Facilitating Student Engagement: Teaching with Cases

Abstract

In this paper, we will show the usefulness of case studies for student engagement. Facilitation of student engagement in a third year engineering course is examined. From experience, we know that content of the course, Industrial Health and Safety, is easy to follow. Finding the right answers to given questions during labs does not require much effort, and consequently, students become disengaged. During winter 2010, we took the challenge of revising the course to encourage students to pursue deep learning during labs by using cases. These cases are based on real situations, gathered by reviewing text books, old project reports, newspapers, etc. We no longer ask students to answer direct questions from materials that have already been presented to them in previous classes. We now give students cases related to the content of that particular lab. We assign two or three students to work together to find answers by reading the given case. The process of case design, the impact observed within a third year engineering course, and lessons that would be valuable to other disciplines will be discussed.