Campus Connection

The doors opened for a meeting between a UW-L assistant professor in California, her history class in La Crosse and a freelance journalist, sitting in a coffee shop in Beirut, Lebanon — and they all virtually walked in. At least, that’s how UW-L Distance Learning Tech Coordinator Terry Wirkus describes it. “Last semester this technology helped a faculty member teach right after having surgery on his leg,” says Wirkus. “At the end of the semester, he told me ‘I wish I could teach like this all the time.’” The virtual meeting rooms also allow UW System schools to share foreign language teachers. Students at UW-Stevens Point and UW Oshkosh are able to take Russian classes from UW-La Crosse lecturer Natalia Roberts, while the students can learn Japanese from UW-River Falls and Arabic from UW-Whitewater. Another teaching and learning resource for UW-L faculty, staff and students is “My Mediasite.” It provides a secure spot to store and manage videos, similar to YouTube. “You can see analytics on the video,” says Wirkus, “you can put security on the videos and you can use it to do some light editing.” It also allows users to create projects, such as screencasts or presentations with slides and audio. “Before taking this history class, I didn’t know we had this technology and this capability,” says Chris Brooks, a UW-L history major. “I’m sure there’s a lot of students who don’t know about it and need to see it. It’s pretty eye opening.”