Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/61389
Gettina These are not your grandfather's case studies. New media and new content are leading to widespread transformation of these venerable b-school teaching tools. by Sharon Shinn illustrations by Hadar Kimchy-Shiloh Technology, student demographics, and globalization have transformed almost every aspect of business school, and the case study method of teaching is no exception. Today's case studies have the same goals as those pioneered at the Harvard Business School 80 years ago; they are designed to teach stu- dents how to analyze a specific problem, faced in the real world by a specific company, and decide on the best course of action in response. However, new media, new delivery options, fresh and urgent issues in the business world, and the evolving makeup of the student body have combined to ensure that the 21st-century business case is nothing like the one students mastered back in the 1920s. For one thing, cases today deal with topics and problems that weren't even considered 80 years ago. But the biggest transformation case studies will ever undergo may still be in the offing, as major case providers consider the best way to deliver cases in a multimedia format. The Message in the Medium As of yet, most publishers have only a small number of their case studies available through digital media such as DVDs or interactiveWeb sites. However, the simple com- bination of high-quality technology and student demand would seem to indicate that more and more cases in the future will be produced for multimedia presentation. "There aren't as many multimedia cases available as I would have expected by now, TO 30 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2004 Down Cases to be honest," says Jeffrey Gray, director of The European Case Clearing House, Cranfield University, England. "I think one of the reasons is that the level of investment is relatively high and often the cases that are produced in this format can have quite short shelf lives. Technology changes. People are worried that if they invest the sort of money needed to produce these cases, they'll be superseded by something else within three or four years. They won't really have had their investment repaid through a relatively short period. Having said that, we do have a number, and that number is growing." Copyright issues also are problematic, especially if the case writer wants to use clips from TV shows or bits of music, notes Paul Beamish, the associate dean of research at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London,