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Intelligence Community Case Method Program |
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Home | About Us | About the Case Method | ICCMP Services | Search Site |
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Intelligence Community Case Method Program |
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Home | About Us | About the Case Method | ICCMP Services | Search Site |
"Evacuating the Americans from Rwanda"
A Case: Imagine you are one of the US Embassy staff members responsible for the safe evacuation of 258 Americans from Rwanda in April 1994.
There are three options to help get the Americans out of Kigali: by way of the airport, assuming that it remained open; helicopter gunship cover by the Marines for an overland departure; or leaving by an overland route without US military escort. All require time to plan and implement.
What is your assessment of the various options you see as available under the circumstances that prevailed in this case?
Which option should the Ambassador select?
After you read and prepare a case, you and your classmates meet under the direction of a trained instructor to discuss and test your analyses and recommendations against those of your peers. Most case studies involve an individual or group who face a problem and must try to find a solution, or "plan of action" as it is called in case method teaching. The case summarizes the basic information available to those who had to make the decision in real life. Missing information is important in considering the problem; as in real life, decision makers must act often in the absence of complete information.
Case discussions typically last 60 to 75 minutes and are by nature lively and full of controversy as participants express their positions and seek to defend them. You and your classmates may arrive at difference conclusions about the same material because of your varying backgrounds and experience. These differences provide opportunities for you to sharpen your analytic skills as your instructor and colleagues challenge you to use evidence from the case—along with common sense and experience—to defend your arguments and recommendations. You may find, as many students do, that you will have improved your ability to express your analyses and recommendations articulately and to defend them against criticism.
Your instructor's role in the case study method differs from a teacher's role in conventional techniques. Instead of telling you what to think, the instructor guides you to grasp the teaching objectives for yourself. The instructor uses the skills of questioning, listening, and responding to lead you and your classmates to the lesson's main conclusions. A case method teacher rarely expresses an opinion about the problem under consideration or the actions that should be taken.
At the end, the instructor may summarize the teaching objectives and tell the class "what happened," but the purpose of analyzing the case study is never for you to "guess what happened" or "get the right answer." Instead, the goal is for your class to analyze the problem thoroughly and come up with a number of practical solutions through critical analysis and discussion.
Learning by the case method is not easy nor passive. You are asked to think for yourself. You are more likely to internalize the knowledge rather than merely repeat what the instructor said. You will have the responsibility to come to the discussion prepared and ready to contribute to the team's examination of the dilemma or event under consideration. These responsibilities, however, are rewarding and can result in greater factual knowledge and an improved ability to make well-reasoned decisions about tough problems.