Recent changes in New Zealand’s employment relations framework has made the topic vital for many students but its multi-disciplinary foundation and its particular historical and cultural setting have proved difficult for student learning. This paper overviews our development of employment relations teaching materials and it shows how this development has been driven by specific shortfalls in the available teaching materials and by changing student needs. It is also emphasised how the teaching and research processes are interlinked and this provides an avenue for making research-driven teaching obtainable. In order to facilitate the students’ understanding of and interest in the research process we have developed a number of case studies and a CD-ROM design has been trialled in 2005. The paper overviews two of the case studies and it also details the development logic of the CD-ROM design.