Peter Smith: Blog

I just received a brief email from a stu­dent ask­ing how to pre­pare for Friday’s case.
That really is a hard ques­tion to answer because I don’t know what the stu­dent knows about prep­ping a case. I could tell them all I know, but that prob­ably wouldn’t be help­ful as the stu­dent wouldn’t have an organ­ising frame­work and it would be dis­con­nect from their own exper­i­ence and know­ledge.
Not only that, I hope that this course is devel­op­mental. I’ve said it else­where, but my expect­a­tion is that stu­dents will become more skilled at _doing a case_ over the dur­a­tion of the course. Thus, what is good now, might be con­sidered poor later in the course. There are pros and cons to this approach. Amongst the pros are; 1) it allows stu­dents to develop a soph­ist­ic­ate approach to cases, without hav­ing to _know everything_ or _analyse everything_ at the begin­ning, 2) it allows good work to be rewar­ded appro­pri­ately through­out the whole course — this is import­ant because whilst at the end of the course, stu­dents may _know everything_ right now they don’t; and since they are assessed each week it could pen­al­ise them for not know­ing it all, and finally, 3) it allows stu­dents to become their *own* strategist rather than con­form­ing to some normative/prescriptive/formulaic expect­a­tions.
The biggest con is that the tar­get is mov­ing; and this can be un set­tling. How is it that some­thing that is okay one week, is poor a month later? I think the way to deal with this is for stu­dents to con­stantly eval­u­ate the per­form­ance of the best stu­dents in the class and com­par­ing it with their own per­form­ance. I’ve found that stu­dents are very cap­able at spot­ting who is ‘best’ in the class. Gen­er­ally, it is a good prac­tice, in this class, to con­stantly be mark­ing ones own per­form­ance. If any­one has other thoughts, I’d be really keen to hear them.
Any­way, I think the best way for that stu­dent to move for­ward is to pre­pare a case, and then come and talk to me about it — that way, I can give guid­ance on what will make the biggest dif­fer­ence for that stu­dent, rather than spend­ing hours (days, or weeks) writ­ing down all I know. So gen­er­ally, if you want help with cases, be it with regard to pre­par­ing on present­ing them, then come and see me once your have had a go at pre­par­ing it.