This guide for course instructors is a common introduction to separate Teaching Notes that provide classroom discussion questions and role playing scenarios for each THRO case. The Request Form enables instructors to obtain those case teaching notes by explaining intended class use. Feedback offering ideas for others will be reviewed for posting online so that new faculty using THRO cases may benefit from specific recommendations based on classroom experience. This introductory note
In a culture dominated by television and computer games, can time spent before a monitor improve students’ substantive knowledge, cognitive and normative intelligence? "Teaching is a social art, necessarily involving a relationship between people."1 Gamson and Chickering’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education promote active learning, prompt feedback on performance, time on task, student collaboration and contact with faculty.2 Can cyberspace become a global learning community? Success requires programming and electronic communication which challenge students to think and collaborate rather than to have computers solve a problem.
Case based teaching requires students to shift from passive reading and memorization to active learning and problem solving. Alfred North Whitehead admonished: "beware of 'inert ideas'--that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations."3 John Dewey in 1916 offered a similar prescription:
All that the school can or need do for pupils, so far as their minds are concerned . . . is to develop their ability to think. . . . The alternative to furnishing ready-made subject matter and listening to the accuracy with which it is reproduced is not quiescence, but participating, sharing in an activity.4
THRO cases follow Dewey’s rational-analytical model by confronting students with dilemmas that require them to explain how they would reconcile value conflicts. The case method and Socratic dialogue challenge students to balance competing norms and to explain reasoned conclusions. When responding to questions online, students receive immediate feedback designed to help them identify unresolved issues, recognize relevant facts and legal authority, and reason by analogy. Email, electronic bulletin boards and threaded discussion groups should increase students’ collaborative problem solving and contacts with the instructor.
Instructional technology is not a labor saving device. The reference bibliography provides links to electronic cases and online simulations available in education, business, law, public administration and international relations. Lecturers play the familiar role of sage on the stage. Converts to active learning have learned the demanding new role of guide on the side. THRO cases may be used in lecture classes as a traditional reading assignment and homework exercises. The teaching recommendations which follow are offered to reduce the burden of using the problems more effectively to promote active learning.
Active Learning Rationale/Cognitive Skills/Normative Reasoning
