Does the Blackboard purchase of ANGEL affect me?
To MSU’s online instructors by Brendan Guenther, Director MSU vuDAT…
Because their press release seems to be garnering attention, many of you are probably already aware of Blackboard Inc’s purchase of ALI, the vendor that created our ANGEL learning management. If you are planning on launching online or blended courses at MSU, or have already developed a large amount of content in ANGEL, you might be wondering what impact this news has on your work and how soon this may affect you. BlackBoard has released a set of Frequently Asked Questions about the combined company which explains that they will honor existing contracts and that both systems will continue to be developed. This implies that the combined company will stand behind the three year support window for ANGEL 7.4.
MSU has a history of upgrading to a new version of the ANGEL system once every two years. With an upgrade planned for May 14-15, 2009 you can expect that there will be a healthy period of stability that follows this. This stability will enable you to continue to reap benefits of all your content development, allowing academic programs to continue to grow their online and blended programming as needed. On our campus and our ANGEL implementation, there will be no immediate impact felt from these developments. Rest assured that vuDAT and our partners within Libraries, Computing, and Technology will continue working to provide a stable and reliable technology platform for your distance learning needs. Whatever happens in the marketplace, we hope to provide smooth sailing for our instructors and assist them through any necessary transitions.
