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The class is organized around intense class participation and class
presentations. Beginning September 16, you will begin presenting the issues for
the "crime of the week." Each group will have two or three people. I will
provide at least one reading, and the group will provide others that
address the issues. Readings must be delivered NO LESS THAN a week in advance.
Grading will be assigned on three criteria:
1) Timeliness in getting assigned readings to the class (5 percent)
2) Quality of readings (15 percent)
3) Group coherence and integration (30 percent)
4) Quality of the individual presentations (50 percent)
(NOTE: The first three criteria become a group grade; #4 an individual grade)
Each group will select a specific crime related to the week's topic
no less than 48 hours prior to the presentation and distribute it to the
class. The crime(s) will be the basis for applying the readings.
Some tips for presentations:
1) They should derive from readings that focus specifically on the
crime under discussion
2) The readings must be current (unless they are classics or otherwise
are not empirically or temporally dated). Readings can be obtained
from Jstor and either the links sent out to people or the full files
sent to me. I'll put both up in the
Assignments section of the page.
3) The presenters must integrate their presentation with a single
organize theme that each presentation develops
4) Presentations should draw from material from previous weeks' information
5) Presentations will generally take most of the hour. But, they should
leave the instructor with 15-30 minutes at the beginning to lay the
foundation, and 15 minutes at the end to summarize.
6) Presentations should get other students involved through questions,
debates, games, challenges, or other techniques to generate some
discussion.
7) Reading the presentations from a paper is generally not good form.
It's better to have talking points or an outline and "talk" the
presentation.
8) PowerPoint should be used with caution. While it can be effective,
simply reading from the screen what students can read themselves
more quickly isn't good form. The presenter, not the screen, should be
the center of attention.
9) Handouts (which can be distributed on the homepage or in class)
are useful.
10) Themes to consider in your presentation:
--Your group must select a crime that has been in the news within
about three weeks (flexible) of the presenation and you must
provide a link to the crime
--Explain why it's "crime of the week"
--Have an organizing theme that links the presentations together
in a common thread. Each presenter can present very different
material (or common material) - what makes it work is the
framework that ties it together
--The presentations should provide cultural, theoretical, or
social justice content to teach the rest of us something
we didn't know or give us new insights. This is key to the
presentation: We must all learn from it!
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