Teaching Via
Mixed Methods
BPS Doctoral Consortium, August 2013
Margie Peteraf
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Possible Teaching Approaches
 Lectures
Classroom-ready lectures available (for any text)
 Exercises/exams with automatic grading available

 Cases
 Case collections; textbooks collections
 Video cases; interactive cases
 Simulations and Games
 Project based teaching (classroom consulting)
 Site visits and executive participants
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What Do I Do?
 I use a mix of methods throughout the
course and within each session
Why?
 Research suggests that the attention span of
college students is about 7-10 minutes

Human adults can only go for about 20 minutes
with minor breaks
 And
it’s WAY MORE FUN!
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Over the Course of the Term
I use:
 Lectures
 Cases

Full length and mini cases
 Videos
 Exercises
 Games
 Guest
speakers (on an occasional basis)
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But Within Each Session…
 I also make a point to vary the methods
and keep things moving
 But the majority of my sessions are either
essentially a case discussion day or a
lecture day
 So
for each of these basic formats, how do I
mix things up?
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Case Discussion Days
 Videos (2 to 8 minute clips)
 E.g.: Southwest Airlines; Walmart; Disney; DeBeers
 Demonstrations
 E.g. Cola Wars taste test; Newell shopping trip
 Breakout groups
 Group presentations of their conclusions
 Debates that divide the room into two sides
 Numbers analysis (for demonstration purposes)
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Lecture Days
They’re always interactive lectures
 Tests students’ levels of preparation and
understanding
 Engages them
But in addition, I use:
 Exercises in small discussion groups
 Games to illustrate concepts
 Stories to bring ideas to life
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Examples of In-Class Exercises
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#1: Competitive Intelligence
 Competitive Intelligence:
 refers to activities designed to gather
information about your competitors that can
help you make strategic decisions and
compete more effectively
 An area where the ethical limits are not
entirely clear
Competitive Intelligence Exercise
 I give them a list of examples for them to discuss in
small groups and decide on whether or not they are
ethical
 We talk about this as a group, noting how hard this can
be and how guidance may be needed
 We talk about actual cases of misbehavior and the
consequences
 I handout copies of a company code of conduct and we
discuss how such codes can make the difference
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#2: The Price/Cost/Value Model
 I use an “Illustration Capsule” from my
textbook on the Aravind Eye Clinic
 An
example of a focused low cost strategy
 The Capsule provides sufficient
information to allow students to calculate:
 The
Customer Value Proposition
 The Profit Formula
 Total Economic Value Created
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Where Can You Find Exercises?
 News articles from papers, blogs, magazines
 Mini-cases or illustration capsules in textbooks
 Prepared slides often include questions to
accompany these parts of text
 Exercises at the end of textbook chapters
 Ideas that colleagues have had success with
 Teaching sessions at conferences
 Shared teaching ideas from online sources
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