ANGEL Community Hub

I hear ANGEL Support is getting asked this question a lot these days. I'd like to provide an in-depth look at the answer.

First, the remarks field in drop boxes have always had a 2500 character limit. Prior to a recent update ANGEL would silently not save any characters beyond that limit. To prevent this type of data loss, ANGEL now warns you that you've exceeded the limit.

Second, a common question seems to be that ANGEL claims that more than 2500 characters have been entered even when the user has only entered a few letters. This is the result of an unfortunate interaction between Microsoft Word and, well, everything else including the ANGEL HTML editor. Let's take a look at why this occurs and what can be done about it.

Please pass this on to all who use ANGEL for graded quizzes.

If you are going to embed a video in a quiz question that the quizzee MUST watch to answer the question, please provide alternative links to said video, and an alternative way to get at the required info - like a text transcript.

I just watched my daughter wait 30 minutes for a video to load in an ANGEL quiz. Good grief.

Some of you who use both ANGEL and the Blogs at Penn State may be interested in having your blog headlines be fed into your course. The link below documents how to generate and embed JavaScript which will do that for you.

http://blogger.psu.edu/help/advanced/headlinetoangel

I've devised a solution for an "Angel challenge" I experienced for some time. This little process allows me to to better segment many different Angel resources (discussion forums, documents, dropboxes etc.), that are tied to a single lesson, but appear in a long list on the page.
Similar results can be achieved with a simple file and folder structure, but for a number of reasons (I won't take time describe), I needed to do it this way. I hope this helps someone, or at least spawns other ideas on flexibility within Angel.

Watch the Screencast (created w/Jing)

Disclaimer:

In a previous post I described how instructors can check their course file size to see if they were approaching the 1 GB ceiling. But did you know there are several media storage options available to instructors that can offset the amount of course storage space used? For example, within ANGEL instructors can apply for a Learning Object Repository or a Master Course. Additionally, services external to ANGEL, such as the Streaming Media Server and iTunes U are available to support audio and video files. Each is briefly described here.

Prior to the fall 2006 semester ANGEL course file space was capped at 1gigabyte (GB) for a course. The 1 GB allocation corresponds to the maximum size of a course that can be reliably imported and exported. Exceeding this allocation cap will prevent faculty and students from being able to upload additional files, such as course content or attachments. As we get further along in the semester it is advisable to check your course to see how much space is available, and to take any necessary action, before the limit is exceeded. To do this from your course:

Within the Gradebook instructors have the ability to reorder assignments within a category, move assignments to another category, and rearrange the category display order.

To reorder assignments within a category:

1. On the main Gradebook menu, select the Categories link beneath the Gradebook Management subheading.
2. Select the check box for the category, then click the Show Tasks.
3. Select the Reorder Assignments link to reorder assignments within the selected category.

Reorder assignments by using the Top, Up, Down, and Bottom buttons