US Army Sergeant in Kosovo Takes Aim at CSU, Chico via HorizonLive

Earlier this year, U.S. Army Sergeant Jose Garcia enrolled in the fall semester at California State University, Chico.

But, Sergeant Garcia’s classroom isn’t exactly in northern California — it’s at Camp Bondsteel, an army base in Kosovo where he serves in a peacekeeping mission with his Georgia-based 11th Engineer Battalion. Thanks to HorizonLive, a New York e-learning software provider, Sergeant Garcia and thousands of other students are now able take classes no matter where they may be.

Sgt. Garcia’s situation is not as unusual as it may seem. Over half of the nation’s college students are over the age of 25, many of whom juggle work, home, and school, or live in remote areas and have difficulty getting to a classroom. Traditionally, a simple solution to getting an effective and convenient education was never very simple — until now.

HorizonLive is the premier provider of tools for creating live, and on-demand, web-based learning. The HorizonLive platform enables colleges to offer high-quality, interactive, instructor-led classes to make e-learning a convenient reality for all those who seek it.

With HorizonLive, instructors communicate through live streaming audio and video, while students interact via two-way audio or text-based chat. Each classroom is complete with a wide array of multimedia tools including a virtual whiteboard and application sharing.

Surveys, quizzes and polls can be offered, and content is easily imported from leading course management systems and the Internet. In addition, each class can be recorded for later playback, with each indexed and navigable “archive” including all the information and interactivity provided in the live session.

How schools will use HorizonLive during the Fall 2001 semester:

• CSU, Chico will use HorizonLive to offer over 1,000 hours of live instruction, and record each session for later review by students

• Strayer University will offer nearly 200 classes, serving over 4,000 students, ranging from accounting to English

• Lehigh University will hold virtual office hours, live online, for students in Instructional Design classes

“Online courses can be just as lively and effective as those offered in the classroom,” said HorizonLive CEO, Tom Wisniewski. “With such an array of schools offering everything from business administration to the humanities live online with HorizonLive, we’ve proven we can help colleges worldwide effectively teach students who want to continue their education.”

Other colleges and universities using HorizonLive to offer online classes, events, office hours, and alumni collaboration include Arizona State, Columbia ILT, Drexel, Harvard, Lehigh, the Maricopa Community Colleges, New Mexico State, the North Harris Community Colleges, St. John’s, St. Joseph’s, and St. Petersburg Community College, amongst others.

Further, HorizonLive has partnered with the industry’s leading course management systems, Blackboard, eCollege, Jones Knowledge, and WebCT to offer live interaction to these highly popular asynchronous course solutions.