Hannah Aronoff

Florida-based Link-Systems International (LSI) has released the latest version of its highly acclaimed WorldWideWhiteboard—version 6.0—at the 42nd Annual Association of Colleges for Tutoring and Learning Assistance (ACTLA) Conference, which was held in Las Vegas. Headquartered in Tampa, LSI is celebrating its 20^th anniversary of edtech innovation this year. LSI is an educational technology enterprise that provides student-focused eLearning solutions through innovations such as the WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0. The product was created in the interest of enhancing collaborative learning.

Fashioned by educators with the classroom in mind, the WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 is a premiere platform for web conferencing that can be used by teachers and students alike.

The WorldWideWhiteboard can be utilized for a wide range of academic activities—from hosting virtual office hours with instructors to connecting peers through online study sessions. This platform is optimal for distance-learning classrooms, as it provides users with opportunities to bring the classroom environment to life online. The California Community college system partnered with LSI to enhance the virtual pedagogy and learning experience—they were especially impressed by the WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0’s efficacy in fostering legitimate connections between peers, something often hard to achieve through distance-learning.

The WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 approaches digital learning through a twofold approach, enabling users to engage with others in live-streaming sessions and to approach other pressing matters on their own time. LSI defines these dual modes as synchronous and asynchronous. In this way, WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 takes the traditional aspects of classroom learning and combines them with the capabilities that online education presents. Attributes previously associated exclusively with in-person learning are easily transferrable online through the WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0—such as providing feedback on assignments, tutoring sessions, and even delivering lectures. The WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 achieves this by allocating resources to different “Centers.” There is the “Paper Center”, the “Worksheet Center”, “Notes Center”, and the “Q&A Center.”

Students can partake in both private and public sessions with both teachers and fellow students, this allows for both personal connections between users and deeper engagement with material to occur. These live conferences can take a multitude of forms—from one-on-one to one-to-many to peer-to-peer. LSI’s newest adjustments to the WorldWideWhiteboard include features such as screen sharing, drag-and-drop, a Chemistry toolset, and even its own tutoring service, NetTutor. The latter of these updates is further strengthened by another proprietary service of LSI, Refer-Tutor-Report, which allows instructors to not only introduce students to online tutoring options but also empower them to closely monitor and collaborate with tutors to bring students the best learning support possible.

The WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 also provides innovations to increase accessibility embodied by its text-to-speech feature that can read text written on a whiteboard during a live session. One of the greatest aspects of the platform is that students can access it wherever, whenever they want on any device they choose—the WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 is compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows 8/10 devices. LSI is devoted to crafting the optimal conditions for learning, innovation, and collaboration to occur—the WorldWideWhiteboard 6.0 makes all this and much more possible.