Online Forums Reimagined
Are your distance online students feeling isolated and disengaged? Are you looking for a way to design distance flexible learning where the collaboration and interaction between learners and lecturers is free flowing?
OB3 brings your course content and collaboration together. It outperforms other learning technologies in the online forum space; and is proven to increase learner agency, engagement, and interaction. Its interface design can help to reduce lecture workload, and cognitive demands associated with technology use.
Flyer: OB3 attributes and benefits
Case study video: Interview with Ara Midwifery Department (prepared for TTMEC 2021)
Publications: Gomez et al. working paper (2018), Gomez et al. at ASCILITE 2017, Daellenbach et al. at ASCILITE 2014
OB3 - Beautiful study for lifelong learning™
Authoring & Publishing
- Build and share media-rich documents with in less than 60 minutes, using only the skills required to browse the web, copy and paste, use email and edit a Word doc.
- Designed for easy adoption and use by time-starved staff and students.
- Drag or copy content from the desktop or web: we automatically convert and embed media.
- Anything you can add to OB3 in the browser, you can also email to OB3.
- Share your docs with other OB3 users, or link/embed within a course in your LMS
Collaboration
- Supports individual, group and class asynchronous activities with collaboratively editable documents and discussions
- Discussions happen in context within curriculum content or student-led assignments (unique to OB3)
- Contribute to discussions by replying through email (including with formatting, attachments and media)
- Supports team-based curriculum development
Alumni (unique to OB3)
- Alumni accounts are free and students can keep retain access to their content, and any content you want to share with them, after graduation.
- Facilitates the development of online learning communities.
Institution
- Integrates with all major LMS systems (Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, D2L)
- Create study activities that span multiple courses within a degree
- Publication and content export features allow OB3 to be used within institutional workflows
- APIs enable custom learning apps and enterprise integrations
Analytics & Reporting
- Summarise student activity and content authoring within a document, folder or entire course
- Generate reports to speed up common administrative and course authoring activities
Engagement & Support
- Student activity in OB3 generates individual learner profiles that enable personalized student support
- Keep students active and engaged: identify struggling students, deliver getting-started and study-support messages in-app or via email
Meet the Founders
Dr Gloria Gomez undertakes the educational and interaction design research that underpins OB3’s development. Her past experience includes being the visual designer for IHMC’s CmapTools and a number of other educational products internationally. From 2012 to 2017, she taught design in the masters of Product Development and Innovation at the University of Southern Denmark. She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney.
Rodney Tamblyn is co-founder and CEO at OB3, where he heads up sales, product and operations. His background includes 30 years experience developing and supporting educational technologies for Higher Education.
Plans
Great for lifelong learning such as: independent study; reflective journaling; taking personal notes at events; and curating your personal learning resources in a way that is easy to find, review, and share with groups of people.
Organise your informal learning content: create media-rich documents containing notes, videos, photos, links to videos, podcasts, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter feeds, etc.
Great for Collaboration: engage in seamless discussions within your documents; share media-rich content and folders; discuss ideas with people from your personal or professional networks; and note taking during brainstorming sessions or meetings.
Create Collections: on diverse topics - such as gardening, yoga or spiritual teachings; favourite podcast topics, curated lists of YouTube videos, movies, books etc; share with groups you create - family, friends, co-workers, club members, community projects, etc.
Individual Teacher Plan includes use of OB3 with up to 25 students. Payment options: $19 NZD/month or $199 NZD/annual
Department Plans include: trial and pilot options; 1:1 assistance, training and support; ability to use with or without LMS integration; start using and grow, OB3 can be deployed in a single unit of study or across all courses in a department
Enterprise Plans include: supported trial and piloting options, ability to integrate OB3 with all major LMS via LTI, reporting and learning analytics features, enterprise SLA options
Contact us to explore how we can bring the benefits of OB3 to your students.
PO Box 2247
Dunedin 9044
New Zealand
Tel: +64 (0)3 4742102Contact us:
Please use the blue chat bubble, enquiry form, or email
