Dubai: The Hult Business School has successfully managed to integrate the Apple iPad into its executive education programmes with a global roll-out of nearly 2,000 tablets.
The iPads were rolled out onto the Global MBA and Executive MBA programmes across Hult's campuses in London, Dubai and Shanghai. This undertaking was headed by Yousuf Khan, Chief Information Officer at Hult, who spoke to Gulf News last week at an information session in Dubai.
"What we have done is a very comprehensive global deployment of iPads which a lot of schools have been trying to do ever since the iPad was launched," said Khan. "In September we integrated 1,700 iPads into the classroom and took it into every aspect of the student experience, both on the academic and student life side."
The initiative took the best part of the year to set up in close collaboration with Apple and has resulted in facilitating student mobility and easier access to information. Through an agreement, Apple will now send a tutor at the start of every term to Hult campuses to train students on the effective use of the iPad.
The initiative has addressed the academic elements of learning from integrating textbooks, case studies and other course materials onto the device to introducing clicker response applications into the classroom.
"With online polling and Who Wants to be a Millionaire-type technology, the classroom experience becomes better," he said. "The technology is out there so why not use it in education?"
He said in terms of the classroom polling application, just like on television game shows, teachers can conduct an instant poll of public opinion in the class.
"The reality is some people are willing to put their hands up and others aren't, some people are kind of shy but want to participate," he said. "Things like this increase classroom participation, resulting in more engaging discussions and increased learning."
Mobile applications
He said in terms of using the iPad for student life, the university has adopted mobile applications. This allows the institution to send alerts to its students, which they receive on their tablet or smartphone, in the same way a news alert would pop up on an iPhone, for example.
Khan himself delivered his information session to potential MBA candidates through a power point presentation entirely developed on the tablet. He said besides there being a "cool" factor to this initiative, it is expected by students living and working in the digital age.
