elearnspace

Jay Cross explores the role of cases in business education: Is the case study method of instruction due for an overhaul? “Most of my learning came from working on cases with my study group. Half a dozen of us met in the evening to suss out the salient points of the next day’s three cases. This exploratory give-and-take was highly participatory, more so that the classroom discussion fielded by a member of the faculty the following day.”
This statement gets at the centre of any type of educational tool or approach: the value is in how the resource/approach enables people to connect with each other and debate/negotiate. Case-based education has the value of providing learners with potential scenarios – a tool to think about how we might act in certain situations. Cases move beyond the lecture to practice implementation. The next step is implementation. Each is a different stage with different affordances.
Gary Klein – in Sources of Power – suggests that experts do not follow steps sequentially. For example, a firefighter entering a hazardous situation does not process the environment according to the way it’s laid out in a text book. Instead, they pattern recognize. They draw from a rich bank (hence the value of experience and expertise) of previous encounters, generating an almost intuitive response. I see cases as one potential approach to learning patterns, rather than steps.