# CASECase

Working first individually and then in small teams, participants review a raw starter scenario, apply evaluation criteria, and draft a plan to improve and facilitate the case before presenting and comparing their design against a benchmark plan.

**Time:** 90 minutes. Source specifies 90 minutes; UWT maintains this 90-minute structure allocated across individual, team, presentation, and debrief phases.
**People:** 6 to 24. Individual reading followed by small teams of 3 to 6 participants (forming 2 to 4 teams total), concluding with whole-room presentations.

## Choose this exercise

**Purpose:** Draft and critique an instructional plan for revising and facilitating an ambiguous case study.
**Use it when:** Use in instructional design or facilitation workshops when practitioners need to learn how to structure, expand, and debrief case-based learning activities.
**Skip it when:** Skip when participants need immediate solutions to operational emergencies rather than learning activity design, or when the group has less than 90 minutes available.

## Materials and tools

- One printed copy per participant of Handout 1: Your Assignment
- One printed copy per participant of Handout 2: At the Hurricane Shelter
- One printed copy per participant of Handout 3: Case Activity Evaluation Checklist
- One printed copy per participant of Handout 4: Guiding Questions for Case Revision
- One printed copy per participant of Background Reference: The Case Method and 32 Tweets
- One printed copy per participant of Facilitator Benchmark Plan (prepared in advance)
- Blank chart paper or digital boards for team outlines
- Markers or writing pens
- Countdown timer
- Soft chime or whistle

## Before participants arrive

1. Before the session, complete the assignment yourself using Handout 1 and referring to Handouts 3 and 4 to create a concrete Facilitator Benchmark Plan.
2. Print or prepare digital links for Handouts 1 through 4, the Background Reference, and your Benchmark Plan.
3. Organize the physical or virtual room into small group tables or breakout spaces for teams of 3 to 6 people.

## Say this to open

Welcome. Today we will use the case method to learn how to design and facilitate case studies. You will act as an instructional design team asked to overhaul a brief scenario about volunteer work at an emergency shelter. Your goal is not to write finished prose, but to create a structured outline that expands the situation and gives facilitators clear instructions for conducting the session. We will start with ten minutes of individual reading and note-taking.

## How to run it

### 1. Introduce assignment and read individually (10 minutes)

Distribute Handout 1 (Your Assignment) and Handout 2 (At the Hurricane Shelter). Deliver the opening script. Instruct everyone to work independently for ten minutes, reading both handouts and writing notes on issues, missing context, and facilitation needs. Start the countdown timer.

### 2. Review criteria and prompts (10 minutes)

Distribute Handout 3 (Case Activity Evaluation Checklist) and Handout 4 (Guiding Questions for Case Revision). Ask participants to continue working solo for ten minutes, checking their initial notes against the evaluation checklist and picking three questions from Handout 4 that their plan must address.

### 3. Form teams and share concepts (15 minutes)

Divide participants into teams of 3 to 6, creating 2 to 4 teams across the room. Distribute the Background Reference (The Case Method and 32 Tweets). Direct teams to have each member share their initial notes. Ask each group to pick a scribe and select their strongest shared ideas for expanding the case.

### 4. Draft team outline (25 minutes)

Instruct teams to draft a joint plan outline on chart paper or a shared board. The outline must state: learning objectives, proposed additions to the story, participant tasks, and three specific debrief questions for the facilitator. Give a 2-minute warning at minute 23.

### 5. Present team plans (12 minutes)

Call time. Invite each team to present their plan in two minutes or less. With 2 to 4 teams, all teams will present within the allotted time. Ask presenters to highlight what makes their facilitation plan distinct. Do not debate plans during presentations.

### 6. Compare against benchmark plan (8 minutes)

Distribute your pre-written Facilitator Benchmark Plan to all participants. Give teams five minutes to read it silently and compare it to their own outline, noting one thing their plan handled better and one element they would borrow from the benchmark.

### 7. Debrief and conclude (10 minutes)

Facilitate a whole-room debrief using the provided questions. Take 3 to 4 spoken responses across the group. Conclude by summarizing how clear facilitation questions turn raw narrative cases into structured inquiry.


## Debrief questions

- What was the hardest choice when deciding how much detail to add versus leaving the case open for interpretation?
- How did your team's proposed debrief questions prevent the session from collapsing into searching for a single right answer?
- Comparing your team plan with the benchmark, what design element would you add to your next case study?

**Finished output:** A written team outline specifying instructional goals, scenario revisions, and facilitator debrief questions for an emergency shelter training case.

## Remote

Run in video breakout rooms of 3 to 6 people. Post links to digital handouts via cloud folder or chat. Teams draft their outlines on shared digital whiteboards or documents. Whole-group presentations occur in the main room with screen sharing capped at 2 minutes per team. The benchmark plan is released via chat link after presentations.

## Hybrid

In-person and remote participants work in separate homogeneous pods to preserve equal communication flow. Remote pods use shared digital documents; in-person pods use chart paper. During the presentation phase, camera views focus on the current presenter, and in-person charts are photographed and shared on screen.

## Access and participation choices

- Offer digital screen-reader-friendly text formats alongside printed handouts.
- Participants may contribute to team outlines via writing, spoken discussion, or formatting without speaking during the whole-room presentation.
- Teams may decline whole-room oral presentation by posting their outline for silent gallery reading.

## If the session gets stuck

**Teams spend all their time drafting detailed fictional dialogue rather than designing the learning plan.**

Intervene and remind teams that the deliverable is a facilitation plan outline with objectives, scenario notes, and debrief questions, not a finished script.

**Participants get stuck trying to solve the medical or emotional crisis in the hurricane shelter scenario itself.**

Clarify that their job is meta-design: they are designing the training activity for future shelter workers, not roleplaying the responders today.


## Terms used here

- Case Method: An instructional technique where learners analyze a complex, realistic scenario from multiple perspectives to recommend actions and explore trade-offs.
- Psychological First Aid (PFA): Evidence-informed supportive actions aimed at reducing acute stress reactions after traumatic events and disasters.

## Participant material: Handout 1: Your Assignment

Your team has been hired to revise and expand the case material (At the Hurricane Shelter) on the next page. This case material is designed for use in a training session for city staff members assigned to emergency hurricane centers.

Goals and objectives: Provide psychological first aid (PFA) to reduce the emotional impact of disasters.

Background information: PFA involves actions undertaken to alleviate normal stress reactions to abnormal disaster situations. Types of disasters include natural events (floods, hurricanes), accidents, and intentional incidents. Stress reactions include physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses.

Participants: Volunteer staff members recruited from city government offices. Diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, balanced mix of men and women, no previous shelter experience.

Training context: Teams of 2 to 7 members in a classroom setting. Available workshop time ranges from 45 to 120 minutes. A subject-matter expert may or may not be present.

Your task: Prepare a plan in outline form for revising and expanding the case materials. Include instructions and discussion questions for the facilitator.

## Participant material: Handout 2: At the Hurricane Shelter

It is 9:30 when you arrive at the Hurricane Shelter. Your shift starts at 10:00, so you walk through to see what is happening.

On the left side of the room you notice a little girl with tangled hair, a dirty face, and no shoes. She is standing still, facing a wall, and crying silently. From time to time, her whole body shakes. Nobody is near her, neither adults nor children. She is not paying attention to what is happening around her, and nobody seems to be paying attention to her.

On the right side of the room, people are avoiding a family group. A mother is yelling continuously at three small children in a foreign language. You do not see a father. An older man sits on a cot in a corner, staring at the wall. A teenage girl in jeans is biting her nails. When you speak to her, she replies in clear English that she cannot reach her boyfriend, her father is searching for her grandmother, and her grandfather has lost his glasses, cannot see, is confused, and refuses to talk. She whispers, 'I wish I was dead.'

## Participant material: Handout 3: Case Activity Evaluation Checklist

1. Authentic problem: Does the case present a realistically ambiguous situation?
2. Real-world relevance: Does it reflect real challenges faced on the job?
3. Multiple perspectives: Can learners examine it from multiple valid viewpoints?
4. Collaborative process: Does it require and reward small-group collaboration?
5. Effective instructions: Are learner objectives and tasks unambiguous?
6. Discussion questions: Does it include open-ended inquiry prompts?
7. Appropriate format: Does the activity structure match the audience?
8. Flexible format: Can it scale to different group sizes and time limits?
9. Facilitator instructions: Are guidance and debrief notes included?
10. Feedback: Does it provide expert benchmarks or comparison models?

## Participant material: Handout 4: Guiding Questions for Case Revision

Select questions from this list to guide your revision outline:
- What specific content and process objectives will your case target?
- How will you expand the scenario to include conflicting operational demands?
- What secondary documents (such as shelter maps, intake logs, or triage guides) could accompany the case?
- What instructions will you give learners to separate observations from assumptions?
- What three core discussion questions will the facilitator use to debrief the case?
- How should the facilitator handle disagreements when teams reach different conclusions?

## Participant material: Background Reference: The Case Method and 32 Tweets

Case Method Core Principles:
- Combines analysis with action by placing learners in an authentic, messy situation.
- Rejects the single-right-answer mindset; emphasizes multiple perspectives and trade-offs.
- Requires three distinct analytical tasks: Describe what is observed, Analyze underlying factors, and Prescribe realistic interventions.
- Balances content learning (technical procedures) with process learning (collaboration, evidence evaluation, active listening).
- The facilitator guides open-minded inquiry without steering participants toward a predetermined conclusion.

## Sources and adaptation

Observed in the Thiagi GameLetter (December 2011), published by The Thiagi Group, authored by Sivasailam Thiagarajan.

Rebuilt directly from the CASECase activity published in the December 2011 Thiagi GameLetter. Retained the core recursive mechanic (using the case method to design case method materials), the hurricane shelter scenario, and the evaluation checklist. Adjusted group sizing to teams of 3 to 6 (yielding 2 to 4 teams total for up to 24 people) so that team formation works cleanly across all intermediate room numbers and all teams can present within the 12-minute window. Clarified setup instructions for creating the benchmark plan. Added specific step timing across the 90-minute structure, concrete opening script, remote and hybrid rules, and printable handout layouts.

[thiagi.net](http://thiagi.net/archive/www/pfp/IE4H/december2011.html)

Current run sheet: https://unitedwetransform.com/exercises/tgl-december-2011/