Does the Angel online platform suck wind as much as it seems?

My daughter is working online on a degree at Empire State U. They use the Angel online platform and my daughter hates it. Her biggest complaint is that the requirements for various assignments are not in any one centralized link and she has to search numerous obscure links to find out what she is supposed to do. I said "No problem dear. Let Dad, the online expert get you all straightened out." Upon logging in, I was quickly humbled. I was surprised that I had a difficult time figuring out how to navigate it. I can't believe how unintuitive the user interface is. I have complained here about Blackboard in the past, but Angel makes Blackboard good.

Thoughts?
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Angel has been purchased by Blackboard. BB will continue to support Angel until 2014 and then I suspect it will die a quiet death. One school I teach at uses Angel and is actively looking for a LMS to replace it since they went to Angel from BB and do not want to return to BB.

As for your question - in my experience it really depends on how the system is administered. If it is done right and the school devotes the resources towards maintaining content and sets up a well-structured shell for the instructor - it is a great system. If the school leaves the majority of the work up to the instructor, Angel sucks ass since there are so many intricacies to setting up a course.

 

Yes, that's it. Needlessly intricate.

 

I honestly have difficulties with it. All of your gripes are legitimate.

 

I have used ANGEL, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, WebCT and Moodle. Although I do not care for the grade book in ANGEL, it has a lot of capabilities that the other LMSs don't (which is why Blackboard purchased it). An ANGEL course can be set up with good or poor navigation. We just have a folder for each week's instruction--everything that week in one place.

 

My full time school uses Angel. I have designed our Fresh comp class on it. Everything the student needs is found in "Lessons" with each week having a folder. I think it is pretty easy to navigate. Having said that, it is easy because I set it up that way. It does take several steps to get to gradebook, etc. I pretty much hate the gradebook.

As stated earlier, it was bought by BB, so it will be gone in a few years. My school used WebCT, which was bought out by BB, and moved to Angel, which is not bought out by them, too. I suppose we will move to eCollege or Moodle next...

 

It's been years since I have used eCollege, but I remember that it was a pretty slick interface that was no trouble.

 

I'm so used to Angel that I don't really mind it anymore, though it does feel a bit outdated. I had a class once that used Blackboard & I really disliked that platform. It seemed far too chaotic, with dozens of links, sub-links, four or five different forums for each week, etc.