Page 5 - Short Business Case Studies Article

In March 2018 Prime Minister, Theresa May announced a review of
tuition fees aims to encourage more flexible and cheaper ways to study.
Part-time student numbers fell by more than 40% after fees increased in
2012 (11). The review followed concerns about the high cost of
university, with average graduate debts of more than £50,000. However,
also in March 2018, the University of London announced its first fully
fledged online, undergraduate BSc course aimed at "people who are
working and need a more flexible approach" produced in a partnership
with one of the world's biggest online university companies, the
California-based Coursera who claim of the model that "It's so
compelling that other universities will have to follow," (11).

There is, as a result of these developments a paradigm shift, a growing
trend towards the development and use of short business case studies.
These short cases need to reflect effective sound-bite encapsulation of

an idea or concept, and also the need for a readjustment not only of the
use of cases on business courses but also their development,
architecture and delivery mechanisms. That the switch to short rather
than long is straight forward and easily achieved? However, this may be
more illusory than real and an instance of market driven rather than
market driving.

Where the traditional case study requires time to teach these changes
impact their efficacy and as such need to be addressed. The solution
may be to develop more focused cases targeted at a specificity not
easily achievable in the ‘noise’ of a traditional case. Short cases have
the potential to ensure case content is fresh, varied, properly prepared
and served up in the right portions thereby ensuring a memorable
learning experience that may be more readily transferred to the learner’s
own work situation.

So, what is a short case study, what purpose does it serve and what are
its objectives? Are they simply short for short’s sake, pithy, focused and
directed or are they a substitute for in-depth thinking and analysis,
construction effort, and hard research? Or perhaps they are a response
to the demands of falling teaching contact hours and the need to provide
learners with easily comprehended, less demanding and digestible
teaching material? Or perhaps it is all of these?

For the authors the short case study was an emerging force in their case
method arsenal. One moreover, that that they saw as offering a vehicle
that equally addressed case truisms and the objectives of both the
lecturer and learner, if handled correctly.