Dr. Grandon Gill holds an AB (cum laude) from Harvard College and an MBA (high distinction) and DBA from Harvard Business School. He teaches introductory and intermediate courses in programming for undergraduates and also teaches case method capstone courses in the MIS undergraduate, MS-MIS and Executive MBA programs. He has also taught a variety of IT courses during his tenure at USF, from computer systems concepts to doctoral case methods. He received USF’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and 2013.
Dr. Gill has published or edited more than 40 case studies, most recently for the Journal of IT Education: Discussion Cases. His recent book, Informing with the Case Method, has been the basis of workshops in the U.S. and around the globe. Thus far in 2013, venues have included the NSF TUES PI Conference in Washington D.C., RMIT: Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, the United Nations Staff College in Turin, Italy, and at the 3rd International Symposium on Integrating Research, Education, and Problem Solving (Special Track on Case Methodologies), Orlando Florida.
Dr. Gill is passionate about using technology as a teaching tool and has studied distance learning, strategy, and practice, alternative course designs, and tools for course development and delivery, all under the general heading of informing science. His research in this area has been published in many journals, including Informing Science, Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, the Journal of Information Systems Education, eLearn, and the Journal of IT Education. He has also published multiple times in MIS Quarterly, the MIS discipline’s leading journal—his most recent article considering the MIS fields from an informing science perspective. His academic service includes stints on the editorial boards of six journals. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Informing Science: the International Journal of the Emerging Transdiscipline and the Journal of IT Education: Discussion Cases. He serves as a Governor and Fellow of the Informing Science Institute.
The Case Method: The case method is an interactive teaching method that involves using a detailed description of a real world decision situation to stimulate an in-depth classroom discussion, typically lasting 75 to 90 minutes. The principal pedagogical objective of the approach, which was originally developed and refined at Harvard Business School, is to help students improve their judgment under conditions of considerable uncertainty and ambiguity. As such, the case studies developed to support these discussions rarely have a “right” answer and the actual outcome associated with a particular decision tends to be less important than the process through which the decision was reached.
Workshop Objectives: The workshop is intended to provide participants with an introductory look at the case method, with a particular emphasis on its application to cybersecurity situations. Topics to be covered will include:
• Types of case studies and their application: The term “case study” means many things to different people. A framework for understanding the various types of case studies and their appropriate uses will be introduced.
• Facilitating case discussions: Using cases as an instructional medium. Participants will be given the opportunity to engage in a discussion of an abbreviated case.
• Developing discussion cases: The steps in the process of developing a discussion case will be examined, both from the case writer’s and organization’s perspective.
• Publishing discussion cases: Outlets for publication of peer-reviewed discussion cases will be examined, as well as other outlets through which cases can be distributed. The existing collection of cybersecurity cases will be reviewed.
Acknowledgement: The materials developed for the workshop are being funded as part of a 2-year project that was funded by the Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF Award #1418711, “EDU: Developing Open Authentic Case Studies for a MS in Cybersecurity Capstone Course) specifically intended to develop case studies for use in a cybersecurity curriculum. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material provided or presented in the workshop are those of the facilitator(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
