Institute's Pedagogy

In IIM Ahmedabad, business education is not the sole driver; the institute prides itself in teaching a much broader realm, beyond mere business, and hence prefers to call itself a "management" institute that provides education about managing resources based on solid foundation of knowledge, attitude, skills and habits (KASH) approach. I will talk more about this approach subsequently but let me concentrate on its pedagogy for now.

IIMA takes great pride in its pedagogy of the case method of teaching. This is borne out of the fact that the school was initially established in collaboration with Harvard, which is renowned for this form of education. The interesting aspect shared today was that there is an essential difference between between "case" and "case study" method, so much so that the profs can get extremely touchy if we fail to appreciate the difference. I won't delve into the details of the difference; I've mentioned this primarily to impress about the importance placed on using the right terminology or nomenclature.

Now a major complaint against the case method1 is that it has dependency on how much indepth knowledge students allow themselves to be forced into, e.g. shallow analysis of the case might lead to lack of "KASH" generation! To overcome this shortcoming, IIMA is extremely serious about the prescribed readings, and taking surprise quizes are a norm with profs here. I have heard instances of students getting a "zero" in these quizes, probably for the first time in their lives. The term examinations add on another level of challenge for courses. Net-net, the school ensures that the shortcomings of case method are overcome through numerous means, including strict monitoring of the quality of class participation . Few courses even stipulate 30 percent of their grading for class participation.

The chairperson today was candid about the need to "dive-in" to draw the strengths from this case method of learning. He recommended at least two hours of self analysis of a case before participating in a group discussion. Typically, on an average bad day with three heavy duty classes, we could have three cases to analyze. The typical turnaround time for each case is overnight. If we add the necessary readings for each course in the midst, we are looking at roughly 12 hours of extra study after class hours (2 hours self study * 3 courses + 1 hour of minimum group discussion * 3 courses + 1-2 hours of reading * 2 courses approx as three is impractical). If we start the study at 2.30 in the afternoon after lunch, the earliest we could realistically complete the study would be early morning of the next day. Then we could have few cases that are more dense than others and might require extensive quantitative analysis; the result: for the next few months, sleep will be biggest casualty!

To wind up with KASH: this is the liquid asset in great supply at IIMA. Knowledge and Skills are essential learnings through its rigorous course curriculum. But the circle completes when this results in development of the right Attitudes (or philosophies) as we get ingrained with the correct Habits. Typically, finance courses are slightly more loaded with "K" & "S", and Strategy courses deal more with "A" & "H". I'm eager to find out how case method will evolve for finance courses.

1 - Management development - by Joseph Prokopenko, International Labour Office