On November 15th, 2011, I attended a webinar hosted by Sloan-C Institute. The topic mentioned on the website of Collaborate was: “Using Collaboration Technologies to Engage Students of All Ages and Experience.” The conference was given by two presenters: Mr. Nicholas Dean from Marshall University and Mrs. Kristen Palson from Babson College. It was a live webinar and 56 persons were attending this webinar. The first part was given by Mr. Dean. He talked about Wimba, which is a product you can use in classroom context. He had a PowerPoint presentation about different style of learning and also cited that not only Generation X wanted to learn about technology, but all generations.
The second part, hosted by Mrs. Palson, was about how Babson College integrated Eluminate Technology (now called Blackboard Collaborate). For example, Babson College is situated in Massachusetts and some of their students are coming from Arizona. Instead of flying to Wellesley, MA, those students were able to attend the class by videoconference via Collaborate. They created a room where the teacher could move and being filmed at the same time. This is giving the impression to give a real face-to-face class and the student can follow the teacher walking around like if they were in class.
Although the second part was not research content but more marketing content (they were selling the Collaborate products) it was an interesting webinar to see how far technology can bring us. There were a lot of questions from the participants to the presenters. The only negative point would be that the first part should have been longer and Mr. Dean should have passed more time on his presentation because it was really interesting. The topic he was talking about was one of the main reasons why we should include Collaborate in our future so the content should have been more detailed. I have to admit that the idea of using Collaborate at university level is really interesting because, living far from the university; it could be great to be able to attend the class from home.
