Storytelling and Sensemaking: Students’ Responses to Learning With Classmates’ Cases

This workshop is intended to report on the experience of faculty and students and encourage participants to consider whose stories are being told in class through cases. Teaching with students’ course-specific cases drawn from their experience combines the power of storytelling with the challenging case-based processes of inquiry and sensemaking. In the first third of this workshop, we will share preliminary results from our study of students’ reactions to and reflections on learning with classmates’ cases in lieu of commercially published cases. The workshop will briefly explain how students’ course-specific cases can be used in graduate and undergraduate business classes. Our research data are drawn from hundreds of students who have learned using classmates’ cases with different professors in varied courses, teaching modalities, institutions, and cultures. The results suggest that applying appropriate theories and models to students' cases can overcome many criticisms of teaching with published cases. Students report their peers’ cases are engaging, relevant, and timely. Students’ self-reported increase in engagement is directly related to their (a) ownership of the learning process and (b) commitment to helping their classmates in real organizational situations. The latter two-thirds of the workshop will involve participants discussing where elements of processes described may be appropriate in their courses and programs and how to adapt the student case process to each course and student population.