ANGEL Tip – Essay, Short Answer, and Fill in the Blank Questions

There are 10 different types of questions you can use in an ANGEL assessment, but three of these question types must be graded manually (that means you!) while the others are graded automatically in ANGEL. Of these three manually graded question types, the most commonly used are:

1. Short Answer
2. Essay

For these types of questions, the student must type an answer into a text field. After submitting the assessment, the rest of the questions will be graded, but any short answer and/or essay questions will be left ungraded until you go in and grade them. After you grade them, the score for the assessment will be totaled and entered into the grade book.

You can grade these types of questions by going to the assessment and clicking on the Utilities link. Then select Grade by Question . You will see a list of submissions and can click on each one to grade the questions. You can either leave student names hidden, or display student names to see whose answer you are grading.

Note: Fill in the Blank questions can be graded automatically by ANGEL! You can enter answer options that you will accept as correct, but you must be very careful that you type your options exactly. Be especially careful about spaces, capitalization, and punctuation. You can enter more than one option for each blank. For instance, if the answer is “dog” but you will also accept “canine” or “K-9”, you can enter each choice as a correct option for that blank.

Thanks to Tracy Newman, Sr. Ed. Tech. Center Analyst at JCCC for this tip.

ANGEL Tip: Dropping the Lowest Grade

In the ANGEL Grade Book if you choose to drop the lowest grade, by using the “Drop Lowest” option for a Category, you may still want to see which grade was dropped (the ANGEL Grade Book does not show which grade was dropped). However, you can go to reports and run a report on a given student and the dropped items will appear in gray.

You may also wonder if a category is set to drop the lowest grade and there is an “extra credit” item in the category, will the extra credit item get dropped if it is lowest scored item? Or what if the extra credit item is not completed by the student? You would not expect extra credit items to be dropped and that is how ANGEL behaves. The extra credit item is not dropped.

Use of Secure Browser in ANGEL

Some faculty when setting up assessments have selected the High - requires Secure ANGEL browser option when they establish Browser Security (You select the Settings link under the assessment name and then go to the Access tab). The Secure Browser setting means (for all practical purposes) the student must take the test in the JCCC Testing Center (that’s the only location on our campus where we’ve installed the Secure Browser). A better option is selecting None or Medium for Browser Security.

Cure for Slow Manage Tab

At JCCC, we were experiencing a significant slowdown when faculty used the ANGEL Manage tab (to access Roster, Grade Book and so on). We're running ANGEL 7.3. ANGEL has supplied a fix (December 2009) that we have not yet tested, but attributed the slowdown to the Course Theme Selector nugget on the Manage tab (which is available for each course). There is another link for the Course Theme Selector on the Manage tab in the Course Settings nugget that does the same thing. To avoid the slowdown we’ve removed the Course Theme Selector nugget on the Manage tab and to change the course theme, faculty would need to use the link under the Course Settings nugget.

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.

Not Moving to ANGEL 7.4

Just prior to the Thanksgiving Break, the Educational Technology Center staff at JCCC completed the first round of tests of ANGEL 7.4 (originally scheduled to be installed over the upcoming semester break and ready for production/faculty use in January 2010). Based on that testing, we recommended to JCCC's ANGEL Implementation Team (and notified our Distance Learning Advisory Council) that sufficient time was not available prior to the planned upgrade to complete testing, explore new features and resolve a number of issues encountered (e.g., the new Gradebook functionality, exception errors encountered and more). As a result, the Implementation Team has decided to postpone the ANGEL 7.4 upgrade until at least summer 2010.

We’ll be testing additional 7.3 patches available for ANGEL in a pre-production environment and will install the new 7.3 patches at an appropriate time this spring.

Our Testing Results
For the record, during our initial testing we encountered multiple problems and felt we could not work through these issues in time for a January update. All of the following were reported to Blackboard/ANGEL and in some cases they responded with potential fixes, that we do not have time to implement or test. Here’s a quick cut and paste of the issues we did encounter.

1. We tried to create a new course similar to a source course in ANGEL and for some system editors, did not allow the user to add the course title, received an error message.
2. We tried to view the course preview and setting for the 7.4 courses. longer have the edit pencil in 7.4 or could not preview the course without an error.
3. When a course includes a quiz (even though we never used Quizes, just assessments, many epacks come with quizzes to amke them compatible with 7.2) when the course opens there is a pop up that asks if you want to convert all of your quizzes to assessments. If you click "no" it keeps popping up. If you click "yes" you get an error page. It did not actually convert anything and the pop up continues to appear no matter what one does. Note: This pop up only occurs if you have an old format quiz in the course.
4. You cannot create a Grading Scale in the Gradebook. Go to Gradebook click on Grading Scale try to enter a grade letter and a number and click on new Item. Nothing happens and it is not added.
5. When attempting to enter certain courses (clicking the course name in the course list) an error message appears in a new tab. It is possible to enter the course and the course seems to run fine except for the error message re-appearing when you click on the "Course" tab.
6. The Grade Entry Grid does not load. There is a message that says "There is no grading scale defined for this course. You may see incomplete grade data until a complete grading scale is created."
7. When you go to Manage Tab>Grade Reports and click Rearrange, you get a server application error (but you can go to the Reports Tab and see My Gradebook)
8. When using the “Ungraded Items” in the Tasks List, on the Course Guide, a tester reported that when she clicked on the Mid-Term (an assessment in ANGEL with just 4 questions), you get some of those questions repeated in the ungraded list.
9. You get an error when you try to Publish Grades: “There are no allowable grade values defined by the administrator. . .” There are grades present, though because the Submission Manager appears to work correctly, showing you the grades and comments that have already been entered. You can also grade assignments by going to the assignment and clicking on Submissions
10. Add Item button does nothing. Browser reports a JavaScript error: "Angel is not defined","https://owa.jccc.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=d3bce8fd830f4801ba4cfed8094794bc&URL=https%3a%2f%2fangeltest.jccc.edu%2fsection%2fGB%2fCategories%2fDefault-min-Loc-en-US.js","Line: 19". That line reads: "{Angel.API.Ajax.Gradebook.SaveCategories(json,strPropertyList,objGrid.SaveDataSuccess,objGrid.SaveDataFailure,objGrid);}"
11. On the 7.4 pre-prod server, when copying a course over another course, not a blank shell, the copy process took exceedingly long (30 Minutes). Also the new homepage fro the target course, did not match the original course home page format/arrangement, that is, some elements were present but not in the original locations, and the theme was not copied over.

Just for what it’s worth.

ANGEL Tip – What’s a Chat Room Anyway?

One of the tools available in ANGEL is the Live Chat nugget. As the name implies, this tool is for synchronous conversations, or chats. To take advantage of this tool, you would first make sure the Live Chat nugget is available in your course – usually this is present on the Communicate tab. If not, you can use the Edit Page link and then the Add Components button to add the Live Chat nugget to the page.

Next you need to add an actual chat room. You can add as many different rooms as you like. Think of them like actual rooms, with labels on the doors. If you want to chat about a certain subject or on a certain date, you would enter the room with that label. As the instructor, you determine what label you want on the “door” by naming your chat room. Or, you can have a generic chat room for general purpose use, in which case you might just call it something like Chat Room. To create a room (and give it a name), just click on the pencil icon at the top of the Live Chat nugget and then choose Add a Live Chat . Fill out the options and click Save . If you want to change any of the options you selected, you can click on the pencil icon and then click on the Edit button next to the chat room you want to edit.

Whatever you name your room and however many rooms you have in your course, there are some things you should know about chat rooms. When you enter a chat room, it’s like walking into a real room. Whatever was said before you entered is not available to you. All you “hear” (i.e., see on the screen) is what is happening when you are in the room. If you leave the room and come back in, you will no longer see the text that was on the screen when you left – it’s like starting over!

You can save a record of everything said in a chat room. To do this, you must turn Tracking to ON in the chat room settings.

You can then review all posted messages in saved chat logs. Be sure that you make it clear to your students which rooms are being recorded and which are not!

ANGEL TIP: TEAMS & UNREAD DISCUSSIONS POSTINGS

Faculty members have reported that unread discussions are not showing up in the Tasks area of the course Guide. Here’s what we discovered: If you create new teams with ANGEL randomly generating only students, you will not be on any of the new teams. If you are the Course Editor, but not on a team, you can read the discussions, but new unread postings will not appear in the Tasks area as unread discussions. Once you assign yourself to the new team(s), the unread postings will appear in the Tasks area.

ANGEL TIP: USING THE COURSE ANNOUNCEMENTS TOOL EFFECTIVELY

The Course Announcements nugget is a common place many instructors use to communicate important information to their students. Do realize, however, that whatever you put in this nugget is also visible on the Personal Home Page (the page you see after logging in to ANGEL but before you select a class) in the My Announcements nugget.

This functionality can be helpful if you have information you want students to see even before they log into your class. However, you should be aware that if you include some kind of formatted content, like a large image or a table, your announcement could affect the appearance of the Personal Home Page for all of your students. If you include something (like an image or a table) that cannot collapse to a smaller width, it will cause the whole column that includes the My Announcements nugget to remain at that width. This causes the other columns to shrink to smaller widths, which can make it difficult for students to locate their courses or read other content.

If you want to make an announcement in your course that does not appear on the Personal Home Page, you can consider using the Course News nugget rather than the Course Announcements nugget.

Thanks to Tracy Newman for sharing this tip.

Reordering Discussions in the Discussion Forums Nugget

You can now change the way Discussions are listed in the Discussion Forums nugget that appears by default on the Communicate tab (and can be added to the Resources page or the Course Home page).

1. Go to the Communicate tab (or wherever your Discussion Forums nugget is located).
2. Mouse over the Discussion Forums nugget and click on the pencil icon.







3. Choose the order you would like to use to display your discussion forums within the Discussion Forums nugget.
   


4. Check the boxes for the other options you want.




5. Click the Save button.

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).