The B-School Case Study Gets a Digital Makeover - Businessweek - 0 views
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Elena Ares on 16 Mar 12Starting out how tablets are so easy to use instead of sifting through 500 pages to find case studies and course materials
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Next, Okun unsheathes the alternative: an iPad (AAPL) edition of the same course materials—a feature NYU introduced last year. In each digital case study, students can highlight material in fluorescent colors and take notes. A tap on the screen allows them to skip to an exhibit at the end of a document, and then follow the menu back to where they left off reading—with no virtual or actual page-leafing required. All the features work offline.
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Over the ensuing 87 years, the case study has undergone some changes but remains much as it was at its inception—a straightforward narrative of business success or failure. Tablet technology may make the case study more of an interactive experience.
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arvard Business School, the largest publisher of case studies in North America, is in the process of converting 3,500 of its files to tablet-enhanced formats during this school year and expects to finish converting its library of 17,000 titles by 2013.
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The tablet medium also seems ideal for simulated cases, says Glenn Rowe, a professor at the Ivey school and author of nearly 40 case studies. In role-playing exercises, prices and other variables can change on the fly. Students may also be smacked with unexpected events, such as their biggest competitor slashing prices, or by their receiving a higher-than-expected counterbid after a merger proposal. Students choose what they would do, and the simulation immediately tells them the consequence of that action.
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Students are also more inclined to use tablets for supplemental reading. (Assuming prices are the same, 86 percent of college students say they prefer a hard copy textbook to an e-textbook, according to the market research firm Student Monitor.)