Happy holidays to all online students from the GMBA crew! Congratulations to the new graduates from the GMBA program. Welcome to all new and returning online students! In this issue of the newsletter, we would like to share the information on the following topics:

• Elluminate Live! Web Conference Tool 
• Online Teaching Award Nomination Reminder
• Spring 2006 Course Offerings
• Online Application for Graduation and new graduates
• Important Reminders

Elluminate Live! Web Conference Tool

We are pleased to announce the Spring 2006 rollout of our new web conferencing tool, Elluminate Live. This powerful tool combines Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), application and desktop sharing, instant messaging, and whiteboard functionality to create a powerful, easy-to-use, collaborative learning environment. For more information, visit the Elluminate website at http://www.elluminate.com/index.jsp. Elluminate will replace the existing telephone conference tool “MeetingPlace” beginning in Spring 2006 semester.

Interaction Made Easy With Elluminate

Elluminate provides an advanced web conferencing environment that is easy to use and works with most bandwidths. Below are just a few of the opportunities Elluminate Live! provides.

• Live Web Conferencing with VoIP
• Application and Desktop Sharing
• Powerful Student Presentations
• Increased Collaboration

Elluminate Training & Hands-On Demos

Elluminate’s training website provides a wide range of training guides and recorded demonstrations to familiarize you with the many easy-to-use functions available to use. Just go to http://www.elluminate.com, and click on the “Training” link on the left-hand side. This training site has numerous demos and guides for students to go through. Below is a short list of those demos and guides we have found to be most useful for students. (Students are free, however, to go through the other information listed on the page as well.)

Demos:

• Participant Orientation
• Getting Started With Elluminate Live! (Moderator orientation)
• Using Application Sharing (useful function for group collaboration)

Guides:

• Elluminate Live! Quick Reference Guide for participants (pdf file)
• Elluminate Live! Quick Reference Guide for moderators (pdf file)

Technical Requirements for Using Elluminate

Each user will need a microphone connecting to a computer with Internet access.  Elluminate Live requires Sun Microsystems Java Web Start™ to be installed on your machine. First time users will be prompted to do a quick set-up to have this required software installed if they don’t already have it. A link to this set-up will be sent to users with the meeting access information.  For this and other useful information, go to the Elluminate Support site, http://www.elluminate.com/support/, and go through the First Time Users section.

How to Schedule a Student Group Meeting

To schedule a group meeting for an online class, please send a request one week in advance to gmbasupport@utdallas.edu. Please include course name, meeting date, time, duration and number of participants. The requester will be the group meeting moderator.

For any questions or comments regarding using Elluminate, please email gmbasupport@utdallas.edu or call 972-883-5964.

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Online Teaching Award Nomination Reminder

We would like to remind you that you can nominate an online course instructor for the excellence in online teaching which is awarded annually at School of Management. We thank those of you who have submitted their nominations for this semester's online instructors. If you haven't submitted your nomination yet, you still have the opportunity to acknowledge a professor.

Please submit your nomination at: http://som.utdallas.edu/training/award.htm 

Thank you for helping us recognize outstanding online teaching

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Spring 2006 Online Courses and New Course Profile

In this coming Spring 2006 semester, The Global MBA Online program, will be offering 8 core courses and 8 electives. The Accounting Online program is also offering 8 online courses. Please see the Course Offering page for the complete course list. If you haven't registered yet, please send your course registration request to: gmbaadvising@utdallas.edu.

Profile of a new online course:

MKT 6332.0G1 Advertising and Promotional Strategy

To provide an adequate overview of the field of “Promotional Strategy & Management” from a managerial standpoint. The fundamental concepts will be systematically presented in class sessions and related to real-life business situations. Numerous examples and caselets will be used to highlight the most relevant topics & issues.

The primary mode of teaching will be online lecture modules along with relevant discussions & group projects. Numerous commercials & cases will also be shown & discussed. A significant component of the learning experience, in a course of this type, is constructive & reasoned discussion among the students. With this in mind, all students are encouraged to actively and judiciously participate in online class discussions.

About the instructor: Prof. Biswas has taught Marketing courses for the last 18 years at Purdue University, SMU & UTD. He has had 2 years of experience working with and for advertising agencies, has worked for 2 years in industry and has also been in marketing consulting for 7 years.

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Online Application for Graduation

Any graduate student planning to graduate this coming semester needs to contact the Global MBA Advisor, Corina Cantua at gmbaadvising@utdallas.edu, to verify all the degree requirements have been met.  In addition, the student must submit an online graduation application by January 17th. 

To access the online graduation application, please visit: http://www.utdallas.edu/dept/graddean/.

Congratulations to this fall's 23 graduates of the Global MBA Online program who were recognized at UTD's School of Management commencement ceremony on December 10th.

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Important Reminders

Academic calendar: Please keep in mind that our program follows the exact same academic calendar of the university. All deadlines apply to online students. It's important that you follow the schedule to pay fees, drop/add classes, etc.

Course registration: Priority is given to GMBA students for core course registration. GMBA students should register for classes during the early registration period. Registration request from graduate students with other majors will be processed when regular registration starts. Please send your registration request to gmbaadvising@utdallas.edu.

Graduation application: The deadline for graduation application for Spring 2006 is Tuesday January 17. Please email the GMBA Advisor at gmbaadvising@utdallas.edu if you are graduating. Please also see the Graduation Web Site for more information.

Updating password: Please make sure you have a valid UTD NetID account and update your account password periodically (6-12 months) so that you can access UTD WebCT courses without any interruption. Please see GMBA FAQ - Password. You can go to the NetID Page for password updating.

Spring 2006 term course starting dates:  3-credit full term and 1st 8-week courses start on January 9, 2nd 8-week courses start on March 13. Courses will be released for student access on or right before these dates. Please check out the Getting Started Information page for course access instructions and other information. An email reminder will also be sent out to all registered students right before the semester starts.

Summer 2006 academic calendar will be available at: UTD Academic Calendar page.

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