Is effective: It employs active learning, involves self-discovery where the teacher serves as facilitator.
Builds the capacity for critical thinking: It uses questioning skills as modeled by the teacher and employs discussion and debates.
Exercises an administrative point of view: Students must develop a framework for making decisions.
Models a learning environment: It offers an exchange and flow of ideas from one person to another and achieves trust, respect, and risk-taking.
Models the process of inductive learning-from-experience: It is valuable in promoting life-long learning. It also promotes more effective contextual learning and long-term retention.
Mimics the real world:Decisions are sometimes based not on absolute values of right and wrong, but on relative values and uncertainty.
WHAT ARE SOME WAYS TO USE THE CASE METHOD APPROPRIATELY?
Choose an appropriate case Cases can be any of the following (Indiana University Teaching Handbook, 2005):
Finished cases based on facts; these are useful for purposes of analysis.
Unfinished open-ended cases; where the results are not clear yet, so the student must predict, make suggestions, and conclusions.
Fictional cases that the teacher writes; the difficulty is in writing these cases so they reflect a real-world situation.
Original documents, such as the use of news articles, reports, data sets, ethnographies; an interesting case would be to provide two sides of a scenario.
Develop effective questions Think about ways to start the discussion such as using a hypothetical example or employing the background knowledge of your students.
Get students prepared To prepare for the next class ask students to think about the following questions:
What is the problem or decision?
Who is the key decision-maker?
Who are the other people involved?
What caused the problem?
What are some underlying assumptions or objectives?
