It has been a full quarter since Sinclair Community College upgraded the Angel Learning system.\u00a0 Though things did not run as smoothly as initially hoped, the experience for students and faculty seems to have improved, according to Director of Research, Analytics and Systems Development Mike Burns.<\/p>\n
Student and faculty experience<\/strong><\/p>\n Business Management major Doug Thompson said he hasn\u2019t experienced any bugs since he started attending Sinclair last fall.\u00a0 He keeps school files on the Angel file system.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps me out a lot,\u201d Thompson said.\u00a0 \u201cWith everything else I\u2019ve got going on, it keeps me on schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n Mental Health Technology major James Calvin agrees.\u00a0 He\u2019s heard some classmates say they\u2019ve had problems accessing quizzes, but Calvin said he\u2019s only had a couple e-mails dropped.<\/p>\n \u201cI got no complaints other than it acts quirky sometimes,\u201d Calvin said.<\/p>\n Student Jordan Hager has also experienced dropped e-mails.\u00a0 Most involved getting information or assignments to her teachers, but she expressed no complaints.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t really had any problems,\u201d Hager said.<\/p>\n Dr. Robert Leonard, who teaches both campus and online Communication classes, said it\u2019s not uncommon for a small number of students to have occasional problems.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know to what extent that was Angel\u2019s issue or Internet connection issue or operator error,\u201d Leonard said.\u00a0 \u201cBut I do know that they do exist, problems that is, and sometimes that causes us to have to adjust due dates or extend test time or something to that effect, but that\u2019s the nature of online.\u201d<\/p>\n Why Angel goes offline<\/strong><\/p>\n Angel goes offline for regularly scheduled software updates about once a month, according to Burns.\u00a0 He also said the system can go down because of \u201chot fixes\u201d to software bugs or because of component failure.<\/p>\n \u201cAngel is a very complex hardware and software environment,\u201d Burns said in an e-mail.\u00a0 \u201cThere are file servers, database servers, web servers, load balancers, network switches, etc.\u00a0 A failure in any one of these components can have the potential to make the entire system unavailable.\u00a0 Each of these systems has a backup component, but when the first level fails, it may take time to bring the backup component into operation.\u201d<\/p>\n Burns said recovery time depends on what component has failed.\u00a0 For example, he said Web servers appear to recover quickly because there are 34 Web servers in the system, but file servers can take hours to recover because of the amount of information that has to be restored to backup systems.\u00a0 Any time Angel goes down for a repair, Burns said a notice would be posted on My.Sinclair.<\/p>\n Winter quarter bugs<\/strong><\/p>\n Burns said some difficulties with Angel last quarter were partly due to two software bugs relating to file names and user recognition.<\/p>\n \u201cThe student and faculty experience at the beginning of Spring quarter has been much smoother than the experience at the beginning of Winter quarter,\u201d Burns said.\u00a0 \u201cHelp desk calls related to Angel are averaging about 10 per day now, compared with 50 or 60 per day at the beginning of Winter quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n Angel Learning, the software writing company, has since sent corrections, according to Burns.\u00a0 He thinks more improvements could be made.<\/p>\n \u201cAngel Learning needs to identify software bugs and correct them,\u201d Burns said.\u00a0 \u201cIn addition, Angel Learning needs to certify that their product functions seamlessly with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 8 in native mode.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been a full quarter since Sinclair Community College upgraded the Angel Learning system.\u00a0 Though things did not run as smoothly as initially hoped, the experience for students and faculty seems to have improved, according to Director of Research, Analytics and Systems Development Mike Burns. Student and faculty experience Business Management major Doug Thompson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[847,1976,846,38,1055],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-angel","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-my-sinclair","tag-online","tag-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1gb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4848,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions\/4848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}