Massey University is the nearest thing New Zealand has to a national university. It has nearly 41,000 students enrolled on three campuses, with 21,000 nationally and worldwide extramural students. Recently, Massey embarked on an aggressive and innovative plan to deliver online professional development via Wimba to lecturers at 14 geographically dispersed institutions across New Zealand. Additionally, the University’s extramural students, on whom the school depends for a substantial proportion of its operating revenue, were missing out on some aspects of their language learning experience—remote students felt that they weren’t getting enough practice for oral and listening exercises. But thanks to funding and by using resources more cleverly we felt using Wimba Voice was a good opportunity to connect everybody, humanise the experience, and gauge where people were with the programme.” The University also organised blocks of face-to-face study for these students that often involved the lecturer and/or the students traveling significant distances to meet; which meant time out of the office along with expenses for travel and accommodation. This was expensive both in terms of time and money—but is no longer the case with Wimba.
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