Wimba

We believe that Wimba is the perfect complement to our courses as it allows our entire organization to communicate in the manner that fits the situation whether that means using audio, video, or text. Steve Kossakoski, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, New Hampshire Virtual Learning Academy Charter School

As distance education administrators, my colleagues and I find Wimba Classroom an incredibly powerful tool for collaborating both inside AND outside the instructional space. Before the University of North Texas adopted Wimba Classroom for our web conferencing needs, I had been using Wimba Classroom to host Texas Distance Learning Board meetings with my 17 colleagues spread out across Texas. Wimba Classroom allowed us to construct Board motions in black and white for everyone's consideration and then vote on them using the polling tool. When someone wanted to request the floor to comment, the raise hand tool enabled me to see who should be called on next. Using Wimba Classroom made our meetings more productive and more democratic.
Visit the UNT website Patrick Pluscht, Director, Center for Distributed Learning, University of North Texas

"It has made my life so wonderful! I can't tell you what a great tool this is."Patricia Landy, Instructor, Laramie County Community College

I think using Wimba has helped us to be taken more seriously as innovative management educators in the Higher Education sector in the UK
Visit the Winchester Website Neil Marriott, Dean of Winchester Business School, University of Winchester

The major benefit of using Wimba Classroom is that it allows all of my online students to be successful whereas without it, I average between 10 to 20 percent drop-out rates. In addition, my classes are much more interactive than they ever were when I taught my classes face-to-face on campus. Between using polls, asking open-ended questions where my students must then answer by talking back to me, or by having break out rooms where students can engage in either small group problem solving or small group project work my students are much more engaged. It seems like my face-to-face classes were always much more teacher centered.
Visit the University of Georgia Website Mike Orey, Professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, University of Georgia

"Wimba is unquestionably a “game-changer,” a disruptive technology, if you will, when it comes to e-learning. The ability for faculty and students to collaborate in real-time through Classroom and Pronto breathes new life into the online classroom by giving aural and kinesthetic learners what they have needed for years, a synchronous learning experience. What has surprised me the most is that faculty who teach in a traditional classroom are discovering that they can better leverage Wimba’s asynchronous tools to extend learning beyond the time-and-space limits of the traditional classroom. Through the archive and file download features, students are able to benefit exponentially from repeated interaction with content and collaborative experiences. Wimba is a perfect blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning environments in a user friendly package. I would not want to develop an online program without it."Mark Burris, Director of Scholarly Technology and Resources (STaR), University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Thanks to Wimba, SIMITA achieves a simulation environment that integrates with the students’ online learning experience, that looks and feels realistic, that is flexible and stable, that fosters interactive exchanges and encourages students to apply their knowledge, take responsibility for their learning and reflect on what they are doing.Manuel Frutos Perez, Deputy Manager, E-Learning Unit, University of the West of England

I'm very happy with Wimba Classroom. My students can record themselves having a conversation in Spanish and I evaluate them. All the conversations are archived. I've deleted them so I don't get mixed up. Thanks so much for your help, support, and patience. My students love that tool as well.Jorge Trujillo, University of North Carolina Wilmington

Wimba has become a catch-all phrase like Kleenex and Xerox.Jim Wolfgang, Director, The Digital Innovation Group @ Georgia College, University System of Georgia

From statewide professional development among teachers, to virtual tutoring for students, we've found that the Wimba Collaboration Suite gives us the enterprise-wide flexibility we need to efficiently and inexpensively connect students, teachers, and academic staff across Pennsylvania. We provide K-12 schools throughout the state with the ability to collaborate, problem solve, and teach and learn without the physical barriers of time and location. Jed Friedrichsen, Chief Administrative Officer, BlendedSchools.net

We saved tens of thousands of dollars and more than doubled our usual attendance by holding our conference online with Wimba. Gayle Nelson, Director of Instructional Design and Educational Technology, Troy University

After I evaluated other products, Wimba Classroom was the best. We broadcast our classes to students at home in Asia in real-time and they're able to ask questions back to us. Not only do our teachers enjoy it, but so do our students.
Visit the SUNY Stony Brook University Website Dr. Ted Teng, Full Professor Undergraduate Program Director, Stony Brook University

While many schools have a difficult time calculating the return-on-investment they receive by using educational technologies, here at San Diego State University we believe we may have cracked the code. By looking at a few factors and costs, one engineering professor believes he saved our school $75,000 by using Wimba Classroom to teach only one class online - a class whose enrollment has since tripled - while also significantly improving student learning and obviating the need for expensive hardware purchases.Dr. James Frazee, Director, Instructional Technology Services, San Diego State University

We began our search for a web conferencing solution but realized we would get much more value with a comprehensive solution that could support the diverse needs of members across our network. The Wimba Collaboration Suite will enable our community of users to connect and collaborate in so many different ways. It seems likely that we will discover new uses for the technology as we become more familiar with all of the capabilities.
Visit the Utah Education Network onlineCory Stokes, Director, University of Utah

Wimba Classroom brings to life what is otherwise typically monotonous text-based online learning communication. Additionally, Wimba Classroom enables faculty to teach and students to learn via an effective multi-sensory approach online. Students in particular appreciate the immediate and unhindered access to their professors and fellow classmates offered via Wimba Classroom.
Visit the West Georgia Website Christy Talley, Distance Education Specialist, University of West Georgia

Wimba is used university-wide and is a mission critical solution at Marshall. By providing engaging online courses via Wimba, we improved retention rates by more than 20% in multiple courses, and by increasing enrollment in our online courses, we have increased revenues. We've even saved money by leveraging our existing Wimba investment for lecture capture.Allen Taylor, Chief Technology Officer, Marshall University

Wimba has offered us a user-friendly interface and low technology demands that make access easy and instinctive. We now have tools that we can use as we wish rather than having to shape our interaction to fit the software.
Visit The University of Warwick Website Teresa Mackinnon, Business Language Development Officer , University of Warwick

We expected that our foreign language programs would be the biggest users of Wimba for practice, dictée, pronunciation, etc. Although adopted for this purpose, what we discovered is that both our students and faculty report it heightens socialization and accelerates the establishment of a cohesive community of learners. With the tight integration to our course management system and the superior diagnostics within Wimba, use is as close to seamless for all users.
Visit The Dalhousie University Website Phil O'Hara, Assistant Director, Academic Computing Services, Dalhousie University

The effective use of new technology will allow us to improve quality language learning of our students and also increase the efficiency of our language teaching of our instructors.
Visit The Catholic University of America Website Koorosh Azhandeh, Multimedia Director, Deptartment of Modern Languages, Catholic University of America

I can't imagine teaching English as a Second Language online without Wimba Voice. ESL students need to practice their pronunciation, listening skills, and conversation skills and Wimba's Voice Board, Voice E-Mail, Voice Chat, Voice Announcements, and, of course, Wimba Classroom, allow English learners and their instructors to have dynamic interactivity in quality audio/video, regardless of distance.
Visit Teach Me Help Me Website Ioan Elvis Sersea, M.A., Owner, Teach Me Help Me Educational Services

Adding Wimba Voice is probably the best-ever investment we've done to our Blackboard offering (since 1999).
Visit the University of Illinois Chicago Website Ed Garay, Assistant Director for Academic Computing, University of Illinois at Chicago

Working with Wimba continues to be a true partnership. Wimba Voice 5.2 is a perfect example of how Wimba listens to clients and prioritizes its product roadmap based on our feedback. The tool's usefulness extends beyond the 'obvious' subjects like foreign-language and speech, enabling our teachers in every content area to communicate personally, above and beyond what can be accomplished in text alone. For K-12 students, personal contact and feedback with voice tools are critical for student success.
Visit Idaho Digital Academy Website Donna Vakili, Ph.D., Director, Idaho Digital Learning Academy

I have been using Wimba with my English as a Second Language students for two years now, and we love it! Even students who have never touched a computer before are able to use it, and we all agree that it is an invaluable tool for language practice and feedback. I also feel it is a very useful tool for any and every class, not just language courses. I look forward to hearing how others are using the voice tools at the breakfast.
Visit Estrella Mountain College Website Diane Stonebrink, Professor, Estrella Mountain College

I've been working on a separate project called BlendEd (http://www.blend-ed.ac.uk) for the last 9 months. The project is to create Blended Learning Materials for the Further Education sector in both Business and Social Care. The consortium includes Reid Kerr, Langside, Cardonald, Dundee, and Glasgow College of Nautical Studies. I thought you might like to know that all the colleges have adopted Wimba Create as one of the main development tools. Wimba Create has been a very important tool in the process - I don't know what we would have done without it.
Visit the Langside College website William Paterson, Learning Technologist, Langside College

We upgraded to v2.0 a couple of weeks ago and are enjoying using the new version!
Visit the Shrewsbury College website Richard Booth, ILT Co-ordinator, Shrewsbury College of Arts & Technology

I just wanted to write you to let you know how happy we are with Wimba Create. We've found that Wimba Create dramatically shortens our course development cycle. Without it, our large-scale online-course projects would be extremely time-consuming. While we have staff members trained in web development, it is nice to have an application we can use to quickly take a faculty member's content from a Word document to a web-ready learning object with little or no HTML coding or editing.
Visit University of Texas San Antonio website LaVonne Grandy, Lead Instructional Designer, University of Texas - San Antonio

As a Trainer and Associate Professor at Orange Coast College, I teach online and use Blackboard Vista. While I do know how to use many web applications, I love using Word to write my lessons and learning module since it has a great spell and grammar checker. In addition I can use Office graphics in my documents. Well now Wimba Create will allow me and my colleagues convert our Word docs into actual lessons for our students and create beautiful navigation tools along with it. I could not ask for better. Thank you Wimba! I have told my peers if you can use Word, you can use Wimba Create!
Visit the Orange Coast College website Eric Wilson, Technology Trainer, Orange Coast College

We recently purchased Wimba Create as the preferred software for a project to develop HN Computing Digital Learning Materials for colleges within Scotland. The creation of interactive course material has been an exciting venture and the writers involved have found the software easy to use and the overall finished HTML pages extremely impressive.
Visit SQA website Caroline Douglas, Qualifications Officer, Scottish Qualifications Authority

We are very happy with all the Wimba Voice features and thoroughly enjoying using Wimba Pronto!!!
Visit the Berkeley College Website Mary Jane Clerkin, Coordinator of Online Faculty Support , Berkeley College

APSU faculty and staff are embracing the benefits of Pronto. The decision to purchase was driven by APSU’s desire to increase access to APSU for online and off-campus students. With Pronto, the community connection is enhanced as students, faculty and staff can interact instantly. Pronto facilitates group work within departments and among students in classes. Students no longer need to return to campus to participate in group meetings for classes, they can interact with their team from multiple locations in real time; Pronto also enables deployed military students the opportunity to interact in real time with faculty and classmates. Faculty are offering virtual office hours, making it easier for students to receive individual attention and be advised more conveniently. APSU’s Virtual Academic Support Center combines Pronto, Desire2Learn and Wimba Live Classroom to meet the needs of online, on-campus and off-campus students. Extended and Distance Education will utilize Pronto by opening an online help desk for students and faculty.Kathrine Bailey, Multimedia Specialist, Austin Peay State University

Wimba Pronto has given Ivy Tech the tool to hold on-line office hours, which has provided students with better overall comprehension of course materials since they now have the ability to chat synchronously with the Instructor.
Visit the Ivy Tech Website Jeff Ventrano, Technical Specialist, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana

My experience with Wimba has been just about as good as it gets with a vendor! The hosted server experience has been great. All service has been timely and transparent. We here all appreciate just how easy it is to get things done with the company - and we love the products too!
Visit the Boston College Website Elizabeth Clark, Director, Instructional Design and eTeaching Services, Office of the University Provost, Boston College University

"[Wimba's] support is wonderful. It's probably the most responsive help support system that I've seen amongst all the vendors I've worked with over the last decade." Dean Dyer, SUNY Jefferson

"I really enjoyed having instructors who know the product inside and out as well as having the time to go through the materials. Jennifer and Steve were a couple of the best trainers I have ever seen. Extremely professional and worked well together. They were so personally attentive to all the participants. I loved the best practices and troubleshooting tips."
Visit the Regent University Website Robert Fitkin, Instructional Designer, Regent University

Thanks again for your top-notch support. Of all the companies I deal with, you all really are the best. You guys really are the pinnacle!Nicholas Eastham, University of Northern Colorado

I looked at other tools and nobody beats Wimba when it comes to service and training.Kathrine Bailey, Multimedia Specialist, Austin Peay State University

WestEd Regional Technology in Education Consortia, provides assistance to K-12 educational institutions to help support them rate technology in their instructional and administrative efforts. We have used Wimba for years to provide online webcast events to our educational community. Our clients are often using this technology for the first time and the Wimba staff have been very supportive - "no question is a silly one" to them. Their senior staff has been great at advising us on how to adapt their services to the special needs of our audience and on how to be more effective. Thank You!
Visit the WestEd Website Julie Duffield, Research Associate, WestED RTEC

I have to say that in 20 plus years of working with vendors this is our best and most successful collaboration.Bob Jones, Director of Distance Education, El Paso Community College