MSU began switching students to a new Microsoft Office 365-based email system and completed the transition from ANGEL to D2L this year.
The new email system, called Spartailmail, is now used by the freshmen class. However, according to the MSU Information Technology website, returning students have yet to have their email accounts updated.
Returning students will have their emails updated over the course of the fall, according to the MSU Information Technology website. The website says students will be notified they are being migrated to the new mail a week or two in advance.
Many students have accepted the updates in a positive way.
“The notifications I get (on my phone) from the (new) email are really helpful,” computer science freshman Matt Forsyth said .
The learning management system used at MSU also changed — ANGEL no longer exists, with D2L becoming the sole learning management system used .
However, some members of the MSU community have concerns with D2L.
“D2L seems to work better with different web browsers but I couldn’t really use (ANGEL) on my phone, and D2L doesn’t seem to work any better,” media and information senior Damani Gatewood said.
Ross Emmett, professor in the James Madison College, shared students’ disappointment in D2L’s lack of a standalone mobile app but explained that unlike ANGEL, D2L allows for the integration of outside mobile apps.
Emmett said professors might utilize apps such as Piazza in cohesion with D2L to facilitate more efficient communication between students and faculty.
Rather than relying on mass emails, Piazza allows students and professors to ask and answer each other’s questions as well as post polls from their mobile devices, Emmett said.
Emmett lauded what he called D2L’s “more oriented to students" design. These features allowed IT workers to tweak some of ANGEL’s finite details to the administration’s desires but also added clutter and complexity to the user experience ANGEL offered.
Emmett partly attributed these differences in user friendliness to D2L being initially designed for K-12 school district usage, while ANGEL was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers for university use.
American and women’s history professor Susan Stein-Roggenbuck agreed about D2L’s more user friendly appeal for students and professors.
“With ANGEL I got more students saying they couldn’t see grades on their papers,” Stein-Roggenbuck said .
With fall semester starting on Wednesday, students and faculty will begin fully experiencing the extent of these changes.
Email migration takes place between late night to early morning the day after students receive their final notification.
MSU IT Services recommends students do not attempt to access their email during the migration period. Notifications including instructions on password setup and configuring the new email system for mobile devices will be sent to students after the migration process is complete.
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Students with questions or concerns about these changes should contact the MSU IT Services Department at 517-432-6200 .
