If there’s one thing that UCLA knows about executives, it’s that they travel a great deal.
For that reason, about two years ago, UCLA began exploring the possibility of integrating laptop technology into its Fully Employed and Executive MBA Programs. The part-time programs are designed for executives and managers on the rise, who, by virtue of their employment, are frequently on the road.
Among the companies they represent are Hughes Aircraft, Disney, Lockheed, Pacific Bell, McDonnell Douglas, Xerox, TRW, the Navy, Chevron, Arco, IBM, Southern Cal Edison, Paramount, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, and various banking, legal and accounting firms.
Following a small pilot last year, which offered either a PowerBook or a Zenith Laptop to the students, the faculty and administration realized they had to pick one standard or no true integration could take place. The PowerBook 170 was selected as the standard, and was issued to all 130 new executives and fully employed MBA students who entered the program in 1992, as part of their tuition.
Integral to the program are syndicated study groups. The students will be using the PowerBooks to communicate with their work groups, as well as tie into the servers at the business school, and prepare and give presentations. Work groups are generally composed of three to five students. Each student concentrates on a section of the project.
Since most of the students travel, those out of town can pass on their section to other members of the group and still communicate through the PowerBooks. Marketing classes do case analyses, while finance and business economic classes study sophisticated financial analyses. Students learn about presentation packages like Aldus Persuasion while preparing for their presentations.
Economic class study groups help their fellow students grasp concepts by using multimedia visual tools in addition to definitions and graphs for their presentations.
The PowerBook 170s were pre-loaded with 8 MB of RAM, an 80MB hard drive, the PowerPort Fax/Modem, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Mail, Aldus Persuasion, Fastat, a “FaceFile” with pictures and biographies of the students, staff, and faculty in the program, and the first quarter’s class notes and syllabi. Students can access the entire school network via six modems connected with a LANrover to a Quadra.
The Quadra is bridged using Ethernet to tie to the campus network. Printers are connected with Farallon cables. Generally, students use the network to communicate with administration about regular areas of concern like weekend class schedules and speaker schedules, which have been known to change.
This gives the professor and the work groups the freedom to reschedule, and traveling students can remain prepared. Another benefit to the network is that students can communicate with their professor through the network.
“We knew that this technology would make a big difference in our program,” says Jack McDonough, faculty director of the Executive MBA Program. McDonough says there are three areas in which the PowerBooks are particularly helpful.
The programs have a quantitative core and students can use their PowerBooks in the classroom to run their own statistical routines. The school provides them with a variety of data sets. Having the computing power at hand allows the students to see the power of analytic techniques in a way that faculty find fascinating.
Also central to the programs is the ability to communicate via fax and modem. The PowerBooks provide a communications link among students, faculty, and administrators through which they can share reports, charts and other information.
A third area where PowerBooks’ capability enhances the programs is through graphics and multimedia. One accounting professor has created a fully electronic course using Excel and Persuasion. In other classes, students give presentations created in the program. Executive MBA students will attend a spring semester course dedicated entirely to multimedia. This course will include instruction on HyperCard, MacroMind Director and animation, video, and sound.
One goal of the program, says McDonough, is that students graduate from the program computer-literate, with hands-on, working knowledge of some of the sophisticated software packages available.
“The program,” says McDonough, “has been greeted with more enthusiasm than we ever imagined.”
For more information, contact Gary Lindblad, associate director of UCLA’s Executive and Fully Employed MBA Programs, UCLA, 405 Hilgarde St., Los Angeles, CA 90024; (310) 825-2632; lindblad@agsm.ucla.edu.
