Online case teaching of finance: Design moves that improve employability outcomes

This paper examines how finance instructors adapt the case method to online delivery and proposes design moves that strengthen employability outcomes, decision quality, and participation. Using a qualitative, exploratory design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with finance professors across Asia-Pacific (APAC) business schools that covered instructional design, facilitation, assessment, and technology use. Data was thematically coded and interpreted through the lenses of community of inquiry, cognitive load, and self-determination theory. Findings point to five reproducible moves that improved online outcomes: scaffolded pre-class models, transparent cold-call rotation, time-boxed breakout valuation, live polling on decision forks, and a rotating scribe working in a shared sheet. A 48-hour memo then secured individual judgment, reported gains included higher-quality participation, cleaner documentation, and faster team convergence, alongside frictions such as uneven quantitative readiness, digital fatigue, and challenges attributing individual contributions in groups. The study is limited by instructor perspectives from the APAC context and a cross-sectional snapshot; future work should add multisite student outcome data, comparative platform analyses, and longitudinal tracking of workplace transfer. Practical guidance includes providing modelling templates, publishing a cold-call roster, using poll and repoll cycles, assigning a scribe, grading a short memo, and tracking a small set of weekly metrics on a one-slide dashboard. Well-designed online case teaching can widen access for working learners and international cohorts while maintaining rigour. The paper offers a finance-specific playbook that links the online case method to employability skills with observable metrics and reproducible routines. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.