Discussion Board

UNL Faculty Discussion Strategy: Group Case Studies

Learning Goals/Purpose:

• Enable students to benefit from a broad range of perspectives that classmates bring to the forums.
• Have students share knowledge and experiences of key issues with classmates.
• Get students to apply concepts and think critically.
• Avoid "group think" and challenge students to think critically by having them defend a position that may be different from their personal opinions/experience.

Instructor Role:

• Facilitator. Creates the groups and assign members of each group "roles" to act out in the discussions, such as "devil's advocate."
• Re-assign roles throughout the semester to give students a chance to answer the questions from a different perspective.

Student Responsibilities:

• Post a response to the case study questions based on their assigned role in the group.
• Contribute to the discussion board at least 2-3 times week.

Process:

1. The instructor creates student groups and assigns discussion roles.
2. The instructor assigns a weekly case study relevant to the material covered in the readings. At the end of each case, there are several questions for the groups to discuss.
3. It is the group's responsibility to discuss the questions based on the assigned roles of each group member.
   
   

Discussion Strategy is from GRBA 815, Operations and Information Systems Strategy. Thanks to Professor Scott Swenseth, Department of Management, College of Business Administration.

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