Strategies for Effective Case Method Teaching in Large Undergraduate Business Classes

This study finds that the case method pedagogy, originally designed for use with graduate students, can also be effective in large, undergraduate business classes. While most of the case method research has historically focused on the graduate level, the method has now become popular for undergraduate teaching. There is a growing need for large class pedagogy and best practices due to the fast growing enrolment in North American business schools, and this study presents a preliminary opinion on how the case method could be adapted to meet the needs of large and diverse classes. The study reviews the challenges of teaching cases, and the challenges of using active learning techniques in large class teaching. The study presents a definition for “large” and “very large” classes in the context of case teaching, and suggests several practices from case-teaching instructors that can be used to teach the method effectively in these environments.