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NTU Management Review Vol. 32 No. 3 Dec. 2022

The Effect of Adopting Case Method with the Modified
Consulting Exercise on Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition
and Learning Interest

Yu-Lin Chen, Department of Accounting Information, National Taipei University of Business
Mei-Chu Huang, Department of Accounting, Chung Yuan Christian University

1. Purpose/Objective

Case method teaching, advocated by Harvard Business School in 1921, is a
participant-centered teaching/learning method that embraces interactive activities and
group discussions to encourage participants to gain the ability of problem-solving and
cultivate a habit of active learning (Barnes, Christensen, and Hansen, 1994). Case method
teaching theoretically helps cultivate student interest and engagement with the learning

material because real-life connections may enhance the perceived relevance of the material
and the teamwork to complete the problems may promote ideal conditions for maintained
situational interest to take hold (Hidi and Renninger, 2006). Previous studies on case

method teaching mainly focus on comparing learning outcomes between case teaching and
lectures (Stout, 1996; Yen and Duh, 2008; Fan and Lin, 2011; Wynn-Williams, Beatson,
and Anderson, 2016; Chen, Hsu, Shih, Lee, and Chen, 2019; Tan, 2019). Overall, their
findings are inconsistent, partly caused by the lack of research on how to improve case
method teaching. More recently, Erzurumlu and Rollag (2013) has emphasized team-based

preparation and proposed the role-play-based consulting exercise, but they merely present
teaching observations without supporting empirical testing. Moreover, without considering
the lecture method as the benchmark, whether and how case method teaching can enhance

critical thinking disposition and learning interest remains unclear.
This study has proposed a Case Method with the Modified Consulting Exercise
(CMMCE) that is designed to address the challenges to teamwork and case discussions
novice students encounter. CMMCE includes two stages where the modified consulting
exercise precedes the traditional case method teaching. This study then investigates

whether adopting CMMCE improves students’ critical thinking disposition and learning
interest when compared with applying only the lecture method or the traditional case

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