Centra’s Web Collaboration Software is Key Component of Virginia Tech’s Innovative and Award Winning Programs Delivered at a Distance
With 24 different masters degrees and certificates offered at a distance, Virginia Tech is using Centra to connect faculty and students from around the world to deliver award-winning education programs online, such as its Master of Information Technology, and new innovative offerings, such as its Master of Science in Ocean Engineering – one of only four such programs in the nation. The university’s faculty is also using Centra to collaborate online with colleagues worldwide for grant and research activities.
Established in 1999, IDDL works collaboratively across the university community to electronically extend Virginia Tech’s campus throughout the commonwealth and beyond, and provide an open learning environment where teaching and learning occur anytime and anyplace. Many courses delivered through IDDL offer a blended program of asynchronous and Centra-powered real-time online learning.
“We chose Centra because of the product’s advanced collaboration capabilities and ease-of-use, which is absolutely critical to the successful delivery of live online courses,” said Mark S. Raby, associate director, eLearning Support Systems, Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning, Virginia Tech. “Centra is being used for group activities where students and faculty need the ability to communicate and share information in a highly interactive online environment. Without Centra, we would have struggled to provide this level of collaboration, and it would have been difficult to rapidly roll out these innovative programs to our dispersed student population.”
Scalable Software Solution for Enterprise Collaboration Centra’s secure and scalable enterprise application provides collaboration solutions for sales, marketing, human resources, information technology, and other departments across the enterprise that need to take advantage of more efficient and cost-effective business communication over the Web.
CentraOne(tm) brings together voice, video, data, and graphics in easy-to-use interfaces for Web conferencing, meetings, and virtual classrooms that can be deployed onsite or accessed through a secure ASP, leveraging Centra’s global network of servers. Centra integrates with existing infrastructure to help organizations align enterprise IT strategies with key business processes to enhance productivity, lower costs, and drive revenue. Centra’s solutions are available in 13 language editions and in 29 countries worldwide.
“A Centra customer for four years, Virginia Tech is one of the earliest adopters of real-time, online collaboration technology, and has pioneered the way for other educational institutions by helping them understand the value of live eLearning and how it can enhance their own distance learning initiatives,” said Joyce Bokuniewicz, Centra’s director of higher education solutions. “Today, IDDL is a model program, offering a wide array of choices and flexibility for students and faculty that in turn increase the university’s student population.” For more information, visit www.iddl.vt.edu.
About Virginia Tech
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known as Virginia Tech, has evolved into a comprehensive university of national and international prominence. As Virginia’s largest university with 25,600 students and one of the top 50 research institutions in the nation, it is an institution that firmly embraces a history of putting knowledge to work. That tradition is rooted in its motto, Ut Prosim: “That I May Serve,” and its land-grant missions of instruction, research, and solving the problems of society through public service and outreach activities. For more information, visit www.vt.edu.
About Centra
Leading with an undisputed track record of helping more than 3 million licensed users to increase revenue and improve overall business performance, Centra enables global corporations, government agencies, and universities to drive greater productivity and lower costs through the industry’s most extensible application software for real-time enterprise collaboration. Today more than 1,000 organizations across every industry and market sector choose Centra, including Cadbury Schweppes, Citigroup, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, McKesson, Nationwide Insurance, Sysco, and Stanford University. Centra’s products are bolstered by a vital ecosystem of strategic partners, including Deloitte Consulting, EDS, Microsoft, Siebel, Cisco, and Oracle. Headquartered in Boston, Centra services a worldwide customer base throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information, visit www.centra.com.
Centra is a registered trademark, and CentraOne is a trademark of Centra Software, Inc.
Centra Software, Inc. 430 Bedford Street, Lexington, MA 02420 * http://www.centra.com
phone 781-861-7000 * fax 781-863-7288
