Teaching with Wimba Classroom
Overview
UNT licenses Wimba Classroom, an online, synchronous, collaboration tool designed to enhance online courses with dynamic interaction. Wimba Classroom is a live, virtual classroom that enables groups of participants to interact using voice, video, content sharing, and electronic whiteboard in a web-based environment. Wimba's pedagogical design and ease-of-use ensures that educators and students engage as if they were meeting face-to-face. This technology is perfect for educators who are teaching online and wish to enhance their classes with live, voice-based interaction. Classroom sessions can be archived and exported as MP3 and MP4 files for those who want to review a class.
- More about Wimba - Bring Class to Life (archived demo)
- Wimba Capability Clip (below)
Getting Started
There are two ways to access with Wimba Classroom at UNT:
- In Blackboard Vista from the Build tab, click on Add Content and select Live Classroom. For a video demo, see: Create WC in Vista / CE (Video)
- To use Wimba Classroom without using Blackboard Vista, please email mary.speight@unt.edu.
Wimba Classroom Tutorials and Live Workshops
- Presenter Guide 6.0 (PDF) (687.47 KB)
- Blackboard Vista User Guide 4.0 (PDF) (176.06 KB)
- Attend a live Wimba Online Workshop: http://www.wimba.com/company/events/wow/
- See Wimba's complete list of guides and video "quicklets" at http://www.wimba.com/services/instructor/classroom/ .
Best Practices Using Wimba Classroom
- Prepare your students or participants in advance of your Wimba Classroom session by sending them this Getting Ready Guide (PDF). You may want to post this guide as a link in your Bb Vista course. (A Wimba Participant Guide (399.67 KB) is also available should students need more information about using Wimba.)
- Review and follow the Wimba Classroom: Five Teaching Tips and Trouble Shooting Guide.
UNT's Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment, and Redesign (CLEAR) assigns instructional consultants to work with faculty who want to implement this technology in their teaching activities. For one-on-one training or to schedule a demo for a small group, please contact the CLEAR instructional consultant assigned to work with you.
Accessibility Guidelines
Wimba's collaboration software is designed to meet or exceed globally recognized accessibility guidelines, as defined in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (U.S. Government), as well as W3C-WAI and SENDA (UK).
Who to Contact for Technical Support
The terms of our license with Wimba, Inc. entitle our users to 24/7 support. If you experience a problem using Wimba, please use one of the following methods to communicate with Wimba Technical Support.
Technical Support via Email: technicalsupport@wimba.com
Wimba Collaboration Suite Technical Support via phone:
- US & Canada: 866.350.4978
- UK: 0800.007.6788
- Rest of World: +1 703.956.3816