Page 16 - Articles Written by JGJ EF DPS

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.