Anthony Palomba arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2020 as a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business (Darden). As a media-management and audience-analysis scholar, Palomba had previously assigned media- and entertainment-business-based cases to students to read. However, he had no idea how to exercise the case method in the classroom. In order to understand the case method, Palomba interviewed current Darden faculty members about best practices in pre-class planning, class discussion execution, and post-class or outside-class activities.
In this note, Palomba organizes and summarizes what he discovered through these interviews, and reflects on his own case-study teaching experiences. Though he wrote this note for Darden faculty who are new to the case method, it is useful for any instructor taking on the case method for the first time. Moreover, it may serve as a refresher for veteran faculty members seeking inspiration or fresh perspectives.
