Case study questions: An exam alternative

For many years, Modified Essay Questions or MEQs have been used in disciplines such as medicine to test students on problem solving and decision making in the style of a case study. At one stage, many academics felt that MEQs were over-used and veered away from them to alternative methods of assessment.

However, in recent years a variety of testing methods have been popularised again and extended to other disciplines. With a generic description along the lines of being case-based questions, these can be an effective way of giving students a real-life scenario to work through under exam conditions.

The main characteristics of many of these case-based questions are:

Initial details of a case study are given to students. In medicine, these might be the presenting symptoms of a patient; in commerce, the start-up details of a new business.

Students are asked one or two questions about this information. Questions should require students to interpret the information and apply their knowledge. A good rule of thumb is that questions should only be answerable using a combination of both the information provided and knowledge and skills gained through the course.

On the following page, the “next step” of the case study is given. Sometimes, this will involve providing some of the answers to preceding questions, while in other cases it will simply move on to a different aspect of the case study.

Cases should cover a core concept and look for the main practical information as answers, rather than obscure or minute details. Such details can still be given some marks but the majority of marks should come from students demonstrating a pragmatic approach to the case study.

To allow the most realistic case studies to be used, it is preferable that students are unable to look at previous or future questions in the test. Various methods can be used to ensure this, for example, having students complete the test in a web-based environment which prevents them from moving forwards or backwards; using different coloured pages for each question and having students turn the page after certain time limits (supervisors can easily check that all students are on the same coloured page); or stapling question papers at the top and bottom and requiring students to tear off each page as they complete it and place it on the floor beside them.

In an era where we realise that examinations are often not the best way to test student learning, case-based questions can provide an effective alternative to essays, short answers or multiple-choice questions. They can simulate scenarios which students are likely to face in the workforce and test how students would apply their knowledge and skills to different situations.

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