At an early stage of its inception, this method was widely used in the courses of post-graduate students in the MBA program. Over time, the case method began to be applied in many educational institutions not only in the US but also in other countries. In recent years it has been widely spread in the study of medicine, law, mathematics and other sciences. In Russia, the case method in teaching began to be used in the 80-ies first in Moscow State University, and then in academic and industrial institutions, and later in special courses for training and retraining of specialists.
The Harvard Business School still created most of the cases used in today's business schools. In Western business schools 30-40% of study time is paid to analysis of case studies. On an average, 35-40% of study time is dedicated to an analysis of typical situations. In the Business school of Chicago University 25% of the time is shared to "cases" , in Business school of Columbia University 30%, and in the famous Wharton 40% [2].
What is a "case study"? "Case" (from English case situation, a portfolio) is an interactive method of teaching which is used for solving educational tasks and updates certain set of knowledge to be learned.
Case study a technology based on the acquisition of sets (cases) text teaching materials on selected topic and tasks on specific problem situation and transfer them to students for self-study (with advice from the instructor), and solving problems followed by a group discussion of options for developing the most efficient and creative proposals [3]. The students together try to find a solution to the problem contained in the case.
Each "case" may be divided into three components. The first part is a description of a particular situation that took place in real life. The peculiarity of the situation lies in the fact that it contains a problem requiring resolution. In the second part of the case there is a summary of additional information that helps the student to solve the problem. This information may contain text, diagrams, tables, graphs showing the contents of an existing problem. The third part contains tasks to "case". Basically they are questions whose answers are pushing participants to discuss the solution of the problem.
