When it began offering Executive MBA (EMBA) courses online in 2004, Saint Mary’s College of California became a pioneer of virtual education. The program gave working professionals a combination of convenience and in-person interaction by blending virtual and in-classroom learning. Saint Mary’s award-winning EMBA program has since become a model for other institutions.
Recently, the liberal arts college implemented Adobe Connect as its preferred online conferencing platform. Adobe Connect features seamless breakout rooms that aid interaction and engagement by allowing students to smoothly transition between instructor-led discussions and separate study groups.
“Other online conferencing platforms we tried, and we tried many, couldn’t support the seamless experience that Adobe Connect provides,” says Professor Barry Eckhouse, Special Assistant to the Provost for eLearning and Director of Technology & Online Programs at the School of Economics and Business Administration, Saint Mary’s College of California. “The technology does not get in the way of achieving our educational goals.”
MeetingOne, an Adobe Connect Gold Partner, provides integrated high-performance audio and telephony capabilities to Saint Mary’s, which help the College maintain its high standards for online curriculum. Saint Mary’s also developed a renowned Digital Driver’s License (DDL) program to certify instructors on how to create and manage digital coursework and associated technologies.
More than 100 faculty members have earned DDL certification. Besides learning Adobe Connect features such as whiteboarding, annotation, chat, and polling, faculty members can reuse virtual classrooms because of the solution’s content persistence, saving time and effort. https://adobe.ly/2G17ID1