DCSMAT Institutions, ever since their inceptions have been pioneering the ‘case method of instruction’ in Kerala. Dr Sreekumar Ancheri, the founding Director of DCSMAT was an ardent practitioner and a ‘teacher of teachers’ (ustadon ka ustad) of this method of teaching, and it is under his leadership that this gained traction in DCSMAT and thereafter elsewhere in Kerala. The tradition continues to this day. Needless to say, that this is a widely accepted form of teaching in world class institutions like the Harvard Business School, Yale University, Cornell University, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Indian School of Business, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad etc.

Case studies are actually powerful tools that enable studentcantered teaching- learning processes that can instil in the students critical thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills.

In this method, students are encouraged to work through complex, ambiguous, real world problems and analyse them closely by putting themselves in those life-like situations. Case studies thus can help to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Working on cases requires students to search and evaluate multiple sources of data, encouraging them to research. Case method helps to develop real world, professional skills – organizational, time management, written and oral communication, presentation, collaboration, team management and decision-making skills. In other words, case studies force students into real-life situations and help to develop real-life skills.

Teaching with case studies is more than anything, an art, requiring the highest skills of a teacher – he or she has to take on and keep switching between many roles during the course of the session; a facilitator, a guide, a defender, a devil’s advocate, a moderator, a judge amongst others. In the case method, the teacher does not force, rather does not even offer his or her own opinions, but encourages the students to devise, describe, and defend solutions to the problems presented by each case. Teachers of DCSMAT have been trained in this art within the Institution and in outside institutions such as IIM, Ahmedabad.