Discovery Learning in Management Education: Design and Case Analysis

Two approaches to the process of guided discovery learning are compared for their impacts on concept understanding. One, referred to as design, emphasizes invention and draws on the simulation literature. The other, referred to as case analysis, focuses on discovery and draws on the case-based reasoning literature. Following a lecture on four cognitive-bias concepts, management students were assigned randomly to a design, case analysis, or lecture-only condition: A first experiment compared a design with a lecture-only condition and a second experiment compared case analysis with a lecture-only condition. Both design and case analysis students understood the concepts better than lecture-only students. Designers in the first experiment retained their understanding of the concepts better than the case analysts in the second experiment. The impacts on learning for design were similar to those obtained in earlier research where design was compared with role-playing and a classroom lecture. Implications of the findings for theory development and practice are discussed.