WAOL Blog

Information for Spring 09 WAOL Instructors

January 29, 2009 at 1:56 pm Leave a comment

• 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.

Entry filed under: Angel, Announcements, Faculty, Important Dates. Tags: Angel, instructor, ITT, migration, transition.