-- City College of Norwich
-- Dublin Institute of Technology
-- University of Bristol
-- University of Durham
-- University of Salford
-- University of Ulster
-- University of Wales Swansea
Just one month since the domestic launch of the new Wimba Pronto, Grand
Rapids Community College, a nationally recognized institution serving over
26,000 students, is implementing the platform across the college.
"After testing Wimba Pronto Basic, we quickly recognized how much instant
messaging technology could benefit our community, enabling students to
informally collaborate with each other and faculty anytime and from any
location, in ways that were simply not possible before," said Garry Brand,
Director of Distance Learning and Instructional Technologies at Grand
Rapids Community College. "The new Wimba Pronto is especially important for
enhancing engagement with our student population who do not live on campus
and are often juggling work and family, while taking courses."
Wimba Pronto's Unique Academic-Centric Features
The new Wimba Pronto is enhancing collaboration among students, faculty and
across institutions with a suite of unique features including:
-- Instant Access to Campus Services: Institutions can bring services
online in real-time including the IT Department, Registrar, Financial Aid
office, and Library to create a 21st-century campus for the 21st-century
student.
-- Queued Chat for Tutoring and Office Hours: Teachers can control the IM
environment to enable a focused setting in which students "line up" for
individualized help.
-- Automatic Population of Classmates and Courses: Students' contact
lists are automatically populated with their courses and classmates to
facilitate and expand collaboration.
-- Application Sharing: Students can share any application on their
desktop in real-time with their classmates and teachers.
-- Blended Audio and Video Conferencing: Students and teachers can
interact in a group setting using their preferred media; whether that be
just audio or Wimba's follow-the-speaker video.
With 84% of undergraduate students using instant messaging on a daily
basis(1), Wimba Pronto enables institutions to bridge the gap between how
students live and learn, by replicating informal learning settings in the
online environment.
"Online and blended classes are integrated into the educational experience
for most students today; it is crucial to provide an online environment
that fosters informal discussion and collaboration where learning so often
takes place," said Yancy Oshita, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing
Officer for Wimba. "Wimba Pronto was developed specifically to harness the
power of these informal learning settings, similar to interactions that
take place in campus hallways, the student union and library, to bring
together students, faculty and staff in a familiar setting that is secure,
safe and comfortable."
Wimba Pronto is part of the Wimba Collaboration Suite™ which facilitates
the use of online video, voice, instant messaging, content authoring,
application sharing and white boarding. The Wimba Collaboration Suite works
seamlessly within existing online courses enabling convenient single
sign-on for instructors and students to access the collaborative elements
from within their course environment. The Wimba Collaboration Suite
integrates with the most widely used course management systems including
the Angel, Blackboard and Moodle platforms. For more information on Wimba
Pronto, please visit www.wimba.com/products/wimbapronto/
About Wimba
Wimba® is a leading provider of collaborative learning software
applications and services to the education industry. Our collaborative
software applications for the online and blended education market enable
institutions to bridge technology and pedagogy by supplementing course
management systems with many of the proven disciplines of in-person
learning environments. Wimba's intuitive solutions enable educators and
students to quickly and easily teach and learn live online, engage in live
chat and instant message exchanges, benefit from oral content being added
to text-based course content, and more. Instructors can also use Wimba
solutions to easily convert Microsoft Word documents into online course
content and to create and administer tests, quizzes, and exams. Our focus
on education and collaboration with educators fuels our product
development. For more information, please visit www.wimba.com or send an
email to info@wimba.com.
Wimba. People Teach People. www.wimba.com
(1) The 2007 Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Study of
Undergraduate Students and Information Technology
Contact Information: Wimba PR Contact Melissa Chotiner DBC Public Relations +1.202.292.4572 Melissa@dbcpr.com