Wearing More Than One Hat: Improving Student-Authored Case Longevity While Encouraging Additional Student Roles

Abstract

The marketing education literature emphasizes and documents the effectiveness of using the student-authored case (SAC) method as a means to develop managerial and critical thinking skills. However, most SACs are short lived, lack suggested case solutions, do not benefit from peer feedback, and present challenges in finding relevant company data. This paper describes the improvements that were made to the SAC method to address these limitations and the new roles that students took in the process. These additional roles (problem and solution developer, instructor, discussion leader, and peer reviewer) elevate involvement levels with case preparation, research, analysis, and presentation while improving case quality and relevance.