Faculty Spotlight: Rachel Cummings on Using Case Studies and Discussion to Help Students Implement Technical Concepts in Real-World Settings
Rachel Cummings, Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, was awarded an Office of the Provost’s Innovative Course Design grant for her project “Introducing Case-Based Teaching into Interdisciplinary Data Privacy Education.”
Dr. Cummings worked with the Center for Teaching and Learning to develop and implement case studies and discussion activities for her Engineering course ORCS 4201: Policy for Privacy Technologies to help students implement technical concepts in real-world settings.
In this spotlight, Dr. Cummings shares her experience.
Describe your course and its goals.
This course is inspired by my own research on data privacy, and it combines technical foundations of privacy-preserving technologies, such as differential privacy and cryptography, with social and legal questions of how, when, and why these tools are deployed in practice. These questions include: how should an organization that’s thinking of adopting these tools do the cost-benefit analysis to decide whether the tools should be used? How should they decide which tool to use? How does the context of deployment—such as a large tech company, a small startup, or a government organization—impact implementation details of these tools? We also explore the connections and, most importantly, the gaps between these privacy technologies and current privacy laws, and understand how privacy legislation is made. It’s a course where there are very few “correct answers,” but instead we learn how to ask the right questions and grapple with the complexities that exist in this sociotechnical space.
Why and how do you use synchronous and asynchronous discussions in your course?
Some things are best learned in the classroom, either with an instructor or with classmates, and some things are best learned at home, on your own and with more time to think. I think about our limited time in the classroom—75 minutes, twice a week—where we’re in there together, and I think about how this time can best be used. For example, if I want to discuss an article, it doesn’t make sense to use class time doing the reading. Instead I’ll have them read the article and prompt them with some discussion questions to think about before class, and then during class we’ll have the discussion.
The real value of in-class time is that all the students are all there together. I like to use this time for group discussions, think-pair-share where students discuss in pairs and then share their conclusions with a larger group, or collaborative problem solving for the technical problems that might need more than one person brainstorming. For more controversial topics, I’ll have students take opposing sides and debate. Outside of class, I use discussion boards with a prompt—often about the material from the previous class period to synthesize what we learned together, or as preparation for the upcoming class period—and students are asked to post their own responses, as well as comment on each other’s posts.
Why and how do you use case studies in your course?
Case studies are commonly used in other fields of teaching, such as business, policy, and law. A good case study should use the skills taught in the course and place them in a concrete real-world example where these skills can be applied. These case studies also put the student in the driver’s seat of making decisions in an applied setting, based upon what they have learned in class.
I designed or adapted three case studies for ORCS 4201, all corresponding to real-world applications of differential privacy or cryptography. One is the use of differential privacy at LinkedIn to share privacy-preserving insights with marketers, one on the use of differential privacy at the U.S. Census Bureau to publish privacy-preserving statistics following the 2020 Decennial Census, and one was the use of secure multi-party computation by the City of Boston to study wage gaps across gender and ethnicity. These three case studies walk the students through the decision-making process of adopting and deploying privacy tools in each setting. The students get to see that it’s more than just a yes/no question, and that there are many nuanced decisions that go into a deployment. They also get to see how an appropriate deployment looks different in each of these contexts, based on the privacy tool, the organization deploying it, the type of data being used, and laws surrounding the use of data in each setting.
The case studies involve a mix of synchronous and asynchronous work spread across multiple class periods: the students would read the case study documents before class, and prepare responses to a set of questions related to the content of the case. We would then spend a full class period discussing it, with open-ended questions that build upon their initial responses, and illuminate the core concepts that are meant to be taught in the case. Finally, using their first set of responses and our in-class conversation, students write a short document providing “guidance” to the protagonist of the case for the decision they are facing.
How did your students respond to your use of discussions and case studies? How did these teaching approaches impact student learning?
I think the students really enjoy it! I constantly have current and former students tell me this is the most interesting class they’ve taken, or their favorite class at Columbia. At the beginning of the semester, students can be kind of off-put by all the new activities, especially if this isn’t the kind of class they were expecting. After a few weeks, students are totally out of their shells, forming friendships, making jokes, and feeling very comfortable. By the end of the semester, we have really formed a community in the classroom. In terms of student learning, the learning objectives of this course were highly centered around students having the ability to apply technical concepts to real-world scenarios, so case studies are a natural way to practice this. Centering these applications and discussions around specific examples also made the concepts more concrete and more memorable.
What are your most important takeaways from using these teaching strategies?
The most important takeaway is that learning should be fun and engaging. No one wants to sit still and be lectured at for 75 minutes. Changing up the pace of classroom activities really makes class time a more engaging experience. Also, these teaching strategies can be used in any field of teaching. I used to think that engineering courses could only be taught lecture-style, but now I see that’s so far from true. There are so many different techniques to help students think, engage, create, apply, and reflect, that can be applied across a wide variety of teaching contents and disciplines. The CTL staff can help you get started if you don’t know where to begin.
What advice do you have for other faculty interested in incorporating discussions or case studies in their courses?
I would say go for it! It is so rewarding and makes teaching so much more fun and engaging. I constantly learn new things from my students that I wouldn’t have known or thought about if I taught this course in a traditional lecture-style. I also got to know them more as people because their voices were heard in my classroom. Even small changes like incorporating more active learning techniques into classes can have a huge payoff. I always recommend the CTL’s Active Learning Institute, which was extremely helpful to me at the beginning of this journey. They provide training and tools for how to get started, and make it not seem so daunting.
In terms of case studies specifically, I will say that writing a case study can be a lot of work. Since case studies are based on real-world decisions that actually happened, writing one involves many interviews with the people involved in that decision to get all relevant details and perspectives, writing and revising the case documents, and developing a teaching plan. Before deciding to write one from scratch, you can also check repositories (e.g., Case Consortium @ Columbia) in your field or other related fields to see if a relevant case study already exists that can be used directly or lightly adapted for your course. If you do end up writing one from scratch, these can often be published in educational conferences and journals. I also recommend applying for one of the Provost’s Teaching and Learning Grants, which can provide funds and in-kind support from the CTL, to help develop new courses, new modules in a course, or revamp existing courses.