Assistant Professor Graham and Ms.

Macomber

Executive Summary

This case is about Professor Charles Graham at the New Dominion. Prof. Graham has been
associated with the institution for the last one year. He has recently started teaching
Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management (QAOM) to a class of 80 students. He is
new to the case study pedagogy and has adopted it over the routine lecture method. During a
case study discussion in his class, he expected that at least few of the participants will
identify the crux of the case study to solve the problem in the case study. To his amusement,
he did not see any one identifying this crux.

At the end of the class, Ms. Janet Macomber one of the younger students shared her view on
the case. Ms. Janet Macomber has an excellent Academic Record and has graduated from
Cal-Tech. She pointed out the flaw in the approach that everyone was taking to solve the
problem. At this moment, Prof. Graham was relieved that finally someone has cracked the
case but he wanted this to unfold in pieces. He had learnt that Ms. Macomber was nervous so
he tried to unfold her reasoning bit by bit by asking her multiple follow up questions. Prof.
Graham concludes the class on a cliff-hanger by staying silent on the judgements passed by
Ms. Macomber. According to Prof. Graham, making the whole class think about this problem
was fun and was satisfied that he has chosen the case-study pedagogy of teaching.

A. The overall judgement of Prof. Graham’s behaviour in the class, and then predict
how Janet and other students might experience it?

Prof. Graham was patient as he wanted to give a fair chance to the class to come to the
right conclusion. For majority of the class duration, the students could not correctly analyse
the case. He thought that he would have to give the solution to the class himself as would be
done in a traditional teaching method. He was reluctant to do so as he believed firmly in the
case discussion teaching methods.

The students were not on the right track with the case discussion, though they were not
aware of it as Prof. Graham did not point it out and let the class continue with the discussion.
He also did not end the class by giving them the solution and instead let them ponder over
Janet’s analysis.
B. How does this situation appear to Prof. Graham?

After the discussion of 1hr and 10 min, the class was unable to crack the case and the
discussion wasn’t going in the right direction. The whole class seemed to miss track of the
case and that’s why Professor Graham thought he would end up teaching with a conventional
method instead of asking students to find the solution. But when he realized that Janet came
up with the right approach to the case, he seemed satisfied and his belief in the case teaching
method was reinforced.

C. How well did Prof. Graham handle the questioning and response with Janet?

Prof. Graham did not directly declare that Janet’s answer was right. He instead cross
questioned her to bring out the analysis and reasoning behind her answer. He also controlled
his amazement at Janet’s answer, so that the other students would also think through the
problem at hand.

D. At the end of the interchange, Prof. Graham says, “Well, well!” What do you think
of this response? What will be the effect of this response? How else might he have
responded?

Prof. Graham remark was an indication that he had received satisfactory response from
Janet. He had also realized that the class was already 2 min overtime and had to conclude the
session.

He did not pass any judgement on Jante’s analysis or on preceding case discussion so that
students could think through the problem by themselves which will lead the case discussion
in right direction.

Prof. Graham also had option of telling the class whether Jante’s solution was correct or
not. He could not have asked for other students’ comments as there was no time left.

E. Should Prof. Graham have dropped by the group around Janet’s Desk?

Professor Graham wants to make students think instead of giving them pat answers. If he
drops by Janet’s desk it may lead to the conventional method of teaching rather than
promoting his own way of teaching. Also, the class was already 2 minutes overtime and
students were interested in knowing the approach of Janet. When they gathered around her,
he should let them learn through peer discussion as he had already created the thinking
atmosphere in the class.
Group Members:

Ameya Pradip Shirodkar (P43004)

Chetan Agrawal (P43011)

C.Venkata Nagalingam (P43012)

Gaurav Yadav (P43015)

Priya (P43042)

Rushikesh Shelke (P43045)

Shubham Ajay Sonar (P43054)