About this story: Regularly we feature submissions by business instructors who have discovered a particular insight into how to better teach with a case, simulation, or negotiation exercise. Sharing best practices in effective pedagogical methods helps the entire community of case teachers become more skilled at their craft. If you have case related classroom tips to share with your colleagues please contact us at sales@dardenbusinesspublishing.com, and we will feature it here.
This inaugural blog entry was contributed by Brian Burns¹ from Florida Atlantic University. Burns has observed trends in which students come to class less prepared, are distracted by digital technology, and rely heavily on textbooks as inscrutable evidence. Burns decided to take a unique approach to teaching the case “Euroland Foods S.A.” that completely engaged his students. We thought that you might find his story enjoyable and consider sharing your experiences in the classroom here as well.
Case Method Success for Undergraduates Comes from Complicating, not Simplifying, the Method by Brian Burns
I tried a new approach this year with the "Euroland Foods S.A." finance case. Students were assigned the roles of the stakeholders in the case. Photo placards with each student’s role-play character emblazoned upon them were handed out at the beginning of the class discussion. (Not for nothing did I choose a photo of Meryl Streep for the Verdin character portraying Margaret Thatcher. The crowd favorite was surely Angelina Jolie, who was the embodiment of Fabienne Morin. A gaggle of European executives and royal princes completed the cast of photos for the Euroland name placards.)
Why all the drama? For one reason: It gets harder every year to engage undergraduate students and keep them focused on difficult material. In November 2012, the New York Times published two studies: both found that “students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks.”2
Whether or not digital technology is the sole or even main cause, the signs are obvious in classrooms of my colleagues where every semester less time is spent on preparation and that time is in ever smaller chunks with more distractions. I sense students’ distaste for or perhaps fear of addressing questions that require imagination, critical thinking, or synthesis of different aspects of their environment. They eschew any form of quantitative evidence in favor of the broad, bland platitudes supported by paraphrases of textbook pronouncements that sadly have been accepted in many of their past courses. And worst of all, their essays composed in Twitterese.
Paradoxically, I have found that using the case method innovatively can ameliorate these problems for almost every student in every semester. Scores of exit interview comments by my students say the same thing: “True case-method classes are as fun and effective as they are challenging and stand head and shoulders above other classes in the college curricula.”3
The case method earned its laurels at a small number of graduate schools that are both residential and ban outside employment. These prestigious schools, along with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business at the forefront, can count on students spending from 6 to 15 hours preparing a case and from 60 to 100 hours per week on all school tasks. Three elements are essential: careful individual preparation on both quantitative and qualitative case aspects, analysis and synthesis within peer group learning teams, and expertly run discussions by teachers schooled in the techniques of the case method including Darden’s own Dean Bob Bruner. A fourth element is corollary: substantial group preparation leads to completely individual contributions, be they in oral or written format.
Most undergraduate case method adaptations water down this approach to meet the presumed needs of older, commuting students who have full-time jobs and often families. Instructors of the case method of teaching are rarely required to train in pedagogy. Discussions filled with platitudes and pabulum often result. Lectures fill the time remaining. This is largely how I taught cases during my first three years. The students generally enjoyed it, but they knew no better. From my viewpoint, only 10% to 20% of the class truly absorbed and practiced the essential aspect of critical thinking. The remainder soldiered on, producing weekly essays largely recounting the textbook theories and methods that might apply to a case.
For the last five years, I have chosen to go the opposite route: To expand their math skills, every week students first prepare the sophisticated “quilt work” of financial analysis that is needed to support MBA-level discussions of finance cases. Then they prepare a weekly written response to all the case-related assignment questions that explicitly draw on each student’s own Excel analysis to support at least two-thirds of the memorandum’s content. How is this possible with only 160 minutes of class per week? It isn’t.
The challenge is getting small groups of students together to work on cases between classes. The solution I come up with are two four-hour noncredit meetings per week hosted by me at present although my role could be filled by a teaching assistant graduate student or even an “A-level course alumnus,” as are many peer-to-peer tutors in programs often called “supplemental instruction.”
The key to these meetings is to run them as real meetings or labs. The host does not instruct. Instead the host presents a brief introduction and a recap of the key deliverables expected from students. Perhaps the host demonstrates a technique unfamiliar to all students. (If a student is obviously familiar with the technique have that student demonstrate it.) Refer all questions to the students at large to answer. The surest test of understanding a concept is the ability to explain it to a peer in simple language. The host addresses specific questions only if all students are stumped, and then preferably by suggesting a series of questions so that students discover the answers on their own. Hand nothing to students on a silver platter. But I give some extra help to the truly lost students. About two-thirds of my students attend at least one weekly meeting. To the rest I distribute “lab notes,” essentially minutes of what the students at the meeting accomplished and discovered. I might offer advice about the most challenging analytical tasks.
The benefits of this approach are many:
- Complex financial analysis is only hinted at in normal undergraduate finance courses. In my classes, we learn at a near-professional level.
- Fully three-quarters of the semester is spent analyzing cases on fundamentals that will be equally useful for entrants in either junior management or MBA programs. These include cases on ratio health assessment, funds forecasting, working capital management, and capital project discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis.
- Arguing quantitatively about analytic numbers is a skill essential in both management and higher education but rarely gained in an undergraduate program.
- Requiring inductive argument from self-prepared analysis also curbs the temptation to crib from the Internet. I rotate among three or four sets of cases, so legacy case analyses are difficult to find. Plagiarism discovered by standard software on written submissions results in grade reductions. Platitudes, however relevant, receive low marks if not backed up by specific figures or case facts.
Most important is what every student at a school that uses the case method discovers. At some point in the process of taking a case all the way from a collection of facts or a dilemma, through analysis, through understanding concepts, and finally to offering a solution or recommendation for action, students enjoy a gratifying “aha!” moment. To get there usually requires a “deep dive” into the case, and almost never happens during a quick float on the surface. Undergraduates involved in the diverse distractions so common today rarely experience such a moment.
And so, is it possible to combat all the distractions facing undergraduate students by teaching with cases? I believe the key to adapting the case method of teaching to confront the cultural challenges facing undergraduate students is not to dilute the method but to increase the curricular “bet” by adding student meetings, appropriate meeting hosts, faculty training in case-method teaching and discussion techniques, and perhaps even increasing the credit hours earned by such an expanded combination of learning activities.
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¹ Brian Burns holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, specializing in finance, and an AB with concentrations in both economics and urban studies from Brown University. During his 20-year career with a Fortune 100 company, Burns held numerous senior management assignments in finance, economics, corporate strategic planning, and operations. An adjunct instructor of “Cases in Financial Management” for undergraduate seniors at Florida Atlantic University since 2004, he developed an innovative structure for the course in 2008, which has been extremely well-received by students. He has led several south Florida faculty training sessions in leading classes based on participant-centered learning by discussion.
² Matt Richtel, “Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say,” New York Times, November 1, 2012.
³These comments are collected in my teaching portfolio.