The case study method of teaching ..

Over the past two years I have taken more of a case study based approach in Management teaching that I carry out at Alliance School of Business Bangalore. More than enjoying it to the hilt, it remains the top student teaching tool (from a survey done among them) and gives me great satisfaction to see find that I am getting exposed to multiple perspectives regarding the case each time I discuss it in the class. It is great to see how perspectives of people get formed and differ.

Case studies are (real or made up) stories that are used as a teaching tool to show the application of a theory or concept to real situations. Dependent on the goal they are meant to fulfill the objectives of the course, cases can be fact-driven and deductive where there is a correct answer, or they can be context driven where multiple solutions are possible. www.vanderbilt.edu

Click here for a detailed article by Prof. Nitin Nohria in HBR of Dec 21.

Prof Nitin points to seven main reasons why the case based teaching is superior to other types of teaching in management education,

1. Preparation

2. Discernment

3. Bias recognition

4. Judgement

5. Collaboration

6. Curiosity and

7. Self-confidence

According to my experience in case based teaching and after student interaction, post classroom discussions among the students is what adds maximum value to students. Case discussions for sure do increase one's confidence in handling real life situations as with cases one is exposed to many real world instances of learning and experiencing management decision making.

One of the most interesting and beneficial cases of learning I found was when i discussed the case on cyber security in my MBA class. I prepared a fictitious case after reading the different aspects of cyber security from literature and own experiences at Goa Engineering College. After going through the case discussion in the class, I could sense for myself the added self-confidence the case gave to a non-science or non-engineering student as he / she got exposed to new concepts on hacking, cracking and information security. 

Besides giving students the new information and perspectives, I have found students to be very inquisitive and intuitive on observing and learning new concepts, being curious and better aware of of business aspects.

Another observation is when the student realises for himself the bias he had earlier and how it has changed with the interesting multi-faceted case discussions in the class. 

Most of the time it is difficult or not practical to collect all information regarding any situation and managers have to take decisions based on available incomplete information. The case discussion helps the students to differentiate the more important information from the less important one to aid in decision making.

Even though some of my students are very appreciative of the importance of doing role plays in the class to give more self confidence to students and forms the highest level in the Bloom's taxonomy, for a behavioural field like Management, most of the researchers feel the case based teaching is the best method of teaching students multiple concepts, helping understand multiple perspectives and biases.

My conclusion is that online mode of management education cannot give these additional physical interactions and thus do not help students attain high levels of learning and practice.

George.