Bug Report: Personal & Team Calendar Entries Visible to All

The recent patch applied to the ANGEL server (July 2009 patch plus hotfix and security patch) has caused an issue with personal entries in the ANGEL Calendar. Personal entries created by an instructor are now visible to all students in that course. Students can also see all team entries, whether or not they are on the team for which the entry was intended. ANGEL is aware of the issue and is working on a fix; however, there is currently no workaround. We suggest that instructors remove all personal entries from their course calendars until this issue has been resolved.

ANGEL 7.3 Bug Fixes in July Patch & Hotfix

JCCC will apply a series of patches (July 2009 plus the subsequent hotfix) to our ANGEL server on Monday, September 21, 2009. These patches have been tested on campus by staff in the Educational Technology Center and the Information Services Branch. The following indicates those items that have been fixed, per our testing. The list also includes some problems that we discovered during testing (they'll be reported to ANGEL) as well as some issues that we anticipated would be fixed but were not. Items in red may be critical issues to you depending on which tools you use in your course.

Items that Are Fixed:

1. Assessments with questions linked from a LOR can be exported into another course. Note: This works with questions copied from the LOR, but a Question Pool that draws from the LOR disappears from the assessment when exported. Copy Course does work, however.
2. When multiple questions are displayed in an assessment, they appear in the proper order with question one visible at the top of the screen.
3. Hitting the Enter key while taking an assessment does not result in loss of assessment responses. Note: hitting the Enter key submits the quiz, but gives the student the option of canceling before submission.
4. Students can see personal events in Today's Calendar Nugget. Note: A student can create a “personal” entry, which is all that students can create anyway. The entry doesn't show up in the course, because the entry is “personal.” It does show up on the Calendar nugget on the ANGEL home page of the user who created it.
5. Private Team Journal Malfunction: Private teams can no longer see posts from other private teams in which they are not members . Note: This has another improvement - now when students post there is a drop-down (in a more obvious place than previously) that lets them select the team in which they are a member (if they are members of more than one team in a course). If you have the access set correctly, including the Read/Post/Reply permissions on the Post Permission tab, then there is only one team listed, unless you add the student to more than one team and give access/permissions to those teams .
6. Student's email address is not visible in Discussion Forum post if their personal information is set to restrict the email address. Note: This works when the student deletes their email address in personal preferences; that is, if email information exists in a student's profile, it will be accessible from posts. Removing info from the profile doesn't seem to qualify as restricting, as implied, but that’s how it works.
7. The default sort order in Grade Book is alphabetical.
8. When new courses are created for a faculty member, those courses automatically have access to the instructor’s personal LOR.
9. When an email message is sent to multiple recipients, they all get the message.
10. When Milestone entries are edited, they no longer are duplicated and if one of the duplicates is deleted, all entries are no longer deleted. In other words, creating, editing and deleting Milestones works as you’d expect.
11. You can search within the Course Roster by login name, user first name or user last name. Note: you cannot search by first and last name at the same time.
12. Results from SoftChalk generated SCORM module quizzes are successfully posted to the Grade Book without generating an error message. (See pages 10-17 of SoftChalk manual for details at http://www.softchalk.com/pdf/lms_angel7_3.pdf)

Items that Are Not Fixed:

1. When the instructor grades an assignment and checks the box to send an email, if the student replies to the email, the instructor does not receive the email. Note: The reply message isn't validly addressed; if it goes anywhere, it's not to the instructor(s).
2. Desktop Sharing function does not work.
3. You cannot generate a printable list of all drop box submissions except by using the Browser Print feature.
4. You cannot generate a printable version of each submission in the drop box except by using the Browser Print feature.
5. Print PDF (Grade Book) function works on Macintosh with a caveat: the print function generates a file with the .aspx extension which will not open in Acrobat Reader. Changing the extension to .pdf makes file readable in Acrobat Reader.
6. Using View Grades > Find Student in the Gradebook does not work. Note: We stumbled across bug in our testing. If you select Find Student in the second drop-down under View Grades in the Gradebook, then click Search in the window that pops up, and then click on a user's name; nothing happens.
7. If you import an ANGEL archive into a new course (using Import > Content Package) with the "overwrite existing content" box checked, the import still duplicates all content.
8. When page content exceeds the viewable area of a browser window (in certain browsers only) and scrollbars are needed to scroll content, the scrollbars are not visible in the window and user cannot scroll. Note: On Firefox 2 and Firefox 3.5 part of the content is hidden but this works fine in Internet Explorer 7.
9. The ANGEL Print function does not print the entire page of content, just the portion displayed in the browser window.
10. The Roster does not print in alphabetical order

Other:

1. Though we have not tested it fully, it appears that Internet Explorer 8 is now supported.
2. Macintosh users cannot publish from Respondus to ANGEL course, because there is no Mac version of Respondus.

HOW TO VIEW ASSESSMENT ANSWERS & ITEM ANALYSIS: CORRECTION

Correction: While the steps indicated in yesterday’s message cover the Item Analysis feature, they do not address how you would view an individual student's answers. To do this:

1. Go to Utilities for that assessment.


2. Select View, Grade or Delete Submissions.


3. Next to a student's name, click either View or Grade, depending on whether you just want to see their answers or if you want to grade the assessment.


4. And that’s it!

If you want to see the Item Analysis for the assessment, use the following steps (the same steps listed in yesterday’s newsletter).

1. Go to the item (Assessment) on the Lessons tab.


2. As you mouse over the item, links appear below the item (Settings, Reports, Utilities, Delete).


3. Click on the Reports link and you will see the following options:
   
   Activity Summary: Displays the number of times each user has accessed this item
   Activity Detail: Displays the complete activity log for this item
   Item Analysis: Shows a summary of responses by question
   


4. Select Item Analysis and you will be able to review the answers students gave to each question.

GRADE BOOK GRADING CAVEAT & UPDATE

Here’s a grading scenario that doesn’t work in ANGEL: A faculty member was using the Drop Box but not recording points (e.g., 85 out of 100), but was attaching a marked up file and/or including text in the comment box. She also selected the option to send to mail. When she clicked OK, she received an error message every time. She then logged in as a student, because she weren’t sure if her students were or were not getting the messages and files she was trying to send. As a student, she made a submission; then, returned as the professor and wrote a message in the box without entering a grade; the error message appeared as it did with other students. Then, she went back into the course to see if her "student view" displayed the comments or if she had a mail message; the comments did not appear and the email never came.

When grading in a Drop Box, if you leave the grade blank it generates a type mis-match error message. This has been reported to ANGEL. While the error is not very descriptive, it’s trying to signal that you need a grade in the field to continue. So the process includes these steps:

1. Open the course.
2. Go to Lessons and select the Drop Box ready for grading.
3. Grade a student’s work and leave the grade blank.
4. You see the error message.
5. Entering any number including 0 in the field will prevent the error.

This issue is addressed in the July 2009 ANGEL 7.3 Patch, which is currently being tested in a pre-production environment at JCCC. The July patch does appear to correct this problem so an error is not generated when faculty do not enter a grade but include comments on a Drop Box assignment.

Assessment Mis-Behavior

You will find that when you go to take an assessment in ANGEL it will start you at the bottom of the assessment. You will get the last question and any before it that fit on the screen and not the first question with any following that show, like you would expect.

This is causing some students to panic because they don’t realize they must scroll to the top of the screen to get the beginning of their assessment and they think they are missing questions.

This refers to ANGEL version 7.3 with all patches installed up to and including June 30, 2009.

How Students Can View Their Grades

If you have the Grades nugget on your course home page, students will be able to see an overview of their grades when they log into your course. Students should click the Refresh link on the Grades nugget to see the most current view.

To get a detailed listing of grades, a student can click anywhere on the graph within the Grades nugget. This action will bring the student to the Reports console, with Learner Profile > Gradebook Grades already selected. All the student needs to do is to click the Run button. They may also want to switch the view from Chart to Table for a more understandable summary of grades.

Any assignments or assessments in their grade summary can be accessed from the grade report by clicking on the link to that assignment or assessment. This technique works even if you have put the assignments inside a hidden folder. As long as the folder is hidden but the actual assignments are not hidden, the student will be able to access them via the links on their grade report.

If you do not include the Grades nugget in your course, students can still get grade reports by going to the Reports tab, choosing Learner Profile in the first drop-down menu and Gradebook Grades in the second drop-down menu, and clicking Run.

A more detailed report can be accessed by going to the Reports tab, choosing Grades in the first drop-down menu and Student Grades in the second drop-down menu.

Finally, previewing this action in your student view may or may not produce accurate results. Your students will be able to access their grade reports, but an instructor using the student view may not.

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).

Publishing from Respondus to Disabled Course

If an ANGEL course has been disabled (access limited to Editors only), it's also unavailable to Respondus. Respondus is a program that enables you to create an assessment off-line in Respondus and then publish the assessment to ANGEL. If you’re trying to upload an assessment and Respondus cannot see the course, you’ll need to enable the course using these steps:

1. Select Manage tab
2. Select General Course Settings
3. Select the Access tab
4. Set Member Access to All Members (if set to Editors Only, the course is disabled and will not appear in the Courses nugget, except on the Home page of Course Editors).
5. While on the screen, if the course is a source course, set the Search Engines radio button to No.
6. Click the Save button to save the new settings.

A trial version of Respondus is available at http://www.respondus.com/products/respondus.shtml

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.

Warning about Merged Course Rosters

If you’ve merged two or more sections of the same course, do not enable any of the original courses (whose rosters were merged). If you enable them, students will see the original courses (in their Courses nugget) in addition to the merged course. The end result is confusion for the student and the possibility that you may have student activity in both the original and the merged courses (which cannot be combined).

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!

Creating and Editing Files in ANGEL

The best way to edit files that were not created in ANGEL is to do so offline. When you work offline (using an HTML editor or SoftChalk) it may appear that you have problems replacing the old file with the new. To successfully replace a file:

1. You need to click on the Utilities option (appears under the filename you want to replace),
2. Select the Re-upload option,
3. Browse to find the updated version of your file on your computer that you want to upload.

It won't work just to delete the old file and give the new file the same name--it'll look like your work was lost and ANGEL is still using the old file (ANGEL caches pages and you’ll see the old content until you log out or clear your browser’s cache).

One benefit of working offline and keeping your files in a local spot is you’re never dependent upon the ANGEL server to store your work—you just need to trust your computer and your own methods of backing up your work. By keeping copies on your local hard drive, the content stored in ANGEL becomes just another archive copy of your work, but not the only place you store your data (which probably represents hours of labor).

Thanks to Monica Hogan, Center for Teaching & Learning Distance Learning Associate, for this tip.

ANGEL Gradebook Tips

When ANGEL calculates grades for students, only the assignments/assessments that have been graded are included in the average. This means that you need to fill in zeroes for any assignments/assessments that students did not turn in. There are a couple of options for how to accomplish this task.

1. After an assignment or assessment closes, go to the Gradebook , go to Enter Grades by Assignment , choose the assignment/assessment, and use Batch Update to enter a zero – only the students with no grade entered will be affected by the batch update, therefore it will give zeroes only to those who don’t already have a grade.
   or,
2. At the end of the semester, when you are not accepting any more work, go back to the Gradebook preferences and check the box for “Treat ungraded items as zero .” This will fill in zeroes for any score that has not already been entered.

The benefit to the first method is that your students will see an accurate cumulative grade throughout the semester. You can always change a grade later if the student turns in the assignment and you accept late work. Using the second method at the end of the semester, even if you used the first method throughout the semester, can serve as a final check that all the zeroes have been entered.

If you notice that not all of your assignments or assessments are being used to calculate the final grade, the first thing you should check is the Gradebook Categories . If you have set a category to “Use highest 5 assignments” and there are six assignments in that category, one of the grades will be dropped. Likewise, if you set a category to drop the lowest 1 grade, one grade will be dropped. You can leave this setting at the default value of “Use all assignments” if you don’t want to drop any grades for that category. To change this setting, check the box next to the category, click Edit Selected , and then change the setting to use the number of grades desired.

Thanks to Tracy Newman, Ed Tech Center Sr. Analyst for compiling this information.

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.

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?

Best Macintosh Browser for ANGEL 7.3?

A JCCC faculty member recently indicated (on a campus list that a student using a Macintosh computer reported problems when using Apple’s Safari browser. The ANGEL browser check returned all positive results (green check marks) but they experienced problems using ANGEL Mail and other ANGEL functions. After switching to Mozilla FireFox the problems stopped. Firefox is the recommended browser for Macintosh users and it’s available for download free at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ . In addition to Mail problems, Safari fails to display some ANGEL buttons, which are part of the interface.

A second issue for Macintosh users is how PDF files are handled. No Macintosh browser currently supports viewing PDF files inline; it does not matter which browser you use or the website you visit. It's just not something Macintosh computers do. The same applies to Microsoft Word files.

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.

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.

DOJ Investigates Blackboard Acquisition of ANGEL

Many thanks to Timothy W. Peterson, Ph.D., Dean of Continuing Education, Washburn University for conveying the news that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating Blackboard's acquisition of ANGEL learning. He wrote:

In case you've haven't already seen the article below.The United States Department of Justice is apparently taking an interest in Blackboard's recent acquisition of Angel Learning. DOJ has been asking questions about the controversial buyout, according to Blackboard's chief rival in the commercial LMS space, Desire2Learn.

The Campus Technology article about the investigation is at http://tinyurl.com/pgfdgf.

From the Desire2Learn's own web site we learn some additional details; see http://tinyurl.com/D2LonBb.

For additional background on the migration of Blackboard users to ANGEL check out http://tinyurl.com/owxe6k.

To review my FAX complaint calling for an investigation check out http://tinyurl.com/qxtq7c.

Join the "Force," file your own citizen's complaint!

DOJ Fax Complaint

Here's the language of the FAX sent to the Department of Justice Citizen's Complaint line regarding the Blackboard acquisition:

Please feel free to use any portion or all of this language to file your own complaint.

Blackboard Inc. (650 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20001-3796, phone: 202 463-4860, http://www.blackboard.com/) licenses two learning management systems (LMS): Blackboard Campus Edition (formerly WebCT and acquired when they purchased WebCT in 2006) and Blackboard Academic Suite (their original product). Numerous schools, Johnson County Community College among them, have chosen to cease licensing Blackboard and are in the process of migrating to a different LMS, primarily ANGEL offered by ANGEL Learning. This migration is specifically related to cost and the lack of customer support and responsiveness to the customer.

In early May 2009, Blackboard Inc. announced that they have acquired/purchased ANGEL Learning, thus eliminating one of the last non-Blackboard Inc. options available to institutions offering online instruction. Further, Blackboard has an on-going patent infringement case against another competitor in the LMS field, Desire2Learn. Blackboard appears to be trying to shut down competition either by purchase or by legal action. Their patent claim is disputed by most industry leaders and has been thrown out at least once by the court but the decision has been appealed and a second patent claim filed by Blackboard against Desire2Learn.

If you check my blog at http://angeliclearning.blogspot.com/ you’ll find several postings on this issue including the May 10, 2009 posting that lists institutions that have experienced poor customer service and an inferior product line since the merger of Blackboard and WebCT.
Our concern is that Blackboard through monopolistic practices is reducing the viable alternatives in the field and forcing the higher education customer base to use Blackboard product(s) as they eliminate other options. To see verification of this, please review the Instructional Technology Councils 2008 Distance Education Survey Results, Table 1, page 3 at http://www.itcnetwork.org/file.php?file=/1/ITCAnnualSurveyMarch2009Final.pdf).

We are requesting that the Department of Justice review this merger/acquisition to determine whether allowing the process to continue creates a monopoly by significantly reducing competition and whether the needs of the higher education community are served or jeopardized by the acquisition.

Footnote: Additional coverage of this "buyout" has appeared in:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i37/37a00102.htm, May 22, 2009


• eLiterate: http://mfeldstein.com/bad-news-for-blackboard-good-news-for-angel/