Online collaboration brings distance learning closer
Distance learning and training institutions can now take a big digital leap in the way they reach and deliver content to students and trainees. Internet Solutions (IS) is enabling these institutions to improve their online collaboration capabilities with the launch of Cisco WebEx web conferencing, a unified conferencing and content sharing collaboration tool. WebEx enables a single licensed user, in this case the lecturer or trainer (the WebEx meeting host) to communicate and share content with any student who has an internet connection and they will be able to utilise the service and connect to the WebEx service without the need for a license.
“WebEx is the ultimate collaboration solution as it only requires an internet connection and browser to work,” says Hayden Lamberti, Application Solutions Business Unit Manager at IS. “WebEx combines real-time desktop sharing with phone conferencing, gives everyone the ability to view the same content during the conference call. This makes it far more productive than emailing files and then struggling to get everyone on the same page. The proliferation of internet access to homes around South Africa also makes WebEx the ideal solution to enable and enhance distance learning and education in this country by giving students a means to interact directly with lecturers.”
According to Lamberti, as a collaborative solution that includes visual and audio communication, WebEx makes it possible for educational institutions to deliver a more efficient and cost effective distance learning programme that can help increase reach and improve student productivity and performance. “Cost reduction comes from the decreased need for students to travel to collect course work and lecture notes, as everything can be delivered optimally online. This also saves time, increases the speed at which learning can occur and has a positive impact on the environment as travel is reduced.”
WebEx uses a worldwide managed audio network to deliver the voice component of the conferencing functionality, which means students will have a local toll number that they can call into. “By delivering the voice component separately to the visual component bandwidth use is also optimised, ensuring IT hardware and connectivity costs are reduced,” he says.
“WebEx is software delivered as a service, which means it is hosted in a data centre and accessed across the internet, so users can access it from anywhere, through any device that has access to the internet and a web browser. Lecturers and trainers will be able to schedule specific WebEx sessions, or will be able to launch a session on-demand when speaking to students outside of lecture periods. During these WebEx sessions lecturers and trainers can share documents, work together with students in different applications, share desktops or remotely control another desktop, as well as annotate the session on-the-go to give notes at the end of the lecture,” continues Lamberti. “However, the lecturer can control the sharing of content as it is self contained on their desktop, so session participants can’t copy or record anything unless the lecturer specifically allows them to do so.
“With all this functionality we see WebEx as a key online technology that will enable distance learning and training institutions to offer a more productive and cost effective manner to collaborate with students,” says Lamberti. “With over 250,000 daily WebEx users globally and over 50 million individual users, WebEx is already the global standard in web conferencing, and it is now available to the South African market through Internet Solutions,” he concludes.
TAMMY DU PREEZ
Communications Manager
Tel: 087 365 7768
Tel: +27 (11) 575 7768
Fax: +27 (11) 576 7768