1. Course materials with a student-centred case-based design
Paul Lam
Daniel Ong
25 October, 2006

2. About us Carmel McNaught, Paul Lam, Vivian Lee Daniel Ong
Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (學能提升及硏究中心), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Daniel Ong
Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

3. Context
Teaching vs. Learning

4. Context
Theory and then drill?
Or, inquiry-based learning?

5. Context
True understanding

6. Context
Peer learning

7. Context
Learning skills

8. Case-based learning
A case is a story, often told as a sequence of events in a particular place. Students put themselves in the role of an actor in the situation
Presentation of cases with problems to solve
Identification of learning issues
Acquiring information
Understanding information
Developing a plan of actions
Arriving at case solutions

9. History Early use of Case-Based learning Currently
Law schools as early as late 1800s
Business schools since early 1900s
Currently
Professional schools: medicine, dentistry, law, business, teachers
General education, humanities
Science?

10. Goals Able to formulate concepts (hypotheses) in a systematic way
Analyze and critically review data and ideas
Integrate knowledge across different areas
Apply scientific knowledge to real world
Improve thinking & problem-solving skills
Learn form their peers learn & remember more
Feel motivated in learning

11. UGC Teaching Development Grant (2001-04) Project
Incorporating skills in metacognition and case-based teaching and learning into tertiary science education
Major investigators
Leo Lau, Physics, CUHK
Peter Au, Chemistry, BUHK
Carmel McNaught, CLEAR, CUHK

12. Year 1 Undergraduate Course in Materials Science
Design philosophy
Coach students to acquire the concept of learning responsibility and skills in self- learning, collaborative learning, and presentation, in the context of introductory materials science

13. Year 1 Undergraduate Course in Materials Science
A case
CASE: Peter Lam's Puzzle in Organizing Data for his First Job Interview
Peter Lam received a phone call from David Chan, HR manager of Compass Technology Ltd. at 9:45am this morning, who requested him to attend a one-hour job interview at 2pm. Peter is extremely happy and excited, partly because he will have his first job interview two months prior to his graduation from the BSc Program in Materials Science and Engineering at CUHK, and partly because he knows that Compass Technology is a leading company in the global business of tape packaging products for the integrated circuit industry. But he is also very nervous, particularly because David specifically asked him to prepare a ten minute presentation on his knowledge on materials science and engineering.

14. Courses involved

15. Overall course structure
Teaching of main concepts
Self learning
Peer teaching
Cases
Group discussion
Presentation and class teaching

16. Evaluation data Student Survey Focus group interviews Exam results
In class observation
Teacher survey

17. Findings Learning ( pilot case-based, )) “I learned more by going through the cases than what I could have learnt if the course had been conducted in a traditional lecture format”
The data suggest that students comments regarding the usefulness seem divided, though it would be fair to say that most students agree that learning through cases enabled them to learn more than what traditional lectures could deliver.
Note that a smaller percentage of postgraduate students commented positively. The reason to this may be found in data from focus group meeting which suggests that some students would have felt more positively toward independent case-based learning, if they could get more guidance from teachers, if the heavy workload were adjusted and if there had been much more communication between the instructor and the students.
Conclusion:
It is thus important for the teachers to do more on guiding students throughout their learning. It is also necessary for the students to actively seek help once they have problems on their independent learning

18. Learning ( refined case-based, 2004-05 ) Students’ answers to survey question:
In this set of data, similar trend appears, that post-graduate students show less enthusiasm in adopting the case-based approach. Several reasons may explain the somewhat neutral or negative feedback from postgraduate students:
Students who are in part-time education find the case-based approach too demanding as a significant part of the case-based components requires self-study.
Other students view the nature of the taught postgraduate program as inappropriate for case-based learning which requires great amount of self-learning.
This gives us insights into the design of case-based courses: that the workload need to be careful measured and that may benefit more if they have stronger support in the topics on which the case is based.

19. Enjoyment (pilot case-based, ) Students’ answers to survey question: “I found completing the cases enjoyable”
The data suggest an increase of students finding case-based learning experience enjoyable, for postgraduate students several factors might be have negative effects on students’ learning experience:
1) Workload of the learning activities not manageable
2) Unfamiliarity of the subject
3) Lack of understanding of topics covered in the course.
1) the workload of each section in the cases was unevenly distributed. This led to the fact that some students needed to do more and some did less.
Suggestions:
Clearer guidelines and better teacher-student communication) will enhance learning experience

20. Enjoyment (refined case-based, 2004-05) Students’ answers to survey question:
In academic year , the feedback from students shows slight increase of acceptance and that comments have been more positive.

21. Acquisition of skills Students’ answers to survey question: “The cases have helped me acquire the following skills which are important for my future career:
The data is collected from all the students across the two academic years, including both undergraduate students and postgraduate students. Feedback to this question has been very positive, it is shown that a majority of students regarded the case-based approach as helping them to develop crucial skills for their future career.

22. Findings on opinions

23. Assignment performance

24. Strengths
Case-based learning helps students gain better understanding of theories
Students observed improvement in their skills including problem-solving skills, group-working skills, and self-learning skills and presentation skills
Available data of exam scores suggests that students perform well in answering questions that require knowledge of fact and perform even better in questions that require higher analytical skill. Students had become more able to apply relevant material when answering analysis based questions.

25. Weaknesses
For some part-time postgraduates, they found case-based approach which demands group work time consuming
Students require stronger learning support in terms of guidance, teaching support and communications with tutors
Students required strong guidance – it is important for the lecturer to disseminate more concrete instructions and basic knowledge before the start of the case project (maybe in the form of a briefing session), give tips and direction to students during the process, and give more comments to students after their presentations.

26. Designing the supplementary package
Inquiry-based
Balancing lecturing and student inquisitive learning
Not about knowing a lot, but about true understanding of the important and basic
Peer learning
Student motivation (variety of activities, interesting topics, stories, cases)
Teacher help