Course Description

This course is the WORST I have taken among the six in two years, and possibly one of the worse ones among other courses.



It will require students to investigate a real case using some 20-30 police reports and develop an exhaustive case file with legal proceedings. The lecturer, an experienced professional in forensic pathology, will kindly mention many interesting facts surrounding forensics but besides that, I think it is unfair to expect inexperienced students to solve a full case from scratch, which is hard even for professional investigators.



The course aims to introduce the science of experimentation: applying evidence to hypotheses and making deductions. Unfortunately there is little learning which reinforces that. Students will instead, right at the beginning, be required to pour over a complex set of statistical noise, logical contradictions and generally overwhelming information. Unlike another forensic science course which explores the laboratory setting and features interactive experiments, this course is rarely about forensic science at all, not what many think to be "cool" crime scene investigation. This course all boils down to hard paper work and abstract thinking.



Because of the title of this course, many students have enrolled in it out of curiosity, but as people always say, curiosity kills the cat.

Assessment

Very heavy workload.



100% coursework

-20% Essays (individual) (varies every semester)

-30% Problem-based Learning tutorials

-20% Analysis and preparation of a case file

-30% Presentation case analysis and conclusions (individual and small group)



The work distribution stated, there is a case file, presentation, some essays and tutorial participation. But what seems like usual workload turns out to be a case file of hundreds of pages, a 50 minute presentation with drama/videotaping which takes students weeks and overnight meetings to make and develop, on top of three essays which are frankly pointless. Yes, you could theoretically choose not to do those and slip by (e.g. only powerpoint presentation with no video, 50 page report and something like that), but expect a devastating grade. For those who fulfill the "basic" requirement of drama, videotaping and writing the immense report, still do not expect a good grade.



The tutorial participation: unfair and misjudged. Groups have to hold meetings themselves and hand in group reports every week or so such that the tutor can give them evidence related to the case. I understand the notion of not allowing the use of Google Documents or Google Drive to share the police reports or our own minutes, due to the privacy of criminal records, but that stunts the spirit of groupwork and the efficiency of cooperation, making what's supposed to be group work into individual work. It makes the entire group unable to understand the complex case until the end of the course, while the tutor provides no hint for the confused students. This is such a waste to the cases which are tragic and worth investigating in nature. Suspending the mystery for too long turned those into pointless work: It was such a drag.

Grading

Login is required for this action, please click here to login or register a new account.

Teaching Skills & Others

Login is required for this action, please click here to login or register a new account.