Haas School Unveils New Mobile Learning Platform
The UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and EmpoweredU will roll out a new mobile learning platform tailored for the Berkeley MBA for Executives program. EmpoweredU’s mobile learning platform provides the tools, mobility, and ease of the iPad for a mobile learning experience.
It also improves student-to-student communication and student-to-instructor communication, allows students to stay in touch with classmates between class sessions, and helps students juggle coursework with career and family commitments.
“Our executive MBA program will be the first degree program to experience the benefits of this mobile learning experience,” says Adam Berman, who heads the Haas School’s initiatives in learning technologies. “For senior professionals on the go, having this kind of technology means getting the most out of their MBA experience, using their time most efficiently, and deepening their ties to their classmates.”
The platform allows for streaming content via the Internet, course site creation, on-line lectures, assignment, test administering, grading, user publishing, live chat, peer-to-peer interaction, discussion forum, development of student portfolios, messaging, and news and web-content access.
This partnership is the result of a recently completed pilot program that allowed students in the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program to test out the mobile education technology. Initially, these tools will be applied to the following courses: Finance; Leading People; Marketing; and Building Trust based on Relationship; plus an additional four courses per semester to be added later.
“EmpoweredU’s mobile first technology breaks students away from being tethered to a desktop with full-time internet access. We provide a mobile platform that students can use both in and out of WiFi zones,” says EmpoweredU CEO Steve Poizner. “This kind of flexibility enhances productivity, allowing students to complete coursework anywhere, anytime, whether that be at lunch, at the beach, waiting in a parking lot, or picking up kids from soccer practice.”
