ANGEL 7.3 Projects, Pilots, Publications
From ETS
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ANGEL Documentation Team
The primary goal of the team is to review, update, and build on the existing ANGEL documentation to make it consistent with the ANGEL upgrade to v7.3 on 5/16/2009. The second goal of the team is to preview the usability and functionality of v7.3 and to report its findings to ANGEL Support via Mantis (our bug tracking tool). The third goal of the team is to create video tutorials and vodcasts previewing the main new tools and features faculty and students can expect to find in v7.3
The team meets every other Friday. Meeting time is 9:00-10:00 AM. Attendees can meet at University Park in 202 K Rider or via Adobe Connect at angeldocs.
ANGELshorts
ANGELshorts are one-page documents covering a specific point of interest in ANGEL. They cover the 5 most essential things you need to know about the topic in order to maximize its use. The aim is to help faculty, staff, and students maximize the value of using ANGEL as a teaching tool.
Planned shorts for Spring-Fall 2009 include:
- What's New in ANGEL 7.3 (published May 18, 2009)
- Five Things You Should about the HTML Editor
- Five Things You Should Know about Discussion Forums
- Five Things You Should Know about the Permissions Manager
- Five Things You Should Know about ANGEL Mail
Action Items:
- I will write drafts of these shorts over the summer so they can be published by the start of the fall semester. Yu-Tai Chung and/or Alan Klein will develop the video tutorials. Can we place these on the PSU You Tube space and embed them in the Community Hub?
- I will ask Alan Klein to write the Training Services gradebook tutorials
- I will put together a timeline for material development for Terry (completed 6/11)
Timeline:
- By 7/7: Publish text versions of HTML Editor, Discussion Forums, Mail. Re-publish What you need to know about 7.3
- By 8/24 Publish video versions of above
Pilots
Pilots are contingent upon the current ANGEL-Blackboard situation
Pilots will assess the tool/feature on the following:
- Usability- how easy is it for the end user to operate?
- Functionality- does the tool/feature perform as expected?
- Performance- will it work in our environment?
Assessments
We hope to pilot the assessment tool in summer and fall 2009 with the possibility of a general release with the spring upgrade. In addition to usability, functionality, and performance the assessment pilot will also:
- examine how the tool functions in the Pollock Testing environment
- see if we can migrate quizzes to assessments
- compare the quiz and assessment feature sets
Faculty to pilot in 2nd session summer 09
- Stan Smith, Math 022
- Susan Bienert, AGBM 200 (5 exams, 2 quizzes. 35-50 students)
Faculty to pilot in fall 09
- Stan Smith, 3 algebra courses
- Lisa Mangel BiSc 004 section 300. (via Qi Dunsworth)
- Ron DelPorto CMPSC 121, section 002 and 003 (via Qi Dunsworth)
- Margo Kertis Nursing 112, section 1-5 (via Qi Dunsworth)
Learning Outcomes Manager
Pilot dates TBD
- Stan Smith
Action Items Jeff, Terry, Brian, Andy, Jenn will meet after the 6/11 Ops meeting to discuss pilot dates.
Projects
Moving Content from ANGEL to Blackboard (Jan Mahar, Professor IST)
Jan is teaching two summer courses at UCSD, a Bb school. She requested assistance with moving her course content from ANGEL to Bb.The Bb option does not look good. Not only because of the course size limit (UCSD limits course space to 100 mb) but also because it is very likely that Quizzes will not import from ANGEL to Bb. This is a known issue with no known resolution.
Meeting May 21, 2008:
- We spoke with her support person at UCSD and at that time they had not set up her (2) courses.
- I was able to verify that UCSD courses offer only 100 mb of storage space and Jan's course content approaches 1 GB.
- I created 2 courses for her in ANGEL where I imported the content she wanted. She is configuring those courses with an eye towards using them (along with FPS accounts for the students) for her courses at UCSD
- Note Brain is checking to see if we are able to have non-PSU students take a course in ANGEL
- Note There is an issue with functionality and FPS accounts in 7.3. FPS accounts are having difficulty accessing certain items such as discussion forums and mail.
- UCSD has a mandatory online tutorial about their CMS that all instructors have to take. Jan was planning on completing this last week while I was away.
The plan is for us to touch base when her courses become available in Blackboard to see if anything can be done with them. I sent a follow-up note to Jan on 6/1.
Follow-up note from UCSD, 6/1: "When importing an IMS package, the process creates a single item in your course. That item may be associated with a single grade column in your grade book.In other words, an IMS package should contain a single lecture, assignment, or test. If you want to deploy five lectures through importing, you should have five IMS packages."
ANGEL Related Events
ANGEL User Conference, May 2009
Executive Summary: Blackboard's main purpose at the conference was to stabilize the reaction of the ANGEL Community by announcing all contracts would be honored, the Indianapolis office will remain open, and extending the 7.3 and 7.4 support timelines. Ray Henderson was appointed President for the Blackboard Learn Division. This is a combination of product development, hosting, services, and user support for the combined companies products (ANGEL, Blackboard and WebCT). Bb also announced registration fees for Bb world July 14-17 in Washington, D.C would be waived for existing ANGEL customers. Ray Henderson stated this would be the last ANGEL User Conference but something would be done at Bb World in 2010 to maintain the ANGEL community presence. Bb will continue to support ANGEL 7.3 through July 31, 2011 and V 7.4 through July 31, 2012. There are plans to release v. 8.0 (2010-2011); however, that timeline is now flexible and will most likely be a transition step toward integrating ANGEL into Blackboard NG (Next Generation). For more information, please see AUC Summary Review by Jeff Swain, Terry O'Heron. and Brian Beiswenger.
Sakai, July 2009
July 8 - 10
BbWorld 09, July 09
July 14 - 17
Open Content, Aug 09
Aug. 8 - 11
ANGEL Marketing
Fall 09
ANGEL Town Hall Town Hall 8/25, 10-noon, 116 Willard and via Adobe Connect URL: ANGEL 7.3 Town Hall
Prerequisite(s): A basic understanding of ANGEL is a plus but not required.
Description (approx. 50 words): Penn State upgraded ANGEL to version 7.3 at the end of the spring semester. The Town Hall will provide faculty, support staff and others who work with ANGEL a chance to view the new ANGEL interface either in person at University Park or via Adobe Connect. This is an open discussion forum where in depth exploration of all the new tools and features will take place. Time will be available at the end of the seminar for questions and answers.
Objectives:
• Review several changes made to the interface with 7.3 • Explore the new features in ANGEL 7.3 including the HTML editor, the Date Manager, and Live Office Hours • Review the updated features including Discussion Forums and Mail • Discuss the possibilities of using ANGEL in conjunction with other collaborative tools
Links to Sem Reg Register to attend in person Register to attend via Adobe Connect
ANGEL Training by Training Services
- Gradebook: 8/18 & 8/21
- Start Using ANGEL: 8/17 & 8/20
- What's New in 7.3: 8/19
ANGEL Calendar Dates
Dates for the ANGEL Calendar (Symposium, ANGEL, LDSC , DC Tailgate, Gaming) Re-issue 7.3 Announcement for release week of 8/10. This way we can include info. on Town Halls and ANGEL training later in the month.
ANGELshorts For publication 8/24 (pdf and video) Re-release What's New in 7.3 Release 5 Things: (1)HTML editor, (2)Mail, (3)Discussion Forums
Release two additional shorts (late Sept. and Oct.) Release late Nov. 5 Things to prepare for end of semester (tallying grades, publishing grades, right-sizing your course content, import-export, tool availability during finals week)
Mention Town Hall and shorts release dates on the TLT Homepage (Mary checking w/Derick)
- If appropriate include in "back-to-school" packet
ANGEL Homepage (Mary) opt-in listserv (Mary) community hub (Jeff) communicators listserv (Jeff)
