Monday, January 19, 2009
Learning by action
I´m an alumni of Pacifico University from Lima,Perú, and since last November, I´m an International MBA candidate of IE Business School. My background is in marketing and before October 2008, I was a product manager in Samsung's Lima Office. The experience of working in an international company gave me similar feelings when I used to work in AIESEC: learning about diversity, enjoying our differences, being proactive, breaking paradigm, being an agent of change, and so on. If you noticed, all of them involved ACTION-INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND PREPARATION. Aiesecers don´t want to be like the rest of the people, we want to be different. That is why I decided to do a masters outside my country, in order to live a new international academic experience.
There are several reasons why I chose IE. First, IE has a very good reputation in Europe in academics, efficiency, networking and diversity. Also, they offer financial support (scholarships) to many emerging countries. Moreover, two of the three main areas that I am interested are: social responsibility and entrepreneurship. IE has an active role in Spain's development. However, besides the reasons above, I decided on IE because of the case method and their process of learning.
Why is the Case Method successful?
I believe that it represents one of the most demanding, engaging, and provocative ways to learn because you have to find solutions to real or unreal situations faced by organizations in different areas and industries. You will put in action theory concepts through three main steps: individual analysis, group discussion, and class sharing.
What are the key elements for the case method?
First: personal effort! You first need to study the lesson before go to class or your group meeting. Otherwise your participation won't increase the team's knowledge. Also, if you are not prepared, you will not participate in class and IE evaluates your participation at around 20% to 50% of your grade.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Theory in practice
Looking back to my university in Latvia, I did not know too much about case method and did not have experience in studying with the case method. I thought IE is great school just because its teachers and program structure. When we started to study and straight away we started to study based on case method. For me it was great to see how much I can learn out of it.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Learning in Action - The Case Method
This is how it works in practice here at IE. For example, you know your next Marketing class will discuss the launch of a new product by a large pharmaceutical company. You have the case, which is 10-15 pages usually, and additional theoretical material that will help you solve it. In the pharma case, it was reading a specific chapter of the book and use the tools described to solve the case. In addition, the professor posted some guiding questions. I read the case 2 days before the class and made my notes. Next day, I met my work group (6 people) to discuss the case and work on a group solution. My colleague was responsible to summarize our solution in a 3-page document, which was posted on a Wiki, so everybody could edit. The next day, we delivered our written solution to the professor before the class. During class, the professor facilitates the case discussion with the other groups, totalling 50 people. He uses the frameworks provided by the book and clarifies our doubts. Parts of the case have no right or wrong solution, so the discussion between groups is stimulated. At the end of the class, the professor may say what was the real solution implemented by the company and its results. Some days later he sends our grade on the case write-up. At the end of the term, our participation in class is also graded.
It is incredible how much more you learn with this method. First, you have to prepare, do your homework, and exercise the concepts read in the books. Second, you learn from discussing with your group. Most of the times, at least 1 person in the group has some experience in the topic discussed. Practicing team work and time management skills is also a daily duty. Last, you wrap-up your learning during class, by listening to the professors and the solutions from other groups. This is what IE calls ACTION LEARNING.
With this method, you are forced to study EVERYDAY and skipping classes becomes a huge risk to your learning and grades. In the other hand, when you reach the exams week, you do not need to bother much. Very likely you already learned much of the subject and secured your grade by class participation and assignments.
Why university was not like this? I will keep wondering...
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