8/21/2015 Case teaching when you are not at Harvard | Applied Abstractions

http://appliedabstractions.com/2014/08/02/caseteachingwhenyouarenotatharvard/ 1/2

Applied AbstractionsEspen Andersen's take on technology, strategy, and many other things

Case teaching when you are not at HarvardOur book is out!

Bill Schiano and I have written a book, Teaching with Cases: A Practical

Guide, o�cially launched today at Harvard Business Publishing,

available as PDF and in paperback (304 pages).

Bill and I are both passionate about case teaching and use it whenever

possible. We have aimed the book at the kind of people we were 18

years ago: Teachers wanting to use case teaching, but �nding

ourselves in institutions where case teaching is not the dominant

teaching method. (We actually wanted to name the book Case teaching

when you are not at Harvard, but saner minds intervened.)

There are a few books on how to do case teaching available, but

common to them is that they are a) rather philosophical and abstract

in their advice, and b) take the institutional environment for granted –

i.e., they assume that you are at a school, such as Harvard Business School, Wharton, INSEAD or

University of Western Ontario, where case teaching is the norm, the students are brilliant and �ercely

competitive, classrooms are made for case teaching and excellent teaching is valued by the

administration (and the promotion committees.)

We wanted the book to be relentlessly practical – what to wear to class, how to deal with disruptive

students, how to get students to prepare, how to grade participation. We also wanted the book to

address how to create the necessary infrastructure for case teaching with little or no administrative

support, down to how you create name cards (let the students do it or use a spreadsheet/mail-merge

function) and class chart (take a photo of the students holding their name cards, print it in weak

grayscale for after-class note-taking.)

The book is built around three concepts: Foundations (how to set up the course, contract with the

students, and set up infrastructure); Flow (how to conduct the discussion in the classroom, manage time

8/21/2015 Case teaching when you are not at Harvard | Applied Abstractions

http://appliedabstractions.com/2014/08/02/caseteachingwhenyouarenotatharvard/ 2/2

and boards, ask questions, and conclude discussions); and Feedback (how to design grading and

feedback, especially participation grading.) We have extra chapters on dealing with di�cult issues

(much of it based on questions from participants in HBS’ case teaching seminars); how to teach

quantitative and technical material; how to deal with di�erences in language and culture (foreign

students and foreign teachers); how to prepare for the next course; how to foster case teaching at the

school level (many business schools are now looking to better teaching, including case teaching, as a

di�erentiator); and lastly, a long and detailed chapter on technologies for case teaching, including our

views on how to teach cases online.

The book also includes a collection of online resources (sample syllabi, sample teaching plans, etc.) for

teachers, available at teachingwithcases.hbsp.harvard.edu. We hope to grow this collection as we hear

from readers and build more material ourselves.

That’s it for now – I’ll be back with excerpts, a full table of contents, and various other nuggets

eventually. But given that this book has been on my mind for a couple of years now, it is a rather good

day…

Share this:

Email Twitter 1 Facebook 39 LinkedIn Google More

This entry was posted in Academically speaking, Case teaching, Teaching and tagged Bill Schiano,

Harvard Business Publishing, HBS Press, teachingwithcases on August 2, 2014

[http://appliedabstractions.com/2014/08/02/case-teaching-when-you-are-not-at-harvard/] .

 Like

Be the first to like this.

Related

A case of teaching caseteaching

Re�ections on teaching caseteaching

GRA6821 Eight lecture:Disruptive technologies

In "Strategic" In "Teaching" In "GRA6821"

Follow

Follow “AppliedAbstractions”Get every new post deliveredto your Inbox.

Join 2,737 other followers

Enter your email address

Sign me up

Build a website with WordPress.com