Using ANGEL’s Preview Function with Teams

When you are using ANGEL’s User Preview function and an instructor has teams set up for the content you are reviewing, don’t forget that you need to select which team you wish to view. You do not go into the Teams interface and actually add yourself to a team. You do check the box(es) for the team(s) you want to pretend to be on for preview purposes – these checkboxes are in the User Preview Tool interface (i.e. click on the glasses, check the box(es) for the team(s) you want to be on for this preview, click Begin Preview).

ANGEL’s Team Journal Feature

Do you want your students to participate in a team discussion in your online course? Perhaps you have a lot of students in your class, or you have merged two sections of your class, and you want smaller discussion groups. In ANGEL, you can do this without creating a separate discussion forum for each team.

First, you must create teams in your class. You can either have the teams randomly generated by ANGEL, or you can create teams and choose members manually. In this example, we will have ANGEL generate the teams.

To set up randomly generated teams, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Manage tab
2. Click on Teams
3. Click on Random Team Generator
4. Fill in the next screen based on your preferences
5. Click Next when all criteria have been set
6. Adjust team membership as desired, then click Generate Teams
7. Click Continue

Now that you have teams in your class, it’s time to set up a Team Discussion forum:

1. Go to your Lessons tab and click Add Content
2. Choose Discussion Forum
3. Fill out the criteria on the various tabs as usual, with the following exceptions
   a. On the Access tab, set the Team Access drop-down to Selected Teams
   b. Check the boxes for the teams you wish to have access to the forum
   c. On the Post Permissions tab, make sure Read, New Post, and Reply are checked only for the teams that will be using the forum
   d. On the Interaction tab, change Mode to Private Team Journal
4. When all the settings are the way you want them, click Save

As the instructor, you will be able to see posts from any or all of the teams by going to the forum and choosing which team you want to view (or choosing all teams) from a drop-down list at the top of the forum. Students will only be able to see posts and replies from other members of their team.

Thanks to Tracy Newman for writing up this tip.

Merged Rosters Idiosyncrasy

We’ve discovered a small issue when we merge rosters for two or more sections of a course. During the roster merge process, we can place students on teams based on the original section in which they are enrolled (e.g., students in section 350 are enrolled on a team called "Section 350," students in Section 351 are enrolled on a team called “Section 351” and so on).

By default, this is how we setup a course with a merged roster at JCCC. This enables the instructor to keep separate all or part of the activities of students assigned to the original course sections. However, new students who are added to the original sections after the rosters are merged are not automatically assigned to any team (the instructor must handle this manually). We’ve contacted ANGEL to inquire whether this is a bug or functioning as designed?

Additional Findings about Teams

[See the earlier post today for further background] If you’ve used multiple teams and it is causing confusion, you might want to delete or hide the old teams. Just be aware of the following:

You can delete old teams, but this makes the forum disappear for students. You can change the access to all teams and the forum link will then be visible, but students can’t read any posts. Instructors can still see the old posts, and grades appear to be retained in the grade book.

You can hide the old teams – the students will no longer see the hidden team name in the drop-down box, so they cannot post to the old (incorrect) team. Students can still access discussion boards for the hidden team, but they can’t post from that team—not sure why that capability exists.

You can disable the old teams. When you disable the old teams, students will not be able to see the old board. For instance, if Teams 1 and 2 can access Forum 1 and you disable Teams 1 and 2, Forum 1 will no longer be visible to them.

In the second two cases (hidden and disabled), grades do remain in the grade book, and when the students go to post, they have “all journals” and one team name (whatever team they are on that is not hidden or disabled) in their drop-down menu.

Caution About Teams

As we’ve worked with teams in Discussions, we‘ve found some interesting idiosyncrasies which can best be described using a specific example.

Students must be cautioned to know and select the correct team for each forum in which they post in order for the system to work as expected.

ANGEL allows the student to see their postings (based on their drop-down menu selection) for any team in which they are a member, without regard to the current Forum selected. That is; you can select a forum, and then select a team that is not appropriate for that forum from a drop-down menu/list. Example

• A student is assigned to Team A for Forum A and Team B for Forum B.
• The instructor assumes that when working on Forum B, the student and other team members will only see postings by other students on Team B.
• Because the student is enrolled in more than one team (for different forums), she has a drop-down menu that enables her to view and post to either Team A or Team B.
• The option to post to either Team A or Team B opens the possibility that she could respond to Forum B after selecting Team A. If this occurs, other students who are only on Team B will not see her post.
• The instructor’s assumption is that anyone assigned to Team A for Forum A will only see postings by their team members. The same assumption holds for students assigned to Team B for Forum B without regard to team assignments for other projects/forums.
• If a student selects a team to which they are not assigned for a given forum (e.g., they select Team A for a posting in Forum B), their postings are not visible to other members of the assigned team (Team B)…which gives the impression that the posting disappeared.
• The posting is still available but not visible unless the student later selects the incorrect team (Team A) for the forum (Forum B).

For instructors who use new groups for each discussion or each new unit, here’s a suggestion. Consider naming the teams to correspond to the assignment or the unit; such as, “Narrative Team 1,” Narrative Team 2,” and so on. Then, students would have “Narrative” in only one of their team names, and they could select that “narrative” team for any discussion that has “Narrative” in its title or for any discussion in the “Narrative” unit. Students would then have a list of meaningful team names rather than generic team names (such as Team A, Team B, Group 1 and so on). It would also mean the instructions in the discussion wouldn’t have to be personalized; you, as the instructor could tell students to select their “Narrative” team, for example.