Documentation talk:Open Case Studies/Resources/Teaching Guide

I think the changes are looking good! In the spirit of wiki editing, I have taken the liberty to edit sections for clarity. Feel free to roll back the edits if you don't agree with what I have done. Specifically, I:

• took out the beginning focus on PPBL and instead kept the focus on case studies and active, authentic learning (too many references to different pedagogical approaches may be confusing).
• Simplified where necessary.
• added some links to other references for more info (I think this strategy could be expanded - especially related to the teaching approaches - I suspect many of the approaches on your list have been documented).

I am working on some sample "orientation" assignments for the wiki (as promised during our meeting) and will link them here when I have some decent drafts.

I reviewed the Teaching Guide today and made a few notes: Section 1: You may want to shift the focus of this section to outline the purpose of the guide. You may want to start off with your rationale for case studies (from the section on Active vs, Passive learning) The use of case studies provides the instructor an opportunity to create a culture of inquiry in their classrooms because they will be asking students to respond to real-world problems. This approach, combined with an open learning environment, closely mimics real life practice in sustainability education in that it illuminates the ongoing complexity of the problems students are addressing. That the cases never “end” and that they can be considered by students from all over the UBC community highlight their potential as powerful educational tools that can foster inter-disciplinary research of authentic problems. And then move into something like, this guide is intended to help you get started with your case study project by offering:

• getting started resources and sample assignments to introduce wiki editing and the case study assignment to students.
• rationale for case studies as inquiry based learning
• UBCwiki as a platform for collaborative writing and open publishing

Suggested formatting changes:

• consider moving the getting started section up as section 2 (after the intro).
• make sure you edit all reference to “teacher” guide as “teaching” guide or “instructor” – in reference to a person.
• suggest change title of section on active vs. passive learning to Case Studies and Inquiry Based Learning.
• suggest change of title from Benefits of incorporating UBCWiki to UBCWiki for Collaboration and Open Publishing.
• consider adding a section called Using Case Studies in the Classroom: to highlight different approaches: example: looking at a particular question across a variety of case studies; groups unpacking a single case study; groups can take on a single perspective - with each group taking a different one - to highlight the diversity of perspectives brought to bear on a case study;
• consider adding a section on framework for case based discussion: http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/lt/resources/handouts/CaseMethodBestPractices.pdf

Also, wondering about the wording for short –term assignment? Is this necessary - Can we just call it a sample assignment?

Hi all, I wanted to add a few comments as well. Overall, I like how you connected constructivism with using the Wiki, and I feel that this will resonate with faculty.

Consider using more specific information about how to use case-studies in the classroom. There are lots of great resources that you could use to share effective teaching practices using case studies. You may also want to connect these practices with the example assignments that you provide the faculty with. One way of doing this would be to add a section on leading a case-based discussion. Take a look at this resource from Carnegie Mellon, it has a useful section on this https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/instructionalstrategies/casestudies.html

The CMU resource also has a useful section on the context of using case studies that you may wish to adapt and a section on considerations for using case studies.

Goals and Context (excerpt from Carnegie Mellon)

"How you use case studies will depend on the goals, as well as on the format, of your course. If it is a large lecture course, for example, you might use a case study to illustrate and enrich the lecture material. (An instructor lecturing on principles of marketing, for example, might use the case of a particular company or product to explore marketing issues and dilemmas in a real-life context.) Also in a large class you might consider breaking the class into small groups or pairs to discuss a relevant case. If your class is a smaller, discussion-format course, you will be able to use more detailed and complex cases, to explore the perspectives introduced in the case in greater depth, and perhaps integrate other instructional strategies, such as role playing or debate.

Considerations

Regardless of the format in which you employ case studies, it is important that you, as the instructor, know all the issues involved in the case, prepare questions and prompts in advance, and anticipate where students might run into problems. Finally, consider who your students are and how you might productively draw on their backgrounds, experiences, personalities, etc., to enhance the discussion.

Other ideas that came up in our meeting Oct. 31:

• Ask instructors to give small reflective blurbs of why they used these and how, value they saw
• focus on what's really important for instructors to know to use these; less big blocks of text, maybe cut out a bit
  • more bullet points? maybe a picture or two?
  • UBC Library Flickr account has images of students working
• move into section out of header so not in accordion
• CMU resource Lucas linked to--could have whole section on discussions around cases from this page: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/instructionalstrategies/casestudies.html
• sample assignments section
  • put a little context around them explaining what kinds of courses and assignments these are
• Discuss somewhere other ideas for assignments--across disciplines and courses

Hello everyone,

You will see that I have made major changes to the Wiki page and that most of it has gone! (I know we can revive older versions, but I also have a copy of the original document on google drive as well). I think Cindy made a really good point about pairing down the teaching guide to just the essentials. I think a lot of the theory stuff can go elsewhere -- perhaps the "about" page??

From our last meeting, my vision for the teaching guide is as follows:

- section 1 states the purpose of the guide (this version is complete, feel free to comment) - section 2 is getting started and will list technical information about the Wiki and some links (I may need some help here) - section 3 will provide tips on how to teach with case studies using the information from the Carnegie Mellon web site as well as a few more articles I will look into. If we are going to keep the sample assignments, I think we should use sub-pages under this page. For each assignment sub-page I will explain the class and context of the assignment.

I took out the constructivist stuff for now, but I can also refer to it in the instructional tips section. I think it would also fit in nicely there.

I will continue to work on this throughout the week. Please feel free to comment and edit as you see fit. Thanks!

Also, do we want to link out to external sites (Wikipedia pages, for example) that may also outline social constructivist theories of learning, etc? Or do we want to keep it within the UBC wiki?

I think having links out to other sites is fine; this is a resource that teachers would use, so perhaps focusing on sites that are either research articles or university websites might be more "respected" by many than Wikipedia? Though that need not be the case, it sometimes is for teachers!

For the Getting Started with Wiki - do we still want to elaborate on the hand-out or leave it virtual?

I think having a link to the resources we've already created, as I sent via email, would be best--those are going to be updated centrally, whereas a handout will not be. Here is where those are on the UBC wiki: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Documentation:Open_Case_Studies/Guide/WikiGuide

When the new website URL comes out we can point people to that page as it appears on the website, because it looks nicer on the website than on the wiki. But we don't have a permanent URL for that right now, so let's just use the above link to the wiki page.