Case Studies: Theory

Motivation for case based instruction:

• Examples provided in the casess allow for less hand holding on part of the instructor.
• Cases improve motivations. Students appreciate the reality of the cases and the applicability of what they are learning.

Activities Based on Case Studies

• First mention of a taxonomy of case study uses went this way...
  • Perturbility (is this a word?)
  • Traceability
  • Contrast (HW #7)
  • Analogy/modeling (HW #1)
  • Extension
  • Summarization
• Later it took this form...
  • Modeling
    • Use case to develop another instance
    • That one is a paradigm case
  • Perturbation
    • Have a case and transform it
    • Redevelop/analyze it
    • This involves generating a new case variation, at least to some point, based on changed context
    • Can be done by establishing deltas or pursuing a new design entirely
  • Summarization
    • Create an analysis of the case
  • Traceability
    • Go through a case checking against some question such as, "Were the requirements achieved?"
    • Did they do what they said they would (internal consistency)
  • Contrast
    • Contrast two cases
    • Each student to study one of two cases and then pairwise explain the differences (could possibly be an on-line collaboration).
  • Caricature/Stereotype
    • Extract the distinguishing characteristics, make them stronger
    • This is like leading claims
    • Define what makes this case most interesting
• How well does this taxonomy align with our current library?
  • There are things we can task using the case library
  • There are things the students can do with the case library
  • The question is whether these two sets are/need to be the same
  • What about things students can do with the case library that are not tasked?
  • What about things that are tasked that cannot be done with the library?
    • This could be a problem
    • Or a rationale for creative solutions
• CS 3724 homeworks/activites based on case library use:
  • Case library is used for the following homework:
    1. Use case as a sample, create your own segment in parallel
    2. Explain what happened in a case
    3. N/A
    4. N/A
    5. Analyze what happened in a case and assess it
    6. Analyze a case with respect to a certain model
    7. Compare/contrast two cases
    8. N/A
    9. N/A
    10. Analyze a single case with respect to two models; assess success of model
  • Case library is used for the following in-class assignments:
    • In class #1: Change an input requirement and trace changes to the case
    • In class #10: Develop a new scenario and extend its implications (this uses familiarity with the case study in the text)
  • These activites lead to the following variation on case use taxonomy:
    • Mimic (#1) (similar to analogy/modeling, but at a basic level)
    • Summarize/Explain (#2)
    • Analyze (#5, #6, #10)
      • ...with respect to models (given one, given two, open choice)
      • ...Check for internal consistency
    • Assess (#5, #10)
    • Compare/Contrast (#7)
    • Perturb (In-class assignment #1)
    • Extend (In-class assignment #10)

Characteristics of Cases

• Mapping of activities to cases
  • Do some tasks map best onto cases with certain characteristics?
  • If so, what characteristics? What tasks? What mapping?
• There is messiness and realism in a case study. Stated as a claim:
  • Messiness in a case
    • + Supports realism
    • - But does not provide a complete experience unless there is a story to link the artifacts
• Case studies extend in time as a story or narrative
• Case studies concern practices in addition to objects
• Case studies embody tradeoffs, decisions, conflicts, etc.
• Case studies differ across some dimensions
  • For example, case studies of design efforts are not exactly like case studies of workers and their tools

Case Studies vs. Examples

• Are we doing true case-based learning or are we doing example-based learing based on realistic examples in cases?
• We need to look at other known case-based learning situations (such as professional schools) to examine:
  1. IF they use cases as a basis for any introductory courses
  2. Whether cases are used at all or only some levels of learning [Action: ALL]
• Cases contain examples in a context
• What other paradigms of learning? (such as principle first)

Measures of Effectiveness

• Learning Objectives
  • Discussed the need to base analysis on the learning objectives of the courses that use the case study library
  • A complete skill hierarchy will be difficult to obtain--most educators are less formal
  • We could search for a common set of learning objectives
    • Each educator to identify a few of their most important learning objectives
    • Can extract some from exam material
    • Some sort of voting process at the workshop could tune this down to a workable list
      • That was representative of the courses
      • That could be measured
      • That would be used
• Possible measurement of case-based pedagogy effectiveness could include
  • Measuring the instructor perception of student efficacy
  • Measuring the instructor's self-efficacy in teaching the material
• It would be good to know what learning outcomes we expect from each exercise so we can develop related questions

Terminology

• Some terminology will need precise rather than off-the-street definition:
  • case study
  • case
  • example
  • realistic
  • narrative

General/Miscellaneous Comments

• Could also map what the cases are useful for....
  • as a starting point for analysis
  • as a starting point for experiences
• Discussion on other dimensions:
  • Some other dimensions are...
    • Generate new
    • Analyze old
    • Test hypotheses of knowledge
    • Internalize case or at least the experience of dealing with the case
  • These, and others, may facilitate a matrix with the taxonomy of use to show things such as...
    • What learning has occurred?
    • What learning was supposed to happen?
• We should look at other cases to see how they organize and use the case material
  • Is a case used only once or does the pedagogy return to the case several times during a course
  • What is the case used for? To teach skills, concepts, or to provoke discussions?
  • Add an examples page to the web site to collect the variety of case studies [Action: Con, Completed]
• It seems dangerous to make general claims about case studies without some parameters that define the context of use
• Perhaps a case should have connective threading that links the artifacts together in the same manner they were generated and experienced. There should be a way for a case user to backtrack or follow this thread starting from any artifact of the case.