HIGH POINT, N.C., April 24, 2012 – Three professors and three students from High Point University have taken a bold idea and turned it into a new app for the iPad that changes the way students learn about markets in the classroom.
“One day, when conducting an economic experiment in my class, I realized that if each student had an iPad, the experiments would become easier to perform and more interactive than performing all or part of the experiment on paper,” says Dr. Daniel Hall, assistant professor of economics at HPU. “Each iPad could instantly record decisions while allowing students to move freely about the room while trading with other students.”
He teamed up with Dr. Stephanie Crofton, associate dean of the Phillips School of Business at HPU, to bring the idea to fruition. The duo came up with a plan to create an app that would provide students with a more realistic experience. The end product is an app that allows students to act as “buyers” and “sellers” who instantly exchange trading information, just as if they were on a live trading floor, by physically “bumping” the iPads together.
To fund the project, they received more than $12,000 last year from the university’s Think Big grant, which awards funds to professors with innovative projects designed to inspire learning. They also received an additional $2,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, all of which was used as real dollars for students to trade in the classroom.
They eventually teamed up with Roger Shore, associate professor of mathematics and computer science, and three computer science majors to create the app along the way.
“We saw this as an occasion for students to get a real-world opportunity to apply their programming skills and a simultaneous opportunity for economics students at HPU and nationwide to learn economic principles from the app,” says Crofton. “Roger and the student programmers worked feverishly to bring the economics experiments to life.”
The app, which was officially finished about one month ago, has already garnered attention. The three computer science majors involved in the creation – Christian Weigandt, Thomas Langford and Kevin Sanders – received second place out of 32 undergraduate research presentations at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Mid-Southeast Chapter Fall Conference in November.
While the app is now being used frequently in Crofton and Hall’s classes, they plan to spread it to other universities and research centers so more students can benefit from the app as well.
“We’ve already received interest for the app from other colleges after we presented the idea at a recent conference,” says Crofton. “Schools want new ways to use technology in the classroom; we are developing the systems right here at HPU – giving our students first access.”
At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education in an inspiring environment with caring people.℠ HPU, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a liberal arts institution with over 4,200 undergraduate and graduate students at campuses in High Point and Winston-Salem. It is ranked by US News and World Report at No. 3 among Regional Colleges in the South. Parade Magazine lists HPU in the top 25 private schools in the nation. HPU was selected in the 2010-2011 list of “Colleges of Distinction,” as well as one of the top green schools in the country by the Sierra Club. The university offers 44 undergraduate majors, 40 undergraduate minors and 10 graduate degree programs. It is a member of the NCAA, Division I and the Big South Conference. Visit High Point University on the Web at highpoint.edu.
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Pam Haynes
Communication Specialist
336-841-9055
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