Project History
In August, 2009, The eLearning Strategic Implementation Committee, convened by Provost Alutto, recommended that OSU provide a central webinar service.
In January 2010, the Office of the CIO began an evaluation of web conferencing software for administrative use. Once this committee had reduced the number of products under consideration to four, a separate, academically-focused evaluation was conducted. This took place between September and December, 2010, and included representatives from across the university:
- Tom Stone, OCIO Learning Technology (coordinator)
- Lynn Trinko, Lima campus
- Anand Khurma, College of Pharmacy
- Laura Fathauer, College of Education and Human Ecology
- Eva Bradshaw and Randy Spears, Fisher College of Business
- Byron Roush, College of Nursing
- Jennifer Simmons, College of Veterinary Medicine
- Ken Petri, Web Accessibility Center
By December, this group had determined that Elluminate and Adobe offered the two best webinar products for teaching and learning. Ultimately, Adobe Connect emerged as the leader, due to their cost-effective simultaneous use licenses. These licenses are not tied to individuals so can be effectively shared across the many different courses and projects at Ohio State.
A small group of users participated in a proof of concept project during Winter, Spring, and Summer terms of 2011. This demonstrated that the Adobe Connect hosted solution met the needs of instructors and administrators, and that the system performed well under moderate load.
Starting in Autumn 2011 will be transitioning from proof of concept, which has been fully managed by staff within the OCIO, to a full pilot, which will be a cooperative effort among several university organizations. This pilot will thoroughly test the capacity of the system and our support, training, and administrative structures.