Southwest Baptist U Adopts Angel LMS

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/24/08

Southwest Baptist University (SBU) in Missouri has adopted the Angel Learning Management Suite (LMS) to deliver and manage Web-enhanced instruction in traditional face-to-face classes and hybrid and online courses. The university chose to consider an alternative to its Blackboard implementation, which it's had in place since 1997, due to increasing costs and a decline in technical support.

"Over the last year or two, we experienced a steady decline in support from the provider of the [course management system] (CMS) we originally licensed, and prices were increasing," said Bob McGlasson, VP for IT services at the school. "We heard a lot of good things about Angel at conferences and from schools similar in size to us. We scheduled demonstrations, and we liked what we saw in Angel."

"Our CMS is a very important instructional tool, and our faculty are gung ho as long as they are supported," added Neal Cross, director of instructional technology. "We brought faculty in every step of the way in our decision to switch to the Angel LMS, and they liked Angel from all different perspectives. The Angel gradebook knocked their socks off. The ability of Angel agents to automate work, Angel's communication capabilities, they are all impressive."

At the conclusion of the evaluation, the faculty decision to go with Angel was unanimous, according to McGlasson. Now the university is looking at its Angel adoption as an opportunity to increase its LMS adoption rate from the 80 percent it had with its previous installation. "We want to get everyone on board and extend our LMS usage with our Angel adoption," said McGlasson. "We consider adopting Angel a fresh start. We're very pleased and excited with the tools Angel provides."

The university has about 3,600 students across four campuses.