UW-ACE: Updates to UCIST (was UW-ACE Steering
Committee)
Starting from Spring 2004
See the original UW-ACE project pages at the following URL:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/project.html
Usage statistics presented to UCIST on 13 June 2008
See:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/communications/ucist_update_20080613.pptx
Summary for 30 May 2008 [Previous update 30 November 2007]
1. Online Learning Environment Review Project (commencing upon approval of
UCIST)
a. Intent: Re-evaluate where we are, and where we want to be, for our UW
campus online learning environment. Recommend a direction to UCIST
by May 2009 (according to tentative deadlines in the project charter).
b. Overview of process: Phase I investigates and reports on a possible short
list of candidate environments. Phase II further investigates the short list,
if warranted. Comprehensive campus consultation will be undertaken,
particularly in Phase I. Participants will be solicited for the evaluations in
Phase II.
c. Duration: Commence as soon as UCIST approves the charter. Phase I
investigation due January 2009, and final recommendation in May 2009
(again, according to tentative deadlines in the project charter).
d. Project team: The "core" group is comprised of the UW-ACE Operations
group so far, and needs a faculty member and student(s). The "resource"
group members come from areas such as the Faculty computing offices,
the Bookstore, IST security resource, etc., and will likely include
additional faculty members.
2. UW-ACE Operations group retreat (20 June 2008)
a. Intent: Time to focus efforts of the UW-ACE Operations group for the
next year. We carry a long list of future items that should be prioritized.
Identify the "big" items to try to address over that time, and think about
our processes for managing UW-ACE.
3. UW-ACE general update
a. Upgrade to V7.2 Smooth upgrade on Tuesday, April 29th
b. Authentication problem on Wednesday, April 30th (fixed)
c. Top V7.2 issues:
i. Mostly e-mail E-mail marked as spam (local tweak made to our
spamassassin, but leaves UW vulnerable to internal e-mail spam
attack). Addressing with ALI.
d.
e.
f.
g.
ii. "Scary" error message when an e-mail is sent from ANGEL to
joeuser@uwaterloo.ca and joeuser has not specified a forwarding
address.
iii. Encouraged Mac users to upgrade to Firefox 2.0 and that seems to
fix Mac-related e-mail issues.
Security breaches
i. Two students gained privileged access to ANGEL through a
vulnerability hack. Associate Deans of Undergraduate Math
handling the cases. AD-U of Arts and Eng apprised because of
activity in some of those courses. No mark changes detected
except where culprit admitted one (small participation mark
change).
ii. While looking at log activities, coincidently uncovered a case of a
stolen UWdir and Nexus password. Two culprits changed CS
midterm marks in UW-ACE. Students identified (CS) and AD-U
Math is handling those cases.
iii. Reviewing for any recommendations regarding process changes
(db checking) and "best practise" (maintain another copy of marks
outside UW-ACE??).
UW-ACE Operations group topics
i. Auditing a course – Policy
Undergrads must register and pay for the course. Thus, they should
not be added just on request. Grads may be added to undergrad
courses upon the professor's approval.
ii. V7.3 Beta - UW took part. Impressed with new admin tools.
Possibly upgrade in April 2009, but depends upon overall benefits
and "appetite".
iii. File formats, in particular problems arising with printing in Library
- Info sent to CTE Liaisons regarding creating PDFs (margin
issues).
UW-ACE "Add ons"
i. Turnitin pilot into second term and survey of students, faculty,
staff, admin run by Bruce Mitchell (through UW-ACE)
ii. Wimba renewal - IST paid for half, DCE other half. Price is high
and usage is low (though vital in some DE courses). Over next 9
months DCE will lead an investigation into other solutions.
Growth in UW-ACE use (awaiting slides from Jan)
Summary for 30 November 2007 [Previous update 16 February 2007]
1. Growth: Peaking?
 Over 24,000 students in UW-ACE in F07 (largest yet)
 899 UW-ACE course entities
 That makes 32% of “total classes” (up about 1.5% from last fall) and 49% of
“total courses”.
Term
Fall 2007
Spring 2007
Winter 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006
Winter 2006
Fall 2005
Spring 2005
Winter 2005
Fall 2004
Faculty
AHS
ARTS
ENG
ENVS
MATH
SCI
UW-ACE “courses”
# Campus
# DE
Total
803
342
734
664
256
571
475
96
83
81
62
48
59
51
899
425
838
726
304
630
526
128
UW offerings
Total
Total
classes courses
2802
1836
1558
1076
2743
2784
1458
2784
2795
1516
318
222
2821
~ 2780
Course numbers by Faculty for Fall 2007
# DE courses
# Campus courses
8
50
63
345
1
146
0
63
9
84
15
115
% of
% of
classes courses
32%
49%
27%
39%
31 %
26 %
21 %
23 %
19 %
8%
11 %
8%
Total
58
408
147
63
93
130
2. Student email in UW-ACE (discussed at UCIST April 27th, initiated by Robert
Park)
 UCIST wanted to keep student access to Email the Entire Class (including
professors) but to remove student access to All Students. These cannot be
restricted individually so must either both be available or not. In that case, UCIST
wanted both turned off, i.e., change the default access to disallow.
 A complication arose with the return of the class list to the email dropdown list
which had disappeared as an unintentional repercussion of restricting student
access (in V6.2) to other student profiles (FIPPA concerns). In V7.1 we found a
better way to restrict that access (without database changes), and returned the
student list to the email dropdown.
 This introduced another way that students can send email to the entire class, that
is, via a "select all" from this dropdown list.
 In late June we realized that we now could not restrict access to "all students".
Also, the team felt that flipping the default access was more disruptive than
educating instructors on the situation.
 For the July Ops meeting we investigated whether the upgrade at the end of April
to V7.2 would offer new ways of restricting access which may cause another
change. It turns out that we have the same scenario in it.

3.
4.
5.
6.
Instead, Jan worked with the Liaisons on a document to explain how to turn off
the All Students and Entire Class, and the repercussions. She sent this to the
Liaisons on August 27th. Some of them have forwarded it to all of their faculty
members, but perhaps not all of them have.
 See the document in the UW-ACE Help. Use Help's Index, and look under "Info
& Help for INSTRUCTORS" for the file called "UW-ACE Course Mail Settings
Guide". It shows both how to restrict access, and also talks about the
repercussions.
Bringing back course data for student grade appeal.
 Recent request for 2005 (v6.2, archive failed to load in V7.1, had to go to
backups, took 3 days).
 Questions posed of Associate Deans of Computing:
i. What is the deadline for a student to initiate a grade appeal in your
Faculty?
ii. Is that deadline the one that should determine our UW-ACE student
data retention duration?
iii. What should be our procedure with regard to communications with the
Faculty when we have a request for data for an appeal?
UW-ACE Ops topics:
 Students dropped for non-payment.
 Faculty survey
 Policies and communications
ANGEL “add ons” under investigation/pilot
 Turnitin – Bruce Mitchell’s pilot for plagiarism software. The “plug-in” to
ANGEL is installed on the development system.
 Horizon Wimba Voice Tools – After the DE/IST pilot, DE decided to purchase
the integrated voice tools. At last check, no significant uptake outside of DE.
What’s ahead?
 Upgrade – Tentatively set for Tuesday, April 29th. Need to send feedback to ALI.
 License renewal in May 2007, for 3 years (until May 2010)
 LMS review plans
 Plan is to stay with ANGEL unless there is a compelling reason to move!
 However, there are changes afoot in the LMS and online learning space,
including the rise of the social networking tools and the open systems
(Moodle and Sakai gaining confidence of market, and making inroads). We
want to go into next negotiation with knowledge and an understanding of
those spaces.
 D2L demo
 LPS input
Summary for 16 February 2007 [Previous update 2 February 2007]
Notice of the “disbanding” of the UW-ACE Steering Committee
During the January 19th meeting UCIST discussed creating an instructional technologies
committee, an idea first proposed in September. UW-ACE is well established, and
UCIST had decided that a UW-ACE Steering Committee is no longer needed. Instead,
UCIST will provide UW-ACE governance and expand its discussion topics to more
general campus instructional technology issues, receiving recommendations and
comments from a new Instructional Technologies Advisory Committee. ITAC held its
first meeting on 15 February 2007. It is led by Gail Cuthbert Brandt.
1. For discussion at UCIST:
a. ANGEL license renewal – Our three year license agreement ends in May.
We have grown in our FTEs. We requested pricing, and expect follow-up
negotiations. Our renewal period will depend upon their stance. Need to
remind them of competition, both from Desire2Learn and open source.
b. Removing inactive users from UW-ACE – See the following URL. We
changed the inactivity period for professors from 2 years to 3 based on
your feedback from February 2nd. Need approval.
http://ist/~chappell/projects/angel/infrastructure/no_longer_valid.html
2. Growth: >21,000 students in UW-ACE in F06 and W07, avg >3 courses each.
Term
Winter 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006
Winter 2006
Fall 2005
Spring 2005
Winter 2005
Fall 2004
# Campus
# DE
courses courses
734
81
664
62
256
48
571
59
475
51
Total
courses
838
726
304
630
526
128
318
222
Total course
offerings
2743
2784
1458
2784
2795
1516
2821
Estimate 2780
Percentage of total
course offerings
31 %
26 %
21 %
23 %
19 %
8%
11 %
8%
3. ANGEL “add ons” under investigation/pilot
a. Horizon Wimba Voice Tools – DE/IST pilot to evaluate integrated voice
tools. Voice “discussion” similar to adding other content items. Three DE
German courses are using it (one professor). Plan a demo with Arts
Language Lab. Some usability issues. A big question of how to integrate
the Wimba data into the general course archive (separate server).
b. ANGEL Live – ANGEL package with whiteboard, chat, desktop sharing,
scheduling and queuing can facilitate online office hours. Investigating
with one course (not available generally to all courses). System load is a
concern (would spin off to another server if it is popular). Install issues.
4. Infrastructure
a. New data source gives student withdrawal data – Now access the “class
list” data from an Oracle table rather than from the file on watserv1. We
have the withdrawal status (yeah!) so that we can disable those students in
the course; professors have requested since early days. This source also
gives the flexibility to request additional Quest data if desired, whereas the
watserv1 file could not be changed (too many people depending upon it).
b. Multiple Course List (MCL) tool – The ANGEL “merged course” feature
allows us to combine several lectures or courses into one, but difficult to
alter those later. Requests for changes create lots of work. Lorne Connell
created a new tool with much more flexibility, saving many days of work.
We already use our own course roster tool. Using MCL does not take us
further away from a “vanilla” system, or add significant risk on upgrades.
c. System timeout – Investigating lowering the inactivity timeout to 90
minutes. ANGEL Learning has advised us that 120 is high and may be the
cause of our web server (IIS) restarts that disconnect people logged onto
the server. Looking at what happens with quizzes that take over 1.5 hours.
d. Library e-reserves and upgrade – Apparently e-reserves ‘broke’ during the
last upgrade. We need to make sure we keep the Library folks in the loop.
5. Support
a. Still down one LT3 Faculty Liaison (Engineering)
b. David Hinton of IST’s Computer Systems and Services group will be
Lorne Connell’s backup. Great comfort, since Lorne is the key architect
for the UW-ACE technologies. Welcome Dave!
6. UW-ACE Community Groups
a. WHMIS has been a very successful and well run program in UW-ACE,
with great local support in the Safety Office through Doug Dye. We met
with the SO to discuss expanding their use to other courses. This is a
beneficial non-academic course use of UW-ACE, and they are a model of
how cooperative support works.
b. CECS’s eManual continues to grow, up to 5600 in the roster. This creates
performance problems for it and the system. Need a removal plan.
7. UW-ACE survey – Andrea, and Vivian Schoner and Gail Spencer of LRI/CTE
on UW-ACE surveys of students and faculty to be run in mid March. Technology
and pedagogical questions will overlap between the student and faculty surveys.
Andrea will look for professors who can preview the faculty survey. Bryan did a
fine job last time and she’s sure he’ll be keen to help again.
Summary for 2 February 2007 [Previous update by email, 14 September 2006]
1. Growth – over 21,000 students in courses in UW-ACE in F06 and W07,
averaging over 3 courses each.
Term
Winter 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006
Winter 2006
Fall 2005
Spring 2005
Winter 2005
# Campus
# DE
courses courses
734
81
664
62
256
48
571
59
475
51
Total
courses
815
726
304
630
526
128
318
Total course
offerings
2743
2784
1458
2784
2795
1516
2821
Percentage of total
course offerings
30 %
26 %
21 %
23 %
19 %
8%
11 %
Fall 2004
222
Estimate 2780
8%
2. Infrastructure
a. Removing inactive users from UW-ACE – See discussion at the following
URL. We would like to implement this process, after your feedback.
http://ist/~chappell/projects/angel/infrastructure/no_longer_valid.html
Email update 14 September 2006 [Previous update was 23 June 2006]
-------- Original Message -------Subject: [UW-ACE] update on UW-ACE for fall 2006
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:58:36 -0400
From: Andrea Chappell <chappell@ist.uwaterloo.ca>
To: uw-ace@lists.uwaterloo.ca
Hello everyone,
Here we are well into the first week of using the new version (v7.1) of ANGEL on UWACE. It has not been without bumps, including a performance problem earlier this week,
and there have been lots and lots of calls to our fabulous support team in IST, LT3 (hiring
soon into open Liaison positions!), and DE. However, things are going along pretty well.
One thing to recall is that v7.1 is fairly new (released in April) and there are lots of
changes, especially since we skipped the interim release, v6.3. Most of the big schools
have not moved to v7.1. However, our move to it this fall was necessary. We couldn't
move to the interim v6.3 because of our custom "bolt-ons" for the "replicator", yet v6.2
was out of the support window as of June. As a consequence we are probably going to
experience the growing pains of a new and significantly changed system, but it was a
move we had to make.
Given that, as I said, I think things are going along well.
Another part of this fall's UW-ACE line-up is the new Dell "dual core", dual processor
database server, a much faster system than we had in the summer.
Despite this upgraded addition to the hardware, we experienced significant slowness
early in the week, and it was our sparkling new database server that was taking the hit!
Lorne and Sean worked with ANGEL Learning Inc., and a fix was put in place on
Wednesday afternoon (yesterday). This seems to have fixed the problem. We will
continue to monitor how well the system performs in general.
Load:
We have had peaks of over 2450 simultaneous logins, which is higher than we'd reported
in the winter 2006 term.
Courses:
We have, as of this morning, 637 courses on UW-ACE, 61 of which are DE courses. For
comparison, we had 525 in F05, and 630 in W06. We expect the numbers to grow a bit
over the next week or so. I'll get the total number of offerings in order to determine the
percentages, and I'll send that report in a week or so.
That's it for now, except for a huge thanks and appreciation for the support team
members who are doing a tremendous job during this stressful first week of the fall term.
Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or comments!
Thanks,
Andrea
_______________________________________________
UW-ACE mailing list
UW-ACE@lists.uwaterloo.ca
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/uw-ace
Summary for 23 June 2006 [Previous update was 17 March 2006]
1. ANGEL V7.1 upgrade planning
 http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/upgrades/v62_to_v71.html
2. Common Look and Feel and V7.1
 http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/upgrades/v71_clf.html
3. ePortfolios (Liwana Bringelson)
4. Society of Management Accountants - Proposed use of UW-ACE via
Continuing Education (Cathy Newell Kelly)
Summary for 17 March 2006 [last summary was 28 October 2005]
1. ANGEL V7.1 upgrade – We will not install ANGEL V7.1 for the Spring (May
- August) term. Instead, we will upgrade at the end of August.
Beta received on 6 March. Tested “stock” install on the 10th and 13th. Upgrade
of V6.2+ to V6.3 (including a copy of the current course data) successful on
14th. Final release due on 4 April.
A Spring upgrade is preferable because it is a lighter term. However, the timing
of this release is not good, especially for DE, and with problems revealed in the
Beta testing. All in all, the upgrade is too risky, potentially damaging the trust
now established. Upgrading in August gives us the summer to test and provide
information, courses, help sessions, and properly prepare for the changes. Also,
gives ALI time to fix problems that always occur in a new release.
Primary issues for decision to postpone:




Numerous interface changes for students and faculty to learn. Also,
significant Gradebook changes that would be used very soon after.
Local “Quest-ready” final grades export no longer works (likely can
resolve with ALI, but need time).
Significant bugs revealed in testing the Beta, including problems with DE
style sheets.
Difficulty with the upgrade (good exercise, but lowered confidence).
2. Growth – Doubled since last Winter term
 “UW offerings” count the enrolment or primary sections for courses.
Numbers include potential offerings; up to 10% may be cancelled.
 Both on-campus and distance education courses offerings are included.
Winter 2006 – 22% (with over 18,000 students)
 UW-ACE: 627 (568 campus, 59 DE) (22%)
 UW offerings: 2784 (for 1947 different courses)
Fall 2005 – 18% - 508 of 2795
Spring 2005 – 8% - 128 of 1516
Winter 2005 – 11% - 318 of 2821
3. UW-ACE systems – capacity and disaster planning
 Status at last report (October):
i.
3 front end web servers.
ii.
Data on a shared file server (NetApps).
iii. Database server software upgraded to “Enterprise” to allow more
memory allocation, improving performance.
 Changes since October:
i.
Database server was upgraded to as good as can get in its class of
machine, and changes were made to use more memory.
ii.
Database performance issue prompted us to change “What’s
New” setting to no longer “hide” unhidden files under hidden
content directories. (Clear as mud? I’ll explain in person.)
iii. Backup database server machine arrived. Installed as another
front end web server, to be switched out as backup if needed.
iv.
Now 4 front end web servers.
 Next stages: Capacity seems fine; disaster planning continues.
i.
End of April split of systems across two machine rooms (IST and
Physics/SHARCnet).
ii.
Move database file to shared file server (NetApps) to allow faster
recovery if database server failed.
 Spikes of over 2100 concurrent active sessions.
4. Instructor survey – plans for Fall 2006 (mid November) in conjunction with a
student survey run by Vivian Schoner of LRI. Feedback on the environment,
support, system performance, use of features, etc., and align some with the
student survey. Collaborate with DE and LT3 (and Library?) on questions.
5. Other topics
 Accessibility – set up a course for Office of Persons with Disabilities in
order to look at UW-ACE for accessibility. Will provide them with access
to V7.1 once it is stable.
 Changes in course procedures
i.
End of term disabling of students in courses – by default students
from previous term are disabled in the course on first day of the
next term. A tool was created to allow instructors to extend
course end date to end of next month after term end. Automated
messages Jan after that day to disable students in those courses.
ii.
Deleting old courses - removed courses that were 4 terms (and
older). Jan sent notices to all instructors; received two requests
after the fact to reinstate a course that was removed.
 Non-academic course use of ACE.
i.
Career Services use and issues with alumni.
ii.
Optometry pilot use and new request.
 ANGEL conference in May. UW will present on Replicator (to make
others aware of it so they might use it too).


Past items with not much progress yet:
1. Library integration (Liwana Bringelson) – Set up a meeting with
Mark Haslett, including Cathy Newell-Kelly, Andrea Chappell.
2. Plagiarism (Liwana Bringelson) – Check with Bruce Mitchell on
some things he is coordinating.
3. Math (Sean Warren, IST) – Work with Jan Willwerth (IST), Sean
Scott (Stats), Paul Kates (LT3 Math Liaison), Barb Forrest
(Math).
4. Languages and character sets (Andrew Ward, DE) – Define
needs, working with Dave Bean (LT3).
Future items
i.
When to begin a review process of use of ANGEL (3 years in
May 2007). Fall instructor survey can be part of the input, so
should gear some questions to that.
ii.
UW-ACE team “meet and greet” with SC? In addition, what
might be the work-related theme of the gathering? Perhaps
towards the review process (as above).
Summary for 28 October 2005
6. Upgrade of UW-ACE systems to address performance issues
 Moved to 3 front end web servers in two short down times (Oct 4th, 6th).
 The backend database server machine was not upgraded, though software
was upgraded to “Enterprise” edition (~$5000). Performing well, but
larger machine on order.


Performance issues seem to be resolved. New highest spike of 2075
concurrent active sessions on Monday Oct 24th.
More capacity planning and disaster recovery configs in a future meeting.
7. Input to growth planning. What growth might we expect and how well are we
equipped to deal with it? One measure of growth potential is the total numbers
of courses offered. Thanks to Derek Kirkland for getting the data below. Please
note:
 “UW offerings” counts the classes that are designated as the enrolment or
primary sections for courses. E.g., there may be 8 lecture sections to a
course, each taught by a different instructor. These 8 would count as 8
offerings. This is a reasonable measure for UW-ACE as each of those
professors may wish to have a different course created.
 Both on-campus and distance education courses offerings are included.
 The total numbers include potential offerings, though some may have
been subsequently cancelled or closed (roughly 10% of offerings).
Fall 2005
 UW-ACE: 508 (18%)
 UW offerings: 2795 class offerings for 1812 different courses
i.
Undergraduate: 2295 class offerings for 1436 different courses
ii.
Graduate: 500 class offerings for 385 different courses
Spring 2005
 UW-ACE: 128 (8%)
 UW offerings: 1516
o Undergraduate: 1217 class offerings
o Graduate: 299 class offerings
Winter 2005
 UW-ACE: 318 (11%)
 UW offerings: 2821
o Undergraduate: 2279 class offerings
o Graduate: 542 class offerings
8. Non-academic course use of ACE.
 Career Services use and issues.
 Optometry pilot use and issues.
 Overall statement and condoned uses.
9.
“Considerations for 6 Month Horizon”
A list of ACE related items was compiled for the Steering Committee to review
for possible directions over the next 6 months.
 It was agreed that we would submit to ALI the “General ANGEL
Improvements” items. Those have been submitted, but only as of 27
October 2005.


As part of the general items above we provided feedback on fixes and
features for our three extensions: CD Export, Replicator, and Team
Generator. That was also done 27 October 2005.
As a result of a UW-ACE “ops” team meeting on 11 October 2005, we
determined first steps for other items in the horizon list and assigned
names. Due to lots of other work on the go, not much progress has been
made!
i.
Library integration (Liwana Bringelson) – Set up a meeting with
Mark Haslett, including Cathy Newell-Kelly, Andrea Chappell.
ii.
Plagiarism (Liwana Bringelson) – Check with Bruce Mitchell on
some things he is coordinating.
iii. Math (Sean Warren, IST) – Work with Jan Willwerth (IST),
Sean Scott (Stats), Paul Kates (LT3 Math Liaison), Barb Forrest
(Math) and others on options.
iv.
Languages and character sets (Andrew Ward, DE) – Define
needs, working with Dave Bean (LT3).
Summary for 30 September 2005
10. Fall 2005 term stats (as of 28 September 2005)
 508 courses in total (50 DE and 458 campus)
 Distance Education students – 2886 (3421 enrollments)
 On campus students – 17,820 (46,467 enrollments)
 Course breakdown:
i.
Distance Education courses – 50:
 AHS – 1, ARTS – 36, MATH – 3, SCI – 10
ii.
On campus courses – 458:
 AHS – 34, ARTS – 186 (7 Grebel, 4 St. J., 21 Renison),
ENG – 72, ENV – 30, MATH – 60, SCI – 74, Other
(VPA?) – 2
 Past numbers:
i.
S05: DE – 3, on campus – 125 ; 5573 students
ii.
W05: DE – 2, on campus – 316; 12,759 students
iii. F04: DE – 4, on campus – 218; 12,200 students
11. Performance issues
 Spikes of active sessions over 1750 (spikes of ~975 at the start of W05).
 Slowness and restarts. Web server (IIS/ANGEL) restarts kick everyone off
every few hours during peak loads.
 Suspected memory leak problem; 2G more added on September 20th (to
total of 4G). Problems continue.
 Plan to move to two front end web servers, with shared disk space.
Requires two short interruptions (first 2-3 hours, other of ½ hour). This
configuration was tested before term start.
 Keeping DE and the Liaisons in the loop. Announcements will be made on
ACE soon. Hope to perform the upgrades in the week of October 3rd.
12. Extensions
 CD Export used by DE for CD creation this term; Replicator key to DE.

Meeting on October 7th to compile issues with Team Generator,
Replicator, and CD Export, for submission to ALI.
 Concern that ALI is backing away from Replicator being moved into
standard ANGEL codebase.
13. Upgrade planning
 ALI moving to once per year upgrades; UW pressuring for early release,
preferably February for beta (and “good” beta!).
 UW will move from current ANGEL V6.2 to spring release (V6.4?) for
May1, 2006 (skipping V6.3 which was released in April 2005).
i.
DE CD Export concerns. DE creates CDs in March 2006 for use
in S06. Those CDs will be cut in our current environment, but
will need to work with the new version running by May 1, 2006.
ii.
We have stressed to ALI, notifying them that we want an early
release as possible, and that testing MUST be done for CD
Export between versions V6.2 (our current) and the new version.
 ALI indicated in a phone conference that they were backing away from
their promise to integrate Replicator fully into their standard codebase. We
have impressed upon them that this is a big problem, and have continued
to pressure them about our need to have Replicator integrated into the
spring release.
14. Some recent local changes:
 Tool to export final marks from ANGEL in a format for import to
PeopleSoft/Quest’s new upload.
 Ability for instructor to activate/deactivate all students in a course to
override our default of activation on the first day of classes.
 Ability for DE to print all uploaded assignments to their department
printer.
 Ability for DE to provide access through ACE to their “Vera” phonebased assignment and feedback system.
15. Other topics:
1. “Considerations for 6 Month Horizon” (separate information provided to the
meeting). A list of ACE related items compiled for the Steering Committee to
review for possible directions over the next 6 months.
2. Non-academic course use of ACE (separate information provided to the
meeting).
i.
Overall statement and condoned uses.
ii.
Career Services use and issues.
Summary for 6 May 2005
E-portfolios presentation and discussion (Liwana and others)
1. Spring term stats (as of 2 May 2005): 123 courses; 4724 students; 8588
enrollments (each student may be enrolled in more than one course). [Note: I
emailed IAP on 2 May 2005 to ask for the number of courses offered each term,
by Faculty/Department if possible, so that we can use this as a measure of our
2.
3.
4.
5.
uptake percentages. I meant to do so ages ago! I’ll bring let you know the answer
after they reply to my request.]
Upgrade (notes on upgrade sent by email to committee members on 25 April
2005)
Extensions
 Both CD Export and Replicator were installed as “bolt-on” items during
the upgrade. Primarily for testing and CD creation by DE this term.
 Some feedback sent to ANGEL Learning about the CD Export which we
just received two days before the upgrade.
“Data integration” with PeopleSoft applications (ongoing from last report)
 For student roster information, need to determine what additional fields
we want, and how to get an extract with those fields. For example,
withdrawal status.
 For export of final marks from ANGEL to PeopleSoft/Quest, need to work
with SISP people now that their upgrade is completed.
Math notation in ANGEL
 Sean Warren of IST looked at Respondus, a tool to allow off-line creation
of ANGEL quizzes. It provides some additional math notation capability
(for quiz creation only, not for student responses). He has solicited
feedback from the Liaisons, Barb Forrest in Math, Sean Scott in Stats,
Jane Recoskie of DE, etc.
 We plan to hold a session for instructors on math notation and
workarounds to share options and elicit more feedback. No specific date
set yet, but possibly late May or early June.
Summary for 18 March 2005
1. Math notation in ANGEL
 What is available? Math notation editor in the HTML editor (HTML page
creation, discussion areas, quizzes), available to professors and students.

Solicited feedback (Barb Forrest in Math, Sean Scott in Stats, Paul Kates
of LT3) – Math notation is suitable for basic requirements. For more
advanced needs some use LaTeX converted to postscript or PDF, from
which math “images” are cut and pasted. Paul Kates has used LaTeX
directly in HTML editor, pulling in a translator (not widely used,
complicated).
 Next steps: A session for instructors on math notation and shared
workarounds, and/or a feedback survey (standalone or part of a general
faculty feedback survey) to elicit more feedback.
2. Non-academic Course Use of UW-ACE
 We have frozen “other” uses until the conclusion of the IST-sponsored
UW Web Collaboration Software Project
(http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/webcollaboration/).
 Reasons: We are hitting issues with respect to the number, scope, and
unknowns of some requests. We are not ready to support them, and need
to more specifically identify the types to take on, under what conditions.
 Example requests are CECS’s online activities around their Career
Development Manual, and Accountancy and Optometry (at least) would
like to have year/stream courses or groups for communications purposes.
 Next steps: Meeting within IST on Monday March 21st to discuss support
issues and models. I have asked for a meeting with CECS project people
to discuss the boundaries of their project and its related use of UW-ACE.
3. ACE Look and Feel (results of meeting and work by the ACE InYourFace group)
 Current UW-ACE site: http://uwace.uwaterloo.ca
 Proposed changes:
i.
Move menu items from middle of page to left hand side.
ii.
Remove term image from left hand side (e.g., "Winter 05").
iii. Create new banner image (not done yet) incorporating term (e.g.,
“Winter 05”) at top of image (because course tabs hide lower
part of banner). Note that the banner appears only in courses
which have not set their own theme.
iv.
Rough take on changes:
https://uwangeldev.uwaterloo.ca/uwangeldev61/frameIndex.htm
 Non-adherence issues:
i.
Note: L&F only applies to the UW-ACE login page, no other
“levels” (i.e., not once logged in).
ii.
UW logo not at top – would be partially hidden by course tabs
after login page (if course doesn’t have own theme).
iii. Search – external search does not make much sense in UW-ACE,
and not sure we could change it anyway.
iv.
Collage – not recommended size as that is not possible in
ANGEL application.
v.
Campaign Waterloo – We would add this under protest . We
do not feel students are the target of this campaign.
 Next step: Take to UW Web Steering Committee for discussion of general
issues for L&F embedded in applications.
4. Other UW-ACE Activities
 Update on current extensions
i.
Replicator – final expected delivery arrived. UW testing.
ii.
CD Export – next on the list to do, with expectation of it
completed by the end of March.
iii. Have asked for a schedule from ANGEL Learning on how and
when the Replicator and CD Export will be integrated into their
general release.
iv.
Timelines are getting tight for planning upgrades to take us to
the fall term. Prefer to install in May what we will run in fall so
that we can use it first in a lighter term. Also, we need to have
Replicator and the CD-export available for DE in the summer to
build their courses for the fall delivery.
 DE integration planning
i.
Tied to the Replicator and CD Export.
ii.
Cathy Kelly, Andrew Ward, and Andrea met in January to
discuss DE support model, including common support areas, and
DE specific ones.
iii. Next steps: Meeting within IST to discuss support within Client
Services, followed by meetings with DE.
 “Data integration” with PeopleSoft applications
i.
For student roster information, need to determine what additional
fields we want, and how to get an extract with those fields. For
example, withdrawal status.
ii.
For export of final marks from ANGEL to PeopleSoft/Quest,
need to work with SISP people now that their upgrade is
completed. Also, have passed along to ANGEL comments on
ANGEL issues, in particular export fields (no Student ID,
inability to select specific fields).
Summary for 25 February 2005
5. Updated stats for Winter 2005 – up 20 courses from January report
 313 campus courses, with 12,691 students.
 10 DE courses with 548 students.
 Spikes of active sessions reaching 975.
6. ACE Look and Feel (ACE InYourFace)
 Need to revisit for new Common Look and Feel guidelines.
 Plan to present at next Steering Committee.
7. Update on extensions
 UW team reviewed Replicator to date, and also the Team Generator tool
delivered in the V6.2 release last fall (met Jan. 27th, sent to ANGEL
Learning Feb. 15th).
 Team Generator feedback will be “added to the list.”
 Replicator – requested update on Feb. 22nd because of slipping schedule
i.
16-20 hours left on the Replicator, to be finished by March 4th.
ii.
Replicator will be over the number of hours estimated.
iii. Feedback to go into the current development cycle.
 CD Export is scheduled for the delivery by the end of March.
8. UW-ACE and Math
 Asked Jan and Sean to provide information for a report. Plan to present at
next Steering Committee.
i.
Overview of what is available in ANGEL, feedback from client
groups (Math, CS, Eng, others).
ii.
What are the shortcomings? Existing workarounds or solutions?
iii. Recommendations?
9. UW-ACE activities – planning priorities
 Feb 9th meeting to collect all activities and who is working on them. The
project web page (see top of this page) will be updated to reflect all.
 Next step is to look at priorities and the structure to make sure things
move forward. Items will come forward to the Steering Committee from
this process.
Summary for 21 January 2005
1. Stats for Winter 2005
 295 campus courses, with 12,532 students; 3 DE courses with 111
students
i.
37% increase in number of courses from Fall 2004 (218 courses)
ii.
number of students increased by 4% from Fall 2004
iii. major move of DE courses into UW-ACE planned for Fall 2005
2. Submissions to ANGEL User Conference (June 2, 3 at Indiana University-Purdue
University Indianapolis)
 Enhancements for University of Waterloo’s ANGEL
 Backup, Recovery, and Redundancy (a panel session)
 UW’s instructional design gateway to ANGEL
3.
4.
5.
6.
 Supporting reuse of instructional designs and Content
 Dealing with the many forms of feedback in ANGEL
ACE Look and Feel (InYourFace items) moved into place for W05
 Thanks to the very fun team of Scott Anderson, Dave Bean, Liwana
Bringelson, Lorne Connell, Cathy Kelly, Alan Kirker, Leslie Richards, Jan
Willwerth.
 Special kudos to Alan Kirker for his designs!
Update on extensions
 Replicator 2nd delivery is here.
 CD Export can’t go ahead until Replicator completed.
 Upcoming meeting to review Replicator to date, and also the Team
Generator tool delivered in the V6.2 release last fall.
Other (added after agenda circulated)
 Sean Warren has joined the IST UW-ACE team as the second support
person. He will work half time on user support with Jan Willwerth, and
the other half on systems support with Lorne Connell. We very much
value his skills, especially his knowledge of DE issues!
Update on LT3 Exploration (Liwana)
Summary for 10 December 2004
1. ACE "InYourFace" update
 A link showing the group’s proposed login page look and feel, and
recommended links, for discussion.
http://lt3.uwaterloo.ca/angel_login/scr3d.html
 A link to discussion about the group’s decisions:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/interface_group/meetings.
html
2. Redundancy of UW-ACE computer systems - some scenarios under investigation
3. User's Group inaugural event - summary
 Liwana, Jan, Andrea presentations
 Joe Sanderson (Biology)
 James Skidmore (Ger & Slavic)
 Discussion and issues
4. UW-ACE and final marks submissions - planning
5. Support model - questions for AD,Cs to consider; second IST position
6. UW Web Collaboration Project update - UW-ACE usage recommendations (from
Draft final report)
 See the first six (6) pages of the project report:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/webcollaboration/Webcollabreport.pdf
Summary for 12 November 2004
1. User support
 Job description written for 2nd support person is written and will be
advertised. Covers assistance to Jan and Lorne.

Faculty consulting offices – contacting AD,Cs to determine current
support, and discuss any changes.
2. System support
 Replicator – Coding by CLL began 1 November, expecting staged
delivery on 15th, 3rd Dec, 17th Dec, and final on 7th January.
 CD Export – response to CLL Service Order being handled by Dave Bean
(LT3). Expect to finalize soon.
o Checklist for options on export, e.g., what to do with hidden and
password protected materials;
o Forcing a link to server for some “dynamic” materials.
 Backup/recover/redundancy plans – “Gold” coverage for servers; asked
Mike B. for meeting to look at possible paths.
 Integration with PS/SA data – met with Mark Walker, Dave M., Derek,
Joanne Voisin on Oct. 28th.
 Investigating integrating Library reserves (Penn State has done, Bill
Oldfield is keen to work with me on it).
3. Steering issues
 Two meetings of the UW-ACE “Interfaces” Group (informally called “In
Your Faces” Group) on Thursday. See issues being discussed at


http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/interface_group/issues.html
UW-ACE Student Survey, Faculty Survey – planning for running later in
November (Rob Gorbet and Rohan Jayasundera involved in Student, with
Vivian Schoner, LT3).
Non-course usage (Web Collaborations project) – identify support needs,
and document issue of not interfering with course usage.
4. Other
 Presentation to Dean’s Advisory Council (Math) on October 28th
(Andrea).
 Presentation to Chairs’ Forum on November 23rd (Alan, Tom, Andrea).
Summary for 15 October 2004
1. User support
o Need assistance and backup for Jan (UW-ACE Training and Support
Coordinator) and Lorne (Computer Systems Integration member).
o Faculty consultants – still need to arrange meetings/calls with AD,Cs.
2. System Support
o Total cost for UWone extensions: $29,000 USD
 Random Team Generator feature ("Team Wizard"): 65 hrs @ $200
USD/hr = $13,000 USD
 Team "Replicator": 60 hrs @ $200 USD/hr = $12,000 USD
 "CD export": 20 hrs @ $200 USD/hr = $4000 USD
o Replicator – response to CLL Service Order sent 13 October 2004. Expect
delivery end of November.
o CD Export – can no go ahead (dependent on Replicator). No dates yet.
o Other issues to resolve for project wrap-up:
 Determine and document regular production processes,
 Plan further integration to student system,
 Disaster recovery plan (backups, redundancies, recovery, etc.).
3. “Steering” issues
o Use for non-academic courses and groups – running 4 or 5 pilots to
determine support issues in using UW-ACE for other uses (candidate in
the UW Web Collaboration Tools project). See
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/support/non_course_use/f2004_pilots.html
o DE integration meetings (Cathy, Liwana, Andrea).
 Timelines for DE adoption (replicator/CD export, and UWone
migration dependencies), course registration & enrolment and
other issues for process, support and documentation models.
o Feedback mechanisms, e.g., surveys –correlating faculty survey with
Vivian Schoner’s (LT3) student survey questions.
o Other issues to resolve for project wrap-up:
 “Interfaces” group report
 Ongoing leader/driver for UW-ACE arch., extensions, etc.
Summary for 17 September 2004
1. Fall 2004 updates
a) Course statistics
 UW-ACE houses 190 courses and over 11,400 unique students for fall 2004
(as of 13 September). There are over 21,700 enrolments (students may be
enrolled in more than one course).
 In fall 2003 UW had approximately 19,000 students (numbers not yet
available for fall 2004), and ?? courses.
Faculty /
School
Distance Ed.
ART
SCI
Campus
AHS
ART
CGC
ENG
ENV
MAT
REN
SCI
STJ
VPA (CBET)
# Courses
2
1
1
188
19
64
2
10
23
13
3
42
1
11
# Students
99
30
69
11,381
1292
3902
126
771
1159
1641
83
4835
71
125
# Enrolments
99
30
69
21,733
2019
4771
129
858
1625
2573
94
9306
71
287
b) Support updates
 Jan Willwerth (IST) offered group training sessions for instructors using
UW-ACE, and also for IST and Faculty support staff who may want to learn
more about UW-ACE for queries that may come to their help desks
 Liwana Bringelson has assigned 40% of Peter Goldsworthy’s time (LT3) as
an extra support person for assistance at the start of the fall term.
 ANGEL was upgraded from V6.0 to V6.1 on August 16th.
2. Functionality Extensions (Teams and CD Export)
a) Team functionality extension
 Review of the team extensions that CLL is building: The Random Team
Generator (was named Team Wizard) facilitates breaking the class into
teams of requested sizes; the Replicator rapidly creates resources for sets of
teams (discussion areas, drop boxes, etc.).
 Random Team Generator – The first cut of tool was delivered in early
August. We gave CLL feedback on the interface (esp. scrolling) and a few
bugs; will be rolled into next ANGEL version, V6.2, due end of October.
 Team Resource “Replicator”
o Confirmed it will be rolled into standard distribution, but will not be
in the V6.2 at the end of October.
o Key functionality issues remain: replicated resource updates will not
be reported in the “What’s New” tool, a significant problem for
instructors and students.
o The “CD Export” (critical to DE) depends upon the Replicator.
o New estimate for Replicator is 60 hours (was originally 35 hours; an
improved design brought it to 45 – 50; recent review brought to 60).
b) Course “export” to CD extension (for DE and other use)
CD “Export” – confirmed it will be rolled into standard release (April 2005);
likely could deliver to UW for mid November; very low risk to tack on between
releases. We now have information on the direction and costs (for CLL to build)
to bring to the Steering Committee.
c) Timelines for implementing extensions into UW-ACE
 ANGEL V6.2 release from CLL, including Random Team Generator – end
of October 2004 (CLL timeline).
 ANGEL V6.2+, including Random Team Generator + Replicator and CD
Export “patches” – run in test mode on the UW-ACE Exploration server
(LT3) in W2005.
 ANGEL V6.2+ (or the April version release of ANGEL) will run on
Enterprise in S2005. DE can export courses to CD for fall courses.
3. Important processes for UW-ACE
We will regularize recurring UW-ACE course administration processes. The
following are examples. Others will be documented as we resolve them. See
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/processes.html to track them.
 Next term courses
 As next term courses are created, the students will be created as
“disabled” in the roster. They will not be able to access the course until
they are enabled. This is to prevent course materials that are still being
developed from being inadvertently revealed to students.
 A few days before the start of term the rosters will be enabled. For
F2004 this was Friday, 10 September 2004 (for class start on 13
September 2004).
 Current term archives
 The archive captures the course contents and all student data. It is kept
in the event that we need to retrieve the course, for example for a
student appeal that required reviewing student submissions to a course.
 Process: Disable all accounts in S2004 courses, except Instructors and
Liaisons, in advance of archiving S2004 courses. For archiving S2004
courses the accounts were disabled on Tuesday, 7 September 2004.
Course extensions may need to be accommodated.
 Version changes on the UW-ACE Enterprise system will likely occur in April
and or August. December is not suitable due to the limited window between
fall and winter terms (considering the one-week UW shutdown).
4. Use of UW-ACE for purposes other than academic courses
CECS, the Engineering student group Formula SAE, and other groups have
approached us about using UW-ACE for groups and collaborations which are not
academic courses. We have a couple pilots running in UW-ACE to try to better
understand the needs of these groups, and also determine support requirements.
Populating the courses/groups and maintaining non-UWdir accounts are key support
issues to resolve. UW-ACE is considered a candidate for IST support in the recent
IST project, UW Web Collaboration Project
(http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/webcollaboration/), and the decision to support it now rests
in this project. However, we will also look for guidance and input from the Steering
Committee on issues to consider.
5. Faculty Survey results
A survey was created in UW-ACE, and on 8 July 2004 Course Editors within UWACE (including the 30 instructors of pilot courses, and other testers) were invited to
participate. We were looking for feedback in order to prepare for the fall term, in
terms of support and usage. 18 responded. Find the survey results here:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/support/surveys/s04_instructor_summ
ary.html
6. “Interface” group topics
An informal group called the Interface Group met to discuss some topics related to
the UW-ACE entry page and the system defaults. Issues such as the following were
discussed: what links should appear on the entry page, whether Show Map should be
set on or off for courses by default, what announcements should go on the entry
pages. The group will meet again to collect some recommendations, which will be
brought forward to the Steering Committee.
Summary for 22 July 2004
1. The Fall 2004 UW-ACE Course Registration announcement
 The announcement to invite faculty members to register fall 2004 courses in
UW-ACE went in the Bulletin on Thursday, 22 July 2004. The Liaisons will
also distribute the message within the Faculties.
2. UW-ACE Training sessions – FACCUS and various IST members invited
 Jan has advertised the UW-ACE sessions to FACCUS (Faculty computing
users group) and various groups and individuals in IST to make sure support
people are aware of ANGEL, and to give them an opportunity to see and try it
in action.
3. Team functionality extension
 Team Wizard (random team generator) – On July 9th CLL sent prototype
images for UW to review. UW responded with questions and comments on
July 16th. CLL has replied to those. The UW team needs to meet to finalize
these last issues. The deadline to “sign off” on the Wizard, the 25th, will be
missed by a couple or few days.
 Resource Replicator (replicating quizzes, discussion areas, etc., for each of
numerous teams) – The Replicator has changed in concept from the initial
specification from CLL. It now more closely matches other functionality,
which is of benefit. In its previous model, CLL did not see rolling into the
base product. In its more recent form, that seems much more likely. However,
there are issues to resolve, the question of rolling into the product being one.
4. Survey of Pilot course editors
 The survey was sent to all course editors in UW-ACE, about 100 people.
However, with 30 courses running, the number of actual instructors using the
system is more like 30. We received 15 responses. Results will be sent to the
Steering Committee, the UW-ACE Project group, the UW-ACE course
editors, and others.
Summary for 9 July 2004
1. The feedback survey
 The feedback survey was (finally) made available on July 8th 2004, later than
intended, updated based on comments from the UW-ACE SC, the Liaisons,
and others. An end-of-term follow-up survey will not be sent as originally
planned. Instead, participants will be invited to give additional feedback when
the survey results are provided to them (week of July 19th).
2. UW-ACE training sessions – regularly held by Jan Willwerth
 May course registrations: Overview (20 participants), Gradebook (13), Quiz
(15)
 July course registrations (upcoming): Overview (16, waiting list of 6), Quiz
(8), Gradebook (10)
 August course registrations (upcoming): Overview (8), Quiz (6), Gradebook
(4)
3. Preparing for Fall 2004
 The proposed announcement for fall course registration
o It was circulated to the Liaisons, the UW-ACE Project team, and IST,
DE and LT3 members involved in UW-ACE. After their feedback it
was sent to the UW-ACE SC for discussion today (July 9th).
o Capping was not mentioned directly in the proposal, but there is a
“hedge” inserted by saying that the number of courses may need to be
limited in fall 2004, as an interim period to the “grand opening” in
winter 2005.
o Looking for wording on the participation of “some” Faculty consulting
offices!
 The course registration form (to request a course for fall 2004)
o It will be made available in conjunction with the announcement. The
form requires the professor to simply login using the UWdir/Quest
username and password. It shows the courses listed as taught by that
professor, and also “held with” courses.
o The existing data for the form is a month old. We hope to have
updated data Monday. Subsequently we hope to have it weekly.
o Instructors not finding their courses via the form will be directed to
send an email to uwacehelp@ist.uwaterloo.ca
4. Team functionality
 Contract with CLL to build the Team Wizard was signed and sent on 30 June
2004, on the timeline.
 The missing component from the previous CLL Service Order, i.e. the
“Replicator,” is now included in a separate Service Order. Including this
component in our contract, we are still within the original estimate proposed
by CLL. The Replicator was separated so that the Wizard could proceed on
schedule while details are worked out for the Replicator.
 The UW team will finalize the details on the Replicator with CLL next week
(of the 12th).
Summary for 11 June 2004
1. The pilot
 The instructors teaching the 27 courses now hosted in UW-ACE for S2004
will be surveyed for feedback. The survey should be made available later
today, or by Monday at the latest. (Survey circulated in hard copy at the UWACE Steering Committee meeting.)
 More UW-ACE training sessions have been held by Jan Willwerth.
Gradebook was very well attended.
2. Preparing for Fall 2004
 ANGEL: The current version of ANGEL for UW-ACE is V6.0. Lorne
Connell is planning the upgrade to V6.1 at the end of the S2004 exam period.
 Course registration: Form is almost ready for release.
 Capping?: Question of necessity for any course number “capping” has been
discussed with support team, but remains a bit of an unknown. Information:
UWone migration courses (to UW-ACE) and courses running in UWone will
consume some of the Liaison time. The UW-ACE course support for the
pilots does not seem to be overwhelming. Arts may be an area where more
support could be applied to prevent support problems.
 Campus announcement: May co-ordinate a UW-ACE advertising “splash”
around the same time as the UWone/Task Users group meeting on 23rd.
 Non-course related use of UW-ACE is becoming a topic of some interest.
3. Status of Team functionality extension
 Received CLL specifications on 8 June. (Hard copy circulated at SC
meeting.) UW group met 9 June. Drafting response to CLL for June 14th.
 Issues for response: Spec is missing the “Replicate Team resources,” need to
clarify the “balance teams” interface, and check a few other items.
 Timelines (some potential to move final delivery earlier):
o June 30 – final response from UW (hope to do earlier)
o July 12th – prototype from CLL
o July 25th – UW finalizes changes to prototype
o Aug 9th – CLL delivers final product to UW
4. Migration planning to June 9th (provided by Liwana)
 UW-ACE-Exploration server is installed and running Angel 6.1.
 Two co-op students have been hired for Spring 2004. They have been
familiarizing themselves with the system and migration process (testing and
validating the migration process, and migrating and testing courses).
 LT3 Faculty Liaisons were consulted to identify courses (and versions) to be
migrated; these selections were verified with the faculty members.
 Migration begins Thursday June 10th. Courses will be migrated in the
following priority, with the goal to migrate all Level 1 courses by the end of
Spring 04:
a) Level 1 courses to be offered in Fall 2004.
b) Level 1 courses to be offered in subsequent terms.
 Note: No DCE courses will be migrated until the Export functionality is
available in UW-ACE.

Jan Willwerth and the Liaisons are aware of training issues for UW-ACE
users who have migrated courses from UWone
5. Disaster recovery planning
First meeting held with Lorne Connell and Mike Borkowski. Items to pursue: Dell
“service level agreements” for various response times, cost and viability of
redundant systems, statement of expectation for recovery in cases of “oops” to
disaster. Various scenarios to follow in a couple weeks.
6. Other:
PDEng program – Andrea met with the new director (Professor Carolyn
MacGregor) and group to talk about UW-ACE. More discussion to follow with
this group.
Summary for 20 May 2004 (sent as text via email)
We proposed May 28th as the next meeting. However, a number of people will be away,
and I have heard that another committee, which includes some of you, would like to have
a meeting on the 28th. Here is an update by email for now. I think that unless you hear
differently by noon Tuesday the 25th we should assume the UW-ACE SC meeting is
postponed.
1. The pilot
There are now 25 courses with about 2000 students, a good number for a test.
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/pilots.html
Next step: survey participants to obtain feedback on experiences (objectives, startup, training, documentation, etc.). I hope to have something drafted at the first of
next week.
2. Preparing for fall 2004
We have 7 courses in UW-ACE for the fall. These are "OKed" by the Liaison and
me to ensure we don't overwhelm our support during the pilot. We want to resolve
the issue of registering courses automatically before opening up further to the
campus. I hope we can do so by mid June. Other issues include a UW-ACE
advertising "splash" for campus, upgrading ANGEL to V6.1, finalizing term
rollover procedures (especially carrying courses forward to the next term).
Next step: begin regular meetings (including IST, DE, LT3 where appropriate).
3. Status of the Team Functionality extension
We revised our functionality document to reflect more details on what the team
"wizard" should do, the result of our phone meeting with CLL of April 22nd. We
sent this to CLL on May 7th.
Next step: reponse from CLL with a detailed plan for delivery. (The ANGEL User
Conference and the imminent V6.1 release have occupied much of their time in
May.) Our preference is to have the extension on LT3's UW-ACE to pilot/test in
F2004.
4. Topics for the upcoming meetings:
o DE and UW-ACE - directions, needs, and next steps (Cathy)
o Update on the pilot, preparations for fall, and the Team extension
(Andrea)
o Migration planning (Liwana)
o Disaster recovery planning (Andrea, possibly with Lorne Connell)
o Reusable content and templates in UW-ACE (Liwana)
o Others?
Summary for 5 March 2004
 Team meetings Feb 24th and Mar 2nd
March 2nd
o Overviewed UW online course memo coming from Tom and Alan
(without showing it to the group). This group is mentioned in the memo.
o Discussed the pilot support flowchart. This prompted more discussion
about support after the pilot, and the topic will be taken forward to the
Assoc. Deans.
o Liaisons and Faculty computing reps on this project will collaborate to
come up with pilot participants.
o Agreed to meet in 2 weeks.
February 24th
o Updated group on non-user-support issues
 Separate installation of ANGEL V6.0 for UW CMS/ANGEL pilot
(technical and “directional” reasons for not sharing with the
UWone ANGEL installation);
 Memo coming from Tom and Alan;
 CyberLearning Labs – second call about the UWone extensions.
Expecting a response re: cost and timeline for moving extensions
into ANGEL (by CLL).
o Ensuing discussion:
 Confusion over the “no new courses” text of the UCIST minutes.
 Discussion on why not use UWone to build ANGEL courses.
o Comments on the LT3 Liaison document re: their evolving role definition
for CMS/ANGEL participation (especially issues of pedagogical versus
technical support).
o Communication mechanisms to each Faculty discussed and determined.
( HYPERLINK
"http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/communications.html"
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/communications.html )
o Pilot participants need to be identified soon. Asked Faculty reps to work
with their Faculty Liaisons.
Summary for 20 February 2004
 Minor project charter revisions
o Charter provided to IST management team, with result in minor revisions.
o Change wording to clarify participant list, document that the UCIST
ADCs act as faculty member consultants, and to emphasize investigation
of role of Faculty computing offices. (See
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/project_charter_new.html)
o Will request UCIST review to approve changes.
 Team began discussions on support (meetings on 10th and 17th of February)
o Overview of what mechanisms Faculties now use for course support;
assure ANGEL not meant to supplant, rather to augment and replace if
Faculty sees merit.
o Need mechanism to register ANGEL courses, and to get the training and
documentation into this loop.
o Make use of existing Faculty TA programs to inform about ANGEL.
o Make creating “test” course easy (and yet identifiable so we can remove
them at some point).
o Involvement of Faculty computing help desks. Who do people now call
for course support in the Faculty? Varies across Faculties, but generally
involves Help Desk/Consulting Offices.
o LT3 Faculty Liaisons and their role in the UW CMS (“blending” of
pedagogical and technical support, with expertise in each area).
 ANGEL client support in IST
o Andrea began discussions with Paul Snyder, and Bob Hicks (acting
Director for Client Services in Paul’s absence). Need to write role
description.
 ANGEL system support in IST
o Linked to the support of current UWone, future UWone extensions (who
does what); will involve IST Systems and IST Production Support.
Discussions will progress once directions are set.
 ANGEL hardware review (input from Penn State experience). New hardware.
 Two separate ANGEL systems
o One for inaugural UW-CMS (V6.0), one for current UWone (V5.6, to
maintain “as is” for course commitments S04)
o Licensing and course population issues to resolve.
 DE plans to move “traditional” courses to ANGEL
o Convert audio tapes to MP3, import to ANGEL, export for CD.
o 6-10 for S04 term as trial, possibly 70 more for next year; track issue of
disk space for so many hours of tape (~250M for each course).
Summary for 6 February 2004
 first team meeting 3 Feb. 2004 (3 people couldn't make it)
o question of “why ANGEL” arose
o question of faculty member involvement (told it is through UCIST now)
o no negative immediate reactions, but time may tell if they see downsides
o plan to meet weekly for the next 3 weeks
 next team meeting (10 Feb. 2004) will begin the discussion of a support model,
and also discuss their mechanisms for communicating the project to their areas,
and how to solicit participants to pilot
 need to involve the IST Client Services group now as well
 issue of two ANGEL installations (one "vanilla" and one modified for UWone)
will be discussed by Lorne, me, others, then taken to the group