I have decided to take an independent study and create a whole new Introduction to Criminal Justice course in Instructure Canvas, the new learning management system at Bellevue College. I have encountered several problems. Since I began the study, I found out they may make a standard application that every instructor will have to use in the Canvas system. Every course would be like the last course and every instructor would be required to use the college’s set up.
The program chair of the Criminal Justice department is using a new book this fall quarter and I will have to re-design the syllabus I created. I had the new edition of the text-book used in Spring quarter. That edition will not be used in the fall. Hopefully the new text will get to me before most of the quarter is over. A lot of new text-books are being requested and it can delay delivery dates. I use the syllabus as a guide for designing the course. I need to decide the most important big idea I want the students to take with them five years after they have forgotten much of what they have learned. That big idea is stated in the course objectives and outcomes.
The next stage is deciding what tools I want to use to get the information from the text into the student’s memory storage area. It seems that a lot of what people believe about the criminal justice system is myth and doesn’t match the reality of how it was established and how it really works in today’s world. In my mind, if a case should go to the courts, the prosecutor and the attorney for the defense play out a scenario once seen in the middle ages. It is like two knights fighting for the winning spot (in the press). No one is mortally wounded today in the battle; but lives are changed forever and occasionally the defendant is put to death by the state. Needless to say the stakes in this battle, even in the 21st century, are extremely high. The system is a bit archaic and it is all we have to work with in the present.
The whole process begins when society create laws to regulate behavior. It is an ever-changing process.There are many different ideas about how law is created and what concepts or theories they are based on. That is not in the scope of this course. An interesting study on how laws are created and based on what theories, belongs in the study of Criminal Law. However, the students need some information on the subject and given this in the basic introductory course.
Once these concepts are reviewed, we move to the study of the men and women we trust with the task of arresting and investigation violations. Because they belong to an organization that has its own set of goals and objectives that often clash with the goals and objectives of the courts and correction organizations, we can study and research their successes and failures and how they fit into the criminal justice system. Law enforcement is often very different from the federal level, state to state and so on. One of the most important aspects of this study is the morality and ethics of the people assigned to protect us from criminal behavior and the goals and objectives of the organizations they belong to.
Actually the fact that what we call a criminal justice system can function in the first place is amazing. Even more amazing is that we call it a criminal justice system. Many of our constitutional rights have been replaced with plea bargaining. Once in court, should things progress to that point, choosing the jury becomes a game of high stakes. Often jury selection appears to be just another high stakes… game. We find ourselves asking the question, which jurists can we pick to support our position or which person will deadlock the process when it comes to a decision? There are many more questions like this as we continue the study.
America’s attempts to rehabilitate people who have found their way into the system seem to be handicapped by the legacies of the past. Maybe it would have been easier to just tie the defendant to a pole and dunk them in ice-cold rivers. If they were guilty they would drowned and if not… What we do today, is lock them up them together and hope they will somehow come out better people. In the most severe cases we kill them. That way society doesn’t have to pay the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to warehouse them in our prisons. In the end, do we really know what is causing this behavior and if we did could we fix it?
Now the real thinking portion of the project begins. I must use Web 2.0 technology without the help of an on campus classroom to help students understand how it all fits together and plays out in real-time. This course may be used by Bellevue College or some form of it; if I can put the elements together in a way that is conductive to learning in an online environment. On top of this, I need to learn a system that is completely new to me. Actually, since I have already begun the process, it is like learning a foreign language.
JOYSTECHTOOL 
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