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Harrison College Launches Interactive Virtual Campus

Harrison College has launched KnowU, an interactive virtual campus for online learners. Harrison worked with technology consulting firm Perficient on this project.

Harrison created KnowU as a way to foster a sense of community and support among its growing population of online learners, said Kevin Hesler, vice president of information services at Harrison College, in a statement released this week.

"Online education is becoming increasingly popular, yet few institutions are attempting to improve the way online education is delivered," said Hesler. "There are many issues with online education that need to be addressed. For example, online students don’t feel a connection to the college they are attending. They find it difficult to develop relationships with other students, and interaction with staff and faculty is limited. But KnowU changes that."

Before KnowU, Harrison used a packaged learning management system to deliver its online courses. Now students access their courses through the new virtual campus which has been integrated with the school's legacy platform. KnowU supports real-time interaction between users, delivers news and announcements, and offers a number of resources for learning and career support.

KnowU's social media capabilities include discussion groups, networking forums, and a news feed. Users can also import their Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles into the system.

KnowU also features support functions. Users can find answers to questions through the site's hot topics buzz cloud or its FAQ pages. The site offers 24/7 live support.

Harrison College administrators collaborated with Perficient to develop the vision and design for the marketing and online learning sites. Perficient's teams produced the functional and technical designs and code development for KnowU.

For more information about this project, view Harrison College's video or visit KnowU's Web site.

About the Author

Kanoe Namahoe is online editor for 1105 Media's Education Group. She can be reached at [email protected].

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