Cracking the Case: A Task-Based Investigation of a Group Case-Study Project at a Business School

Research has noted an increase in the use of assessed group projects across disciplines in institutions of higher learning. Consequently, this study investigates the prompt for an assessed group case-study project in a sophomore business module in order to provide lecturers with tools and techniques for probing a prompt document. The authors use a task-analysis framework developed for task-based language teaching to examine the project's requirements and chain of integrated tasks. The study shows that the project prompt was dense and complicated and the component tasks were highly interactive and complex. Further, the study reveals that group case-study projects can play an important role in developing the team skills needed for future real-life projects.