Case Facilitation

Today was the day that I have been worried out. I know myself that I am not a very good speaker in front of audiences, and I had the luck of being in the first group to conduct a case facilitation during IS101, Seminar on Information System Management. We spent lots of effort in this, rehearsing and rehearsing, but ultimately we could not anticipate what points that classmates would mention during the course of our discussion. I also initiated the idea of giving out free lollipops for those who participated and thank you my sister for helping me shop for the sweets.

During yesterday’s rehearsal I was pretty nervous, and my face turned red the moment I stood up to share my part. After going through nearly 4 drafts of prepared questions and anticipated answers, I decided to just leave it to the class to provide me with the content for my part of the case discussion.

Today, before the case facilitation, I told myself to to put on a mask. Since weikiat can’t speak well, let me pretend to be acting as someone who can. I went up, the whole thing was a blur, and I was done with the discussion even before I know it. I know, I went too fast, and weiyi could detect shivers in my voice, but looking at the peer reviews right now, I felt happy that we had done a good job.

Here are some extracts of the peer reviews.

Case presented was very interactive and presenters are able to get the audiences to input their comments and views on the case discussion itself. Most of the speakers presented well and covered the essential topics and points that are brought up in the PSA case.

Good initiatives to make the class interactive by using sweets as a motivation factor. Highlighted the key points of the PSA report though I was hoping to see more of CITOS. Nonetheless, the team had set a high benchmark for the remaining teams.

I believe the case facilitation went well as well. It would be good if the first speaker cuts down on his “Errrr”. Other than that, the discussion went pretty well, this can be evident by the responses from the class. Just a feedback, the sweets given in class might have serve as a little distraction at certain point. Overall, the team managed to lead us to discuss on the case with the questions asked by them.

I feel that the presentation was a bit rush but nevertheless the job did a great job in explaining the case through engaging the whole class with sweets.

I felt that not enough information was brought by the team to get the class to fill in more details. Like statistics or numbers to show us how great or bad the situation is etc.

I personally feel it was good on the case presentation. Key points were touched on and elaborated. Perhaps a point for improvement would be writing on the board neatly for better presentation.

I personally felt that group 7 did a rather excellent case facilitation today. The idea of rewarding class participation greatly helped the class to be more active in joining the debate and discussion. In terms of clarity, I believe most of the group members were able to bring out the case to the class. There were points of time where the presenters were unable to get the right information from the audience but overall I would say thumbs up for the group for their first attempt!

I strongly believe the overall group has done a pretty good job at diverting the focus point of the class, in the right direction, and providing a good learning curve through the simple questions asked.

They have displayed a very good and simplified sense of the case study, and had brought forth very good key pointers which allowed me to better understand the case and the overall picture of how PSA functions and operates.

Great job guys! =)

I think group 7 did a great job in case facilitation although some group members spoke too fast and sometimes made it hard for me to catch what they were trying to explain. Otherwise I think they put a lot effort into this case facilitation and understood the topic well. To comment overall, I think the group needs to improve on organizing the parts and to explain more clearly on the points they are trying to make.

I think that they were good considering that they were the first group and they do not have any thing or any one to model after. I think that wei kiat, saurabh and aisyatus were very good at getting the class to response. I think eaint should try to maintain more eye contact.

I think their way to present is creative, in the sense they just did not have many slides and got class participated involved. They summaries some key concepts from the case study and helped us reviewed the case.

Interactive. Good motivation by offering sweets to answer questions. Case being presented was clear. Issues dealt covers whats written in the notes.

It is very clear in their elaborating the PSA case and they did communicate with the class to get the target.

Nice initiative of giving out sweets during the facilitation. But apart from that, I think the team did quite well by trying to point out the key factor and points of the case study. Not much to complain about except i think Eanit might speak a bit too softly thru out the last part.

Overall I feel that they have done well. I especially like how they used the whiteboard instead of powerpoint and their idea of giving out sweets to encourage participation.
Perhaps Saurabh covered too much as compared to his groupmates.
Eaint was a little too soft.

Overall, the discussion was constructive and helped understanding. The idea of giving out lollipops to those who have attempted to try and participate in the discussion was great. However, members should organize the points and plan in a more proper way when writing down the information on the whiteboard to prevent a mess which might cause misunderstanding and confusion.

Saurabh tend to speak a little too fast, it would be better if you could slow down abit. Great job trying to link the problems PSA faced and the solutions answering to these problems! (weikiat: this part was mine )Thanks for the sweets too!

Team 7 adopts a ‘free lollipop’ for every participation by the class. An interesting way to spice the class participation.
They also did well in terms of bring the main gist of the case to the class, and guiding the answers out of the class by prompting back suggestive questions.
However, improvements can be made by using more ‘props’ in class, instead of just using the whiteboard. In addition, the way they write down the key points on the board are a little over the place and messy. Powerpoint slides are also a little dull. Improvements can be done in these areas.

Team 7 generally dissected the case well into the various sections, but I felt they could be more organised in presenting and showing the linkage between the facts to aid in understanding.

Team 7 have facilitated very well. They are very engaging and managed to aid me in analysing PSA’s case. They have covered a lot of IT solutions as well as the competitive edge of PSA.

Team 7 presented tty the case on PSA pretty well, and made it feel like a class room session similar to last week.

The case facilitation today was very interesting which allows me to know more about the business processes of PSA. Having discussion with the class helps to generate more ideas that can be shared among the class. Additionally, the group members were very well-organised and structured.

The case facilitation was very interactive and it got every student much more involved. As the mood of facilitation was much lighter with comparison to the usual lecture, more students opened up and allowed us to have much more insights and perspectives. Very well organized as well.

The case was presented in a simple manner, which was good as it made understanding the article easier. The article was not easily understood as there were many terms that I was unfamiliar with, but the group made the article understandable. However, the presenters moved onto their next points too quickly, which may result in some peers being unable to follow or to give more input. A slower pace would give more students a chance to participate, or even calling on some who are inactive in speaking out would be beneficial to them.

The facilitation was clear and managed to involve the whole class in the discussion. It wasn’t too serious and rather laid back.
However, I found that the powerpoint slides weren’t really needed at all because I was too busy concentrating on what the presenters were writing on the board.

The facilitators did a good job in leading the facilitation and having interaction with the class.

The group is nice to give out sweets,a boost for an early morning session.They managed to drive the class as a whole to come out with ideas for portnet.however i am kind of confused when they initially talk about the geographical constrains. It took me some time to get to their points. Some points are clearly stated during their facilitation which is appreciated, thanks a lot.

The group was useful in helping us understand the case at the higher level. The constant questioning enabled us to think throughouly, read more carefully into the readings for more detailed information. Also, the generousity of the group in buying us sweets as incentives to spaek up in class definitely help to keep the class alive, as well as help us with our class participation. haha well done! =)

The interaction between the facilitators and the class was great! Using the lollipops as an incentive to get the class to answer worked Saurabh started the presentation off well as he was able to command the audience’s attention. Wei Kiat added much humour to the presentation with some of his antics which I felt was good Eaint and Aisya were clear in presenting the class views on the board. Overalll, great faciliatation

The sweets were a very innovative idea, though it was somewhat distracting when the facilitator is speaking and lollipops are passed around. The group did a good job in their allocation of work, breaking down the discussion into various parts and suming it up together.

The team did a great job explaining how PSA came about and how they expanded in a very interactive way. Some improvements could be visual aids and examples of similar corporations. More variety of sweets next time! Good job!

The team drew mind maps onto the whiteboard to show the business processes of the case, PSA and discuss with the class.Instead of spoon feeding the class with answers, the team uses an innovative way to facilitate class participation, which is to give away sweets for every answer given. This resulted in one had to really think about the questions and come out with an answer for the “sweet incentive.” It’s all right when one gives the wrong answer and the team will still give him the “sweet incentive” for attempting to answer the questions.

The whole job was very impressive. The facilitators were very confident about their performances. The process, they used by giving lollipop to the student who answers their questions, was also very fascinating. I liked their performances.

There weren’t much discussion on business strategies, challenges etc. besides highlighting the key points. The presentation started pretty well, gradually went down but reached a somewhat clear conclusion.

They integrated the whiteboard with powerpoint slides with minimal words. Most of the explainations were written on the whiteboard as they try to facilitate the discussion of the case like how a lecturer will. It was great as it enables the class to interact and when they jot down our points on the board, they made us feel like we are really in the discussion. Also the team has a very clear understanding of the case thus being able to come up with points which we may have missed. Honestly, the sweets made my day so hopefully other groups who are presenting the following weeks come up with goodies to reward those who participate.

They lead us well through the case study as they probe and let us think into deeper thoughts instead of directly giving us the expected response. The giving out of lollipop is a good way of encouraging participation.

They were great in getting the class to participate and ensured everyone was paying attention to the case they presented. However, I thought the pointers mentioned by the class should have already be listed in the presentation slides as the writings on the blackboard were clustered all over. If you miss a portion of the presentation, I might get lost in nowhere’s land. Otherwise, the presentation was great!

This case facilitation has helped many of our peers to speak up and contribute their opinions. Contributions of opinions in such a manner engages everyone in a active discussion and this gives us an idea of how future case discussions will be like. Initially I thought it will be difficult to hold a case discussion in a class of over forty people, but it had turned out to be interesting and it allows everyone to participate in one way or another, at the very least keeping our minds thinking. The facilitation was carried out in quite an orderly manner at the beginning, but towards the second half everyone was freely voicing out whatever they had in mind. This could have prevented some people who are less vocal from speaking. Hence case facilitators can help these people, maybe by allowing them a chance to speak by directing questions to certain individuals who haven´t had a chance to talk, so as not to be overshadowed by others who are more bold whom speak out often. Overall I think it was a good effort by the team.

Today case facilitator was very new, whereby the team fully utilizes the board & PowerPoint slide, I was expecting a debut session for it. The idea of disturbing sweets when the audience gives feedback was also very creative, which will give the class to come up with more question to make the session more lively.

for a start, the use of sweets to attract participation and gather opinions was a good move – especially for a lesson early in the morning.

weikiat was a dynamic and enthusiastic presenter, generating lots of creative ideas.

The facilitation team has helped me understood the essence of the PSA success factors and its history within a short period of time, summarising what i have read in the thick 20 page case study. thumbs up to them!

very interactive! It was an excellent recap to the PSA case.

However, i believe that there should have been more explanations in terms of what exactly portnet is. I think it would’ve been more complete that way. Also, it would be interesting if you added a section on all that PSA has achieved today, in 2009! yupp, thats just a suggestion!

On the whole, well explained and well done! Thanks for the presentation. I enjoyed it!

Thank you people! Will bear all these in mind and try to improve in my/our future presentations!