I used this case twice in an upper level undergraduate immunology course when teaching at Bates College. I presented it after we had covered the mechanisms of immune reactions and transplants but gave the student no clue what might be happening. I grouped the students into groups of 4, each group from a different institution.
The students loved this activity. It would often take them about between 30–45 minutes to begin to make sense of the information, and most arrived at the proper conclusion by 90 minutes. On occasion some groups would set up “collaborations” with other institutions/groups and pool their resources (with no encouragement from me, making for a great teaching moment on the power of collaboration and the difficulties).
I would use this activity again in a heartbeat, as it makes the students really think about data and dig deep into what they know about.
The students generally didn’t have time to come up with an experimental approach to confirm their hypothesis while in class. This might be a good exam question to follow the exercise.
