WIZIQ

Homepage: http://www.wiziq.com

Tool Category/ies: Communication   Feedback   Collaboration   Presentation  

License Type: No Free Option

 

Overall Rating

 

4/5

Description

 

WiZiQ is a tool that creates a virtual classroom. It allows the learners to have a real classroom experience on-line where a teacher interacts with students, explains topics, answers questions, etc. in real time. Live video-audio communication makes the interaction more personal since the teacher and the learners can see and hear each other.

Virtual Classroom in WizIQ

Interaction in WizIQ

 

 

1 of 3

Reviews

 

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by: Joanna Wojciechowska on 03/21/2013


Description
WiZiQ allows live video stream for up to 4 people at one time and audio communication for all the students in the classroom at the same time. The on-line chat option allows the teacher to give a student personal attention with one-on-one chat or all the students can chat with each other simultaneously.  The session can be recorded and replayed later by a learner for a review of the material or for a demonstration in a different environment, or by the teacher to share the recording of the session with those students who were not able to attend the class. The tool allows the teacher to write on a whiteboard, upload the session material ahead of time, download videos, etc. All students can participate in the class or the teacher can divide them into separate groups for a group project. In that case, the students are working in separate rooms and the teacher is in charge of communication between the rooms. The class can be taught in four languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew. WiZiQ provides writing tools and multilingual text chat support in those languages. Overall it seems to be easy to use; all you have to do is to log in and follow the instructions, and as a teacher you can invite any number of participants to be in your class.

Things to know before using WizIQ
Definitely the general knowledge of how to work on a computer. I believe that all the information that a learner needs to enroll in a class are given in a simple and straightforward way and then a teacher leads the students and explains how to share screens, how to make sure that audio works, etc.

Resources required to use WizIQ
A computer with access to internet, a working microphone, speakers, and a webcam.

How to use WizIQ in a teaching environment
WiZiQ is an excellent Web 2.0 tool for expanding the teaching process beyond the traditional classroom. After I finish my adolescent medicine fellowship here at Baylor College of Medicine, I am going to work at Texas Tech University Medical School, El Paso Branch as a faculty. Texas Tech University Medical School reaches students in four campuses: Lubbock, Amarillo, Odessa and El Paso. However, there are not many of us, adolescent medicine docs, in those remote Texas locations. I will be the only one in El Paso and I know that there is one in Lubbock. WiZiQ gives us an opportunity to work together and set up an adolescent medicine lecture series that might reach medical students and pediatric residents at all four campuses at the same time. It will create cooperation between two doctors separated by several hundred miles and will bring together a couple hundred learners for an interactive virtual class experience. The students and residents can log in from any location that has internet access, so it makes it easier for them to attend the class. In addition we all know that the medical students and residents are always busy seeing patients, being on-call or attending other teaching sessions, thus they can take advantage of the WiZiQ option to watch the recorded version of the lecture on their own time. Since these are going to be interactive sessions with the students and residents, they would be able to ask questions to clarify things or to share their opinions at the time of a session. Those learners who would be watching the recorded sessions might have many of their own questions already explained this way

In medicine, learning a theory is only a part of a success. The ability to use it effectively in patient care is the overarching goal. WiZiQ gives me an opportunity to prerecord live encounters with adolescent patients and download them into the presentations or to invite teenagers to share their experience with the audience during the sessions. The learners could be able to talk to the teenagers directly, to ask them questions, to learn how to interact with them or how to conduct a proper interview with an adolescent patient. I could pre-record real clinic encounters to share with the learners and to show them, for example, a proper interviewing technique, or a proper physical exam. I could make photos of skin lesions and download them to be used during the class or to present interesting or rare cases in the virtual classroom. I could record students and residents encounters with the patients and then we could discuss them with the rest of the class.

Advantages of using WizIQ
  •     A teacher can teach from his/her office or home.
  •     A course can be developed that is tailored for a specific audience.
  •     A course can be developed that teaches a very specific subject or skills (ex: orientation to a new job, how to build a pond in your backyard, etc.)
  •     He/she can reach many students in many, often remote locations
  •     He/she have an international audience. He/she can set up his/her own schedule

Disadvantages of using WizIQ
  •     There is no personal contact with the students
  •     I worry about the quality of classes
  •     I am not sure if there is any agency overseeing the correctness of the materials presented.
  •     Does any school (like a university/college) accept these classes and give credits for them?

 

©2011- The University of Houston. All rights reserved.

4800 Calhoun Road, Houston, Texas 77204 (713) 743-2255