Archive for January, 2009
Changes to Intent to Teach Form Manager
New for Spring 2009
- Course types simplified: College Private, Hybrid and Flexible courses are now all under the College Private name.
- Instructors for WAOL courses will continue to use their ‘waol_’ accounts in Spring quarter. The plan is for faculty to use college-prefix accounts starting Summer quarter, for College Private courses.
- Instruction dates are collected for all College Private courses. This page allows you to choose either your college dates, WAOL dates, or to enter any other set of dates. Your college dates are set by default.
- ANGEL course shells will be created starting Feb 9th, and instructors are required to copy or import their course content. Bb shells will be created Feb 6th, and course content will be copied automatically as in past quarters.
Most courses will be on ANGEL. Instructors still teaching on Blackboard must place a notice in ANGEL directing their students to Blackboard.
ELC info for Spring Intent to Teach Management
· We did get some feedback and made some changes this afternoon to de-emphasize the option of Blackboard for Spring. If you want all faculty at your college on ANGEL for Spring, please let them know, so they will make the right choice.
· We will send you a report in a few weeks to let you know which of your instructors chose Blackboard, if any. If you don’t want your instructors on Blackboard, we’ll have time to fix it before Spring begins.
· Most important–Please check carefully as you approve the Intent to Teach forms to make sure the correct dates are there. WAOL automates every process based on those dates, and the power is now yours to make them what you want at your college. (Note: That is for private classrooms only; shared courses continue to use WAOL start-stop dates.)
Information for Spring 09 WAOL Instructors
- We’re transitioning to the ANGEL Learning Management System
- You’ll need to import your course content from Blackboard into ANGEL
- Resources for obtaining an ANGEL account & migrating content are available at our Faculty ANGEL Support page. Your ELC will also have the most current information on the move.
- Please read carefully about changes in the Intent to Teach process listed below.
The Spring 09 Intent to Teach form is now open. The new ITT form defaults to ANGEL since we plan to have most users on ANGEL for Spring 09. It also allows flexible dates for any private course. Shared courses, of course, must continue to use the WAOL start-stop dates. These changes reflect the new tech fee structure, the cutover to ANGEL and the general simplification of WAOL procedures that these changes enable. The first change is that the College Private and Hybrid course types will effectively be merged into the old Flexible course type. This new, merged course type will keep the College Private name, but will have the flexibility of the old WAOL Flexible course type. The new College Private course type will be:
- Private to your school (which is no change from the existing College Private, Hybrid and Flexible types),
- Enrollment always open on the WAOL side, (and so controlled only by the college in SMS),
- Flexible dates. The ITT form defaults to the dates set by your college, but the ELC may edit them prior to approving the form.
The second change is the emphasis on ANGEL over Blackboard. The ITT form for Spring 09 will:
- Default to ANGEL, but offer Blackboard as a less emphasized option. Please check with your ELC before choosing Blackboard. On many campuses all instructors will be moving to ANGEL.
- The Course ID to Copy is not collected for ANGEL courses. Instructors on ANGEL all receive empty course shells, and so copy their course content themselves from their masters or prior sections or Blackboard. (Originally, WAOL planned to migrate content from Blackboard for instructors. During the Fall pilot we got feedback from instructors that it is much easier if the instructor imports the content. Don’t worry—it’s easy.)
These are relatively small adjustments, and the overall process is unchanged. Instructors continue to fill out an online form by going to their MyWAOL account. E-Learning Coordinators receive email notice as the forms are submitted, and may then approve or reject the forms on WAOL.org. WAOL staff can see these forms as they move through the system, and this form information is the basis for the online classrooms that are provisioned in WAOL’s SMS and in ANGEL and Blackboard. So, as always, we need the approved ITT form before your classroom can be created.
ANGEL users social networking site
For those interested, Lansing Community College has begun to build an informal social network site for ANGEL users. Since sharing and collaboration are always a good thing they would like to invite others to feel free to join the group. The site contains a lot of features such as Groups, Forums, Videos and more. You can also create your own groups, customize your personal page, add a photo etc…
Here is the url: http://angel-space.ning.com/?xgi=6DmP3Hq
ANGEL Maintenance: Friday, January 23rd
ANGEL Maintenance 2am to 5am, Friday 23rd. During this period ANGEL may be unavailable for up to 30 minutes.
WAOL Council Meeting: December 29 & Jan12 recording
Click here for access to a list of all Council meeting recordings and slideshows.
ANGEL System Maintenance, Friday, January 9th
On Friday morning, January 9th, between 2AM and 5AM EDT, the AHS team hold a maintenance window for the purpose of infrastructure updates and maintenance.
During this time your ANGEL instance may be unavailable, so please plan accordingly for this scheduled maintenance window.
