Please Respond: WAOL ANGEL Faculty Survey
Audience: WashingtonOnline ANGEL Faculty
Announcement/Request: We are gathering information for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week so we can determine the extent of any continuing performance issues. We really need this information.
The survey will be open online through Sunday, February 7, and instructors can access the survey multiple times until then. Each time the survey is opened, it creates a new response. (In other words, you can’t go back to the same response more than once, but you can create multiple responses.)
Note: This survey is on performance issues, not functions like “What’s New” and “Tasks.” We are committed to turning those functions back on.
Here’s the link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FLLPNWB
In Addition: If elearning staff want to respond to the survey, that’s fine. The more information, the better.
Add comment February 4, 2010
Spring Book Order Deadline: Friday, February 5th
Audience: All instructors of WAOL shared courses
What: Deadline for submitting your Spring book orders is Friday, February 5th.
- Lead instructors: please take a moment to confirm that your texts for Spring are updated and correct.
- Please let me know ASAP if you are changing your texts so I can pass that information along to other instructors teaching your course.
- All other instructors: please check the book order report to be sure you are offering the most current texts.
- Click on this link for steps to entering your Book Order
- If you do not go in and update the Spring book order then no books will be posted for your class. If your course is not being offered this quarter then please disregard this request.
A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: We have come to see that many students are using services like Amazon to order their texts. This is causing BIG problems for those courses that have custom bundled texts or special order items.
We’ve discovered:
- Students often use our eCampus bookstore to find their texts then order them elsewhere.
- Students often bypass their campus bookstores and order from services like Amazon.
- This often results in the wrong course materials for students who have courses that list bundled/custom texts.
Remember: If you are having trouble accessing your book order manager please take a moment to review the instructions in the link above and remember this message applies only to lead instructors teaching shared courses.
Add comment February 4, 2010
Practice using Elluminate
Audience: All Elluminate Users
What’s New: Ann Garnsey-Harter, Ph.D., Director of eLearning at Shoreline Community College is offering sessions for practice in Elluminate.
Practicing Elluminate 2-3 pm Wednesday 2/3
Practice using Elluminate, a live web conferencing tool, with your CTC colleagues in a casual setting.
Join remotely from your own computer by going to this Elluminate room:
Just enter your name; you don’t need a password to participate.
When: Takes place 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month from 2-3pm (through March 17th, possibly longer).
Add comment February 2, 2010
ANGEL Institutional Directory Changes
Audience: ANGEL Administrators
What’s New: WAOL staff are currently simplifying the Directory structure, moving each school up one level, to be directly under the top, Institution level. (As part of the 7.4 upgrade, schools were place under the Institution > WAOL level, and this is correcting that.)
The directory structure will look different for ANGEL administrators; however, we do not anticipate any effect for end users.
What you’ll see: For example, the old style was Institution > WAOL > P010 and the new style is Institution > P010.
Add comment February 1, 2010
WAOL Book Order Deadline: Friday, February 5th
Deadline for submitting your Spring book orders is Friday, February 5th.
Audience: Faculty teaching WashingtonOnline shared courses
- Lead instructors: Please take a moment to confirm that your texts for Spring are updated and correct.
If you are changing your texts let Monique Kovalenko (mkovalenko@sbctc.edu) know ASAP so she can pass that information along to other instructors teaching your course. - All other instructors: please check the book order report to be sure you are offering the most current texts.
Click on this link for steps to entering your Book Order - If you do not go in and update the Spring book order then we will assume there are no changes and the books that were used for Winter quarter will be ordered for Spring quarter. If your course is not being offered this quarter then please disregard this request.
A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: We have come to see that many students are using services like Amazon to order their texts. This is causing BIG problems for those courses that have custom bundled texts or special order items.
We’ve discovered:
- Students often use our eCampus bookstore to locate their texts then order them elsewhere.
- Students often bypass their campus bookstores and order from services like Amazon.
- This can, and has, resulted in the wrong course materials for students who have courses that list bundled/custom texts.
Add comment February 1, 2010
PRO98 was down
The WAOL HP3000 went offline briefly this morning; however, it is back up now.
This system impacts registrations into WAOL courses at your school, along with several WAOL.org forms including the ITT Approval Form.
If you experience any further problems with these functions, please let the WAOL office know.
Add comment February 1, 2010
WAOL ANGEL Update January 27, 2010
Audience: ELC, Faculty and ITC
ANGEL Update:
· WAOL ANGEL performance improved Tuesday after turning off What’s New Monday night.
· Thanks to Jerry Lewis and Brandy Long for materials to help instructors and students use the Task feature. Jerry’s video is on the log in page announcement.
· Brandy also tested sending a message to all faculty in the LWTC domain. Since no other domains reported getting the message, domain administrators can now send a message that will only go to their single domain (not everybody on WAOL ANGEL as before).
· ANGEL released Service Pack 5 for 7.4 today. It looks like there are some fixes there for bugs we have seen. As Gold-Hosted customers, WAOL ANGEL will apply this service pack during a regular maintenance period, which is every Friday between 2 and 5:00 am, BUT only after other customers have tested the updates. This is good because we won’t be the ones to find any bugs in the bug fixes. We’ll keep you informed on when ANGEL thinks it is safe to apply this update to WAOL ANGEL.
· An ANGEL Development team has begun to investigate alternatives to What’s New.
· ANGEL identified a way to find and delete additional and unneeded content that can be added when using a course cartridge. These files can be deleted to bring a classroom size down to a workable size. (We saw this same problem when instructors initially imported their classrooms from Blackboard.) Details and instructions will follow on how to delete this duplicated and unnecessary Blackboard cartridge content.
· ANGEL will also help us archive and delete old classrooms. We will discuss that at the next WAOL Advisory Group meeting on February 8.
Thanks, everyone, for all your help in keeping track of the current status for your users.
Add comment January 27, 2010
ANGEL What’s New Workaround
Angel’s “What’s New” function has been turned off due to performance issues. The “What’s New” function was what caused alerts/icons for new items/tasks to show up under your class listing on the home page. You can still access these features from within your classes:
- In the class, expand the Guide, then click on the “What’s New” or “Tasks” tabs.
- Click on the plus sign to expand the categories.
- Note that under Tasks, the categories may indicate zero (0) items when they actually exist. Expand the categories to see.
- Click here for a video created by Jerry Lewis of Columbia Basin on how to do this.
We are working with Blackboard to determine the problem and reactivate “What’s New,” however, in the mean-time, please use the workaround.
Add comment January 27, 2010
WAOL ANGEL What’s New OFF
Audience: ELC, Faculty and ITC
Update: ANGEL successfully disabled “What’s New” again last night, and they report improved performance of WAOL ANGEL.
WAOL staff will meet with ANGEL this morning to discuss how to configure What’s New so we can turn it on again.
If you get reports of slowness, please update the ticket with detailed information. Ticket # #596-8313119.
Add comment January 26, 2010
Elluminate Live! Recording – WAOL Advisory Group Meeting January 25, 2010
Audience: ELC and ITC
Here’s the WAOL Advisory Group meeting recording and PowerPoint from today’s meeting, Monday January 25th, 2010.
To view the recording, click the link below:
Add comment January 25, 2010
