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

The accepted wisdom is that webinars need to be short and sharp, but my experience so far on delivering our online masters in photojournalism and documentary photography at the LCC suggests otherwise.

Clive notes 2 presentations at an elearning network seminar Thinking Synch, where several of the presentations discussed how they were working with much longer sessions live, up to 4 hours in one case. both presentations seemed to focus on how concentrated webinars with engaging content can be delivered in a way that maximises benefits in the most concentrated way.

I teach both a f2f and online mode of the same course, with essentially the same content and assignments etc, just delivered in college over one year or entirely online part time over 2. On the online mode,  most of the teaching is done live in real time using synchronous web conferencing – we use the Wimba live classroom. Our sessions are typically 2 hours long for lecturers, seminars and tutorials. In my opinion, if the experience is engaging enough, and uses good visuals and materials, then a live web conference can be sustained over a long period of time – in fact our group usually want to go on longer!!

I think that one reason is the intensity of the experience, and another is that it is easier for them to schedule one long session once a week than several shorter ones – they are mostly working professional freelancers – and it is easier to block out one longer slot a week than several shorter ones. Also I feel that the energy generated in a 2 hour session is just right – we typically have 2 ‘lecturers’ on different topics, with group discussions etc, and then a general informational session where we cover course admin, assignments etc.

I even think that webinars offer several advantages over a traditional classroom environment. Once you are over that strange feeling of talking to the ether that soon passes, I feel like the intimacy and intensity generated by having the headphones on and the work right in front of me on screen, filling most of my field of vision, creates a performative space where i get energised and excited just as much as in a f2f lecture. in fact the fact that i cant see my audience in a way enhances this, because I don’t get upset if someone looks like they are dropping off! From the feedback we are getting from the participants (there are 16 on the course each year), they feel a similar sense of engagement. One proof of this is that although the sessions are all archived, our attendance levels for the live sessions are typically around 75-805 which isn’t bad for a traditional lecture, never mind one that crosses transatlantic time zones and freelance work patterns.

Another major advantage  I think is that they are all archived and stored with an easy to navigate timecoded system that makes going straight to a particular part of a talk or session very easy.

But the real killer app is the range of feedback options that the participants have. They can put in chat/text messages, either to the whole room or privately, and in a good session this amounts to a running commentary on the presentation, with approvals (and disagreements!); questions that can then be rolled into the talk; and even a whole team of ‘researchers’ who can quickly google a reference when its mentioned in a presenation and post the url to the group.

Wimba has various emoticons and yes/no tick boxes, an they too add to the sense of involvement, its easy to ask ‘is everyone following this’ and thne get a series of green ticks if they are, or red crosses if they are not.

And there’s nothing quite like a round of virtual applause emoticons at the end of a great session!!

Wimba themselves have a long running series of online lectures that typically run for an hour each with up to 200 participants at a time, they have done over 500 of these and again the problem is running out of time not going on too long.

And the ability to annotate and draw onto images as in the example above is invaluable in dissecting how and why a particular photography works – or doesn’t. 

Certainly I don’t feel that synchronous has to be short…nor does it have to be technical

BTW here’s a great list of myth busters about live online teaching from Jennifer Hofmann, president of InSync Training (www.insynctraining.com),

And Clive has just added another post that confirms my experiences even more, especially this

Further evidence came from Matthew James and Dr Kathy Seddon from NCSL who presented on ‘multi-layered synchronous learning’. They made the point that web conferencing encourages multiple dialogues among participants. Online you can be viewing a slide and listening to a speaker while simultaneously interacting with peers through text chat. In other words, online learners have excess capacity for interaction that the formal aspect of the event will not always utilise; online that capacity can be used to the full. And, this additional channel is not superficial or frivolous – the speakers reported that many participants asked if the session could continue after the facilitator had left, so they could continue their discussions. This dynamic of what the speakers called ‘co-construction’ is not typically evident in a face-to-face environment.’

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you can register here 

the abstract is here

Blogs form a vital part of the collaborative space in which postgraduates interact with each other and with tutors and industry professionals; operating as the core of the learning circle, connecting and interlinking its stages and transforming practical assignments into an Schonian repertoire of experience that prepares the student for professional practice. Their real time nature and the seamless mashing up of ideas, reflections, images, links and emotions of the blogging format create the foundations for a future generation of E-flective Practitioners.

This presentation discusses how the School of Media at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, uses blogs alongside synchronous interactions using the Wimba classroom to map the participants learning journey on the course in both full time face-to-face and fully online part time modes, and to build a collaborative community of practice on the course.

Blogs act as a conduit of connected knowledge between the teaching staff and the cohort, offering an unparralled insight into the working methodologies, influences, problems and successes of the group in real time in a way traditional tutorial forms cannot replicate.

The Media School targets mature students who are mid-career professionals looking to deepen and extend their practice, or who are looking to gain the skills and methodological toolbox to operate as professionals in the media and related areas.

Through student feedback and analysis of the role of blogs on the course, the course team identified several key features of blogs, identifying both the strengths and potential problem areas; and how they map onto Schon’s concepts of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action: