Just like many business and law school courses, Michigan High School Ethics Bowl's focus is the "case": an ethically complex scenario worthy of the student's thoughtful input. The success of Ethics Bowl (as an educational, competitive, and entertaining enterprise) depends on our ability to present participants with a rich array of challenging, yet accessible, case studies. We depend on writers like you to make this happen. This page provides prospective case writers all the information they need to complete this very important task.
The Ethics Bowl season begins in late September with the distribution of the year's cases to team coaches. Between then and the statewide competition in February, teams "practice" by reading, analyzing, and forming arguments about the cases, the questions they pose, and the decisions they force. Each team undertakes this process differently: some assign each case to an individual student, while others study all cases as a team. Regardless of the team's strategy, though, the cases consume the minds of the competitors over the winter as they grapple with the issues the cases raise: in classrooms, hallways, coffee shops, and living rooms. That process looks something like this:
At the competition in February, students present the resulting arguments and engage in dialogue with judges and the opposing teams. Judges evaluate each team's analysis and argumentation. Importantly, judges may be experts in the field from which the case study is taken or know very little about it. Students' arguments must therefore be accessible to all and still impressive to specialists. The winner advances to the nationwide competition in April.
A good case study meets all of the following criteria:
Possible approaches for constructing a case study include the following:
However, we encourage you to be creative and choose ethically complex scenarios that personally interest you, or which you think would be good for high school students.
A few logistical notes:
All cases may be edited before use will become the property of A2Ethics.org. At the same time, all submissions can be included in current and future case sets, in full or in part.
See sub-pages here for prior cases, past case study authors, and student perspectives on cases.