ANGEL to be upgraded to version 7.3 weekend of May 16

During the weekend of May 16, Information Technology Services (ITS) plans to upgrade Penn State’s Course Management System, ANGEL, from version 7.1 to 7.3. The new version will feature enhancements to several existing tools, and several new tools will help course editors perform administrative tasks. Users will also see several minor interface changes. For the most part, however, the functionality will remain familiar to users.

Following is a description of new features in ANGEL 7.3. For any questions, contact ANGEL support at angelsupport@psu.edu.

Enhanced Tools

Enhanced tools include course/group mail, discussion forums, chat, the course/group roster, reports, the HTML editor used in text entry areas, and the theme selector.

Using the ANGEL 7.3 mail tool, students and instructors can conveniently access mail from all their courses and groups at once, either from a component on the My Profile page or from within a course or group. The interface more closely resembles commercial mail applications.

The discussion forum tool has added functionality. In place of the separate Discussion Forums Wizard on the Lessons tab Add Content screen found in earlier versions of ANGEL, the settings for a discussion forum include a built-in Mode selection menu. In addition to the fishbowl, hot seat, and required post modes are two new modes, Private User Journal and Private Team Journal. Discussion forums can also optionally be set up to allow students to rate each other’s posts on a scale of one to five stars and to allow them to edit their own existing posts.

The chat tool, which has a new look, opens in a separate window. As messages are posted, the screen refreshes instantly, with no lag time. A related chat tool, called live office hours, provides a way for students to meet with their instructors individually online. As students select the link for the live office hours chat, they are placed in a queue, then allowed into the chat one at a time. Each student can only see his/her own messages and those of the instructor. When the instructor sets up the times/dates for live office hours, these times and dates are automatically added to the course calendar.

The Course/Group Roster screen on the Communicate tab has an added print option. Selecting this option opens a separate print-friendly window with the roster listing.

On the course Report tab, the same types of reports can be generated as before; however, changes have been made to the names of some fields and the arrangement of the screen. Once a report is generated, a user can click the Print Preview button to generate a PDF file to print or save.

The new inline HTML editor is integrated with each text area, rather than opening in a separate window as before. The tool features improved functionality, including a more robust equation editor and the ability to create form fields. The equation editor, which includes the functionality of the WebEQ application, allows a user to build an equation right within an ANGEL text area, eliminating the need to build an equation using an application outside ANGEL, then importing it. The HTML editor, including the improved equation editor, is available to students when composing quiz essay questions, discussion forum posts, and mail messages, as well as in other locations.

The theme selector screen is redesigned. If you are editing a theme, it is easier to preview edits. More built-in themes specific to academic fields have been added, as well as a “projector-friendly” theme.

New Tools

New tools in ANGEL 7.3 include a section heading content type on the Lessons tab, a Permissions tab within the roster editor, and a Date Manager for lesson content items.

Instructors can use the section heading content type to group related content items on the course Lessons tab and/or provide directions. It can contain images as well as text. This can help students quickly grasp how lesson items relate to one another.

Within the roster editor, when an instructor is editing the entry for a course member, the settings are arranged on two tabs. The first contains the familiar user settings. The second is the new Permissions tab. Here, an instructor can assign read/write or read-only permission for chat, mail, and discussion forums. When assigning permissions to a fellow course editor, the instructor can grant or deny permission to edit various portions of the course.

In ANGEL 7.1, instructors assigned start and end dates for lesson content items within the settings for each individual item. In ANGEL 7.3, a new Date Manager located on the Manage tab streamlines this task. It allows an instructor to set dates for all content items in a single location. If the course is then copied into another section, for example, in a subsequent term, the dates can be adjusted more easily.

Interface Changes

In version 7.3, by default, certain menu selections only become visible when the cursor is moved over them. These include the icons within the title bar of each component on My Profile or within a course, and the menu available to course editors beneath each content item on the Lessons tab.

Users who prefer these menu items to always be visible can apply a theme called psu new nohover. To do so, they can click the Preferences button in the left navigation, then select the Theme Selector link.

Users will also note two changes to the left navigation buttons. The Help button is now immediately below the Home button, followed by the Log Off button, a switch from version 7.1. In addition the icon for the Preferences button has been changed from a wrench to a person’s silhouette.

A new hide/show banner button in the extreme top right of the screen can be clicked by a user to hide the banner in order to expand the main content area. To show the banner, the user just clicks the button once more.

Users can now navigate to any of their courses or groups from any ANGEL screen without first returning to My Profile. To do so, click the arrow next to your name in the upper right, then select the name of the course/group from the pop-up window that opens. This can help save time for students who are completing assignments for several different courses.