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Issues:

The concerns for TDU were 2 fold:

  1. part of the project focus was on communicating and collaborating with a variety of geographically separated institutions from across New Zealand.
  2. the second issue to address was that they were also the central unit for training and online learning for their own institution geographically separated across 3 campuses

Duncan O'Hara explains the reasons behind adopting the Wimba Voice Tools:

Duncan O'Hara

"Our job is to show Massey staff what the possibilities are in eLearning. We need to be one step ahead of the game in order for our staff to be ahead of the game.

As part of the eCDF project we're delivering professional development resources to a number of institutions, we therefore need to show them that we're current with our knowledge.

At a more practical level it was a really good opportunity to cut down on travel, both in respect to our Massey obligations and for the project.

We've made a big decision to run our Massey professional development completely online - all of our professional development for online learning and teaching is now ALL online - and we think that is unique. The key for us delivering online was that wanted lecturers to experience what students would experience - they need to see what it feels like to be an online student. In addition, we are also providing specific learning and teaching resources that helps themto develop best practice online. The key phrase for us would be learning by doing - they learn so much more by being part of an online learning environment and being exposed to the possibilities.

In respect to the project the social, human element can get lost. Thanks to funding and by using resources more cleverly we felt using the suite of voice tools was a good opportunity to connect everybody, humanise the experience and be able to gauge where people were at with the programme."