Case Day Challenges in MSCI 100 | Engineering Cases

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- Dr. Kenneth McKay, Professor and Department Teaching and Undergraduate Liaison Officer
- Instructor of MSCI 100, Fall 2015

In 2015, I was doing a major re-development of a core course. WCDE provided crucial assistance during this activity and assisted me with creating unique cases with specific learning outcomes. I have created and used cases for several decades and it was a pleasure to work with people who understood the pedagogy and what I wanted to accomplish! …[The] cases captured the student's imagination, engaged them, and delivered on all of the learning objectives. According to student feedback, the case days were one of the best parts of the course. For us, the reward was the learning we were able to observe

Management Engineering Concepts (MSCI 100)

MSCI 100 is an introductory course that focuses on principles of management engineering. An overarching goal is for students to understand and apply concepts in efficiency and effectiveness. Through application of course topics, they practice time management, project planning, teamwork and communication. In the fall 2015 offering, three full days were dedicated to case studies. These three “case days” started at 8:30 am and ended at 4:20 pm. They were staggered throughout the term:

Week	Tuesday (8:30-4:20)	Wednesday (10:30-11:20)	Thursday (10:30-11:20)
1	Introduction	Cause & Effect Analysis	Cause & Effect Analysis
2	Planning	Scheduling	Project Management
3	Case Day 1	Organizations	Teams
4	Innovation & Change	Health Care & Process	Service & Financial
5	Case Day 2	Manufacturing & Process	Midterm Review
6	Write Midterm 1
7	Toyota Field Trip	Toyota Debrief	Forecasting
8	Forecasting	Inventory	Inventory
9	Case Day 3	Assessments	Inventory
10	Inventory	Optimization	Shortest Path
11	Shortest Path	Queuing	Design Process
12	Midterm Review	Term Summary	Write Midterm 2

Case Study Synopsis: “Northern Canada Co-op Experience”

Although initially excited to land a co-op position, Samantha is trying to figure out the logistics of actually moving to Dawson City, Yukon, for four months. She also has to work with a student budget.

Downtown Dawson City, Yukon (WikiMedia Commons)

Knowing she is coming back after four months, Samantha wants to create a detailed plan on what to bring, buy, or go without. Luckily she has already found a place to rent: a single bedroom in a fully furnished house. Her bedroom only has a closet and a dresser with six small drawers. The rest of the space is filled up with her tiny bed. Samantha is determined that all stuff will fit into her bedroom storage areas; however, she is torn between what things to leave behind, the effort of moving and balancing a budget.

Case Day Structure

The case days were modeled after single-day case competitions used in business schools. Students were given the case study challenge at 8:30 am and had to submit their solution by the end of the day (4:20 pm). The same base case was used for all three days, allowing for incremental difficulty by using a new problem statement each implementation. Students were assigned their group (about 5 students per group for a total of 13 groups). They remained in the same teams and worked together to stay on task and on schedule. Successful students realized the importance of project planning and effective teamwork.

Team Advisors

Each team was given an advisor that they met with at set points throughout the case days. The role of the advisor was to support and observe. Advisors took note of the students’ abilities to manage their tasks and work as a team based on the meetings and quality of deliverables. For all advisory meetings, students had to be on time and could only ask three questions. Advisors used the Socratic Method to answer these questions and pushed students to reflect on their project management decisions.

Implementation Strategy

From case day 1 to case day 3, the support and guidance of the advisor diminished. The student teams had to apply what they learned from previous case days to solve more complex problems with fewer deliverables. Ultimately, students were scaffolded into more responsibility and less structure.

Learning Goals and Assessment

The learning goals for the case days were less focused on the mechanics of the solution and more focused on the soft skills surrounding project management. Based on the submissions to Learn and the advisor-team interactions, the following was assessed:

Teamwork (learn to organize themselves, have clear roles and collaborate)
Project Planning (learn to write status reports and complete quality solutions on time)
Communication (learn to facilitate meetings wisely, apply advice from one meeting to the next and communicate effectively with team members)
Submissions (learn to develop solutions that address requirements and write quality documents)

Student Response

The student response was overall positive. There were many comments along the following themes:

Progression from a group to a team: it was good that we were in the same teams so we could grow and learn how to work together effectively
Chance to learn from mistakes: reassess skills and previous decisions to plan for each case day
Time management skills: we had to understand and solve a problem all in one day which forced us to apply best practices for handling a time-crunched project
Teamwork: learning the strengths and weaknesses of our team members and how to use this knowledge to schedule our tasks
It was the best part of the course!