[Using Sakai] Wimba integration

[Stephen Marquard]

Hi Ed,

Can you expand on the problem with giving "free reign to instructors to directly schedule & approve Web conferencing sessions on our Centra server" - are the constraints that prevent you enabling this related to licensing, bandwidth, server capacity, or some other constraint?

Regards
Stephen
 
>>> Ed Garay <garay at uic.edu> 12/2/2009 5:07 PM >>> 
I don't understand why programmers of LMS integration software for Web  
conferencing system like Wimba Classroom, Saba Centra, Adobe Connect  
Pro, and Elluminate, fail to provide granular controls for  
institutions to conveniently configure the service and interface.

For several years now, we have been running our own on-campus hosted  
Saba Centra system. Saba's Blackboard integration is forever useless  
because if enabled it would give free reign to instructors to directly  
schedule & approve Web conferencing sessions on our Centra server.

Other than that, the Saba Centra Blackboard connector works great ::  
it makes it easy for faculty to schedule Centra-facilitated classes  
and meetings, it automatically posts announcements and places access  
links where desired.

Another problem is that it does not individually enroll class students  
for the Web conferences. Instead, everyone is enrolled as a generic  
LMS user, which is not very helpful for when students raise their  
hands, type anything in the Text-Chat, participate in Web conferencing  
polls, whiteboards, etc. or need to be promoted to co-presenters. The  
LMS integration needs to enroll each individual student with a clear  
identity.

I am experiencing the same crude one-size-fits-all LMS integration for  
comercial lecture capture systems like Echo360, Camtasia Relay and  
Mediasite.

Frustrating.

--- Ed Garay
Assistant Director for Academic Computing
University of Illinois at Chicago
Academic Computing and Communications Center
Director, UIC Instructional Technology Lab
www.accc.uic.edu/itl

(new) UIC Student Media Lab :: www.accc.uic.edu/sml

[ Sent from iPhone :: sorry for typos, mine or iPhone-induced ]