According to university officials, ANGEL’s system has recorded about 59,000 unique log-ins out of about 80,000 people associated with the system this fall, and it remains to be seen whether Moodle eventually could handle that volume of traffic.

By the end of this academic year, MSU Director of Virtual University Design and Technology Brendan Guenther is optimistic Moodle could be ready for a larger trial run with more courses and professors involved next summer.

The university has been exploring options for an alternative to ANGEL since earlier this year. Switching to the new system could save money for the university because Moodle is an open-source program, Leigh Wolf, a program coordinator in the College of Education’s Master of Arts in Education Technology progam, said in an April interview with The State News. Wolf also said Moodle will make it easier for students to work together on group projects.

Guenther said some professors already have offered feedback on improvements for Moodle and begun to develop their own classes tailored for the system.

The rest of this fall, programmers will continue to prepare the software for another run during the spring semester. About seven professors have expressed interest in participating in the spring’s trial period, Guenther said.

“We’re hoping that by next summer we can open it up,” he said. “During the spring, it would still be running in kind of a limited mode.”

Wolf helped teach Moodle’s features to students in one of her summer courses. Wolf said many of those students were elementary and high school teachers who needed to use the Moodle system in their coursework.

Wolf said students in her class focused on evaluating the interface and the website’s content. Some students also identified problems with aspects of the site’s design, she said.

“They were taking on Moodle to learn more about what they’re expected to use in their own classrooms,” she said.

Guenther noted there still are changes to be made to Moodle’s operating system, including additions to the program’s gradebook feature.

The current gradebook is not well-equipped to handle the variety and size of some classes at MSU, he said.

Based on feedback from faculty who used Moodle this summer, officials also want to improve email and messaging communication using the software, Guenther said.

“Most of the instructors really wanted to get back to their students in a timely fashion,” he said.

“There’s some improvements we want to make to both of those features.”

Communication junior Stephanie Held said she mainly has struggled with submitting assignments on ANGEL and wouldn’t have a problem with a new software system.

“It’s just a matter of ANGEL being down,” she said. “The only hassle has been submitting papers.”