Grading and Feedback of Marketing Management Case Studies: The Elegant and Warm Approach

Abstract

Using written analysis of case studies to assess MBA students in the core marketing course can place severe time restrictions on students and impose harsh grading burdens on instructors. Similarly, providing written feedback to students on their work adds to the instructor's workload without necessarily showing any empathy to the audience. This paper describes an approach to overcoming these problems. It requires students to prepare a slide presentation of their analysis of a case study, which forces them to condense knowledge in a manner that is far more in tune with the rigors of modern managerial reality. Similarly, the approach allows the instructor to more quickly assess the worth of the student's contribution without having to read many pages of script. In addition, feedback is now given in the form of a spoken personal message to the individual student using technology which is readily available on most computers and commonly used software. Some implementation issues, adaptations and possible problems are also discussed.