Educational Case Studies: Writing#1

When you use cases in teaching it is important that they give a platform for achieving the learning outcomes of the module or course.  Sometimes, however, you just cannot find a case that is up to date, reflective of your own teaching or even specialised enough for your purposes.  If that's where you find yourself, you may turn to writing cases of your own - but where to start?

Let's consider the type of case you will write... or, more accurately, what outcomes do you want to achieve in using the case?

Lundberg, C et al. (2001) suggest that there are 7 types of case to choose from - and, of course, variants and combinations of case types to suit a tutor's needs.

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Outcomes for the various types of case are: 


1. "Iceberg" cases... research and application of conceptual models.
2. "Incident" cases...application of models or student experience.
3. "Illustrative" cases...discussion of textbook model application.
4. "Head" cases...discussion of motivations of principal actor.
5. "Dialogue" cases... discussion of motivations and interactions of principal actors.
6. "Application" cases... application of a management technique.
7. "Data" cases...organising, analysing and drawing conclusions from data.
8. "Issue" cases...discussion of dynamics and context of a situation.
9. "Prediction" cases...multi-part case requiring students to predict possible outcomes.

Now, for each type of case the writer offers a different level of information and structure:

Now all the writer has to do is to come up with an up to date, accessible and researchable event, story, subject.....and start writing.

You didn't think it was easy did you?

Ideas from: Lundberg, C et al., 2001, Case writing reconsidered, Journal of Management Education, Vol 25., No. 4, August.