Important Points
Faculty Access to Courses
Student Access to Courses
Identifying Courses for ANGEL
Training for Instructors Using ANGEL
Course development in ANGEL
Getting Help
Common Request Tracker "Online Learning" requests
How To ...
Submit a Request Tracker ticket
Export Your Course (i.e. make a local copy)
Create Course Backups
Copy Course From Previous Semester
Put Content in Your LOR
Find Missing Submissions
ANGEL is the Learning Management System (LMS) used at SUNYIT. Our ANGEL environment is managed and supported by two university-wide organizations: the SUNY Learning Network (SLN), and the SUNY Information Technology Exchange Center (ITEC). ANGEL can be used to offer an online course, hybrid course or to supplement a classroom based course. Many services and support functions for our ANGEL environment are provided by SLN and ITEC such as:
ANGEL is a web browser dependent system. The browser version, cookie and pop-up settings must be set up correctly for the features to work properly. The "Test Your System" box on the ANGEL login page, detects your browser version, cookie settings and pop-up settings. An red dot with a slash will be displayed for incorrect versions and settings. It is strongly recommended that faculty and students use Mozilla Firefox as their browser when accessing ANGEL. Internet Explorer has been known to have issues with certain features of ANGEL. Safari and Chrome are not supported at all.
ANGEL times out after 90 minutes of idle time. Activities that take place in the editor are not do not register as activity. ANGEL sees time spent there as idle time. Users are urged to compose work off-line and save it as a file. Copy/paste from the saved file into text box, or attach or upload the saved file. These precautions will prevent data loss.
ANGEL Updates run three times a day at 6 AM, 12 PM and 7 PM to update student enrollments in courses. The ANGEL updates that creates courses and add instructors to courses runs once a day at 7 PM.
The Registrar's office sets up courses for ANGEL and handles all course enrollment and roster issues including requests to add people who are not on the roster to a course. Email John Lasher for requests to add participants to courses.
Faculty Access to Courses
Semester courses that are set up in Banner to use ANGEL will be created according to this schedule:
Fall courses are created at the end of May
Spring courses are created during the advance registration period in November
Summer courses are created during the advance registration period in April
Instructors who want to begin working on courses before the semester courses are available may request an ANGEL development shell via Request Tracker ticket.
Instructors working in semester courses can use the Team Leader preview to see their course from the student's perspective until the course is open to students. Once the course is open to students, the Student preview can be used. Instructors working in noterm shells can use the Student preview at any time.
Faculty will be able to access their courses while they remain on the ANGEL server. All ANGEL users can control which courses appear on the ANGEL homepage through the course display filter. Semester courses remain on the server for a year. Then they are archived, removed from the ANGEL server and sent the campus ANGEL Administrator. Instructors who want courses that are no longer on the ANGEL server may submit a Request Tracker ticket.
Student Access to Courses
Students will have access to classroom courses when the term starts and to online and hybrid courses 7 days before their term starts. ANGEL courses will be accessible for 21 days after the course ends.
Students with Incomplete or In Progress (IP) grades will have extended access to their ANGEL courses upon their course by instructor request. If the ANGEL course is not available, course work must be submitted by some another method (e.g. email, fax, postal service).
Identifying Courses for ANGEL
The Registrar's office sets up courses to use ANGEL. Online and hybrid courses are identified to use ANGEL as part of the development of the master schedule. They must be identified on the course schedule before it is published. Classroom based courses can be set up for ANGEL by email request to the Registrar's office.
Students who are searching the course schedule can search for courses by instructional method. Online and hybrid courses also receive special section numbers and a comment. If no instructional method is given, the default "classroom" based method will be applied.
Training for Instructors using ANGEL
Course development in ANGEL
Faculty generally use a ANGEL sandbox or practice course during training, and can also use their semester course if it is available. Faculty who want to start working on their courses before the semester courses are created can request an ANGEL shell.
Faculty will find resources to help them with ANGEL in the Faculty Resources area on the ANGEL home page. The self-paced ANGEL 1-2-3 Online course is also available for faculty to learn the basics for using ANGEL.
Below are recommendations for developing courses.
Faculty control student access to content within the course with its access settings or through the Date Manager.
Getting Help
The SLN Helpdesk supports the ANGEL system and its users.
SLNSupport@itec.suny.edu
Phone: 1 (800) 875-6269 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1 (800) 875-6269 end_of_the_skype_highlighting (toll free in US); 1 (518) 443-5617 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1 (518) 443-5617 end_of_the_skype_highlighting (direct)
SLN Helpdesk Portal
SLN website
The Registrar handles all registration, course roster and course schedule concerns.
John.Lasher@sunyit.edu
Phone: (315)792-7265 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (315)792-7265 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
The SUNYIT ITS Helpdesk handles issues with SITNet IDs and passwords. Resetting the password with corrects most problems. Passwords changed in Banner take effect at the top of the hour. The old password must be used until the new one takes effect.
SITNet Password Reset
Phone: (315) 792-7440 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (315) 792-7440 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Request Tracker ticket Instructions to submit ticket
ITS Helpdesk
The campus ANGEL Administrator is liaison to SLN and ITEC, maintains the SUNYIT Online Learning and SLN website for the campus.
Carol.Berger@sunyit.edu
Phone: (315 )792-7118
Office: L141 Cayan Library
Online Learning Help
Common Request Tracker "Online Learning" requests
Common Online Learning requests are described in this table.
| Create course/ sandbox | Shells and sandboxes are used for training and to develop courses before semester courses have been created. Students are not given access to them. Semester courses are through a Banner integration process, not by request. |
| Special course | Special courses are used for student projects where the student needs to develop content within ANGEL. The course instructor must request a special courses for his or her students and is added to its course roster as a Course Editor. No other students will not be added to the special course roster. |
| Merged roster course | Instructors teaching multiple sections of the same course in ANGEL may request a “merged roster” course to manage all sections from one course shell. Merged courses will be created the week before online and hybrid courses open. Merged courses for cross-listed courses will be created once the semester courses are created, not by request. |
| Pour course | Pour the content from a previously taught ANGEL course, or converted SLN Classic/CourseSpace course. Complete the "Course Code and Section", "Pour Course Semester" and "Course Type" fields. Example: Course Code and Section - ACC 201-35W, Pour Course Semester - Fall 2006, Course Type - converted SLN Classic |
| Grant access to LOR content | Faculty who want to share all or materials, and content in their courses can do through their LOR or creation of a departmental LOR. The ticket can request help in finding the appropriate solution for their needs. |
| Share content with another instructor | Faculty can request all to share all or parts of their courses in ANGEL with another instructor. The entire course content will be copied into the other instructor's course unless specifics are given. |
| Extend access for students with “IP” and “Incomplete” grades | Include the course and students who are receiving the incomplete or IP grade. The extended access will be processed on the last day of normal access to the course. In the ticket include the course ID (e.g. ACC 201-35W), student name(s), last date of access to the course. The date when Incompletes revert to an F grade will be used if no alternate is provided. |
| Delete course or sandbox | Remove courses that have been reassigned to another instructor, or that are no longer needed. |
| Special request | Non-critical requests that do not fit into any of the other categories. Contact the SLN Helpdesk about connection problems. Use email or the SLN Helpdesk website to avoid frustration with long wait times on the phone. |
| Restore a “live” course | A course restore requires the timestamp (i.e. date and time) to restore from and the instructor's local backup of the course. Be sure to include them in your ticket. The restore cannot be processed without this information. |
How to Submit a Request Tracker Ticket
RT sends automated email to your college email with the ticket number and its subject when tickets are created.
Export Your Course (i.e. make local copy)
Instructors should export their course after the semester ends and download the exported file to their hard drive, thumb drive or network drive. This give instructors access to their courses after they have been removed from the ANGEL server. Follow these instructions to create the it.
Create Course Backups
Instructors are responsible for backing up their courses on a regular basis. While SLN does have an emergency restore plan in the event of something catastrophic, they cannot regularly restore courses for individual instructors if items or student coursework is accidentally deleted. Because of this, it is imperative that instructors make and save regular backups of their courses.
It is recommended that backups always be made after important items have been added to the course, and at key points throughout the semester. That way, if something does go wrong during the semester (a module is deleted for example), the ANGEL Admin can attempt to restore the content for you. Without a backup, the material will need to be recreated.
Instructions for Creating Course Backups
Copy Course From Previous Semester (Course Copy video)
Instructors can copy their ANGEL courses to other ANGEL courses or can request to have it done for them through a Request Tracker ticket.
Remember to archive the course you want to copy.The archive is your safety net in case you make a mistake with the course copy process.
Put Content in Your LOR
The ANGEL Learning Object Repository (LOR) is a storage area for items that you want reuse from semester to semester, course to course, and to share with others. Accessing LOR content is easy and it is the most efficient way to use system resources. LOR content must comply with Copyright Law and the TEACH Act. Request information on the TEACH Act.
Find Missing Submissions
A problem with student submissions not showing up in the dropbox was reported this summer. The missing submissions were located in the dropbox Associated files. It appears that the submission process did not complete. Follow the steps below to locate the missing files.