Graduate School, USDA Standardizes on Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro

High-impact eLearning solutions engage national network of staff, instructors and consultants

SAN JOSE, Calif. — May 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that the Graduate School, USDA is standardizing on Adobe® Acrobat® Connect Pro to improve eLearning for its extensive network of government staff, federal contractors, and industry professionals across the U.S. The Adobe eLearning solutions, including Acrobat Connect Pro, Adobe Presenter, and Adobe Captivate®, enable the school to deliver rich, engaging course work on demand in synchronous and asynchronous modes.

The Graduate School, USDA is a self-sustaining government entity created 87 years ago by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide adult continuing education. By leveraging Acrobat Connect Pro, the Graduate School, USDA is reaching 200,000 industry professionals faster and more efficiently, while improving the overall scope and quality of its courses. In addition, the Adobe solution helps the organization to add more courses, while it increases enrollment.

“Acrobat Connect Pro continues to set the standard for ease of use and interactivity when it comes to eLearning,” says Dr. Sharon Fratta-Hill, dean of information technology for the Graduate School, USDA. “And the latest release of the software further expands options for delivering rich online courses. With the newest version of Acrobat Connect Pro, our instructors and students have more flexibility to engage in interactive discussions. Instructors can easily transfer audio control to students, and students can jump in and ask questions and share their insights on topics in real time.”

Graduate School, USDA courses focus on helping people develop process-oriented skills, such as accounting and auditing, human resources, leadership and management, and information technology. With Acrobat Connect Pro, the Graduate School, USDA can deliver engaging online courses that include real-time meetings with instructors, dynamic discussions, and interactive polls. Adobe Presenter lets technical experts at the Graduate School, USDA easily develop courseware and create high-quality presentations from within Microsoft® PowerPoint®, adding rich content such as audio narration for slides, video, animations, quizzes and surveys, and outputting to the Flash® format.

By using the new breakout rooms in Acrobat Connect Pro, meeting organizers can have participants engage in smaller meetings to cover topics in more detail. Each breakout room includes its own private VoIP or telephony audio. Instructors can monitor and move among breakout rooms, and communicate with all participants across breakout room boundaries. For the Graduate School, USDA, an added advantage of standardizing on Acrobat Connect Pro is that people can participate in courses and discussions using the free, ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player - installed on over 98 percent of Internet-connected computers - helping ensure the organization reaches as broad an audience as possible.