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Southeast Alaska is made up of small, rural communities not connected by roads, making distance education is very important. Michael Ciri is the Director of Information Technology Services at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. "UAS has always taken a leadership role in providing distance education through a variety of different ways, like audio conferencing, live video from a studio, and streaming video," he said. "It only makes sense that a synchronous web meeting tool would be a part of the portfolio."
Will It Play in Rural Alaska?
"I’ve been in this game for a long time and have seen cools things come down the pike," he continued. "The questions is: will they play in rural Alaska? First technologically, does the tool have the ability to support our spotty Internet connectivity over dial up and satellite. Second, could the product get folks get up and running quickly."
"Often times, I’m in the position of surveying the campus and recommending products even though nobody has articulated this need," Ciri explained. "In the case of the web meeting tool, UAF worked with some of our faculty who wanted to try it, and it got a positive response. So Elluminate Live! was largely a grassroots effort. We didn’t have to sell the faculty on it. They kicked the tires for a couple of semesters and found it to be what we needed for a synchronous web product."
Many Needs, One Elluminate
According to Ciri, one of the strengths of the university system is that it can apply a single tool in different ways to meet the needs of its unique organizational cultures. "I observed the use of Elluminate Live! for the capstone class of a masters program," he said. "Each week one student acted as the instructor for a particular topic, using the tool as moderator for the first time. And it was very successful for all of them."
"This demonstrated to me that Elluminate Live! was something our diverse group of faculty could use without an enormous up-front investment in training and motivation," Ciri commented. "If we want a tool adopted across our organization, it has to be something like email where you just start using it and eventually learn more capabilities. I was very confident that Elluminate was a tool that would succeed in our environment."
"UAA has been extremely collaborative, providing us with a specific instance of the product, so we could tailor it to the needs of the SE region, continued Ciri. "Here, Blackboard is a supplement to our instructional environment. Our core course management system is a set of tools we’ve developed or purchased and woven together ourselves. Every course has a website and the capability of having an Elluminate meeting room associated with it."
Flexible, Easy-to-Use SDK
"The Elluminate API is flexible and well documented, enabling us to easily integrate the tool," he added. "In fact, when we rolled out the new version Elluminate last spring, we reengineered our entire custom interface in a single day with the Elluminate Live! SDK. It was very straightforward, enabling us to extend capability of system based on the needs of the faculty."
According to Ciri, UAS is very well positioned to customize and tailor the way a tool works in their environment. "For example, along with our traditional course management environment, we also have a comprehensive ePortfolio environment for students, faculty, and staff that includes educational artifacts, weblogs, threaded discussion, and podcasting," he explained. "Soon, every portfolio page (and you can have unlimited pages) can have an Elluminate meeting room integrated into it, providing open access for group collaboration, social activities, whatever they choose to use it for."
Positive Feedback, High Adoption Rate, Profound Success
"Since our major rollout of Elluminate for the fall semester, one in five (20%) courses has Elluminate Live! activated by the instructor," said Ciri. "I consider that to be an extremely high adoption rate. Students also rate courses and instructors by online survey. Of the positive comments, Elluminate was the second most commented upon. It accounted for 12.7% of all positive comments received and 4.2% of comments overall. These are pretty compelling statistics."
"Elluminate Live! is one of our most successful projects in recent years, with positive feedback from students, a high faculty adoption rate, the flexibility of SDK, and the success of our cross-institution collaboration, Ciri added. It’s been a profound success, and an extremely positive experience, with virtually no technical problems worth discussing. If you look at the strategic plan for UAS, one of our core values is integrating technology effectively in all programs and services. We need a suite of tools to do that, including Elluminate Live! It’s directly aligned with the strategic plan of the institution."
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