Gyan Gupta a - Professor Case

Assistant Professor Gyan Gupta and the Wet Noodle Class(A)

Summary of the case:

This case is about teaching and the case method to conduct class. Gyan Gupta is assistant professor at the Millar School of Business. He is teaching entrepreneurship course for the first time and the class was worst in the entire three years he had been teaching since receiving his PH D degree. The former professor of entrepreneurship, professor Elton, had used cases almost exclusively even though most of other professors used to taught through lectures. Gupta liked case based approach but could not pull real world examples due to lack of experience.

The students were accustomed to lecture mode and Gupta wanted to conduct good discussion but student were not prepared as per his expectations. Most class members sat in silence, even when they were willing to speak, the discussion went in all directions, without a central thread. Each student simply said whatever comment he or she had in mind, with no attempt to connect to what others had already said. Gupta realize that student even not listened to each other.

In his second class, he lectured, referring only to the case an example. He tried to relate his doctoral research theory and he rather enjoyed drawing upon his own expertise. Students appeared bored but they feel more comfortable with his teaching style. Lecturing might be easy way for him but he can’t entertain lecturer because he is not a humorous person. So he was facing the problem about how to engage his students. He remembered that former professor Elton hadn’t faced any problem though he taught the course through cases. He started case discussion again. He also notified his students via email to come with preparation because 15% of the grade was depended on class participation. Somehow this tactic worked but most student remained silent except five/six student participated.

In his fourth class, he gave a chance to opening the case of ‘Home Watcher’ for Julie Stover but she opened the case by announcing that she had done an internet search on ‘Home Watcher” and explained some latest information about the company. But the decision point in the case whether or not to business models to target home owners directly. That’s why Gupta wanted to stimulate debate on the business strategy decision but Julie precluded that debate. Gupta wanted to bring students back to a deeper discussion on the case showing example of how case protagonist Liao had demonstrated some common conformation bias. He tried to get his class to see the bias by asking questions but no one seemed to see the problem. Then he gave a five-minute brief lecture on conformation bias but students seemed unwilling to take his word. He briefly tried to discussion back to the case but they sat in silence. So he thought “This is like trying to push a wet noodle”.

He was deeply confused about how to manage several issues for the next class and the rest of the term. Then he decided to seek some advice from other instructors who used to teach case based course, about the use of internet in case preparation. Organization Behavior professor Jane Thompson told him that he didn’t try to fight with use of internet. Marketing professor Janet Wang said that she didn’t allow to use of internet during case preparation. She also asked him why he didn’t set out a policy about using the internet in his syllabus. Her this question led Gupta to consider whether or not to impose a internet policy this late in the term. He had a final issue that how to introduce theory in the course such as he learned in his doctorate course.