“If this course didn’t make all the students who took it better citizens, I don’t know what course could.” The phrase is from a Harvard Business School (HBS) student and is from a few years ago. In 2013 Professor David Moss decided to introduce a course based on the case method called History of American Democracy intended primarily for undergraduate students. It was an absolute success.
Attendees said that thanks to this teaching method they were able to learn and retain all the information much more effectively. The repercussions of the course reached the ears of high school teachers, they also wanted to use the teaching methodology with their students. Feedback was extremely positive.
The case method has been used at Harvard Business School (HBS) since 1924 and, since then, has been one of the teaching methodologies that has spread the most and has been the most successful throughout the United States and the world. . It is widely used in business schools, but as word began to spread, it transcended spaces to reach more and more classrooms and more students.
What is the genesis of this success? In the 1920s, HBS academics began to think of a new teaching methodology for their novel business program (it would later be called the Master of Business Administration). The method remains the same and is as follows: the participants are not given the answer to the problem they have to face and solve.
Instead – and as directors, general managers or board members of the company do – students must analyze the situation and find the solutions and options without having all the knowledge of the facts and the methods. They come to be in the center, the teacher becomes a facilitator and the expository master class gives way to discussion among all those who are part of the classroom. In this way, the participants face what happens every day in the universe of companies and connect with the outside world, acquire new skills and develop abstract knowledge.
Students must analyze the situation and find the solutions and options without having all the knowledge of the facts and the methods.
The case method is one of the learning methodologies used in the UCU Business School MBA. Isabelle Chaquiriand, Professor of General Management at the MBA and Dean of the Faculty of Business Sciences, reflects: “I really like the case method because it is a type of learning that is centered on the participant. Where he learns through experience, from his knowledge, from seeing through the eyes of others and where he puts part of himself”.
Gabriel Vallone –professor and referent of Negotiation at UCUBS– explains that, during the exchange that occurs when the case method is applied, in addition to the students learning, the teachers also learn. For Vallone the power of the method has no limits and if applied with awareness it is extremely rewarding.
The Administrative Vice Chancellor of the Catholic University and Professor of Finance at UCUBS, Santiago Mercant, broadens his perspective and tells what are the differentials of the MBA at the UCU business school. “The UCUBS MBA combines two things. On the one hand, the academic, the demand, the areas of knowledge. And, on the other, the areas of the person. We believe that there is individual learning, but we also believe in collective learning and that is why work teams are put together”, he says.
Gabriela Barbeito is a Telecommunications Engineer. She did her MBA at UCU Business School and summarizes her experience as follows: “The MBA is very much based on the discussion of the Harvard case method. You have a slogan to discuss a certain problem, not to solve it, but to generate a discussion and a resolution. Having a group with different profiles, different formations, different visions made that discussion much richer”.
Carolina Olagüe highlights current and applicable content in everyday work and also chooses to highlight the method of the case. Olagüe works as a Product Owner at BBVA and generates the following reflection: “Beyond the concepts or the technicality that the case brings, it helps you experience that concept from another place. Working with that wealth also implies many differences. This is also part of learning. Facing the negotiation, learning to give in, learning to generate something new and enriched”.
