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The University of Queensland is inviting participants from around the globe to take part in a citizen crime scene investigation.
The Crime 101x open online course, which begins today, allows members of the public to walk through a murder investigation and to follow the criminal justice process.
Participants will learn about the psychology of the law and follow the trial through a series of weekly videos.
UQ School of Psychology Associate Professor and course co-ordinator Blake McKimmie says people often have misconceptions on how the system runs.
"We want to expose people to the way in which psychology teaches us about the criminal justice system and how it sometimes does not work as we expect," he said.
"People have ideas on how the systems works from television programs or their own experiences, but sometimes those beliefs are not reflecting what the research tells us."
The free course runs over eight weeks and can be taken by anyone, anywhere in the world with no prior knowledge needed.
The drama and the 'who-did-it?' is what draws people in, it is the tension as the investigation unfolds.
"People see the crime happen and follow it right through, looking at issues like how our witness memory works and how to choose a suspect from a line-up," he said.
"In extra videos, one of the co-ordinators will explain the psychology of these things and how it is applied to the practise in the criminal justice system.
"What we have tried to do is to let people take on the various roles in the drama."
In a later tutorials participants will learn how to interview a witness and select questions to put to forward.
"Participants will watch an interview but then they get to imagine they are interviewing the same witness, and they choose which question they will ask and see how the interview unfolds," explained Mr McKimmie.
"We are trying to bring people into the drama with us, to let them experience as much as they can first hand and to give them a good understanding of what we are talking about.
"The drama and the 'who-did-it?' is what draws people in, it is the tension as the investigation unfolds."
Filming the crime
The videos that accompany the course took more than seven months to create.
Mr McKimmie says the filming of the drama component took eight days on the St Lucia campus in Brisbane and even he appears in front of the camera.
"We filmed everything with a professional film crew and used actors from Brisbane and Melbourne," he said.
"It was good fun to be part of the videos and it was out of necessity as we shot it on a shoe string, so the crew became cast as well."
He says the project has been a labour of love.
"It has been an amazing opportunity to go back to first principals and look at the research which tells us the best way for people to learn, and to also design a course in a way that you would not usually imagine," he said.
The public can sign up at any point during the course through the UQ School of Psychology.
Topics:
law-crime-and-justice,
university-and-further-education,
education,
brisbane-4000
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