Teacher Page
This multidisciplinary
project creates a link between biology, biotechnology, chemistry and physics. It
is intended to expose high school students to the various laboratory skills
commonly used during a forensic investigation. Students will acquire the skills
of observation, microscopy, chromatography, serology, DNA fingerprinting with
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), and laws of physics through the project.
The most difficult
part of the project is probably making a decision between the two different
goals. Such a dilemma is shown in the diagram on left side of this page. As one
can see, one scope is no better than the other. Since both have pros and cons,
it would be at instructors’ discretion to follow or modify one or the other.
First,
students will understand better if an instructor adopts the Crime Scene
Investigation (CSI) model in this project. What instructors can do is develop a
good story line of a crime and leave rest to students’ imagination. If the
instructor’s goal is to have students feel the reality of an actual crime scene,
the he or she can even decorate the stock room or prep any room as a real crime
scene. However, there are several problems associated with this idea. First, it
may be difficult to come up with a good story line that contains all activities
shown in this project. For example, it would be irrelevant for students to
analyze skid marks on the road when the story line is dealing with homicide case
on a ship. Likewise, the instructors may not be able to incorporate all
Project Activities into their story line. Obviously, the purpose of using
this scheme is to offer students some fun while meeting educational objective,
but a bad story line such as nonsense criminal story would produce negative
result. Second, instructor may face difficulties in setting up controls during
experiment. In this scheme, students may collect evidence directly from the
crime scene. Depending on the number of students, perhaps, it is a good idea for
the instructor to assign groups consisting of 3 to 4 students per group. That
means the instructor will have to set up different sessions for each group to
perform their observations. Since the group or the individual students will be
evaluated at the end of project, it is instructor’s responsibility to provide
the same crime scene to each group. Many things can happen while students are
evaluating the crime scene. A student can pick up a strand of hair that has
fallen off from a member of the previous group. Also, students can miss a
fingerprint that the teacher has embedded as a clue, but rather they find
fingerprints belonging to someone else who was there previously. Lastly,
depending on the force of grip and the pressure, different kinds of fingerprints
might be left. In other words, some group might take advantage of obtaining
clean and dark fingerprint, and another might pick dull and light fingerprint.
Such discrepancies related with the control are some obstacles that follow with
CSI model.
Although students are able to gain hands-on experience
from the CSI model scheme, there are many problems associated with projects.
Another approach to a forensic science project is to investigate a crime without
using a story line. With this model, students will conduct various activities
without dealing with a crime scene. In this case, activities are not necessarily
bound into a storyline, so student can fully take advantage of conducting every
activity in random order. Instructors can have a better quality control this way
since collecting evidence by students has been eliminated. Instructor will be
the middle man in each activity and he/she would provide the students with
evidence directly. Certain evidence like fingerprints still need to be created
by instructors but students would know where to locate such things.
The most important part of the
project is to expose students to sterile techniques because some activities deal
with blood and other bodily fluids body fluids. However, instructors should go
over theories and any other background information prior to experiment. In
order to fulfill the objective, students may carry further experiment without
instruction. This is how students’ minds are enriched through the PLTW (Project
Lead the Way) program. Students will construct laboratory reports/case reports
(depending on how instructors want them), and perform oral presentations on who
they think the perpetrator is among the suspects.
Goal:
To allow Academy students to
experience advanced-level laboratory techniques not usually
available on the high school level.
Objectives:
Math & Science:
