More than a century has passed since Harvard University devised the ‘Case Method’ in 1914, but its validity continues. It was so revolutionary that it is still considered the learning method par excellence in university education.
Broadly speaking, it focuses on the presentation of real complex situations to encourage decision-making in the student, the exposition of well-founded judgments and the subsequent evaluation of the actions. It is the system most used by the most prestigious schools, and the one used successfully by the largest digital university in the world in Spanish, TECH Technological University.
The Educational Group, which since 2018 has had its base of operations in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, from where it serves students from the 23 countries in which it operates every day, has had a strategic agreement with Harvard since 2019 to employ School of Business the materials of the famous university. ‘Its success lies in the fact that it prepares the student to face challenges and make complex decisions, favoring their personal and professional growth on the path to success and excellence in any area,’ they point out from TECH University.
The ‘Case Method’ allows students to acquire the most important skills and competencies in their area of study, facing real situations that may take place in their professional career. «It is an active technique, based on simulated environments that favor immersive learning and allow theoretical knowledge to be used in a practical way. The student must be able to understand, know and analyze the context in its entirety and the different variables that intervene”, explain those responsible for the institution.
It has its origin in the training of Harvard Law students, who were exposed to real cases to prevent them from learning laws based on theoretical content. With this strategy, they were able to guide the student to integrate all her knowledge, working as a team, investigating, and arguing for decision-making. The results were so exceptional that the university eventually established it as its standard teaching method.
Re-learning: e-learning evolution
Re-learning combines the highest pedagogical rigor, the highest academic demands and the latest educational technology. It is based on directed reiteration and is based on the premise that everything that is learned tends to be forgotten.
It has its origin in the ‘Forgetting Curve Theory’ of the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who showed that 95% of learning ends up being lost after 30 days if what has been learned is not reviewed. His theory, described in 1885, is still today the reference regarding the approach to memory.
The same author highlighted the importance of repetition, establishing the «learning curve», where it can be seen that the effect continues to increase with exposure to the memory, until the information is fully learned. This repeated learning over time, self-managed by the student and directed by a teaching professional, allows the student to acquire the appropriate skills and achieve satisfactory learning results.
Re-learning is the result of adapting Ebbinghaus’s findings to online training, giving rise to the most important educational innovation method of the moment. And it is the system on which the training process applied at TECH University is based. It basically consists of constant reiteration accompanied by attempts to learn and re-learn until knowledge is firmly established.
Far from the traditional linear methods of teaching, it advances in a spiral: you learn, you forget and you relearn. In this way, TECH’s philosophy focuses on the creation of an individualized educational itinerary that has the best pedagogical resources ordered in a reiterated and targeted manner. A method that guarantees the acquisition of professional skills in each training program.
«The key is to choose the appropriate teaching resources, an optimal learning methodology, and offer the most up-to-date and attractive knowledge for the student, so that they feel motivated to successfully complete the process. To do this, our teachers and pedagogues select the most relevant concepts of each lesson, synthesize them and present them as interactive multimedia elements, relying on the orderly use of images, moving diagrams, decision algorithms and animations that guarantee the correct acquisition of knowledge. », stand out from TECH University.
In this way, the system of the largest digital university in the world in Spanish combines the study of real cases, the resolution of complex situations and learning based on reiteration. All this supported by the use of quality images and multimedia content, with abundant graphic material designed to contextualize more realistically.
The result is that the contents last longer in the memory, thanks to a strategy that allows students to assimilate concepts more quickly and effectively, developing a critical spirit, the ability to make decisions and the ability to argue. A method that they apply with excellent results in the 23 countries in which they operate, with an academic offer of 8,100 titles.
