You may need a more up-to-date browser to see these pages as they were meant to be.

Wright State University Designated a 2010 Elluminate Center of Excellence Winner

Elluminate Award Recognizes Best Practices, Creativity in Technology, Educational Methods.

[Dayton, Ohio] (March 5, 2010) — Elluminate, Inc., the leading provider of online collaboration tools serving seven million teachers and students in 170 countries, named Wright State University a 2010 Center of Excellence winner and named Sheri Stover, an Instructional Designer in the Center for Teaching and Learning at Wright State, an Elluminate Hero. This is Elluminate’s 5th year recognizing international educational and corporate institutions for their best practices and for leading the way in technological methods of teaching, learning and conducting related business processes.

The first user of Elluminate at Wright State was Dr. Rick Wantz, Professor in the Human Services Department. Wantz incorporates the web conferencing tool into his Distance Education (DE) classes because it allows him to conduct live online team-based learning activities with his students. He is also able to receive and give real time feedback to his students. Since Elluminate has a voice-over-IP feature, Wantz feels that the ability to communicate verbally is far superior to the key board text chat that he had used for his previous DE classes.

Dr. Lynn Disbrow, Associate Professor in the Communication Department, feels that the use of Elluminate in her online classes has re-invigorated her love for teaching. Elluminate allows her to reintroduce the element of spontaneous interaction and sharing into her online classes. Her online students now discover the same feelings of cohesiveness and camaraderie that develop in a traditional class room experience. She feels the use of Elluminate is a great resume builder for students since the use of web conferencing for meetings and training is growing in the corporate world.

Dr. Jacqueline Collier, Associate Professor in the College of Education, feels that her students are often uneasy about using technology to learn in an online environment and Elluminate brings back the human factor into the class. Since Elluminate allows participants to talk over the internet, the human voice can calm and support students beyond a text message. It is the context of the voice, the personal contact that students want and need. Students repeatedly tell her they need to hear the voice of a live human being, they want to be able to ask a question and hear an immediate response. Elluminate allows that conversation to take place in real-time.

Elluminate has been incorporated into many of the Nursing classes at Wright State. Dr. Susan Praeger, Professor of Nursing, uses Elluminate to Simulcast her classes. This allows her to teach face-to-face and remote classes simultaneously. Praeger has taught campus courses where school nurses from as far as Kuwait needed to participate and Elluminate allowed her to accommodate this request. Praeger also conducts virtual office hours through Elluminate, giving students more flexibility and increasing the number of students contacting her. She also creates Elluminate sessions for her students to enable them to work on their group projects independently. This means they do not have to travel to complete group projects.

The Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Wright State, Dan DeStephen feels that Elluminate is central to the university’s strategic goal of making our academic and professional programs more accessible, responsible, and flexible. Elluminate allows the university to expand student access to what we have to offer beyond the four walls of the classroom. Terri Klaus, Associate Director in the CTL made the decision to bring Elluminate to Wright State to give faculty a powerful tool to enhance their ability to interact with the students in their online classes. Klaus said that there are over 400 faculty and staff currently using Elluminate at Wright State. Having Elluminate on campus has the potential to revolutionize our faculty and staff’s ability to work collaboratively with their colleagues and students regardless of their physical location.