Reuse of simulated cases in teaching enterprise modelling

Abstract

Case-based teaching/learning is widely used in Information Systems (IS) education in general, and in teaching/learning modeling, in particular. A case presents to the students a real or imaginary business situation asking them to build a model of it, or showing how such model can be built. In situations where a business case is presented in a text form, reusing it as is, or with modification in the same or a different course does not constitute much of a problem. However, using textual description for presenting cases has drawbacks on its own, as it does not help the students to acquire the skills of dissecting analyzing and analyzing the reality when building a model. The latter can be better achieved when a case is presented in a multimedia form, e.g. recorded interviews, website of a company, etc. As the previous works of the same authors show, such case presentations gives the students better understanding of the essence of modeling, which is appreciated by the students. The dark side of the multimedia presentation is that such a case presentation requires more time to build compared to using a textual form, and it is not easy to change it. This paper is a preliminary inquiry into the problem of reusing of cases presented with the help of multimedia. It presents a conceptual model of the domain aimed at discussing the potential of reuse of the whole case or its parts, and concludes with considerations on reusability that need to be covered when building multimedia presentations of cases.