Wimba

In How Using Wimba Supports Cognitive Processes Resulting In Higher Retention Rates, a dissertation in progress by Lisa Frazier, MED, Curriculum Development Specialist/Instructional Technologist at Great Basin College, Frazier finds that, “Our online courses that use Wimba in addition to the Blackboard environment have a 5-7% higher retention rate than online courses using Blackboard alone.  ... ...
Seven percent is a very meaningful number when students who usually can’t sign up and complete courses are now signing up, completing, and loving their experience. ” It’s examples such as these which clearly demonstrate that collaboration is key to any student’s success, particularly for students learning at a distance.

Mike Orey is an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia who has taught online courses since the late 1990’s.  He has used numerous course delivery systems ranging from the early version of WebCT Campus Edition to the full Wimba Collaboration Suite.  His experience and research point to tangible success via collaboration.  “When I taught asynchronously, I would have about 20% of my students that were either dropping out or failing my online classes, and these were graduate students who successfully went through the K-12 system and successfully got their undergraduate degrees.  But by now having these synchronous classes with Wimba, it essentially is the experience with which they’ve been successful for 16 years.  There’s virtually no difference between my online classes that are done in Wimba versus the classes I teach face-to-face.”

Are instructors publishing these results in any of the online learning journals?

Yes.  This particular study hasn’t been published yet in a journal, but the author, Lisa Frazier, just publicly presented this info last month as part of the Wimba Distinguished Lecture Series.  The archive of her presentation can be viewed at: http://lecture.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?channel=gbc_2008_1113_1504_06

Also, this research (and a lot of additional research) has been published in this Wimba-written white paper:  http://www.wimba.com/zone2/Academic_Research_Makes_A_Case_For_Wimba_Whitepaper.pdf

Sincerely,
Matt