The skills involved in generating and guiding and enriching classroom discussion are an invaluable addition to the University of Phoenix Nevada Campus instructor’s toolkit. In numerous discussions with both seasoned and novice case method Business and Management instructors, we’ve heard the lament that there isn’t much opportunity

to fine-tune the craft. Thus, these guidelines are offered, along with personal commentary, to aid you and your students on how to analyze a case situation by casting yourselves in the role of protagonist, developing criteria for alternative decisions, and generalizing to other situations.

I would have to say that earning my masters, doctorate and law degree while in the midst of raising five children was one of the most challenging periods in my life — and one of my greatest learning periods, as well. While I learned an amplitude about research and teaching in my chosen field of Management at Walden University, and the University of LaVerne College of Law, perhaps the most important learning I experienced with respect to teaching was at home with my children. Those of you who are parents understand this well. There is an excitement and curiosity that is a part of youth which results in new perspectives on the world that adults may not have considered, and which asks questions never before asked and not yet answered. My children were shaking things up as they sought to learn more about the world they were in. I saw that everything was new for them, and that asking new questions and going down new paths was at the heart of gaining new knowledge for them.

But beyond the general environment in which I found myself at the time, there was one moment in particular that stands out as a pivotal learning experience about teaching for me. One evening during one of our infrequent Monday Night Family Home Evenings, my teenage daughter, Sharyn, asked a question about a matter I have long since forgotten. But I remember clearly that I began to carefully articulate a rational comprehensive response. Soon I noticed a glazed, far-away look in her eyes. I stopped talking, and I noticed she instantly popped back to the here and now. When I asked what was wrong, she said "Dad, you’re lecturing me." Until that moment, the concept of a lecture always had a virtuous meaning because it was an occasion where important knowledge was imparted. Ever since, however, the concept connotes more of a one-way flow of information that takes participation and ownership of the learning process away from the person for whom learning is most important.

Since then, I have sought to apply this lesson to practice in my teaching at the University of Phoenix. Since my courses rely heavily on cases, the greatest challenge has been to modify the way I "teach cases." Harvard Business School case teaching notes are wonderful, but they also encourage Facilitators in subtle ways to "deliver the goods" at some point during the class in the same ways that we have traditionally lectured. How else will the students ever get to know all those great insights? The challenge is to find a way that allows students to discover for themselves the important lessons that a case illustrates.

Having this insight about how students might learn more effectively was not much help for cases, quite frankly. I had no roadmap to give me direction in this effort. Some of my worst failures as a teacher were on nights when I experimented with a new method of involving students in a case. We all know the feeling — those late nights when you crawl back home waiting to face another day at your real job and stare out the bedroom window wondering why on earth you ever signed up for this hitch.

Nine years ago I attended a University of Phoenix Faculty Development seminar titled "The Art and Craft of Facilitation." The seminar provided a framework to use in managing class discussions, and I have since applied this framework to the cases I use. In part, the framework involves asking questions — the right questions, at the proper conceptual level, of the right students in the classroom, at the right time during the discussion. By carefully thinking through the ways in which a discussion might begin to unfold after its initiation, the well-prepared Nevada Campus instructor can draw upon an arsenal of questions that will, in fact, guide students toward the important lessons. Now I walk into a case class with a page of questions, as opposed to pages of notes on case details.

It is not easy to completely change the way one approaches case discussions; I would not want to mislead here. Walking away from meticulously-prepared notes on the case, more active listening to students’ comments, orchestrating the entire conversation through appropriate questioning, thinking through in advance how the discussions might develop and what the questions in the arsenal should be — all of these represent new ground and are uncomfortable at first. With practice it becomes second nature, however, and I believe students learn more when they discover through their own efforts.

Case Study Teaching involves the interactive, student-centered exploration of realistic and specific narratives. The students engage in the intellectual, and emotional, exercise of facing complex problems and making critical decisions within the constraints imposed by reality, e. g., limited time and information and pervasive uncertainty. Considering them from the protagonist's perspective, which calls on analysis to inform action, the students strive to resolve questions that have no single right answer. In their effort to find solutions and reach decisions through discussion, they sort out factual data, apply analytic tools, articulate issues, reflect on their relevant experience, and draw conclusions they can carry forward to new situations. In the process, they acquire substantive knowledge, as well as developing analytic, collaborative, and communication skills. Skills that can be generalized to many new experiences…skills that go beyond simply meeting the demands or satisfying the needs of the current learning situation.

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