Pre and Post Class Case Discussion: Engaging Business Students in Learning Management Information Systems

Case study method has been commonly employed as one of the most effective teaching tools in various business disciplines. It has the benefits of positioning students in a realistic business scenario and practicing students’ critical thinking skills. The current study explores several ways of implementing case study teaching method in the context of engaging business students in the Principle of Management Information Systems course offered at an undergraduate level. Based on our observations and feedbacks from students, we came up with a new case study teaching method with two opportunities to engage – Pre and Post Class Meetings. We implemented our proposed teaching method in the target course and empirically investigated students’ perception of its effectiveness, as well as the objective learning outcomes. The results show that the new approach did effectively motivate business students to study relevant concepts in MIS and explore more novel ideas.