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These areas will impact and colour the questions set for the case study
and its use for example; who is the target audience and at what level of
the educational process are they? In the traditional case study questions
set for undergraduate will be substantially different from those used with
post-experience. Short cases however, may help ameliorate this question
differential?

In 1956 George A. Miller formulated the chunk concept (2). A concept
that today has some, if limited, appeal for explaining of the advantages
of short case studies.

Chunking refers to the strategy of breaking down information into bite-
sized pieces so the brain can more easily digest new information. If
university courses are being fore-shortened then there may be a case
for ‘chunking’ business cases into more manageable bite sizes i.e. short
cases.

This would require that the course module was divided into smaller
related cases and these become the basis for the lessons. It could be
predicated that these short cases could be used as building blocks of
varying complexity to underpin the final traditional examination style
case study.

Short cases, if organized in a logical and progressive way, can provide a
platform for addressing the strictures identified in Diagram 6. The
rationale for this lies in the view that chunking cases doesn’t only work
for typical linear instruction, it also works for learning objects, for non-
linear approaches to learning as well as discovery learning. In addition,
short cases have the facility to group together conceptually related
information thereby making it meaningful and easier to understand.

When you have a solid module-lesson-topic structure, organize the
cases so each consists of one chunk of related information. However,
this requires being crystal clear on the participants’ learning objectives
from start and thereafter with each case.