[MUSIC] So in business education one of the key assessment tasks that we have is that we provide students with case studies where a particular company is facing a problem. And what I learned from these assessments, from my students especially, is that it's really important to identify the right problem to solve. A really interesting case study is of a soft drink company that taught that people are buying their product because of the taste. And so they did a blindfold test where they put the competitive product and their own product, and what they found was most people liked the competitor's. So what this company did was actually change their whole original formula and people didn't like it because they were asking the wrong problem, or solving the wrong problem. So people were not buying the product because of taste. People were buying the product because of the feelings they had towards the product. So therefore, the assumptions were totally wrong and they needed to question that assumption. [MUSIC] >> So the most important strategy we have in solving physics problems is always to step back and work out what the big picture is. You're often given a lot of words, a lot of detail in the problem, but you've got to be able to abstract, where does the physics come in? Physics model for how things are going to behave. So, here is a typical problem that I'll show you. We're asking the question, when will our eggs start to slide down the pan? So, we, first of all, just for your own sake, you draw yourself a little sketch showing you what the angles are, have it firm in your mind exactly what's going on. Then, we draw a very important kind of diagram called a free body diagram which is an abstraction that again, encapsulates the physics involved. In this case we're looking at what are the only forces that are acting on the egg. Because one of the physics principles you know is that an object won't move unless there's a force acting on it. So in this case, we know that there's a force of gravity that's pulling the egg down. There's the normal force from the pan that's preventing the gravity pulling the egg down. And there's the friction force that's preventing the egg from sliding down the pan. Now, so we draw ourselves a little diagram showing those forces. Once you've done that, then the rest of the solution is quite easy. We consider which forces are acting in which directions and we can then deduce the angle at which the pan has to be held. In order for the component of gravity to be stronger than the frictional force which is preventing the egg from sliding. [MUSIC] >> In the health sciences when you're looking at a case based problem, you need to first look at the key words in the question. Often, this is a step that students miss, and this is where they lose marks. So you need to actually look at, is the person asking me here to list something where I just need to write down what's associated. Do I need to actually describe, which means I need to provide more detail. Or in most cases when doing a case based problem, you need to compare and contrast issues. So this would require you in order to define what's being stated in the problem but you also create comparisons. So it makes you be for example it worth talking about a patient with atherosclerosis. You might compare stress with increased blood pressure, and how that might relate then, to problems with the blood vessels. So, all those things have to be connected. [MUSIC] Another strategy, when looking at a case based problem is concept mapping. So, what I tell students to do is to actually, look at the problem and then underline all the key bits of information and then create a list of that information. And then get a big piece paper and start putting those ideas on the paper and drawing arrows between the concepts that link. I also find this is a good time when I say write a paper that may be links to stress with atherosclerosis, it's actually write down the name of the author on that linkage. So when I go back to write my answer I know where I actually read that material, this also helps me construct my own answer. And it means I can refer to the people's ideas that I've actually got my knowledge from. But it means that I'm actually synthesizing that knowledge into my own answer, rather than just paraphrasing or using quotes from their material. [MUSIC]
