Wharton lab will simulate market

As if the Wharton curve didn't provide enough competition, students can now take part in online auctions and bidding battles.

But unlike the curve, these competitions are simulated.

With a $10 million gift from alumnus Alfred West Jr., the Wharton School has recently created the Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab, consisting of a new development center and experimental laboratory to create educational Web-based computer programs.

The goal of these products is to allow students to learn outside the realm of lecture halls, textbooks and videos.

"The idea is to explore new ways of learning," said Gerard McCartney, an associate dean at Wharton. "Not something that a book or a videotape can already do -- something unique to technology."

Wharton students will be able to access interactive, transcontinental case discussions, a virtual bond engine, a trading investment simulator and other mock environments, all designed to allow students to gain experience with real-world business situations.

All products are available from any Web browser and therefore, with the exception of group projects, can be accessed from the comfort of one's own room.

"The whole point is that you can do it anywhere, anytime," McCartney said.

West, the chairman and chief executive officer of SEI Investments, is also chairman of the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, which developed the idea of the Learning Lab.

The idea, which has evolved over the course of about a year and a half, was tested last year with Wharton's Web Cafe.

The Learning Lab teams created their various products -- each taking three to six months to design -- by soliciting requests from faculty.

"Professors would have an idea, then come to us and say, `It would be neat if we could do this,'" McCartney said. "The team would then go and work on it."

There are currently nine products readily available for both graduate and undergraduate Wharton students to employ in their classes, and as faculty keep masterminding novel concepts, the Learning Lab will keep inventing new products.

West -- who founded Simulated Environments, Inc., the predecessor to SEI Investments, as a Wharton MBA student in 1968 -- has high hopes for these new methods of technology learning.

"I am delighted to have the opportunity to help Wharton push the boundaries of business education as we know it," West said in a statement. "One of the school's greatest strengths is its intellectual leadership, and I am confident that the Learning Lab will set the standard for ground-breaking research on learning and for technology-enhanced education."

Wharton's Learning Lab will play a significant role in the global future of technological learning tools, according to Wharton Dean Patrick Harker.

"On a broader scale, the Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab's technology-enhanced materials and world-class research on learning will contribute to academia and industry world-wide," Harker said in a statement. "Beyond the impact to Wharton and Penn, the outcomes of the Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab will be applicable to corporate and government training programs, as well as collegiate and secondary education."

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