Archive for March 29, 2010
Additional Information on Copying Courses in ANGEL for Spring
A couple of comments on the need to ask instructors to back up their courses.
- The Service Level Agreement (SLA) discusses instructor backups specifically in Section 2.2 (below) Yes, ANGEL backs up everything daily for catastrophic failures. And, yes, we can restore content that has been accidentally deleted. However, restoring from the ANGEL backup is slow, difficult and costs $500 per instance. If the fault is with SBCTC/WAOL, we will pay the cost. However, if the fault is with the college staff, the college will pay the $500. For these reasons, training instructors to do the backups is specifically mentioned as part of the college responsibility in the SLA. In addition, it’s just good practice for all users of technology to learn to back up any important content. ANGEL makes it pretty easy to do.
- The college can and should set in place a policy on how they will backup their classrooms. I’m attaching the DRAFT document that we have been discussing at the WAOL Advisory Group meeting. You can also find out more on how a college can backup their content in the Administrator Manual, starting on page 192.
- All instructors should have and be trained to use Master classrooms. Using a Master classroom solves multiple problems—whether the course is completely online or web-enhanced. We’re working on a new tutorial on Master classrooms and LORs, and that will be a feature of the face-to-face Advanced ANGEL training this May.
Instructor backups and Master classrooms can avert disasters and save time. We really need to push this information to faculty.
View the SLA and examples of ways to manage ANGEL backups:
Spring 2010 Canceled Courses
Audience: Registrars, eLearning Coordinators
All shared spring 2010 classrooms are now open, and instruction begins next Thursday, April 1st. Here is a list of courses that have been canceled due to no/low enrollments for spring quarter so please check this list and if you have students enrolled in any of these course you will need to be sure and notify those students ASAP and drop them from those classes.
Canceled WAOL System-Owned Shared Spring Courses:
#2002 – WAOL Understanding Diversity
#5301 – WAOL Issues and Trends
#5303 – WAOL Methods in Curriculum Development
Canceled College-owned Shared Spring Courses:
#7285 – Child Abuse & Neglect (OC)
#7459 – Human Resource Management (SFCC)
#7794 – Intro to Business (GHC)
You can go here to view the winter instructor class report: http://www.waol.org/info/currentQuarter/allCoursesReport_n.asp
Important Information on Copying Courses in ANGEL
- Back up your classrooms frequently. Restoring data that has been accidentally deleted is pretty easy if you backup your classroom. Otherwise, it is difficult and costly– or maybe impossible. You can find instructions on how to backup your content here: http://tinyurl.com/back1tup
- Copy from your Master Classroom so you do not include existing students and their work in your new classroom. When copying content into a new classroom, copy from your Master classroom. This will link you to the instructions: http://d2.parature.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=8161&task=knowledge&questionID=1432
Note! If instead of copying from another course or master course you are importing a backup file, it will contain student records, grades, e-mail, submissions, discussion forum postings, and more. Uncheck the User Data column so that they will not be imported into the new course. All assignments remain, but do not contain any student submissions. You might also want to uncheck Calendar Items and Announcements if you do not want them in the new course.
These two steps can save you a lot of stress!
