wbsLive goes live

This term welcomes the launch of wbsLive at Warwick Business School, a desktop video conferencing facility, available to all WBS staff, students and alumni. wbsLive is a virtual classroom environment which offers audio, video, application sharing and content display to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

After thorough testing during 2008 by the Learning Resources Development team and some willing tutors, wbsLive is now being deployed within the MBA programme, Specialist Masters courses, alumni projects and career development programmes for current students and alumni. wbsLive is now part of the facilities of the School's online virtual learning environment to make it easily accessible and manageable for users.

Some current and future uses include:

• Open events: WBS presenters delivering material introduce programmes, for example, to a global audience sitting at their own computers, being able to answer questions as well as present information;
  
• Lectures and seminars: WBS academics delivering lectures and tutorials to an audience of students located around the world;
  
• Guest speakers: Practitioners from across the world speak to WBS students and alumni without incurring the expenses of travel and time to visit the campus;
  
• Online collaboration: Teams of geographically-dispersed students working together in wbsLive on assessed coursework, study support and sharing documents and editing them in 'real-time';
  
• Online groups: WBS' special interest groups (for example, the Telecoms Industry group, or the Women of Warwick group) using wbsLive to network and communicate from their desktops;
  
• Online interviews: MBA Selectors using wbsLive to interview candidates via their desktop to save candidates having to travel to Warwick or to add a visual dimension to telephone interviews.
  
• Online induction events: the Distance Learning MBA Induction Days this year are being complemented with equivalent online sessions using wbsLive to enable more students to benefit from the optional induction day.

Ray Irving, head of the Learning Resources Development team, said, "WBS has a rich and deep tradition in exploiting technologies to deliver distance-based education, as evidenced by our Distance Learning MBA ranking of third in the world. wbsLive offers us tremendous opportunities to reduce the feeling of remoteness that distance learning can bring, and also enables us to reach out to new audiences."

Students who have already used wbsLive are enthusiastic about this enhanced service, providing positive feedback:

"Our study group was just lamenting yesterday how the overseas distance students are somewhat at a disadvantage by not being able to attend the one day revision seminars ... on campus. Being able to webcast these sessions would be great and level the playing field for us all."

"I found this very useful - has helped increase my motivation levels."

"It (wbsLive) helps to feel a bit more connected to WBS."

"(wbsLive) is a great addition to current materials for lesson reinforcement."

Read MBA Marketing & Recruitment Manager Rachel Killian's comments on wbsLive in the Financial Times here.