Case‐Based Teaching: Four Experiences in Educational Software Design

Abstract

Abstract Good teaching is good story telling. Case‐based teaching exploits the basic capacity for students to learn from stories and the basic desire of teachers to tell stories that are indicative of their experiences. The premise of software that used case‐based teaching would be to place a student in a situation that the student found interesting and where the telling of a story would be appreciated. First, case‐based teachers teach the student what he or she needs to know at precisely the point of becoming interested in knowing the information. This information should be presented in the form of stories. Law schools and business schools have been teaching this way for years. They teach cases rather than rules because, by and large, they don't have rules to teach. The second critical part of learning in a case‐based environment is teaching a student to abstract from what the student has been told, and adapting it to situations for which the student was not specifically trained. At the Institute, we have, to date, built four examples of case‐based teaching software. The programs are: VICTOR — a voice and image courtesy tutor — built for Ameritech DUSTIN — a language experience — built for Andersen Consulting CREANIMATE — a biology experience‐built for schools and supported by IBM TAXOPS — a tax opportunity advisor and cross seller — built for the Tax division of Arthur Andersen This paper will discuss these programs and some of the practical and theoretical lessons learned from building them.