All users of Penn State's Course Management System, ANGEL, are cordially welcomed to the ANGEL Community Hub. The ANGEL Community Hub, at http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/angel/, is a place to share ideas, discuss views, and help fellow community members work out solutions and best practices related to ANGEL.
Anyone visiting the site can read existing posts on the ANGEL Community Hub blog. In order to post a new topic or comment on an existing topic, you must select the "Login/Register" link on the right side of the page, then enter your Penn State Access Account userid and password on the WebAccess form.
Jeff Swain, ANGEL new products specialist within ITS, explained the core purpose of the ANGEL Community Hub. "It's a place to share information in an open environment that allows divergent perspectives to come together about the same topic. In other words, you have faculty, staff, and students all using ANGEL, but coming at it from different perspectives."
He said that since he created the site in summer 2006, there have been hundreds of visitors, and each blog post has been read by an average of 150 people. "The nice thing is, people are coming there for information now," said Swain. "The next step is, once you get there and start finding it useful, you begin participating."
While so far many of the posts have been made by members of the ITS ANGEL support team "pushing out" information, Swain said, "I'd like to see it come back some the other way and have more comments on some of our posts. In the community itself there are a lot of smart people who figure things out. It would be interesting to see faculty participate, to see them posting their own thoughts or tips for using ANGEL and getting the most out of it, and explain how they're using it in unique ways."