Page 10 - Ice Breaker Article

10

FIRST CLASS TEST

On occasion the class has been offered the opportunity for the first person to solve the equation
(Diagram 4) to have the day off. The equation is supposed to be the fundamental strategy followed
by all businesses and one that helps protect against gross errors of judgment.

It is hypocriful but the solution (Diagram 5) does help illustrate that business is not all about
number crunching or slavish adherence to analytics.

Where students must deal directly with the meaning of the information in the case study context
lecturers should be able to list exactly what the students should know and should be able to do
after they have finished the case that they didn't know and couldn't do before they went through
the case.

However, in the icebreaker case study the objective is not to attempt to do the latter. Rather,
instead of trying to achieve the impossible of "the students will learn how to think critically", it
merely aspires to de-scale the thought process by showing that talking to one another and
developing linkages between case information and its interpretation is an elementary but essential
feature of case analysis. As Herreid [Herreid, 1997, 2000, 2004] states the very act of writing key
points demonstrates case method process whilst giving structure to the discussion, demonstrating
it is not aimless rambling.

Chalkboard work is essential to the success of a case and forms a pivotal part of determining
how a student sees its worth.

The objective then is to ameliorate fear by using an ice breaker case study as the introduction
to case teaching and case analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

The process of case study analysis is simply a means of making sense of large, complex,
unstructured, problems. It provides insight into the building blocks and the relationships which bind
and influence them and which in turn, are used by the individual in conjunction with his or her own
intellectual and intuitive abilities to form these rational solutions. However, for many students fear
manifests when faced for the first time with this unknown methodology. Consequently, the first
introduction to the case method is extremely important and should therefore be given due
consideration by the lecturer as a means of settling the student into a deeper and more productive
method of analysis. To this end, doing the ice breaker case study and drawing out the analysis and
showing relationships and possible interpretations is fundamental. Moreover, this process attempts
by example, to encourage students to construct their own solutions to future cases by applying the
same questioning and relationship building steps (or diagnostic adaptations) encountered in the ice
breaker case study. Diagnostic tools should and must be adapted to circumstances existent in the
case study under examination - one size does not fit all.
The provision of the e-resource Ice Breaker Case Study provides a further support for the student
by presenting access to the worked ‘solution’, appropriate theory base and tests and quizzes delivered
to multiple platforms and accessible when the student wants them.

THE ICE BREAKER CASE

The following introductory, ice breaker business case study, takes between one and one - and
- a half hours to complete with the class. It is an attempt to demystify the case method in the eyes
of the students. It allows the lecturer to visually construct a solution drawing on the interpretation
of each paragraph by the class but augmented by the lecturer. In addition, on student prompts, the
lecturer constructs an analysis drawing on common diagnostic tools and their interpretation to aid
the assessment of the company’s current and future competitive position. Essentially, it is an attempt
to read between the lines, to pick out the critical elements and build a solution that the students can
take a measure of ownership from.