The Open Case Studies project is an educational resource of experiential guides that demonstrate how to effectively derive knowledge from data in real-world challenges.
Our case studies can be used:
Find out more about how others are using case studies and what they think of them in this study.
Learn more about the OCS project and how to use our case
studies using our guide:
Website
version |
PDF
version and more
Our case studies cover many concepts!
Statistical
topics: from correlation to the influence of multicollinearity
on linear regression
Data science topics: from
making simple plots to building dashboards and performing machine
learning (ML), a type of artificial intelligence (AI)!
Despite unprecedented and growing interest in data science on campuses, there are few courses and course materials that provide meaningful opportunity for students to learn about real-world challenges. Most courses frequently fail to frame the lectures around a real-world application and provide unrealistically clean datasets that fit the assumptions of the methods in an unrealistic way. The result is that students are left unable to effectively analyze data and solve real-world challenges outside of the classroom.
In 1999, Nolan and Speed argued the solution was to teach courses through in-depth case studies derived from interesting problems, with nontrivial solutions that leave room for different analyses. This innovative framework teaches the student to make important connections between the scientific question, data and statistical concepts that only come from hands-on experience analyzing data. However, these case studies based on realistic challenges, not toy examples, are scarce.
To address this, we are developing the Open Case Studies educational resource of case studies, which demonstrate illustrative data analyses that can be used in the classroom to teach students how to effectively derive knowledge from data. This approach has successfully been used to teach data science courses at many universities, including:
Carrie Wright, Qier Meng, Michael R. Breshock, Lyla Atta, Margaret A. Taub, Leah R. Jager, John Muschelli & Stephanie C. Hicks
Open case studies on public health topics, developed in partnership with the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins.
Open case studies for the biomedical sciences, bringing real-world quantitative biology education to students, instructors, and independent learners.
