ACADEMIC SKILLS FOR CRIMINOLOGY AND FORENSIC INVESTIGATION - 2023/4

Module Overview

This module is designed to help students successfully make the transition from further to higher education and lays the groundwork for thriving at university. It introduces students to the academic, employability and professional, and other skills and capabilities that they will need throughout their course (and beyond) and provides foundations upon which to build their confidence in meeting the varying demands of their degree programme. As such, the module aims to introduce and develop resourcefulness and resilience amongst students (alongside other skills and capabilities ¿ see ¿other information¿, below) that will prepare them for concurrent and future module requirements. Rather than simply being about ¿study skills¿, this module approaches the development of academic learning, employability, and professional and other relevant skills and capabilities from a holistic, subject area-specific perspective. The intention here is to enable students to situate their learning within the expectations of the social sciences more generally, but within the demands of criminology and forensic investigation more specifically, with a particular focus on the interconnectivity of what might initially appear to be discreet and/or loosely related components. Moreover, the module is ¿outward facing¿ in the sense that it recognises the requirements of other modules across the programme and further integrates the development of the capabilities required for those here.

Module provider

Sociology

Module Leader

RHODES Claire (Sociology)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 4

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

The module content includes: understanding the demands and requirements of the social sciences (both generally and subject-specific); an introduction to epistemology, ontology, and critical thinking; writing for specific tasks (academic and professional); recognising the interconnected nature of specific tasks; information literacy; applied and flipped learning; reading and writing in HE; proofreading and editing written work; successful presentations; understanding assessment types; understanding and using grade descriptors; interpreting and evaluating different sources; conducting literature searches; self-reflection; understanding and situating the subject areas; career choices; using the library; time management; making the most of the academic support and resources available to students; subject-specific employability capabilities; and skills and resources for adapting to life at university beyond academia.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate that they have successfully met the learning outcomes of the module.

  Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• Peer assessed group presentation (30%). Students will deliver a short, peer assessed, group presentation that discusses their collective feelings about making the transition from further to higher education and their reflections on what action they feel they need to take to maximise their potential to succeed at university.


• Portfolio of Learning (70%). Students will produce a portfolio of learning that charts their progress in relation to the reflections identified as part of their presentation, as described above. Students will be required to reflect upon the practical actions that they have taken during the semester to address any perceived gaps in their personal and academic development needs, why and how they did this, what they perceive the outcome to be, and how they will use their newfound knowledge to strengthen their academic skills and capabilities in the future.

Why are we doing this?

The step up from further to higher education can be both daunting and challenging for students at the best of times. This is recognised by both the learning and teaching strategy and the assessment strategy for this module (and indeed other modules on the programme), which is designed to support students with the transition to university life and learning.

The assessment strategy is therefore designed to provide students with a mutually supportive means of recognising and reflecting on individual and collective learning needs and to help them with the development of resourcefulness and resilience right at the start of their learning journey. The skills acquired and tested are intended to provide the foundations for success in future modules (where the means for the further enhancement of these skills will be designed in). The respective strategies for this module are also designed to foster confidence in learners across a range of diverse learning needs and to allow students to learn from the diverse backgrounds present within the cohort.

Formative assessment

Informal formative assessment is conducted throughout the module during workshops where students have the opportunity to engage in a variety of activities and to receive both peer and tutor feedback, with the aim of allowing students to assess their progress week by week.

  Feedback

Feedback and feedforward on summative assignments will be provided via SurreyLearn. This will indicate what students did well, less well, and what they need to do to improve in the future and will relate both to issues specific to the module and to transferable skills. Formative feedback will be provided throughout the module within in-class discussions and activities, and tutorials

Module aims

• Ease students¿ transition from further to higher education
• Grow student confidence in relation to a range of pertinent academic, employability, and other relevant transferable skills
• Facilitate student engagement and enable a sense of community amongst the cohort

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

• Allow students practical opportunities to learn, develop, and practice/rehearse a range of pertinent skills required for success at degree level.


• Build a strong sense of community within the cohort through a range of engagement opportunities


• Foster a mutually supportive learning environment

The learning and teaching methods include workshops, class exercises and discussions, video input, and independent study. Each week students will be introduced to a different set of academic and/or professional skills in the form of a lecture and a workshop, where information will be imparted and associated practical exercises will allow students to engage with that skill themselves to enhance their knowledge and confidence, and to reflect on their learning needs. Collectively, these methods will combine guided learning, independent learning, and self-reflection, within a mutually supportive environment. Whilst this perhaps implies a more traditional, atomisAcademied, approach to skills development, it is understood that there are more constructive and engaging ways to generate student curiosity and passion for the processes of learning. As such, rather than adhere to a strict ‘week by week, skill by skill’ approach where those skills are presented in a silo, the module recognises the importance of exploring and examining the interrelationships between engaging with and making sense of ‘evidence’, making and taking ‘meaning’ from this, and writing, across a specific range of tasks.

The lectures will introduce and explain key concepts, theories, and core aspects of the practical application of the issues discussed. The workshops will provide students with the opportunity to be active participants in their learning experience by undertaking interactive exercises and group discussions, demonstrating their acquired understanding and knowledge, critical thinking, and communication skills.

In order to build confidence and to engage students with diverse learning backgrounds, students will be encouraged to share their thoughts, ideas, and reflections, including those relating to their own experiences. Ongoing feedback opportunities from staff and peers will be variously present in seminars and tutorials, and online.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: SOC1055

Other information

Surrey's Curriculum Framework is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas: Employability: The content of the module, together with the assessment strategy, will introduce students not only to the types of career options available to graduates within the field, but it will also begin to identify and develop the types of skills required within these careers, as well as in the social sciences more generally. This will also provide the platform to further develop the employability skills and capabilities contained within other modules across the programme. Global and Cultural Capabilities: The workshops and elements of the assessment will require students to work collectively. This is intended to help foster a sense of community amongst the cohort from the start of the programme, and to allow students to work together, to reflect, and to share experiences with people from different backgrounds to solve problems and to address new, common challenges. In doing so, students will have the opportunity to broaden their own worldview, perspectives, and to challenge stereotypes, by actively engaging with against a broader spectrum of ideas, experiences, and representations held by others, both through facilitated in-class discussions and as elements of the portfolio assessment. Digital Capabilities: Students will begin their digital capability journey through the use of SurreyLearn, where they will learn to navigate and utilise the VLE for multiple aspects of the module online provision. Students will also utilise Microsoft Teams as a means of communication and collaboration and engage with other online platforms and databases. Resourcefulness and Resilience: The approach of this module is one that allows students to share the collective challenges of the transition to higher education together, sharing experiences and providing support and empathy. Through the workshops students are encouraged to develop their own resourcefulness, capabilities, and problem-solving skills, and in so doing to grow their confidence, self-efficacy, and resilience in the face of the challenges presented by their new learning environment. Students will be encouraged to self-reflect and to recognize and address learning challenges through engagement with a range of methods, techniques, and resources, all within a mutually supportive environment. The assessment will encourage collective working, peer support, leadership, contribution to constructive dialogue, and mutually beneficial learning. It will further allow students to create a preliminary personal learning needs analysis which can be shared, discussed, and will receive feedback from peers and tutors.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2023/4 academic year.