USING CASES IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION CLASSES Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 13 USING CASES IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION CLASSES Gretchen N. Vik, San Diego State University ABSTRACT The modified case study method promulgated through the Exxon Educational Foundations Guided Design grants under their IMPACT program is a practical way to give business communication students problem-solving experience. The underlying premise of Guided Design, originated by Charles E. Wales, Director of Freshmen Engineering at West Virginia University, and Robert A. Stager, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, is that students learn more by tackling problems in small groups or individually and by writing subsequent reports than they do by listening to lectures or reading even the best texts and being tested on them. THE GUIDED DESIGN GRANT Guided Designs method of experiential learning had been successfully used in many science and some social science courses until 1977, when San Diego State University received a small grant to test and implement the method in a business communication class. This was the first use in a class already involving a great deal of writing. (Since the method requires at least a writing assignment per case, it added quite a lot of writing to engineering courses and others like them. How Guided Design Works During a semesters work, business communication students would normally write solutions for 10-12 short cases and at least one long case involving outside research. Current students usually don’t have enough background in real decision-making skills to do a thorough job on these cases, tending to skip steps such as evaluating all alternatives in order to hurry to the answer of the case, even though communication problems tend to have no pat answers. The open-ended problems used in Guided Design work as follows: 1) Students are placed in groups of 5-7 and choose a leader. 2) They receive the problem one step at a time, discuss that instruction, and arrive at conclusions or suggestions as directed. 3) Each groups leader keeps track of the groups discussion and reports results to the instructor. 4) They receive the next instruction when they demonstrate that their discussion has reached a successful result. 5) Each leader writes a report of the groups activities; each member writes a report using the case knowledge to solve a further problem. The logistics of this method are perhaps its only drawback. I am experimenting with the less cumbersome plan of handing out the problems in packet form after cautioning students that the whole point of the assignment is to do the work step by step and as a group, rather than looking ahead to find the answer. The most persuasive argument, of course, is that there is no single right answer to these problems. Outline of the Moving Company Case One project that I’ve successfully used so far requires students to choose a moving company for their firm, which frequently either hires new executives or transfers current employees, thus needing a predictable move r. ICC figures (on underestimating, late pick-up, ‘ate delivery, damage over $50, and days to settle a case) are used to compare more than 20 moving companies identified only by number. When I had used this case without breaking down the decision-making process step by step, students seemed to pick a company without any justification--they may have had reasons, but their choice motivation was rarely explained. Using the decision-making process-- Situation or setting Gather Information Choice of Solution Constraints Evaluation of Choices Analyze One Choice in Detail Synthesize Plans for One Part of Solution Synthesize Plans for the Whole Solution --students were forced to decide what criteria would affect their choice, and most important in this problem, to realize that \ and employee would have slightly different ideas about what constitutes a perfect moving company. Analyses of this problem improved remarkably after the step by step process was introduced. CHOOSING A MOVING COMPANY Many business reports solve problems of choosing - the most feasible solution, the most cost-effective method, the most efficient equipment, the best person (or firm) for the job. In this Guided Design problem you 11 be asked to choose the best way of moving across the country. You 11 use information on moves and on communication theory as well as the decision-making skills you’ve practiced in Guided Design. Instruction A Problem/Goal/Choice/Solutions Eastern Company is relocating 100 employees across the country to a new branch office, to either Seattle or San Diego. Various departments are evaluating the two cities by marketing, sales, income & population criteria. Laurel, a new management trainee now assigned to the office of John Zane, the controller, is asked to identify the best method of moving employees household goods safely and efficiently across the country. What options are available to move 100 people, their families, and their goods across the U.S.? ______________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 14 (The double lines follow each instruction--the remainder of the page is left blank. The resulting feedback from the group appears on the next page and is handed out only after the group has come to a conclusion about the instruction.) Homework Read Persuasive messages, ch. 11 (p. 384-396) (1) Case #3 p. 397 (appeal to re-enter school) (2) Design a questionnaire to find out employees’ experience with moving. Use the tips about kinds of questions to ask and how to ask them in pp. 463-466 of your text. Try to elicit information that you can quantify as much as possible. Bear in mind that you’ll take these answers into account in choosing a company, but that you’ll also be basing your decision on ICC figures and other data. Parallel Project Using the steps you’ve just practiced, identifying the problem selecting options identifying constraints evaluation choices analyzing criteria synthesizing a solution: 1) Write a two page memo explaining your choice of some item of equipment for your office (typewriter, micro-computer, furniture, etc.) or 2) Write a two page memo explaining your choice of major/job field. These reading & writing assignments are similar to those given in a regular business communication class, but I have found that students using Guided Design are able to write at a higher level of sophistication than those who have drawn their information from lectures and reading assignments alone STUDENT WRITTEN CASES The second semester I used this case method, the last Guided Design assignment was to write a step by step case. It seemed possible that the assignment would prove impossibly difficult for some, but I also hypothesized that students who understood how to work through projects could also create them in a limited format. The Assignment I asked students to first write the outline for a decision-making case of their own, preferably beginning with a case in the text. They were to list the Insights into Experiential Pedagogy, Volume 6, 1979 15 steps and describe briefly the instruction and expected feedback for each one. After writing peer evaluations of others outlines, each class was divided into groups of 4-5. Each group then choose one members outline and expanded it into a full case, eventually typing it up like the model case already given here. The Resultant Cases While all the cases weren’t completely practical to use in class, the best cases received were excellent. Students wrote about computerized check-cashing in supermarkets as a means of drawing more customers, designing a data sheet, buying a car for a real estate sales job, choosing a retirement benefit for a small company, solving space problems at a small manufacturing company, deciding what action an adjustment manager in a retail store should take, designing the advertising campaign for a new restaurant, and solving an order problem, among others. Students tended to use less “story in their cases, instead presenting the facts in detail and describing the desired action. The most common areas of weakness were omitting a good written assignment at the end of a case or not giving enough of a reading assignment as background information so that students using the case could logically be expected to come up with the needed feedback. THE EFFECT ON THE COURSE Since students generally solve another written problem using the new decision-making method at the end of each case, the amount of writing done in the business communication course can remain about the same as in a regular course, while the quality of the thinking behind the writing drastically improves. Lecture time is reduced and outside reading is correlated to the cases so that students can spend class time actually solving problems in business communication rather than listening to usually one-sided discussions of communication theory. While I am not using Guided Design exactly as it was originally designed, I will be glad to show instructors in other areas how this type of highly structured case could offer an innovative and useful way to help students learn content material. The original method, described in an available film1 and in an excellent book2 by the originators is best perhaps for the quantitative functional areas such as accounting, statistics, and information systems, while my revised method would work well in management, marketing, finance and other areas which are more subjective in their content. 1 The film (#31864 GUIDED DESIGN) is available for free loan from: Film Scheduling Center Modern Talking Picture Service, Inc. 2323 New Hyde Park Rd. New Hyde Park, NY 11040 Tel: (516) 488-3810 2 Guided Design by Charles E. Wales & Robert A. Stager. Copyright 1977. Available from Dr. Wales at West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va. Table of Contents Volume 6, 1979 The Use of Cases with Role Plays in a Research Methods Course Debugging and Implementing the Live-Case Approach to Marketing Research in the Australian Environment Using a Case as the Basis for a Modified Debate Using Cases in Business Communication Classes A Structured Approach to Case Analysis and Reporting Intercollegiate Case Analysis Competition as an Experiential Learning Experience Attributes Germane to Student/Live Case Situations Understanding Dispute Resolution Through Experiential learning Personality Development and Conflict Dynamics: An Experimental Design to Study the Effects of Teaching Methodologies on Conflict Resolution Interpersonal Competence and the Digital PDP-11:40 The process of Writing a Collective Bargaining Simulation: A Case Study in Practical Pedagogy Simulating Negotiations in an Educational Context Simulations as a Technique for Teaching Collective Bargaining Experiential Processing of Differing Managerial Perspectives: The Use of a Game Show Format Individual Self Report vs. Group consensus in Small Decision-Making Groups Effects of Sex-Role Stereotypes on Promotion Decisions: An Exercise Computer Aids to Planning: The Budget and Forecasting Module Use of a Microcomputer in a Decision Analysis for Investment Portfolio Selection A Game of Investment Strategy: Description, Use, Criticism and Modification Coping with Future Uncertainties Through Probabilistic Budgeting Administration and Design of Simulation Materials for a Specialized Management Training Program Managing Stress in Organizational Life Banksim: The Bank Management Simulation Issues in the Organizational Application of Simulation and Experiential material Games Within Games: The Role of the Glitch Experiential Learning from Classroom to Business An Evaluation of the Small Business Institute Program as an Experiential learning Exercise Conversations with Top Management (Simulated) Experience in the Use and Assessment of Simulation in Management Education A Statistical Analysis of Simulation Users: Relationships between Stress and Human Subject guidelines Group Decision Making in a Computer Game Analysis of Demographic and Psychosocial Variables Comparing Performance During Three Managerial Accounting Simulation Schedules Business Policy Simulation and the Intense Course Structure The Use of Intensive Simulation in Executive Development and Academic Settings The Use of Experiential Exercises in the Undergraduate Consumer Behavior Course A Personal Marketing Strategy Approach: Framework and Application Teaching PERT Experientially in Marketing Research Discovering the Majority Fallacy An Experiential Approach to Studying International Business A Demonstration of the Business Simulation Game as a Curriculum Assessment Device Relating Teaching Methods with Educational Objectives in the Business Curriculum The Junior Achievement Applied Management Program as a Compromise Situation Between the Simulation and the Internship Who is Using Computerized Business Games?: A View from Publishers' Adoption Lists Trials and Tribulations in Testing Educational Innovations An Examination of the Perceived Effectiveness of Computer Simulation in a Classroom Setting as Affected by Game, Environmental and Respondent Characteristics Game Administration: A Life Cycle Analysis Research on the Effectiveness of Using a Computerized Simulation in the Basic Management Course Gaming and Attitudinal Change The Teacher-Student Relationship in Experiential Classes and the Student's Perception of Course Effectiveness An Exploratory Study of Student Characteristics and Educational Processes in Programmatic Experiential learning General Incongruity Adaption Level (GIAL) as a Predictor of Risk Preferences in a Simulated Management Game The Cap-Stone Opportunity: Combining Business Simulation and Experiential Learning Incorporating MIS/DSS into Policy Courses Via Simulation Who Benefits Most from Participation in Business Policy Simulations: An Empirical Study of Skill Development by Functional Areas The Use of Program NAMEX in Teaching the Accounting for Nonmonetary Assets The Use of Program CVP in Teaching Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis Experiential vs. Traditional Classroom Approach in the Basic Management Course: A Puerto Rican Experience A Guide to the Successful Use of Business Simulation Games The Dynamic Aspects of Interactive Gaming Puts the Realism into Gaming System Representation of SIMORG The Design of a Database System to Support Business Simulation and Experiential Learning A Data Entry and Retrieval System for a Computer Simulation (DERS) Simulation - An Advantage for Accounting Research Computer-Aided Project Performance Control Simulation: An Interactive Experiential Gaming Technique for Managerial Decision Making Utilization of Manual Simulation Games to Develop Scenarios of Future Events - An Exploratory Study Foundry: A Foundry Simulation Customized Debriefing: The Achilles Heel of Experiential learning? Computerized Business Simulations and Experiential Learning Exercises: An Instructional Interface The Baseball Game: A Group Role Observation, Problem Solving Experience A Practical Design for Experiential Learning Exercises: Roles, Technical Equipment and Alternative Debriefing Formats