Everything you need to know about teaching cases

Kovin was struggling. He had lost his friend and partner the year before, and after their decades of partnership, taking over as CEO had made sense. But he could feel the tension in the senior management meeting. The team were enjoying the benefits of their commercial success – they could attract talent, offer competitive salaries, develop more meaningful patents. But at what cost? Could they really still consider themselves a non-profit social enterprise? 

In the age of AI and Co-Pilot, the teaching case is gaining attention as a useful teaching tool. It not only consolidates lessons around central analytical themes, but also tests students’ analytical and interpretation skills. 

• Flip students’ presentations for more in-depth learning
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A teaching case like this one brings real-world difficulties into the classroom, allowing students to apply what they’ve learned and solve problems. This case tells the story of anti-apartheid activist-turned-optometrist Kovin Naidoo, who finds himself leading a multinational social enterprise after the death of his partner. He struggles to balance his deeply held commitments to social change with the benefits of a fast-commercialising organisation. Studying this, students experience CEO-level tensions balancing profit and purpose, and work through how to balance competing value systems.

How do teaching cases work?

In the classroom, the lecturer introduces the case, describing the main protagonist, the context that they are operating in, and the dilemma that they are faced with. Teaching cases are not short of drama. They typically end on a cliffhanger, that nail-biting “now what?” moment, which students must then solve. Like a detective in a novel, students piece together the main facts, identify the red herrings, and through this process apply theoretical frameworks. Teaching cases are wonderful tools for critical thinking, synthesis and analysis.

For many years, the teaching case was seen as the domain of law and business schools. But steady work by publishers such as Emerald, IVEY, Harvard, Yale and the Case Centre has seen the scope of cases widening. 

What they have in common is a commitment to developing cases that transport students to different contexts, where they can immerse themselves in the detail of the problem and apply their learnings, across a range of disciplines. It is this DNA that makes them a useful tool in the AI learning world.

Cases contextualise and tailor our curriculum. In doing so, they are an anchor in our efforts to build nuanced teaching materials, providing alternatives to standard scenarios which, when repeated, risk one-dimensional, monocausal teaching.

Because of their focus on different situations, they contribute to inclusivity. Not only do they provide contextual variation but they engage with core concepts in a multitude of ways to facilitate learning. They allow us to use storytelling to address difficult topics that have the potential to marginalise or exclude. They encourage simulation and group work and create a dialogue between theory and practice, both teaching processes that contribute to professional relevance. As a result, students are immersed in problem-based, action-oriented learning techniques, which results in them being “engaged in, and structuring their own learning” – one of the pillars of inclusive teaching practice.

But it is the teaching note that is the lecturer’s friend. It introduces new pedagogy and approaches. Anchored in Bloom’s Taxonomy, it builds the teaching narrative, specifying the learning outcomes and how theoretical frameworks can be taught.

We are seeing innovations in case writing as the format gains popularity, such as:

• Short cases: Harvard is pioneering cases of 800 words (the length of this article) with a snappy dilemma. These can be fictional or drawn from secondary literature, building an informed narrative around a figure they can relate to. Taylor Swift is the focus of this case, for example, which requires little preparation time and sparks lively discussion. 
• Visual cases: We’ve been seeing comic book-style teaching notes that encourage storyboarding and description of both theory and process. Visual cases encourage broad discussion as students read between the lines, stimulated by both the style of graphics and minimised narrative. IMD’s Netflix: streaming wars and IBS’ Turbulence on the Tarmac are stylistically different, setting a different tone for discussion and debate.  
• Multimedia cases: Animation or short-form interviews that students can interact with are becoming common in teaching cases. Role-playing can range from the classic Oxford-style debate, where students develop opposing arguments, to materials such as this animation by IE Business School, which allows chronological learning across a historical timeline. 
• Raw teaching cases encourage students to research the dilemma that they are presented with. These cases are crisp in their presentation of the dilemma, and require students to then research and investigate the problem and solution. Pioneered by Yale, Raw Cases teach students how to synthesise information. Examples include this case on SELCO, and this debate-style approach to analysing the  Systems of Exchange framework.
• Students writing teaching cases as assignments: The NACRA community and our colleague Maria Ballesteros-Solas have developed the idea of putting students in the driving seat.  Here, students write a teaching case and note as an assignment. It requires students to research a dilemma and establish theoretical links – a creative process that encourages deep analysis and application of theory to practice.

Teaching cases are not new but the questions educators are grappling with on the use of AI have refocused our attention on the value that they bring to the classroom. They bring real-world dilemmas for students to think through, where the applied nature of the work means that there is no one-size-fits-all response. By encouraging group work and interactive and inclusive teaching practice, they help us as teachers contextualise our content and create opportunities for rich, structured debate and embedded learning.

Kerryn Krige is senior lecturer of teaching practice at the Marshall Institute at the London School of Economics. 

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