Welcome to the Science Case Network!
SCN supports a community of science educators, learners, researchers, developers, and professional organizations interested in furthering the accessibility, development, and use of cases and problem based learning (PBL).
View the video above for a brief introduction to Science Case Net.
Spotlight on Case Scholars, SOTL Scholars, Mentors and Group Leaders
Natalie G. Farny, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is a part of the inaugural cohort of SCN New Case Fellows. Her recent case study Up All Night: A Mini-Case on Diabetes has been accepted by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science to be published on their website.
Example cases by student groups
Ellen M. Wisner, New Jersey Institute of Technology, designed a semester long project to help my students write their own cases in her honors course with the help of Kipp Herreid, her mentor in the New Case Fellow program.
In Insights into Student Development of Case Studies, she shares what she has learned while developing and implementing this project over the past two years including student response to this project.
Science Case Network Fellow, Sarah A. Orlofske, Northeastern Illinois University, shares her experience in developing, implementing, and publishing her case addressing food web misconceptions.
“The case study is presented as a research problem faced by a pair of undergraduate researchers who discover that indeed they have ‘missed’ a trophic level in their study. As the students in the class read the story, they can also create the food web networks by hand (simplified, conceptual model) and mathematically using the software program R.”
Students worked to build the world’s largest fractal as well as a new appreciation of mathematics as art.
SCN SOTL Scholar, Rachel Bayless, makes a case for mathematics in the humanities. Her SoTL project this past semester explored whether or not teaching with cases changes students’ perceptions of mathematics. Real-world examples provided motivation as students completed text assignments, while each homework assignment focused on fabricated real-world-type problems. Case studies were used followed by a re-evaluation of student attitudes using survey methods.
One case features data from the controversial presidential election in Chile in 1970 from the perspective of a young mother who has questions. Students discover the mathematical implications of the voting system at that time. Read more from Rachel Bayless at Agnes Scott College and her Math for the Liberal Arts course. Bayless_PDF
Networking for Vision and Change
