Presentation of “Book of Reforms” in Kyiv: Why is the Case Method Useful in the Modern Educational Process?
After elaborating the training case, even after hearing a very good answer to his / her question, the teacher should immediately ask the audience: “and who has the opposite opinion?”. Working with the case, students learn not to give the correct answer to the question; they learn to think critically, to analyze facts and to “make up” the overall picture from pieces of information. Within the framework of the first public presentation of the collection of cases “Book of Reforms” in Kyiv the participants of the discussion spoke about what the case method was and how to work with it.
The discussion engaged the CEO of the UCU Center for Leadership and co-author of several cases from the collection Andrii Rozhdestvenskyi, Member of the Parliament of Ukraine, Secretary of the Committee on Education, Science and Innovation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Natalia Pipa and the Chairman of the Board of the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, the character of the case entitled “Public Broadcasting in Ukraine” Zurab Alasaniia.
The event was attended by educators, university teachers, experts in education sphere, representatives of non-governmental organizations and businesses and those interested in new educational technologies. “I believe in education. And I believe that the situation in the country depends directly on the situation in the educational sphere. Corruption starts with writing off. Because if we take the theft of intellectual work as a norm, we thus legitimize misconduct in general,” Natalia Pipa, the Secretary of the Committee on Education, Science and Innovation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, said. “I also believe that the “crammed – passed – forgot” approach no longer works in the modern world, if it ever worked, the university should first of all teach how to think and analyze information.”
At the presentation of “Book of Reforms”, the participants were able to better learn what the case method was and how to use it in the classroom. “When working with cases, the teacher should create an atmosphere of respect for each other, a tolerant attitude to different opinions and active intellectual work. Case study is almost always based on the specific theoretical material, but working with the case, of great importance is, first of all, the path made by the students before learning the theory. This path should be full of discussions and answers to difficult questions. It is not so important what answer you arrived at, it is important that you dared to find the answer”- the co-author of the collection Andrii Rozhdestvenskyi explained.
“Book of Reforms” includes 12 cases, each describing comprehensively the specific case of the transformation process that took place in Ukraine after the Dignity Revolution. One of the cases is about the early stage of establishing Public Broadcasting in Ukraine: “Having been appointed to the position of the General Director of the National Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, I saw the scope of the problems, understood that it was a “long game” and at the same time felt a high level of expectation from outside, – the main character of the case Zurab Alasaniia said, – I came to more than one channel, there were 26 of them, each one being like a separate world. And now, working with this case, put yourself in my place and think what decisions I should have made then. I will tell you for sure – you will not find absolutely correct answer, because like in real life, we can never be 100% sure of our decisions, we always act lacking information, we always fall short of several puzzles to see the overall picture and, nevertheless, we must act.”
Collection of cases “Book of Reforms” was written and published thanks to the generous donations of Mr. Ian O. Ihnatowycz and his wife Marta Witer, the President and the CEO of First Generation Capital Inc. company, in Canada, and that is why, we can distribute it for free. You may get the Book for free at one of our public events. Welcome to the presentation of the Book in Lviv, follow the news on the web-site of the UCU Center for Leadership and on Facebook.
Background information:
“Book of Reforms” is a collection of twelve cases, each describing comprehensively the specific case of the transformation process that took place in Ukraine after the Revolution of Dignity in 2013–2014. More than twenty authors and editors have been involved in the work on collection, including from the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law of Stanford University, Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, Richard Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario.
Andriy Rozhdestvensky – СЕО of UCU Center for Leadership , co-author of Transparency International Ukraine Case, Public Broadcasting in Ukraine Case;
Natalia Pipa – Member of the Parliament, Secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education, Science and Innovation;
Zurab Alasaniia – Chairman of the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, the character of the case entitled “Public Broadcasting in Ukraine”
