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The State Board office will soon be offering ad-hoc training in the month of December and January for faculty preparing their Blackboard courses for the spring.

"Over 250 faculty--a quarter of those teaching in the MSVCC--have already downloaded and installed the Wimba Pronto program," says Terry Pollard, SBCJC eLearning Specialist, "so it seemed like an appropriate time to give this training method a shot.  It was designed for this."

The training will be delivered and administered through Wimba Pronto; Pronto delivers desktop sharing, two-way audio and video broadcasting, application sharing, a whiteboard, and chat communication.

The training will be offered by a ranging group of State Board staff and college trainers.  The goal is to assist faculty in answering questions related to these topics: 

• Blackboard content presentation,
• Blackboard course design,
• the Blackboard Grade Center,
• Wimba Podcasting
• Wimba Voice Tools
• Turnitin Grademark functionality

It should be noted that some questions cannot be addressed through the Help Desk, such as textbook store questions, course cartridges, and procedures specific to individual colleges.  "Given that all 1,000 faculty can view this Help Desk in Pronto once they install the program," says Pollard, "we need to scale back the level of service that we will offer.  Any kind of question might come at us, so we are focusing on the above list."

"This is intended as a help desk for ad-hoc requests from faculty who are preparing their spring courses.  We want to help faculty at the close of the fall semester, and if the program is successful, we'll deliver additional services throughout the spring.  Any faculty who tries to reach us through Pronto when the Help Desk is open will be prompted for their problem or issue before being helped.  If we cannot answer it, or if the answer is better suited to a particular college, we will refer that individual to the appropriate school and contact person."

Faculty should first install Wimba Pronto prior to attending any of the sessions.  Instructions for downloading Wimba Pronto and finding the help desk are located here.

Training Details:

1) Beginning Tuesday, December 8, 2009, faculty should login to Pronto during the day to see which topic will be covered in the Help Desk that day. Topics will vary depending on demand and level of interest and will be listed within Pronto by 10 a.m. each day; these will be listed in the Pronto schools tab.  We are hoping to assist each individual within a 5-7 minute timeframe. State Board offices are open throughout most of the Christmas break; Help Desk Hours, if closed for a day or series of days, will be published within the Pronto schools tab area each day.

2) The system will work best for faculty if they are not on a wireless network.

3) For general information on using Pronto, visit these tutorials here.