The National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, welcomes case submissions for its web-based case collection at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/ubcase.htm.
Our mission is to promote the case method of teaching science, with a particular focus on undergraduate education. To that end, we are developing an online case collection. We accept case submissions in all areas of science including the life sciences, physical sciences (including chemistry, physics, and earth science), engineering, mathematics, statistics, computer science, psychology, anthropology, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, and science education, among others.
We accept cases via email. To send us your case, please use the following email address: cwright2@buffalo.edu, noting in the subject line of your message the following: "New Case Submission."
We need you to send us not only your case but also teaching notes for it at the same time, even if these are only "skeletal" notes. It is difficult for us to review a case without some idea of the course the case has been developed for, your learning objectives for the case, the prerequisite knowledge the students must have to succesfully engage the case, and some idea of the mechanics of how the case will be taught. These are all points that should be covered in the case teaching notes.
We encourage you to take a look at the teaching notes for cases we have up on our website to get an idea of what yours should include. The major sections are: Introduction/Background (which includes a bulleted list of teaching objectives), Classroom Management, Blocks of Analysis, a separate Answer Key for the case that provides reasonable answers to questions posed in the case, and References. The examples on our website will show you how these can be handled. In addition, the article And All That Jazz: Extolling the Virtues of Writing Case Teaching Notes explains how to write case teaching notes and can be used as a guide.
If you want to incorporate charts or graphs or extensive text verbatim from another previously published source, please flag that material for us and tell us where it comes from (a complete citation, the URL for the website, etc.) so that we can determine who to contact to secure permission to use the material.
The easiest way for us to receive your case and notes is via email. We work in Word, but we can convert from other file formats.
Your case and notes will first be reviewed internally. At this stage, we may send it back to you for further work. Once we feel your draft is ready, we will send it out to be reviewed following a double-blind peer-review process. Typically, we use two (and sometimes three) outside reviewers. These are people who are experienced case teachers with subject background in the area of your case. Reviewers are usually given three to four weeks to complete their review of a case. After we have read over the reviewers' comments, we will forward them to you and ask you to consider them as you revise your case.
Once we accept your case, it will then be prepared for our website. When we have finished with the HTML mark-up and layout of your case, we will send you several unlinked URLs so you can review the case and notes online. Once we make any corrections, additions or changes you may have, we then link it, list it, and announce it. Please keep in mind that we consider the cases on our website to be dynamic, subject to change and refinement, and we are happy at any time in the future to incorporate new material or make corrections or changes, as new developments are made, say, in the field of the case topic or after you have taught the case a couple of times and have made modifications or developed new formats to present the case material.
In the final step before publication, we will send you a copyright transfer form for you to sign, transferring copyright for your case to the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. By signing the form, you ensure that the work is original and also transfer the rights to it to our Center. Guidelines for allowable uses of our cases, which we have formulated as the copyright holder for the cases in our collection, are stated on our website at: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/guidelines.html.
If you have any questions, contact Nancy Schiller, Co-Director, National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, Science and Engineering Library, 228 Capen Hall, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, schiller@buffalo.edu, telephone: 716-645-2947 x225, fax: 716-645-3710.
