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Wimba Increases Engagement & Attracts new Students in University of Nevada Reno Spectroscopy Course

Plasma spectroscopy course attracts international attention

Read the original article in Nevada’s Center for Entrpreneurship and Technology here


Professor Roberto Mancini’s graduate-level high-energy density plasma University of Nevada, Reno spectroscopy course can be taken sitting on a beach, in a coffee shop, or in a lab – wherever the students have an internet connection – and it’s being taken from spots around the world.

“It may be a little too distracting to be at the beach while taking this class, but it truly is an interactive class, on the web, that we broadcast in real time,” Mancini, chair of the University of Nevada, Reno’sRoberto Mancini, physics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, demostrates the Wimba Classroom set up he uses to teach students who attend his class, along with others who are connected online throughout the U.S. and in Europe. Photo by Jean Dixon Physics Department said. “All the students need is a browser, and with a microphone and web camera they can ask questions and participate in class discussions.”

The class has 16 students attending in the second floor conference room of the University’s Physics building, with 30 more scattered around the country and the world. The audio-activated system allows the class to see who is talking, helping Mancini interact with his students, which is important when he’s explaining how a spectrometer can distinguish temperatures in the 10,000-plus degree range. He can show graphs, equations and other content in explaining how to measure the fundamental properties of plasma.

“Students learn how to interpret the data in order to extract the density of plasma, how ionized it is; to decompose the light that the plasma emits and learn why certain colors and intensities appear at certain temperatures; the spectrometer is the instrument we use to observe and record what plasma does,” Mancini said.

“We have grad students, post-doctoral students and scientists, such as at Los Alamos National Laboratory, participating” he said. “This course content is based on experience gained from years of research; and not many institutions have this kind of class, the students are interested in the knowledge more than class credits.”

“This is a course with international appeal, a topic that is highly specialized, and a professor with incredible expertise” said Jill Wallace, a manager in Nevada’s Information Technology department who helped Mancini set up the course through Wimba Live Classroom, a software that enables the interactive live classroom. “This is as much like face-to-face as you can get, which is important for the professor to interact with his students.”