Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
News
Graduate School, USDA Standardizes on Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro for E-learning
5/8/2008
The Graduate School, USDA has standardized on Acrobat Connect Pro, a Web conferencing and e-learning platform from Adobe Systems. The school is a self-sustaining government entity created 87 years ago by the United States Department of Agriculture to provide adult continuing education."Acrobat Connect Pro continues to set the standard for ease of use and interactivity when it comes to eLearning," said Dr. Sharon Fratta-Hill, dean of IT. "And the latest release of the software further expands options for delivering rich online courses. With the newest version of Acrobat Connect Pro, our instructors and students have more flexibility to engage in interactive discussions. Instructors can easily transfer audio control to students, and students can jump in and ask questions and share their insights on topics in real time."
The courses delivered online focus on helping people develop process-oriented skills, such as accounting and auditing, human resources, leadership and management, and IT. With Connect Pro, the courses will be able to provide real-time meetings with instructors, real-time discussions, and interactive polls.
Adobe announced a new version of Connect Pro, which will be available at the end of May.
By using a new feature called breakout rooms, meeting organizers can have participants engage in smaller meetings to cover topics in more detail. Each breakout room includes its own private voice over IP or telephony audio. Instructors can monitor and move among breakout rooms and communicate with all participants across breakout room boundaries.
The Graduate School will use Adobe Presenter to develop courseware and create presentations from within Microsoft PowerPoint, adding content such as audio narration for slides, video, animations, quizzes and surveys, and then saving the presentations in the Adobe Flash format.
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business. Send your higher education technology news to her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Business Intelligence Tool Means Healthy Data at UVA
University IT groups will recognize the challenge of combining disparate data from more than one department in order to create meaningful reports for various users. At the University of Virginia Department of Medicine, which is overseen by UVA's School of Medicine, data was coming from two very different accounting systems, which meant problems for faculty members whenever they needed to run reports.
- Exec Describes Microsoft's 'Social Networking' Vision
A Microsoft executive involved with the company's Windows Live efforts outlined some of the company's ideas about cloud-based computing and social networking technologies Tuesday. The talk was presented by Brian Hall, general manager of the Windows Live Business Group, at the 2008 Merrill Lynch Technology Conference May 6.
- Texas A&M System Signs Distribution Deal for Virtual Clinical Learning Lab
Texas A&M University has signed a license agreement with BreakAway Ltd., a developer of game-based technology, for the worldwide rights to Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab. Pulse is a federally funded project in development at the Corpus Christi campus that allows medical professionals to practice decision-making protocol and experiential skills on PCs in a virtual hospital setting. The agreement grants BreakAway the rights to develop, market and distribute Pulse.
- Tegrity Records 325,000 Hours of Lectures
Ed tech developer Tegrity reported this week that usage of its Campus 2.0 classroom capture system hit record levels last year, including, among other things, capturing 325,000 hours of faculty lectures on Tegrity servers in a 12-month period.
- JavaOne Keynote: Neil Young Likes Java
Rock legend Neil Young joined Sun Microsystems' Executive Vice President of Software Rich Green on stage during the opening keynote of the 13th annual JavaOne conference, underway this week in San Francisco.
- Michigan Embraces Electronic Transcripts
"We get wheelbarrows of paper documents in the mail every day," according to Michael Cook, senior associate director of admissions at Michigan State University. "Our goal is to become paperless here in the admissions world," he added, "but that's not as easy as it seems."
