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Product Name ANGEL Learning Management Suite, V7.1
Developer Name ANGEL Learning, Inc
URL Angel Learning
Review Date October 25, 2006
Forums ANGEL Learning Management Suite, V7.1 Discussions
Reviewer Kathryne Riha    email    bio
Communication Tools
Discussion Forum
  • Students can enable or disable posts to be sent to their email.
  • Students can receive posts by email as daily digests of subject lines or whole posts.
  • A spell-checker is available for student and instructor responses.
Reviewer Comments
Discussions can be viewed by date, by thread, by title, by author, by group, by the type of post. Posts can be plain or formatted text or html and can include attachments, images or URLs. Students can categorize posts as problems, explanations, scientific explanations, comments, evaluations, or summaries. Instructors can associate a discussion with any course content. Discussions can be shared across courses, departments, or any institutional unit. Instructors may create separate discussion environments for small groups. Groups can be open to all or only a select set of students. Instructors can determine the level of involvement (read, write, or post anonymously) for students. Only the instructor may delete posts. The threaded discussion software includes a formatting text editor. Discussion threads are expandable and collapsible to view an entire conversation on one screen. The entire discussion can be saved or printed for off-line reading. Instructors can set up discussion forums so new posts are sent to the email of each student. Students can enable or disable posts to be sent to their email. Instructors can limit discussions to specific time periods. The discussion forums can include a moderation function (screen all posts).

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Discussion Management
  • Instructors can set up moderated discussions where all posts are screened.
  • Posts may be peer reviewed by other students.
  • Instructors can view statistical summaries of discussions displaying participation which can be used to generate grades.
  • Discussions can be shared across courses, departments, or any institutional unit.


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File Exchange
  • Students can submit assignments using drop boxes.
  • Students can share the contents of their personal folders with other students.
  • Administrators can define disk space limitations for each user.


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Internal Email
  • Students can use the built-in email functionality to email individuals or groups.
  • Instructors can email the entire class at once at a single address or alias.
  • Students can elect to forward their mail to an external address.


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Online Journal/Notes
  • Students can attach notes to any page.


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Real-time Chat
  • The chat tool supports a limited number of simultaneous rooms.
  • The chat tool supports unlimited simultaneous group discussions
  • Instructors may moderate chats and suspend students from the chat rooms.
  • The chat tool supports a structured way for students to ask questions and instructors to provide answers.
  • The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms.
Reviewer Comments
ANGEL LIVE synchronous tools are included in ANGEL LMS at no extra charge. Flexible, secure communication and collaboration tools extend the learning environment and offer instructors easy options to control or monitor participation. True "Virtual Office Hours" go far beyond chats and include scheduling and ANGEL's unique Queue Manager; "Desktop Sharing" makes it easy to share desktop applications for collaboration and convenience; "Whiteboard" stimulates creativity or the ability to share complex concepts and imagery; Controlled Chat and Instant Messenger allows instructors to easily customize, control, monitor & moderate communications (allows simultaneous group discussions, calendar scheduling, chat log review and user suspension options), while the "Who's Online" nugget quickly shows who's participating or available for discussion. The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms.

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Whiteboard
  • The whiteboard supports image and PowerPoint uploading.
  • The software supports group web browsing.
  • The software supports application desktop sharing.


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Productivity Tools
Bookmarks
  • Students can share their bookmarks.
  • Students can create bookmarks in a private folder.


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Calendar/Progress Review
  • Instructors and students can post events in the online course calendar.
  • Instructors can post announcements to a course announcement page.
  • Students have a personal home page that lists all courses in which the student is enrolled, new email and all course and system-wide events from their personal calendar.
  • Students can view their grades on completed assignments, total points possible, course grade, and compare their grades against the class performance.
  • Students can subscribe to RSS feeds to be notified of changes to materials.


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Searching Within Course
  • Students can search all course content.
  • Students can search all discussion threads.


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Work Offline/Synchronize
  • Students can compile and download the content for an entire course into a format that can be printed or stored locally.
  • Instructors can publish course content on a CD-ROM that can be linked to dynamically from within the online course or viewed offline.
  • Students can download course content and discussion group content with a PDA.


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Orientation/Help
  • Students can access context sensitive help for any tool.


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Student Involvement Tools
Groupwork
  • Instructors can assign students to groups.
  • The system can randomly create groups of a certain size or a set number of groups.
  • Each group can have its own discussion forum.
  • Each group can have its own chat or whiteboard.
  • Each group can be given group-specific assignments or activities.


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Community Networking
  • Students can create online clubs, interest, and study groups at the system level.
  • Students from different courses can interact in system-wide chat rooms or discussion forums.


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Student Portfolios
  • Students can create a personal home page in each course.


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Administration Tools
Authentication
  • Administrators can allow guest access to all courses.
  • The system can authenticate against an external LDAP server.
  • The system can authenticate using the Kerberos protocol.
  • The system supports Shibboleth.
  • The system can authenticate against IMAP, POP3 or secure NNTP.
  • Administrators can set up fail-through authentication against a secondary source (e.g. the system's own database) in the event that the primary source (e.g. LDAP server ) fails.
  • The system can support multiple organizational units and virtual hosts within a server configuration.


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Course Authorization
  • The system supports restricting access based on roles and roles can also be customizedby the service provider.
  • Instructors or students may be assigned different roles in different courses.


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Registration Integration
  • Instructors can add students to their courses manually or allow students to self-register.
  • Administrators can batch add students to the system using a delimited text file.
  • Administrators can transfer student information bidirectionally between the system and an SIS using delimited text files.
  • The software supports data interchange with student information systems through an event-driven API.
  • The software supports integration with SCT Banner, SCT Luminis, Datatel, PeopleSoft 8 or customized integration with other SIS or portal systems.
  • The software is compliant with the IMS Enterprise Specification for Student Data.


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Hosted Services
  • The product provider offers a hosted solution.
Reviewer Comments
Enterprise level systems solutions for institutions seeking optimal performance, reliability and the security of partnering with award-winning, highly responsive technical experts.
ANGEL hosting services offers 24x7x356 comprehensive web environment monitoring that ensures peak performance, fully redundant systems and daily backup with offsite storage at our disaster recovery facility. A historically stable 99.8% uptime standard is offered, with additional options available to meet individual institution needs. While all software maintenance and upgrades are performed by application engineering experts, you maintain complete control of your ANGEL instance.


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Course Delivery Tools
Test Types
  • Multiple choice
  • Multiple answer
  • Matching
  • Ordering
  • Calculated
  • Fill-in the blank
  • Short answer
  • Survey questions
  • Essay
  • Questions can contain other media elements (images, videos, audio)
  • Custom question types can be defined.


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Automated Testing Management
  • The system can randomize the questions and answers.
  • Instructors can create self-assessments.
  • Instructors can set a time limit on a test.
  • Instructors can permit multiple attempts.
  • The students are allowed to review past attempts of a quiz.
  • The system supports a MathML editor for the inclusion of mathematical formulas in both questions and answers.
  • Instructors can specify whether correct results are shown as feedback
  • The system supports proctored tests.


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Automated Testing Support
  • Instructors can create personal test banks.
  • Instructors can create system wide test banks.
  • Questions can be imported from external test banks that support QTI.
  • The system provides test analysis data.


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Online Marking Tools
  • Instructors can choose to mark each student on all questions or to mark each question on all students.
  • Instructors can choose to evaluate student responses anonymously.
  • Instructors can enable students to rate and comment on submissions of other students.


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Online Gradebook
  • When an instructor adds an assignment to the course, the software automatically adds it to the gradebook.
  • Instructors can add grades for offline assignments.
  • Instructors can add details to the gradebook in custom columns.
  • Instructors can export the scores in the gradebook to an external spreadsheet.
  • Instructors can create a course grading scale that can employ either percents, letter grades, or pass/fail metrics.


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Course Management
  • Instructors can selectively release assignments, assessments, and announcements based on specific start and stop dates.
  • Instructors can release materials based on a single criteria (date, grade, etc.) or instructors can use Boolean expressions to identify multiple selective release criteria.
  • Instructors can set up specific course content that is released on a specific date and must be completed by students before they continue with the course.
  • Instructors can link discussions to specific dates or course events.
  • Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on group membership.
  • Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on previous course activity.
  • Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on student performance.
Reviewer Comments
ANGEL's uniue AGENT technology offers simple ways to identify at-risk learners, view student performance or create custom learning paths with maximum flexibility and personalization.Instructors can selectively release materials, assessments, announcements, and emails based on previous course activity or specific start and end dates. Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials and assessments, based on access rights, group membership, previous course activity, or student performance and/or specific start and end dates or other criteria. Instructors can set up specific course content that is released on a specific date and that students must complete before they continue with course. Instructors can link discussions to specific dates or course events. Instructors can design courses for instructor facilitated learning or system managed self-study.

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Student Tracking
  • Instructors can track the frequency and duration of student access to individual course components.
  • Instructors can get reports showing the time and date and frequency students as an aggregated group accessed course content.
  • Instructors can get reports showing the number of times, time, date, frequency and IP address of each student who accessed course content, discussion forums, course assessments, and assignments.
  • Instructors can review the navigation record of each student.
  • Usage statistics can be aggregated across courses or across the institution.


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Content Development Tools
Accessibility Compliance
  • The product provider self-reports that the software complies with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act.
  • The product provider self-reports that the software complies with the WAI WCAG 1.0 Level A guidelines.


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Content Sharing/Reuse
  • Instructors can share content with other instructors and students through a central learning objects repository.
  • The repository can be system-wide or for individual organizational units.
  • The repository supports IEEE LOM and metadata application profiles such as, Dublin Core, Cancore, and custom profiles.


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Course Templates
  • The software provides support for template-based course creation.
  • The system provides course design wizards that provide step-by-step guides that take faculty and course designers through the completion of common course tasks, such as setting up the course homepage, syllabus, organizer pages, content modules, discussion.
  • Course content may be uploaded through WebDAV.
  • Course templates may contain selective release criteria and custom gradebook columns that persist with each new course instance.
  • The system allows administrators to use an existing course or a pre-defined template as a basis for a new course.


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Customized Look and Feel
  • The system provides default course look and feel templates.
  • Instructors can change the navigation icons and color schemes for a course.
  • Instructors can change the order and name of menu items for a course.
  • Institutions can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system, including their own institutional logos, headers, and footers.
  • The system can support multiple institutions, departments, schools or other organizational units on a single installation where each unit can apply its own look and feel templates as well as institutional images, headers and footers.


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Instructional Design Tools
  • Instructors can organize learning objects, course tools, and content into learning sequences that are reusable.
  • Instructors can create linear learning sequences organized hierarchically by course, lesson, and topic.
  • Instructors can reuse courses as templates for future lessons.


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Instructional Standards Compliance
  • IMS Content Packaging 1.1.4
  • IMS QTI 1.2.1
  • IMS Enterprise 1.1
  • IMS Metadata 1.3
  • SCORM 1.2


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Hardware/Software
Client Browser Required Reviewer Comments
ANGEL® is designed to support the widest variety of client-side operating systems and client-side browsers through its limited use of client-side technologies. While ANGEL products generally function well in many browsers, the following are formally supported and tested:

*With PCs running Windows OS: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mozilla
With Macs running OS X: Firefox and Mozilla
Testing is performed on the latest generally available versions for the above platforms and browsers with each General Release of ANGEL products, ensuring full support at that time. As a new browser version is made available, testing is performed to ensure that ANGEL is fully functional in the new browser. Any issues identified with a new release of a browser will be resolved within 90 days of the new browser version's general availability date. Any identified fixes will be implemented and released via ANGEL Monthly Updates.If issues are identified with other ANGEL Learning products (ie - ePortfolio), those will be resolved with the next scheduled update package for the product.

Note: Full functional testing is done on generally available major versions of browsers with any revision/minor versions released being reviewed for further testing if known issues are identified specific to a revision version. Also note that standard procedure for QA testers is to keep browsers current so that general testing done by the QA team is done on most current versions, including latest revisions. We also make efforts to keep a prior version available for test comparisons when needed.
*Note: Some older browsers by default do not provide support for the LiveConnect module that is required for ANGEL LIVE functionality (introduced in LMS v7.1). This is currently not supported with newer versions of various web browsers on a Mac. For instance, the Firefox, Mozilla or Netscape browsers on a Mac do not have support for the LiveConnect module. If the user has one of these or similar web browser configurations you should instruct them to download the LiveConnect module from Sourgeforge.net. Please refer to knowledgebase article for more information

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Database Requirements
  • The system supports MS SQL Server.


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UNIX Server

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Windows Server
  • A Windows version is available.


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Company Details/Licensing
Company Profile Reviewer Comments
ANGEL Learning, recognized innovator of enterprise e-learning software and services, develops and markets ANGEL LMS and ANGEL ePortfolio. Recognized as a leader in product innovation and as a provider of exceptional customer service, ANGEL's proven, powerful systems are recognized for their unique balance of ease of use and powerful features that empower educators and students to readily adopt the product and encourage deeper system use, meaningful collaboration and sharing. ANGEL products incorporate a community innovation model for product development, with customers participating throughout the product design process. Known for a core belief in product openness, ANGEL provides system administrators and technologists access to database schema for maximum flexibility at no additional charge.

Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, ANGEL Learning was founded in July 2000. ANGEL Learning and ANGEL LMS evolved from research and teaching experience at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The initial research system deployed in 1996 became Indiana University's OnCourse. ANGEL LMS was created using the early system concepts and was made more generally applicable and maintainable with a tailorable user interface, flexible backend database integration, and a high performance, reliable component architecture.

Today, though ANGEL Learning has grown from a campus-based organization of university researchers and instructors to a profitable firm with global reach, the company stays loyal to its academic roots. Honed by use, our products serve millions of students and instructors from K to corporate. We enjoy a reputation for creating products with exceptional ease of use, excellent vision into learner progress, and for keeping our commitments.


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Costs / Licensing Reviewer Comments
Contact ANGEL Learning for cost and license information.

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Open Source

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Optional Extras Reviewer Comments
Also available from ANGEL Learning: ANGEL ePortfolio, ANGEL Hosting Services, ANGEL End User Help Desk, ANGEL Consulting Services.

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Reference Citation: EduTools. (2010). CMS: Product Comparison System. Retrieved September 08, 2010 from http://www.edutools.org/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=550