ANGEL WishList

What is on your ANGEL WishList?

So far, I have:

• creation of a public LOR that can be shared among faculty on ANGEL
• Various "how to" cheat sheets

I'd be most interested in your other wishlist items and things you would like to know how to do EASILY on ANGEL.

-Carrie

Just in case you forgot: How to open your LOR

If you are interested in sharing stuff from your LOR with your other courses but can't see all of your courses. You might need to do the following:

Go to your LOR.
Click the Manage tab on the top.
Click "Course and Group Access" in the Repository Access nugget.
Click "My Courses" under the Add Associations from menu on the right side.
Select the courses you wish to have accept items from your LOR.
Click the Add Selected button (and they will magically move to the left hand column).
Then click Exit.
And your problem is solved.
You will now be able to see those courses when you wish to publish info from your LOR.

-Carrie

A "How To" - Grading Discussion Forums

Not sure if you are all on the ANGEL listserv, but this was something that showed up yesterday:

Grading discussions is a two-step process. By rating a discussion, that is a quality rating of that post only. Probably you have some sort of rubric for grading quality (ex. on a 0-4 point scale). This rating provides students feedback based on that rubric. Those per-post ratings do not go into the gradebook.

In order to send grades to the gradebook on a forum, you would go to UTILITIES -- GRADE FORUM. There you will see the student’s name (if you click on their name it will bring up all posts that student has supplied to the forum, though the context in which they may have written it is lost). You will then see the number of posts each student has posted to the forum (in case your forum grade includes a quantity measure). This is followed by number of points earned and points possible (based on your rating, i.e. quality measure). Then you will find a grade column and a comments column. These are what go into the gradebook. You have to use the quantity and quality columns to assign a grade based on the number of points you have assigned to the discussion forum.

Using the CMS - an assignment

Here's one of the first assignments I'm going to give my classes this semester.

The assignment is to write a persona poem - kind of a getting to know you activity. I will be asking to utilize hyperlinks as much as possible. I just can't decide if I want it to be an in-class exercise, a homework assignment, or the first weekly journal assignment.

Here's my sample:

All About Me: A Persona Poem in hyperlinks
Carrie....
optimistic, energetic, green-eyed, grammatically correct
baker of bread
who loves coffee, her mac, and sushi
who is afraid of the sound of a balloon popping, birds, and salmonella
who wants to see Margaret Atwood in person again, the end of taxes, and another summer in Scotland
resident of an orange kitchen
.....Finn.

What do you think?

-Carrie

Linking to Content, Announcements, Discussion Forums, etc.

Quick one:
If you want to link to a section of your course AND you want it to open in a new window, you will need to go to a different spot.

Instead of using the Insert Content Link button, you would use the Insert/Edit Web Link button. You will need to "browse server" and select "map" to find the section you want to link to. Then you would need to change the target using the target tab.

This would make more sense with images.

-C

7.2, oh my!

The upgrade has taken place, and I'm logging back in for the first time. My goal: figure out the blog. Hmmm. Not sure if I like it that much.

I would really want to use this feature to create an individual blog for each student, but I'm not seeing an easy way to do that. It appears that you would create one blog and everyone would have posting rights to it. This really isn't a problem, but I do have 20 students registered for each section. That would be way too many posts. So, here are my options:

1) create an individual blog for each student making each student their own team
2) create team blogs and have students post only to their team blog
3) (this is the insane option) have one blog that each student posts a comment to

And I haven't even thought about grading these yet.....

I do, however, love the inline HTML editor. It's much easier!

-Carrie

surprise it works!

I met with you know who yesterday and one of the things we talked about was the use of icons. She was "blown away" (her words!) by the fact that using our personal file area to store images worked! She couldn't believe that students would be able to see it and was (a bit smugly) going to show me that they couldn't see any of the icons I had added by giving me a test student again. But, oh my, the icons DID show up for students.

She told me repeatedly that I should put them in my LOR or add them to the file for each individual class. I asked her how we could navigate to the LOR from the "icon URL" browse option. That didn't seem to be possible. So she showed me how to use the LOR to use icons and I asked why anyone would do that when the other way works and is MUCH easier. She kept saying she couldn't believe it worked because that area is supposed to be similar to our "W" drives and only accessible by the individual instructor. I asked then why would the browse option direct you to that area?

To be fair she did help me reduce the size of one icon that was life size previously. Her son Luke was there and I think he was working on HCC classes. He asked a question and the conversation sounded like (but remember I can't hear) she was giving him directions to input class data! I didn't address that but I am not thrilled about a child having ANY thing to do with our classes.

Over all I think I gave her more information than she gave me. She answered some questions but her methodology was so convoluted I am not sure I could repeat it if I wanted to.

memory issues?

Okay I think I am running into a file size issue. Nancy didn't you say you talked to Sarah about limits? I don't recall what explanation you were given.

I spent several hours looking for and finding great icons to use in my courses and have uploaded them successfully but they do not appear in the image file. It is so irritating to finally have the technical skills to do this and possibly have it blocked by arbitrary limits. Of course I don't know this for sure or where the limits have been set (HCC or Angel) or why, if they have been set locally.

I just finished reading the email from Sarah about document security. YIKES. I sent Sarah the questions below but am wondering if anyone else has similar questions or answers.

I have a couple of questions about the file security. 1. Do I have to go into past classes and change the settings to "students"? Can't the whole class be set to be inaccessible? 2. If I set the upper level files, which appear when you click on Content to be viewable by students only, will that protect the files within the folder? Or do I really have to go in and reset each individual document to be accessible by student only? I have a list of documents 4 pages long, so I hope there is another option.

Orientation/

Just wondering how the orientation went.

And I wanted to expand on why I was encouraged about orientation becoming a reality by my meeting with Linda and the parking lot mini meeting with Pat East. After talking to Pat about how Datatel interacts with Angel, it seems clear that we don't know if we can incorporate the adaptive release cababilities of Angel for a pre or post registration interactive guide for potential students AT THIS POINT. But Pat said there is a new version of Datatel coming out this summer and with Angel 7.2 coming out this fall, the chances hopefully increase that an orientation component can be accomplished.

The encouraging for me part is the willingness and the potential to work on this issue. The online committee is going to expand to include several new people including more faculty, some different reps from B. Center, and from CIS (who understand Datatel and can work with the committee to actualize the potential) and the registrars office. Instead of discrete groups, unconnected with different perspectives working separately on different parts of the problem we will have the potential to put all the peices together and work toward a commonly understood goal. I hope anyway.

Cindi

Changing Icons cont'd

Here's a link to the document I created about changing icons. Let me know if you see any problems.

-Carrie

Changing Icons

All,

I've created a document that will provide instructions for changing icons for your content in Angel. I'll post it here in some fashion after it's been edited.

Are there any other tutorials or step-by-step instructions that need to be created?

-Carrie

7.2, Template with navigation and Mentoring

What did I find the most useful/helpful from the ANGEL user conference....hmmm. Like both Cindi and Carrie, I found some sessions more tailored to my needs and my expertise level and other sessions less interesting. I found myself in at least one session that was way too techie for me and at least one session that was more basic than I needed. The most helpful info I gleaned at the conference was about the changes coming in 7.2, the templates Carrie referred to in the Penn State presentation, and the West Texas A&M Mentoring model.

The updates coming in version 7.2 look to be a great addition to our CMS. I especially am anxious to learn more about the wikis, blogs, and podcast area. I really like the idea of having the option to allow students unlimited quiz retakes to achieve mastery. I think I may try this with grammar basic skills. I think having the new mail interface (looking more like Outlook) and the capability of having all courses in one mail server will help with time management. I am sure there will be many more features of 7.2 that I will use and appreciate, but these were the features that I have in my notes.

Speaking of notes....I will upload some of my notes from the conference in the next few days.

The Penn State presentation showed a template with navigation that a team of designers (yes, I said designers) create for the instructor. (yes, designers create the ANGEL site....not the instructor) My notes from this presentation are voluminous! I would like to develop a template that includes a table of contents for the site, a "meet the instructor" page that includes a short video of me introducing myself and the course, a contents navigation menu for each unit, and navigation buttons for forward, backward, and home. I have BIG plans for ways I want to use the information from this session! I do believe it will take a fair amount of time to set up the template, but in the long run the template should save me time.

The West Texas A&M mentoring model is a 7-step program for mentoring a new user in ANGEL. During discussion in the van on the way home from Indianapolis, we talked about our responsibility to the college after attending this conference, and I believe we all have the responsibility to help others use the ANGEL CMS. I don't know if the college will institute any mentoring system at all, but I hope that each of us that attended will be open to helping anyone that asks for assistance. The West Texas A&M model included an online mentoring for adjuncts. I may attempt to set up an online mentoring program for adjuncts....I still need to think about this and plan how it would work, but I am sure it would be beneficial if I can get it started.

Right now I am energized to put into practice some of what we saw at the conference. This next week is when I hope to dedicate 15-20 hours of intense ANGEL time. I hope to get a start at the template and create a document for summer ANGEL orientation. When I get this handout created for the May 31 orientation, I will share it with you.

Cindi's Comment: A Response

If you didn't see Cindi's comment on my first post, I've pasted it in here:

Cool! Thanks for setting this up. I'm glad to hear you think we each found some useful things. I liked 3 or 4 sessions I went to and was disappointed in others. Clearly there is much potential we have not had any clue about. I am going to try and work on the automated personalization for my class. Wow I may have to think about this.

I'll start by responding to the first half. I did find at least one thing useful or helpful or innovative in each presentation I went to - even the ones that I didn't think were that smartly put together. What I was most happy about was the conversation we had as a group during sessions, between sessions, in our hotel rooms, at dinner, and in the car on the way to and from the conference. I think that really showed me that we need to keep the conversation going throughout the semester - even when we're bogged down with grading!

Is it too silly to ask what the best thing we learned was? I have already set up a meeting with Linda (May 30) and am planning on talking to her about orientation (my best thing) and the conference in general. Anything else I should be sure to bring up? Cindi

Too silly? Definitely not! I personally found the following three things very useful:

1. Orientation for students is NECESSARY if you want to retain students. This orientation should be made available online for students who are learning from a distance. I also like Nancy's inclusion of a f2f session that is optional for her students. I can see how that would really benefit many students. I'm still not sure if I truly believe that they should have to go through the orientation before they are allowed to register for the course - I don't know if that would keep students from registering. I do think that it could be a great first module in all of our classes that students must work through before begining major assignments....but do we want to sacrifice that time?
2. Training for faculty has to be hands on, organized, incentivized (is that a word?), and progressive. We can't train faculty in one sitting. I love the idea of a 2 hour training with lots of hands on time within a course. I, like many, really just need a space to tinker around and make mistakes so that I can learn from those mistakes. I also like the idea of a fake or test course to work in so that I don't feel as though I could screw things up.
3. This CMS is basically a website that I can edit to serve my own purposes, whatever they might be. Perhaps the rest of you already have acknowledged this in your minds, but for me it took this conference to make me understand that I can adapt the code to make the course work for me. I've created websites before in frontpage and dreamweaver so I do have some coding experience (although it is fast fading). I realize that I don't have to be so tied to the construct that already exists. At the same time, however, I did enjoy hearing about some of the templates that institutions are "forcing" on their departments. I loved the idea of the course orientation, table of contents, etc that was standard on all of the PSU Ag courses. That made sense.

What about the rest of you? What did you find the most useful/informative/exciting about the conference? You can post a reply to this post or you can create your own post. If you aren't sure how to create a post, let me know.

-Carrie

Hands On Orientation

Carrie, thanks for settin up this blog. It will be fun to continue our conversation (begun at the ANGEL users conference, and strengthened in the van) in this manner. I do believe that sharing our knowlege will help instructors and students alike as we continually work to have pedagogically sound online courses at HCC.

The orientation conversation was stimulating for me, both at the conference and in the van. I have many ideas swimming around my mind about things I hope to include in the online orientation we create. Let's get started!!!

Before the spring term ended, I made plans to hold an orientation session for my summer students. I plan to help students feel more comfortable with the ANGEL interface. I am not requiring this f2f session, but hope some of the students that are less confident with online learning will show up for some help.

I am more than willing to have other instructors send their students for help that night as well. Details: May 31, 6-7:30pm, Grundy 222. I don't plan to have any set presentation, but rather it will be a come 'n go session so I can help students individually or in small groups. My goal is for the student to be able to log on, navigate the tabs in ANGEL, find their first series of assignments, and understand some of the basics: drop box, mail within ANGEL, discussion forum, calendar, etc.

Any thoughts on other skills I should suggest students practice that night in their class? I think I will send this info to Sarah U and ask her to email all online summer instructors to let their students know they can participate (not required) in this orientation session.

Let's get together SOON to begin the online orientation planning and creation.

Back from Indy

We just got back from the Angel Users Conference in Indianapolis. Based on the conversation had at the conference and in the van on the way home to Iowa, it was a great experience for each of us. I think each of us walked away with a couple good ideas for our own classes.

I, personally, plan to work this summer on creating some good templates for unit pages, create a set of good instructions for my students (using the resources Angel has available), have long conversations about orienting students to and preparing students for Angel, discuss training needs, create some quick guides for instructors, and develop more visual interactions for my students.

Hopefully this blog will serve as a good space for our discussion!

-Carrie