A Darden Perspective: Teaching Cases—Plan, Listen, Dance

Anthony Palomba arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2020 as a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business (Darden). As a media-management and audience-analysis scholar, Palomba had previously assigned media- and entertainment-business-based cases to students to read. However, he had no idea how to exercise the case method in the classroom. In order to understand the case method, Palomba interviewed current Darden faculty members about best practices in pre-class planning, class discussion execution, and post-class or outside-class activities. In this note, Palomba organizes and summarizes what he discovered through these interviews, and reflects on his own case-study teaching experiences. Though he wrote this note for Darden faculty who are new to the case method, it is useful for any instructor taking on the case method for the first time. Moreover, it may serve as a refresher for veteran faculty members seeking inspiration or fresh perspectives.<p>Excerpt</p><p>UVA-PHA-0083</p><p>Rev. Jun. 3, 2022</p><p>Adjusting to the case method can appear to be a nebulous and ambiguous task for many academics untrained in the particular teaching method. Most elite doctoral programs center their students on research, often leaving teaching up to instructors&apos; own discretion. Once in the field, scholars work at institutions that either emphasize teaching, research, or a bit of both. Most faculty will teach lecture-based classes, perhaps occasionally using group activities or other interactive learning tools in order to realize teaching objectives. However, at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business (Darden), the case method has been adopted as the primary means of educating students. The case method can be intimidating for the uninitiated and is sometimes still daunting for veterans. It eschews traditional lecture as a means of imparting learning and instead seeks to stimulate highly dynamic conversation, teasing out a multitude of different perspectives and pushing students to take stances on issues. A key difference between traditional lecture and case is that lecture-based teaching seeks to exploit faculty expertise and a singular manner of thinking about a topic. In case method, students are implicated as key stakeholders in classroom discussions and outcomes. There is no right answer to any one business problem or opportunity—only myriad perspectives. Indeed, the ideal case discussion has half of the students believing a company should do A, the other half believing it should do B, and a handful of students across both camps thinking about C.</p><p>I arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2020 as a visiting scholar at Darden. As a media-management and audience-analysis scholar, I had previously assigned media- and entertainment-business-based cases to students to read. They would subsequently be responsible for a response paper on what business opportunities or threats were illustrated in the case. However, I had no idea how to exercise the case method in the classroom. In order to understand the case method, I set out to interview current Darden faculty members about best practices in pre-class planning, class discussion execution, and post-class or outside-class activities. Twenty-three (N = 23) Darden faculty members and six (N = 6) staff and administrators were randomly selected for online Zoom sessions from May to July 2020. The sessions lasted from 45 minutes to two ho</p>