Writing your own case studies

Once you and your pupils are familiar with the case study approach to exploring systems engineering you may find that they are able to research and write their own case studies. There are several approaches to this task.

You, the teacher, carry out most if not all of the research and provide your pupils with an information pack from which each pupil develops their own case study. An alternative to this is for the pupils to use the information pack in groups and work collaboratively to develop the case study.

You, the teacher, require the pupils to carry out the research so that they develop their own information pack from which they write the case study. There are several variations on this. Each pupil carries out their own research and writes their own case study. The pupils work in groups to carry out the research and use the information to write individual case studies. The pupils work in groups to carry out the research and write the case studies as a group activity. You can make the task demand extra communication skills by requiring pupils to prepare information packs that are then used by other pupils to prepare case studies.

If you are fortunate enough to have a BAE Systems engineer visit your school you can arrange for him or her to be interviewed by pupils as a source of information for case study writing and also as a judge of case studies that have been produced.

The format of the case studies can vary. They can take the form of written illustrated pieces as in this BAE Systems Engineering pack. Or they can take the form of live presentation to the rest of the class. These can be simple oral presentations supported by flip charts or overhead projection transparencies or full blown PowerPoint presentations.