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We have dived into case studies for three weeks now. As most of you can guess, I have been too busy to post anything in this forum. Here are my feelings about Case methods: Week 1-frustration. I had expected the pure case learning to be tough, but I was still quite shocked by the real toughness. two to Three cases a day, every case with 4 to 25 pages, plus extra text readings for some cases, I had to finish all these during the 3-4 hour period in the afternoon and came up with points and results for evening's learning team discussion. Actually, in my first week, I just could read the case but went to the learning team room with nothing completed. We had a former finance guy in our team, he is quite smart and gets sense to crack every case in less than 1.5 hours, especially for accounting cases. In my first week's learning team discussion, I was just following this smart guy's logic and took notes of his analysis, well, this is part of the beauty of learning team that you can always learn from others; but I felt frustrated cause I wanted to contribute to our team; Week 2-Improving but still struggling. I decided to study more during the weekend befor the week 2 and volunteer to take the lead in Decision Analysis cases. Thanks to my former engineering training, I did it very well in Monday's learning team discussion. Then I volunteered to lead the operation case on Thursday, it went smoothly as well. The more important thing is that I won some respect from my team members. The rule is simple: no contribution, no respect. I was still so so with marketing and accounting cases, especially in the qualitiative parts, but I was quite amazed by how many ideas my other team members had. I felt I learn a lot from my learning team, however, I found myself struggling in the class participations. Every one in our 64-student class came with decent analyses of each case (thanks to learning team), but not every one get the chance to say something during the class, especially for internationals. The reality is you have to actively participate in class discussion to win respect from your oher classmates, to get a good grade (30-40% of final grade from classroom participation), and improve communication skills. Week 3-Best week so far!! Again, led two tough cases in learning team and made them love my spreadsheet style. Class participation is improving, I tried to say at least one point or ask one question in each class, and this worked. The more I get a chance to express my opinion, the more feeling I had that I was involved. To be continued...... | 
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楼主
发表于 2006-9-16 01:01:00
