Instructor Tools

ANGEL maintains its strong focus on instructors by providing practical online teaching and learning tools – and keeping them simple to use and powerful in scope. ANGEL features are flexible, to support individual pedagogical styles and institutional preferences.

• Better Perspective into Learner Performance and Behavior – Course vital signs distilled and displayed for easy consumption. Actionable reports proactively drive better outcomes.
• Automated Options to Easily Act on Student Data – Agent Technology automation takes action at scale, multiplying personal efficiency.
• Industry-Leading Assessment and Learning Outcomes Management – Improve assessment and track student competency to improve learning outcomes.
• Interactive, Collaborative Learning Environments – ANGEL includes today’s most innovative communication and collaboration tools to enrich learning.
• Effective, Efficient Course Management – The most comprehensive suite of easy-to-use course creation, administration and content management tools available.
• Personalized and Customizable – Simple options to customize ANGEL allow learners and instructors to shape ANGEL their way.

Course Home Page Distills and Displays Course Vital Signs

Catch up on critical course information immediately on login. ANGEL distills vital course metrics and presents them graphically on your ANGEL Course Homepage. Academic performance and student activity are automatically assembled, quickly communicating behavior, participation and performance with options to take immediate action. Simply click on any graph to navigate to more comprehensive information and options to take action. "What’s New” and “Tasks” instantly update you on activity since your last login.

Actionable Reports Proactively Drive Better Outcomes

Experience deeper insight into student performance and behavior with ANGEL’s powerful Reports Console. ANGEL’s unified reporting engine distills and delivers extensive course information in one central console.

• Configure, customize, display and share course reports via a single, easy-to-learn console.
• Monitor performance and patterns of activity in real-time.
• Easily pinpoint at-risk behavior.
• Intervene proactively.
• Securely share learner performance reports with parent, mentors and other stakeholders.

Automated Options to Easily Act on Student Data

ANGEL is the first LMS to deliver Agent Technology, powerful pattern recognition of online student activity that allows faculty to easily automate appropriate actions. You establish desired behavior and performance levels and ANGEL Agent Technology automates the work for you.

With ANGEL Agent Technology, you can:

• Monitor student beaviors on your behalf.
  
• Execute predefined actions on a scheduled or event-driven basis.
  
• Automate personalized communication at-scale based on performance or activity.
  
• Dynamically release appropriate content or customized learning paths.

Industry-Leading Assessment and Learning Outcomes Management

ANGEL’s innovative assessment tools allow you to create and deliver the best possible assessments in the fastest, most efficient manner. Granular options deliver complete control over assessment workflow:

• Flexible Assessment Design – Configure display, access and review options to meet pedagogical preferences and assessment objectives.
• Optimized Assessment Creation – Easily create questions, use questions stored in a departmental Question Bank or import questions from publisher content cartridges.
• At-A-Glance Insight into Assessment Performance – Real-time visibility into assessment results and all assessment settings.
• Industry-Leading Item Analysis – Detailed assessment and question performance analysis improve assessments.

• Question Bank Efficiency – Share Question Banks and assessments across your department or campus. Deliver standardized assessments.

ANGEL Learning Outcomes Management (LOM) gives you unprecedented insight into student performance against standards, confidence that course content is aligned to standards, and – most importantly – shows you what’s working (and what isn’t) so you can take action.

• Administer Standards across the Enterprise – Administrators add standards for use by all faculty in your enterprise.
• Simplified Standards Mapping – Faculty easily align their course curriculum by mapping content and assessments to any standard. Reports identify unmapped content.
• Reports Measure Performance against Standards – ANGEL LOM reporting provides leading indicators of student learning outcomes. Course- or student-level reports rapidly diagnose under-performance.

Interactive, Collaborative Learning Environments

Extend the classroom, stimulate student engagement, active learning and interaction with the most comprehensive assortment of integrated communication and collaboration tools available.

ANGEL’s signature ease of use encourages faculty to embrace these exciting methods to support active learning without the hassle of separate log-ins and unfamiliar navigation.

• Email – Secure ANGEL Course Mail is a powerful, full-featured communication system. It handles folders, multiple attachments, blind carbon copies (BCC), HTML formatted messages and links for speed. Students don’t need internet email if they have ANGEL Course Mail, but course mail can be forwarded to an internet email account.
• Discussion Forums – ANGEL Discussion Forums make it easy to create an online environment that fosters enthusiastic student participation and provide instructors with a host of time saving features. Common pedagogical models for using discussions in the classroom are built in and multiple view modes and search filters make it easy to find and act on discussion posts. ANGEL’s unique grading rubrics allow the system to evaluate student behavior according to instructor established rules, making it much easier for instructors to evaluate student activity within a discussion.
• Podcasting – Nowhere is podcasting – or syndication – as simple as it is in ANGEL. Instructors broadcast audio or video files, links or content items by simply placing them in a course syndication folder.
• Wikis – Especially valuable for active peer-to-peer learning and student interaction.
• Blogs – Recognized for allowing enhanced comprehension and communication among students as well as for promoting active learning and building deeper understanding.
• ANGEL LIVE Synchronous Tools – Virtual Office Hours, Desktop Sharing, Whiteboard, Chat and Instant Messaging.
• Calendar – Post entries to the entire class, a specific group or team or just one user. Even recurring events can be posted with only one calendar entry. Events entered on the course calendar are automatically displayed on the personal calendars of the users you select. Milestone events selected by the instructor to help pace the class are automatically integrated with the calendar.

• News – Post announcements and news on your home page, individual course welcome screens or on a departmental homepage. ANGEL’s announcement tools provide simple guidance to make posting quick and easy.

Effective, Efficient Course Management

Lesson Content Development

ANGEL supports all styles of teaching and learning with powerful tools that combine maximum flexibility with simple use. There’s no need to rework your content to fit the system – ANGEL adapts to each teaching style.

• Simple Content Upload: ANGEL’s file upload utility simplifies existing content upload, including files, complex images, web page sets and LMS or publisher-developed content.
• Logical Content Organization: Organize all types of content with user-friendly lesson folders and subfolders.
• Publish New Content Directly to the Web: Powerful Inline HTML Editor includes comprehensive functionality in a user-friendly interface, popular WebEQ equation editor, and integrated browser for seamless graphic upload.
• Personalization Options: Select course look and feel from dozens of pre-designed templates or design your own with ANGEL's Theme Editor.

Simple Navigation for Every Style

Getting around ANGEL has never been easier. Meaningful icons provide navigation from anywhere in ANGEL. Just one click takes you to Home, Help, Logoff, Administrator Tools, Learning Object Repository, Preferences, ANGEL IM, 508 Accessibilty Menu and PDA Display Mode. ANGEL’s simple navigation tabs span the top of the course pages, allowing instructors to quickly navigate throughout the LMS according to their preferences.

IMS Content Import/Export

ANGEL supports IMS specifications, making it easy to import and export course materials. Zip all the material from a course into one file. Save and restore the file without IT assistance. You can transition from term to term simply, selectively preserving the aspects of your course you choose.

ANGEL also make it easy to import content developed in other LMS systems, and import calendar events and announcements from virtually any text file.

Organize Content

ANGEL lets you choose how you organize your course content. Every folder can include all content types: web pages, files, links, quizzes, tests, surveys, drop boxes, and multiple message boards. Put all the elements of one lesson in a folder and have a folder for each lesson or organize any way that suits your needs. Moving, re-sequencing or adding content is as easy as clicking a button.

Control Content Access

ANGEL provides extraordinary control over the display and availability of content. Individual lesson items can be restricted by date, user rights, password and team assignment. Items can also be hidden until a specified day or event. The event, passing a test for example, can even be unique to an individual. This dynamic availability supports self-paced study, conditional release of material and problem-based learning.

User Preview Tool

View your course exactly as your student's see it, as a team member, from any rights level. No need to ask IT to set up dummy accounts.

Syllabus Creation

Not all syllabus tools are created equal! ANGEL's Syllabus Editor provides handy templates that make creating your syllabus as an HTML file easy. Or, simply upload or copy and paste a text file into the editor and your syllabus is online.

Unlimited, Easy-Access Drop Boxes

Instructors control access, set automatic milestone and gradebook settings, and specify MetaData tags for optimal search and organization. Create as many drop boxes as needed, with quick, convenient access within Lesson folders. Grades, remarks and feedback can be sent to students as course mail messages.

Games Add Variety and Fun

ANGEL offers engaging online games that are simple to create. Suitable for all subjects and age groups, games give educators and learners exciting options for interaction and fun. Easily add game results to your gradebook – including how many hints are used to solve puzzles We could cite academic research to support game use, but the truth is we did it for fun!

Learning Object Repository

Personalized Content Sharing is included in ANGEL LMS with its fully integrated Learning Object Repository – at no extra charge. Maximize content investment with reuse, sharing and collaboration.

ANGEL Teams Bring Students Together

ANGEL makes team definition and management easy, providing educators with more options for peer learning and interaction. Teams can also be used for dynamic content availability to support self-paced study, problem-based learning and conditional material release. Simple tools create teams by individual assignment or randomly generate teams. Once the teams are created, they can be easily rebalanced automatically.

ANGEL allows instructors to interact with assigned teams just like classes or individuals. View the course Gradebook, reports, send an email or create an announcement for teams. The possibilities are endless and provide true flexibility for the educator.

Gradebook Efficiency

ANGEL’s flexibility assists in the management of student grades with maximum efficiency and minimum hassle. Choose online or offline grading, modify weight assignments, re-grade, map grades to scores and perform complex grading calculations with ease. And ANGEL’s Gradebook Wizard is always available for extra tips or to learn a new way to manage grades.

Flexible Enrollment Management

ANGEL's flexible design allows the institution to delegate all or part of course administrative control from a central administrator to the instructor as well as selecting from manual or automatic enrollment. You can manually enroll students, edit, add, and delete user accounts from the class roster. The course roster can also be synchronized with one or more linked ANGEL courses, so all rosters automatically change as needed.

Automatic Enrollment Integration. ANGEL integrates easily with registrar systems for automated enrollment. Users can also be added from a text file with ANGEL's batch enrollment or self-enabled wizard. And because we recognize that class rosters can change repeatedly, ANGEL lets you reflect those changes without assistance from a central administrator.

Delegate Administrative Tasks

Delegation doesn’t have to be time-consuming! ANGEL makes it easy to assign access rights to your course assistant(s) that provide access to grade items, the ANGEL attendance manager and to review each student's Learner Profile. At this specialized rights level, the course assistant can access every grading tool, but you can limit their grading rights by team membership, and retain your exclusive control of content.

Personalized and Customizable

Your ANGEL Home page is a personalized information hub for all your courses in one central location. Select the information you’d like displayed, drag-and-drop the components and you are finished. Efficient new features like ANGEL’s What’s New course icons communicate course activity without even entering the course.

Your Preferences, Not Ours

Customize ANGEL to fit your needs, not what we suppose they are. You’ll find personalization options throughout the LMS that stem from educator feedback and attention to the important details. The Preferences icon is visible throughout the LMS.

Dozens of Pre-Defined Themes

Our community members have commented that selecting the look and feel of their learning environment is motivational – a personal ANGEL touch that they appreciate. ANGEL comes with a host of design-based themes such as such as “Fresh Veggies,” “Ice” or “Stars and Stripes," or subject-based themes such as “Biology,” "Composition,” “Criminal Justice” and more. There are even grade-level themes for K12. One click and the preview window reveals your new style.

Design Your Own Theme

Create a custom theme for your course or portal, with as much detail as your creativity or institution desires. ANGEL’s Theme Editor lets you chose the colors, subject matter and graphics independently. Advanced users can upload their own!

ANGEL technologies empower instructors with practical online teaching and learning tools that maximize their impact on students, increase their workflow efficiency and improve outcomes.

VALUE: Learning Outcomes Management technologies built into ANGEL require no additional investment.