ANGEL Transition

WAOL has not yet begun negotiating the contract with ANGEL, but these are the tentative plans.

• May - negotiating the contract with ANGEL. They have negotiated a contract with Blackboard for 1 more year and Blackboard use will end June 30, 2009. The cost will stay the same (good news) but the course cap will not rise (bad news). There is also a hope that we can stay with our current version of Blackboard, but they may be forced to change versions (also bad news if transition needed). Presidium will continue to support Blackboard and will also support ANGEL and the anticipated webinar tool.
  
• June - sign a contract.
• July - Angel up and running
• By fall - faculty will have spaces for playing, but ANGEL will not be ready for offering courses and probably won't have any professional development up and running this summer in preparation for fall classes and maybe not even winter (this is a conservative estimate - it is entirely possible things will move faster)
  

What will follow is:

• Course migration
• Professional development for faculty, staff and administrators
  
• integration between ANGEL and CIS systems - SMS (must be complete before courses can formally be offered in ANGEL).
  

Training - WAOL will have lots of training opportunities and they are currently revamping the WAOL training course. They've realized that the "one size fits all" model that they have followed with training, actually fits very few. I've offered my assistance in the revamping of training and I certainly lobby for on campus options that substitute for the WAOL training option.

Keep in mind that ANGEL is the presumed CMS. If the negotiations fail, the CMS Review committee can get back together and go to one of the other top competitors - Deside2Learn, Moodlerooms and (ugh!) Blackboard.

Also interesting - There is a portal project going on to integrate Sharepoint with ANGEL. Hmmm