The Use of iPocket Coach in Business Education: An

Interactive Class Exercise

The use of tablets in schools are increasing; therefore, demand for educational apps are growing.

Students use apps for organizing and recording lecture notes, note taking, reading digital materials, web surfing (Kaya, 2010), playing games, watching films and images (Lima, Lennon, and Filho,

2012), recording videos, taking still pictures, playing music (Auletta, 2010), keep schedules and reminding tasks.

Although many apps are designed to do these functions, only a few focus on building soft skills in business and management.

iPocket Coach is an app that can be used to:o Understand common management issueso Resolving conflict between individuals and teamso Professional development o Giving positive feedback o Interviewing for the right talento Discussing job performance, promotions, rewards,

and terminations.

It can be used in management, HR, negotiations, consumer behavior, sales management, and any class that teaches students interpersonal skills.

Therefore, this paper explains how the skill building exercises can be utilized effectively in classrooms by using iPocket Coach to enhance the business education and help students build interpersonal and communication skills.

It is only a matter of time before the use of applications on tablets becomes a common practice to enhance teaching and learning in classrooms.

Although mobile technology has become a hot topic in all levels of education, the published articles related to the use of mobile devices in business and business education are still in shortage in the literature.

The value of using mobile technology to support education needs to be further researched and better understood (Sheng, Siau, and Nah, 2010).

Yee and Pompos (2012) present a review of an iPad application called OnLive Desktop and discusses its benefits for classroom use to create, present and edit MS Office files and view Flash files on an iPad.

As more literature is published on the educational benefits and use of iPad apps, the higher adoption rate of these apps can be expected by the educators to enhance the classroom interaction and engagement.

The iPocket Coach app costs only $.99 and can easily be purchased and downloaded from Apple’s App Store on to an iPad/iPhone.

This paper demonstrates and explains how educators can use iPocket Coach and benefit students in building communication and interpersonal skills to become competent professionals.

The way that the application is utilized is by selecting which topic best fits the situation; conflict, development, feedback, interviewing, performance, promotions, rewards, or termination.

Once a topic has been selected the next screen gives an overview of the topic, with a button at the bottom to “view statements.”

Once on the view statements screen, a choice for a scenario can be made for: with employee, between employees (raised to you by both parties), with own team, with peer (on same team), with peer’s team, with boss, with vendor/partner, or with customer.

Once a selection has been made the next screen will show suggestions of statements that can be made in a specific situation to a specific person or people. These statements may be used as starter scripts or to begin thinking about a conversation.

An example scenario may be:There are two roles, the person who purchased the vehicle and the salesperson at the car dealership who sold the vehicle. After completing the purchase of a car, the buyer realizes there is a small crack in the windshield that he/she did not notice prior to driving home, this crack is on the driver’s side. The buyer consulted with an auto mechanic and was informed that the car would not pass the next inspection without replacing the windshield. The crack is considered to be in an area of the windshield that could potentially obstruct the view of the driver. The person who purchased the car is returning to the dealership to speak to the salesperson and would like to make arrangements for the dealership to pay for the repair since he/she has just purchased the vehicle. The salesperson has spoken to his/her supervisor and has been informed that they will not cover the cost of the repair since the buyer signed all of the paperwork and the windshield is not covered in the 30 day warranty.

Problem Solving in Role Playing: The conversations can be generated in a classroom in role playing exercises between two, or more students, or between a student and professor. The professor would provide a scenario in one of the skill building topic areas (i.e., conflict, development, feedback, interviewing, performance, promotion, rewards, and termination) in which the students would be expected to determine the best possible way to approach the problem given and reflect his/her learning in a reaction paper.

Problem solving option 1: A variation to the previous exercise would be to assign a scenario to the students as homework asking them to use iPocket Coach to respond to the scenario, without the in-class role playing exercise. The student would be responsible for creating a paper detailing the process he/she would use to resolve the given situation.

Problem solving option 2: Another use for problem solving would be to give the student an assignment to utilize the application in a real-life situation he/she had experienced (e.g., job interview, conflict with a friend/colleague/manager, providing constructive feedback) and then the student presents the situation and outcome to his/her class. After the students had the opportunity to practice use of the application in a real-world setting, they would present to the class background on the situation, what process was used to move forward, how the situation turned out and what he/she would have done differently.

Testing knowledge: Another way this application could be used is by administering a written test based on the use of this application and topics learned. The student would be expected to use the application to answer questions on the test and would be graded on appropriateness of response to the questions asked and knowledge learned throughout the semester.

Not all students may have access to an iPad/iPhone to use the iPocket Coach application.

Limited answer base within the application. The application does not allow to add ideas and

suggestions for other ways of addressing the different topics for the student to be able to refer back to within the application.

It is not possible to create a test within the application. Testing a student’s knowledge would require a test to be created outside of this application.

iPocket Coach application would give students the opportunity to build interpersonal skills and develop alternative methods for approaching business related issues.

It enables students to share ideas with other classmates to enhance their understanding of different scenarios or situations.

Due to the role-playing practices, students would become more confident in handling situations and co-workers, and better prepared for the business world.