Page 16 - Case Lab Case Method

Teaching

In the words of Alfred North Whitehead, “the case method

rejects the doctrine that students first learn passively, and

then apply the knowledge.” The case method is not

traditional teaching where the instructor speaks and the

student listens. Rather, the focus is on the student learning

by doing through joint co-operative effort.

Teaching through the case method allows specific
pedagogical issues to be addressed and higher-order skills

to be developed.

Case Characteristics

• A significant business issue or issues

• Sufficient information on which to base conclusions

• No stated conclusion

• However, many cases have characteristics which

obfuscate:

• information that includes ‘noise’ - information that does

not add materially to the rhetoric

• Unstated information that must be inferred from the

case material

• A non-linear structure in which related evidence is

scattered throughout the text and is often disguised

and left to inference