(Send campus distance education HILIGHTS to: DESIEN-List@uwex.edu)

UW-COLLEGES - Starting the last week of July, the 13 UW-Colleges will receive 4 hours of vendor training for faculty and support personnel planning to use the colleges new videoconferencing system in the fall. Following this training, Instructional Communications Systems (ICS) will provide additional training, building on their two-day spring workshop. Hardware has now been installed at a majority of the colleges sites and there is a sense of excitement as fall draws near.

UW-COOPERATIVE EXTENSION - This UWEX Division will be offering its satellite downlink sites to local groups when the Society for Non-Profit Organizations offers a PBS/ALS satellite certificate program through its recently created Learning Institute. The 8-part program piloted in the spring, will be offered this fall. It includes such subjects as: strategic planning, resource development, board development, marketing, financial empowerment... It 's a program that will be helpful to nonprofit board members, management and administration. For further information contact Char Bell at: 608-264-9730.

UW-EXTENSION, ICS - What do UW-Milwaukee education faculty, Pennsylvania Power and Light Nuclear trainers and professional staff members of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services have in common? They all wanted to learn how to design and conduct interactive video courses, programs and meetings - and they tapped ICS expertise to help them.

During the weeks of June 15 and June 22, these three groups, located at their remote sites, participated in a highly interactive 16-hour videoconferencing (VC) workshop. They talked about their concerns, explored the medium's potential and benefits, learned to feel more comfortable with VC, discovered the 7 Key Areas for VC Success, developed and presented a 15-minute micro-session and...had fun!

While VC Workshops are given regularly by ICS Distance Education Specialists Bruce Dewey and Rosemary Lehman, this one was "a first" for several reasons. It incorporated groups from diverse organizations at one time, included a newly designed VC Web site to provide pre-workshop orientation and post-workshop information, utilized cross-site interviews and blended in a wider variety of other media: fax (for activity information), email (for participant feedback), audio (to bring in a guest expert) and video (for case studies and presentations.)

According to Bruce and Rosemary, "As we continue to develop these VC workshops, we're beginning to realize the richness that divergent backgrounds can bring to the experience and the power that use of multiple media can add."

UW-PLATTEVILLE - The University of Wisconsin-Platteville is in the process of hiring an individual to work with faculty in designing courses for web-based instruction. The title of the position is Information Processing Consultant. Full information about the position can be found at http://vms.www.uwplatt.edu/~pers/employ.htm. If you have questions contact Dawn Drake at: 608-342-1547 or email at: Drake@uwplatt.edu