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ANGEL- (A New Global Environment for Learning) is an online Course Management System utilized by over 50 Universities , High School s, Middle School s, and business professionals. The ANGEL system is an LMS, learning management system, created for powerful learning and teaching environments, by schools and businesses to be easy-to-use, flexible, and rewarding for the clients that use it. The main use for the ANGEL system at universities is for instructors to post online material for their students’ use, without extensive knowledge of HTML. ANGEL contains various features such as: syllabi, lesson plans, discussion forums, schedule/calendars, online readings, online quizzes, email features for classmates, instructors, and TAs, course roster, and an online grade report. HISTORY Founded in July 2000 by the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis CyberLab as a product of the professional management team known as ANGEL Learning and ANGEL LMS. ANGEL is a byproduct of the initial research system developed in 1996 at Indiana University. The system originally created at Indiana University was known as OnCourse, which is still currently in use today, supporting approximately 100,000 students on eight University campuses. The ANGEL LMS system was then created to be more applicable and easier to maintain than OnCourse. Innovation was updated in the user interface, flexible database integration, high performance, and reliability. ANGEL is easy-to-use, powerful, flexible, open, and innovative. All of these features are what make ANGEL a rapidly evolving technology. For more information on ANGEL Learning and its other products visit http://www.angellearning.com/tour/default.html# FEATURES My Courses Once you log into the ANGEL site using your student ID and password, you are taken to your personal ANGEL page. The settings for this page can be altered by using the “My Settings” link, but the default settings for ANGEL provide “My Courses” at the top of the page. Under this header, one can see the list of links of the courses in which he or she is enrolled that semester if the instructor has created an ANGEL page for that particular section. Since the ANGEL system is growing in popularity, it is very common for instructors to take advantage of this technology. By clicking any of the courses, the student is then taken to the standard ANGEL page, which holds any information the instructor wished to provide. Also, courses from past semesters remain on the “My Courses” list for about two years after being taken, incase one desires to look back at past information. Syllabus Once a student accesses a course under the “My Courses” list, they are taken to a site of one of the six tabs on top of the page, usually either “Syllabus” or “Lessons”, depending on the choice of the instructor. If not taken directly to the Syllabus page, it can be accessed by simply clicking the tab at the top of the site. The instructor has the option to post the course syllabus on this page, however not everyone that uses the ANGEL service chooses to post an online syllabus, and may prefer to hand out a hard copy in class. A feature that can be used by the online syllabus that an actual piece of paper cannot is links to readings or assignments as they appear on a weekly schedule. Calendar The second tab on the course page is the calendar, which is not as commonly used by instructors as other features. If the instructor decides not to provide a list of dates in a syllabus format, they may add items to the calendar for students to get a more visual feel of how the semester is laid out. Items such as due dates, quizzes, exams, and guest speakers can be added to the calendar. Lessons This feature is usually the most important to students who access the ANGEL website in search of course material. At the instructors choosing, he or she may post Power Point slides, additional notes and readings, homework assignments, drop boxes for various papers or essays, online quizzes, and anything else the instructor would like to be available to the students. Most of the use of the ANGEL website for a course comes from this tab. Class The “Class” tab allows a student or instructor to view everyone who is enrolled in that particular section, including the instructor and TA’s. A search is available at the top of the page for large courses with many students. Each student’s email address is shown here, and also a personal website if he or she chooses to provide the address. There are also features at the top to show pictures of those who have uploaded personal photos of themselves to ANGEL, along with being able to sort the list by teams if it applies to the particular course. In Touch An important use of the “In Touch” tab is the email function. Here, one is able to send mail, read mail, and view previously sent messages. When one is sending a message, they have access to everyone in the course, along with the instructor and TA’s, which is very convenient since one does not have to search for each person’s email address. They can simply highlight the person’s name, or even choose to send a message to “Everyone”, “All Faculty”, “All Students”, or to one’s own team. Other features in this tab include team files, announcements, news, polls, and a welcome page, should the instructor choose to post in this area. Tools The “Tools” tab is similar to the “In Touch” feature, since it has multiple links to access various information regarding the course. In this tab, one can view their online grade report, learner profile, attendance, notes, activity, milestones, and a “what’s new agent” which highlights in a side bar new material in which the student has not yet accessed. A dictionary/thesaurus search is provided at the bottom, along with direct links to the University Library. -''My Groups'' This feature is not used as much in the ANGEL website as is the course information, since not every course includes group work. However, it is a very useful tool that may be underutilized by students due to lack of knowledge and familiarity. This feature allows students to create a group to host information to share with one another in one common area. This can easily be done by one member creating the group and the others searching for it and being added. The students can then upload files to one location for the other members to look at, and can also post messages and send out emails to the entire group easily. CRITICISMS One major criticism of the ANGEL system is the fact that students and instructors alike do not know how to use it. Penn State currently offers online tutorials and even ANGEL training for those that do not know how to use it. Another criticism is the time it takes for certain documents to download. Sometimes files, such as PowerPoint and PDF are too large and take a significant amount of time to view. Yet another criticism of ANGEL is common of most technology, the fact that ANGEL is sometimes unavailable. Students often have online deadlines for completing quizzes, and homework that are not accepted late if the ANGEL system goes down. Spamming of the ANGEL email is another criticism of the system. Although the ‘in touch’ email feature is very useful, some students and teachers receive too many emails to check, especially when some of the emails are spam from students looking for football tickets, or apartment sublets. RESPONSES "After completing a year-long selection process, ANGEL was the overwhelming choice of our 42-member task force. ANGEL’s superior communication features and our faculty's ability to easily migrate their content from our current CMS to ANGEL were the key factors in our ANGEL selection." -Melaine Kenyon, Electronic Learning Specialist at the Buffalo State University. "ANGEL has features our previous CMS didn’t have: reporting functions, multiple drop boxes, discussion forums that are linked to the gradebook. Overall ANGEL is just more accommodating for teachers." -Jason L. Steinitz, Professor of Social Science and Distance Learning Faculty Liaison at Erie Community College . "ANGEL Adoption continues to increase rapidly at Penn State. As of the Fall ’04 semester, 61,604 students had at least one course in ANGEL — more than 14% increase over the end of the Spring ’04 semester. Penn State now has 4,780 course sections in ANGEL, an increase of 791 course sections since the end of the Spring ’04 semester. All told, ANGEL currently supports 136,331 student/course combinations at Penn State." –Dr. John Harwood, Senior Director of Teaching and Learning with Technology at the Penn State University . "We were looking for a way to better organize instruction, a tool to make learning more interesting to students, and for a means to create a picture-window through which parents can view their student's high school education as it happens. For many students, high school is a time when they disconnect from their parents and lose some of the academic thrust they had at the elementary and middle school levels. By adopting ANGEL, we expect to invigorate student learning and orchestrate meaningful instruction. We chose ANGEL, because ANGEL was the simplest-to-use product we could find to help us meet our academic goals." -Jack Gardner, Principal of Marion High School EXTERNAL LINKS
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