What's New in 7.2
Faculty > What's New in 7.2
On Thursday, May 10, 2007, the ANGEL course management system at Michigan State University was upgraded to version 7.2. Users will notice marked differences in interface and features.
ANGEL 7.2 Features
- Stylesheet Changes
- Learning Object Repositories (LOR)
- New assessment item
- Question pools
- Date manager
- Wiki
- Blog
Stylesheet Changes
There are many changes to ANGEL’s course theme/stylesheet in 7.2. If you have adjusted or customized your course theme you may need to re-apply those changes to achieve the desired appearance for your course.
The new default themes that accompany ANGEL 7.2 have their own color schemes and graphics to match everything from your subject matter to favorite color scheme. Please take some time and review these default themes, one of them may already fit your need.
If your course is part of an online degree program or certificate program and vuDAT assisted by creating a custom theme/stylesheet please contact your producer for assistance converting the custom theme to ANGEL 7.2. If you use a custom theme designed by vuDAT but your course isn’t part of an online degree or certificate program, please review and select one of the default themes. If none of the default themes fit your needs contact your vuDAT producer for further recommendations.
To get your course theme up and running, simply follow these steps:
- From within your ANGEL course, click Manage tab.
- Click Course Theme Selector.
- Select your desired theme from the menu.
- Click Apply when done.
Learning Object Repositories
The ANGEL 6.3 feature known as “My Content” has been rolled into a more functional feature called the Learning Object Repository (LOR). If you stored files or other course content in the My Content section of ANGEL 6.3, that content is now in your Learning Object Repository. Course and Group links to those content items have been broken, and will need to be restored. Students no longer have access to this storage feature. More information on Learning Object Repositories can be found here.
New Assessment Item
In ANGEL 7.2 the quiz item is augmented with the new Assessment Item—a much more powerful way to create and deliver exams and quizzes.
- Question sets allow instructors to group questions and apply different delivery rules to each group.
- New Mastery Mode presents questions in a self-study mode that allows students to drill against a set of questions until they achieve the proficiency level set by the instructor.
- Fine-tune when and how students receive review commentary. Reviews now can be presented any number of days after a user submission, after that assessment is disabled, or after a specific date. Reviews can end any number of days after they begin
- ANGEL 7.2 includes support for QTI 2.1, a new open standard for classifying
and distributing question content.
More information on assessments can be found here.
Question Pools
Question Pool items are selected using powerful search tools. For any given search term, ANGEL’s Question Pools fine tune your results with any or all of the following parameters:
- Question type
- Question Bank location
- Difficulty level
- Keywords
- Associated Standards
- Associated Objectives
More information on question pools can be found here.
Date Manager
The Date Manager allows instructors to assign new dates to every lesson item in their courses as they prepare to teach the course in a new semester.
- See every lesson item and all dates associated with that item in a single tabular view.
- Change the dates associated with every item in the single tabular view, or use a calendar pop-up to set individual dates.
- The calendar pop-up combines a contextualized calendar view with simple point-and-click assignment of dates to individual lesson items.
The pop-up date tool is especially effective because it shows a rolling calendar of dates, with highlighted dates when the course meets. The name of the lesson item is displayed at the top of the dialog box; users can move between lesson items by clicking a button. To assign a date to particular lesson item, the instructor simply highlights a date on the calendar and clicks the appropriate scheduling button below it.
More information on the date manager can be found here.
Wiki
Customers who are interested in building engaging online learning environments will appreciate wikis as another way to foster collaborative learning and greater peer-to-peer and student-to-faculty communication. Instructors can take advantage of wikis in many ways. Sample online educational activities well suited to wiki technology include:
- Learning to use online tools: The wiki's simple interface makes it a perfect tool to introduce students to the online environment and the process of interacting with other students.
- Online icebreakers: Wikis excel as online icebreakers to help students get to know each other and to accelerate the collaborative learning process.
- Peer partnership and team activities: The group-edit nature of a wiki makes it an especially attractive tool for team activities and peer-to-peer learning exercises.
- Collaborative research: Wikis are perfect for collaborative research, peer-to-peer review and review/commentary by external experts.
More information on wikis can be found here.
Blog
A blog is simply a web page with content posted by its owner,
which may offer the opportunity for visitors to comment on the posting.
A blog is different than a wiki in the sense that only the blog’s
owner can edit the text of the blog, whereas anyone can edit wiki content.
Sample online educational activities well suited to blogging include:
- Instructor professional practice blogs.
- Instructional tips for students: A simple, public way to communicate with students.
- Course announcements and readings: Instructor commentary about announcements or reading assignments.
- Annotated links: A collection of annotated research links.
Additional information on blogs can be found here.
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