Mini-Case Study Pedagogy: Experience from a Technical Course in an Information Systems Program

摘要

This Innovate Practice full paper, describes our experience in using the mini-case pedagogy to design and deliver a technical course, “Enterprise Integration” which is a year two course in the Information Systems undergraduate program. Case method is one approach that has been widely adopted in teaching many professions including law, medicine and business. The general practice is to ask students to read the case, usually four to eight pages long, prior to the session, and then spend the whole session discussing the case. However, for technology courses, the students are required to learn concepts and apply them using hands-on software tools through lab sessions. Hence, rather than use long cases, that cover the entire session, we need to use mini-cases that are usually one to two pages long. This pedagogy approach allows the class session to be designed with tight integration across the concept presentation lecture, mini-case analysis and hands-on lab session. We share the pedagogy implementation details and challenges, and discuss our findings and lessons learnt in designing and implementing the mini-case pedagogy. Thus providing one pathway for Information Systems and Computer Science professors to, implement the mini-case pedagogy in “technology heavy” courses.