No. 1, July 2021
Academia, like the rest of the world, changed in March 2020 with the pandemic, and nowhere more so than in teaching, from face-to-face to remote. But how did the fundamental elements of the case method change and what has been the impact on learning?
Having taught by the case method for the previous 45 years. At that time I was finishing facilitating a series of workshops on the basic elements of the method with a group of colleagues with fewer years of experience, but with whom there was plenty of talent and energy to spare.
When we started the workshops, in "normal" times (if at any time there was normality in a region as convulsed as Central America), the first task was to define the topics. I surveyed the twenty participants, reviewed some notes from the C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning, HBS (Harvard Business School) and started to reflect on the steps I have always followed when preparing for the discussion of a case: I think about what the students should learn (or learn to do) in the session, I make the lesson plan and the mapping of the whiteboards, elaborate the "trigger" questions for each block or "pasture" of discussion, visualize the dynamics of discussion in each block and decide how I am going to close.
I also reflected on the results of courses I had taught, in which I felt there was more learning. Sure, there were some subjects that lent themselves more to case method teaching than others, but I sometimes stumbled into such exciting courses as strategy and emerged unscathed from underappreciated subjects such as ANEC (Analyzing Written Cases). Would there be more in-depth elements?
I came to the conclusion that beyond subject matter or style, there is no substitute for careful design and disciplined execution of 6 basic elements: the teaching-learning contract between teacher and students, the lesson plan based on learning objectives, the beginning of the session, the use of the whiteboard/ multimedia, the dynamics of the discussion (asking-listening-answering) and the closing. We just completed the round of workshops on these elements when the pandemic hit.
In this new reality of confinement, I thought there was nothing more to do. I doubted that the 6 elements of case method teaching would have much relevance, but I was wrong. What I discovered, along with my twenty colleagues, is that remote teaching does change each of the 6 elements. But far from being less relevant, they become critical, and must be designed and executed with even greater precision, creativity and discipline.
In subsequent issues of this blog, we will delve deeper into some of these 6 elements and other topics. The message in this first issue is that the 6 elements are still relevant in remote teaching, and that because of the greater precision and discipline it demands, it can make us better case method teachers when we return to the classroom.
