| ANGEL (A New Global Environment for Learning) is a Web-based tool that enables faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants who have no knowledge of HTML to use the Web to enhance their courses. In fall 2001, ANGEL 2001 replaced CourseWeb, the previous course management system at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). Since then, the number of ANGEL users has increased significantly each semester. However, despite the many users involved in ANGEL, there have been few studies or evaluations of ANGEL's use in support of faculty members' teaching.; To explore how Penn State faculty implement ANGEL in instruction, this study sought to ascertain whether there were relationships between the use of ANGEL features and each of the following three factors: (a) The rate of ANGEL course adoption in an academic unit, (b) the average number of ANGEL course sections implemented by a faculty member in an academic unit, and (c) the average ANGEL class size in an academic unit.; The material in this thesis is derived mainly from the ANGEL course database, which is maintained by Information Technology Services (ITS) at Penn State. The database contains statistics from spring 2002 to spring 2004. As the purpose of the study was to examine the latest instructional use of ANGEL, the data from spring 2004 was chosen as the main analysis resource. Since certain instructional features, such as Syllabus, Calendar, Lessons, Quiz, Question, Folder, Drop box, Page, File, Message board, Message, Email, and Chat room provide the most insightful information on how faculty use ANGEL, this study's analytical focus was on the use of those features.; The findings from the analysis of ANGEL feature use at Penn State indicate that the average university-wide ANGEL adoption rate in spring 2004 was 29%. The adoption rates for some campuses and colleges were lower than 10%; however, other campuses or colleges had an adoption rate higher than 40%. In terms of the rate of use of ANGEL features, the study results reveal that some features such as Syllabus, Lessons, Folder, and File had a use rate higher than 44%, while some features, such as Calendar, Message board, Message, Quiz, and Question, had a use rate lower than 15%. Also, Chat room was utilized at a lower rate by users. These results reveal that some important ANGEL features, such as Calendar, Quiz, Message board, and Chat room, were not often employed by users. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
