JoinAll Case Studies
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Educational levels are defined as follows: Elementary, Middle, High School, College
Types of cases are defined as follows: Analysis/Issues, Clicker, Debate, Intimate Debate, Demonstration, Dilemma/Decision, Directed, Discussion, Interrupted, Jig-saw, Journal Article, Laboratory, Student Presentations, Mini-case, Problem-Based Learning, Public Hearing, Role-Play, Trial, Flipped, Game
By Anne Farewell
This case study was designed for use in teacher-education courses for both graduate student laboratory assistants and lecturers or professors in natural sciences at the university or college level. The case demonstrates how laboratory practice and de...
By Brianna S. Nelson, Kelsey N. Aguirre, Alee L. Adams, Emily E. Brodbeck, Breanna N. Harris
This interrupted case study tells the story of “Callie,” a 26-year-old baker from San Francisco who runs a successful new cupcake business with her fiancé, Jeremey. For some time Callie has not felt well, experiencing fatigue, difficulty breathi...
By Monica L. Tischler
This case study for the flipped classroom introduces the discovery process used to elucidate how cells make ATP. Data from three seminal primary literature papers and novel (for their time) methods are used to illustrate how scientists determined the...
Vaccines, Social Media, and the Public Health
By Kim R. Finer
While the "vaccine controversy" has made headlines since the late 1990s, the emergence and popularity of social media has created a public opinion space bursting with pseudoscience, debatable claims and anecdotes regarding the value and importance of...
What Should the Victor Do with the Vanquished?
By Justin A. Pruneski
Smallpox, the worst infectious disease mankind has known, represents a major triumph as the first disease to be intentionally and completely removed from the human population. Although the disease was eradicated in 1980, the variola virus remains pre...
By Joan-Beth Gow
This interrupted case study for the flipped classroom introduces the human microbiome from the perspective of one of its occupants, Heidi Helicobacter (Helicobacter pylori). Heidi lives in the gut of Kristen, a college student, and discusses he...
Bringing Home More than a Medal
By Tracie M. Addy, Kathryn A. Phillips, Maura O. Stevenson
This case study was inspired by the Zika virus outbreak that occurred around the time of the 2016 Olympic Games. Many athletes were fearful of attending because of the link between Zika virus infection and microcephaly in infants. This concern, howev...
Gastronomic Gastroenteritis at The Fat Duck
By Nienke E. van Houten
This interrupted case study was inspired by and uses data from one of the largest commercial restaurant associated outbreaks of norovirus reported in the literature. It applies basic principles of epidemiology and outbreak investigation to a shellfis...
By Rebecca K. Wilson
This case study is targeted to the middle school science student and written especially with female students in mind. Using an interdisciplinary approach, it combines content from physical science and areas of biology (bacteriology, pathology) to tel...
By Karobi Moitra
This case study examines the molecular methods that were used to reverse engineer the 1918 influenza virus strain in order to try and solve the mystery of why it was so deadly. The story starts in the 1950s with the unsuccessful attempts to culture t...
By Lalitha S. Jayant, Christine Priano, Sarah N. Salm, Lauren N. Goodwyn
When covering the process of cellular respiration, advanced high school and undergraduate biology classes present fermentation as a means of anaerobic energy production in certain organisms and in muscle metabolism. Although most biology textbooks co...
Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
By Justin A. Pruneski
This interrupted case study introduces the topic of bacterial sporulation and cannibalism in Bacillus subtilis. The storyline follows Susan and her lab mates who are presenting research at a lab meeting when Susan falls asleep and dreams they are str...
By Marcia Harrison-Pitaniello, Jessica L. Shiltz, Robert E. Hughes, Roger L. Estep, Anna B. Mummert
This PowerPoint-driven case study follows the progress of three undergraduate students as they attempt to model the rapid spread of an influenza outbreak to determine whether their local newspaper's claim that "40% of the campus has the flu" is accur...
By Merle K. Heidemann (rr), Peter J.T. White, James J. Smith
This case study is based on Dr. Richard Lenski’s ongoing studies of evolution in E. coli. Students are introduced to prokaryotic biology and to Lenski’s studies based on serial broth cultures of E. coli, which have been monitored for genotypic an...
BSL-4: Authorized Personnel Only
By Nicole M. Anthony
This case study is based on the 2014 Ebola epidemic that spread to multiple highly populated countries in West Africa, making it the largest and most devastating outbreak in the history of the virus. The storyline, inspired by a compilation of factua...
The Ebola Wars: Advanced Edition
By Derek Dube, Linda M. Iadarola, Tracie M. Addy
This case study was written for upper level undergraduate and graduate students to review foundational aspects of virology and to examine Ebola virus infection in detail. Terry is a college student who travels to a West African clinic for the summer ...
The Ebola Wars: General Edition
By Tracie M. Addy, Linda M. Iadarola, Derek Dube
This case study introduces students to viruses and is suitable for a general biology course. Terry is a college student who travels to a West African clinic for the summer as a volunteer. While abroad, Terry comes into contact with a patient infected...
By Annie Prud’homme-Genereux
Three experiments carried out by the Mars Viking landers in 1976 remain, to this day, our only attempt to detect life on another planet. All other efforts have looked for the presence of elements or conditions thought to be necessary for life rather ...
Which Came First, the Mutation or the Antibiotic?
By Suzanne M. Deschênes, Rosemary M. Danaher, Hema Gopalakrishnan
This case study presents the story of Phil, an undergraduate majoring in biology, whose Russian cousin Dimitri has contracted tuberculosis (TB) from inmates at the prison where he works. Phil learns that his cousin's failure to complete his ant...
No Longer Fond of the Local Pond
By Stephanie L. Luster-Teasley, Janie G. Locklear, Niva S. King
When an elementary school teacher calls in sick to work, she finds out that she is not the only one who will be missing school that day. Children from her fifth grade class have also become ill and parents are calling to report the absences. Th...
By Briana M. Peele, John S. Peters
This case study examines a variety of biological factors that may have been involved in the 2013 dolphin "unusual mortality event" (UME) on the East Coast of the United States. The story follows a news reporter and four different scientists who are p...
By Andrea C. Nicholas, Isabella Villano
This case study centers on an active teaching game that simulates a cholera outbreak among five villages along a river, similar to the Haitian outbreak of 2010. By enacting the behaviors of fictional villagers, students learn how trade, travel, sanit...
By Janet A. De Souza-Hart
This case study is based on real events that the author experienced with her 10-year-old daughter. Although the names have been changed, all of the events (symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, types of healthcare professionals) are recorded exactly as th...
Sunny Skies and a Lurking Microbe
By Kim R. Finer
Based on a true story, this case study chronicles the development of a wound infection that began as a minor cut that occurred while carrying out a typical household task (moving furniture). Identifying the causative agent ultimately took three...
By Richard C. Stewart, Daniel C. Stein, Kevin S. McIver, John Buchner, Ann C. Smith
In this case developed for an introductory general microbiology course, students consider concepts of bacterial genetics as they act as consultants to a foundation interested in funding innovative products. Students take the role of advising "the bar...
By Harry M. Zollars, Catherine Dana Santanello, Marcelo J. Nieto
Ying is sick and is progressively getting worse. His parents' clashing views on Eastern and Western medicine prevent them from agreeing on a course of treatment. As the case unfolds, students follow the progression of their son's illness. After a phy...
By Lynn B. DeSanto
This interrupted case study outlines the history of pertussis or whooping cough, a disease that in the early 1900s claimed the lives of more people than diphtheria, scarlet fever, and measles combined. Whooping cough continued to afflict and kill a l...
Differential Diagnosis and Treatment of an Autoimmune Response
By Alisa J. Petree, Sondra A. Dubowsky, Mary A. Sides
There are a number of medical disorders that mimic each other and accordingly prove problematic for diagnosis, including autoimmune disorders (rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus), bacterial infections (syphilis), and arthropod born...
By Catherine Dana Santanello, Scott J. Bergman
This story is based on the true account of a student who suffered years of misdiagnoses of her illness while she was in a professional school. As the case evolves, students follow the course of Sarah's illness. Part I of the case details the signs of...
By Wayne O. Hatch
This case relates the story of two fictional college students, Kristen and Brent, who discover that they are infected with Staphylococcus aureus. Brent recovers after using an antibiotic, but Kristen does not. It is later confirmed through testing th...
By Annie Prud’homme-Genereux
The discovery of a bacterium capable of substituting arsenic for phosphorus in its DNA was announced with much fanfare in 2010. It was immediately and very publicly critiqued by researchers posting their analyses of the paper on their blogs. The auth...
By Dorothy P. Debbie
The incidence of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), including severe infection, has increased in both institutional settings and the general community. This case study presents the story of an elderly woman who spent time in a hospital and then i...
By Andrew E. Lyman-Buttler
Emerging diseases and potential pandemics make the news nearly every year. Students (and everyone else) may wonder where new infectious diseases come from, how scientists assess the risk of a pandemic, and how we might go about preventing one. This c...
By Stephanie L. Luster-Teasley, Rebecca L. Ives
Life has changed for the rural residents of Farmville County since the arrival of four concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); the air has an odor, wildlife has decreased, and illnesses are on the rise. One of the town's residents has become ...
Sick on a South American Sugarcane Plantation
By Kevin M. Bonney
This case study familiarizes readers with a disease that affects millions of people in Central and South America while illustrating a relatively uncommon route of transmission. The narrative is based on reports of oral transmission of Trypanoso...
By Karen M. Aguirre
This case study introduces students to Dr. E.L. Trudeau, who performed a seminal early experiment validating the germ theory of infection. Part I introduces Trudeau's Rabbit Island experiment, which is simple and easy for beginning or non-major stude...
By Maureen Leonard (rr)
Resistance to antibiotics arose very shortly after these "wonder drugs" were first introduced. This case study examines resistance to the most commonly used antibiotics, penicillin and its derivatives. In particular, it examines a recent ...
Hunting the Ebola Reservoir Host
By Allison Black, Annie Prud’homme-Genereux
This one-hour introduction to the study of infectious diseases uses recent research on the Ebola reservoir host to motivate students to consider the characteristics of a viral host species and how it can be identified. Presented in the form of an int...
Revolt on the Tuberculosis Ward
By Joyce A. Shaw
Monique is a 30-year-old Haitian woman with advanced pulmonary tuberculosis who has been transferred from a tuberculosis sanatorium to a large general hospital in Port au Prince after developing a secondary infection with Bacteroides fragilis at the ...
African Illness: A Case of Parasites?
By Kevin M. Bonney
This case is based on a British patient presenting to a hospital with an array of symptoms after returning from an African safari. Students learn about potential causes of the symptoms based on the patient's potential exposure to parasites endemic to...