University Business - April 2006 - (Page 56)

Rich Media on the Desktop the mouths weren't moving. 25 percent of the cam- Recent advancements in web conferencing puses that have web have helped replicate a true classroom feeling conferencing or digi- online. Garcia Duby uses Elluminate's web con- tal delivery can access ferencing program to enhance distance learning. the technology from The program allows students to share data a multiple campuses. key application and one of the newer ones in That means there are web conferencing. Professor and students can a lot of people online share a desktop. Anything the professor does can in higher education, be shown to students online. All participants doing everything can enter data on a spreadsheet, for example. from streaming lec- The technology has been blended into tures, to pushing rich Babson's MBA program, which has a distance media and video clips, ed component. Garcia Duby expects new web to instructing students conferencing capabilities to allow enrollment to in real time with slide IT administrators at Case Western grow to 200 in September, at least double the presentations and other text material. Reserve Ohio are beta testing a new system that will show video number of students now. Her Elluminate site Web conferencing use has extended beyond images in a larger format. license allows for 150 users online at the same the classroom, though. There are more admin- time, which gives the program room to grow. istrative meetings and interviews happening Garcia Duby uses Macromedia's Breeze soft- online. Some colleges and universities, such as ware for other web conferencing applications. the University of Phoenix and the University We do a lot of international interviewing, she of Akron Ohio , have web cast commence- says. The technology is especially helpful to fol- ment ceremonies. low up with international students who have In s t a l l i n g conferencing equipment was It was like graduated and moved back home. an expensive proposition only a few years We try to be on the leading edge, not the ago. Costs have dropped from a minimum of watching an bleeding edge, says Garcia Duby. We never in- $40,000 to outfit a classroom with cameras, stall version 0 of a software. We are always wait- microphones, and other equipment, to perhaps old Godzilla ing for version 1. Web conferencing is at that as little as $10,000 today. version 1 level for her. It is less likely these days movie where Globalization Drives the Trend that a professor will get in there and the software will bomb on them. Over the past year it has re- Web conferencing allows people in different the words ally become part of the standard package. states or different countries to meet in cyber- The instructors are using web conferenc- space. The technology is not lost on higher ed's were being ing almost as much as the course management distance education administrators. system, she says. In fact, professors access web Babson College Mass. has been work- conferencing applications via Blackboard, the ing with web conferencing technologies since spoken but college's course management program, thus the 1990s, says Tova Garcia Duby, operations eliminating the burden of accessing a separate and ePlatform manager. The technology has the mouths system in order to use the technology. gotten better, she says. Previous incarnations of the technology yielded poor resolution and weren't Beyond the Classroom audio that would flip in and out. It sounded as if the speaker was in an air- Case Western Reserve University's School of moving. plane or underwater, Garcia Duby recalls. Medicine in Cleveland is experimenting with Often the audio was out of whack with the a new program to move web conferencing be- video. It was like watching an old Godzilla yond academics. We use this for staff inter- Tova Garcia Duby, Babson College Mass. movie where the words were being spoken but views and for student placements, explains Lev 56 | April 2006 universitybusiness.com WebConf.indd WebConf.indd 56 3/23/06 11:05:36 AM http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - April 2006

Table of Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
People Watch
Sense of Place
On the Hill
Viewpoint
Future Shock
Financial Aid
Admissions
COVER STORY: Averting Housing Havoc
The Art of Reputation Building
Web Conferencing: Rich Media on the Desktop
All Rights Preserved
Admissions Messages vs. Admissions Realities
Internet Technology
What's New
Calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business - April 2006