Attendence to a webinar

For the first time of my life, I have attended a webinar (an online seminar) given by Karen Wilson. She is a teacher at the Fort Valley State University in Georgia who, with the help of other colleagues, try to integrate the use of Wimba Pronto (Blackboard) in order to facilitate students’ understanding and the availability of resources (teacher and library’s material). I realized that what is cool with webinars is that you can attend every webinar wherever you are on the planet. It does not cost money and it is an innovative way to reach people all around the world.

Here is a little summary of the activity:

Things discussed:

The first points discussed by Miss Watson were comparative results from different universities (California and Utah) that used or are still using Wimba Pronto. All of them agreed that it facilitated students’ retention since they could listen to archives whenever and wherever they want. Then, Miss Watson explained why Fort Valley State University needed this kind of educational approach in her area. She talked about how they started using Pronto and how the university progresses in this domain. Of course, they are always some modifications to make in order to achieve the former expectations, but Miss Watson says that everything is going well so far. Students’ comments about the use of Pronto for online courses are really positive. Most of the students have been helped with financial aid issues, registration issues and library services without coming to the campus. Finally, Miss Watson ended the webinar by saying that there are still improvements to do, especially in motivating students to register/to use online courses using Pronto. The Fort Valley State University aims the expansion of Pronto on a long-term period.

What I learned

I learned that Wimba Pronto helps to increase students’ retention rates, helps students who have difficulties with the content of a course and extends resources availability. All of these results help students to achieve their online courses and help them to save millions in travel reimbursements.  I also learned that Pronto was not only used for online courses, but also for admissions, financial aid issues and tutoring sessions. As soon as I saw the word tutoring, a bell rang in my mind and I thought about the program we have here at the UQTR. So, we have a similar program in Trois-Rivières that helps students with their homework. Although it is not an online course, I think it is the first step that can lead the university to consider the use of Wimba Pronto.   What I liked is that students are identified through Pronto, so the teacher can know who they are and who they say they are. The program pulls all the information from students’ CMS/SIS, thus everything is authenticated, integrated and organized.

It was really interesting and I will attend other webinars for sure!