Implementation of case study method as an effective teaching tool in engineering education

Case study teaching allows students to have contact with real life business, management or engineering situations instead of "chalk-and-talk"; ex-cathedra form of academic teaching. It has already become the main teaching method in the most of business schools since the pioneer example of Harvard University. Nevertheless, case study teaching represents an important teaching method in other areas namely, in the engineering context where they should be implemented on a large scale. KIC Inn Energy M.Sc. "Clean Fossil and Alternative Fuels Energy" course run at AGH University of Science and Technology (Krakow, Poland) gives students an unique offer of studying subjects related to energy and fuels combined with gaining the entrepreneurial skills and focused on innovative thinking. However, to enhance the critical thinking, insight, and analysis capabilities, including case study teaching was suggested to be introduced here. In this paper, process of design and implementation of the case study "Peltest challenge" is explained in details. The presented case study is based on a short scenario and on the follow-up questions "What would you do now?" and "Why do you think it happened?". It has been assigned as a teamwork so that participants are able to brainstorm and develop common solutions, but it can be also used as an individual assignment. Recommendations for both teachers and students are presented and discussed.