NEW YORK – (May 6, 2008) – Wimba, the education technology company that helps people teach people, today announced that the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) has selected the Wimba Collaboration Suite™, to enhance educational opportunities for people across the state. KCTCS will deploy the technology across all 16 of its colleges to connect students and educators through online video, voice, text, application sharing, polling and white boarding. KCTCS will also roll out Wimba’s new academic-centric instant messaging platform, Wimba Pronto™. With Pronto, students can collaborate instantly with classmates, participate in online faculty office hours, and gain immediate access to important campus services, in addition to other opportunities.
KCTCS is the largest provider of postsecondary education and workforce training in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, with 67 campuses statewide, serving more than 92,000, students enrolled in credit programs each semester, and more than 180,000 people each year through continuing education programs.
“KCTCS fills an important role across the state of Kentucky by providing a quality education that is both affordable and accessible to hundreds of thousands of students,” said Sandra L. Cook, MBA, Ed.D., System Director of Distance Learning Technologies for KCTCS. “Our goal is to continue to expand these opportunities. Working closely with Wimba over the past several months, it is clear that the Wimba Collaboration Suite will be instrumental in helping us towards that goal.”
The KCTCS implementation marks the third system-wide integration of Wimba’s technology this year. In the first quarter of 2008, both the Utah Education Network (UEN) and Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) chose the Wimba Collaboration Suite – providing enhanced education opportunities to a combined 41 K-12 and 24 higher education institutions.
“Large state-wide education systems have an important role to expand and improve learning opportunities for a diverse and growing student population,” said Tommaso Trionfi, CEO of Wimba. “Technology is an invaluable asset for these systems. We applaud systems such as KCTCS that are leveraging these solutions for the benefit of their communities.”
The Wimba Collaboration Suite offers a rich array of collaborative applications that allow faculty to retain the highly personal and lively nature of traditional classroom instruction. Wimba solutions integrate seamlessly within existing university course management systems/virtual learning environments (CMS/VLE) such as Angel, Blackboard and Moodle. With this combination, Wimba offers institutions the flexibility they need so that instructors can manage their course content and create customized rooms from within their familiar CMS environment.