Castalia launches goocus pro pilot project at higher education institutions in Africa. -- With ISM in Senegal as a first step

Castalia Co., Ltd. (registered main office: Nagano, Japan / headquarters: Tokyo, Japan / CEO: Satoshi Yamawaki / hereinafter "Castalia") is pleased to announce the implementation of a substantiative experiment utilizing "goocus pro", a mobile learning platform developed by Castalia dedicated to uses in corporations and educational institutions, starting from October 2013, in the MBA program (hereinafter "MBA") at Institut Supérieur de Management (hereinafter "ISM") in Dakar, Senegal, with the support of Africa Business Partners LLC (Headquarters: Chiba, Japan / Representative: Shigeomi Sato), a research and consulting firm specialized in the African region. The agreement for the implementation was signed on September 2, 2013 (local time) at ISM.


In this initiative, we will provide an environment where MBA students conduct social learning in groups, studying the MBA educational contents stored in goocus pro. Many MBA students have their daytime jobs; quite a few of them cannot secure enough time to get prepared for the classes. The introduction of goocus pro enables such students to prepare for the classes in their in-between times by using their own mobile devices. We hope that having all students studied the basic knowledge of the content of the classes beforehand will further enhance the effect of the classes.



 

ISM has experiences in the implementation of e-learning and they already have a solid ground for the introduction of mobile and social learning. MBA students are actively communicating with one another using Facebook groups.
Starting with this case, Castalia plans to further introduce goocus pro to other graduate and undergraduate courses at ISM, and expand it to other universities in the African region.
[About goocus pro]


"goocus pro" is a mobile learning platform born out of an intensive research of learning with rapidly spreading smartphones. It takes full advantage of the portability of mobile devices, an always-on learning environment that does not require certain times or locations, emergence of ideas and competition born from the sharing of knowledge and discoveries by users connected with one another through social networking services such as Facebook, the habitual power of gaming elements, the management of users by the administrator and the utilization of the users' learning history, resulting in a new service that replaces the traditional learning systems. It allows you to create both multiple choice and written questions using texts, photos and images, and audio and visual contents, utilizing the existing internal training materials.
[About Institut Supérieur de Management]


Institut Supérieur de Management (Headquaters: Dakar, Senegal) is a private university that offers undergraduate, graduate and doctorate courses dedicated to business management and IT-related studies. Established in 1992, it has produced 12,000 graduates. Joining alliances with 14 management-related higher education institutions including INSEAD in France, ISM incorporates most updated knowledge and provide education in 8 campuses and ranked the highest among the institutions in the Western African French language region and fourth among Western and Northern Africa, in the 2011 business school ranking.

 
■About Africa Business Partners LLC
Africa Business Partners LLC (Headquarters: Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan /
Representative: Shigeomi Sato) is one of the few Japanese research consulting firm specialized in businesses in Africa. It provides hands-on support on the entire process of the Japanese companies' business development in Africa from planning to settlement, by providing information on businesses in Africa, market researches, selection of partners, financing arrangements, and business monitoring.
URL：http://abp.co.jp/

 
■About Castalia Co., Ltd.
Castalia Co., Ltd. (Registered Main Office: Nagano, Japan / Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan / CEO: Satoshi Yamawaki) produces educational digital content solutions and operates web media for learning, under the concept of "Mobile & Social". Castalia offers a new and educational communication channel between content-providing corporations/educational institutes and individuals, contributing to the further enhancement of their significance.
URL：http://www.castalia.co.jp/en/

 
【For questions regarding this press release, please contact】
Atsushi Inutsuka
Phone: (country code 81)-3-3401-4191
E-mail: info [at] castalia.co.jp (Please change [at] to @ upon sending e-mails)