Issues Since your students will be using these cases a little differently (or taking them a little further) than originally intended, there are a few issues to consider as they develop their project for your class:
Most of these cases are problem solution cases developed for teaching science. For your students, this is just the beginning: The science in these cases will be the basis of a research report, conference presentation, or research proposal.
Most of these cases (especially the largest group of cases from the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science Case Collection at the University of Buffalo) begin with a "human interest story." For your students, these stories—especially those focusing on only one individual or family—provide some human context, but they are less helpful for the professional projects. (However, instructors may find this part of the case studies also useful for units on communicating science in industry and government, or with public audiences.) Unless the journal or funding agency the student is considering routinely takes articles based on single case studies, very little if any of this material would appear in a research report; perhaps it would be seen more often in a conference presentation, or as part of the background section of a proposal.
Students will have to sift not only through the story but also through the entire case for any useful "data," and to use their professional judgment and model journal articles, conference proceedings, or funding agency guidelines and sample proposals to determine which if any of "the data" would be appropriate. Usually, most of the useful data for their projects will be contained in the subsequent parts of the case, teacher's notes, references, and other links provided in the case. ("Teaching Notes" as well as other sections often contain invaluable information and data related to the science or the case.) Like scientists in the field or lab, students will need to generalize from some of the data to support a hypothesis.
Students will still need to research appropriate journals for their project, and use "outside" literature contained in these journals to develop the literature review and other parts of their report, conference presentation, or proposal. As per above, reading this professional scientific material may be a problem for some undergraduate students.
Even though the topic/question/data may be "simpler" or the research "older," students need to understand that the purpose of the project is not to do new or original science, but rather practice writing an article for a specific professional journal, delivering a presentation to a specific professional conference, or writing a proposal for a specific funding agency. Audience adaptation thus becomes a major goal of the course.
Approaches
Once they have found possible case studies from the list of URLs in the Selected Case Studies, students need to comb through them for the hypothesis, background information, and data upon which their project will be built, and decide how they want to use this material.
Many cases actually will require students to work through the experiment to arrive at results; a few cases require extra equipment, but these are fairly basic.
Some cases provide links to other journal articles and sources of data, such as those compiled by government agencies.
As noted under Issues, students will have to do an outside review of research on the topic, not only to find the professional journal, conference, or funding agency for their topic, but also for the literature review and other parts of their "own" study.
Once students have identified the case with which they would like to work based on research topic/question/data, they should pick an appropriate journal, conference, and funding agency, and adapt their work to that venue as if they were actually going to submit their manuscript or deliver their presentation to them.
