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International Society for Technology in Education. Education and technology thought leader uses Adobe Connect to support remote professional development and conferences with interactive content to engage global educators.

“Adobe Connect enables us to expand the conversation and include people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to join— enabling the same rich interactivity from any device to keep dialogs evolving.”

Sherry Bosch, Project Manager, ISTE

SOLUTION: Adobe Connect

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: Engage Systems

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

Established in 1979

Stakeholders: 100,000

Washington, D.C. and Eugene, Oregon

www.iste.org

Watch the video:
www.iste.org/about

 

CHALLENGES

  • Enriching webinar experiences with interactivity and engaging digital content
  • Driving interactive participation
  • Empowering presenters and participants with easy-to-use, highly functional digital platform

 

“The ability to offer easily accessible and convenient digital experiences that mirror in-person seminars with Adobe Connect supports our goal to continue to build our community.”

Jessica Medaille, Chief Membership Officer, ISTE

 

SOLUTION AT A GLANCE

• Adobe Connect

Leading by example

ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education, serves a global network of educators and educational thought leaders committed to empowering teachers and learners with the latest and most effective teaching methods and technologies. The organization serves more than 100,000 stakeholders distributed among school districts and schools at all levels, including primary, secondary, and higher educational institutions.

In its mission to empower communities with shared knowledge and new ideas, the organization has experimented with several digital conferencing and e-learning solutions to facilitate information sharing and training professionals. However, the challenges associated with interacting with such a diverse audience and communicating a wide range of complex, evolving ideas quickly emerged.

“Our community of educators has a spectrum of technologies at their disposal, and we needed a common solution that everyone could quickly and easily adopt,” says Sherry Bosch, Project Manager at ISTE. “We wanted flexibility to enrich presentations with interactive elements and keep audiences engaged, conversations evolving, and presenters empowered.”

Most importantly, ISTE wanted a platform to reflect its leadership position among educational communities with seamless, reliable experiences—including classroom learning, large-format webinars, and one-on-one meetings. ISTE was also looking for a platform where technology allowed participants to engage in a free-flowing experience without interruptions due to service outages, confusing interfaces, and complicated logins.

“Our stakeholders know technology and have high expectations for usability, so a reliable platform is essential,” says Jessica Medaille, Chief Membership Officer at ISTE. “Our credibility depends on it.”

 

Experiences that inspire

With a host of e-learning, webinar, and virtual conference solutions at its disposal, ISTE implemented Adobe Connect to deliver a wide range of development content, support its volunteers who develop and deliver content, as well as for its own internal operations. Persistent meeting rooms in Adobe Connect enable hosts to coordinate internal meetings, training events, and large-scale webinars.

Using a myriad of interactive pods and video, presenters can deliver a variety of materials to global audiences, serving hundreds of members concurrently. Using chat, presentation, social, polling, and many other interactive tools in the Adobe solution, hosts can continually probe, engage, and inspire audiences with content. They can also demonstrate how to leverage similar capabilities within their own digital environments to promote learning.

Mobile access to persistent meeting rooms provides educators in remote locations with similar experiences to those participating from offices and campuses. “Not all users are near their office during events,” says Bosch. “Adobe Connect enables us to expand the conversation and include people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to join—enabling the same rich interactivity from any device to keep dialogs evolving.”

 

Digital learning at its finest

Even though presenters can gauge customer engagement throughout sessions based on participant interaction, the most telling success for ISTE has been through its large-scale virtual conferences. At the outset of the six-hour annual virtual conference, 180 attendees logged into seminar and meeting rooms to participate in breakout sessions and, at the close, more than 140 participants were still in the breakout rooms, engaging with presenters, consuming content, and participating in learning activities.

At the same conference, 90 attendees participated in post-conference evaluation surveys, providing decisively positive feedback to ISTE. This positive feedback from virtual conference participants echoes the feedback ISTE has been receiving since they started using Adobe Connect for online professional development in 2007.

In addition to high customer satisfaction, the organization appreciates that Adobe Connect offers a significant cost savings, affording educators the opportunity to participate in virtual professional learning activities and events. “The ability to offer easily accessible and convenient digital experiences that mirror in-person seminars with Adobe Connect supports our goal to continue to build our community. The platform has enabled us to create meaningful exchanges online, which will assist in our effort to attract new audiences to our association and improve services for thousands of members globally,” says Medaille.

In the near future, ISTE plans to expand its use of Adobe Connect to include the events module capability and others. By employing advanced events capabilities, ISTE can more effectively and efficiently promote and manage events of all sizes, as well as track audience engagement and participation as events progress.

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