How Does Wharton Computing Innovate?

By Deirdre Woods

  It starts with a great idea – either from some of our own Wharton Computing staff or from one of our constituents like students, faculty or our business partners such as External Affairs, MBA Career Management, and MBA Admissions. The implementation is always a partnership between Wharton Computing, our constituents and business partners. The original idea gets refined and improved through the process and we all work together as a team to make it happen.

To see a few examples of this, just look inside our classrooms. When Prof. Peter Fader wanted to encourage "heads-up learning" as opposed to intensive note-taking, we used multiple technology sources to video record all of his lectures and make them available on Web Café. Knowing they would have an opportunity to review the materials later, students were less distracted by note-taking during class. We also worked with Prof. Jerry Wind to enable students to immediately project from their own laptops to the screens in the classroom. As a result, students were able to interact on a new level with screen sharing.

In other courses, students might use Learning Lab simulations such as MacroSim, the Innovation Toolkit, or OTIS – to name just a few. These simulations are a result of our ongoing work with faculty members seeking new ways to engage students and improve the learning process. Learning Lab applications are also used externally by over 2,500 students in universities around the globe. Students also might have noticed an increase in the use of tablets by some of their peers in class. We're actually running a pilot program now in which we've loaned out iPads to students in several courses to better assess their content consumption, content creation, and collaboration as well as interesting apps that may be applicable to the courses.

And as increasingly fast mobile speeds combined with compact mobile devices allow for instant access to content, we're looking at how these devices can span miles to connect students with experts around the world. We're currently building a beta set of mobileready tools to provide another channel for interaction in class as well as thinking about increased uses of immersive videos for connected learning.

Outside of the classroom, our Alumni Community is another example of innovation. Stemming from a partnership with students, alumni and External Affairs, Wharton Computing recently revamped the site to improve everyone's ability to connect with each other both during school and after graduation. The new alumni directory, which includes social features, is easier than ever to use and we've even had interest in this product from other institutions.

Read The Rest Of The Wharton Article