Lessons From Experts: Improving College Science Instruction Through Case Teaching

The overall aim of this article is to introduce case teaching to college professors who may wish to increase their students' level of engagement with science, mathematics, and engineering. Case teaching is an incredibly adaptable instructional method able to involve students in higher levels of cognitive processing. The explicit purposes of this article are (a) to answer some of the basic questions about case teaching and (b) to show how other science and engineering professors have employed cases in their college courses. The basic questions addressed in the article include the following: What is case teaching? What can case teaching do for college science classrooms? and Where can I go to get more information on case teaching? Information from the National Center for Case Teaching in Science website is referenced. The second half of this article illustrates how cases are used in college science and engineering courses based upon interviews with expert case teachers. Several descriptive vignettes and “lessons” from these experts are available to show how case teaching can be applied in diverse contexts.