Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) Take the environmental wonders of the North and South Poles, add a mixture of teachers and research scientists, stir in a pinch of collaborative education software and what do you get? A recipe for science education that engages students like few things have done before. Lear how Wimba Classroom helped bring several recent expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic to life for K-12 students back in the United States.
Bloomsburg University When it comes to accessibility within online education, the case can be made that Dr. Sam Slike and Pamela Berman of Bloomsburg University are two of the most innovative instructors in the world. Dr. Skile and Berman use Wimba Classroom to provide college courses to deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Their innovative courses use a sign language interpreter broadcast through a webcam in conjunction with closed-captioning of spoken lecture material via Caption Colorado. Their work is so remarkable that in Summer 2008 they won the prestigious Excellence in Distance Learning award from the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA).
Bocconi University (Italy) Located in central Milan, Bocconi University is a research university of international standing in business, economics, and law. Bocconi has been ranked among the top 20 best business schools in the world by The Wall Street Journal international rankings, thanks to its M.B.A. program which placed 17th in the world in 2007 in terms of graduate recruitment preference by major multinational companies. In 2003, Forbes ranked Bocconi as the 7th-best business school outside of North America and in 2005 Forbes named Bocconi 1st in the World for "Value for Money." Learn how this prestigious university utilized Wimba to teach its dispersed teachers who live and work throughout all of Italy.
California State University, Chico Dr. Cris Guenter knows how to teach, and thanks in large part to her innovative teaching that heavily relies on Wimba, she recently won the 2008 National Art Educator Award for her "exemplary contributions to the field of visual arts education." For example, on a stormy northern California evening in December 2007, a graduate student of hers who normally makes a six-hour round-trip drive to campus reaped the benefits of her innovative instruction. "We were hit with a lot of rain and snow, and one of our students who's a librarian couldn't get to campus because of a storm. It was ridiculous for her to get out and drive three hours to campus for our final class," Guenter said. To accommodate her student, Guenter set up a Wimba Voice Board so her student could leave her comments and even have her classmates respond to it. "If Wimba hadn't existed, she could have emailed her assignment but this way her classmates could hear her comments and respond back to her. She didn't feel alone or isolated. I'm using Wimba for the collaborative tools and the focused engagement. The interaction in my online classes is as good if not better than in face-to-face classes. And because everything can be documented, there's a great deal of accountability."
Central Gippsland Institute of TAFE (Australia) The Central Gippsland Institute of TAFE (Gipps TAFE) is a rural institute with five campuses in Victoria, Australia and one in Melbourne. Although a relatively small institute, it delivers around 1-million student contact hours per year, serving approximately 3,000 students, nearly half of whom learn in a blended environment. The remaining 1,500 students, from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Singapore, study solely online. Now, 50% of the courses that Gipps TAFE offers online with Wimba were not practical to offer online before Wimba was implemented. Gipps TAFE's ability to expand its number of online courses translates directly to a higher capacity for enrollment and higher levels of revenue.
Cobb County eSchool eHS does not fit the description of a traditional high school. Based in Marietta, Georgia, eHS was created in 2001 by the Cobb County School District for students who wanted to take classes outside of their regular schedules. Traditionally, eHS has offered tuition courses to students who wish to take a class in addition to their regular school day. However, in accordance with the Georgia Virtual School legislation signed by the Governor in May 2005, eHS now offers online courses to students as part of the regular school day. eHS believes Wimba software is easy to use and therefore allows instructors of varying technological skills to implement it based on what they might need in order to reach all their students.
Community Colleges Learn first-hand how three community colleges, Southern State Community College (OH), Centennial College (ON), and Pima Community College (AZ) use Wimba for everything from saving money by reducing faculty and student travel costs, to running entire languages programs.
Dekalb OnLine Academy "We wanted to have our online classes mirror our face-to-face classes, and Wimba gave us that opportunity," said Dr. Regina Merriwether, Assistant Director of Instructional Technology and Principal of DeKalb OnLine Academy, when asked why Wimba was chosen to add a collaborative component to its online courses. Whether a student wants to get ahead or just get caught up, the DeKalb OnLine Academy (DOLA) of Georgia.s DeKalb County School System can help. Offering a comprehensive online, instructor-led curriculum that includes core courses required for graduation, Advanced Placement courses, as well as elective courses, DOLA students benefit by taking its innovative online courses - powered by Wimba - in order to:
Enroll in courses not offered in their local schoolhouse
Take acceleration courses
Receive course recovery efforts
Accommodate scheduling issues for students who need courses for graduation
Drexel University While it is common knowledge that different schools have different needs, some tend to forget that different departments within a single school often have different needs as well. While an arts school like the Rhode Island School of Design specializes in one field of study, most schools have more diverse course offerings, many of which have their own nuances and needs. Drexel University is one such institution. But now, thanks to the diversity available within the Wimba Collaboration Suite, different departments (from Nursing, to Engineering, to ESL) are finding easy answers to their unique needs.
Four-Year Universities Want to learn how six leading universities increase retention rates, enhance learning, and improve student outcomes? This compilation features Drexel University, Kansas State University, Dalhousie University, University of Missouri-St Louis, Arizona State University, and Northeastern University.
Grand Rapids Community College Located in Western Michigan, Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) is a two-year community college serving more than 15,000 students per semester - none of whom live on-campus. GRCC's commuter student body consists of the traditional 18-21 year old college-age student, to working adults who are learning new skills in order to advance their careers. Therefore, in order to build community and keep its students engaged, GRCC utilizes Wimba Pronto and Wimba Voice. By using these products, GRCC improves its student grades, allows its students to feel significantly more connected to the college's community, and allows them to get immediate feedback when studying. By using this powerful combination of collaborative products, GRCC keeps its students more connected than ever before.
Great Basin College Retention rates have jumped by 7% in classes using Wimba at Great Basin College (GBC). GBC serves students spread across more than 60,000 square miles of rural central Nevada and recently learned that its interactive satellite video system still posed limitations and lacked the quality needed for many courses. To improve its distance program, GBC established LiveNet, the campus-branded application of Wimba Classroom within Blackboard, to provide students with increased access and more personal interactivity in synchronous and asynchronous learning. With Wimba, students are making better connections with their classmates and the institution, feeling more engaged, and staying enrolled.
Ivy Tech Community College With more than 100,000 students, Ivy Tech Community College (ITCC) is the largest accredited school in North America. ITCC has 14 regional sites located throughout Indiana, offering both undergraduate and technical courses to its students, all of whom either commute to campus to take their courses remotely. And since its new president set into motion a plan to map out an enhanced distance education strategy for the school, ITCC has also become the fastest growing institution in the state. Therefore, to help compensate for its influx of students, ITCC adopted Wimba Pronto in Spring 2007 in order to offer the easiest means of spontaneous, instant communication between students and instructors.
LEARN (Canada) LEARN, an educational foundation supported by funding from the Quebec-Canada Entente for Minority Language Education, leads the charge when it comes to Wimba and other instructional technologies. LEARN offers e-learning services and support to all of Quebec's English school boards, private schools, community organizations and the private sector in rural and urban settings within the province. It also supports and promotes pedagogical collaboration and innovation using information technology, works to model best practices, and publishes quality learning materials to support educators who are implementing competency-based practices in the classroom. Of course, several of LEARN's most important programs rely on Wimba (it even supports children of Cirque de Soleil performers in Tokyo!).
Massey University (New Zealand) Massey University is the nearest thing New Zealand has to a national university. It has nearly 41,000 students enrolled on three campuses, with 21,000 nationally and worldwide extramural students. Recently, Massey embarked on an aggressive and innovative plan to deliver online professional development via Wimba to lecturers at 14 geographically dispersed institutions across New Zealand. Additionally, the University.s extramural students, on whom the school depends for a substantial proportion of its operating revenue, were missing out on some aspects of their language learning experience -- remote students felt that they weren't getting enough practice for oral and listening exercises. But thanks to funding and by using resources more cleverly we felt using Wimba Voice was a good opportunity to connect everybody, humanise the experience, and gauge where people were with the programme." The University also organised blocks of face-to-face study for these students that often involved the lecturer and/or the students traveling significant distances to meet; which meant time out of the office along with expenses for travel and accommodation. This was expensive both in terms of time and money -- but is no longer the case with Wimba.
Neil Squire Society The Neil Squire Society is the only Canadian not-for-profit organization that uses technology, knowledge, and passion to empower Canadians with physical disabilities. It helps its clients remove barriers so that they can live independent lives and become active members of the workplace and society. Since adopting Wimba in May 2007, the Neil Squire Society has .greatly increased. its effectiveness in delivering real-time classes to people with disabilities across Canada, and even uses real-time captioning online. .The virtual environment is in many ways more accessible to people with disabilities than a face to face program,. says Chad Leaman of the Society. .We have participants where their disability does not allow them to raise their hand, speak clearly, nod or shake their head. In Wimba, participants can raise their hands, communicate through the chat area, and clearly answer yes or no. In many ways, Wimba is more accessible than a .real. classroom environment..
Regent University The May 2008 edition of CenterPoint, the online video magazine of Regent University's Center for Teaching & Learning, features a segment in which Dr. Elisabeth Suarez, Assistant Professor, School of Psychology and Counseling, discusses how using Wimba helps reduce feelings of isolation in an online environment and makes her students "feel connected to me and to each other." For instance, she writes statistical equations on Wimba Classroom's whiteboard and gets real-time feedback from her students. She also provides archives so her students can repeatedly review content until they understand their course material, and she utilizes surveys and polls to quiz her students on their material. She says that instant feedback "eliminates the sense of isolation." She also uses Wimba Voice Emails to give instant, oral comments about their work, and even saves time by not typing all her comments. Dr. Suarez says her students receive a "deeper understanding of course content, make enhanced connections with their classmates, and feel more engaged in the online environment."
San Diego State University While many schools have a difficult time calculating the return-on-investment they receive by using educational technologies, professors at San Diego State University believe they have cracked the code. By looking at a few factors and costs, these professors believe they have saved their school $75,000 by using Wimba Classroom to teach only one class online . a class whose enrollment he has since tripled . while also significantly improving student learning and obviating the need for expensive hardware purchases.
SouthWest London Academic Network and London College of Communication The SouthWest London Academic Network (SWAN) was launched last year as a strategic alliance between Kingston University, St Georges, University of London and Royal Holloway, University of London. The alliance aims to create new opportunities in biological and biomedical sciences, leadership and management education for health professionals and inter-professional practice and learning. Meanwhile, the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London is one of the leading arts schools in all of Europe. In this video, learn how Wimba plays an important role in the development of these diverse institutions' online programs.
University of Alabama School of Law Law schools are highly competitive, with many schools always looking for edge when it comes to attracting new students. The University of Alabama School of Law's Tax Law program touts the fact that it uses Wimba Classroom to deliver its online classes, as it knows that highly collaborative courses are more effective than text-only ones. With Wimba, The University of Alabama Tax Law program attracts the best and brightest from around the country who are eager to learn from the world.s top instructors.
University of Bristol (UK) In 2005, the University of Bristol launched an innovative and aggressive E-Learning Strategy. Through the use of appropriate technology such as the Wimba Collaboration Suite, the project's aim is to enhance the student learning experience and to maintain the academic rigor of both undergraduate and postgraduate programs without compromising the output of research-active academic staff. Bristol saw instant returns upon implementing Wimba and even excitedly wrote on its website, "Blackboard's ability to support innovative teaching and learning has received a major boost by the release of a suite of voice tools developed by Wimba."
University of Georgia Ranked in the top 20 among public universities in the United States by U.S. News and World Report, the University of Georgia (UGA) is on the move. And thanks in part to Wimba, UGA has become one of the leading technology innovators in the country, and has already embarked on one of the most unique worldwide distance education initiatives. As one instructor at UGA says, "There's virtually no difference between my online classes that are done in Wimba versus the classes I teach face-to-face."
University of Reading (UK) The University of Reading is one of the top 20 most research-intensive universities in the UK, a major contributor to the knowledge economy and internationally recognised for the excellence of its teaching in a broad range of Arts, Humanities and Sciences programmes. The University offers degree programmes in more than 60 subjects with more than 250 part-time adult education (public) courses. Reading's students are "highly motivated" by Wimba because during online seminars they feel they cam concentrate better with headphones while at their own terminals and aren't distracted by others in the room. They want to repeat various language activities over and over again.
University of Salford (UK) The University of Salford is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious 6*-rated institutions of higher education. Located in Salford Greater Manchester, the University focuses on areas of high-quality national and international innovative and applied research in multidisciplinary areas of study. Wimba allows students in other countries to take courses at the University of Salford that they otherwise wouldn't be able to take. Now, tutorials, seminars, and conferences are all being undertaken online with Wimba.
University of the West of England Ranked 5th in England out of 83 Higher Education institutions in a Teaching Quality Assessment league table published in the Times Higher Educational Supplement, the University of the West of England (UWE) is a forward looking university. With more than 30,000 students and 3,000 staff, UWE is the largest provider of higher education in the southwest of England. Students come to UWE from all parts of the UK while international students hail from more than 50 countries worldwide. Thus, to ensure it remains at the forefront, UWE is very active in using technology to support teaching and learning activities. For example, it has more than 1,500 active courses in its Virtual Learning Environment, Blackboard 7, and an estimated 75% of its academic modular provision is now supported online. In fact, because UWE's e-learning activities matured so rapidly, in 2006 it became clear that there was an emerging need for more multi-media and collaborative technologies. Enter Wimba.
William Penn School District To help students who are at-risk, have personal or developmental problems, or want to get ahead in their studies, the William Penn School District uses Wimba to help these students meet their diverse educational objectives. In the true spirit of K-12 education, one teacher sums it up best when she discusses the fact that reaching out to students is what gets her out of bed every day and drives her to help her students succeed. "Wimba allows me to reach those students that otherwise we'd lose."
Pearson Prentice Hall In foreign language classes, most instructors want to increase oral practice outside the classroom but often wonder how they can hold their students accountable for doing the work. For years, whether in a traditional language lab setting or in an online environment, there has been no integrated, practical way to ensure that students are doing oral practice, or for instructors to assess or aid in their progress. But recently, thanks to Pearson Prentice Hall and Wimba, now there is. With Wimba Voice a part of MySpanishLab, students can easily record verbal responses to homework assignments and then submit them to their instructors for review and feedback.
Academic Research Makes a Case for the Wimba Collaboration Suite (.pdf)
