New York, NY – (Feb. 5, 2008) – Wimba, the education technology company that helps people teach people, today announced that the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) has selected the Wimba Collaboration Suite™ for all 14 of the system’s universities. The largest education provider in Pennsylvania, PASSHE will leverage Wimba’s interactive solutions to enhance connections between faculty and students online and outside the traditional classroom setting.
“We first implemented Wimba Classroom™ in 2004. Only a few professors were using it. Today, Wimba is used in hundreds of courses, by thousands of students,” said Bob Hails, Distance Learning Coordinator for PASSHE. “With the full Wimba Collaboration Suite, our universities can leverage the technology across their campuses, providing a wide range of tools to complement the needs of different departments, courses and learners.”
At Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania (a PASSHE school), Wimba is central to an online course fully accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing persons, titled “History, Education, and Guidance of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing.” Wimba makes it possible for students to access a sign-language interpreter and closed caption text to accompany the standard slide presentation and instructor’s voice. With only three masters programs on deaf education in Pennsylvania, and 70 nationwide, the Bloomsburg online course provides access to students located around the country, potentially increasing enrollment of teachers who will continue on in this field.
The Wimba Collaboration Suite facilitates connections between teachers and students through voice, video, podcasting, instant messaging, application sharing, polling and white boarding. Academic institutions around the globe rely on the Wimba Collaboration Suite to meet a variety of needs ranging from providing synchronous online courses and archiving lectures to holding online office hours and collecting real-time student feedback on course content.
“Students have so many different options today, ranging from the course of study they choose to when and where they take their classes,” said Tommaso Trionfi, CEO of Wimba. “We aim to provide educational solutions that help institutions facilitate as many options as possible to meet the needs of their students and faculty. We look forward to working with PASSHE on such opportunities.”
As part of the expanded relationship with Wimba, PASSHE faculty will participate in customized training sessions to learn the various ways to leverage the technology. The PASSHE implementation demonstrates the increasing trend of states’ adopting technology platforms for all of their collaborative learning. Just last month, the Utah Education Network (UEN), selected the Wimba Collaboration Suite for use by its 10 public colleges and universities and 41 K-12 school districts across the state.