Colleges Work With Industry Partner

TheYale School of Management, in New Haven, Conn., has partnered with IBM todevelop coursework that teaches MBA students analytics skills. Students at theschool?s Center for Customer Insights, for example, are learning to takecustomer opinions from the Web (such as social media sites and company blogs),analyze that data and discover trends to improve customer service and marketingcampaigns.

See Also: Mobile Stretches Network Security

?Withsocial media, businesses are increasingly realizing that the strategic use ofthis data could be important for businesses,? says K. Sudhir, professor ofmarketing and director of the Yale China India Consumer Insights Program.

Sudhir?sstudents analyzed Intuit?s TurboTax Website to determine the biggest problemsfacing users, in terms of tax return and software questions. After completingtheir analysis, the students advised Intuit on the best way to restructure theWebsite, so users can more easily get the best answers to their questions.

Yale?sCenter for Customer Insights, which is a member of the IBM Academic Initiative,receives free access to IBM technology, as well as course materials, training andcurriculum development.

Touchingthe Cloud

PaceUniversity?s School of Computer Science and Information Systems, in New YorkCity, is one of 20
colleges using the IBM Academic Skills Cloud, which provides free developmenttools and software over the cloud. This is giving students hands-on experiencewith cloud computing.

Studentsin Christelle Scharff?s ?Concepts and Structures of Internet Programming? classlearn about database concepts, fundamentals of programming languages,networking, Web application architectures, and grid and cloud computing. In thepast, her students had to install and configure software, development tools andoperating systems on their own computers. Now, they simply log on and accessthe software from the cloud.

?Ourstudents can access the software from wherever they are,? says Scharff, anassociate professor of computer science. ?Cloud computing is something they?veheard about, but now they are interacting with it and are more productive.?