No. 4, October 2021.
"You should try to teach a case without having read it," advised a colleague with extensive classroom experience. "But only once," he added, smiling. I thought he was joking. Years later, due to circumstances beyond my control, I found myself in that situation. I started the class with a general question, and I had never ever paid so much attention to the words in response. I learned to listen. But the colleague was right, once is enough: it's better to develop a solid, goal-driven lesson plan that motivates learning.
In the last issue of Quemarropa, the focus was on learning objectives as the first step in developing this plan. The question remains, what are the next steps in achieving these objectives?
I begin by deciding which are the pastures or fields where students should be fed with pastures of information on each topic, the analysis of which is essential to achieve the learning objectives. There are usually no fewer than four and no more than seven fields, each of which can last between five and twenty minutes for a face-to-face class (somewhat less in remote teaching) following a logical sequence of decision making-finding the problem, setting priorities, identifying and analyzing alternatives, and selecting the best one. If I decide to start the session point-blank, the sequence starts backwards, with the decision.
The next step is to formulatetrigger questions, so called because they serve to trigger each discussion field. The fields should have specific objectives related to the learning objectives and hopefully a message that has practical utility for those who have chosen a management career.
Third, I try to guess what will be the students' possible answers to each trigger question? And what to do in response to each answer: comment or continue to ask the same student, call another student, with the same or another question, what type? Open? Seeking information? Challenging or action? About priorities? The combinations are almost endless and the decision must be made in nanoseconds. I look for variety in the questions, avoiding repeated questions such as "And what else?" (which I frequently hear when colleagues ask me to observe their classes).
Nothing bores the student more than monotony, which can be broken by varying the level of abstraction and the Grade of stress, with questions as abstract as "What performance standards are appropriate for bank managers?" and as direct as "Should this manager lose his job?". Opportunities for debate, reflection and discovery must be sought in every field.
The fourth step is to design the transitions between one field and another so that the discussion flows and the students can be in an adversarial debate; it is a process of solving a complex problem situation.
Finally, we must close the class, remembering the dictum that all's well that ends well. And what ends badly can erase everything that has gone well in the first seventy minutes of class. We will look at this topic in the next issue.
