NetGenEd Project

Ferolo's academic research looks into how people use mobile devices in their everyday lives and how the technology affects their experiences. "If people are physically here, the video content becomes more relevant to them. I believe there is a higher engagement in that tour," he said.

Stacy Bernstein, 17, a high school senior who was visiting Bradley from St. Louis, said the videos provided insight that she didn't get by staring at limestone buildings.

smart cards and readers, meaning it could easily be integrated into the public transit payment systems in cities that already use a smart card swipe

For another project, infotags were installed in schools. Students could get their individual daily schedule, announcements, and information about homework by waving their phones past the tags. A trial held in one pub allowed customers to tap cards with their NFC-enabled phones for more information about products

The company applied more than 250 NFC-tag stickers at various locations in Berlin that users would swipe their phones past in order to alert their friends that they were “checked in” at that location.

the device isn’t great for exercises that require hard data analysis or spreadsheets.

they must provide tech support,

Regardless of how interactive case studies may become, what won’t change are the analytical and critical thinking skills they impart, Rowe says.

arvard Business School, the largest publisher of case studies in North America, is in the process of converting 3,500 of its files to tablet-enhanced formats during this school year and expects to finish converting its library of 17,000 titles by 2013.

The tablet medium also seems ideal for simulated cases, says Glenn Rowe, a professor at the Ivey school and author of nearly 40 case studies. In role-playing exercises, prices and other variables can change on the fly. Students may also be smacked with unexpected events, such as their biggest competitor slashing prices, or by their receiving a higher-than-expected counterbid after a merger proposal. Students choose what they would do, and the simulation immediately tells them the consequence of that action.

Students are also more inclined to use tablets for supplemental reading. (Assuming prices are the same, 86 percent of college students say they prefer a hard copy textbook to an e-textbook, according to the market research firm Student Monitor.)

As part of Drew’s Wall Street iPad initiative, students will have the option to purchase their Apple device at the end of the semester for a 50 percent discount off the retail price.  Tomljanovich expects that most—if not all—students will take advantage of the buy-out.