Abstract

Title: Wimba Pronto: Instant Collaboration to Support 21st Century Learning
Purpose, Objectives, Practical Application, Information & Relationship to conference Theme:
Whether the goal is to improve student engagement, increase administrative efficiency, or enhance security by bolstering disaster preparedness plans, Wimba’s Collaboration Suite supports academic and administrative operations across an entire campus and addresses the complex challenges facing higher education today. Hear from industry leaders partnering with Wimba to meet these challenges.
During this session we’ll explore how Wimba Pronto, the only instant collaboration platform designed for education, enables students and teachers to uniquely collaborate and learn in an informal “virtual venue,” replicating the exchange of ideas and communication that happens naturally in the hallways, cafeterias, or libraries of a physical campus.
With features like blended video and audio, application sharing, a state-of-the-art whiteboard, classmate lists that auto-populate from your CMS courses, queued chat for office hours, a Spanish language option, and personalized user profiles – your learning community can be transformed as it meets the requirements of 21st Century learners by delivering campus services, office hours, library services, or tutoring sessions online.
Students in online classes especially need courses that are designed to enable interaction between instructor and student, as well as among students. This interaction engages learners and faculty members, and encourages students to feel that they are part of a community. For off-campus students, access to supplementary services—such as writing centers and libraries—is also important. Wimba Pronto allows these students to enjoy and benefit from the same range of services as their on-campus counterparts.
Wimba Pronto is part of the Wimba Collaboration Suite, recently awarded the 2009 “Best Education Solution” CODiE award by SIIA.
Participants will garner perspectives on ways to augment existing tutoring, advising, office hours, help-desks, and other academic and administrative functions:
• Improving the overall quality of online programs
• Building online student/school community
• Increasing the number of online offerings
• Improving Online Student Retention
• Reducing Costs –
• Green Initiatives: fuel, travel, facility

There is a direct correlation between the TTIX theme of the technological advancement of distance learning and the Wimba product demonstration.

Presenter

Shelley Constant

Purpose: This presentation targets those who develop online curriculum in general, but may be of special interest to those who oversee programs and seek ideas for providing a positive experience for online students and increasing their chances of success and completion.

Objectives: We plan to provide a very brief overview of UEN’s online course program and audience as a context, then focus on how we developed a fully-online solution to meet the orientation needs of both class participants and facilitators. We will demonstrate our current online orientation in BlackBoard Vista so participants can see how it is organized and how it works.

Practical applications: Those who attend this session should leave with an understanding of:
1) Why an orientation is important and how to shift from in-person to online
2) What to include for student success and facilitator convenience
3) The time commitment and tools required to create an online orientation
4) What has worked well and areas requiring improvement or change in UEN’s online orientation model

Information: At the time of submitting the conference proposal UEN Professional Development is offering the fully online orientation for the first time. By the time of the conference we will have offered 18 courses requiring completion of the orientation online. We hope to have some valuable insights to share regarding the success or difficulties with our new model. Measures of succes include facilitators’ evaluation of the quality of participation, quantity of technical issues or problems and the number of participants who begin a course the first week and persist until completion.

Biography
Victoria manages the professional development department for UEN. She has eighteen years of teaching and training experience including high school English and biology, university courses in writing and computer skills, seminars on technology topics at the University of Utah and university faculty development centered on use of technology in their curriculum. She also has experience in technical writing, marketing, and higher education information technology services. Victoria’s education includes an undergraduate degree in English and Secondary Education, with biology minor from Utah State University, and graduate work in Communication at the University of Utah.