Giving Students Early Course Access

At JCCC faculty can grant students access to one of your courses (using ANGEL) earlier than the first day of class (for Spring taht date is January 20, 2010), here are the steps to change the availability date. The same steps apply if you want to extend student access to a course beyond the default closing date, which at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) is two weeks after the end of finals (i.e., June 4, 2010):

1. Log into ANGEL and access the specific course.
2. Select the Manage tab.
3. In the Course Settings nugget, select the General Course Settings link.
4. Scroll down and make the required changes to the Course Begins date and time settings and Course Ends date and time settings.
5. Be sure the check boxes in front of the two settings are selected.
6. Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.

It’s important to note that by default, the Course Begins date at JCCC is always set to the first day of the class and the Course Ends date is always set by default to two weeks after the class ends.

Confused? What to do to Start the Semester…

We push a lot of information to JCCC faculty so I tried to gather in one message, a checklist of issues for our faculty to tackle at the start of each semester. Here's the information we share (minus the intranet URLs that would not be accessible to non-JCCC folks anyway):

Do you need a checklist of tasks to complete to prepare for teaching or supplementing your face-to-face course with online materials in ANGEL? Use the following checklist to see if it helps.

1. If you’re teaching multiple sections of the same course and they have the same content, assignment due dates and so on, you may request that the course rosters be merged (the sections merged are treated as a single section and you load content once). Note: we do not enable our faculty to merge rosters, it's handled administratively by my office.
2. If you can’t see your courses on the Courses nugget in ANGEL, change the Courses nugget settings to show hidden courses. By default we hide all courses at JCCC (we create course shells for all sections of all classes and then disable them. Instructors who choose to use ANGEL must enable each section).
3. Update the Online Course Information Guide with details about your course. Note: we have a separate tool that is database driven and includes information on each course provided by the instructor. See http://web.jccc.edu/courseguide/list.asp.
4. Copy content from the source course to the desired production course. You should always build your course in a source course, not a production course.
5. Enable access to the course (that is; make the section visible to students in their Courses nugget). And...
6. Check Course Begins and Course Ends date settings to be sure they are accurate. By default, we allow student access on the first day of the semester (for Fall 2009 we set the Course Begins setting to August 17, 2009 at 12:00 AM and the Course Ends setting to December 30, 2009 at 11:55 PM).
7. Update the About This Section nugget to include information you want prospective and currently enrolled students to read about your course.
8. Update or adjust dates/milestones to make them applicable to the new semester. Check out the Manage tab and select the Date Manager link (Set Content Dates tab).
9. Update and/or upload your course syllabus.
10. Add your Ed Tech Center Designer to your courses (a Sr. Ed Tech Center Analyst is referred to as a Ed Tech Center Designer). If you don’t have an Ed Tech Center Designer, request one by contacting Jonathan Bacon at mailto:jbacon@jccc.edu (JCCC folks only).
11. Grant access to your personal LOR to specific other courses if you’ve granted access in previous semesters and your colleague plans to use the linked content in the new semester. If you need help with the process, contact your Ed Tech Center Designer.
12. If you want to grant students access to your course before the first date of the semester, change the Course Begins date setting to reflect the date you will grant access.
13. Have a wonderful semester!

Closing Up Shop After the Semester Concludes

As JCCC faculty plan ahead for Fall 2009 courses we advise them to be aware that we’ve set, by default, all ANGEL courses to shut down student access on December 30, 2009 . That’s roughly 2 weeks after the end of the semester. This enables students to check the course for final grades or to refer back to course content. We then advise faculty that if they have a student with an incomplete who needs to access the course content after that date, they’ll need to extend the Course Ends date setting.

To do so you use the same steps that change the availability date for a course. Here are the steps:

1. Log into ANGEL and access the specific course.
2. Select the Manage tab.
3. In the Course Settings nugget, select the General Course Settings link.
4. Scroll down and make the required changes to the Course Begins date and time settings and Course Ends date and time settings.
5. Be sure the check box in front of each setting is selected.
6. Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.

Changing the Dates a Course Is “Open” to Students

If you want to grant students access to one of your courses earlier than the first day of class, here are the steps to change the availability date. The same steps apply if you want to extend student access to a course beyond the default closing date, which at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) is two weeks after the end of finals:

1. Log into ANGEL and access the specific course.
2. Select the Manage tab.
3. In the Course Settings nugget, select the General Course Settings link.
4. Scroll down and make the required changes to the Course Begins date and time settings and Course Ends date and time settings.
5. Be sure the check boxes in front of the two settings are selected.
6. Click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.

It’s important to note that by default, the Course Begins date at JCCC is set to the first day of the class and the Course Ends date is set to two weeks after the class ends.

Course Begins & Ends Dates Inherited From Source Course When Copied

Please be aware that when you copy course content from a source course (Manage > Import Wizard > Copy Course), the Course Begins and Course Ends dates in the source course are also copied to the target (production) course. Be sure to check these dates. For example, at JCCC for Spring semester 2009 the settings should be set by default, as follows:

Course Begins: January 14, 2009
Course Ends: May 28, 2009

To view these settings, select Manage > General Course Settings > Course tab and check the Course Begins and Course Ends settings.

Course Begins Date Setting, the Student View and Course Copy

By default, student access at JCCC is enabled on the first day of the semester (January 14, 2009 for Spring 2009). Most production courses and source courses have that date set when created. When you copy from your source course to your production course, the Course Begins and Course Ends dates are transferred to the production course, so you want to be sure these dates are set correctly (by default to the first day of the semester and at JCCC we use two weeks after the last day of class; e.g., May 28, 2009). That means you cannot use the Student View (Sunglasses icon) to review your class until the Course Begins date occurs. If you’re working in your source course (development course shell), you can always change the Course Begins date to today so you can use the Student View. Just be sure to set the date back before you copy from your source course to your production course(s).

Just a reminder; to make your course available earlier:

1. Go to the Manage tab and select General Course Settings.
2. Be sure the check box following the Course Begins label is selected.
3. Set the date to the date when you want students to have access.
4. When finished, be sure to click the Save button and that should do it.