Cracking the Case

Abstract

Research has noted an increase in the use of assessed group projects across disciplines in institutions of higher learning. Consequently, this study investigates the prompt for an assessed group case-study project in a sophomore business module in order to provide lecturers with tools and techniques for probing a prompt document. The authors use a taskanalysis framework developed for task-based language teaching to examine the project's requirements and chain of integrated tasks. The study shows that the project prompt was dense and complicated and the component tasks were highly interactive and complex. Further, the study reveals that group case-study projects can play an important role in developing the team skills needed for future real-life projects.

Introduction to Effective Teaching of Technical Communication

“…Each unit was focused on a multi-stage, complex, realistic case that asked students to make specific decisions and to craft documents within messy problem spaces. This case-based approach has been shown to help students develop teamwork skills (Thondhlana & Smith, 2013) and audience awareness (Robles & Baker, 2019). While technical communication scholarship has identified numerous benefits of online service-learning projects, including increasing students' self-accountability and engagement (Nielsen, 2016), the speed and structure of the adapted-TBL units largely precluded working with real community partners.…”