E-flections

One of the big themes that came out of Wimba Connect 09 which has just finished in Phoenix AZ was that of how live web conferencing can move out of the classroom and into the world outside, both in terms of the internal communications of the academic institution, but also in terms of the relationship to the outside world, especially 2 main stakeholders, prospective students and potential employers.
There was a growing sense that live interactive communication can be used to bring the world into the university and bring the university into the world.

There were several really good examples of how Wimba can be used to bring the world of business and work into the institution. On my course, we regularly bring practitioners in to talk about their work, but the focus from some of the other universities was different, and more clearly focused on employer engagement and enhancing the employability of graduates.

Alice Bird and Alex Spiers of Liverpool John Moores University LJM introduced Wimba in 08, and have trialled it out in a variety of ways, on which more later, but specifically in employer engagement they have a programme called WoW (World of Work), and are starting to use various Wimba tools to enhance this. They are creating employer podcasts using Wimba voice, where they get someone in business or industry to describe a typical day in their life, to give students a better idea of the realities of work.
They are also using live classroom to bring in industry professionals talk directly to students in a Q&A format. There was a great idea from the floor where one institution  sends a headset/mic combo, webcam and a small present to everyone who presents instead of the travel expenses they would otherwise have paid, which makes the industry professional feel valued and respected.

Ideas came thru as well of how to use Wimba to run open days for prospective students, and for outreach to the parents of K12 children to help them understand how to help their children.

The other main theme in this regard was in how Wimba products can be used internally for communication within the institution. Ivy Tech Community  College has rolled out pronto to an impressive number of students and staff, with some 17k students and 1400 professors signed up. They use pronto for helpdesk support, with library, blackboard, tech, admin and financial service desks at both a global and local level, many open 7 days a week from 8am -10pm.

LJM also demonstrated how they used voice tools for formative feedback, describing it as their ‘killer app’, for me the real insight was how the same 2 minutes of staff time could be used to write 150 words of feedback or say around 500, so giving the student much more in depth feedback for the same amount of effort, and feedback that was sent back to the student immediately. They felt that audio feedback gave  flexible delivery of feedback in an authentic voice. They also used the Wimba podcast feature for revision, subject expert debates, community building and employer Q&A’s. They saw some barriers, however, in that its non searchable, the length of recording vs engagement needs to be monitored, its not suitable for large group discussions, and accessibility is a major concern.

Finally they had some good stats on student feedback to Wimba, 25% responded that Wimba was much better than other distance learning software they had used, 100% said it had a positive impact on their learning,100% would choose to study on a wimba enabled course again,  and it had an overall 8.75 /10 satisfaction rating as learning tool