When a MBA Lecture is a Movie with Popcorn

Its 8 a.m. on a Cold Monday Morning in Sydney, Australia and I have no intention of leaving the coziness of my blanket for at least the next 2 hours, after all there has to be some advantage of being back in school.

I toss and turn in bed for the next 30 minutes trying to heed to the advice of the devil in me, “get your sleep and screw the class” is what it says. At 8:30 am however my conscience gets the better of me and sluggishly I let go of my one and only true love (sleeping).

As I begin to get ready I start thinking about what would be happening in class today. Chris Jackson, our OB lecturer always uses the most un-conventional methods of teaching. He taught us the art of understanding teams by simulating an F1 Pitstop in class.

He’s showed us advertisements and movie clips to get his message of Organizational culture and design across and then we’ve had classmates make presentations on certain units of the course. The Organizational behavior class has been a fine example of interactive learning, where in we learn not only from the lecturer and the course notes but also from classmates, movies and other things that we see in daily life.

As I start walking towards college, I begin to look forward to the class. What does Chris Jackson have in store for us today ? He said something about watching a movie called 12 Angry Men, so we would probably be watching a couple of movie clips again about the topics of the day viz. Leadership, Personality and Motivation.

I’m in class at 9:30 am and the first session starts. At 11:00 am Chris announces that the next 90 minutes would be used to sit back, relax and watch the movie 12 Angry Men. Wow, so we would actually be watching the whole movie with rounds of popcorn and chips going around the class. Now that’s something I didn’t expect when I woke up this morning and I am glad I didn’t listen to the devil.

12 Angry Men is a 1957 American drama film adapted from a play. Directed by Sidney Lumet, the film tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the guilt or innocence of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt. The movie was great example of demonstrating different styles of leadership, ways of dealing with people having varying personalities and motivations and indicating the importance of avoiding “Group Think” in making team based decisions.

These were the points that Chris wished to drive home. The movie was also the basis for two class presentations that would be presented next week and would be based on learning’s from the movie.

Movie based teaching is apparently a highly effective method of making people learn and has been used to great effect in organizations as well. SBI (State Bank Of India) chairman, Om Prakash Bhatt apparently used this technique to turn around his organization from an ailing public sector bank to one of the country’s leading financial institutions when he showed the movie “The Legend Of Beggar Vance” to a conclave of 25 of the bank’s senior leaders and coupled it with stories from the Bhagvad gita to illustrate the problems plaguing the company.

As I walked back home after the end of the class, I realized how the MBA might be the only few courses in the world where a lecture would comprise of watching a whole movie in class and taking away a course concept at the end.