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September 2007, Vol. 6, Issue 8

DESKTOP LECTURE SERIES STILL GOING STRONG

Many of us in the online education industry know Matt Wasowski. He’s the familiar voice and, as Wimba’s Director
of Communications, the driving force and creator of Wimba’s popular Desktop Lecture Series, a free online conference that has brought many expert educators to our desktops. Wasowski has hosted numerous live web conferences with Wimba Classroom, going as far back as 2003, when the series was first hosted by HorizonLive. The Desktop Lecture Series titles range from "Using Electronic Portfolios in Your Online Class" and "Pedagogy of Live Online Instruction" to "Mash Ups for Education" and "Meeting Pedagogical Goals with Blackboard." All of these conferences, and many more, are archived at www.wimba.com/community/upcoming.php.

Wasowski started working with HorizonLive back in June 2000, about four years prior to its merging with Wimba, so he has seen a lot of change. "It has been amazing," he says. When he first came on board, there were about 15 employees at HorizonLive. "Now we have four offices internationally. It has been quite a ride."

Producing and hosting the Desktop Lectures - which typically garner about 75 attendees/educators from all over the world and has gotten as many as 250 attendees on occasion - has helped him stay abreast of the latest trends in online education. He says that the people who attend the Desktop Lectures are usually seeking to understand the nuts and bolts of technology-in-education issues. They understand the conceptual aspects of online education and simply want the practical knowledge of how to implement them effectively.

Wasowski believes that online education "has come to the point where a lot of online classes have the foundations and are definitely getting up to speed, but the comfort level is still not where it could be. Right now, to some extent, they are still too basic or utilitarian."

It’s no secret that online teaching and learning, in general, has been incrementally enhancing its environments with tools that feature live audio and video. These tools have become easier to use and manipulate and have been utilized more strategically, from a pedagogical perspective, over the past 12 to 24 months, says Wasowski. "The stats are slowing coming out saying that using this kind of technology does improve retention. The hard data was not there, but now that some schools have a had a couple of years doing this, more and more of this kind of evidence is coming out, overwhelmingly across the board. That is really helping to keep the trend going."

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