Amazon.com announced on May 6 its plans for a pilot program involving five universities to test its new device, Kindle DX. Among them: UVA’s Darden School of Business, the only business school chosen.
“The graduate business school arena is quite different from the undergraduate schools participating in the program,” says Ken White, vice president of communications and marketing for Darden. “Amazon wanted the business school community to be represented in this pilot, and fortunately, they selected us.”
Amazon first introduced Kindle in 2007 as its “revolutionary wireless reading device.” Now, Amazon is taking this idea one step further. The Seattle company will give students at Case Western Reserve University, Princeton, Arizona State, Oregon’s Reed College and Darden a larger version of the standard device loaded with textbooks for chemistry and computer science, among other disciplines.
Last week, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos announced an agreement with three of the leading textbook publishers in the nation, but for Darden, the Kindle DX will be used on business cases rather than textbooks.
The pilot program will span two semesters, and Darden’s goal is to make the Kindle DX available to small groups of students in both the full-time MBA and MBA for Executives programs.
The benefits of the Kindle DX are multiple, says White. “Right off the top is environmental sustainability,” he says. “And it’s actually convenient, not having to carry so many things with you. As far as how it will affect learning, I think we’ll find out in the next two semesters.”
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