Wimba integration with Moodle enhances St. Patrick’s College online teaching and learning environment.
‘Since its foundation in 1875, St Patrick’s College, through its services to teacher education, in particular, can claim to have been at the heart of educational endeavour in this country,’ said College President, Pauric Travers. ‘It is where we aspire to remain.’ St Patrick’s College, a specialist college for education and the humanities, caters to the learning needs of more than 2,000 students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In 1993, the College became a College of Dublin City University, and its courses are accredited by DCU.
The College’s academic departments are currently divided into two faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Education. Mature students also account for a significant proportion of those registered for the B.Ed. and B.A. programmes and the College is the alma mater for a large proportion of Irish primary teachers.
In the past decade, the College underwent a period of growth and diversification. Central to the College’s strategy has been the need to engage with students and practicing teachers beyond the College’s immediate hinterland. In dealing with these challenges, the College recognised the strategic benefits of developing effective online learning as a means to enable their vision for growth and flexible engagement.
Having evaluated a number of virtual classroom solutions to integrate with its learning technology platform, St. Patrick’s selected Wimba Classroom in 2006. According to John Smith, Director of Online Learning at St. Patrick’s College, ‘We needed a virtual classroom solution to facilitate online and distance programmes for postgraduate students of education. Working teachers constitute an important group of our postgraduate students. The deployment of Wimba has also allowed us to make use of staff resources that are geographically distant in some cases.’
‘Since our adoption of Wimba Classroom in 2006, we have made further investments in expanding our learning platform by integrating Wimba Voice. This has added a new dimension and useful options in a range of courses but especially those in the language teaching departments.
John points to the seamless integration of Wimba with the College’s VLE, Moodle, as being a key part of their success. ‘All our Wimba-enabled courses have some element of face-to-face and Moodle scaffolding. The integration of Wimba into our Moodle deployment has made life much easier, both administratively and pedagogically. This has been a most significant improvement, and enabled higher levels of participation and satisfaction.’
Students and lecturers alike have responded very positively. In part this is because the College puts in place excellent support and training mechanisms. After an initial period of adjustment to what are, for most, novel teaching and learning environments, the response is enthusiastic, and many appreciate the flexibility that Wimba brings.
‘We have enjoyed and continue to enjoy a very supportive relationship with Wimba UK. This has also been key to our success.’