Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/52321
Moore Embraces Telepresence THE UNIVERSITY OF South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business in Columbia, South Carolina, recently conducted its first custom executive educa- tion program delivered by telepresence. Using Cisco's TelePresence platform, the school connected faculty in Moore School's Global Learning TelePresence rooms with executives in Germany. The executives, who work for the manufacturing company Fiberweb, took the two-day course from a Marriott hotel in Frankfurt. The technology, which incorporates large, high- definition panels with video and audio, creates a single learning space that has a "natural feeling," says Martin Roth, the international business professor who taught the program. Executives collaborated face-to-face on marketing and strategy projects and participated in syn- chronous and asynchronous activities. The school now has nine telepresence rooms. In Sep- tember, it began using the technology in its professional MBA program at sites throughout South Carolina and neighboring Charlotte, North Carolina. The school has used telepresence to deliver some MBA and undergraduate classes and plans to use the technology for conferences. Telepresence is a boon to global education, because it avoids the problems of long distance, such as jet lag and time lost to travel, while still maintaining a sense of intimacy among students and professors, says Ray Smith, the Moore School's chief learning officer and architect of the school's telepresence and learning mod- els. Says Smith, "This is an important step in creating a global, interactive classroom." Redesigning the MBA: A Curriculum Development Symposium March 26–27, 2012 | Tampa, Florida, USA Spearhead innovation in curriculum redesign. A business school's curriculum refl ects its unique mission and encompasses the intellectual capital and character of its faculty. It is an essential ingredient for high quality management education and a healthy business school brand. Curriculum is also one of the most diffi cult elements for a business school to change and nowhere is this more conspicuous than in MBA degree programs. This event will guide you through the MBA curriculum redesign process and help you think strategically about questions of purpose, positioning, and program design. Facilitators will cover topics essential to curriculum redesign and will provide syllabi examples from schools, while discussing the process of developing courses and programs. Learn more at www.aacsb.edu/MBASymposium. Register by February 26, 2012, and save 100 USD. BizEd January/February 2012 61