Using case studies to design and deliver technology-centered computing education courses

While the advantages of using case studies as an educational vehicle in computing education appear to be more than obvious, there is a very limited amount of research works or practice papers reporting on actual implementations of undergraduate or graduate computing courses which would be largely based on case studies. This conference contribution reports on selected best practices of course design and delivery implemented in one of the core courses of the Bachelor of Science (Information Systems Management) degree program (BSc (ISM)) offered by the School of Information Systems (SIS) at the Singapore Management University (SMU). Nearly all assessments, exercises, in-class activities and lectures of this selected course (Enterprise Web Solutions) are centered around one specific case study which has been written specifically for this course. The paper reports on the practices implemented in this course to design and deliver all hands-on components of the course, it discusses the approach used to tie the lecture component of the course to the case study, and it briefly discusses the rationale of using a fictitious company for the case study of the course (instead of using a real company and real scenario). The paper concludes with a series of recommendations to course designers and educators in the computing education field who are involved in the design and delivery of technology-centered courses and who are interested in exploring the use of case studies in their courses. While the paper is describing best practices implemented within the frame of an Information Systems program, these practices are largely applicable to any other computing education field: computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, information technology, or informatics.