MOVIE BASED CASE STUDIES

As a teacher, I have always been fascinated with one intriguing question: how do I engage the students? What motivates the students to give in their best? Is it the fear of grading, attendance, etc? Is it the way of teaching? Is it the topic? How to increase the participation levels so much so that they take on the faculty? Over the last two years I have observed (I have heard similar observations from innumerable management faculty fraternity) the following: (a) that the students do not come prepared for the case studies and it's quite frustrating for the faculty. (b) even if they have prepared, the mulling over the case facts, analysis touch points and discussion items has always been less than mediocre.They just don't give their best shot (after all they are expected to take decisions identifying themselves with the protoganist / protoganists of the case study). (c) Interestingly however, whenever they are not given any case reading homework, instead a video was shown and were asked to respond, the reflexes are quite fast.

And that set me thinking: how do I speak their language and yet get them to learn the required insights. Of course, I strongly believe that no one learns from others indeed. I have tried with a variety of video formats - video interviews, executive briefs (essentially video case studies), etc. When the fourth semester was drawing to an end, I was to take up an interesting topic in strategy - going global and the students were "genuinely" buisy with their placements. How do I circumvent the usual case avoidance 'suspects' and get them to hit the ground. I have asked them to see the hollywood movie, "The Other End of the Line" as a precursor to going global case studies. When they were asked to analyze the movie from the point of going global, the resultant discussion, analysis and insights were quite revealing. I at once felt we hit the ground without any glitches. Every bit of going global (strategy topic) and globalization (an economics topics) were dissected from the movie and the students enjoyed the whole exercise.

To take this exercise forward and give the benefit of this pedagogical approach to other business schools' teachers, we set out to develop a distinct movie-based product. The first one, "Coach Carter:The Change Agent" has been prepared after having been tested in the demanding classrooms and the feedback from several blind reviewers has been excellent. We hope to take the flavor of hollywood glamor to the management classrooms. After all, seeing is believing. We at IBSCDC, wish to be the Classroom Innovators.