Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Online Focus
American and Brazilian Students Collaborate via Virtual Classrooms
5/21/2008
Four universities--two in the United States and two in Brazil--are testing inter-continental distance learning in a program facilitated by technology from Wimba. The U.S.-Brazil Consortium enables global collaboration among teachers and learners at The University of Georgia in Athens, Utah State University in Logan, Universidade Federal do Ceará and Universidade Estadual Paulista, Bauru.The consortium is using Wimba Classroom, which provides a virtual classroom platform with audio, video, application sharing and content display.
Students in the program spend time in both countries over the span of three semesters plus one summer month, while also participating in distance learning courses.
The consortium is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the Brazilian Ministry of Education's Fundacao Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES). Through the program, instructional technology professors at all four universities teach courses to students on both continents using Wimba Classroom and other learning technologies.
"For the core, recurring distance classroom components of our program, we rely exclusively on Wimba Classroom to enable our continual collaboration," said Michael Orey, University of Georgia associate professor. "Wimba provides a vital part of our program and is truly making higher education more accessible to more students." Orey serves as principal investigator under the FIPSE/CAPES grant and teaches "Learning Theory, Introduction to Instructional Technology," and the doctoral seminar for the consortium.
"With the Wimba Classroom technology I can access the content anytime," said Daniel Maestro, a graduate student at the Universidade Estadual Paulista, Bauru. "It makes it possible for me to study, communicate and work on assignments any time of day and from any location."
Myra Blackmon, graduate student at U Georgia, is switching careers and pursuing a Masters degree in Education Technology while working. "I take all my collaboration classes in the evenings from my home office using Wimba Classroom," she said.
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business. Send your higher education technology news to her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Digital Arts Alliance Adds Fordham U
The Digital Arts Alliance, a consortium led by the Pearson Foundation that promotes digital arts in K-12 education, is expanding its membership with the addition of Fordham University. This follows on the heels of three other organizations joining the group back in July--the National Education Association (NEA) Foundation, the Foundation for Investor Education, and Employers For Education Excellence (E3).
- Payment Card Security Toughens with DSS 1.2 Release
Opinions are mixed on what the new Payment Card Industry (PCI) DSS 1.2 standard will mean for security pros going forward. However, the mandate is clear: protect data.
- 6 Universities Join NASA Astrobiology Institute
Research teams from six universities have been selected by NASA to become members of its Astrobiology Institute with the aim of exploring the "origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe." Teams were each awarded five-year grants, averaging $7 million each, according to NASA.
- Amazon To Host Microsoft Solutions in the Cloud
Amazon announced Wednesday that it is conducting a private beta test of Microsoft's server products running on Amazon's hosted computing platform, which is called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon expects to offer companies the ability to run their applications on EC2 using Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server sometime in the fall, according to an announcement issued by the company.
- CRM Pushing into New Areas of Higher Ed
Implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) solution can require "difficult or even painful behavioral challenges" for administrators in higher education, according to Nicole Engelbert, a lead analyst with research and analysis firm Datamonitor. "It means re-orienting yourself to your students. That can be tough, so you need to be ready for that."
- Integrated Collaborative Environment Leverages Web 2.0
Here's a bit of trivia for your next high-tech happy hour: A "nog" (in addition to being a Christmas favorite) is a wooden block built into a masonry wall so that joinery structure can be nailed to it. For the founders of Piscataway, N.J.-based startup Bluenog this obscure bit of carpentry nomenclature was the perfect metaphor for an integrated software suite that includes a content management system (CMS), rich portal features and business intelligence (BI) capabilities.
