Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55680
The telepresence lecture hall "eliminates barriers of distant col- laboration," says Tracy Futhey, Duke's CIO and vice president of information technology. It takes blended learning a step further, he adds, by "allowing us to extend the educational experience around the globe while maintaining high levels of in-person classroom interaction." In February, the University of South Carolina's Moore School began using the technology in its Professional MBA program. The school also will use the platform in its executive and graduate degree programs, including its master in international business and executive master in higher education management. There is great potential for telepresence to transform the delivery of higher education, says Raymond Smith, associate dean of executive education at the Moore School. But the technology may require some adjustments to be ideal for the classroom. For instance, telepresence tech- nology was originally designed for business meetings including only a few individuals connecting remotely. To accommodate large numbers of students and faculty in geographi- cally distributed locations, Cisco is working with educational partners like the Moore School to fine-tune the technology for education. "We want to create an environ- ment that accommodates at least 15 to 20 people remotely," says Smith. "We also want profes- sors to be free to move about the room as they would in a normal classroom." He'd like to see screens positioned so that the professor can call on a student in Saudi Arabia or Germany as eas- ily as he can someone at a desk in front of him. Finally, the technology ideally would be adaptable to existing traditional classrooms to encour- age widespread adoption by a large number of schools. "Most universi- ties cannot afford to build a new facility for this," Smith says. Smith has been visiting Euro- pean schools to talk with their rep- resentatives about expanding the network of telepresence learning environments. He sees telepresence opening up new possibilities not only for learning, but also for col- laborative research, corporate part- nerships, and student recruitment. The technology helps a school "put learning where the action is," Smith says. "As a professor, I can ask a team of students in Germany to tackle a problem from a German per- spective and a team of students in the U.S. to tackle it from an American perspective. Or, I can ask students from the U.S., China, and Germany to meet in a virtual room and tackle it from a global perspective. We can do all of this without anyone jump- ing on a plane or staying in a hotel." This technology comes at the right time for executive educa- tion, Smith emphasizes. Executives want to decrease travel costs and time spent in the classroom, while increasing the speed with which they can apply what they learn to their jobs. This is true whether a company is 300 or 3,000 miles from campus, Smith adds. "Companies in South Carolina are telling us that they don't want their people to drive two hours to go to class. They're asking if there's a way for us to connect multiple sites across the state," he says. "Our answer, now, is 'Yes.'" Making (Brain) Waves In Marketing The human brain holds a mine of informa- tion useful to marketers—and Terry Childers, a marketing professor at Iowa State University's College of Business in Ames, wants to take a closer look. Childers is now seeking funding for a new lab on the ISU campus that's designed to analyze consumers' brain waves as they make purchasing decisions. Childers specializes in research related to neuromarketing, which refers to the study of consumers' level of consciousness when they decide to buy. The proposed lab, which Childers hopes will be opera- tional by the fall semester, will use an electrophysiological process simi- lar to the electroencephalogram, or EEG, that doctors use to record brain activity. For this research, subjects wear a cap fitted with electrodes connected to a machine that captures their brain signals. "We then monitor what areas of the brain are firing to perform cer- tain functions," Childers explains. To design the lab and train technicians, Childers is consulting BizEd MAY/JUNE 2010 69