Lin Yuan

Oct 29, 2019

Executive Summary: Chapter 7 (How to Prepare and Discuss Cases)

The case discussion session helps provide students with important opportunities to interact with
other classmates. In this class discussion environment, students are in control and are actively
engaging discussion topics among each other. Students can learn and exchange problem-solving
skills from their peers who have different perspectives.
In classroom discussions, the faculties put students in the case discussion environment. To have a
successful classroom discussion, students need to read and understand the case scenarios to be
well-prepared. During the discussion, the faculty assigns students to play a different role so
students can learn how to resolve conflicts and connect different ideas opinions. It is not
necessarily a bad thing when disagreement is raised, it may be a good opportunity to review the
case from a different perspective to understand the dissent better.
Although students might gain many benefits when participating in class discussions, some
students still hesitate to join the discussion. Being afraid of speaking in public is not uncommon,
America’s number-one fear is public speaking. People who feel terrified about public speaking
are usually lacking in preparation and self-confidence about the topic. In addition, public
speaking makes people feel like they are being judged, lacking intelligence, and making
mistakes. Other factors include personal character, language barrier, culture difference, gender,
race, and class are all contributions to personal anxiety.
To overcome this public speaking phobia, students should prepare the class discussion topic
effectively with no more than two hours of research. When researching the topic, students need
to analyze and understand the topic thoroughly and weigh various alternative courses of action
before speaking in class. There might be more than one optimal solution, students’ goals should
aim to analyze the situation in their own views to defend their argument. Active participation in
the class discussion could help students from an excruciating feeling when speaking in front of
people.
Listening is a form of participation but spending too much time observing makes it difficult to be
visible in class, nonetheless. Students should interact with other classmates and make friends to
help students improve the classroom atmosphere with a little humor, in turn, students can have
conversations and discussions easily. The public speaking fear reasons might be summarized into
two things, confidence and worrying too much.