When students go to print their syllabus off of A New Global Environment for Learning, or ANGEL, they will see a very different program from the soon to be retired Blackboard system.

ANGEL, the program commonly used by professors to make announcements and post test scores, has been updated from version 5.6 to 6.0 about a week before its predecessor, Blackboard, goes offline for good. Some new features include "Breadcrumbs," a tool designed to help students navigate through pages more easily, and keep track of where they are.

"We tried to pick a time where there was minimum impact on students and faculty," said David Gift, Vice Provost for Libraries, Computing and Technology. "We chose the day after final grades were due, and before the summer semesters had started."

Even then, Gift said some summer courses had already started and there was no ideal time to start the new version that MSU received for no additional cost.

Richard Wiggins, the senior information technologist for the Computer Center, said the new changes are designed to make the system easier to use.

"ANGEL 6.0 offers better user navigation, new user interface and a few extra components that instructors can use," Wiggins said.

ANGEL still displays some Blackboard elements such as the ability for professors to put anything from class notes to announcements online, and to also use it for other activities such as holding class discussions.

Meanwhile, many students are unaware of the program's existence.

"I used Blackboard, but I haven't heard of ANGEL yet," graduate student Patricia Almeida said. "But I knew Blackboard was being retired."

Wiggins said MSU pays for an annual license to use ANGEL, but the university gets new versions for free.

He added that the upgrade was not intended to fix any of the problems users encountered in the beginning of the year when many students had trouble accessing the site.

Wiggins said any prior problems were with the networking infastructure.