The purpose of this proposed paper session is to share our experiences — and those of our students — with a powerful and versatile method for business education grounded in Ignatian pedagogy. Our session is intended to advance the goals of CJBE and the IAJU’s Inspirational Paradigm for Jesuit Business Education by reporting on Business Grand Rounds, an award-winning process for facilitating learning using course-specific student-written cases, grounded in Ignatian pedagogy.
We developed Business Grand Rounds based on our own needs for an effective, flexible student-centered learning method that maximizes our students’ ownership of their learning process. In doing so, we addressed a number of ongoing challenges cited for years in the literature on teaching cases and the case teaching method (e.g., time, expense, relevance); the results obtained with Business Grand Rounds demonstrate the value of Ignatian pedagogy.
Instead of relying on faculty-selected cases and the traditional case teaching method, Business Grand Rounds “flips” case teaching to case learning by (a) using of student-written cases and (b) maximizing student ownership of the learning process from beginning to end. Business Grand Rounds maintains a focus on students’ learning using cases drawn from students’ own experiences; the faculty serves as a facilitator of this student-centered learning process.
Business Grand Rounds has been supported by the IAJU and been also recognized for excellence beyond the confines of the Jesuit higher education:
• IAJU’s “Inspirational Paradigm for Jesuit Business Education” provided grant support for the authors’ creation (2021) of a comprehensive Teaching Note Business Grand Rounds: A Roadmap to Using Student Cases for Problem-based Learning (available at no cost at https://ignite.global).
• The Business Grand Rounds Teaching Note was the #1 most popular resource on IgnitEd for the Spring 2022 semester.
• At the 2022 Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the authors’ presentation of Business Grand Rounds was recognized with the Management Education and Development Division Best Professional Development Workshop Award.
• The authors’ article, “Teaching Ethics with Business Grand Rounds: Reimagining Student-Written Cases Using Ignatian Pedagogy” will published this summer in volume 14 of Journal of Jesuit Business Education.
Our proposed session will:
• generate interest among faculty being introduced to Ignatian pedagogy;
• facilitate reflection by faculty on their own teaching practices, whether they currently teach with cases or use non-case methods; and
• encourage faculty to:
• explore and experiment teaching with student-written cases; and
• utilize the IgnitED website (https://ignitED,global) for other helpful, no-cost/low-cost resources.
We believe that this proposed paper session is appropriate for the 2023 CJBE Annual Meeting because CJBE:
• socializing faculty who are new to Jesuit higher education, welcoming them to the network of business faculty in Jesuit institutions;
• brings together a growing network of established faculty equally committed to their student's and their own learning; and
• is intended to broaden and deepen these connections.
Consistent with CJBE’s mission and IAJU’s Inspirational Paradigm for Jesuit Business Education, Business Grand Rounds is a means to reimagine business education in Jesuit institutions for the next quarter century and make explicit the values and student-centeredness that make our institutions distinctively Jesuit.