Teaching economics using 'Cases' - Going beyond the 'Chalk-And-Talk' method

This paper describes the adoption of 'case-method' teaching technique in two economics elective courses taught by the same instructor in a small liberal arts college. A questionnaire was administered among the students to obtain a qualitative assessment of their learning experiences using this alternative pedagogy. In both the classes, students ranked 'learning how to use economics to solve real problems' as the most important aspect of the case-method among the given choices. Furthermore, each of these classes was compared with two other sections taught by the same instructor without cases to perform quantitative assessments. In addition to a pooled OLS regression for each course studying the impact of the 'case' on final exam score, a difference in difference analysis was performed to test the difference in test grades before and after the introduction of the case method and between the two classes for each course. Both the methods gave statistically significant results, implying the adoption of the case-method to be effective in making the students active learners.