THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF PENNSYLVANIA
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THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2014
Gift launches Center for Energy Policy Contactless
PennCards to make entry easier Microchips will help PennCards open doors to opportunity BY EMILY OFFIT Staff Writer PennCards will soon give students more than just access to dorms and dining halls. The University is moving away from its 30 year-old magnetic strip PennCard to a new, contactless technology that will open up more possibilities for PennCard use. According to the Penn Business Services website, this new chip technology will provide a host of benefits for students, including quicker transactions, improved security and the future possibility to use the PennCard in other systems. “Contactless is the wave of the future,” Business Services Director of Communications and Project Management Barbara Lea-Kruger said. “This new type of card is coming to North America now, and the University wanted to get into a technology that improves our security and SEE PENNCARDS PAGE 2
Courtesy of Jacques-Jean Tiziou
The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy will be housed on the third and fourth floors of the Fisher Fine Arts Library in the center of campus. The center will bring prominent energy thinkers to speak on campus and provide research and collaboration opportunities for students and faculty.
Alumnus Scott Kleinman donated $10 million to create the center BY KRISTEN GRABARZ News Editor Energy policy progress and debate will soon light up the center of Penn’s campus. Made possible by a $10 million gift from 1994 College and Wharton graduate Scott Kleinman and his wife, Wendy, the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy will serve as a vehicle for developing new energy policy by revolutionizing the re-
lationship between research and practice. It is scheduled to launch in Fall of 2014. Professor of Practice at Penn Design Mark Alan Hughes — who is also the founding Director of Sustainability and former Chief Policy Adviser to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter — will serve as the Center’s director. “[The Center] will make visible and galvanize even more faculty and student attention and opportunities related to energy policy in the United States and around the world,” Hughes said. “It will become a home for special interschool classes, for visiting lectur-
ers, for conferences designed to bring experts from around the country to Penn and to Philly to work through some of the most challenging policies that we face.” The Center — which will be housed on the third and fourth floors of the Fisher Fine Arts Library — will support the creation of new energy policies by fostering collaboration among stakeholders and innovators. Hughes said that he hopes to implement a Kleinman Annual Lecture on Energy Policy in Spring of 2015, which would bring a distinguished individual to campus for about two weeks to correspond
with faculty and students and speak about relevant energy issues. “The idea is that it would become the most influential annual statement about what we need to do next in energy policy in the country,” Hughes said. Serving as a forum for policy development, the Center will bring together scholars, stakeholders and investors to work through “the thorny issues around so many energy problems” and create real policy, Hughes said. “Energy can be complex and afSEE ENERGY PAGE 5
Photo Illustration by Ali Harwood
While not all College House dorm rooms will have pinpads yet, the new PennCards will be given to incoming students.
Penn to pilot app that organizes your Wharton professors say phone contacts for you MOOCS are adaptable Humin uses context and social media information to sort phone contacts
You can’t click rewind in a classroom — even though it may help with learning
BY JILL CASTELLANO Staff Writer
BY ARIEL SMITH Staff Writer
A Penn grad is trying to make your phone contacts more Humincentric. Ankur Jain, a 2011 Wharton graduate, founded a contacts app called Humin a year after he left Penn and will be using Penn as one of the app’s pilot sites within the next few weeks. While phone contacts are normally organized alphabetically by name, Humin distinguishes contacts using contextual information and information from social networking sites such as Facebook. This allows the app to link contacts based on details such as where and when people meet or where someone works or goes to school. By searching “went to Penn,” a list of names will pop up for people who attend or graduated from Penn, which the app knows by gathering information from social networking sites, phone contacts and email. “The most exciting thing for me about Humin is building a technology that thinks the way your brain actually does,” Jain said. “The information that matters is in front of you when you need it.” It took the Humin crew — which is comprised of 30 people including SEE HUMIN PAGE 3
Courtesy of Humin
Humin makes it easy to surf through phone contacts by sorting them based on personal details or where and when the contact was added. Penn will be piloting the app.
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Two Wharton professors think that online learning may provide benefits absent from traditional classroom learning environments. In their study titled “Will Video Kill the Classroom Star? The Threat and Opportunity of MOOCs for Fulltime MBA Programs,” Co-director of the Mack Institute of Innovation and Management Christian Terwiesch and Vice Dean of Innovation Karl Ulrich said that the technology embedded in massive open online courses is beneficial to the learning process, but doubt it will displace the traditional classroom system. MOOCs utilize a system of technology — which Terwiesch and Ulrich coined SuperText — featuring three main components: videos, online learning platforms and a social network that creates a sense of community. Both professors believe that SuperText has the potential to be more reactive to a student’s needs than a professor in a traditional, in-person classroom. “In a classroom, every participant is forced to share an identical experience,” Ulrich said in an email. “With SuperText, the learning ex-
perience can adapt dynamically to the needs and preferences of each individual student.” Terweisch added that MOOCs facilitate some functions that may supplement the learning process in ways in-person classes cannot.. “As simple as it might sound, the SuperText has a rewind button. You watch that video and you get confused so you just rewind it, pause it, text a friend and get an explanation,” Terweisch said. “That’s actually more adaptive than the traditional classroom environment.” Terweisch went on to cite a technology embedded in the SuperText called “adaptive learning” — essentially, the testing platform runs a diagnosis on the student, sees where that student is struggling, and directs the learner towards the area where he or she most needs help. “When it comes to a dull lecture with practice problems, the SuperText technology is probably doing a better job [than the professor]. As faculty we have to ask ourselves how we are spending time in the classroom. We have to deliver a meaningful and exciting experience in the classroom,” Terweisch said. Both professors currently use the SuperText technology in tandem with their normal classroom instruction. Students meet once or twice a week in the classroom after having completed parts of the course SEE MOOCS PAGE 3
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