Page 26 - CL Case Structure

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 be 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 2. The rationale for this lies in the view