Perfecting Lessons Learned for Criminal Justice Online Graduate Education: Reflection,Integration, and Application

Criminal justice programs are seeing an increase in the number of online classes both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. At the graduate level, criminal justice online education requires students to achieve mastery of higher ordered thinking and advanced analytic skills. Some students may believe that online education is simply a matter of reading postings and writing simple responses to queries. In order to counter the view that modern online courses, particularly those at the graduate level, are not academic enough, online graduate faculty must find ways to engage students through useful course design and meaningful assessments that promote deep learning. Such engagement requires faculty and students to show reflection in design as well as the integration and application of course materials in a consistent and significant way. This paper will discuss our attempts to reframe graduate criminal justice online classes in order to enhance student engagement and, ultimately, their deeper learning.     

Clickers and Online Homework in the Criminal Justice Classroom: A Test Study

The criminal justice discipline has few studies that explore the use of technology as a supplement to traditional face-to-face instruction. Using a sample of criminal justice students enrolled in two sections of the same 300-level foundational criminal justice course, this study examines the impact of clickers and online homework on student performance in the course, as well as observes student perceptions of the integrated technology. Results reveal that while students perceived the technologies as helpful to their learning, the addition of technologies to the one section of the course had little impact on student performance indicators such as test scores and final letter grades. Potential explanations for these findings and directions for future research are discussed; and suggestions on how to potentially make these supplemental tools more useful are provided.     

Using chipendale in the classroom

One of the most common complaints among criminal justice educators is that students have very poor writing and research skills. In particular, educators cite that students’ papers are poorly organized, are replete with grammar and spelling errors, are missing key elements in their discussions, and are often plagiarized. Despite the need for research and writing classes, very few social science faculty members teach writing‐intensive courses because of the amount of time such a course requires. Accordingly, this paper presents a model criminal justice writing class that outlines specific teaching methods to overcome the most common problems found in criminal justice writing and research.     

What Motivates Today’s Criminal Justice Student to Become an Engaged Learner?

The use of student-centered High Impact Practices (HIPs) has become increasingly popular across university and college faculty. HIPs increase student development of critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills. HIPs also provide students the opportunity to engage in real-world application of course knowledge. While HIPs increase student engagement and intrinsic motivation, little research has explored student perception of these concepts. This article describes a pilot course offered to upper level criminal justice students that incorporated three HIPs: undergraduate research, collaborative assignments, and service/community-based learning. Semi-structured interviews were used to facilitate individual student discussion regarding their perceptions and experiences of the course related to their level of motivation and engagement as compared to traditional classes. Results indicated student expectations for the course were exceeded; students believed the course would positively impact their future career/education plans; and the HIPs motivated the students to engage more than their traditional lecture-oriented courses.     

Building Legal Competency: Foundations for a More Effective Criminology and Criminal Justice Discipline

This article argues for the need to build legal competency in the discipline of criminal justice and criminology through incorporating law courses in its PhD program curriculum, whether as black letter law (i.e. criminal law, criminal procedure, courts), sociology of law, or socio-legal studies (i.e. law and society courses). Through requiring law courses as a necessary and integral part of the curriculum, and recognizing the mainstream impact of these courses, the discipline stands to enrich the field of legal studies in criminology and criminal justice. The discipline’s need and demand for law trained tenure track faculty with PhD credentials can only be met through consistent law course offerings.     

Service Learning and Criminal Justice Students: An Assessment of the Effects of Co-Curricular Pedagogy on Graduation Rates

Service learning courses provide meaningful community service for students in order to assist them with the integration of theory and practice. A partnership with local high schools allows students in a large criminal justice program on the west coast to serve as mentors for students who are referred to the program by school counselors and/or social workers. Data on student performance are used to assess whether the exposure to service learning improves matriculation. All criminal justice students who participated in the program were included in this analysis. The impact of this pedagogy is highlighted by using a randomized sample of criminal justice students who have not participated in this particular course. Findings from this program assessment indicate that race and gender are not strong predictors of graduation. Students with high GPAs and those taking service learning courses are more likely than their low GPA and no service learning course counterparts to obtain a degree.     

Teaching an Innocence Case Review Course to Undergraduate Students

After two years of experience in overseeing groups of undergraduate and graduate criminal justice students in an Innocence Case Review course at the University of Central Missouri (UCM), the authors reviewed the structure of the course and the attitudes of the participating students. An examination of Innocence Case Review current procedures in undergraduate institutions and law schools provides background for course design. This article summarizes the findings of the students’ experiences, reactions, and attitudes of their yearlong case screening efforts, and to the criminal justice system in general. The first part of this article examines the literature on innocence case review classes at both undergraduate institutions and law schools exploring different learning styles and strategies inherent in this type of class. It also explores the skills necessary for case review, and the skills students can take to other classes and professions. The second part reviews the structure of our courses as initially created and implemented for the last two academic years at UCM and the modifications the instructors felt necessary for the future. The third part examines the survey conducted by the UCM’s Innocence Case Review class, including student suggestions for class improvements and advice to students selected for the new academic year. The benefits and abilities gained by the students through this course become apparent. The fourth part discusses and evaluates the current class structure and reforms suggested by the UCM students, the professors’ experience, and as indicated by other universities. The conclusion reviews findings gathered from the current course as well as examining other universities’ courses, and the value students experience from participating in this experiential or engaged learning.     

Online instruction and site assessment

Online instruction is a rapidly developing phenomenon in higher education and it presents many opportunities and challenges to criminal justice educators. One area deserving attention is the meaningful utilization of the numerous web sites available. This paper reports on the effort to integrate a site evaluation instrument into course structure in order to assist students in their assessment of web sites. The device used to accomplish this objective was a site survey form presented to two online classes. The criteria used by students to assess the quality of web sites was identified, and the highest and lowest rated sites for two classes were recognized.     

Causes of Wrongful Conviction: Looking at Student Knowledge

The current study investigates the impact of a criminal justice education on student knowledge about wrongful conviction. Past research has found fallibility of hard evidence (e.g., eyewitness misidentification), police and lawyer behaviors (e.g., tunnel vision), and social group discrimination to be underlying causes of wrongful conviction. We developed a survey to investigate student knowledge of these underlying causes, comparing participants in different years and programs of study. The findings suggest that criminal justice majors were at times more aware of the underlying causes of wrongful conviction than noncriminal justice majors, specifically in regards to the fallibility of hard evidence and social group discrimination. Criminal justice majors were not more knowledgeable in the areas of police and lawyer behavior. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the scope of criminal justice education and future careers in criminal justice.     

Thinking About Thinking in Criminal Justice Education

Metacognitive learning techniques encourage students to engage course material in such a way that facilitates learning, retention, and application of information gained from a course. While metacognition has begun to be widely used in higher education, little is known about its applicability to criminal justice education. Using a sample of undergraduate students from core criminal justice major courses, this study assesses the impact of metacognitive exercises on learning for criminal justice majors. Specifically, we compared the effect of implementing metacognitive activities on objective and subjective measures of student learning. The results of our evaluation revealed that metacognitive learning techniques were found to have varied objective effectiveness while simultaneously having consistent subjective effectiveness.     

Supporting Student Learning through Instructional Videos in Business Statistics

While statistics is an essential topic for business students, many students experience barriers to successful learning due to anxiety, motivation, or difficulty with quantitative understanding. This research examines the use of online videos with an effort to explore the relationship between student characteristics, video usage, and course performance measures. In addition, the study examines student perceptions of the supplemental resources in an effort to examine the efficacy related to student learning and performance. This study seeks to confirm previous research regarding the benefit of supplemental video resources and extend the knowledge base by understanding the impact for various types of students (e.g., level of course, level of previous academic performance, etc.). The study found that the use of the video resources varies based on students’ previous math performance and the difficulty of the material. Student ratings indicate that the videos were helpful in learning the content and that they provided an important resource when students needed additional tools to master the material. Analysis of the results provides implications for understanding how different students use online videos and offers recommendations for educators and researchers about how to enhance student success in difficult statistics coursework.     

Ethics courses: Their impact on the values and ethical decisions of criminal justice students

Numerous articles and books advocate the importance of ethics as an essential component of a criminal justice curriculum. While there are several approaches suggested, one of the most popular methods of assuring coverage of this important topic is to add an ethics course to the curriculum either as a required or an elective course. Teaching students ethical theories, principles and providing them with the opportunity to discuss discipline specific ethics problems is thought to help contribute to the establishment of ethical practitioners.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of a semester long criminal justice ethics course on the students' value orientations, and their perceptions of both the seriousness of ethical violations and their likelihood of engaging in such behaviors. Our findings are consistent with the results of researchers evaluating ethics courses in other disciplines. Implications for criminal justice ethics education are discussed.     

Developing an online justice studies degree program: A case study

Online technology allows higher education to reach additional students. Because of its convenience many universities will offer a variety of criminology and criminal justice courses online. This paper presents a case study of the transfer of a graduate justice studies degree program from traditional instruction to online delivery. The transformation must involve the coordination of several university departments. Online course instruction includes development, instruction, and assessment stages that are distinct from traditional courses. The lessons learned from this process are discussed.     

Connecting Academic Criminal Justice to the Practitioner Perspective: The Efficacy of the Professional Interview

This paper details the use of the professional interview as an active learning assignment for students enrolled in criminal justice and social science classes. Numerous ways in which the professional interview enhances the advising and career selection process are identified. The authors present the results of a content analysis of the “summary and reflections” section of assignments from more than 100 professional interviews completed by students enrolled in several criminal justice classes. The results are used to illustrate students’ perceptions of the utility of the assignment. Lastly, the text includes a version of the interview instrument the authors have utilized with great success for a number of years.     

Striking Out on Its Own: The Divergence of Criminology and Criminal Justice from Sociology

As education budgets shrink and interest in criminal justice at the collegiate level expands, large classes are being implemented in colleges and universities that traditionally have offered only small ones. If increasing criminal justice class sizes are inevitable, it is crucial that we gain an understanding of how large classes are currently taught and the extent to which these teaching techniques are employed in large criminal justice classes. This paper reports on an exploratory survey of criminal justice programs that ascertained the extent to which large classes are being offered, the organization of these courses, and how they are evaluated. These data enable us to identify current practices, speculate on the future of large classes in the criminal justice field and let us document how university/college characteristics are related to the prevalence, structure, and nature of large courses.     

A formative evaluation of WIKI’s as a learning tool in a face to face juvenile justice course

Current literature indicates an increased pedagogical value of technology integration in university coursework. One form of technology that encourages collaborative, online teaching and learning is a wiki, an online application that allows participants to partner and direct a website. This article describes the design and formative evaluation of a semester-long wiki project that was conducted during three face-to-face juvenile justice courses. Upon completion, 61 students completed written, open-ended evaluations of the project with a focus on (a) the strengths of the project, (b) knowledge of the juvenile justice system gained through the project, and (c) suggestions to improve the overall effectiveness. NVIVO8 was used to code and analyze the results of their responses. Results indicate that the Juvenile Justice Wiki Project demonstrated a real-life (online) understanding of the juvenile justice system in a face-to-face meeting, a more comprehensive examination of the juvenile justice system compared to a more traditional book and lecture pedagogy, and a perceived value in the collaborative, constructivist approach. A formative evaluation indicates future structural and pedagogical project modifications according to student evaluations and perceptions.     

Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect

Establishing causal relationships is an elusive process for criminal justice researchers. Elimination of rival causal factors tends to be the most problematic area. This practice note first describes the methodology of a recent study conducted by the authors and then elaborates on the methodological problems inherent in the search to establish a causal relationship between course work and attitudinal change among students enrolled in introductory criminal justice classes.     

Active teaching to manage course difficulty and learning motivation

Given the recent reported common occurrence of mediocre or substandard academic performance by students in colleges and universities, it has become essential to identify pedagogical factors that might lessen or reverse this trend. Kolb’s experiential learning, Pintrich’s student learning motivation, and cognitive load theories were used as a framework to assess active teaching moderation of the effects of course difficulty on course performance and learning motivation. Hierarchical ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to analyse the data. Research subjects were recruited from a medium-sized historically Black college and university (HBCU) students enrolled in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and Business (i.e. management, economics, or accounting) classes. Active teaching was a positive predictor of course grade and learning motivation. Course difficulty was a negative predictor of course grade. Interaction analysis revealed that increases in active teaching reduced (i.e. moderated) the negative relationship between course difficulty on both course grade and learning motivation. Overall, the findings suggest that student learning outcomes are certainly a function of pedagogy (e.g. active teaching), psychological/affective (e.g. learning motivation), and learning content complexity. Active teaching environments should (1) address both cognitive load and emotional responses attributed to difficult coursework, and (2) provide efficacy building opportunities during instructional delivery.     

Changes in self-efficacy and task value in online learning

This study was designed to investigate whether course content self-efficacy, online technologies self-efficacy, and task value change over the course of a semester. Sixty-nine participating students from four classes provided data through two instruments: (1) the self-efficacy instrument and (2) the task value instrument. Students’ self-efficacy and task value measures were collected three times during the semester (i.e., beginning of semester, mid-term, and final). Data were analyzed using repeated measures of variance. Findings of repeated measures indicate that course content self-efficacy and online technologies self-efficacy fluctuated, but task value remained unaffected during the course of the semester. Educational implications of the results and suggestions for future research are discussed.