By Nicole Majewski

Buffalo State College students will have ANGELs on their shoulders this spring.

ANGEL is a new computer program that will be supplementing BSC courses, beginning this spring.  According to Melaine Kenyon, the system administrator for ANGEL, the program will replace Blackboard and it is already being used by 200 students in nine courses, including eight graduate courses and one undergraduate course.   

According to the system’s manufacturer, Angel Learning, Buffalo State joins nine other SUNY campuses in using the program.

Kenyon said that Blackboard is being replaced because its company will be releasing a new version of the program in December.  Because of this, the version that BSC has been using since 2001 will be retired and no longer supported by Blackboard Inc.

“We were informed that Blackboard was no longer going to be supporting our current version, so we had a decision to make; stay with Blackboard or we could look at some other products,” she said. 

She said that a 43-person taskforce voted anonymously and chose ANGEL from two other choices; Blackboard’s newest version and the SUNY Learning Network, an online course and degree program from the State University of New York.

“25-to-1, ANGEL was chosen,” she said. 

Kenyon declined to comment on how much the ANGEL system cost, although she did say that it was less expensive than Blackboard.

She said that the main differences between ANGEL and Blackboard are that ANGEL:

• Has an improved e-mail system to keep course mail and regular e-mail accounts in one place. 
• Uses the same password as the college’s e-mail system.
• Has an HTML editor that displays many different document formats as a regular Web page.
• Has a “What’s New” section to check for assignments and announcements since the last log-in. 

Buffalo State faculty and students are starting to take notice of this system. 

Susan Birden, an associate professor in the adult education department, said that she hasn’t had to make too many adjustments in switching from Blackboard to ANGEL. 

“I created a course using the SUNY Learning Network after having used Blackboard and I literally had to reconceptualize the entire course to make it work in SLN,” Birden said.  “There was nothing of that sort in the transition from Blackboard to ANGEL.  It was simply a matter of learning where things were located,”

She also said that the files that she had on Blackboard transferred directly to the ANGEL system, and all she had to do was rearrange them. 

“ANGEL does everything that Blackboard did, but with fewer clicks of the mouse and ANGEL does many, many things that Blackboard could not do.” she said. 

Kristina Kelly is a sophomore who uses the system as part of her LIB100 class. 

“It’s easier to see what needs to be done, what you have started but didn’t finish, and what you’ve completed,” Kelly said.  “I kind of wish that all my classes were using it.” 

Contact Nicole Majewski at cerealboxes84@yahoo.com      

Links:

Blackboard:  http://blackboard.buffalostate.edu