Broken Links to a LOR?

We wish it didn’t happen, but there are times when the link between a Learning Object Repository (LOR) in ANGEL and a course breaks. When you notice broken links try reconnecting your LOR before you go item by item and recreate the links. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Go to your LOR.
2. Click Manage.
3. Click Course and Group Access.
4. On the right side of the screen, click My Courses.
5. Check the boxes for all of your current courses.
6. Click Add Selected.
7. Go back to your course and see if the links work.
8. Try to edit an assignment and see if that works.

ANGEL Tip: Using Question Banks

Building a Question Bank is a great tool for creating better assessments for your courses. Think of a Question Bank as a place to store all of your questions from semester to semester. You can create your own questions, or you can upload test banks from your publisher. When creating assessments, you can then pick and choose which questions from your Question Bank you want to include on each assessment.

When creating a Question Bank that you are going to use from semester to semester, you will want to create this Question Bank in your Personal LOR. Every course you are teaching will have access to your LOR, so you will be able to use those questions in any course for any semester.

If you already have an extensive Question Bank in one of your production courses or your Source Course, you can copy the questions into your Question Bank in your LOR.

Note: Sometimes access to your LOR becomes disconnected for some or all of your courses. If this happens, you can reestablish communication between your courses and your LOR by going to the Manage tab in your LOR, clicking on Course and Group Access, clicking on My Courses, then checking the box for all of your courses and choosing the Add Selected button.

Thanks to Tracy Newman for the tip.

LOR Problem: Students Experiencing Access Denied Messages

We’ve had several instances when students have not been able to access course content (such as the syllabus, files within lessons, and so on) and receive an “Access Denied” message instead. In most cases we’re finding this occurs when the course loses access to the Learning Object Repository (LOR ). In other words, the content was linked to an object in the instructor's personal LOR and the link fails. We’re not exactly sure why this has occurred, but here’s the solution:

1. Log-in to your LOR (use the Learning Object Repository button in the left margin of the ANGEL screen) and select the link to your personal LOR .
2. Select the Manage tab.
3. Select the Course and Group Access link and click My Courses (right column).
4. Then select the check box in front of the desired course(s) and click Add Selected.
5. The LOR should now appear on the left-side of the screen as one of the Current Associations.
6. The links should now work (ask your students to verify this).

While this solution is a temporary fix, the real issue is why this is occurring. It seems to occur either when courses are copied from a source course to a production course or during the batch course creation process (which we’re no longer using since ANGEL’s XEI now provides the integration between SunGard Banner and ANGEL). We’ll keep you posted on this issue.

Students Experiencing Access Denied Messages

We’ve had several instances when students have not been able to access course content (such as the syllabus, files within lessons, and so on) and receive an “Access Denied” message instead. In most cases we’re finding this occurs when the course loses access to the Learning Object Repository (LOR). In other words, the content was linked to an object in the instructor's personal LOR and the link fails. We’re not exactly sure why this has occurred (see below), but here’s the solution:

1. Log-in to your LOR (use the Learning Object Repository button on the left margin of the ANGEL screen) and select the link to the personal LOR.
2. Select the Manage tab.
3. Select the Course and Group Access link and click My Courses (right column).
4. Then select the check box in front of the desired course(s) and click Add Selected.
5. The LOR should now appear on the left-side of the screen as one of the Current Associations.

The links should now work (ask your students to verify this).

While this solution is a temporary fix,the real issue is why this is occurring. It seems to occur either when courses are copied from a source course to a production course or during the batch course creation process (we're not using XEI yet to integrate between SunGard Banner and ANGEL). So, is the link to the Course Editor’s personal LOR not being established by the Manage > Import Wizard > Copy Course process or is it not being created during the batch creation process? In other words, if a faculty member has an ANGEL course with a personal LOR and additional courses are added, why isn't that personal LOR automatically attached to the new course(s)?

ANGEL Glitches: Updates

Student Calendar Entries
Issue Reported to ANGEL Tech Support: When a student accesses the ANGEL Calendar and clicks on the Personal Entry link, there is no Add button available to add an entry.

ANGEL Response: I am able to duplicate this behavior both on your server and here. I will research as to why Add does not appear for students (and some other roles as well), and will let you know what I find out.

Meanwhile, anyone who does not have the Add link can still add an entry by clicking on the numeral of the date for which they want to make an entry. That brings up the same page as clicking on Add does.

Cannot Access Learning Object Repository after Course Copy
Issue Reported to ANGEL Tech Support: After a Copy Course Import of a course (Import Wizard > Course Copy), the option to Import from Learning Object Repository (Lessons > Add Content) was no longer available. This option was available in the source course but after the copy no longer shows up in the production course.

ANGEL Response: It looks like the instructor needs to give that course access to his LOR. To do so have the instructor login to his LOR (click Learning Object Repository button in left margin), click Manage > Course and Group Access >My Courses, then check the desired courses and click Add Selected. Then this LOR should show up as an available LOR for the course. When finished, click the Exit button (lower left corner). Please let me know if you need any more assistance with this issue.

Cannot Publish to ANGEL Using Respondus
Issue Reported to ANGEL Tech Support: We are not able to upload any assessments via Respondus 3.5.4 to the ANGEL production server (dl.jccc.edu) since late November 2008 or definitely since the December ANGEL update was installed in mid-December 2008. Several faculty and staff have tried to upload to the server and get error messages in the Respondus client. Here is a typical error message:

Creating Quiz... done.
Adding Questions... error.
Errors, unable to complete.

ANGEL Response: Waiting for a Reply.

Quiz Error Message Occurs When Submitting Answers
Issue Reported to ANGEL Tech Support: Upon submitting answers to the first Quiz question there is a large error message displayed (Error message omitted here for brevity).

ANGEL Response: This error will occur when attempting to grade an algorithmic question set to evaluate using Numeric (tolerance) if the values in the evaluation settings include more than four decimal places.

The evaluation line for question #1 reads:

Evaluate using Numeric (tolerance) [Answer] - 0.00001 <= [Answer] <= [Answer] + 0.00001

It appears as though these values are being converted to a notational format in the database, 1E-05, which cannot be used when evaluating the correctness of the student's response.
I have logged Issue #32368 regarding this problem. In the meantime, in order to avoid the error the instructor will need to change evaluation parameters to only include four decimal places, 0.0001 for instance.

ANGEL Issue Updates: December Release

We’re expecting a software release from ANGEL on Monday, December 15, 2008. The release includes two fixes that were requested by JCCC. As soon as the patch arrives, we’ll test and if possible install on production before the holiday break. Here are the details:

• Algorithmic Math Computation Error - In the algorithmic question type in Assessments, ANGEL is calculating natural logarithms incorrectly. As near as we can tell, ANGEL is rounding the argument before calculating the natural log. This error appears to be happening with all three versions of logarithms (log, ln, and log10) supplied by ANGEL.
  
  For instance, Angel is saying that the answer to the natural logarithm of 1.49 is 0. The correct answer should be 0.39878. However, the natural logarithm of 1 is 0, which fits the hypothesis that ANGEL is rounding the argument (1.49 in this case, rounded down to 1) before calculating the logarithm.
  
• LOR Folders: Can't Access Course Items When Linked From Inside Folder - When linking to a folder in a LOR, it seems to work okay until you try to view one of the items inside the folder, at which point you get an Access Denied error. Linking to a folder should work, as specified in the ANGEL documentation.
  
  Linking to the individual items in the LOR works, just not linking to the entire folder.

When You Publish an Entire Folder from Your LOR

One of the advantages of using the ANGEL Learning Object Repository is the ability to publish an entire folder (assuming you’ve organized your folders course by course) to a source course or production course. However, when you do that, after you go to the target course into which you published, you’ll find a folder named after the LOR, such as “Repository – Personal: Jonathan Bacon.” That’s not an ideal name for a lesson with in a course. There is a way to easily delete that folder while leaving the files and subfolders within that folder intact. In essence, you delete the folder and it moves all the contents “up within the directory structure” of the course.

Before I tell you how this works keep in mind two concerns:

1. If you don’t understand files, folders and what a hierarchical directory structure is, this will mean nothing to you. If that’s the case, see your tech support for assistance.
2. This process is counter-intuitive to how file structures work in the rest of the computing world; that is, you need to realize there is danger in assuming this approach works when using the Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Specifically, using this approach would normally delete all the contents of a folder including files and subfolders. This is a special function in ANGEL only.

With that as background, here’s how it works:

1. Open your LOR and select Publish to copy or link the folder with the desired content. You’ll identify the target course into which you want to publish during the process.
2. Go to the target course.
3. Select the Lessons tab and locate the folder you just published. The folder name will mirror the name of the LOR (such as “Repository – Personal: Jonathan Bacon”).
4. Roll over the folder name and select the Delete link (yes, you see this really is counter-intuitive).
5. When the new list of options appears, select Remove This Folder Only. Luckily it’s identified properly as the link to “Remove this folder and move its contents up.”
6. You’ll now see that the folder has been deleted and any subfolders within the original folder are now visible when you initially select the Lessons tab. All files in the original folder still remain.

LOR Linking Problem

We reported the following to ANGEL Technical Support:

"When you create a new folder from scratch in the Learning Object Repository (LOR) and then use Lessons > Add Content > File (or Page or Section Heading or Link), we found these results. The Section Headings failed to link at all (they did not appear in the linked folder), the (web) Link did appear and worked in the linked folder but the File or Page objects generated an "Access Denied" error. It does not seem to matter if the uploaded pages are HTML or PDFs or other file types.

"THIS IS THE SERIOUS ISSUE since faculty should be able to construct lessons/folders with content in the LOR and then successfully link to the folder, not just the individual items within the folder."

The reply from ANGEL:

"I apologize for the inconvenience and frustration that this has caused you and your users. I have verified that all of these linked LOR items were working in 7.3 July and they were broken with the 7.3 September update. I have entered this as an issue and it has been assigned #31081 for your tracking purposes.

"I have also gone ahead and escalated this to our Maintenance Planning Team (MPT) for consideration of a fix sooner rather than later because this is a core part of curriculum planning.

"I have discovered that you can work around this by expanding the folder and linking to the actual contents items instead of linking to the folder. You can then also move them into a folder inside the course and the links will still work. MPT usually meets on Monday. I will post the response back to this ticket as soon as I receive it.

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention."

“Source Courses” and Effective Content Editing

Typically, you’d only want one "source course" for each distinctive course you teach, not for each section. This approach saves you work because updates are made to a single source course (ANGEL’s name for a course development shell).

You can place learning objects (pages of content, images, assessments and so on) in your personal Learning Object Repository (LOR) and then link or copy from the LOR to each source course or production course. By using this approach, you avoid having the same content stored in multiple places in such a way as to require you to update the content in multiple places. If/when you need to make a correction or addition, you make the change in the LOR and if that content is linked to multiple courses, the changes ripple through all those linked courses. There is at least one caveat to this approach: anything that is graded (such as assessments and assignments) must be copied from the LOR rather than linked, but having the original in one location still saves you time because you can copy to multiple courses semester after semester.

Note that the source course is not the course shell you’ll teach from. These are only the shells in which you build your course. Later you’ll copy the entire source course to one or more production courses. If you teach multiple versions of the same course (online, face-to-face or self-paced) and the content is basically the same, you will find it far easier to include all information for the course in a single source course, copy that content to the different sections you’ll teach and then just delete any content that is not specific to each section. That will be far easier than trying to add updates to multiple source courses and keeping straight what you need to change or what has already been changed.

Generally, we suggest you use a single source course for each distinct course you teach, unless the content is dramatically different between sections of the course (e.g., different textbooks, different content and so on). You’ll be able to manage course materials with less effort by following this approach.

Displaying Advanced Settings & When to Use the LOR

As JCCC begins its transition to ANGEL Learning, we're working with a pilot group of 79 faculty who are completing 6-8 weeks of training in preparation for offering courses online using ANGEL in Spring 2009. As we discover tips, issues and idiosynchrocies with ANGEL, we're informing our "pioneers" using a periodic eNewsletter. Information from the newsletter with more general value will also be posted here.

Displaying Advanced Settings Automatically
In several of the training sessions, faculty have suggested that when adding an item under the Lessons tab (such as Add Content > Page) that the Advanced settings radio button should be the default rather than the Normal settings. This can be accomplished for your account using the following steps:

1. From your Personal Home page, select the Preferences icon on the sidebar.
2. Select System Settings.
3. Change the User Level setting to Advanced. Notice that this setting eliminates some descriptive text which may be helpful.
4. Click the Save button (bottom of the screen).

Your pages should now load with the Advanced option selected and those options visible (if available on the page you’re viewing).

When to Use Your Learning Object Repository (LOR)
Your use of the LOR will depend on how you have your courses organized, how you want to manage the materials for your course, and how many sections of the same course you are teaching. In general, Use your personal LOR if:

• You plan to use the same material in multiple courses,
• You have large files to store (it’s better to import them once rather than multiple times),
• You want to share the files or material with other instructors or
• If you want to store files that may not be used each semester (you teach a course once a year or bi-annually rather than each semester).

In each of these cases, using the LOR would be worth the extra time it takes to upload material. If you have a very large file, such as a video file, you can upload it once and then link to it every semester. If you want all your course materials to be in one place that you can access from anywhere on any machine, then the LOR would be a good place to put those materials.
The LOR could mimic the structure of your course, but it does not necessarily need to nor is it necessarily the best practice. For example, you could have the LOR match the organization of your files on your hard drive. So there’d be a folder for each course in the LOR, and within each folder additional folders that contain all course materials. Then when you actually build the course in ANGEL, you would build the structure of the course in your source course and then link to the appropriate files in the LOR.

If you are only teaching one section of a single course, then uploading all content into the LOR and attempting to build your course structure in the LOR (with links to your source course) may not be the best method. In this case, you could skip the LOR and just upload content to your source course. Or you could use the LOR as a central storage point for your files, mimicking your hard drive organization, and then use those files to build your course. It’s a matter of personal preference.