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Clyde F. (Kipp) Herreid is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, academic director of the University Honors Program and co-director of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. He has been known to dress up as Charles Darwin when lecturing.
What is the case-study approach to teaching?
This is an approach where the teacher uses stories to convey an educational message. All teachers occasionally use stories, but most of these are simply "asides" or vignettes. But, in case-study teaching, the story line is the central way that a teacher frames the message that he or she wishes to convey. Students receive a three- to five-page story (e.g., on the use of cloning in stem cell research) and are asked to analyze the situation or the data that makes up the narrative. The story serves as a hook into the material. Students do not simply memorize facts, equations or principles just because the teacher says they are important. Instead, they learn the material in order to solve a problem, usually through a teacher-led discussion or with small student groups analyzing the case.
This approach has been standard fare for years in schools of law, business and medicine. Why was it not used in the sciences?
Case-study teaching in the formal sense had its origin in the Harvard Law and Business schools about 100 years ago. In these disciplines, history is an important part of the discipline. In law, previous cases are used as precedence in determining the resolution of current cases. Also, in business schools, teachers naturally speak about companies and their experiences in the marketplace. Case studies are a natural fit. They also are a natural fit for medicine; each patient is a case. In the past 30 years, several dozen medical schools have been using cases throughout their curriculum. But in the basic sciences, we tend not to place as much emphasis on the history of the discipline, but are focused primarily on moving the knowledge base of the field forward. We do not have a strong tradition of looking to the past. There is one important exception: A chemist, James Conant at Harvard, returned from his stint as science advisor to Franklin Roosevelt after World War II convinced we were teaching science wrong. He revised his lecturing, using only stories for the entire framework for his science classes. Nobody picked up on that idea in a serious way until we in Buffalo started experimenting with the method about 15 years ago.
You're considered a pioneer in using the case-study approach to teach science. Why did you decide to champion this approach?
It's clear that the lecture method fails many students. For evidence, all you have to do is turn to our grades in the large introductory science classes across the country. You will find that 30 to 40 percent of our students either drop or receive "Ds" and "Fs." This is hardly success. We can blame it all on the students, but we should consider the possibility that the teaching method may be at fault. Many students simply do not learn well by sitting passively in a lecture class. There are more than a thousand studies that show that students working in small, co-operative, learning teams learn better, retain what they learn longer and enjoy the learning experience more than sitting in a lecture classroom. So, why do we continue to use the lecture method?
What kind of response have you gotten from students?
Most students overwhelmingly prefer the use of case studies in teaching. However, about 15 percent still favor the lecture method, even if they have had a good experience in a case-study classroom. I suspect that the same would be true for faculty; they have survived the lecture method quite well and have a strong bias toward its use. Most of us have never seen any other method of teaching science. In fact, we have come to be science faculty through a rather Darwinian process: the people who did not learn well by the lecture method left science.
Why is this approach so effective?
When students grapple with a real-world problem, the chances are excellent that they will remember it better than hearing a theoretical lecture. There is an old adage: the people who teach, learn best. With cases, students have to articulate their views; they are in the role of a teacher—and they learn best. Also, people love stories, right from the beginning of their childhood. Case-study teaching provides a context for learning.
Can you give me some examples of some of the case studies that you use in your teaching?
Currently, I am teaching a course in Scientific Inquiry that emphasizes the way science is really conducted. I use case studies on cold fusion, genetically modified food, forensic use of DNA in the courtroom, AIDS research and population control. Also, I have students develop their own case studies; they go to high school and elementary classrooms in the community to teach them. You will notice that these cases have a strong emphasis on how science impacts society. These are the best cases to garner students' interest in science.
What is the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science?
Nancy Schiller in the UB Science & Engineering Library and I have collaborated on the case-study project for many years. We received several national grants, including funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Science Foundation. We were asked by these organizations to set up a National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science because what we were doing in Buffalo had a clear national agenda. We run workshops and conferences each year in Buffalo, attracting hundreds of college teachers from across the country who come to learn how to teach with cases and write them. In fact, we even have had international visitors from Australia, Mexico, Turkey and Sweden. In addition, we have a prominent Web site where case studies and teaching notes are posted so that faculty in disciplines of engineering, chemistry, biology, psychology and others may find suitable case teaching materials. This site registers millions of hits per year and more than a thousand new visitors each day. You can find it at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/case.html.
What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?
I think it is useful to mention the following:
Our Web site has been recognized by the NSF as a National Science Digital Library collection, i.e., "a digital library of exemplary resource collections and services organized in support of science education at all levels."
Our case collection also has been cited as a source for model case studies for science teaching in the 2003 National Academy of Science report entitled "BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists."
We welcome case submissions! Our goal is to have 300 case studies-complete with teaching notes-published on our Web site by Jan. 1, 2005. We accept case submissions in all areas of science, including the life sciences, physical sciences (chemistry, physics and earth science), engineering, mathematics, statistics, computer science, psychology, anthropology, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and science education, among others. People can send their cases to me at herreid@buffalo.edu or Nancy Schiller at schiller@buffalo.edu. We encourage people thinking about submitting a case for our collection to take a look at the teaching notes on our Web site to getan idea of what they should include.