Posts Tagged ‘Advent’

Conference Calls in Education

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Its that time of year again.  Back to School.  And with everyone getting back to school come applications for conference calls within the educational system, because just like many other areas, education derives many benefits from using conference calls in place of in person meetings.

Conference calls in education applications come in many forms.  Probably the first conference call application you can think of is in the teacher/student relationship.  There are many teachers that teach in multiple campuses because they may have an expertise that is more rare than your standard English or geography discipline.  So, in some cases, instead of being in person for all of the classes the teacher will use a conference call to teach a class instead of being in person for all of the classes.  In fact, there are examples where a class is conducted completely virtual using conference calls and web conferencing to lecture to students from a distance.  With the advent of conference call and web conferencing technology this is entirely possible and the students do not miss anything by attending the class remotely with the use of conference calls and web conferencing.  Entire educational programs are now offered to students without attending any campus at all.  An example of this is the programs of the University of Phoenix.  Their curriculum is meant to be attended remotely by students. 

Another area where conference calls are used in education is in the administration area.  Colleges and Universities in particular are really just another form of business and have many of the same needs.  The administration needs to stay in touch with its board of trustees so they do regular conference calls.  Alumni associations need to organize events and solicit donations through conference calls.  And faculty members need to stay in touch with their unions and associations via conference calls.

We also see a lot of use by the student body with the organization of events using conference calls, student organizations having remote meetings via conference calls and off campus organizations like fraternities staying in touch with national agendas by way of the conference call.

So, as you can see, education also is able to save time and money by using conference calls in place of in person meetings.

 

www.zipconferencing.com

Web Conferencing changes Everything

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Web Conferencing started out as something you did on your company’s network and only if you and the person you wanted to web conference with had the same software installed on their machine.  The internet was still coming of age so many of the things we now take for granted did not exist.  In fact, I remember in 1995 taking some of the available software, buying a card for a computer that allowed multiple network connections and building a web conference bridge you could dial into so that up to 5 people could get on the same web conference.  As long as the 5 people had a good connection to the internet.

When I think about that now I laugh.  In the past 10 years the technology has come a long way.  Today you can easily hold a web conference with up to 100 people and you don’t even have to download any software.  High speed internet connections are taken for granted and conference calls are completed integrated into the experience to add voice and visual communications on a conference call. 

With the advent of web conferencing, you can easily add a visual element to your conference calls.  This makes your confernece call more compelling, encourages audience participation and helps with retention.  The applications are wide spread and more and more people are utilizing web conferencing services to help sell, train and inform to internal and external clients throughout the world. 

I don’ t know if anyone has attempted to calculate the savings in hours of productivity, travel costs and fossil fuels, but it must be enormous. The amount spent on web conferencing in 2007 was over $700,000,000 in the US alone and even as the service continues to be more affordable, it is expected that the amount spent in five years will be almost double what it is today.  That is because web conferencing services make sense to such a wide range of industries and applications.  Just like conference call volume has seen a tremendous amount of growth in the past 15 years, web conferencing is now enjoying that same growth.  That is because it is truly easy to use and affordable to everyone.

So the next time you register for that online “webinar” think about how what you would have to do to get that same seminar without web conferencing.  because web confernecing changes everything.

www.zipconferencing.com