Asynchronous teaching and learning certainly does have its benefits; e.g., time to study and learn is more flexible, obviously, than having to attend regularly scheduled synchronous events. Plus both students and faculty have more time to think about and respond more significantly to posts (in most but not all cases) than in a real-time online event.

However, the use of synchronous tools in online teaching and learning environments - especially web conferencing software with shared audio accompanied by PowerPoint presentations, whiteboarding and desktop and link sharing, - is growing stronger these days. In many instances, the use of such synchronous tools has proven to be more effective than relying solely on asynchronous online teaching and learning tools in fully online courses, as well as in hybrids.

The short story is that web conferencing tools, such as those provided by Wimba, are enabling many educators to more easily conduct live teaching and learning events online than they have in the recent past.

What follows in this issue of Educational Pathways is an overview of how online synchronous tools are being used in higher education, with a focus on Wimba and a few of its customers.

We begin with the obvious: a look at Wimba the company and its products.

Over the course of three years, four companies amalgamated into the global education technology provider that is called Wimba today: HorizonLive, Wimba, Connected Learning and Brownstone Research Group. HorizonLive and Wimba —

two education technology companies that have a history dating back to the late 1990s — formally merged in 2004 to form what was fist called Horizon Wimba. Many people who use Wimba products still refer to them as Horizon Wimba or HorizonLive, as well as a number of other names and identities that are related to the two company’s core products. The official company name, however, is now simply Wimba, and its new tagline is simply "People Teach People."

Wimba currently has four offices, based in New York City; Sophia-Antipolis, France; Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, United Kingdom; and Rome, Georgia. It has plans to establish more offices worldwide as the company grows. At press time, Wimba had 1,000 customers in 17 countries.

Wimba’s products fall under two categories: a Collaboration Suite and Publishing Services.

The Wimba Collaboration Suite is comprised of four products: Wimba Classroom, Wimba Voice, Wimba Pronto and Wimba Create.

HorizonLive, based out of New York City, created the technology behind Wimba Classroom, the web-based software that supports interactive audio, video, application sharing, polling and whiteboarding. It allows users to communicate with each other online in real-time through multi-way voice and video. Additionally, Classroom facilitates public and private text chat, for those who are more comfortable with writing than speaking. It also has a phone conferencing function.

A user-friendly interface gives the presenter/s the power to display PowerPoint slides, Microsoft Word and Excel documents, web pages, PDF documents, Flash presentations and more. Online polls and surveys
can be taken in real-time; and application sharing allows a presenter to show or share any application running on his or her computer with all participants in a presentation.

Classroom presentation content, including voice, chat and video, is archivable, so students can go back asynchronously and review course content if the instructor sets up the course in this manner.

Wimba Classroom participants must have a USB or Bluetooth headset with a microphone attached; a webcam, if they wish to broadcast video; and a highly recommended DSL or cable modem Internet connection. However, as noted in its company literature, Wimba’s "thin-client, low-bandwidth features allow for dial-up access." In addition, it is noted that Wimba’s "cross platform support and intuitive user interface allow for virtually any user, on a PC, Mac or Linux machine, to fully participate with minimal instruction and setup."

One of latest Classroom developments comes with version 5.0, which was released early this year. It features enhanced video capabilities called "Follow-the-Speaker," which is a voice-activated switching method that automatically displays the live audio and video of users who have activated webcams . "The whole goal is to have people spend time communicating with each other using both verbal and non-verbal means, without having to worry about whose camera is facing whom," says Steven D. Kann, Wimba co-founder and chief engineer. The camera automatically focuses on the speaker. "It ends up looking like a very polished news broadcast, and it allows people to focus more on the message and not the medium."

Wimba Classroom 5.0 also has a new phone conferencing feature that allows users to speak and listen to audio and virtually raise their hands and respond to polls from a telephone. This feature is recognized as an alternative for users unable to get to a computer, or who might be having hardware or Internet connectivity problems.

Wimba, from France, created the technology behind Wimba Voice. This web-based software is currently being utilized primarily in foreign language courses. Wimba Voice facilitates vocal instruction, collaboration, coaching and assessment. It enables users to create threaded voice boards, voice-enabled e-mail, embedded voice within course pages and live group discussions.

The latest version of Wimba Voice features a new Wimba Podcaster tool, with support for RSS feed formats, and a new voice presentations tool that lets users add web content alongside audio messages. Another relatively new enhancement gives users the ability to import and export audio files into a voice board in spx, mp3 and wav formats. Users can also import or export an entire voice board and share voice board messages via iTunes. Additionally, some usability improvements include a new interface and a feature that allows users to change configuration parameters via the web instead of via config files. Users can also track usage statistics more easily; employ an auto-play function to play messages automatically, instead of repeatedly having to click on a play button; and take advantage of a voice authoring/player applet that shows playback and recording time information and input and output levels.

Wimba Pronto is the company’s newest tool, officially introduced to educators in July 2006. Pronto is basically a sophisticated instant messaging and live voice chat tool that can be used for informal or unplanned communications between faculty and students. It allows users to spontaneously meet online at any time, and it currently integrates with Blackboard/WebCT to automatically populate a student’s contact list with his or her classmates. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for fellow students and faculty to communicate with each other online anytime and anywhere outside of the courses they are taking, essentially extending the course and learning boundaries.

Pronto provides the tools to create a community of students who live outside of the traditional classroom, says Kann. So, for example, a student in a face-to-face biology class that does not have any online teaching and learning components can hook up with a fellow classmate online (maybe that socially shy, intelligent biology major) and have conversations to support each other’s learning.

"Pronto is the hallway between classes," says Kann, adding that internal company research reveals that these types of informal interactions conducted between students can help improve course learning outcomes and retention rates. "The best way to learn is not to listen but to actually speak," Kann says. "If you can understand a concept and teach it to someone else, you will retain that concept much better."

Kann also notes that he sees future uses of Pronto occurring between students and professors from different colleges and universities who want to share their finest teaching and learning experiences.

In 2005, Horizon Wimba acquired Connected Learning, a United Kingdom-based company with a product called Course Genie, which is content authoring software that allows users to quickly and easily convert Microsoft Word documents into web pages. This is the technology behind Wimba Create.

More than just the aforementioned, the functionality of Wimba Create includes the ability to add interactive features that integrate with Angel Learning, Blackboard/WebCT and Moodle course management systems. Through a combination of special styles and dialogue boxes, users can add elements to their Word-into-web- pages conversions, such as flashcards; HTML, Javascript and other code; hyperlinks; popups; self-test questions; streaming audio/video and more.

Wimba Create is promoted as a time saver that enables users to convert existing materials directly from Word into clean XML and HTML code that is validated against W3C standards as opposed to spending more time using a relatively more complicated web authoring tool. It also gives non-technical authors the ability to create materials that are SCORM compliant.

In 2006, Wimba acquired Brownstone Research Group, which became the company’s Publishing Services unit. Based in Rome, Georgia, Brownstone is a developer of assessment tools for teaching and learning, most notably Diploma Campus and EDU Campus. Diploma Campus is a desktop application that allows instructors to create tests, write and edit questions and create study sessions for students inside a course management system. EDU Campus is a web-based application for creating automatically graded homework and tests.

Wimba is incorporating its Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology into Diploma and EDU in order to create voice-enabled assessments and homework assignments for language learning courses.

Wimba frequently promotes that its solutions integrate with Angel, Blackboard/WebCT and Moodle. Several educators that Educational Pathways talked with mentioned that course management system (CMS) integration was a positive factor in their decision-making process when they ultimately adopted the Wimba tools.

Wimba does have customers who use Desire2Learn and eCollege as their CMS providers. In the case of Desire2Learn, these customers place links within their CMS to hook the two products together. In this scenario, students and instructors are required to re-authenticate in order to access the Wimba tools. Some eCollege customers have built a custom integration with Wimba, using Wimba’s APIs to develop solutions that specifically meet their needs. "We continue to explore other packaged software integrations as the market and our customers demand," says Yancy Oshita, Wimba’s vice president, worldwide marketing. "For example, we are working on a solution for Sakai integration based on customer/market demand."

Wimba is also working on meeting the customer demands of a growing worldwide education marketplace. Oshita mentions, for instance, that currently the use of online collaboration tools is most heavily embedded in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain and Canada. Other smaller countries where he sees collaboration tool adoption starting to mature include the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and Portugal. "We sell into those markets," Oshita says, "and the uptake is pretty high because of the maturity level. We also see South Korea coming on board. Germany and France are still involved with a lot of government reforms, so they are adopting a little bit slower. Ultimately, the big four - China, India, Japan and Indonesia - will follow along afterwards."

"The international aspect of our business is not just something that we look at in terms of markets to attack," adds Kann. "We have offices in three different countries, and understanding the different needs of different countries and cultures is something that is fundamental to the way we work."

Additionally, Wimba has a relatively large international advisory board with representatives from 35 different educational institutions, from K-12 to community colleges to international universities located worldwide.

Another driver behind the fundamental elements of the way Wimba operates is its focus on accessibility, says Kann, who is the lead architect of Wimba’s products and an industry expert on Section 508 accessibility. "My goal is that anyone with a computer and Internet access should be able to use our products," he says. In the early years, the company dealt with making sure that having a Mac and/or a dial-up Internet connection were not impediments to participate. Concerning Section 508 accessibility issues, Kann says that in 2001 the company made a "concerted effort to make sure our products were accessible to people with disabilities, and that is something that we’ve continued to enhance over time. Our latest version of Wimba Classroom has some new enhancements that go beyond what the law requires and ensures that it is not just possible to use our products, but it is easy to use our products. We want our products to be intuitive; we want the technology, in all cases — not just the cases related to people with disabilities — to melt into the background so that people can focus on the message, not the medium."

For more information, see www.wimba.com