Dear Heather,
This area interests a group of us at Southampton’s Centre for Learning and
Teaching. We recently published an exploratory paper looking at the
contribution of collections of case studies; Ottewill R, Fill K and
Shephard K (2002) Assessing the contribution of collections of case studies
to academic development in higher education. International Journal of
Academic Development 7 (1) 51-62.
In this paper we examined the range and variety of collections (there are
very many), the intended purpose of these collections and their perceived
value. The paper is rather critical in places because, all too often,
collections are established and… , well just left there, with little
apparent attempt to evaluate their usefulness or effect. The paper ends by
proposing a research agenda, styled as a series of questions for academic
developers, about how collections of case studies might be used. We
identified 4 categories of questions relating to; the collections
themselves, to the academics using them, to their role in formal
educational development, and to changes in practice. I hope that it will be
possible to design programmes of research that will help answer these
questions; but it will not be easy….nor is it easy to obtain funding for
such an undertaking.
Most of us use case studies, but how well do we use them and how well
designed are they for this use? I hope that the paper helps.
Kerry Shephard
University of Southampton
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