It’s an exciting time for education and training. Teaching, learning, and collaboration are evolving from traditional classroom lectures and activities to online courses, collaborative ad-hoc discussions, and easy access to information and experts.
To achieve their academic, administrative, and financial goals, today's educational institutions are investing in online collaborative technologies that go beyond web conferencing or the virtual classroom to also facilitate the business of education. The time has come to blend pedagogy with sound business decision-making.
Learning for the digital age must be less structured and more informal, self-enabled, interactive, and collaborative. The early success of new tools, like social networks, video, wikis, podcasts, IM, and more, show a demand for learner-driven education. At the same time, educators are resource constrained and must economically find and leverage relevant content and peer expertise to develop new practices with these 21st century tools—while maintaining high-quality teaching and learning.
On an organizational level, a collaborative approach can help increase competitive advantage, drive peer-to-peer learning and engagement, support strategic planning and decision making, and enhance productivity for faculty and staff. With ever-decreasing budgets, academic institutions and training organizations must balance important educational impacts with bottom-line revenue implications, including a rapid return on their investment in technology.
Hear how educational organizations at all levels are implementing integrated collaborative technologies that enable them to:
• Enhance teacher effectiveness and learning experiences
• Increase learner comprehension, engagement, and satisfaction
• Increase retention and completion rates
• Facilitate adoption of learning technologies
• Increase operational efficiency and productivity
• Leverage existing technology investments
• Reduce travel and physical infrastructure costs
Session participants will take away an understanding of:
• The role of open, education-focused collaborative solutions in achieving academic, administrative, and financial goals for today’s educational institutions
• How academic institutions are achieving significant ROI using collaborative technology to do more with less in an environment of decreasing budgets and increasing enrollments
• How collaborative technologies can eliminate barriers to meeting individual needs and learning styles, enabling a wider range of users to fully engage and participate
