CASE-BASED LEARNING
Overview
Case-Based learning is a theory that a student can learn from past cases and apply the knowledge they learned from them to a new case. The past cases will have a solution to them, but will not include how the solution came to be. The student will have to think and rationalize about how the solution occurred, if the case was actually solved or the reasons why it wasn’t, and keep the cases in mind when soling the case that they have been presented with. This is just like taking past experiences and applying them to current ones. This helps students gain a better understanding of the process and how to make strategies to solve cases.
Origins & Major Contributors
David H. Jonassen is the major contributor to Case-based learning theory. It didn’t’ start out that way first. Jonassen started off study and getting a degree in business administration and finance. This lead to a $1.60/hour job, which during the time was the top of the pay scale. While working he became aware that he wanted to become more involved in “educational Media”. He then earned a master’s degree in Elementary Education and taught for a couple of years. After that he sought a doctoral degree in educational media/educational psychology and became a leading expert in the field of instructional technology.
His model was the basis for case based learning. There were two models that Dr. Jonassen came up with. These can be found on the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences from the Utah State University’s web page on case based studies. The first was called mind tools. This is where “knowledge construction tools used to learn with not from”. This is where the student “is in complete control of their learning environment where they organize and interpret their own personal knowledge.” This involves a few different aspects
· Databases: This allows students to use simple and complex queries to solve problems. Critical thinking is a skill they perform when they ask questions on how things came to be.
· Semantic mapping: This is the same as concept mapping.
· Spreadsheets: It allows students to manipulate certain factors of a problem, such as a “what if” scenario and the student will get to see the effects throughout the entire sheet.
The second model is Instructional design models for well-structured and ill-structured problem-solving learning outcomes. Case-Based learning is similar to problem based learning so it is evident that its origins starts there.
Characteristics
· Reasoning – the thinking process involved to figure out how the case was solved
· Recall – being able to remember the main aspects of the case so that they can be applied to future endeavors.
· Similarity – this is here since people find that cases similar to what they are working on will be more comfortable to work with something that isn’t connected in any way.
· Performance behaviors – There are different behaviors that a student will acquire after successful CBL.
Implications for Instructional Design
There are many different implications for instructional design when it comes to case-based learning theory. During the instructional design process, depending on what the design is, the learner could learn not just from information in front of them, but they could also learn from past experiences from other people so that they could be more confident in what they are learning. With cases, it would also let the student become more engaged in what they are learning depending on what the instructional designer is wanting the learner to do.
Case-Based learning theory opens up more possibilities for the instructional designer to pull material from and the designer would have to manage how much time the other cases would take and which ones the learner would need to pull information from. This could take more time, but it would lead to a more in-depth learning experience.
Affordances & Challenges (Ongoing Debates)
The affordances that this type of learning involve the following
· More precise learning.
· Better learning experiences.
The challenges are also presented in the texts
· Not deep enough for complicated material.
· The time it will take with each case.
· The schema that a person may or may not have before the learning.
Example
A student is making an ID project for class and needs a little help with figuring out how to complete the project. While the student is working on their project, they will go and look at different ID projects that have already been completed in the real world that have the same theme. These cases could be from any aspect of life, but they must center around the instructional design field since it is something that the student is learning about. The student will read the old cases and figure out the process that the case used and will also figure out if there is anything wrong with the case that could have been done better.
Important Seminal Works
The most important work that was found when concerning Case-Based Learning Theory is "Facilitating case reuse during problem solving" by Jonassen, D.H., & Lo, J. in 2006
Web Resources
My Power-Point Presentation: PDF
References
http://web.missouri.edu/jonassend/CV-JONASSEN.pdf
http://itls.usu.edu/groups/6505_knowledgebase/revisions/945a3/4/
Cardiff University - http://medicine.cf.ac.uk/medical-education/undergraduate/why-choose-cardiff/our-curriculum/what-case-based-learning-copy/
http://www.cidde.pitt.edu/fds/lrn_casebased.htm
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CC2-3VA8UfwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=case+based+learning&ots=n6lVPWbcaD&sig=ZmCEoZ3FJF9XupoQrKi7NdKCdMU#v=onepage&q=case%20based%20learning&f=false
Luke-Henry Martin Hahn Last updated 3/11/14
