The Conference Coach™

Many colleges and universities have implemented a distance learning strategy for students who cannot attend class on campus employing audio and web conferencing as the backbone of that strategy. In addition to online learning, colleges and universities are finding web and audio conferencing have practical application in daily business operations.

Virtual Meetings
Professors and students find audio and web conferencing very beneficial to their daily schedules, allowing them to collaborate in real-time in internet meetings. Online meetings using web conferencing enables a department, a study group or a research team to work on group projects any time, day or night. If traveling or unavailable for an on campus session, faculty can do a live or recorded webcast of an assignment or lecture to students and monitor who attends or views the webcast using registration reporting. Reducing the need for in-person meetings frees up time so students can focus on other school related assignments, faculty can focus on teaching or research and staff can conduct daily business more efficiently and effectively.

Fund Raising
Higher education institutions use web and audio conferencing to bring alumni and other donors together for fund raising events. Through the highly interactive format of a webinar, colleges and universities are able to show real-time documents, browser share and display applications, which help alumni and donors to better envision future plans and how their donations will play a part in those efforts.

Connecting Alumni to Students
Many colleges and universities find that connecting alumni with prospective students results in higher matriculation and that connecting alumni with current students results in more active alumni post graduation. Through teleconferences and webinars institutions are making these connections. Entrance interviews, intern interviews, industry and job information sessions are just some of the ways web and phone conferencing are used to connect alumni and students.

Collaborating on Teaching Methodologies
Professors, departments and other personnel find teleconferencing and interactive webinars beneficial resources for internal and external meetings. Being able to collaborate with a colleague on campus or across the world helps them share ideas which can better faculty teaching abilities, benefitting the students and schools. New ways to approach hard to reach students, make curriculum relevant and uses of new technology are all ideas that can be proffered in a collaborative conference call.

Research Teams
Colleges and universities receive numerous grants to research and publish on various topics. Collecting data, collaborating with the researchers and conducting focus groups are all better enabled using conferencing technology. Web conferencing services allow a research team to conduct a poll, get an instant data report and compile data for research studies.

Understanding the many ways colleges can benefit from using audio and web conferencing ensures donors, alumni, students, professors and other college personnel are able to meet in the most cost-effective and informative fashion. Working in real-time via a web conference negates the need for travel, saves money and enables participants to have more productive and thorough meetings. While there is still a need for face-to-face meetings, web and audio conferencing are becoming more common on campuses in the United States and worldwide.

About Conference Coach Kelli
Kelli Lunenschloss is a Senior Account Manager at Copper Conferencing. Kelli has been with Copper since 2006 as the first employee hired. Prior to helping found Copper, she was with Raindance Communications for 4 years working in sales and account management. Kelli is extremely “green.” Kelli is a recycling fanatic and is known around the office as the paper police. Kelli’s number one goal is to ensure her customers are happy with their services at Copper Conferencing.