ANGEL Learning
Student Tools
ANGEL LMS 7 is an innovation in learning management system usability. Its design enables learners to become more effective each time they log into ANGEL. But ANGEL's simplicity and intuitive navigation belies the power behind the interface. In ANGEL 7, ANGEL's powerful flexibility reaches new levels with unique, uncomplicated features that support custom learning paths, individual learning styles, and your institutional preferences - including the ability to easily turn off capabilities when you choose.
ANGEL Home - Personalised Learning Space
Home is the ANGEL hub - the central location for all a learner's courses, groups, news, and much more. Personalising Home is so easy that an ANGEL homepage becomes an individualised learning space - a place that engages.
- Drag-and-Drop Personalisation Exclusively in ANGEL - Learners edit the content and layout of their homepage with Drag-and-Drop simplicity. Prefer to have your groups on the right side of the page: Drag-and-Drop. Want to add a calculator, announcements, bookmarks, RSS headlines to your homepage - just click. Don't want Google on your homepage, delete it. Adding Google or any of the more than 30 personalisation options to your homepage again later is Drag-and-Drop easy.
- Customised Themes - Learners create custom looks for their ANGEL homepage by choosing from ANGEL's more than 30 standard custom colour or subject themes. Love greens? There's a custom theme. Want graphics on your pages to represent individual classes or your major? Choose from a long list of options. And, there's always the ability to create a personal theme 'from scratch' for those who want truly individualised homes.
- User Levels Matched to Learner Expertise - The technology expertise of today's learners is diverse - ranging from the part-time learner who may have minimal technology experience to the digital native who requires power and advanced capabilities. ANGEL's user level system settings allow learners to easily choose the system mode that meets their needs: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Whatever their level of comfort with technology all learners are comfortable in ANGEL.
- Context-Sensitive Help - ANGEL provides answers to user questions in the context of their expertise. Clicking the Help icon on any page in ANGEL gives the learner information about using the tools and features on that specific page.
- Accessible Display - Large text and high contrast themes are standard ANGEL options for visually impaired users. And for learners on the go, ANGEL's PDA mode adapts ANGEL for small screens and allows learners to download lessons, unread course mail, or forum messages to their PDA for offline viewing.
- Track Personal Tasks and Calendar Events - Just two of ANGEL's personal productivity tools for learners. These and all ANGEL learner organisation capabilities keep students on track with personal, course, departmental, and institution events and timelines.
ANGEL Communication & Collaboration Features Build Community
Working with fellow students, contacts with an instructor - these interactions take learning to a deeper level. Often students who may not participate in live class discussion are comfortable 'talking' online. The simplicity and power of communication, collaboration and community building features in ANGEL add value to instruction.
- ANGEL LIVE Synchronous Communication Tools - ANGEL LIVE takes online learner-instructor and learner-to-learner interaction beyond standard parameters.
- Virtual Office Hours - More than chat, learners meet and interact with instructors and fellow students in real-time in ANGEL's Virtual Office. The instructor can work with learners one-on-one or allow a group to enter the 'office' for collaborative learning.
- Desktop Sharing - Instructors demonstrate and share any application on their computers with one or multiple learners in a group, course, or the virtual office. Even pass control to learners for hands-on learning.
- Controlled Chat and Instant Messaging - Communicate online in the modes of today's learners - in real time. Participating in peer-to-peer chat reinforces concepts and builds community. It also frequently reduces questions and email to instructors.
- Whiteboard - An exceptional learning tool for free-hand illustrating to share imagery and explain complex concepts.
- Unlimited Threaded Discussions - ANGEL discussions can be shared across groups, a course, a department, or your entire institution. Instructors can define discussions by type of post to stimulate effective discussion. Learners can categorise posts as problems, explanations, scientific explanations, comments, evaluations, or summaries. Multiple team permissions allow for multiple, pedagogically-based models such as Fishbowl, Hot Seat, and Debate to positively impact the learning experience.
- Email - ANGEL's fully integrated internal email system provides the features users expect in a powerful email system. Learners can send messages to one or multiple recipients, BCC, use HTML, and have the option of forwarding their ANGEL email to an internet email account.
- Online Journal - Learners can make private notes about any or all of their courses in their private ANGEL journal. Notes can be shared with instructors and attached to resources.
- Student Community Building - Learners actively participate in their education when they create online clubs, interest and study groups in ANGEL. Students can send email to their groups, use a shared chat space, calendar and announcements, and share material privately within the group. Students from different courses can interact in a system-wide chat rooms or discussion forums.
ANGEL 7's Powerful Automated Agents Impact & Individualise Learning
The actionable information, deeper insight, and enhanced student interaction ANGEL 7 automated agents provide instructors to impact student outcomes are most often viewed from the instructor perspective. Although learners may be unaware of the mechanism behind the actions ANGEL automated agents enable, they are recipients of the benefits.
- Personalised Communication - ANGEL enables instructors to automate the sending of personalised email to large numbers of students. In return, learners' sense they belong.
- Individual Feedback - College students in particular are notorious for last minute, late night work. A student submitting an assignment to a drop box only hours - or minutes - before a midnight deadline is relieved and reassured to receive an automated message acknowledging the assignment has been received and admonishing the student to get some rest. All thanks to ANGEL automated agents.
- Conditional Release of Material - When a learner submits a chapter test and scores, for example, a 90, ANGEL can automatically release the next sequential material to the student - along with a congratulatory 'Well Done' note if the instructor chooses. If the learner scores below an acceptable level, ANGEL automated agents can release remediation material for review and retesting. An automated 'visit me during my office hours' message may also be an action ANGEL agents take with students who score below the accepted level. Each of these actions - scoring the test, releasing appropriate material, automated emails - greatly impact student learning, but require minimal effort on the instructor's part.
ANGEL Progress & Assessment Tools & Reports Promote Student Ownership of Learning
When learners log into their ANGEL courses, their course activity - logons, mail messages, discussion posts, submissions - and grades are graphically presented front and center. Immediate representation of course progress causes students to take ownership of their learning. And a click on ANGEL's Reports tab takes the learner to individual and class detail that provides perspective into progress.
- ANGEL's Learner Profile - Graphs and charts provide detailed summaries of learner course participation and grades in ANGEL's Learning Profile. Students can view top level course participation in numerous areas including chat sessions, forum posts, mail, submissions, and more for an overview of individual course participation. They can also drill down for specific information. Times, dates, content of a forum post for example. Learners can also gain perspective into their individual progress by viewing their grades in the context of all the other students in the course.
- Tests and Quizzing - ANGEL provides instructors many options for tests and quizzing using numerous question formats - even a secure testing environment. ANGEL's advantage to learners lies in the options ANGEL provides for quiz presentation, the availability of ANGEL's HTML editor to easily include math symbols and graphics while taking quizzes, and ANGEL's immediate feedback. Discriminator-level feedback even explains why an answer is incorrect.
- Milestone Feature - A motivating tool, the learner can compare individual progress to instructor-determined course milestones.
- Drop Boxes - Drop boxes associated with individual assignments reduce the potential for learner confusion.
- Security - ANGEL security measures protect learners. They can save answers at any time during a test or quiz without submitting. If the student loses connectivity, ANGEL can recover answers and return the student to the quiz. When a timed quiz is recovered, ANGEL automatically adjust time limit to remaining time.
All ANGEL 7 learner features and tools are included in ANGEL. Use them all or only those you choose. ANGEL's openness allows you to offer only the technologies best suited to your institutional goals and your users' needs.
Copyright © 2006 ANGEL Learning