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Studies are really starting to show that this generation, their brain hardware is different
because of the way they have incorporated technology into their life from the beginning
It could be an advantage if we allow it to be
We've been offering quality business programs at SIUE since the early seventies
Our business school, it has about 20,000 thousand alumni
It has about thirteen hundred students, about a thousand of those are undergraduates, about 300 graduate students
We've been working very hard to listen to employers about
not only their technology needs
what other kinds of skills do they want to see business students have when they leave the university
So we've been looking for tools and methods
that will help us engage our students
and thru that engagement, help provide them with a better education
Smartsheet is one of those things that you introduce and they're like
ok, I get it. This is how I can use it,
not only here, but maybe
I had a student last semester that asked if he could use it
in a totally different class
Smartsheet is a tool
that can support the main stuff,
the entering your project schedule, tracking progress on the project's schedule,
showing when tasks are completed, showing task assignments, sharing the project plans
so that each team member can just go in and update the status
of the tasks assigned to them
Students don't have to to load any software on their computer
They can access their project plan from anywhere, anytime
and that's what students today expect
What was nice about it was we didn't have to be together
in order to do this project
We could be anywhere we wanted to
and we had a lot of conflicting schedules so we had very little time that we can meet outside of class together
I think that one thing that it helps students understand is that
these things we're teaching you are not just things
They're actually used out with real professionals
and the fact that we have them use work breakdown structure
and the Gantt chart that Smartsheet provides,
I think it gives us some credibility in
what we're teaching them
But I also think it helps bridge the gap for them between how to use new technology
and Smartsheet's a lot easier for our students to pick up and understand
than some of the bulkier project management
platforms out there
I would love to use it for any planning event or
any kind of a group thing that I would do
just because there are those steps that you have to take and who accomplishes them and
you can't really do that if you don't have a plan and Smartsheet really helps to do that
Our goal is that they'll have a leg up from other graduates from other universities
All business schools have projects that students work on
We talk about the importance of working together, but these students will have encountered real solutions
for real people problems
and part of that will be that they have this technological tool to help them
manage some of those people problems
I think no matter what career they go into, it's skills and software and a tool they can use
When students come back, a year out, two years out and send me an email
or give me a call
and say the things I learned in your class saved my life, or the things I that I
learned in your class got me a promotion, or I dealt with this problem, and the way I did it
people saw it and now i have more responsibility
That's when I know that it's working