Free Software Case Studies/Prioritise

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How may Free Software Case Studies be prioritised? First, be clear about the reason for prioritising. In this case, it is to decide which ones to use in a particular module for students to learn from the real world experience of others. Please add criteria for selection and/or evaluation below.

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While designing a module to share real world experience with free software, educators need to select from a plethora of case studies or have their students do so. This page is intended to help with that process which will most likely be qualitative.

Criteria for Case Study Selection

  1. Context and relevance
  2. Previous familiarity with the case
    • In general, time is limited and the process of adapting case studies for/by learners needs to be optimised or streamlined. The more one knows in advance, the easier it is to develop and adapt.
  3. Access to and availability of relevant people and information
    • Case studies require deep insight and access to tacit knowledge
      • Willing collaborators
    • Quality and completeness of existing information
      • Currency (is it up to date)
  4. Personal appeal
    • Educators and learners tend to produce better results when working on something which appeals to them. For example, free software used in a project which is inspirational irrespective of the software being used.
  5. Size/scale/complexity
    • The amount of work required to develop/adapt the case study
  6. Learning value
    • Depending on learning objectives, look for case studies which highlight best practices and things to avoid.
      • Some "failure stories" may have a higher learning value than success stories, and are harder to find.
  7. Please add/edit ...

Processes

The following are "quick and dirty" approaches. If more rigour is required, explore (for example) Multi-criteria decision making techniques.

For Individuals

  1. Tabulate the candidate case studies and allocate a score to selected criteria (e.g. from those above). Sum the scores and consider using the one(s) with the highest total(s).
    • Consider weighting the criteria and multiply each score by the weight.
    • Sometimes, there can be overriding criteria which (for example) rule out a case study immediately.

For Teams

If a team of people need to decide, try the following.

  1. Tabulate the candidate case studies and have each member allocate a score to selected criteria (e.g. from those above). Take the mean score from each participant and select the one(s) with the highest total score(s).
    • Consider weighting the criteria
    • Sometimes, there can be overriding criteria which (for example) rule out a case study immediately.
  2. For more rigour, as above, find an appropriate Multi-criteria decision making technique.
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