Colin Mixson's Articles: Angel

With the end of Fall semester looming, most students and faculty at Champlain College have been using the progam Angel for just under four months. While different members of the Champlain community were obliged to utilized the program to varying degrees, some very strong opinions are already in the works, particularly with students.

Ethan Jorgenson, a sophomore at Champlain, believes the school could do better. “I think it sucks,” says Ethan, “because for some reason everything I turn in doesn’t show up, which sucks. Maybe sucks is too strong of a word, it needs improvement.” Ethan is referring to compatibility issues many students have experienced when using web browsers other than Mozilla Fire Fox, in which their assignments get lost in transition.

Senior Shylea Scribner was also less than impressed, saying, "The format is confusing, it's confusing to know what to click... I guess first they had Web CT? Then they switched to Angel over the summer, but they've changed the format since then. Moving things around makes it all confusing."

However, not all students found the program burdensome. Senior Jeff Speanburg found at least one feature he appreciated, saying, "I like how you can use it to check your grades."

Another student, Junior Almasa Kostie said, "I only use it to find assignments really. It's useful."

Tammy Carrol is the Interim Director of eLearing at Champlain, and was involved in the decision to switch from Web CT to Angel. According to Carrol, Champlain was nearing the end of its contract for Web CT, the college's original online service for students, and to continue with the program would have required a serious commitment that the school wasn't entirely willing to make. She says, "Web CT was becoming a program called Blackboard, and to continue with Blackboard would have required expenive upgrades not only to acquire the program, but we would have needed to upgrade our servers as well." Champlain, in continually seeking methodes of increasing enrollment, has found a major issue in space; not only for students, but faculty and administration as well. Upgrading the servers would have required additional space, facilities and technical expenses as well. Carrol cited frequent power outages as another concern, which caused overheating and poor performance in the servers.

Carrol also cites Blackboard's lack of commitment to its clients as another reason for exploring alternatives, saying, "Continuing with Blackboard would have made Champlain a long term client. We didn't want that to happen. Blackboard doesn't seem to care about their clients... We felt like we were being treated like small fish in a big pond."

In choosing another program, the school created a focus group of students and teachers to test possible replacements for Web CT. Ultimately, it was this focus group that choose Angel on the grounds of ease of use for both students and teachers. Furthermore, Angel was found to have excellent, 24/7 technical support, and allowed Champlain to host their servers off campus. This freed space on campus, and reduced the frequency of hardware malfunctions.

At this point, Chamlpain is in the process of tailoring the program based on user feedback. Carrol states, "We realize that all things didn't work out perfectly, like any new venture. Now, were in a period of analyzing, trying to find out what worked and what didn't."

Angel currently exists as a largely optional service for most students, although it facilitates almost all teacher/student communications for those taking online courses. For on campus students, however, the program's functionality is of varying consequence. Many courses, depending on the professor, feature only limited integration with Angel. Professor Ron Miller cites the school's mandate that teachers post their class sylabus and assignments on Angel, for fear of an H1N1 Flu outbreak on campus forcing class cancellations, as his reason for using Angel. In the context of an epidemic Champlain campus would have to be shut down, but classes would continue online with Angel.

Problems arise, however, when teachers mandate their students use Angel to turn in assignments, but are unable to because of software compatability issues. Hopefully, the IT and eLearing departments will be able to customize the program, allowing it to mature based on user feedback. Thus, while the format of the program is subject to change, students can take comfort in the fact that the program itself is not likely to be replaced anytime soon. As compatibility issues are resolved, and the format altered in the persuit of a more intuitive, user friendly structure, it is not unlikely that students will be seeing more and more of the program in future semesters.