Archive for February, 2010
ANGEL Service Pack 5 being added during Friday maintenance
ANGEL hosting will apply Service Pack 5—January Update to WAOL ANGEL on Friday morning, February 12, during our regular maintenance period between 2:00 and 5:00 am.
- We do not anticipate any interruptions in service except during the maintenance time.
- This Service Pack will fix the No Name instructor issue we saw at the start of Winter quarter.
After this Service Pack is applied, announcements over 8000 characters will not be saved. Please note that is 8000 characters, not words. Pasting even a short announcement in from a Word doc can result in a very large number of characters since Word brings in formatting.
Thanks,
Connie
ANGEL Time-out Exceptions Decreasing
Audience: All WAOL ANGEL faculty and students
New Information: Reduction in number of timeout errors. ANGEL hosting has been optimizing our database, and this seems to be helping reduce the number of errors that the ANGEL application is logging.
What’s Next: Please continue to let your college elearning staff or the WAOL Help Desk know if you get a timeout error when using WAOL ANGEL. Include details on the time of day, the classroom you were in, the function you were trying to perform, your browser, or any other relevant details.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
