Consulting Case Study Class

Although it was a difficult decision, I decided that it was best to shift the focus of my Life Club away from entrepreneurship to consulting case studies about business. The fact is that it's difficult for the students to consistently attend the same classes every week; thus, it was difficult to have any continuity with the course content for the entrepreneurship class.

The change to consulting case studies has been a great success! In a typical class, I will present a case about pricing strategy or profitability, for example, and I will have the students break into 3 teams of 5-6 people to crack the case together. The language is difficult--sometimes using MBA-level concepts--but the students are truly engaging the material, absorbing both the language and concepts. What I found is that the students have accelerated learning of new vocabulary when 1) they are focusing on a business problem instead of the words, and 2) they are doing activities that are relevant to their interests, require intellectual thinking and creativity, and encourage teamwork.

Teaching is the best way of learning for me. So, by teaching classes on consulting case studies, it helps me to learn analytical frameworks, for example, and to prepare for the consulting interviews that I hope to have within the next 6 months.

Overall, this class seems to be a breath of fresh air for a lot of students and it allows me to engage the students in more quality discussions than we have in other class formats.