ANGEL Enhancement Survey
Report on the results of the survey distributed to students, faculty, and staff in order to garner input for
prioritization enhancements to ANGEL
March 2013
Table of Contents
ANGEL Enhancement Survey.......................................................................................................................................... 1
Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Marketing Venues .......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Response Rate by Role ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Completion Count by College, Campus, or Special-Mission Unit ................................................................. 6
Respondent Top Priorities by Category ................................................................................................................ 7
Survey Results ................................................................................................................................................................. 8
Top Requests by Category: Assessments .............................................................................................................. 8
Basic Uses .......................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Comments on Assessments ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Top Requests by Category: Calendar ................................................................................................................... 10
Comments on Calendar............................................................................................................................................. 10
Top Requests by Category: Content ..................................................................................................................... 12
Comments on Content ............................................................................................................................................... 12
Top Requests by Category: Course Mail ............................................................................................................. 15
Comments on Course Mail ........................................................................................................................................ 15
Top Requests by Category: Discussion Forums .............................................................................................. 18
Comments on Discussion Forums ......................................................................................................................... 18
Top Requests by Category: Drop Boxes .............................................................................................................. 19
Comments on Drop Boxes ........................................................................................................................................ 19
Top Requests by Category: Grades ....................................................................................................................... 21
Comments on Grades ................................................................................................................................................. 21
Top Requests by Category: Roster Management* .......................................................................................... 25
Comments on Roster Management ...................................................................................................................... 25
Top Requests by Category: Miscellaneous ......................................................................................................... 26
Comments on Miscellaneous................................................................................................................................... 26
Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................................... 27
Appendix A: ANGEL Enhancement Survey Full Descriptions .................................................................... 28
Appendix B: Solicitation Email ............................................................................................................................... 66
Appendix C: Enhancement Suggestions With A Solution In Place Or In Process ............................... 67
Comments on Calendar.............................................................................................................................................. 67
Comments on Content ............................................................................................................................................... 67
Comments on Course Mail ........................................................................................................................................ 67
Comments on Discussion Forums ......................................................................................................................... 67
Comments on Drop Boxes ........................................................................................................................................ 68
Comments on Grades ................................................................................................................................................. 68
2
Executive Summary
Blackboard, Inc., purchased the ANGEL Learning Management System (LMS) in spring 2009. At that
time, they announced plans to discontinue offering ANGEL as a product and to instead integrate various
features / functions it into their LMS product, Blackboard Learn. Blackboard reversed this decision in
spring 2012, announcing plans to continue to offer the ANGEL product to their existing customers.
After piloting several alternative LMS products, Penn State decided to continue with ANGEL as the
University-supported LMS. However, during the period between Blackboard’s purchase of ANGEL and
their decision to continue offering the product to their customers, no work was done to enhance the
feature set of ANGEL and a backlog of enhancement request was accrued.
Students, faculty, and staff were asked to assist with the prioritization of enhancements to be made to
ANGEL by completing a survey designed to measure what the user population felt was most critical.
The survey was broken out by topic (assessments, gradebook, etc.) and participants were asked to select
their top five priorities in each section.
The survey was available to everyone with a Penn State user ID between January 14 and February 4,
2013. Announcements were sent through multiple venues. One thousand six hundred ninety-three
(1,693) responses were received, including 1,044 responses from students and 509 from faculty. The top
enhancement request from faculty was LMS-1861 Simplify selecting email recipients with 300 votes.
There was a tie in the student vote with LMS-1680 Allow instructors to make an assessment review
available to all students and LMS-1728 Allow students to delete their own submitted file from a
drop box, each receiving 620 votes. The top two write-in suggestions were to make ANGEL compatible
with all web browsers and to add ANGEL functionality to mobile devices (smartphones, iPads, and
tablets).
3
Marketing Venues
The survey was available to everyone with a Penn State user ID between January 14 and February 1,
2013. Announcements were sent through multiple venues. See Appendix B for a sample email
solicitation. The table below lists the venues used to solicit participation.
Venue
ANGEL login page
ANGEL opt-in listserv
College of Agriculture listserv
College of Arts and Architecture listserv
College of Communications listserv
College of Education listserv
College of Engineering listserv
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences listserv
College of Health and Human Development listserv
College of Information Sciences and Technology listserv
College of the Liberal Arts listserv
Current
Faculty/Staff Newswire
Information Technology Leadership Council
ITS Consultants listserv
ITS Senior Leadership Team
Learning Design Community listserv
Onward State
Student Newswire
Smeal College of Business listserv
TechNews
TLT website news
Date Sent/Published
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/17/2013
1/17/2013
1/14/2013
1/17/2013
1/14/2013
1/23/2013
1/23/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
1/14/2013
Table 1: The venues used to solicit participation
4
Response Rate by Role
One thousand six hundred ninety-three (1,693) responses were received, including 1,044 responses from
students and 509 from faculty. Survey participants were asked to self-identify based on their primary
role. For example, a staff member taking courses would be asked to select “staff” on the survey.
Option
Faculty
Staff
Student
Administrator
Do Not Use
Count
509
116
1,044
21
3
Percent
30.1
6.9
61.7
1.2
0.2
Table 2: Response Rate by Role
62%
30%
7%
Faculty
Staff
Student
1%
0.20%
Administrator
Do Not Use
Figure 1: Response Rate by Role
5
Completion Count by College, Campus, or Special-Mission Unit
In addition to identifying a primary role, respondents were also asked to self-identify where they were
located. Penn State campus respondents were asked to select their campus name. Respondents at
University Park were asked to select the name of their college. World Campus respondents were asked
to select World Campus.
Option
Penn State Abington
Penn State Altoona
Penn State Beaver
Penn State Berks
Penn State Brandywine
Penn State College of Medicine
Penn State Dickinson School of Law
Penn State DuBois
Penn State Erie
Penn State Fayette
Penn State Great Valley
Penn State Greater Allegheny
Penn State Harrisburg
Penn State Hazleton
Penn State Hershey Medical Center
Penn State Lehigh Valley
Penn State Mont Alto
Penn State New Kensington
Penn State Schuylkill
Penn State Shenango
Penn State Wilkes-Barre
Penn State Worthington Scranton
Penn State York
School of Graduate Professional Studies
UP College of Agricultural Sciences
UP College of Arts and Architecture
UP College of Communications
UP College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
UP College of Education
UP College of Engineering
UP College of Health and Human Development
UP College of Information Sciences and Technology
UP College of the Liberal Arts
UP Eberly College of Science
UP Graduate School
UP School of Nursing
UP Schreyer Honors College
UP Smeal College of Business
Division of Undergraduate Studies
World Campus
Other
Table 3: Campus Distribution
Count
49
70
7
46
15
2
6
15
85
11
9
20
59
19
5
23
36
20
12
13
28
20
12
3
34
25
50
65
35
129
57
75
120
84
6
13
12
66
27
254
35
Percent
2.9
4.2
0.4
2.8
0.9
0.1
0.4
0.9
5.1
0.7
0.5
1.2
3.5
1.1
0.3
1.4
2.2
1.2
0.7
0.8
1.7
1.2
0.7
0.2
2.0
1.5
3.0
3.9
2.1
7.7
3.4
4.5
7.2
5.0
0.4
0.8
0.7
3.9
1.6
15.2
2.1
6
Respondent Top Priorities by Category
The survey was composed of a comprehensive list of requests received between 2009 and 2012. The
survey items were broken down by category to make it easier for respondents to understand the
selections they were making. Responders were asked to select their top five enhancement requests for
these categories: assessments, calendar, content, course mail, discussion forums, gradebook, and roster
management. A miscellaneous category was also included to cover items that did not primarily fit in one
of the identified categories. A separate table for miscellaneous items is located on page 26. Based on a
category as a whole, most respondents felt that content and gradebook were the biggest priorities.
Option
Content
Gradebook
Course mail
Assessments
Discussion forums
Roster management
Count
1,248
1,200
875
714
387
217
Percent
73.7
70.9
51.7
42.2
22.9
12.8
Table 4: Respondent Top Priorities by Category
73.70%
70.90%
51.70%
42.20%
22.90%
12.80%
Content
Gradebook
Course Mail
Assessments
Discussion Forum
Roster
Management
Figure 2: Respondent Top Priorities by Category
7
Survey Results
The following section contains the tabulated results of the survey responses. Each table reflects the top
five student and faculty responses for each category. Categories with fewer than five options will have
spaces left blank. Student and faculty responses are placed side by side. Each response contains the
affiliated identification marker (LMS-xxxx), a description of the enhancement request, and the number
of people who selected the enhancement as a priority. Staff and administrator responses are included
with faculty. Write-in responses are included underneath the category they are most closely related to.
Top Requests by Category: Assessments
On the course Lessons tab, an assessment item provides the opportunity to assess the progress of the
student. An assessment item can contain several different question types.
Basic Uses



Assessments can give students practice on basic terms, concepts, and principles.
To get students to do homework problems, read the chapter, or consider expectations, have them
respond to assessment questions with a deadline a couple hours before class time.
Provide a few critical thinking questions. View submissions to see what students have learned
and determine deficiencies.
Student
LMS-1680 Allow instructors to make an
Number
620
assessment review available to all students
LMS-2373 Add a one-button tool to
Faculty
LMS-5715 Provide more options for
creating assessments, i.e., copy/paste
579
extra credit questions without increasing
instructor to show the results to students
assessment point value
LMS-1606 Editing assessment questions
226
should be more intuitive
secure browser
Less than five results available
N/A
N/A
105
92
LMS-5508 Provide a way to track time
spent on an assessment for each student
Less than five results available
150
LMS-2413 Allow inclusion of bonus or
assessment and survey reports that allows the
LMS-2306 Issue a confirmation ticket for the
Number
90
LMS-1717 Load the HTML editor
automatically in the assessment question
83
editor
Table 5: Top Requests by Category: Assessments
8
Comments on Assessments
“When grading an assessment, I would like an option to grade all user responses to an INDIVIDUAL
question and have the ability to grade/regrade answers for that INDIVIDUAL question. I can currently
do this for ungraded questions, but not for graded questions such as FIB. Students may enter a close
variation of a correct answer for a FIB question, but there is no easy way to see this. I can see a limited
view with REPORTS in the assessment, but it will only show a limited number of FIB responses.”
“Instructors should also use ANGEL to post assessment scores so students have an idea of their
learning progress.”
“With assessments: Do not let the default be the selection of: Automatically accept changes made to this
question from the master source—I have ruined so many other questions with this feature—so easy not
deselect because found at the bottom—which you need to scroll to in order to see. Within Assessments:
Allow for movement of entire question sets—if you make a mistake, you need to start over with an
assessment.”
“When copying questions from a past assessment, the directions do not come with it. It would be nice if
they were copied over too.”
“On assessments, it would be nice to be able to provide different feedback for each answer alternative
on multiple choice questions.”
“Not being able to easily update due dates for assignments is annoying.”
“Need much more intuitive settings for assessment feedback. What do those things MEAN? For
example, if I want to allow students to view their results, but not until everyone has finished, which
things do I have to check to get that to happen?”
“ANGEL used to have a feature that is now gone. You could run a report from the Who Done It to show
who had not completed a certain thing...drop box, assessment, etc. and then you could hit one button to
send a message to all of those students at once. Can we get that back?”
“Make all of ANGEL’s functions available on mobile devices, including assessments.”
9
Top Requests by Category: Calendar
The course Calendar tab allows you as a course editor to schedule course events for yourself, for select
students in your course, for a team, and/or for your entire class.
In addition to being displayed on the course Calendar tab, course calendar entries also appear on your
students’ My Calendar component on their My Profile page.
Student
LMS-1920 Add the ability to import course
calendar events into a user’s personal calendar
LMS-2074 Add an option to receive calendar event
notifications via email
LMS-2214 Provide a calendar on the My Profile
page with events from all a user’s courses
LMS-1781 Highlight the current date on the
calendar in month view
Number
451
392
326
Faculty
LMS-2074 Add an option to receive
calendar event notifications via email
LMS-1769 Add a scheduling tool for
instructor office hours
LMS-2324 Add a tool allowing instructors
to send email reminders of calendar events
Number
193
193
188
LMS-1920 Add the ability to import course
317
calendar events into a user’s personal
177
calendar
LMS-2324 Add a tool allowing instructors to send
email reminders of calendar events
257
LMS-1781 Highlight the current date on the
calendar in month view
141
Table 6: Top Requests by Category: Calendar
Comments on Calendar
“The calendar should be auto-completed with items based off of their due date. Also, a box on the
students’ main page should show them all the items that are open for them to complete and when the
assignment is due by.”
“…calendar should have Gantt view.”
“…all faculty should have to keep their calendar on the "Calendar" page completely up-to-date so
students know EXACTLY what is due and when in one single consolidated place.”
“The ability to have students be able to see all of their course calendars on one master calendar would
really be the most useful improvement I can imagine. So many of my students really desire that.”
“Add the ability to check student access of course content, including documents in Lessons or Calendar
(name, date, frequency).”
“I would really like to see the calendar used more often. I had someone tell me that the calendar was
what ANGEL was focused on when it was first adopted by the University. I use Google calendar to
organize my life and it would be a lot nicer to put classes on the calendar, office hours, exam times,
what times clubs meet, sports games (football, basketball, other University sports), and events going on
around campus to keep me connected because often times I feel disconnected from the University. By
other events I mean like blood drives, HUB activities, appointments around campus (UHS, CAPS,
Career Services, Advising), and concerts. It would be nice to feel more connected to the campus and
connected to my classes and the other students in them
10
“Yes, bulk downloads, file sync, and assignments from all classes loaded onto one calendar would be
wizard, thanks!”
“The ability to copy calendars from previous semester or other sections would be very useful to those
with many redundant online classes...”
“In general, I would like more options to make the calendar more functional and more detail added to
the reports, especially for grades and class ranking.”
“…It seems to me that the “calendar” function would be used to display a course calendar (I’ve had
only one class which has actually used the calendar function at all), that the syllabus would actually be
found within the syllabus link, or that the “resources” link would actually contain resources relevant to
the course.”
“I'd like it if 100% of instructors/professors actually used the Calendar tool. Understanding this isn't
specifically an ANGEL enhancement and more to do with regulating the duties of faculty but as the
Calendar tool is one of the enhancements being discussed, I would appreciate the message being passed
on.”
11
Top Requests by Category: Content
Content items are found under the Lessons tab. The Lessons tab is designed to house the majority of
your instructional content. Here, you can create lecture notes, hyperlinks, assessments, discussion
forums, drop boxes for assignments, and more. Lesson content can be accessed directly on the Lessons
page or nested within folders or subfolders.
Student
Number
LMS-1952 Indicate new, unviewed lesson content
and discussion forum items by making the icon or
LMS-5714 Show contents of folders on the
Lessons tab
LMS-5771 Make courses sortable/movable in the
My Courses component on My Profile
Number
LMS-1832 Show the semester of each
557
title bold
LMS-1945 Add a print function to the Syllabus
Faculty
course in the Import from a Course or Group
194
tool
516
456
439
LMS-2081 Provide a more robust search function
LMS-1945 Add a print function to the
Syllabus
LMS-2388 Add the ability to rearrange or
move multiple lesson content items at once
LMS-2359 Enable editors to copy multiple
content items at once
157
153
147
LMS-1958 When adding Lessons tab
for course content
338
content, provide the option to place new
items at the top or bottom of the page by
133
default
Table 7: Top Requests by Category: Content
Comments on Content
“My main issue with the Content aspect of ANGEL was not addressed at all. There is no standardization
on tabs or even the look/layout of the pages. I had two political science courses look COMPLETELY
different once I clicked on the title to "enter" that class. One remained looking as the main homepage in
ANGEL, with tabs across the top and the other class page refreshed and had everything listed on the left
hand side with different set up and new names of "tabs." This is a learning curve every single semester
because each instructor uses the tabs differently, names them different than the instructor before (ex:
"Lessons" for one classes is equivalent to "Assignments" or even "Activities" in others). If the instructor
chooses to not utilize some features (ANGEL calendar, chat rooms, etc.) that's fine but allowing the
look/location/tab titles, etc. of everything be customizable is creating extra work that isn't necessary. All
it does is cause confusion and the class discussions are constantly filled with questions like "Where is
this?" or "I can't find that." We should know, regardless of course name or instructor, how the tabs will
function, where they are, and what info will be there when clicked. I would really like to see this
addressed to eliminate this continual learning curve with the (same) technology so we can focus on the
content of the class instead. Thank you!!!!”
“Allow the sending of links to specific lesson content. Allow preview of lesson documents. Drag and
drop uploading.”
“Please make it easier to copy material (content) and communications from one course to another, and
easier to store our courses long-term. This is really important.”
“It should automatically allow the students to sort the lesson content items by those they have completed
and those they haven't started yet.”
12
“I have enjoyed using ANGEL so far, but I think it should be easier to access course content instead of
putting it on separate pages.”
“…Another great option would be a link between courses. I have five duplicated courses for different
campuses. The work performed on ANGEL is done in quintuplicate. The copy option has been a great
feature to streamline building content multiple times. Linking to a course area, that provides access to
all content in that area, would be great. The analogy of this feature would be a Unix directory link—
create the parent link and any child content would be available across all courses. Thank you.”
“Add the ability to check student access of course content, including documents in Lessons or Calendar
(name, date, frequency).”
“It is very annoying when having multiple sections to have to upload identical content for each section.
There should be some way to link sections so that you can upload to both of them or mail to both of
them. It takes a remarkable amount of time to set up even two sections, let alone a whole class worth of
them.”
“In general, content ought to be separated from the platform that delivers it, so that course materials
developed using common standards (e.g., the IMS/SCORM standards) can be developed and edited by
an instructor or a textbook publisher outside of ANGEL and yet be seamlessly imported into ANGEL (or
any similar platform) for use in given course in a given semester.”
“I don't think my biggest request was provided as an option here—which, under content, would be
ability to upload multiple documents at one time. Also, there is no mention of SRTE interface here, but
there are cases on a campus where we know (based upon the comments section) that students have filled
out the survey for the incorrect instructor, so finding a way to make that less likely would be my other
major request.”
“….Should be able to replace a file under Content without deleting and recreating the entire item.”
“…As it is set up, ANGEL requires an unnecessary amount of scrolling. It appears to have been
designed for very small classes (25 students) with limited numbers of assignments. For those of us who
teach large classes with significant content, ANGEL is very cumbersome.”
“I find ANGEL to be largely useless except for posting content that I want to distribute to students. The
integration between ANGEL and Scanning Operations functions adequately but allows no options for
manual updating (say for a student who takes a makeup quiz)….”
“ANGEL is clunky. Make it more fluid and intuitive. It is too linear and there are too many layers and
steps required to complete a function as an editor. Editors should be able to customize the names of
each section/tabs instead of having "CONTENT" and "LESSONS" and other sections/tabs as constants.
I remember using Blackboard about 10 years ago and it was much more fluid and intuitive than ANGEL
is now. There has to be a better and more user-friendly system than ANGEL. Often, when using ANGEL,
it feels like it was a student project that has been retrofitted and revised over several iterations. A
WordPress or Facebook style interface and visual presentation would be great. Can ANGEL move in
this direction?”
“When uploading content in "Lessons," it would be nice to be able to specify the dates of availability at
the time of upload rather than having to go back through several layers of menus after the content is
13
uploaded. I.e., I frequently post solutions to quizzes, etc., and want to make sure they are only visible to
students after the due date. There is always that window of time between uploading the file and going
back to change the availability setting (and always the possibility that I'll forget to go back and do it!).”
“Please make lesson content pages compatible/viewable with current tablet devices, notably iPad
devices.”
“PLEASE make sure that ALL course content (downloads, streaming, etc.) is available in multiple
formats—especially those for mobile devices (i.e., iOS6 for iPad).”
“Make ANGEL usable with iOS for iPhone and iPad. This is more important than any enhancements
listed here. I would like to be able to easily view course content and discussion forums; both cannot be
done consistently.”
14
Top Requests by Category: Course Mail
The Course Mail tool on the course Communicate tab allows students and instructors to correspond
with each other without requiring the use of Internet email accounts. It provides access to the HTML
editor (which includes a check spelling tool), supports adding attachments and forwarding to Internet
email addresses, and allows the sender and recipients to monitor who has and has not read a message.
Student
LMS-1861 Simplify selecting email recipients
LMS-1757 Add a visual indicator in course mail
that a message has been replied to
Number
401
314
LMS-1859 Add a periodic autosave feature to
course mail message drafts
Faculty
LMS-1861 Simplify selecting email
recipients
LMS-1757 Add a visual indicator in course
mail that a message has been replied to
Number
300
166
LMS-2039 Add the ability to send
225
announcements to students’ Internet email
accounts, and the ability to subscribe to
141
announcements
LMS-2044 Provide a threaded view in course mail
LMS-1968 Add a tool allowing an instructor
196
to view all correspondence with a user or
113
team
LMS-1710 Display recipient as well as sender in the
course mail inbox
LMS-6096 The Message Body box in the
154
course mail Compose Message window
98
should automatically resize/maximize
Table 8: Top Requests by Category: Course Mail
Comments on Course Mail
“When spell checking an email after pressing send, have a button to cancel the send. Handy when you
realize, through spell checking, that you have it more than just a little wrong and you need a rewrite.”
“Most important of all to me is to streamline sending email messages. Really annoying.”
“Have the team/group forum have the ability to send alerts to user via email.”
“…ordinary email works quite well...”
“Put the WhoDunIt application in a drop box with mail options to those that have or have not completed
the item. That is, put it back to the original mechanism.”
“….There should be an option to mirror emails sent by students to ANGEL so they also go to the
instructor’s psu.edu email account.”
“…There should be a way to type an announcement and then have it also sent as an email to the class,
and/or vice versa.”
“In Course Mail, please make "Send a copy to each recipient's Internet e-mail if known" checked by
default!!! Lots of confusion has been caused by it NOT being checked. So again, please check the "Send
a copy to each recipient's Internet e-mail if known" by default! Thank you.”
15
“Send a receipt email for students once they complete an SRTE with the material they have entered for
their records…”
“I would like to have the ability to email different courses at once, with ease.”
“You should not have both ANGEL email and WebMail. They need to be merged.”
“Emailing students through ANGEL should automatically go to their regular WebMail accounts. 2.
There needs to be an easy way to export student email addresses into a list that can be cut and pasted
into an external email client (Gmail, Mac Mail, etc.). The export feature only allows one to put their
course roster into an Excel-compatible file, and while this is useful, I don't understand why it's so
difficult to just obtain an email list for the course. I'd prefer not to go through the 6-step process of
logging into ANGEL and clicking through the Communicate options if I simply want to send an email to
my class.”
“The mail features are most in need of reform. My younger students ROUTINELY miss my emails
because they don't understand how to forward their mail (even though I do my best to try to give them
clear instructions). Make mail forwarding easier!”
“2 things: Would really like to be able to add any psu address to any ANGEL email—ex., a student is
not in the course (yet) can still get information from ANGEL, or an announcement made via email can
be copied to other interested psu parties...Would like to be able to send email to your ANGEL account
from your psu email—ex., an email announcing an event that comes to PSU email could be sent to your
ANGEL email for forwarding to students. Would like to cc other email addresses from the ANGEL mail
(ex., students' work email addresses in addition to their psu email).”
“I would like two things in ANGEL: 1. the ability to forward psu as well as non-psu emails (e.g., Yahoo)
to my students using ANGEL and 2. the copy/paste tool for ANGEL email(from Word or HTML, for
example) is terrible...the message always gets distorted in format whenever I paste something in the
body of my ANTEL email. Thank you.”
“The course email has funny breaks in words that show in spell check but not in email. Lastly, I would
love to have a 4.0 grading scale option to eliminate points and percentages.”
“Did not see this option in course email...make it more clear/simple to students to set up forwarding
course emails to another email. Also, emails sent in ANGEL should default to go to student's Internet
email (shouldn't have to check the box). Thank you!”
“I did not see the option to copy an email sent to someone on the roster to someone who is not on the
roster. I would like to see this feature since there have been times I would have liked to have copied an
email to another University member, such as an administrator.”
“ANGEL is very difficult to use for large courses. The limit of 1 GB per course is highly restrictive; it
works fine for the 5 students in my advanced class, but not so well for the >1000 students in my general
education class. The mailer typically falls into an infinite loop in the large class, sending multiple copies
until stopped manually, in the large class, unless a relatively unfriendly special mail tool is used. In our
large class with several TAs, it would really, really help to be able to send emails in a way that students
hitting "reply" would send to all course faculty rather than to the single sender. Cheating is a major
headache in large classes. Allowing more "scrambling" options for the questions as well as answers
would help on objective tests.”
16
“...Make sending ANGEL mail to relevant colleagues not on the course roster less impossible.”
“PLEASE add an indicator of some sort to ANGEL's mail feature. When writing mail, the user clicks on
"Send," but nothing happens. A spinning wheel, message, or something should instantly appear to let the
user know that the mail is sending. Also, deactivate the send button when it is pressed to prevent
multiple mail sends.”
“An email confirmation when an assignment is successfully uploaded would be a good benefit.
Sometimes an assignment indicates it was submitted, but the professor doesn't get it for some reason,
and the blame is placed on the student. An email would provide a record so the student to prove they did
submit the document on time.”
“…Get rid of ANGEL Course Mail and use psu.edu email instead.”
“Update the UI to be more friendly. Have never liked the whole mail system. Seems unnecessary and
forwarding to other email is finicky at times.”
“It is very annoying when having multiple sections to have to upload identical content for each section.
There should be some way to link sections so that you can upload to both of them or mail to both of
them. It takes a remarkable amount of time to set up even two sections, let alone a whole class worth of
them.”
“Would love to see support for Droid phones in course mail and discussion forums.”
17
Top Requests by Category: Discussion Forums
Discussion forums have dozens of features that are designed to facilitate teaching and learning as well as reduce the amount
of time required for instructors to manage discussion forums.
Student
Number
LMS-2302 Show discussion forums that have new
posts in a “what's new” area on My Profile
Faculty
Number
LMS-2302 Show discussion forums that have
504
new posts in a “what’s new” area on My
233
Profile
Less than five results available
LMS-5647 Block discussion forum posts
N/A
Less than five results available
beyond the due date, but allow read access
216
LMS-1730 Add the option to include user
N/A
photos when an instructor prints a discussion
180
forum
Less than five results available
LMS-1858 Allow the creation of discussion
N/A
forums in the Discussion Forums component
156
on the Communicate tab
Less than five results available
LMS-1944 Add the ability to rearrange
N/A
discussion forums in the Discussion Forums
140
component on the Communicate tab
Table 9: Top Requests by Category: Discussion Forums
Comments on Discussion Forums
“Make ANGEL usable with iOS for iPhone and iPad. This is more important than any enhancements
listed here. I would like to be able to easily view course content and discussion forums; both cannot be
done consistently.”
“Thank you for changing the ANGEL maintenance to twice weekly from nightly. I routinely work
overnight shifts and my downtime is between 4 and 6 a.m. so not being able to access ANGEL was
extremely frustrating. One other request that I did not see on the discussion forums list is (while in
threaded view) the ability to click on a message and it opens directly under the subject title instead of
opening it in a new window.”
“I would like it if the discussion forums were more user-friendly. The way it is set up now makes looking
at the overall discussion complicated, since you have to click on each post to see it.”
“Would love to see support for Droid phones in course mail and discussion forums.”
18
Top Requests by Category: Drop Boxes
On the course Lessons tab, a drop box provides an area for students to submit assignments electronically. These assignments
can then be reviewed and graded. Students upload the assignment to the drop box, and instructors are able to view which
student uploaded each submission as well as the times when items were submitted.
Student
Number
LMS-1728 Allow students to delete their own
submitted file from a drop box
Faculty
Number
LMS-2068 When an action is
620
completed on the Viewing, Grade or
Delete Submissions screen for a drop
115
box, keep the user on the current page
LMS-1608 Allow students to review rubric
feedback once a drop box closes
LMS-1891 The view option on the
552
View, Grade or Delete Submissions
108
screen should persist
LMS-2048 Increase the size of buttons for page
navigation such as those at the bottom of the drop
LMS-1772 Allow a team assignment to
306
have one drop box entry whose grade is
box submissions page
assigned to all team members
Less than five results available
LMS-1584 The drop box grading
N/A
utility should maintain the instructor’s
190
157
sorting preference
Less than five results available
LMS-2295 Allow users to enter more
N/A
than 2,500 characters in a comments
126
field
Table 10: Top Requests by Category: Drop Boxes
Comments on Drop Boxes
“Make the process of pasting text into the drop box text area simpler—with less steps to paste—and
keep the formatting from the original document.”
“Better browser support. Don't complain if my browser is newer than some arbitrary value. Complain
when browser features are not available and downgrade. HTML5 as standard. Drag and drop of files
into and out of drop box. Folder structure for courses to one email box instead of separate boxes for
every course.”
“Maybe I am missing something, but it would be greatly appreciated to have submitted data
downloaded from a drop box listed by last name and then first name. As it is now, it is first name and
then last name. It is extremely difficult with first name as we keep track of students by their last name
and not their first name. These are folders so we can't resort by last name if we try to figure out a fix.
Please?! My TA's would greatly appreciate it and you will save them hours in their grading of the files.”
“Make submitted assignments in a drop box show in a continuous list, not in page 1, page 2, page 3, 25
at a time. Each time you work on the assignments on page 2, even if you set it to show 50 students, it
goes back to page 1. No need for separate pages to go back and forth, which wastes a lot of time for
grading. Display "all" submissions on the same page in a continuous list.”
“Put the Who Dunnit application in a drop box with mail options to those that have or have not
completed the item. That is put it back to the original mechanism.”
19
“ANGEL used to have a feature that is now gone. You could run a report from the Who Done It to show
who had not completed a certain thing...drop box, assessment, etc. and then you could hit one button to
send a message to all of those students at once. Can we get that back?”
“For team projects, the assignment is usually only submitted by one team member so only that person
sees the drop box feedback. Instead of each person having a private drop box for team assignments,
there should only be 1 drop box labeled for each team for each assignment and it should be provided in
the team project folder where the instructor places all the related materials. When teams are formed and
team email groups are set up, use the groups as a type of access control tool so that team 1 only sees the
team 1 assignment 1 folder, the team 1 assignment 2 folder, etc.”
“Force professors to indicate due date for drop box assignments and to keep the drop boxes visible after
the due date has passed unless the professor explicitly decides not to keep it visible.”
“The local (or drop box) sync would be amazing”
“The interface of uploading documents in ANGEL sucks. Drag-and-Drop environment like Dropbox or
Google Drive would be nice so that uploading documents could be easy. Adding users to an
extracurricular ANGEL folder should be easier than having to individually add people.”
“…I spend a fair amount of time working offline in creating assignments and drop boxes as well as
grading those assignments and returning the (electronic) submissions to students. As ANGEL does not
allow for meaningful importing of information, I find myself being forced to use a number of workarounds, such as dropbox.com and double entry of grades…”
“These are my biggest complaints: 1. Please add a “Done” button at the top in gradebook 2. I would
like to be able to make edits to files that are already uploaded 3. Should be able to upload multiple files
at a time 4. Better attendance functionality 5. Larger drop box size—maxes out pretty quickly with video
6. I have issues opening links that are posted to ANGEL 7. Should not have to close all browser
windows to log into ANGEL 8. Be able to go in and add or remove members of a team. Not have to go in
separately to add and to delete. 9. When look at drop/adds there is an issue with date order. It switches
from chronological to reverse chronological as you click to different pages. 10. Mail is difficult to use—
I often want to forward something from my regular mail to the course email, but that is difficult or
impossible to do. 11. Ability to assign a grade from an item in the drop box to a team rather than just a
person.”
20
Top Requests by Category: Grades
The gradebook allows course editors to track and display grades for ANGEL lesson content items
(assessments, drop boxes, etc.) and for assignments handed in outside of the ANGEL environment
(presentations, speeches, etc.). Assignments are organized by categories that can be weighted to
calculate an overall grade for each student.
Student
LMS-1825 Enable email notification to a student
when his/her assignment is graded
LMS-1628 Weighting of grades by category should
display to students
Number
614
526
LMS-1662 Allow the option to show a gradebook
"progress report" via the Report tab
Faculty
LMS-2371 Allow instructors to customize
drop box instructions
LMS-1899 Provide the ability to add
multiple assignments at once
Number
266
124
LMS-1662 Allow the option to show a
460
gradebook "progress report" via the Report
119
tab
LMS-5845 Add a consolidated gradebook view
component for students
448
LMS-2392 Instead of providing students feedback
files in a drop box, provide them in the grades report
LMS-5576 Make it easier to enter gradebook
grades
115
LMS-1753 Apply the grade for a team drop
328
box submission to all team members
110
automatically
Table 11: Top Requests by Category: Grades
Comments on Grades
The gradebook should count unposted grades as zero by default. When courses are merged, we should
be able to sort the roster by enrolled section AND view add/drops by section.”
“ANGEL is a good CMS tool. Professors need to learn/trust to use the grading features in order for
students to view their grades.”
“I truly like the ANGEL home page view for all my classes. It seems like each class is different and the
ones that use the home page style are easier to navigate. As well, I enjoy the Course tab view that shows
your grades and the class average, as well as messages and course announcements. All classes within
ANGEL should look like this—it is far easier to read and, when you’re a World Campus student, it is all
you have of Penn State.”
“Survey should ask for what enhancement WE want—not vote for those that have already been
identified. 1. Spell check in email is outdated and incomplete 2. We should be able to copy the
gradebook structure from one semester to the next rather than having to set it up each time. 3. Connect
gradebook to eLion so we do not have to reenter grades.”
“Under the report tab of grades, the view tab of selecting how many assignments I want to view is very
annoying and time-consuming. I would prefer if all assignments were always displayed. This was
particularly ridiculous at the end of fall semester when so many grades for assignments were available
and I constantly had to select view all.”
“My three biggest problems with ANGEL are group projects, working offline, and using non-PC
platforms. All but one of my classes uses group projects. The inability of ANGEL to do anything group
21
related makes a great deal of what I do in ANGEL difficult and dependent on work-arounds. Not just
grading, but also submitting files, allowing all team members to see grades and returned files would go
a long way towards improving usability. ANGEL's export functionality is completely undocumented
making it extremely difficult to use the downloaded data as information. I spend a fair amount of time
working offline in creating assignments and drop boxes as well as grading those assignments and
returning the (electronic) submissions to students. As ANGEL does not allow for meaningful importing
of information, I find myself being forced to use a number of work-arounds, such as dropbox.com and
double entry of grades. Finally, in this day and age of ubiquitous computing, ANGEL's inability to work
properly with various software and hardware platforms is unacceptable. Using ANGEL from an iPad,
Android based tablet, or any smart phone is an exercise in futility. The suggestion of using PDA mode is
quirky at best and usually does not restore full functionality. ANGEL needs to be dragged into the 21st
century with as close to universal platform support or applications specific to those platforms be
developed and made available. I would be happy to discuss these and other issues, provide further
information or participate in shaping and developing future releases.”
“Maybe I've been missing something, but I believe that mail and grades from all current courses should
be available in one place. I.e., all course grades report or drop-down to choose course grades to view
and one tab for all mail.”
“I suppose if I was in more online classes, more things with regard to ANGEL would be important, but
its functionality doesn't bother me all that much. I have mostly used it to communicate with the
instructor, do the occasional online discussion, and upload assignments. I look at eLion for my grades,
because most instructors I have had don't use the grade widget in ANGEL. One really annoying thing is
with course mail...I cannot forward it externally, so it is irritating to save mails from the instructor to
places where I can access them more easily from a mobile or other personal device.”
“It is really hard to get the email to work, its needs to be simplified. I would like to export my class
calendar to Google calendar and have it automatically update. The grades report needs to be
simplified.”
“The fact that the grades report is displayed in an extremely small iFrame/frame is extremely annoying
when viewing on large resolution screen. I have a 1680x1050 display and the grades frame only takes
up 1/3 vertical of my screen. And at most I can only view 2 grades at a time in that frame. There needs
to be a way to view all of the grades on a separate window, page, tab, anything BUT a frame. Frames
were web 1.0. We are in web 2.0 now. Every class I've been in the past year and a half, I have heard
tons of people complaining about this considering most classes use this to display grades.”
“Rather than having to go through each class to check grades have a gradebook tab where students can
then select each class and see the grades. Also, PDFs still display lines making them difficult to view in
ANGEL”
“Work on more painless exporting and importing of assignment grades; work on more control on how
grades are reported to students without creating complicated formulas. In particular, remove "overall
point average" because this is irrelevant if the instructor has his own grading weights set in the syllabus
(99% of the cases) and VERY confusing for students.”
“It seems like instructors don't use enough of the tools at their disposal. I'm never able to get a
comprehensive report on my grades, and it would be nice if there were some sort of tool that shows
whether or not you're on the right track to getting a certain letter grade.”
22
“It would be nice to have our ACTUAL current grades posted, in a TIMELY FASHION, by the
teachers/professors/faculty. If it is our responsibility as students to complete and submit our work in a
timely fashion, it is their responsibility to return our grades to us in a similar manner. After all, it is
their job, and it is frustrating to have to badger and 'chase down' professors just to discover a grade that
should be always-available knowledge to you. Thank you.”
“I would like an "All Grades" button. It would make checking my grades more convenient.”
“It would be nice if every teacher would use ANGEL for their classes. Have a time limit for when they
can put on the grades. Some take too long to give you a final grade.”
“Please teach me how to put individual grades into the gradebook so that only each student can see
their grades.”
“Make login significantly easier for personal computers by allowing auto-sign-in and no time-out
periods. Allow instructors to change/add grades at any time. (An instructor once said that they are
limited to some specific time that may become inconvenient or difficult to access). Any enhancement to
gradebook layout and function. Send a receipt email for students once they complete an SRTE with the
material they have entered for their records. Any enhancement to indicate when a file was already
opened by the student or recently posted by the teacher. (To lower possibility of missing an assignment)
ANGEL is otherwise very useful; some minor improvements can yield large productivity increases.”
“Please make changes to discussion forum grade entry for merged classes or teams. If a discussion
forum is only accessible to a specific group, the grade submission page for that forum should only list
the names for the students in that group. This change will save a lot of wasted time scrolling through
names searching for the ones who are to be graded. Also, in gradebook, an individual student's grades
should be able to be viewed in a condensed format. As it is set up, ANGEL requires an unnecessary
amount of scrolling. It appears to have been designed for very small classes (25 students) with limited
numbers of assignments. For those of us who teach large classes with significant content, ANGEL is
very cumbersome.”
“If possible, I would eliminate the tabs at the top. I feel like it would be more friendly to have everything
at a glance on one page; things like the grades, lessons, attendance, and so on should be made into
panels that can be arranged on the home page for the course; almost like the home page for the current
ANGEL. I feel like this would save a lot of time and make users happier about using it.”
“In general, I would like more options to make the calendar more functional and more detail added to
the reports, especially for grades and class ranking.”
“Please make it possible to use 4, as in an A in the 4-point scale, as the maximum points per
assignment. I understand that ANGEL is a giant calculator and that it only works with numbers, not
letter grades, but can we have it work with 4, 3.67, 3.33, etc. as numbers that correspond with the
traditional letter grades, please?”
The gradebook should count unposted grades as zero by default. When courses are merged, we should
be able to sort the roster by enrolled section AND view add/drops by section.”
23
24
Top Requests by Category: Roster Management*
Roster management is done via the Roster Editor. The Roster Editor allows course editors to manage
enrollments and rights.
Faculty
LMS-5635 Allow an export of the
roster with team data
LMS-2410 Add the ability to show at
least two columns in the class list
LMS-1762 Add navigation by letter
of the alphabet to the roster
LMS-2184 Add an option to sort and
filter the roster by teams
Number
128
115
111
105
LMS-2375 Allow students to edit
104
their names in the User Profile Editor
Table 12: Top Requests by Category: Roster Management
*Faculty only
Comments on Roster Management
“1. I did not see the option to copy an email sent to someone on the roster to someone who is not on the
roster. I would like to see this feature since there have been times I would have liked to copied an email
to another University member, such as an administrator. 2. I think the grade export function needs to be
more user-friendly. I have not been successful using this utility.”
“1. Emailing students through ANGEL should automatically go to their regular WebMail accounts. 2.
There needs to be an easy way to export student email addresses into a list that can be cut and pasted
into an external email client (Gmail, Mac Mail, etc.). The export feature only allows one to put their
course roster into an Excel-compatible file, and while this is useful, I don't understand why it's so
difficult to just obtain an email list for the course. I'd prefer not to go through the 6-step process of
logging into ANGEL and clicking through the Communicate options if I simply want to send an email to
my class.”
The gradebook should count unposted grades as zero by default. When courses are merged, we should
be able to sort the roster by enrolled section AND view add/drops by section.”
25
Top Requests by Category: Miscellaneous
Enhancement requests that did not fit into one of the identified categories were categorized as
miscellaneous.
Student
LMS-1727 Allow students to bulk
Number
344
download all course files
LMS-2341 Allow users to sync all course
Faculty
LMS-1686 Make polling possible via
Number
113
cellphones for in-class participation
238
folders and files with their local computer
LMS-1894 Allow instructors to
110
preview the Lessons tab as a student
for a particular date and time
LMS-5849 Provide improved syllabus
access
LMS-2077 Allow multiple file downloads
226
LMS-5589 Add a feature to log each
99
student’s total time spent on the course
203
of lesson content items and eliminate the
LMS-1676 Add an upload progress
81
bar for uploading file attachments
download timer
LMS-5533 Make the default Report tab
192
category and report Grades-->Student
LMS-2066 Allow announcements to
78
be posted to multiple courses at once
Grades
Table 13: Top Requests by Category: Miscellaneous
Comments on Miscellaneous
“I feel that all of the proposed changes in the Miscellaneous category should be implemented. They all
do things that would make ANGEL more robust and useful to students.”
“Users should be notified of the hours of ANGEL by default. I found it hard to only choose five (5)
options in the "miscellaneous" category when there are actually many things that should be added to
enhance ANGEL. It would also be beneficial to reduce the amount of clicks a user needs to make in
order to get to where they need to be in the website.”
26
Conclusions
The ANGEL operations team should use these results to help prioritize the order of integrating
enhancements into ANGEL. Ideally, work would be done starting with the most requested items by
students and faculty and working down from there; however, there may be other factors to consider
including whether vendor assistance is needed, the availability of Penn State resources to work on the
enhancement, and the amount of work required to integrate the enhancement into ANGEL.
Survey results should be shared with the appropriate areas and next steps should be shared with the
ANGEL user community at Penn State.
27
Appendix A: ANGEL Enhancement Survey Full Descriptions
The following is a list of the enhancement requests received between spring 2009 and spring
2012, the period when Blackboard was planning to discontinue ANGEL. The list contains the
tracking number (LMS-xxxx), a summary of the request, and the full description. Survey
participants had access to this list when taking the survey via a hyperlink.
Key
LMS1584
Summary
Drop box should
maintain sorting
preference
Description
The grading utility of a drop box located at Utilities->View/Grade/Delete submissions will preserve the sorting
option selected, so if I sort by grades, and issue grades in helterskelter order, after each grade issued, the list is still sorted by
my criterion of "grades."
If I grade via the main view of the drop box, I can sort, but if I
issue a grade, the sorting reverts back to the default "date/time"
sorting option. This tool, too, should maintain the user's
preference for the sake of consistency.
LMS1585
Group
Enrollment &
Rights Level
LMS1600
Allow team
access / settings
for tools such as
the calendar, etc.
Editing
assessment
questions is not
intuitive
Students unable
to review rubric
feedback obce
drop box closes
LMS1606
LMS1608
LMS1609
The mail
"Action: Send to
Folder" option
Note: in Utilities-->View/Grade/Delete submissions will NOT
preserve the sorting option selected, and it will default back to
the date/time sorting option after each grading.
The ability to set up a group, and then have people self-enroll at
a specific rights level the main course editor specifies. Right
now, anyone self-enrolling in any group enrolls as a group
member (the equivalent of a student). IST has to then go into
the group and manually, one at a time, bump everyone's rights
up. IST (and me!) would like to set a group up so everyone
enrolling in it is enrolled with rights as specified by the group
owner.
Provide more project management tools for team projects. team calendar, task assignments, team meetings minutes.
If the instructor tries to edit an existing question in an
assessment, he has to click on the type of the question (such as
Multiple Choice) to be able to edit. This is NOT intuitive.
There is no option to disable the drop box and still allow
students to review the rubric information. Instructor wants the
students to be able to review the Rubric feedback via the
reports learner profile, grades table. There is an option for
viewing the rubric when the drop box is open using this method
but as soon as the drop box closes, then the view rubric option
is unavailable.
Having the instructor select "Send to Folder" and THEN select
between two folders is beyond ridiculous. Put ALL selections
("Send to Saved Mail Folder" and "Send to ...") in the first menu
28
LMS1616
LMS1622
LMS1623
LMS1624
should be
streamlined and
simply eliminate
the 2nd step
Allow default
course to be
selected for
viewing Mail in
the nugget on
the homepage
Allow the setup
of the gradebook
macro to
retroactively use
letter grades
given in an
assignment
Grade export
unsuccessful
when special
character used
(comma)
Re-upload file
button should
update with a
time stamp
and delete the unnecessary second menu.
User requests the ability to set a default course to make sending
mail to one particular course easier.
The ability of the grade macro to retroactively enable already
assigned letter grades to a given assignment. This would require
converting stored labels in gb3_grades into percentages
whenever a macro is created
User wants the grade export (CSV) to allow for names with
Special characters. In his case, commas. His gradebook didn't
export properly due to commas in his titles.
Evidently Angel considers a COMMA to be a special character.
He would like to recommend using the escape character on
exports to CSV files.
Faculty would like the server to update the time stamp, when
the Re-upload tool is used for updating files; currently this does
not happen.
This request comes on the heels of a complaint: namely, that an
updated file will not become available to students, unless they
clear their browser cache.
LMS1628
LMS1640
weighting of
grades by
category should
display to
students
Allow matching
questions to
have more
terms than
definitions or
more definitions
than terms.
Note: not sure if an update to the time stamp on the server side
will alleviate this.
Have the Gradebook display the category weights next to the
category averages whenever it is set to display category
averages and overall averages.
Recently a fix was made to prevent calculation problems with
matching questions that were caused by having more terms
than definitions or more definitions than terms. The fix forced
the matching question to have the exact same number of terms
as the number of definitions.
Some instructors are now complaining that this limits there
ability to use this type question. They state that at the college
level, a matching item needs to be
29
able to include additional distractors to increase the difficulty
level.
LMS1647
LMS1650
LMS1658
LMS1661
Grade total
points against
lower
benchmark
Assessment
Pending items
submitted
automatically
Ability to assign
multiple users to
an event in
course/group
calendars
When
generating a
report keep the
date naming
conventions
consistant
LMS1662
Gradebook
grade options
LMS1663
Ability for a quiz
to be
automatically
submitted at a
specific time
LMS1673
Comments on
WebEQ
Allow multi-part assignments (with points assigned to each
part) to be automatically graded not against the total points of
the parts but against a lower benchmark.
For example, "this exam allows a total of 38 points out of 30".
The lower benchmark would be 30 and not 38.
Faculty member wants the pending assessment items submitted
automatically without intervention from the faculty member.
Allow multiple users to be selected when creating a personal
calendar entry rather than have each entry be created
individually. This would be similar to selecting multiple
recipients when composing mail. Using teams is too
cumbersome when the calendar entry is a one-time only thing.
When generating a report on the Report tab, the dates listed on
the report are sometimes replace with a string of text indicating
the relative dates.
For instance, if the calendar icon were used to pick a Starting
Date and a Ending Before Date, the date 3/1/2010 may be
replace with the text - "14 days ago".
The instructor requests that the dates selected be shown in the
report, instead of the preset text that they coincide with.
User wants the option to show a "progress report" via the
reports tab that would show the average of the work due up to a
certain date that they set.
Faculty would like the ability to have an assessment submitted
at a specific time. This would be most useful when ANGEL is
used to deliver assessments in class.
Note: because auto-submission relies on Javascript, this feature
would be easily defeated by changing the time on the computer
on which the assessment is being given.
I think there are some symbols missing that the math
instructors may ask about in the Set Theory palette (see
attached WebeqPanelSetTheory.gif). As you can see that have a
U pointing east (proper subset) and an east U with line (subset)
- last two on top row. And there are two crossed versions (next
row down) which mean "not a subset." In the third row we have
two west pointing U's for "not a superset"...but no uncrossed
version for "is a proper superset" or "is a superset." Someone
may want the positive as well as the negative.
30
LMS1676
Progress Bar for
Uploading Files
Add an upload progress bar to ANGEL upload pages
+Drop Box Attachments
+Mail Attachments
+Discussion Forum Attachments
LMS1680
Review should
be available to
all students
LMS1682
rights to put
content into
Master Courses
or LOR
Currently, unless using a series of work-arounds, assessment
reviews are only available to students who took the assessment.
Please make a review option available to all students, regardless
of whether or not they took the assessment.
We are using Master Courses to distribute content to any user
with editor rights in any IST course at any campus by allowing
them to import FROM the Master Courses into their course.
We would like to enable the instructors to share content and be
able to put content into Master Courses - in other words import
(push) TO the Master Course. We would want the same settings
for access.
In other words we want it set up so any editor in any IST course
at any campus could "put in" and "pull out" materials from the
Master Course or LOR.
LMS1686
LMS1689
LMS1710
Polling from cell
phones for inclass
participation
Include number
of recipients in
mail sent
confirmation
message
Display
recipient +
sender in Inbox
We currently have "Course Development" groups set up with a
pin and someone bumps the rights up to editor so users can
push and pull content. We want to eliminate the need for us to
control access rights. We are considering how we can eliminate
the need for us to be the "keepers of the keys" and allow the
instructors to make changes and collaborate on content and
materials.
Instructor would like to use cell phones for
polling/participation during her course instead of forcing the
student to buy a clicker.
Of course, phones with data plans can access ANGEL for
purposes such as this.
A couple of my faculty have mentioned dissatisfaction with the
new ANGEL e-mail program. One aspect is that ANGEL no longer
acknowledges 'sent' mail. Before when you sent an email out to
the class you would get a confirmation back saying that your
message was sent to XXX number of folks. It assured the user
that the message went out and it went to so many folks.
While you still can check on sent mail - it is not automatic and
seamless. Several folks have commented that they miss this
feature
In the Inbox, the ability to see the recipient as well as the sender
of a message would be helpful, perhaps as a display option. This
is needed in a course where both the instructor and the TA send
31
out many e-mails with the same subject line.
LMS1712
Bookmark
Exporting
LMS1715
Finer controls in
permissions
manager
Is it possible to enhance ANGEL by adding a way to export all of
our bookmarks at one time and have it saved as an HTML
document?
Instructors would like finer controls in the permissions
manager. An ACL-like approach would be best in which
instructors can separately control who can add, change, or
delete each item listed. For example, an instructor may want an
editor who is a teaching assistance to add content items,
announcements, or calendar items, but not permit deleting
these items. This would help greatly in preventing teaching
assistants from accidentally deleting the instructor's content
while also allowing them to assist with uploading content to the
course.
--It would be a huge advantage to instructors if course assistants
or some other allocation (in 7.2 the permissions tab on user
settings) if you could assign a user the right to add content but
not delete it. With all the rights and permissions configurations
possible, this is still an unavailable but needed function.
LMS1717
LMS1719
LMS1720
LMS1721
LMS1726
There should be an over-ride where the instructor/owner of the
course has the ultimate say on deleting content.
Load FCK editor Users find it confusing to see HTML code in the question box if
automatically
they are editing a question they may have copied from MSWord.
when editing
Furthermore, they report that it is not intuitive to figure out that
assessment
the HTML tool has to be triggered to get out of Source view.
questions
They are asking for the FCK editor to be automatically loaded in
the editing view of assessment questions.
Course setting to This user wants to keep several instructors in the loop on each
force a mail
reply from a student. She wants the ability to send a note to a
reply to go to all student and have any reply from that student go to all course
course editors.
faculty.
Quiz should
We would like for our Non-lethal and Less-lethal courses to be
allow for
able to have branch scenarios. Basically, depending on how the
"branching
question is answered, a different set of questions would be
questions"
given.
faculty should
Faculty should be able to CC ANGEL Support via ANGEL mail.
be able to CC
ANGEL Support
via ANGEL mail
task - the way
Tasks added to the user profile. It would be better if there was
they are
an option to make these Course name sections to be open
displayed
(collapsed) as well as the Incomplete section so that tasks are
seen without the need to click '+' two times. In this way, once
ANGEL loads a student instantly sees the collapsed chain
Course>Incomplete>Tasks and therefore actually sees tasks that
32
there are instead of Course names that need to be clicked in
order to get to tasks.
LMS1727
LMS1728
LMS1730
LMS1734
LMS1737
LMS1741
LMS1745
LMS1749
LMS1751
Allow students
to bulk
download
course files
Student Drop
Boxes Delete
function
Ability to show
user photos in
discussion
forum print
view
Allow comments
to flow from the
gradebook back
to dropboxes.
PIN enrollment
in groups
defaults to
"Student" title
instead of
"member" title
Add check box
to roster setting
to exclude a
particular user
from the
gradebook
Copy the
question set
heading text into
student
submission
generate
advising group
based on eLion's
advisee lists
Ability to save
calendar view
Allow students to download all course files as one zip folder.
When a student uploads the file to a drop box they are not given
an option to delete the file if it was not correct. I know the
instructor has the option to delete the file but it would be nice if
the student could delete the file themselves.
Faculty would like the ability to show user photos in the
discussion forum print utility /DiscussionForums/print.aspx
User would like a way for comments put into the gradebook to
flow back to her dropboxes.
In our instance at least, level 2 rights have different titles in a
group vs. a course. For course 2=student for groups 2=member.
But if you self-enroll via a PIN into a group, then the default title
is "student" instead of "member."
This user would like to exclude users from the gradebook by
userid. He would be happy with a check box similar to "Hidden"
check box that when checked will exclude a userid from the
gradebook.
Currently text entered into the Question Set> Configure>
General tab> Heading Text> is displayed for the student when
taking the assessment, but is not displayed when the
submission is viewed or graded. This information may be
needed to clarify the answers for the instructor when grading
the submission.
This instructor is requesting that this text header information
transfer through to the submission.
User would like to see Angel Advising groups automatically
generated based on the eLion advising lists so he can
communicate with his advisees.
This is something many of his peers would like also. Currently,
he manually creates the groups.
Allow the user to set the default view state for personal and
course calendars. I.e. choose whether the calendar should
33
state
LMS1753
LMS1757
LMS1762
LMS1769
A team drop box
submission,
once graded,
should
automatically
issue the same
grade to all team
members
Replied-to flag
in course mail
Show letters in
addition to page
numbers on
roster
Make an office
hour scheduling
tool
display in list view or grid view, day view or month view, etc, by
default.
User suggests that if a team submits a document to a drop box
as a team assignment, ANGEL should automatically give the
instructor's grade to all members of the team in the gradebook.
Most e-mail clients have a visual marker for a piece of mail the
recipient replied to. This could be shown in the column where
the read/unread flag is displayed.
It would be nice if for the 'Class' tab if instead of numbers at the
bottom of the pages to skip through the pages there were letters
to indicate where in the roster you were skipping to.
I would like to request that ANGEL's development path include
a new Office Hour Scheduling Tool.
All instructors need to schedule office hours, help sessions, and
other meetings and activities with students held outside
regularly scheduled class sessions. These scheduling decisions
are important. Yet trying to find a time that is convenient for the
largest possible number of students is a haphazard process.
Usually I rely on pure guesswork, supplemented occasionally by
ad hoc surveys held during class sessions. I find invariably that I
guess wrong. This semester hardly anyone comes to my office
hours, while I'm deluged with requests for specially scheduled
appointments. (I moved my office hours once already. No luck.)
For instructors, this outcome is an inconvenience. For students,
especially those who are struggling and truly need extra
individual help, the inability to attend office hours can create
serious obstacles to academic achievement.
An Office Hour Scheduling Tool would offer a simple and
practical solution to this problem, one that instructors and
students confront regularly. (The idea is inspired by my recent
adoption of Google Calendar.) Here's how it could work.
For each student registered for a course, the Tool would
retrieve data on that student's schedule. These data could be
drawn from the Registrar's database. (On privacy concerns, see
below.)
Next, for each half-hour block of time during a normal week, the
Tool would simply count the number of students who have a
scheduling conflict during that period.
34
Finally, the Tool would display results: A calendar for a normal
week that shows, for each half-hour block of time, the number of
students who are busy during that period. (The calendar could
be color-coded, with warm colors denoting periods with many
conflicts, and cool colors for those periods that show relatively
few conflicts.) While it will often be impossible to avoid all
conflicts, the Tool would offer actionable intelligence to
minimize conflicts.
LMS1772
LMS1781
LMS1799
LMS1800
Allow dropbox
to automatically
grade one
assignment for
an entire team
Highlight
today's date in
monthly view of
calendar
Assessment
pending items
should have IP
address
Optimizing files
for upload,
storage, and
viewability
LMS1825
Notification for
new grades
LMS1830
Show upcoming
weeks in
calendar grid
view instead of
To preserve students' privacy, the Tool would not display any
information on the schedule or availability of any individual
students. It would only display aggregate figures for the class as
a whole, or for groups/teams above a certain size (say, five
members).
Allow a team assignment to have one drop box entry that gives a
grade value for the assignment to all team members.
It would be helpful if the box representing today's date were
highlighted in the calendar's monthly view.
In quizzes a pending item displayed the IP address where the
quiz was started--this same information is requested for
pending items in assessments as well.
Just thinking that it would be very cool if there was an
optimizing macro/tool that would automatically reduce or
optimize file size of items that are uploaded to the CMS ... i.e. a
smart tool that would automatically reduce the file size of things
that are uploaded into course space, dropboxes etc.
Just like you can "subscribe" to posts, I'd like to "subscribe" to
grade notifications. in other words, I would like an email
notification when an assignment is graded. It would save the
time having to log in 3 or 4 times a day to check for a grade. I
currently check several times a day for a grade on an
assignment before I submit the next assignment. I'd like to know
how I did on a pending assignment and be able to benefit
instructor's comments before I submit the next instruction. Just
an email stating that a grade has been posted would suffice.
However, if you could email the grade and the instructor's
comments, that would be a benefit as well.
Many calendaring programs show upcoming weeks instead of
just the current month. This view is very helpful when viewing
appointments during the first or last week of the month as
appointments that fall outside that month but in the same week
35
month
are shown.
LMS1832
Show semester
in Add Content>Import tool
selection dialog
LMS1840
Mail archive
feature
The selection for the Lessons/Content->Add Content->Import
tool dialog shows only the course title, making it difficult to pick
the correct semester offering of a course. We would like this
dialog to display the semester (e.g. 2006/07 FA) along with the
course title.
For each class, Professor Arndt creates an individual mail folder
to sort their email into. However, with the update to ANGEL 7.3,
she can see all the folders in all her classes - and with each
semester the list of "My Folders" gets longer and longer.
If she deletes the old folders, she loses that student's emails,
which may be important later.
LMS1843
LMS1845
E-mailed grade
should keep
gradebook
format
Export
submission
data--> Item
responses
should have
options
She would like some way of archiving the old email off sorted by
class and semester, or the ability to sort the My Folder list by
class and semester (hierarchical tree structure) so she doesn't
have to scroll down up and down this huge long list several
times just to make a new folder.
If a grade is issued via a dropbox submission, and the "send as
mail" box is selected, the grade is currently always sent in
percentage format, regardless of preferences or grading scale
used. This is confusing to students who see a point-based grade
in the course, but receive an email with a percentage based
score (without an explanation that this grade is in percentage
format).
Instructors want the e-mailed grade to be exactly the same as
the grade they enter into the grading box, and is displayed in the
dropbox as well as the gradebook.
In assessments, the Export submission data--> Item responses
entry should have options for "answer" or "label" to be included
in the export file.
NB: in quizzes, the Item responses field meant answer/choice
labels, and in assessments, the same field means answers. For
example:
Question 1
A) A
B) B
Question 2
A) Taurus
B) Aries
In quizzes, Item response corresponded to the label of the
student's choice: A and A.
36
In assessments, the Item responses value exports the actual
student answer: A and Taurus.
Faculty asked that both be possible.
LMS1846
LMS1858
LMS1859
Assessment
regrade (send
email) to
affected regrade
students
Allow the
creation of
forums in the
discussion
forums nugget
Autosave in
course mail
before session
timeout
When using the re-grade option, provide an option to send
email to the affected student where the re-grade was issued.
Allow discussion forums to be created in the discussion forum
nugget using an "add" link instead of requiring editors to add
the forum on the Lessons tab.
Support for periodic autosaving via AJAX of message drafts
during editing. This would help prevent loss of data if the user's
session times out or the user experiences technical issues while
editing a draft.
Could you PLEASE add some sort of an autosave feature before
the ANGEL time out message on ANGEL. (when you get that
prompt you lose enything being worked on in email).
I just had a 1hr summary of research suggestions lost due to the
system time out message ... and if I had back the hours of
messages lost throughout the semester (because of phone calls
and student interruptions) while in the middle of composing
messages to class / answering questions etc ....
LMS1861
Simplify
selecting email
recipients
LMS1866
Ability to delete
multiple teams
at once
I realize I should (and usually do - draft offline) ... but it is so
tempting to just try to get the message in the box .... but then, the
100 students from class send me IMs, calls from department ....
invariably I lose half of the work I think I am getting done when
I try to send quick email messages using the angel interface.
Faculty find the process of selecting recipients for an email
message in the new mail in ANGEL 7.3 to be too cumbersome. It
involves "too many clicks" and slows down their workflow.
They would prefer a method of selecting recipients that does
not involve opening a new window or clicking too many dialogs.
Ability to delete a group of teams all at once. this will save a lot
of time especially when the class have more than 10 teams.
37
LMS1873
LMS1881
LMS1883
LMS1889
LMS1891
LMS1894
LMS1897
LMS1899
Rubric
enhancement
1) I would like to place section headings in my rubric.
I tend to have a dozen or more criteria on each of my
assignments,
and section headings would help to organize them.
(It would also be helpful if the heading indicated the
total value of all the criteria within it)
2) I appreciate that you check that all my criteria weightings
add up to 100%, but I would like to have the flexibility to
override that total with bonus points. Perhaps instead of
outright disallowing anything that adds up wrong, give me
a dialog box that asks if I am truly willing to proceed.
gradebook batch The Batch Update ONLY works the FIRST time. If I wish to
update
update added points to a group, the Batch Update doesn't
change anything. Use wants to be able to use the batch update
more than once.
If dropping
As a suggestion, one thing that would be useful is to have Angel
grades, exported export 'filtered' data. For example, if I have a category set up so
file should filter as to drop the lowest score, it would be great if there was a way
for the dropped to
grades
export data that way.
Times in
Allow a date and TIME option for milestones
milestones
Display option
Although the View/Grade/Display utility allows options for
in
displaying a certain number of entries, the choice does not
View/Grade/Dis persist and has to be selected every time.
play utility does
not persist
Access dates I wish I could test out how lesson items will look tomorrow, or
Preview date
in one hour, or in two weeks... without having to go and change
options
access settings in my items AND THEN remembering to go in
again and change the access settings back. I wish setting
preview date and time were an option. And "current time"
should of course be the default, but I wish there were an
alternative to the system clock.
Forwarded mail: When messages with multiple recipients are forwarded from
formatting of list ANGEL to an email account, each user's name is separated by a
of recipients
comma. Each user's first and last name, however, is also
separated by a comma. When there are more than a very few
recipients, this can make it difficult to read the recipients list.
Could semicolons (or some other delimiter) be used to separe
names?
Ability to add
Editors would like the ability to create multiple assignments at
multiple
once. This would be especially helpful when creating multiple
assignments at
assignments that have similar settings that are not tied to
once
content items. In addition to an interface in ANGEL, the ability to
import assignments from CSV or TSV would be helpful.
38
LMS1909
LMS1913
Provide a pop up
warning before
clearing entered
grades when
grading by
assignment
Survey export
types
When grading by assignment, this user wants a pop up warning
message to appear when he changes the display options and
clicks the Go button. He wants the pop up warning to tell him
that this action will clear the grades entered on that page.
Reported by: RIADH BOUNATIROU" <[email protected]>
When using the survey, the instructor would like the following
enhancements for reporting.
1. We would like to have the participants able to see and print to
pdf their individual submissions to keep for their records.
LMS1919
LMS1920
LMS1923
LMS1925
LMS1927
Allow Random
Team Generator
in merged
courses to
generate teams
by original
course rosters.
Ability to import
calendar events
to personal
calendar
2. We would like to be able to export individual submissions
(for each student) in a pdf format (or .doc), not the CSV or .txt
format available under the export option. In other words we
would like to be able to export the view we see when we view
and grade these surveys. A view that is easily understood by
humans.
A faculty member would like to use the Random Team
Generator in a
combined course. She'd like to create teams with students from
their
originally enrolled section only.
Currently under the Random Team Generator / User Pool the
roster-based team is not listed. The faculty member would like
the original roster-based teams to be displayed under User Pool.
Users often like to use their ANGEL personal calendar as their
primary calendar. It would be helpful if they could import
calendar events using CSV, ics, and vcal files.
It would also be useful for editors to be able to import calendar
events using ics and vcal files in addition to CSV.
Add a "select all" Faculty would like a "select all" button on the add team
button to "add
members page (/section/people/Editor/addMembers.asp). This
team members" would be especially helpful in courses with large enrollment
page
(several hundred students).
Icon contrast
Another user is requesting that we make lesson icons easier to
between hidden distinguish.
and non-hidden
makes it difficult
to discern which
is which
Add section
This user is requesting that section headings be added back as a
headings back
choice of question in assessments.
into
39
LMS1928
LMS1934
LMS1935
LMS1944
LMS1945
LMS1947
LMS1952
assessments
When grading in
gradebook
receive message
'abandon all
changes' after
entering grade
and pressing
enter
Ability to export
range of
calendar events
Show overall
performance
Ability to
rearrange
discussion
forums on
communicate
tab
Syllabus: bring
the Print button
back
Have a way to
tell who deleted
my content
Dynamic Icons
and Titles for
Lessons and
Discussion
boards
Instructor has asked that the 'abandon all changes' message be
removed and/or changing the action taken by the system when
pressing enter after entering a grade into the gradebook.
Having this message pop up after pressing enter may cause
confusion, lost grading.
One can export individual events from a calendar, but not all
events. Someone who wants to export their ANGEL calendar to
Outlook, iCal, or their handheld will get frustrated at this.
I would like to request that when looking at the grades of an
individual
student in the gradebook, his/her overall performance be
shown at the top of the page.
The reason is that sometimes students ask me to discuss their
grades and if I go to their individual grades, their overall
performance does not appear.
This may be very doable, since when I look at the grades for the
entire class, the overall percentage is shown there.
On the communicate tab, discussion forums are always shown
in alphabetical order. Instructors would like to be able to
rearrange discussion forums on the communicate tab as they
can with content on the lessons tab.
The desire for this feature has also been expressed on the
mailing list.
User misses the Print button for the Syllabus from 7.1
If an editor can blow away a course (or delete specific items),
the IOR wants to be able to investigate who it was that deleted
the content. A tool or a report that can answer this question is
needed.
Working in the Angel program, within each courses I would find
it helpful to have an additional indicator to find any new or
unviewed items (including lessons pages, assessments, or
posts). Just as with unviewed items with these folders they new
items are marked bold. Being able to quickly view unviewed
items through dynamic icons and/or bold title names on the
folder title itself. Bold and anything dynamic would be helpful to
find the lingering items I am afraid of missing. This
enhancement would supplement nicely to the what's new
frame.
40
LMS1958
LMS1965
LMS1968
LMS1979
Lessons tab:
when adding
content, have
option to place
on top or at
bottom
User requests
that an
extracurricular
tab be added to
ANGEL.
View for
showing all
correspondance
with a user
Question type
combining check
boxes with a
form field
LMS1988
Filter ANGEL
Mail Messages
LMS1996
Text correction
on Permissions
tab of
enrollment
settings
Display upload
date and size
information
with file uploads
on Lessons tab
Change font
color for
inactive items
Assignment
Editor Associated
Content Items
LMS2011
LMS2015
LMS2024
A few users have suggested that if they could decide whether
every added item should be placed on top or bottom of the page
under Lessons tab it would save them the pain to rearrange
each one after it is added. I thought this might be something to
be included in the Content Setting or Lessons Setting in future
upgrades.
Just something to think about: alot of clubs and sports are out
there, and there's alot of information kids are looking for
pertaining to sports. Maybe an extracurricular tab could be
added in the future? That'd be cool
Tool to search for and display all mail sent to and received from
a particular user, team, or group of users. For example, I could
use the tool to find all mail that I've sent to jsm298 and received
from jsm298 in a particular course.
A new question type that includes both check boxes and a form
field. This would be most useful for surveys in which the user is
asked to check one of four boxes OR check a box labeled "other"
and be able to fill in a response. Ideally, there would really be
two additional question types: one that uses radio buttons and
one that uses check boxes.
Modifying the existing check box and radio button question
types so that a text field can be included would also work.
All users to created filters in ANGEL mail (e.g. filter messages
from same team into one folder). Right now users must move
messages into folders one by one.
Enhancement request: Under the Authoring subsection of the
Permissions tab, Import/Export Wizard should be changed to
Import/Export Console.
ANGEL should automatically display the upload dates for files,
so students can see when the file was last modified.
Display file size with file uploads.
In addition to a changing icon, change the color of the text of an
active icon vs. an inactive icon.
User wants one gradebook assignment to be linked to only one
item on
the Assignment Editor screen (the right side of the screen where
you can
check the check marks). So as soon as an assignment is linked to
a content item, the rest of the check boxes would gray out,
preventing multiple linking.
41
LMS2026
LMS2034
Add standard
deviation and a
histogram to
gradebook
When Copying
questions enhancements
Can you add standard deviations to the gradebook. So far, only
averages are supported.
It might also be useful to have a histogram feature where
students can compare their score to the entire class.
Reported by Julia Kregenow" <[email protected]>
1) Have two separate drop down lists: one for course, and one
for assessments. The first drop-down list shows only the classes,
not the individual assessments within them. Then, once I've
selected a class, then a SECOND drop-down list could
immediately populate with the individual assessments within
that class. (The same way the PSU schedule of courses has
multiple drop-down lists. When I select a DEPARTMENT from
the first drop-down list, the second drop-down list immediately
and intelligently populates with only the relevant course
numbers offered that semester in that department.)
The second list could *initially* show all the assessments, like
the system currently does. Therefore people who like the
current system wouldn't have to change. OR, the second list
could initially be blank, so the user would have to choose from
the first list first. I feel the previous option is a little more userfriendly.
2) Could the drop-down lists be ordered dynamically and
cleverly, where the class(es) that you've copied assessments
from most recently appear on top, and are thus the easiest to
access? Indeed, those are the ones you're most likely to copy
from again. It would be great if the order were dynamic,
reflecting the most recently (or frequently?) copied-from
courses, PARTICULAR TO the course you're currently working
in. In fact, the course that you're currently working in should be
the default in the drop-down lists. Man that would save such
time!
LMS2038
3) When I copy a question, could I have the option to copy it
multiple times in a single pass? Currently, if I want to import
three copies of it (with the intention of modifying it), I have to
go in and do it three times.
Allow
I would very much like to be able to display how many scores I
gradebook to
had for an
count letter
assignment or for full semester grades. It would be extremely
grades for
helpful when
assignments and trying to assess the relative difficulty of an assignment or the
for the course
distribution of grades in a class.
It will be a relatively simple thing to count how many of each
letter grade are present for any given graded item.
42
LMS2039
LMS2044
LMS2046
LMS2048
LMS2051
LMS2053
LMS2062
Ability to send
announcements
to students
internet email
accounts
Threaded view
in mail
Provide a
preference to
weight
assignments in a
category easily
instead of using
formulas
Increase size of
buttons for page
navigation
When creating announcements, it would be nice to be able to
send group members a copy of the announcement via email.
This would be very helpful in situations where the instructor is
posting an announcement that a class has been canceled.
Students may not see the announcement, but are likely to be
checking their email.
A related enhancement would be for users to have the ability to
subscribe to course announcements.
The problem is for any email that's been read, it's no longer
new. There is no way of tracking which email I replied because I
have to switch back and forth inbox and sent box. It is
impossible to track what did I reply to which student.
What I hope to see is a thread view, like a discussion forum so I
can track the progress.
It would be good if there were an explicit box to choose whether
one wants straight average or weighted average when
assignments are worth different points instead of using a
formula token ({CATEGORY:USER:AVERAGE-ASSIGNMENTPERCENTAGE}). The fact that the default is weighted average is
not clear to instructors.
When scrolling to the bottom of drop boxes, the page buttons
for moving between pages is extremely small. Make it larger and
make the page scroll below these numbers so that the instructor
can select a different page more easily.
Allow for sorting Yes, this is under the Content tab of Groups. I've add many files
files or other
and will continue to add more - to about 300-400 files. The
content items in system
alphabetical
does give me the ability to "rearrange" the files, but an
order in a group automatic
or course
alphabetization process (sort by alphabet) would be most
helpful.
Attendance
it would be great if on the attendance taking page if you could
Manager should view just students like [in] the gradebook.
allow "students
only " filter, like
GB does
Introduce
add the ability to do find/replace editing within a selected
find/replace
assignment (quiz for example)or a group of selected
function
assignments
43
LMS2065
Grading
ordering
questions
I would like an enhancement on how these are graded. Let''s say
my choices ABCDE are to rank 5 nations in order of area:
Canada, United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador If a
student misplaces just one of these choices, that will necessarily
cause others to also be misplaced, which results in a score lower
than is probably merited. For example: United States, Mexico,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Canada would score 0 points, even
though 4 of the 5 nations are in sequence.
Or if they answer: United States, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador,
Guatemala they would score only 20%, even though they
correctly identify which are the two largest countries, and
which are the two smallest.
LMS2066
LMS2067
LMS2068
LMS2071
LMS2072
Allow
announcements
to be posted to
multiple courses
at once
Allow editors
the ability to
create office
hours for
another editor
When viewing /
grading /
deleting
dropbox
submissions,
stay on the
current page
after an action is
completed
Lessons Bulk
Delete
Questions
Added via
"Import through
I would like to have a score assigned for having something off by
one position (at least, this is the simplest enhancement). So for
example, if it's 2 for being correct, and 1 for being off by 1, the
first example above would score 4/10 and the second 6/10,
both of which I think are considerably better assessments than
0 or 2/10.
User requests the ability to post a single announcement to all
classes at once instead of copying and pasting the same one
class by class.
The ability for one editor to create live office hours for another
editor. For example, an instructional designer setting up a cours
would like to create office hours for an instructor of a course.
Currently, when an editor creates the office hours in the course
the resulting chat will be associated with the creator.
When there are many submissions to a dropbox causing
multiple pages to be displayed, completing tasks in the View /
Grade / Delete option will currently re-direct the user to page 1
of the submissions - enhancement request is to leave the user
on the same page of submissions when the action is completed.
There does not seem to be a multiple delete option if you are in
a course/group and want to delete multiple items from the
space. You can delete one by one but that is tedious. It would be
helpful if you could pick/choose what you would like to delete
from a courser/group all at one time.
When assessment questions are added through the "Copy /
Paste from text" option, these questions are not automatically
added to the Question Bank.
44
LMS2074
LMS2077
Copy / Paste"
does not add
questions to
Question Bank
Calendar
notifications
It would be really helpful if the Calendar feature in ANGEL had a
setting such that I could tell it to send me
an email to remind me of an entry. For example, I'd love to have
a reminder that a test is coming up in one of my classes.
allow multiple
Currently in order to download the entire folder of say, lecture
file downloads
slides, it is necessary to navigate into each individual posting,
for students, and see a single link (or it just starts a download/save dialog), and
get rid of timer
then download it, then go back, click into the next one, click to
download that one. For PDF files, a pdf reader must be loaded
simply to save the file, which is time consuming and absurd, and
adds more steps when one simply wishes to download the file
for use later.
This could be eliminated by simply making posted items which
lead to download links (as apposed to plain text or images,
which are less used) simply be the actual link. For items such as
images, plain text, and others which are simply viewed in the
browser natively (not adobe or other plugin) the current
behavior is acceptable.
LMS2079
Enhancements
for the
attendance
manager
Better still would be to add checkboxes and a "download
selected" button, to allow downloading multiple files together
(this could be in the form of an uncompressed zip, to reduce
server load in both connections made and cpu time)
Our faculty have requested several enhancements for the
attendance manager. These enhancements would integrate the
attendance manager more fully into ANGEL courses as well as
add additional features.
<p>
1. A method to tie the attendance to the gradebook so that a
grade can be automatically entered for a student's attendace.
Ideally, this should take excused absences and/or number of
allowed absences into account.
<p>
2. The ability to filter the attendance manager by team. This
would be extremely helpful when entering attendance in large
merged courses, especially when teaching assistants are
responsible for entering attendance for their own sections.
<p>
3. The ability to restrict the dates shown on the attendance
manager so that dates before the course begins or ends are not
shown. Note: it may be best to separate this functionality from
the course start/end date set in General Settings as the
instructor may not wish to use this feature and/or make the
course available before or after it begins to meet.
45
LMS2081
LMS2091
LMS2096
LMS2101
LMS2102
LMS2107
LMS2113
More robust
search function
for course
content.
Turn on HTML
editor by default
in syllabus tab
<p>
4. The ability to remove days from the attendance manager
during which the course does not meet. This would encompass
both regular meeting days (e.g. MWF) and days when the class
is canceled.
<p>
5. The ability to use date/time restrictions and/or IP filters to
control when and where students are able to enter attendance.
This would allow students to enter the attendance PIN while
they are physically in the classroom while the class meets, but
not from home.
A working search function: the one incorported finds only
names of folders/links. How about searching inside content
(quizzes , for example)
Can you make the HTML editor screen the default in the
syllabus tab the way you did with the lessons pages? I've just
had to re-enter everything because I didn't realize I needed to
switch to HTML.
Uncheck the Add Ability to uncheck the Add to Master Course option.
to Master
Course
Angel Photos User is requesting that there be a "show" or "hide" option next
Student pictures to each student photo. The default would be "Show". Whatever
E-lion
the last selection was for each photo, it stays as that and does
Enhancement
not revert to "Show" if it was set to "hide"
Editing
When editing assessment titles, users expect that the
assessment title corresponding folder title in the Question Bank Manager should
does not update also update; instead, the title remains unchanged and this can
folder name in
lead to confusion.
Question Bank
Manager
Peer review
Students doing a peer review assignment should be able to
assignments
grade and comment on their peers' work when a drop box is set
should be able
to peer review mode. Further, the peer-review received grades
to be
are averaged and the instructor can then adjust or approve the
graded/commen peer review grades for entry into the grade book.
ted by peers and
then be
automatically
averaged for the
instructor
Student is
I would like to request a "last updated" date stamp on all the
requesting
files and folders on ANGEL. it would help because i could see
timestamp for
when the professor has added or modified something and
file changes
reduce hunting around for things.
46
LMS2130
LMS2137
LMS2139
LMS2147
LMS2170
LMS2178
LMS2184
If Dropbox
attachments are
disabled student
can still attach
via HTML editor
Add sound alerts
to chat
Change default
for Attendance
manager Export
utility to csv
If a dropbox is set to not allow attachments, there should be an
option to also disable the 'insert content' option in the HTML
editor. Students who are aware of this can still add an item to
the dropbox via the HTML editor, thus effectively bypassing the
dropbox attachment setting.
After using the chat system yesterday, we found it hard to
perform research and know when someone that you are
chatting with is trying to answer or reply to a previous post. A
lot of chat programs will flash or make a sound when someone
posts in the chat session. This would be a very helpful addition
to the current chat program in Angel.
In doing the review of exporting the attendance log . the default
file type is a TSV file with an option for a CSV file. We might
want to consider having it default to CSV as folks may be more
familiar with this w/ excel
We may also want to consider wherever the default format for
an export is TSV, to change that to CSV too.
Allow scoring
After setting up a scoring rubric on the Assignment tab of a
rubrics saved for discussion forum, the user would like to transfer that rubric to
a discussion
other discussion forums.
forum to be
transferred to
another
discussion
forum
When exporting You can export grades from a course, but not comments. It
gradebook data, would be very important to be able to do this, as graders in
allow to export
courses with multiple instructors have no way of backing up
comments as
data once entered. If the assignment is deleted by another
well
editor, the lost data currently cannot be easily reconstituted
because comments are not exportable.
Assessment
Wants to request for ordering questions to allow partial credit?
Ordering
Currently, ordering questions are either correct when in the
questions
proper order or incorrect when one or more are out of order.
Sort and filter
roster by teams
So if they have an ordering question with 8 items and they get
6/8 correct, she wants credit for the 6 correct ones.
Allow for roster to be sorted and filtered by teams. This is
especially useful in merged courses where this would allow
instructors to sort and filter by section.
47
LMS2208
Enhancements
for student
teams
We received the following message from one of our students.
"This is more of a suggestion for ANGEL than a technical
support case: The tools available on ANGEL (Discussion Forum,
File folders) facilitate data storage and are very limited when it
comes to rich team collaboration for teams in World Campus /
iMBA.
There are many ways in which this can be changed - for
instance, here's my top 10:
LMS2214
LMS2228
LMS2239
User wants all
Calendars for all
courses to be
available on
Profile page
Mail search
should also
search
recipients and
sender fields
Ability to export
mail at the end
of course
1. Create Individual and Team Tasks that can be downloaded to
iCAL or Outlook... and updated online
2. Collaboration portal that allows teams to maintain "active"
(i.e. updatable) lists like on SharePoint and shared and private
Document library (like Google Docs)
3. Integrated Chat server so teams don't have to rely on Skype
4. Generic Team Discussion Forum that is not tied to any course
in particular
5. DeliCiOus-style bookmark sharing
6. A usable Calendar that can be integrated with Outlook or
Google Calendar
7. (VERY IMP): Meeting Scheduler like TimeBridge or Doodle
8. All this could be integrated with the Email system and with
the blogging engine (that's a great tool, by the way - although I
haven't had time to work on it)
9. RSS feeds for Discussion Forum posts and,
10. Last but not least, all this in a "packaged" template form so
new teams can get started quickly
User has multiple courses that she would like to create one
calendar and place it on her profile pages that will include all
calendar items for all of the courses.
She has the following courses: 201011FAUP___RMETO422_001,
201011FAUP___RMETO597F001 and
201011FAUP___RMETO600_017, as well as
201011FAUP___REM_SC100S005
The mail search does not search the to, cc, bcc, and sender fields.
Users would like to be able to search by these fields in addition
to subject and message body.
Student would like the ability to export course mail in bulk and
download to hard drive when the course ends.
The option to forward mail from ANGEL during the semester is
not a good alternative because ANGEL mail cannot be filtered by
source course outside of ANGEL.
48
LMS2248
Ability to flag
mail
LMS2257
Add rubrics for
any assignment
LMS2261
Display ANGEL's
normal hours of
operation on the
ANGEL home
page.
make semester
folders and
course titles
rearrangeable
FCK editor:
allow placing
buttons onto to
toolbar, rather
than use
pulldown menus
Only show days
a class meets in
attendance
report
LMS2271
LMS2287
LMS2291
LMS2293
LMS2295
LMS2296
LMS2297
WhoDunIt
Gradebook
Grade Tool
Allow more than
2500 characters
for comments
Change font
color of
messages to
black in ANGEL
Mail replies
Item analysis allow for the
extraction of
Instructor would like the ability to mark a read or unread
message with a flag (maybe just add that option to the
"options"). This would be a fantastic help to mark messages for
followup without having to mark them as unread.
This user would like rubrics to be available for each assignment.
The user would like to be able to open up the gradebook for a
particular
assignment, and have the "View Rubric" button next to each
student's
name.
This instructor has students who log into ANGEL from all over
the World. She would like ANGEL's normal hours of operation to
be listed clearly on the ANGEL home page, so that her students
can better predict when they can access it.
Just as the My Profile page can be rearranged, it would be good
to be able to rearrange the semester folders, i.e. to put the
current one on top, and/or to rearrange courses inside a
semester folder
Rather than using pull-down menus for options such as "Paste
as plain text" in the HTML editor, allow users to select button
sets for the HTML editor toolbar.
If the attendance manager allows instructors to select the days
of the week when the class meets, then the report tab should
also respect those days. Currently all days are shown: with P, A,
etc. entries for the class days and "no data" notations for the
days that do not exist in the attendance manager.
Selecting course days via the Date manager does not alleviate
this.
This tool only allows you to specify a percentage. If you grade by
points, it should allow you specify a point value as well.
User would like to be able to enter more than 2500 characters
in the "comments" field.
When a user replies to a message in ANGEL Mail, the font color
changes to a grey color on the original message. This makes
reading text difficult when you are trying to reply to messages
and need to re-read the message when composing.
In Item analysis an "AVERAGE completion time" is quoted for a
given assessment.
49
LMS2299
LMS2302
LMS2304
LMS2306
LMS2309
individual
completion
times
Forced
submission
upon End date
on all types of
assignments
Show which
discussion
forum has new
posts in What's
New on My
Profile
Routinized
backup/restore
or version
tracking option
for gradebook
It would be nice to have a way to quickly extract individual
completion times for students.
All submissions with a due date ought to have a setting to
submit upon due date. This would be similar to the assessment
setting "submit when time expires."
It would be great if upon logging into Angel we could see which
message boards have new messages on them, just as we see that
there are new emails. I think the students would be more
inclined to participate in these boards regularly if they were
reminded that there was something new to look at. I used
another course management system in the past that had this
feature and I miss it.
Requested is the ability to either: a) perform version tracking on
the grade book (to track changes that have been made to the
GB); or
b) the ability to automate backups of grade book data (automate
.csv export of gradebook data.
The request was made as part of a grade dispute investigation.
Confirmation
In the secure browser, create a printed "confirmation ticket"
Ticket for secure that would contain information such as:
browser
“John Doe (xyz123) completed "Quiz 1" at 12:02 am on Sunday,
December 3. Confirmation number 12345678.”
Action to unhide Instructors would like the ability to hide a student's grades on
gradebook
one or more assignments until another action in the course has
grades
been completed. For example, hide all grades for a set of
assessments until the student completes a different assessment.
This would be similar to using actions to lock and unlock
content items and could be implemented in a similar fashion.
For instance, with the semester almost over the students can
see their grades for all assignments. If I wanted to post a survey
that I wanted to be sure everyone completed and I know
students were going to want to see their grades, I'd like to be
able to lock that grade report from view until the student
submitted their survey.
LMS2316
When "Sorting"
overall grades in
"Points" mode,
sort based on
So as a student submits the survey they can then have access to
their
complete grade report.
When sorting based on scores in the gradebook - if the
gradebook is in "Points" mode, by clicking on a column to sort
via the grades in the column the grades are still sorted by
percentage instead of points.
50
LMS2318
LMS2320
LMS2324
LMS2332
LMS2341
LMS2347
LMS2355
LMS2356
total points
instead of
percentage
Usability: Show
course title in
personal
calendar
Fn loss - no
dropdown box
to change
question type
when creating
assessment
question
Calendar: should
have email
reminders
Rounding in
algorithmic
assessment
question should
use Round Half
Away From Zero
Sync ability with
local computer
7.4: Gradebook
default category
of quizzes
should be
changed to
assessments
Allow more than
one week's view
in calendar
Allow course
editors to limit
the types of
attachments
based on wildcards.
The personal calendar shows users calendar events in all
courses in which they are enrolled. However, the title of the
course is not shown in the event. This causes frustration for
users who are enrolled in a large number of courses as they
must enter each course and view the calendar to determine
which one the event belongs to. We would like the course title to
be shown in events in the personal calendar.
Original request from JBG13: allow editors to change the type
on an existing question. This used to be possible to do via the
Edit button in quizzes.
Student suggesting that the ANGEL Calendar should have a tool
for sending out email reminders.
According to the documentation, rounding in algorithmic
assessment questions should use Round Half Away From Zero,
but testing indicates that Round Half To Even is being used.
This instructor would like ANGEL this to use Round Half Away
From Zero, or have a setting that allows for this method.
This user wants us to add a Sync button to ANGEL. Clicking this
button would sync all the course folders and files in ANGEL with
a their local machine.
I know we are keeping the same gradebook tool as before in 7.4
for now, but can the default category of quizzes be changed to
assessments?
Instead of just showing the current week in the calendar's week
view, allow a quick view of the week before and after the
selected week. If only two weeks can be shown, the current
week, and the immediately following week would be useful.
User insists that this current+future week view is more
desirable than the month view.
Give course editors the ability to limit file formats based on
wild-cards so that, for example, if they only wanted to accept
*.odt and *.doc format files, the drop box would only take these
and warn the students if their files were not of the correct
format (perhaps with a user supplied message). This could very
easily be done in the client side javascript.
51
LMS2357
LMS2358
LMS2359
LMS2360
LMS2361
LMS2363
LMS2364
Show semester
in Copy Course
tool selection
dialog
Indicate what
the default
setting for
Course Mail
Settings (They
simply say
"default" and
who knows
what that is?)
Copy multiple
content items at
once
Request for
feature which
allows quizzes
to bring over
correct answers
from previous
attempt when
multiple
attempts
enabled
Include music
symbols in
symbol table
Roster should
have sorting
options
allow to create
assignment via
the import
grades tool;
relable Done
buttons as
Cancel
The selection for the Copy Course tool dialog shows only the
course title, making it difficult to pick the correct semester
offering of a course. We would like this dialog to display the
semester (e.g. 2006/07 FA) along with the course title.
It would be helpful if the Course Mail Settings page gave users
an indication of what the default setting for 'Minimum Rights' is
for each feature, so as not to leave the user uncertain of the
consequences of choosing the 'Default' setting for a particular
feature.
Provide the ability to copy multiple items at once using Add
Content >> Copy Items
Student requested a feature be enabled for instructors to have
the option to enable a quiz to import questions already
answered correctly from a previous quiz attempt when multiple
attempts for a quiz is enabled.
Incorrect answers from previous attempt(s) would be blank to
allow student to only have to answer those questions.
I am in the process of changing over my course syllabi to Angel.
I wonder if it would be possible to create a category in the
"symbols" portion of the editing that includes music symbols?
It would be very helpful to sort the roster by role (i.e. student vs
faculty, in my case). For example, one of my courses is team
taught by 9 faculty, all of whom obviously need to be on the
roster. The Attendance function lists everyone, faculty mixed in
with students. If I could list just students that would be ideal (or
at least sort them so students are alphabetically together and
separate from faculty). Actually, anywhere the roster is used
this would be helpful.
It would be nice if there was an add assignment option in the
``import grade
step 2'' window. A lot of times I forget whether I have created
the assignment
or not until I get to this window. Then I find out that the
assigment is
not on the list and have to go back make the assignment and
then import
the spreadsheet all over again.
It would be nice to have this in the ``Enter Grades By
52
Assignment'' but this
is not that important since this window is only one step from
the main gradebook
window.
LMS2365
LMS2366
LMS2367
LMS2368
Add a "Hide
Graded Items"
check box when
manually
grading
assessment
submissions
Provide
distribution of
student grades
for an
assignment in
instructor view
Allow users to
edit survey
responses
Resend mail
utility
LMS2370
Ability to
duplicate/copy
gradebook
assignments
LMS2371
Allow instructor
to customize
instructions
Make default
setting for GB to
NOT include
Instructors
quiz/survey
reports should
have a onebutton tool that
allows to show
LMS2372
LMS2373
A lot of the buttons that are labeled ``done'' buttons should
really be labeled ``cancel''. For example in the ``Enter Grades By
Assignment'' window and the
``Export Grades'' window, I keep mistakenly hitting the done
button thinking
that it means that I am ready to go on to the next step.
The user would like us to add a "Hide Graded Items" check box
to the assessment's grade utility under View, Grade or Delete
Submissions. This would work in a similar fashion to Quizzes.
Quizzes have a "Hide Graded Items" check box that allows the
instructor to hide all of the automatically graded questions, so
that the instructor can focus on the questions that they need to
manually grade.
I'd like to look at an assignment and see a histogram of student
grades for that assignment (for example, number of students
with grades between 90 and 100, between 80 and 90, etc.). A
graph would be even nicer, but I could dump the data to excel
and do that myself.
Allow users to edit and resubmit survey responses.
It would be nice if there were a ''resend'' option for mail that
has been sent. Especially since when you suppress the header
you no longer has a visible list of who you sent the mail to.
It would be useful to duplicate/copy/clone existing gradebook
assignments. A situation where this would be useful is if an
instructor asked students to hand in lab work (not via a content
item) weekly--the instructor could create the assignment once
in the gradebook, then duplicate it to avoid extra data entry.
Allow an instructor to customize the drop box instructions.
Excluding instructors from the averages should be the default
setting. I cannot think of any case where someone would want
to average the faculty member's grade [which is non-existent]
into the average for the class.
A tool that does the following:
1. Shows aggregate results for a quiz or survey. This would be
similar to the "Response Summary" for surveys, but would show
Text Box or Text Area responses on the summary page rather
53
LMS2374
LMS2375
LMS2376
LMS2377
LMS2378
results to
students
(submitted by
JTH)
than requiring the user to click the "responses" link.
Allow
instructors to
hide grades for
guests and
exclude guest
scores from
averages
Display
nicknames in
class rosters
"Authenticated guest" level rights do not exclude account on the
GB View all grid when "only students" display option is selected.
Attendance PIN:
hard to guess
differences
between O and
0, or l and 1
Control sending
to team
permissions on
a team-by-team
basis
IP Filters for
content items
LMS2379
Rearrange for
multiple
select/choice
questions
LMS2380
Project
management/gr
oup to-do list
feature
LMS2382
Export category
scores only from
gradebook
Ability for a user
to leave a group
LMS2384
2. Allow this data to be shown to users at a rights level lower
than faculty (32). Ideally, it would be viewable to students (2).
Allow users to enter nicknames that will be displayed in
class/group rosters. This will be especially helpful for students
who go by middle names or names not in their official name in
ISIS.
The students and I have experienced some confusion
discriminating between O and 0 in the attendance PIN. So far we
have guessed well, but perhaps the PIN generator should avoid
O and 0, l and 1.
I want to have control over whether a team member can send
mail to their team (ON A TEAM BY TEAM BASIS)
In a large lab class such as Stat 200 (approx 70-80 students per
lab) I use ANGEL to distribute activities and a drop box to
collect them. Having an IP filter on all content items or at least
the drop box would be beneficial to me by restricting access to
only those students who attend the class.
When creating a multiple select questions it would be great if
there were a rearrange feature so you could reorganize the
answers after you created them all. It would also be great if you
could just delete answers and have the rest of the options move
up the list.
I like ANGEL for course management and am trying to use it to
manage research projects and committee work as well. But, it
lacks a "to do" list function that is vital for those activities. See
for example,http://www.backpackit.com/ or Basecamp by the
same company.
Add a setting to the gradebook export for exporting only
category averages rather than the scores for all assignments.
Users would like the ability to leave an ANGEL group. To
accommodate situations in which users should not be permitted
to unenroll from a group on their own, editors should be able to
set a preference for whether or not users are allowed to selfunenroll from a group.
54
LMS2385
LMS2386
LMS2387
LMS2388
LMS2389
LMS2390
LMS2392
LMS2394
Ability to
eliminate the
text that states
"upload an
attachment OR
paste text into
the textarea."
Allow course
assistants
(rights=16) to
export
gradebook
Show user a list
of students in
View Grades By
User, not just
search tool
Make
rearranging/mo
ving several
items at once
possible
ANGEL Files;
save them
periodically and
make last save
available to user
who gets
distracted
Attendance
manager should
have photos
instead of
showing
feedback files in
the dropbox,
show them in
the gradebook
Display IP
addresses in
tracking data
Give course editors the ability to modify or eliminate the text
that states that users should "upload an attachment OR paste
text into the textarea."
Allow course assistants the ability to at least EXPORT grades for
back up purposes. This was possible with the online grade
report, but not the course gradebook.
In addition to providing a roster search field, the user search
utility in the gradebook should show a list of students enrolled
in the class for faculty to select from.
It would be more efficient if things under the Lesson''s tab can
be moved to a folder together (select, then move) although they
may originally locate in different folders. A file structure "tree"
with editing ability is preferred.
Was just chatting with Stewart Kurtz in EE ... he was
working on a file (editing it online in ANGEL) got
distracted - and went back. Bottom line is he lost all the
work he did on it - so , an ER would be to have ANGEL auto
save files that are being worked on so if folks time out the last version is saved like Word. Then user can get
cued that an auto save version is available fo rreview and
what do they want to do with it.
I would like to have pictures of my students appear on the list of
students as I take attendance. This would really help with my
attempt to memorize names and faces.
I am requesting the following feature in Angel. My goal: to have
the students be able to retrieve an attached file, their
"corrected" assignment, within the gradebook feature.
The students would like to be able to Click on Reports, then
Grades (Under Type #1) and be able to retrieve their corrected
(ink annotated) version of their assignment, as well as their
grade. Currently, the students can only view their grade, then
they have to go back into the Drop Box to retrieve their attached
file from the instructor.
I would like to log the IP address of users who access certain
content in Angel.' This would be helpful in situations where
faculty would like to use tracking data to determine if students
viewed material from a given IP range (such as a lab) or from
elsewhere.
55
LMS2395
LMS2396
Include an
assignment
description in
the gradebook
Utility to
regrade all
questions at
once
LMS2397
Portal for teamrelated items
LMS2398
Search feature
for quiz
submissions
LMS2399
GB should have
section column
for students
when
exporting/impo
rting
LMS2401
Statistical
analysis of
Grade Book data
LMS2402
Show point
values of quiz
questions to
students
Poll Results
LMS2404
LMS2405
LMS2406
Show history
when joining a
chat room
Crossword
puzzle--make it
printable, and
have more than
5 words as
default
Allow the instructor to view an assignment's description on the
"enter grade by assignment" page and also by clicking the
assignment title when viewing grades.
For a question to be regraded, that particular question must be
saved with the re-grade submission box checked. If an
instructor changes multiple questions, the regrade must be run
for each question changed and can be time-consuming. This
request would be for a tool that would allow the instructor to
change multiple questions, then regrade all questions on the
quiz.
A a dedicated space for student teams that appeared on a single
screen, sort of their portal to their team 'stuff' which would
include chats, discussion boards, files, etc.
Provide a search feature that allows instructors to search within
quiz submissions. This will be very helpful in classes with large
enrollment where the sorting features do not adequately meet
instructor needs
Add a column for the section number for students when a
professor chooses Export Grades in the Grade Book Menu. I find
it much more convenient to enter grades in Excel than in
ANGEL. However, I sort the students by sections first, and then
alphabetically, not alphabetically for the whole class. When I
export the grades from ANGEL, they are alphabetical by default.
If there were a column with the section number, I would be able
to sort by section and more easily enter the grades.
"It would be very useful to be able to 'instantly' analyze the
scores for the whole course (or any subsections thereof) for an
assignment or a series of assignments (included in a formula)
with simple statistics (mean, standard deviation, max and min,
score distribution curve, etc). "
Show the point values of each question while a student is taking
a quiz. This would be useful so the students could prioritize
questions and be sure to provide an answer worthy of the
possible number of points.
Can you add an option to make poll results available to
members of the group?
If you enter a room, be allowed to see the dialogue you missed,
i.e., the previous XX minutes of activity in the chat room
It would be very helpful if both the instructor and the student
could print the completed crossword puzzle along with the
clues.
Also, since I would think that most crossword puzzles at this
level have many more than 5 clues/words, it would be much
more convenient to have as a default spaces for at least 10
clues/words, and then have to click to add each additional one.
56
LMS2407
LMS2408
LMS2409
LMS2410
LMS2411
LMS2412
(Multiple
requests for
this) Make
column labels in
gradebook
import more
consistent
(remove
"column 0")
On step 2 of the gradebook import screen, the column labels are
very confusing. There are two choices for "User ID": column 0
and column 1. Column 0 refers to the first column in the
imported file, and column 1 the second column.
However, the next lines will refer to the first column as column
1 and the second as column 2. This is highly confusing for users.
For consistency, the "user ID" menu should use "column 1" for
the first column and "column 2" for the second.
This covers several requests from users.
Make it easy to
I have a quiz with a bank of questions from which ANGEL
find submissions randomly assigns a certain number of them to each student. One
that have one
of the questions needed to be regraded. We have found all the
particular
students who have received that question by reviewing their
question, when
quizzes individually. However, for the future, if this happens
questions are
again,is there any way to see the specific students who received
randomized
a particular item and what
their selections were?
make class
Well, although if I were a student I'd like to see where I stand in
average optional the class for each assignment or exam, some instructors had
in reportstold me they prefer not to display the class average to students
>learner profile because students got upset if they found themselves below class
average and kept going after the instructor. Besides, not every
instructor knows how to exclude non-student right users from
calculating class average so the numbers shown may be
misleading.
Ability to show
at least two
columns in the
class list
Offer choice of
scaling or not
scaling points
when changing
assignment
point total
Information on
viewing/editing
rights
I think if the instructor has the right to decide whether the class
average should be displayed under Report tab - Type/Learner
Profile - Select Data/Grades for students, it would offer max
flexibility to suit all kinds of users.
An option to be able to show two or even three columns when
viewing the class list in Angel would be great. That would
reduce the need to be paging through long class lists.
Because grades are always stored in the database as
percentages, changing the number of points an assignment is
worth will appear to change the number of points students have
earned. It would be nice if instructors were offerent the option
of scaling grades so that the number of points earned does not
change when changing the point value of an assignment.
It would be helpful if the ''Rights'' link on the Enrollment
Settings page actually linked to the descriptions of the different
rights categories)
It would be nice if when you went to select rights for users if
there was a pop-up box or call out that explained what those
57
rights mean. it would make it easier for folks
LMS2413
LMS2414
LMS2415
Bonus or extra
credit questions
Grading and
Reporting for
Ordering
Questions on
Quizzes needs
improvements
Additional
options for the
gradebook
formula editor
A few faculty members have asked me if it is possible to include
bonus questions in a quiz and have the credits of these
questions (if answered correctly) added to the total earning of
this quiz without increasing the point value of the entire quiz.
I thought this might be something to be included in future
upgrades of ANGEL. Currently the only work around is to make
a seperate quiz that has all bonus questions, and make this quiz
an "extra credit" assignment in the gradebook. This is pretty
cumbersome and the professor can not use the "drop the lowest
X" in the quiz category at the same time.
First, my gripe about the reporting scheme. I get results like
this:
A:1, B:2, C:3, D:4, E:5 (5/5)
A:1, B:2, E:5, D:4, C:3 (5/5)
Although these are simply both permutations of the same
correct answer, they come out separately,
which combines with the limited number of different answers
shown to really give me very little useful information.
Perhaps the permutations came from these options being
randomly ordered each time the question is asked -- but it
seems when I get to more than 4 things being ordered, the
chances two perfect answers will actually group together gets to
be unlikely.
You have ''grade them all'', ''keep the highest'' and ''drop the
lowest''. I use a scheme that mixes up a bit.
I grade all the items in the category add them together, and then
compare the total to some number which is the maximum I
would count for the category.
For example, I might have a Quiz category worth 100 points but
I have 6 quizzes worth 25 points each. If a student gets an
average of 15 points a quiz, he gets 6*15 = 90. If he gets an
average of 20 points a quiz, he gets 100 points for the total,
since 6*20 > 100.
This ends up being a little more favorable to them than ''drop
the two lowest'', since at least showing up for those low quizzes
is worth something.
Since I do this thing for all my homework dropboxes, plus tests
58
with bonus points, I suppose I will not be able to use this
Gradebook system until this enhancement arrives.
LMS5456
UCS link on
ANGEL
LMS5496
More custom
content fields
please?
LMS5508
Tracking time
spent on an
exam for each
student
LMS5533
LMS5557
Enhancement
Request: Default
report view
ANGEL8 - UCS
link on ANGEL
There is a Webmail link at the top of the home page. As more
faculty begin using the web interface for UCS, there should
probably be a UCS link added to the top menu row. Faculty may
not be aware that "Webmail" and UCS webmail point to
different email mailboxes.
I like how we can make a "custom content" item on the various
angel tab pages. But I wish we could make more than one. Could
there be "custom content 1", "custom content 2", "custom
content 3", etc.?
Hi, when I look at the item analysis report for a test (e.g. Exam 1
in my Astro 10 class), one thing it shows me is the average time
spent on the test. I find that very useful.
Can I get that information quickly for EACH STUDENT who took
the test? I figure it must be hiding in Angel somewhere, if Angel
is able to report a mean. I just want to know how to get it.
The only way I know how to tell how long students took to
complete an exam (NOT taken in the Pollock center, but at home
on their own) is to go to the "Reports" tab and look up each
student's login record by hand to see when the exam was
"delivered" and "submitted" for them, and then subtract those
two numbers. For a class of over 100 students, that task would
be prohibitively onerous. I'm hoping for a way to just download
those numbers for the whole class at once.
One of our World Campus students, Michael Crane (mjc5482),
contacted us with an enhancement request. When selecting the
Report tab, by default it brings up the Learner Profile/Activity
Log report. The student would like to request that the default be
Grades/Student Grades since this is the only report he feels that
students will use.
I checked and it does not seem like anything similiar has been
submitted to JIRA. If something has already been submitted,
please let us know.
There is a Webmail link at the top of the home page. As more
faculty begin using the web interface for UCS, there should
probably be a UCS link added to the top menu row. Faculty may
not be aware that "Webmail" and UCS webmail point to
59
different email mailboxes.
LMS5576
Gradebook
Enhancement
I hope the Angel gradebook could have the following two
features. These features are supposed to make it easier to enter
grades.
1. When the course editor is entering grades for an
assignment,after a student's entry loses focus (mouse click
elsewhere, or strokes of arrow keys on the keyboard), the entry
hides itself (but can be expand if the course editor wants to).
This feature shortens the list of students as the course editor
keeps entering grades, which makes it increasingly easier to
locate students whose grades haven't been entered.
LMS5584
RFC: Rubric
Scoring
2. After the course editor finishes entering the grades of an
assignment and click "save changes", the list automatically sorts
according to the order of when a grade was entered. That is, the
student whose grade is entered the first become the first (or
last) one in the list. Now the list and the pile of exams/
homework has the same order. The course editor can easily
double check the grades just recorded to see if they are the
same as the ones on the exams/homework.
I asked for this in the past, but will ask again, in case summer is
a good development time.
I would like to have some alternative way to score a rubric than
the existing 100%. This limits me in several ways:
It hampers my ability to score items that are not 100 points, or
some closely related number (such as 50 or 200). If I want to
have something worth 30 points or 70 points, the percentages
give me very awkward decimals.
It does not permit me to assign Extra Credit to the assignment,
since those extra points cause the total value to be something
other than exactly 100%.
Occasionally I wish to score many details on an assignment,
which take me past the 20-item limit on the rubric. I wouldn't
mind working around that if I could break the assignment into
separate sections, scored different number of points, but as
indicated above, I cannot do that either.
Perhaps a 'small' enhancement would be two input boxes
available when first creating the rubric:
(1) total score (default 100)
(2) verify rubric matches total (default true)
60
In this case, whatever code is activated when first completing
the rubric
would consult these two boxes. The default behavior would
match what
currently happens. But this would also allow me to have
different scoring
assignments (by changing box 1) or to allow extra credit
(changing box 2)
LMS5589
Total time spent
on class
I teach a web-only class. It would be very useful for me if Angel
could record that total time that a student spent logged into a
class. Even more useful would be if Angel could break it down
by what activities the student was doing: reading pages, looking
at the syllabus, working on assignments, taking tests, reading
discussion boards, etc. It would be even MORE useful if Angel
ALSO broke it down by which individual assignments they were
looking at.
In summary, I would like this information for:
1) total time doing ANYTHING in the class
2) total time working on different CATEGORIES of assignments
3) total time on individual assignments by name.
LMS5614
ANGEL:
Enhancement
Request Respondus
LMS5635
Export the
Roster with
Team data
Block forum
posts beyond
due date, but
allow read
access
LMS5647
I'm hoping this information won't be too hard to collect, since I
know Angel already records when a student accesses each page
and starts each assignment (as long as the tracking is on).
Some learning designers have learned about a new secure
testing software that integrates with ANGEL called Respondus
Lockdown. Would it be possible to integrate it/use it in our
courses? It requires an environment variable. Here's some info:
http://www.respondus.com/update/2009-8-b.shtml
The user needed to export the roster divided in the same teams
he has them on Angel. Angel is not doing so, instead it is just
exporting the roster without any information about the teams.
Is there a way to automatically block new posts to a discussion
forum beyond the due data & time, but allow students to read
the posts in the forum?
I'm aware of the fact that I can go in and manually remove the
post permission, but that reuires a perfectly timesd manual
action by me. I want that action to be done automatically when
the due date & time arrives.
61
LMS5671
LMS5681
WhoDunIt
report
enhancement
Reporting time
it takes students
to complete
assessment
items
User supports Custodial Operations at Physical Plant--adding
and removing names, organizing teams.
Request from the custodial supervisors to add another report
for them to obtain year to date training on their employees.
Here is what they would like:
Sample Information
Click on Reports
Category: Whodunit
Report: Gradebook grades
Users: Team 23
Knowledge retention down arrow.....have a report that could be
selected with all of the training compiled for one year or year to
date.
Keep the click chart or table option
Click run
User wrote in that online instructors we were interested in
finding out how long it is taking our students to complete an
assessment (exam).
STAT 200 gives a common final across 10 sections
STAT 100 give common exams across 3 sections
Do students have enough time to complete the number of
questions given? Or, do most students need more time?
We can find a generic report of Average Complete Time under
Reports > Item Analysis, Or, we can dig out this information for
a single users under the Reports Tab > Learner Profile > Activity
Logs > Drill down and do the math for each student!?
LMS5685
ANGEL
Assessment
video
How does ANGEL calculate the Average Complete Time and can
we gain access to this data that will give us a more detailed view
of class performance in terms of completion time?
THIS REQUEST HAS TWO THINGS: both related to ANGEL
Assessments
First: I was watching the "ANGEL assessment question sets"
video
https://meeting.psu.edu/p11595788/?launcher=false&fcsCont
ent=true&pbMode=normal
and noted that the T/F example question the gentleman adds is
"Joe Paterno is the head football coach." and his answer is
"True"! It might be a very good time to revise this video
example!
Second: I am converting (old) Test Pilot and (even older)
Examiner data sets for mastery based quizzing to HTML for
62
uploading into ANGEL Assessments, so my students can use
ANGEL to take these quizzes. Each multiple choice item in my
old question data sets has individual targeted-feedback. I am
looking for a way to add this item-specific feedback into the
Multiple Choice questions in the HTML. The "FEEDBACK" option
I did find only permits me to give general feedback, and doesn't
even discern the "correct answer" feedback from the "incorrect
answer" feedback. I see that I can add ITEM-SPECIFIC feedback
manually in the ANGEL Assessment editor, but I would really
like to take advantage of the fact that I have all those individual
FEEDBACK items in the dataset already, if I can get HTML to
understand what they mean.
QUESTION: Is there a way to phrase the HTML FEEDBACK to
allow for item-specific feedback to be installed within the data
set when I am cutting-and-pasting into ANGEL?
EXAMPLE (I wish THIS would work, but it doesn't):
Q: What is the name of the following?
P<sub>4</sub>S<sub>3</sub>
A. tetraphosphorus trisulfide
FEEDBACK A: Your answer: tetraphosphorus trisulfide is
correct!
B. tetraphosphorus trisulfate
FEEDBACK B: You must use -ide for the ending on the second
element.
C. tetraphosphorus sulfide
FEEDBACK C: You must used the Greek prefix for the second
element, also.
D. phosphorus sulfide
FEEDBACK D: You must used the Greek prefixes for each
element.
E. phosphorus trisulfate
FEEDBACK E: You must used the Greek prefix for the first
element, also.
F. pentaphosphorus sulfate
FEEDBACK F: You must used the correct Greek prefixes and use
-ide for the ending on the second element.
G. pentaphosphorus trisulfide
FEEDBACK G: You must used correct Greek prefixes. Here, you
used penta- meaning 5, when you shouldhave used tetrameaning 4.
H. sulfur phosphide
FEEDBACK H: Familiarize yourself with the naming system for
binary molecular copounds.
ANSWER: A
SCORE: 1
63
LMS5714
Showing
contents of
folders in
"Lessons"
This user is asking for a global course setting available to
instructors that will allow the course to display all Lessons tab
folders and contents at the same time. This would work similar
to a user clicking on the index link on the Lesson tab, but be the
default setting for the course.
LMS5715
Create more
options for
creating
assessments i.e.
copy / paste
Review of
Assessment not
taken
User requests the addition of more variable options when
creating assessment questions. Suggested options include
individual answer feedback and FiTB question box size
customization. More options may be requested later, at what
time I will update this ticket.
I created a series of assessments for my course that I intend to
be viewable the entire semester (no start or end date specified).
But I want to limit interaction (i.e. submitting answers) to a
finite time period (with dates specified through the interaction
tab). But once that interaction is closed, it seems that the
content (i.e. questions) is only visible to those students who
submitted answers, and is completely invisible to those that
have not. How should I set up the settings for an Assessment
item so that it is still visible after the interaction deadline to
those who did not respond?
I think that if the "Automatically submit assessment when time
expires" option is selected, that ANGEL should automatically
submit everyone's answers at the end of the time instead of only
automatically submit answers for people that happen to still be
logged in at the end of the time.
Have a feature similar to collaborative editing in Google docs so
an instructor could open a student's paper, make edits, and
save/return the edited paper without having to download the
paper, edit it, save it with a different file name, and upload it for
the student to see.
Have the option of sub-categories in the gradebook. The
instructor has multiple sub-categories under the final portfolio
category. The sub-categories each have different weights and
contain different numbers of weighted assignments. The final
portfolio category also has a specific weight in relation to the
final grade.
Please include a function -- either in the "gradebook" or
"reports" area to show a histogram of grade distribution on
(1) individual assignments,
(2) whole gradebook category averages (e.g. exams, homework,
participation, labs, etc.),
and
(3) the overall course grade?
LMS5731
LMS5750
Automatically
Submit Answers
LMS5766
Collaborative
Editing Feature
Request
LMS5767
Gradebook
Subcategories
LMS5769
Grade
distribution
histogram
Moreover, could you also please include the quick stats for each
distribution: min, max, mean, median, mode, standard deviation,
etc.
64
It would be nice to be able to see these at a click, instead of
having to download the entire gradebook each time and
calculate them by hand every time a new assignment is added. It
would also be nice to give the instructor the option of showing
this information to the class, or not, at the instructor's
discretion.
LMS5771
LMS5772
LMS5845
LMS5846
LMS5847
LMS5848
LMS5849
Make Courses
Sortable/Movabl
e in the My
Profile - My
Courses nugget
Add word
"copy" to copied
content items
Consolidated
gradebook view
nugget for
students
Improved
calendar –
content –
gradebook
integration and
creation options
Calendar feed
subscription
(e.g. iCal or RSS)
Anti-spam
(blacklist
filtering) in mail
Improved
Syllabus Access
User wants to be able to sort the courses in the My Courses
nugget in the opposite direction.
User request to have the word 'Copy' added to the top-level
node for copied items. So, a copy of "Assessment 1" would
appear as "Assessment 1 - Copy" (or similar naming
convention).
Consolidated gradebook view nugget for students to see their
grades across all their active courses.
Improved calendar – content – gradebook integration and
creation options. My understanding is that this would entail
creation in one of any of the three areas then making an
associated item in the other two.
Ability to create a calendar feed subscription (e.g. iCal or RSS).
If possible, include support for Oracle, SyncML, iCal/vCal or
other standard calendering technologies so that ANGEL
calendars can be synced with desktop and mobile clients. Secure
authentication is a must.
Give users the ability to create an anti-spam (blacklist filtering)
in mail. For example, block that one annoying student trying to
sell his football tickets.
Give students the ability to access their syllabus from anywhere
in the course.
65
Appendix B: Solicitation Email
Below is a sample of the original email solicitation intended to recruit participants.
Survey seeks feedback on potential ANGEL enhancements
Faculty, students, and staff are encouraged to complete a survey to provide
input on potential enhancements to be made to the ANGEL course management
system.
As Penn State plans to make ANGEL available to the University community for
several more years, Information Technology Services (ITS) wishes to ensure
the system effectively meets faculty objectives and course needs. ITS has
collected enhancement suggestions from ANGEL users and arranged them by
category on the survey. Survey takers are asked to vote for the enhancements
in each of the categories they consider most important.
The survey, which will take approximately fifteen minutes to complete, is
located online at http://angelsurvey.tlt.psu.edu/. Each respondent will need
to log in via WebAccess. The survey will be available through Monday,
January 28.
For any questions, email [email protected].
66
Appendix C: Enhancement Suggestions With A Solution In Place Or In Process
“Make assessments compatible with Google Chrome.”
Chrome is a supported browser.
“Allow a different submission time for assessments to be set for an individual student if needed (due to
illness, etc.) without having to open the submissions to the entire class.”
ANGEL currently supports this via the Selected Teams and Override settings.
Comments on Calendar
“…I would like to export my class calendar to Google calendar and have it automatically update. The
grades report needs to be simplified.”
Duplicates “LMS-5847 - Calendar feed subscription”
Comments on Content
“When using ANGEL on electronics such as an iPad you can only view so much of the content on the
page. It will not allow you to scroll down the page and continue reading.”
ANGEL currently supports iPad scrolling.
Comments on Course Mail
“There should be a spell-check option in the mail feature…”
Spellcheck is an available feature in mail.
“Email should auto-spellcheck like all other browser boxes.”
Spellcheck is an available feature in mail.
“ANGEL discussion board posts and email messages to forward copies to my personal home email
address. That way, if there's a time that I have trouble accessing ANGEL, I can still keep up with what's
happening by reading my personal email inbox items. I also have problems with course consistency.”
Users can subscribe to forums and set up email forwarding.
“A mobile app for Android would be great. At the very least an app that can send and receive course
mail would be very helpful.”
A Mobile Pilot is underway.
Comments on Discussion Forums
“I would like the discussion forums improved. I would like to be able to add an attachment or post a
PDF to a forum…”
Attachments can be added to forums.
67
Comments on Drop Boxes
“Make ANGEL more user-friendly on Chrome and other browsers. I know that I cannot upload anything
to a drop box using Chrome and it is very irritating.”
This issue has been fixed.
Comments on Grades
“There should be an iPhone or Android app to check grades and what not on ANGEL.”
Mobile Pilot is underway.
“Suggestions: 1. Allow a different submission time for assessments to be set for an individual student if
needed (due to illness, etc.) without having to open the submissions to the entire class. 2. Export the
attendance report so that has a column with student names, columns with dates of attendance (so it is a
spreadsheet of what is on the screen) 3. When entering grades by user, it does not list all students when
a student search is done for large classes, just the first 70 students or so. 4. It takes a bit of finesse to
import grades (first export grades and add to spreadsheet), and even then imported grades sometimes
do not appear.”
ANGEL currently supports this via the Selected Teams and Override settings.
68
This publicatiAon is available in alternative media on request.
Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.
U.Ed. ITS13-7008
69