UI UX
Case Study Module
Making the reasoning part of the assignment
Context
An online case-study module built at Edwisely for undergraduate engineering students at partner colleges.
Inspired by the HBR case-study format, the experience takes students through individual research, AI-assisted thinking, group discussion and a final case-study report.
Who worked on it
The problem
“They like case studies for students’ development, but they are turning into just another assignment. Students write something, submit it and move on.”
Our founder told us this after he met faculty at one of the colleges.
The underlying problem was simple. The answer was the deliverable, so finding the answer finished the task.
Students could look something up, write it down and submit it without showing how they arrived there. Faculty could see the outcome, but not the reasoning behind it.
Explorations and decisions
Each student works alone first
Every student has a role and finishes their own research before the group phase opens.
A discussion where half the group has nothing of its own to bring is not a discussion, so the report is built out of what each student brings rather than out of whoever spoke first.
The AI pushes instead of answering
The AI challenges assumptions and asks students to explain their reasoning, so the thinking stays theirs.
AI credits are limited because the usage has a real operating cost, but the limit also makes a student frame a better question before spending one.
Faculty can read the exchanges, which is where the thinking behind a conclusion becomes visible.
A discussion space without the AI
Students get an AI-free space to share insights, challenge each other and decide what to take forward.
Keeping it inside the product means the reasoning behind the group’s decisions stays visible instead of disappearing into an external messaging app.
The reports mark the route, not the answer
The group report looks at how the team collaborated. Individual reports look at how each student understood and performed their role.
This shifts the focus from what answer did they submit to how did they arrive there.
Role swapping Rejected
We considered letting students swap roles midway and left it out of the first version. Students were already managing individual work, group collaboration and the case itself, and another layer of flexibility risked cognitive load without solving a core problem.
It stays an open opportunity.
The final design
The chat screen
The layout moved from two columns to three. In the two-column version the reports sat low in the first column, visible only after scrolling. Three columns give them their own panel.
The discussion space
The discussion and the AI chat share one panel, switched by a toggle. Whatever the group decides can be sent straight to the AI, so it ends up in the report instead of an unassessed chat.
The reports
The report opens into the rubric it was built from, so each mark is tied to the criterion it came from.
Below that, the analysis explains the performance. An individual report shows that student alone, and the group report shows how the group performed as a whole.
What I would work on
Faculty can see every conversation, which is what makes the reasoning assessable. It may also change that reasoning. A student who knows their chat is being read is more likely to write what sounds like a good answer than to think out loud, and the module would end up capturing a performance instead of the reasoning it was built to reach.