Emerging Markets Case Studies (ISSN: 2045-0621)

Guide to writing a Teaching Note

Purpose of a teaching note

A teaching note acts as a guide to both instructors who are deciding whether to teach your case
and to those who have decided to teach your case. It shows the teaching objectives of the case as
well as the academic value an instructor adds to the information in the case through the teaching
process. It gives the instructors resources they could use to deepen their knowledge of the topic
being taught. It also demonstrates your depth of knowledge of the chosen field of academia.
Many of the emerging market cases will be taught by instructors who have never lived, worked
or taught in the specific emerging market setting of your case study, and so your teaching note
should enable the instructors to gain insights into the complexities and challenges of these unique
operating environments.

A teaching note also gives suggestions as to how the case could be taught; from the questions the
students should prepare before the class based on their reading of the case, to an example of a
plan for the case teaching session. It includes possible answers to the assignment questions and
may include a range of additional materials that could be used by the lecturers. It does not
prescribe how a case should be taught, it merely offers suggestions. A teaching note can be of
great assistance to instructors who are new to teaching cases, so it should reflect knowledge of
case teaching methodology. The teaching note is not shown to the organization or person about
whom you wrote the case or to the students.

Method of writing a teaching note

A teaching note should be begun at the same time as the outset of writing the case and should
evolve over a period of time. The teaching objectives and major theoretical aspects should be
decided on before the case is written as discussed in the guidelines for writing a case. The
analysis of the assignment questions could be written before you teach the case for the first time.
The teaching plan section may only be written after you have taught the case for the first time
and you discovered what worked and didn’t work in the teaching process. You would also then
be aware of what issues the students raised that you may want to discuss in the teaching note.
Teaching notes require a great detail of preparation as they become part of the intellectual capital
of the teaching fraternity and become part of your academic brand.

Format of a teaching note

It is strongly suggested that submitted teaching notes follow the format and all the headings
given in the template example below. It is expected that a teaching note would be a minimum of
4000 words but may go up to 10,000 words.

Prepared by Dr. Margaret Sutherland 1 Updated: October 2015

and Dr. Michael M. Goldman
 Teaching Note

THE NAME OF THE CASE STUDY IS PLACED HERE

SYNOPSIS

This should be a 150-200 words synopsis of the case study. In it you should give a few details of
the name of the organisation, the industry, the country, the time span of the case study, the
protagonist and what the challenge facing the protagonist is. You should give a sense of what
sub-field of academia the case is designed to teach e.g. market segmentation in the
telecommunications sector, or performance management in the NGO sector.

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

This section should be between 150 and 250 words long. It should state the level of student the
case is aimed at e.g. undergraduate, Masters students in a particular field, MBA students or short
course executives. It should name the field of study that the case study could be taught in e.g.
innovation, social entrepreneurship, corporate finance, product development in emerging
markets. It could be suited for a number of types of students or courses.

The teaching objectives for the case must be given. These clarify what you expect students to
learn from the reading of the case, preparing for the lecture and during the process of teaching
the case. There are typically between three and five objectives. They should be presented in
numbered format. These should be very similar to the expected learning outcomes on the title
page of the case study. You should consider whether the objectives are around content (i.e. you
want to teach an academic principle or model) or whether you want to teach a process (e.g. how
students come to better decisions once a variety of options have been presented and defended).
These teaching objectives would need to be closely aligned to whatever courses you are
suggesting the case be taught in.

An example of a teaching objective could be

Teaching Objective 1: Students need to know the importance of doing market research and some
methods for doing it before launching a new product or service.

RESEARCH METHODS
This section (typically between 30 and 100 words) needs to detail the types of data, and data
collection methods, that were used to research the case study. These can primary and/or
secondary data, including among others field interviews within the case organization,
organizational documents, industry reports, and news articles.

Prepared by Dr. Margaret Sutherland 2 Updated: October 2015

and Dr. Michael M. Goldman
KEY WORDS AND SUBJECT CODE
The subject code should be the same as the one on the case study title page. There should be
about six key words which will help instructors decide if this case study will fit into their course
design e.g. Social entrepreneurship, performance management, strategy.

ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS

This section should be about 150 words long.

You should give between 3 to 5 numbered questions that the students should prepare answers to
before they come to class. They should be told they will be expected to both answer the question
and be able to defend their reasoning for their answer. An example of a question is:

Question 1: Do you think the company should focus on selling their products into other
countries or should they focus on expanding their product range in the domestic market?

The questions should be closely aligned to the teaching objectives in the previous section and
cover the expected content learning outcomes of the case. The expected answers to the questions
should not be simplistic but should require the students to think about a complex issue that could
have a variety of feasible answers. These questions are typically used by instructors in their
course outlines for individual or group pre-class preparation.

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

These could take two forms. You may suggest the students access some of the named materials
in additional preparation before the lecture e.g. to look at a YouTube clip online or to refer to a
model in the textbook. Or you may provide photographs, short videos of the protagonist, typical
customers, links to websites (e.g. Gapminder), or YouTube clips – or upload another form of
video that the instructor could use during the class session to increase the students’ engagement
with the case during the class.

SUGGESTED CORE READINGS

Here you should give approximately 5 recent references the instructor could read to deepen their
knowledge on the particular academic topic the case is focused on. This list should include both
journal articles and textbooks. These references should be given in alphabetical order in APA
format e.g.

Bartscht, J. (2015). Why systems must explore the unknown to survive VUCA environments.
Kybernetes. 44, 253-270.

Prepared by Dr. Margaret Sutherland 3 Updated: October 2015

and Dr. Michael M. Goldman
Bloom, P. N., & Chatterj, A. K. C. (2009). Scaling social entrepreneurial impact. California
Management Review, 51, 114-133.

TEACHING PLAN AND TIMING

The purpose of this section is to give the instructors an idea of how you would teach the case in
90 minutes. This is just a suggested method and is not prescriptive for other instructors to use. It
could include some creative methods but should show knowledge of case teaching methodology.
You should give an approximate timing for each section. This section should be about 500 words
long, and refer where relevant to the suggested board plan that is included as a TN Exhibit.

It could look like this:

 15 minutes: Introduction - get the class to vote on a key question e.g. Is this company
financially stable? Then elicit from the class the reasons given by those who voted yes and
those who voted no.

 5 minutes: The instructor could show a YouTube clip referenced under additional materials
illustrating the context of the study.

 25 minutes: Assignment question 1 – the instructor shows the relevant academic model from
the teaching note exhibit and gets the class to discuss how the details of the case correspond
to the model.

 35 minutes: Assignment question 2 – the instructor gets the class to work in pairs to come up
with a suggested action plan for the protagonist/company – the instructor randomly selects
two pairs of students to present their plans – and then presents a framework given in the
teaching note exhibit to assist the students in making decisions in the future.

 5 minutes: Conclusion restating the key learning points or reading the postscript.

ANALYSIS OF ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS

A model answer of about 700 words should be given to each assignment question. The answer
should include the application of models / frameworks / concepts from textbooks & journal
articles to deepen the analysis and show knowledge of current academic thinking in the field of
study. Use should be made of the suggested core readings given above and other sources. It is
strongly suggested that the writer provides some diagrams/ figures /models which should be

Prepared by Dr. Margaret Sutherland 4 Updated: October 2015

and Dr. Michael M. Goldman
placed in exhibits at the end of the teaching note, and reference must be made to the source of
each exhibit. If it is the case writer’s own model it should be referenced as “authors own”. All
sources must be referenced in footnotes. This section should be written as a template answer. If
possible this section could also include possible student responses to the question and how these
should be responded to.

KEY LEARNINGS

The instructor can conclude the case discussion with a summary of how the case demonstrates 2
to 3 key learnings from the case, e.g. the centrality of cash flow management in organisational
sustainability, or the importance of responding to a wide range of stakeholders in different ways,
as well as providing the students with a model or framework given as an Exhibit, which the
students could apply in the future to solve other problems they may face in their careers. These
must be stated clearly here in about 150 words.

POSTSCRIPT

If the case writer knows what happened in the organisation after the time period in which the
case is set, how the organisation or protagonist responded to the dilemma in the case and what
the outcome was, a postscript could be placed here. The instructor could then read this at the end
of the lecture.

EXHIBITS

All figures, tables, models and diagrams referred to in the analysis section, or other supporting
material (e.g. set of company accounts, photographs) should be placed here in the following
format.

EXHIBIT TN-1: [FIRST EXHIBIT TITLE]

Place the figure here

Source: Case author’s own

EXHIBIT TN-2: [SECOND EXHIBIT TITLE]

Place the model here

Prepared by Dr. Margaret Sutherland 5 Updated: October 2015

and Dr. Michael M. Goldman
Source: Soda, G., & Zaheer, A. (2012). A network perspective on organizational architecture:
performance effects of the interplay of formal and informal organization. Strategic Management
Journal, 33, 751-771.

EXHIBIT TN-3: SUGGESTED BOARD PLAN

A board plan should visually outline the structure, sections and content of the classroom
discussion, as captured by the instructor on a board in the room.

Prepared by Dr. Margaret Sutherland 6 Updated: October 2015

and Dr. Michael M. Goldman