About the Seminar
Increasingly, business education, especially at the capstone and graduate level, engages the case method. In case teaching, course content is learned through active classroom discussion about particular problems in particular businesses or industries. With a series of carefully designed discussion prompts, the teacher facilitates a classroom environment in which students apply various business models and frameworks to interrogate the case, identify key issues, and explore evidence-based recommendations. In case teaching, students learn course content actively, rather than through lecture-style instruction; they discover that each case poses many problems and even more potential solutions; they develop relevant and evidence-based arguments in conversation with peers; and they gain practical experience they can transfer to other learning or professional contexts.
The capstone course in Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business, Business Strategy (BPL 5100), has recently adopted case teaching as its core methodology. The Institute already supports BPL 5100 extensively via a curriculum of in-class workshops and supplemental student support, so extending our partnership to the development interests of the course’s faculty was a natural fit. The two-session seminar in Fall 2017 focused on preparing for case discussion with a teaching plan and reading strategies for students, facilitating meaningful case discussion, and responding to students’ case-based writing. A second cohort, comprised of all new faculty teaching the course, will convene for the seminar in Fall 2018.
Resources
If you’re interested in teaching with cases, you might like to look at some of the resources we shared in the seminar.
- Teaching with Cases: A Practical Guide by Espen Andersen and Bill Schiano
- The Case Study Handbook: How to Read, Discuss, and Write Persuasively About Cases by William Ellet
- Very Short Guides to Reading to Learn, Building Classroom Community, Fostering Participation, Managing Difficult Class Dynamics, Active Listening, Teaching with the Whiteboard, and Responding to Student Writing
- Short, practical videos on teaching with cases from Tony Gomez-Ibanez, from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
Be in touch!
If you’d like to learn more about the seminar, or for consultation and support on teaching with cases in other courses, be in touch.
