Teaching Teachers
CPCL Energizes The Global Classroom
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| Making friends, exchanging ideas: CPCL
participants Roberto Zentgraf of Brazil's IBMEC;
Zbigniew Turowski,Warsaw University of
Technology Business School; HBS professor
emeritus James Heskett; Tania Casado, University
of São Paulo School of Business; Rebecca Arkader,
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Business
School; and Felipe Gonzalez of Mexico's IPADE. Photo by Catherine Walsh |
Professor Tania Casado was already the recipient of numerous awards for her teaching at the Faculdade de Economia (FEA), the University of São Paulo's prestigious business school. Like any good professor, however, Casado was constantly looking for new techniques to improve her students' learning experience. So in August, she, along with nearly seventy other professors and deans from business schools in Latin America, China, Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe, arrived at HBS for the third annual Colloquium on Participant-Centered Learning (CPCL), a ten-day seminar organized by Professor Tom Piper, under the auspices of the HBS Global Initiative.
The colloquium's schedule — which ran twelve to fourteen hours a day — included discussions led by HBS faculty on course design and development, case-method teaching, field-based research, and case writing. Despite the demanding pace, Casado clearly relished her newfound role as student.
“It was exciting to be among professors from different countries and cultures to discuss a common concern: the teachinglearning process,” says Casado, who has made a number of adjustments in her classroom as a result of her CPCL experience. “When I lead a discussion group now, I continue to respect the students' pace and interests, but I push them to decisions,” she comments. “I support them, but I'm not afraid to ask some hard questions and tell my students that they need to have a point.”
The challenge of “somehow bringing 3.5 billion people into the global economy” drives the School's commitment to the CPCL, says HBS professor Howard H. Stevenson, senior associate dean for External Relations. “We strongly believe that the case method is the best means for teaching the messy business of modern management,” he states. “Sharing ideas, materials, and a research agenda can have a multiplier effect on our individual efforts. We can only be a leader if we are truly global. That requires building joint intellectual capital.”
The case method is already a familiar pedagogical tool at Nigeria's Lagos Business School (LBS), where Enase Okonedo directs the Executive MBA Program. Like Casado, she also received enthusiastic reviews from students before attending the CPCL, but Okonedo says her exposure to the various teaching methods of HBS professors has helped her bring a new level of energy to the classroom. “Now I use some of the same techniques that I observed at the CPCL, such as role-playing and getting students to speak and listen to one another in one-on-one discussions at the beginning of class,” she remarks. “It's simply fantastic to watch students who were once quite passive and shy about participating become much more involved in discussions.”
Another tip Okonedo picked up has led to changes in how she and her colleagues approach potential research subjects. In Nigeria, she says, it is common practice for companies to hide information — particularly when it may not be especially flattering. “This has been a major stumbling block in LBS's bid to build a library of Nigerian cases,” Okonedo comments. Company executives are more likely to be cooperative, she learned, if they're made aware of the “fictional” aspects of a case — that their company can be renamed, for example, and that financial figures can be multiplied or reduced to further disguise a firm's identity.
In addition to changes in their own teaching and research techniques, seminar participants often mention the extended influence of the CPCL on colleagues and professors at other schools in their regions. At the FEA this fall, Casado was part of a team that inaugurated a teaching and learning lab to support faculty development. Brazilian CPCL alumni and professors and deans from other schools in São Paulo were also invited to a FEA conference in October to further discuss various approaches to the case method. And in November, Casado says, students of fellow CPCL alum Michael T. Bendixen visited the FEA from the Wits Business School in Johannesburg, South Africa, to meet with faculty and graduate students and learn more about the university's approach to teaching and research as well as the impact of recent economic events in Brazil.
Gustavo A. Herrero (MBA '76), executive director of the HBS Latin America Research Center, agrees that the benefits of programs like the CPCL are both farreaching and long-lasting. “Relationships are being developed over time, not only between our faculty and those from emerging economies, but also among and between visiting faculty and deans. Such alliances are an asset that is priceless,” Herrero states. “It's social capital that no amount of money could buy.”
