Writing a Teaching Case and Teaching Note: A Reference Guide

Abstract

Writing a teaching case and teaching note differs from writing a research paper. In this guide, we explain what an author needs to consider to write a good teaching case and accompanying teaching note. We describe how to increase a case’s teaching value by linking it to pertinent concepts or theories, how to make a case more appealing to students through contextual nuances, and what content to include to enhance the usefulness of the teaching note for instructors. We write this paper to address the increased interest in writing teaching cases in recent years and to update an earlier CAIS paper that the third author wrote alone. We hope that the guide will help enable and not unduly constrain IS scholars who wish to bring realistic and helpful real-life examples from our field to our students.