What is a Case Study?

A case study is an account of an activity, event or problem that contains a real or hypothetical
situation and includes the complexities associated with the activity, event or problem. A case
study may be descriptive, evaluative or interpretive, but are most often a combination of these
(Merriam 1988).
What is a Case Study analysis?
Using a case study as a teaching methodological approach, or a case study analysis provides
students with valuable hands-on experience. In areas such as business and law, case studies
are often used to not only illustrate what a student has learned and retained in class, but also
to see how students make use of the knowledge gained.
Analysing a case study requires students to practice applying their knowledge and their
thinking skills to a real situation. To learn from a case study analysis, students are expected
to show their skills of "analysing, applying knowledge, reasoning and drawing conclusions"
(Kardos & Smith 1979).
In English classroom, a case study analysis should allow students to go beyond the isolated
and decontextualised language function that is taught and learned. A case study analysis
should allow students to see how English is used in different interactional contexts and
settings.
Types of Case Study
In applied fields such as business and law, students may analyse a historical case i.e. an
event that happened to an individual or a company where they discuss the causes and
consequences of the situation and the lessons learned from the event. In a historical case
analysis, students act as an outsider to the situation.
In a problem oriented case, students have to assume a role in order to solve the problem or a
situation. Students may need to discuss possible solutions, make suggestions and
recommendations based on their background knowledge, disciplinary knowledge and other
relevant information that they may have gathered in their reading while preparing for the
task.

SWOT Analysis

Sources:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/what-case-study
Herreid, C.F. (2007) The Boy Scouts Said It Best: Some Advice on Case-Study
Teaching and Student Preparation. Journal of College Science Teaching 37(1):
67.
Kardos, G. , & Smith, C. O. (1979). On writing engineering cases. Proceedings of the
American Society for Engineering Education National Conference on
Engineering Case Studies, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Merriam, S. (1998). Case study research in education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.
Miller, J. (1997). Case study in second language teaching. QJER. Vol 13.