In this video & blog post, Marianna Rolbina talks about being faced with the problem of students struggling to bring together different elements of the course in the final assignment:

I have created and delivered a number of mini-cases, combining the benefits of the case study and short examples without sacrificing any of the crucial content from the course. This led to a better comprehension of the concepts and their interconnections, better results in the final assignment, and higher student satisfaction.

Video 8m 30s.  In addition, you can read the full case study below.

To watch the video with closed captions, please view via the Video Portal.

The Problem

I am teaching a final year course in Entrepreneurship at AMBS. The final assignment is an industry-style report that requires the students to bring together diverse concepts from across the course and apply them in practice to pitch a new company idea.

In teaching this course, I have faced multiple challenges:

First, when a single lecture covers several concepts and examples, the abundance of information makes it harder for the students to abstract from individual items to more general concepts.

Second, practicing the application of concepts at lectures is difficult. Students rarely speak up, ask or answer questions – both due to shyness and the difficulty of coming up with ideas on the spot.

Finally, the course draws from different disciplines, such as Finance, Marketing and Strategy. This eclectic structure means students often struggle to see connections between the concepts when writing the final assignments. Their reports looked disjointed, often contained contradictions (such as a lifestyle firm suddenly aiming for maximum growth and going for IPO). Even good students were not sure how to approach an industry-style report that, while very practical, was not a format they have encountered previously. All this took away from their enjoyment of the course. Even streamlining the course and reducing the number of concepts per lecture did not help.

I couldn’t see why my students were struggling: after all, I always picked the most vivid practical examples for each concept to make sure they were easy to understand.

The Revelation

But then it hit me: how was I expecting my students to connect concepts together, when I myself was not doing that? Instead of multiple examples, why not use one throughout the lecture to demonstrate these interdependencies and connections? One problem was that there is no one company that illustrates every concept well. But my students did not seem to have difficulty with understanding different concepts, they struggled with connecting them. So, I decided to prioritise cohesion. It would not only be easier for the students, but would also save time, eliminating the need to describe each new company I was using as an example.

Inspired by this new revelation, I’ve hit the case publishing websites (this was before they started doing Short Cases). But most cases there were 20 pages long, with maybe a quarter of information in the case relevant to my lectures. And we all know that expecting the students to read 20 pages just to prepare for one lecture is… optimistic.

The Solution

With no ready-made solutions available, I came up with my own: the mini-cases. I have written one per lecture, discussing a separate company in each case, structured as follows.

First, a headshot of the entrepreneur and a short introduction of the company both to make the case more relatable to the students and to emphasise the connection between the entrepreneurial qualities of a person and the type of company they founded. This would take up about a paragraph.

This was followed by a description of the company’s activities centred on the topic we were covering that week. For instance, how the founder used Kickstarter in the week we discussed entrepreneurial funding, how the company developed its prototype in the week we talked about lean approach, or how the company collaborated with its stakeholders when we covered the context of entrepreneurship. This main part of the case spanned a couple of pages, including visuals.

Finally, each case ended with a few questions for the students to reflect upon and to practice connecting company practices with academic concepts, and a list of references. This took up about two-thirds of a page.

While constructing the cases, my main principles were as follows:

1) Readability. Each case would be only 3-4 A4 pages long. I have used Canva, an easy-to-use analogue of Adobe Premiere and similar copy-editing software, to create visually appealing reports. I also required the students to use it in their work. While being more fun to use than a plain text editor, this also contributed to students’ transferable skill development, as Canva is an industry standard software for copywriting.

2) Relevance. In my descriptions, I focused on the elements of each company that were relevant to the concepts we were covering that week, and connected the elements together to highlight interdependencies. For instance, when talking about entrepreneurial qualities, I provided a more detailed description of the entrepreneur’s personal life to illustrate how her personality affected the company she founded. In contrast, the case covering entrepreneurial risks had a longer description of the market and reputational struggles of the company for the students to connect the sources of risks with company’s activities, while the description of the founder was kept short because it was less relevant. I made sure the cases represented a diversity of sectors, countries, and founder backgrounds to make them more relatable for students with different backgrounds and interests.

3) Visual engagement. All cases were creatively formatted (e.g. FT-style report for a bank, pixelated illustrations for a video game company, brown packing paper style for sustainable design bureau), videos and images embedded into the report. Besides being more fun to read, multimedia content illustrated formatting requirements for each component of the work such as images or references.

The cases were delivered in three stages:

1) Pre-session stage. I would embed the case on the course content page and put it in mandatory readings for that week. I went with embedding rather than uploading the file because that way the case page was noticeable and stood out, attracting attention and minimizing the chances of being overlooked.

2) In-session stage. I’d introduce the context of that week’s case following the question-answer model, presenting it as an enigma to be discovered throughout the lecture (e.g. ‘How does this company manage to create more products while employing fewer people than the competition?’ or ‘Could the founder know in advance this product would fail?’). I would then give the students about 2 minutes to re-read the case. Afterwards, I’d offer a quick refresher quiz (through Mentimeter) that applied the concepts from the previous lecture to this week’s case to demonstrate and reinforce how interconnected all concepts are in reality. As I explained new academic concepts, I referred back to the case and used interactive slides to ask the case questions, applying these new concepts to the case. For instance, I would ask what element of the customer need the entrepreneur failed to identify.

3) Post-session stage. As there was only one case per lecture, it was easy to refer to the case and the lecture at the same time (‘Remember [X]?’). The cases themselves also served as example of acceptable formatting for the final assessment.

The Results

The use of mini-cases helped students to get a deeper understanding of not only the concepts covered in the course, but how they fit together. It significantly enhanced the quality of the final reports. There were no more contradictions, the formatting improved, and the average grade went up. While the course used fewer examples, students did not see it as less practical. On the contrary, the course evaluation improved dramatically. They pointed out that “The case studies were easier to follow too.” Even if the interests of a particular student were not met by any of the case studies, the feedback was “I appreciate that case studies were implemented”.

School: AMBS

Academic: Marianna Rolbinar
Lecturer in Digital Innovation, AMBS

Course: BMAN32261 Entrepreneurship and Venturing

Cohort Size: 100

Themes: Teaching idea(s)

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