Incorporating Case Studies into a World Food and Population Course

Abstract

The use of case studies in college courses can increase student engagement with the subject matter and improve analytical, problem‐solving, and communication skills. Case studies were introduced in a relatively large (54 students) undergraduate world food and population course at Colorado State University in the spring semester of 2008 and evaluated for their effectiveness. Groups of two to four students selected and presented case studies developed at Cornell University that address human health and nutrition, food production, poverty alleviation, and natural resource management. The quality of the presentations and the learning experience varied considerably among the 16 presenting groups. The most successful presentations were those that had been rehearsed with an instructor, incorporated role playing or other creative techniques, and demonstrated enthusiasm for the topic. In an evaluation at the end of the semester, a majority of students felt the case studies were an important learning experience, improved their presentation skills, and should be retained in future offerings of the course. However, in multiple choice exams, students performed less well on questions based on case studies compared with questions derived from lecture material. This may be a reflection of the ineffectiveness of multiple choice exams to evaluate higher‐level learning. Based on our experience, case studies can make positive contributions to similar courses, especially if efforts are made to improve class discussions and synthesis comments are made by the instructor to tie the case studies to the rest of the course.

Student Presentations of Case Studies to Illustrate Core Concepts in Soil Biogeochemistry

“…Case studies based on modern environmental problems can be an invaluable pedagogic tool to reinforce concepts and translate theoretical knowledge into practical application and holistic understanding. Although case studies traditionally have been applied in medical classes and law classes (Herreid, 2007a), more recent reports have detailed the development of learning activities based around case studies in plant pathology, world food and population courses, and many fields of biology (Econopouly et al, 2010; Garvin, 2003; Herreid, 2007b; Yadav and Beckerman, 2009). Jonassen and Hernandez‐Serrano (2002) suggested that case studies could be viewed as a form of story‐telling that would integrate problem‐solving to promote learning in students.…”

Fostering oral presentation competence in higher education

“…The following theoretical frameworks or concepts were cited in more than two of these studies: the social cognitive theory of Bandura (1997), communication apprehension as a crucial intermediate variable to develop oral presentation competence (McCroskey, 1970) and theories associated with case-based and problem-based learning (e.g. Econopouly, Byrne and Johnson, 2010;Kolber, 2011). Conceptual relations that these studies suggested were that a challenging learning task (Chan, 2011) and…”

“…working with complex, authentic tasks in case-based (Econopouly et al, 2010) or problem-based learning settings (Kolber, 2011) increases presentation performance via increasing students' motivation (De Grez et al, 2009a), that repeatedly practicing presentations for real world audiences increases self-efficacy (Tucker & McCarthy, 2001), and that ordering the presentation learning tasks from simple to complex decreases communication apprehension and thereby improves presentation competence (Grace & Gilsdorf, 2004).…”

“…Other studies also experimented with the content of the presentation task, suggesting that the scientific or practical relevance of the topic positively influenced oral presentation competence. For example, Econopouly et al (2010) and Kolber (2011) studied the effects of learning presentation skills via working on and presenting authentic cases (case-based learning) or problems (problembased learning). Both studies revealed improvements of students' presentation competencies, students' confidence levels, and high appreciation of learning via an authentic task for the students.…”

“…Tucker & McCarthy, 2001;Taylor, 1992) and studies using expert models, for example teachers or other professionals (e.g. Swanson et al, 1992;Econopouly et al, 2010). Only one researcher (Adams, 2004) compared the impact of non-expert (peers) with expert models on the self-efficacy beliefs regarding students' own hypothetical presentation.…”