Case competitions provide a unique opportunity for students at all academic levels to amalgamate and synthesize everything they learn in the classroom into an applied real-world context utilizing the case construct. Most of these contests are ungraded, thereby allowing students, mentors, and faculty on both sides of the proverbial desk to be highly candid in their feedback without creating an uncomfortable situation, allowing it to be more constructive, affecting the culture of a traditional classroom or their grade point average, or impacting teaching evaluations. The result is often an analytically rigorous paper or PowerPoint presentation where students can adroitly demonstrate their knowledge of the concepts, effectively defend their recommendations, engage in meaningful Q&A, and follow best practices related to teamwork. This study aims to explore the mentorship and coaching strategies for case competition teams in undergraduate and graduate academic programs. The two most significant factors affecting case competition rank are “Mentor Hours” and “Effort Invested as a Team.”
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Twenty-five years ago, students engaging in action learning used it to promote dialogue and turned to their peers for feedback (Wade et al., 1999). A few years later, real-world issues were integrated (Clarke et al., 2006), followed by action learning sponsors and consultants (Bong et al., 2014). Reginald Revans is considered the pioneer of action learning, and according to Pedler (2016), the process approach is not organizational change but instead bringing about gradual improvements, including in oneself. In comparison with experiential learning, David Kolb developed that learning style in 1984, and according to Mcleod (2023), it is a bifurcated theory with four cycles and four separate learning styles. Most academic classes have action learning components like projects with outside entrepreneurs or companies. One example is a case competition, a team-based exercise that might involve pitching a new idea, analyzing a company, or allocating funding, all in a timed format (Carter et al., 2019).
Case competitions provide a unique opportunity for students at all academic levels to amalgamate and synthesize everything they learn in the classroom into an applied real-world context utilizing the case study method (Nohria, 2021), improving research literacy (Donnelly et al., 2023), positively interacting with peers (Strayhorn, 2008) and doing so in a multidisciplinary and practical fashion (Bennis et al., 2005). Most of these non-graded contests tackle real problems (Boshyk, 2019), positively contribute to students’ careers (Lynch et al., 2022), and allow students, mentors, and faculty on both sides of the proverbial desk to be highly candid in their feedback without creating an uncomfortable situation. This will enable interactions to be more constructive without affecting the culture of a traditional classroom, impacting a student's grade point average, improving students’ well-being (Carrell et al., 2023), or biasing faculty teaching evaluations (Marcel et al., 2019). The result is often an analytically rigorous paper or PowerPoint presentation (Gibson et al., 2013) where students can adroitly demonstrate their knowledge of the concepts, effectively defend their recommendations, engage in meaningful Q&A, and follow best practices related to teamwork.
A crucial aspect of competition success comes from team formation (Brutus et al., 2021), and Rhee believes innovation originates from teamwork (2013). Much has been written about SAFe Agile’s teamwork method around software development, where scrum-focused mechanisms promote communication and trust (Strode et al., 2022). Of particular interest from their study is to what extent a team should be preselected with specialists in different categories, even though the members might have never met one another or previously worked together on a class project. This is similar to the tack gymnastics coaches take in assembling a squad, using a combination of generalists and event specialists (Roenigk, 2023). On the other hand, students are often happier when they feel comfortable working alongside ‘friends.’ Freeman et al. addressed this in a 2017 paper, noting that most self-select by gender and background, and according to work from the University of Washington, happier students have a stronger will to learn (Dreezens, 2020) and yield positive results beyond the classroom (Eckart, 2017).