Forensic Science Lesson Plans

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:52:26 +0000

A lesson plan is a teacher’s detailed description of the course of instruction for an individual lesson. While there is no single way to construct one, most lesson plans contain some or all of the elements of the course. In today’s modern teaching style, individual lesson plans are often inappropriate. Specific objectives and timelines may be included in the unit plan, but lesson plans are more fluid as they cater to the students needs and learning styles.

Students are asked to engage in problems or inquiry learning. Rigid lesson planning with title, objectives and specific outcomes within certain time constraints, often no longer fit within modern effective pedagogy. Today, formal lesson plans are often required only by student teachers, who must be demonstrably familiar with the components of a lesson, or by teachers new to the field, who have not yet internalized the flow of a lesson.

Given below are a series of different lesson plans which may appeal to science professors, currently teaching forensic science in class, involving a range of difficulties and different aspects of forensic science.

Bloodstain Analysis involves introducing students to some of the techniques used by forensic scientists for analyzing blood, the concept of blood type, and providing opportunity for students to practice critical thinking skills in the context of scientific inquiry. It consists of two parts. The first part is intended to teach students about the catalase test, which is used to detect the presence of blood. While there are more sensitive tests available for the presence of blood that an investigator might use, this is by far the cheapest. Students are expected to predict whether or not the substances provided will be catalase positive or negative. They also examine whether each substance tests positive for blood using the phenolphthalein test. After this step, they open the evidence packets provided and test whether each stain that was found is likely to be blood or not. The second part addresses blood typing.

Hair Analysis intends to introduce students to the thought process involved in developing a technique for forensic analysis and to the physical structure of hair. It also provides opportunity for students to improve skills in observation, critical thinking and microscopy. This activity again involves two parts, which may be performed separately or as a cohesive unit. The first part requires students to examine a given set of hair. Using their observational and critical thinking skills, they develop a procedure to identify hair collected from crime scenes. The second part is intended to complement any crime scene scenario. In this part, students examine the hair supposedly collected from the crime scene as well as hair of the suspects and the pets involved. They use the data sheet provided to determine which suspect is the most likely match.

DNA fingerprinting involves the preparation and conduct of the DNA fingerprinting laboratory. It is divided into the following parts- Preparation of the student materials, plasmid DNA preparation, restriction endonuclease preparation, migration dye preparation and preparation, loading and running of an agarose gel for use with carolina blue stain.

By: Elizabeth Morgan

Fingerprinting in Forensic Science

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:55:39 +0000

Fingerprints collected from a crime scene, or from items of evidence from a crime, can be used in forensic science to identify suspects, victims and other persons who touched the surface in question. Fingerprint identification emerged as an important system within various police agencies in the late 19th century. This system replaced anthropometric measurements as a more reliable method for identifying persons having a prior record, often under an alias name, in a criminal record repository. The science of fingerprint identification stands out among all other forensic sciences for many reasons because of its superiority and reliability.

Worldwide, fingerprinting has served all governments during the past 100 years to provide accurate identification of criminals. No two fingerprints have ever been found alike in the billions of human and automated computer comparisons. Fingerprints have become the very basis for criminal history foundation at almost every police agency.

The first forensic professional organization, the International Association for Identification (IAI), was established in 1915. It established the first professional certification program for forensic scientists, the IAI’s Certified Latent Print Examiner program in 1977, issuing certification to those meeting stringent criteria and revoking certification for serious errors such as erroneous identifications.

Fingerprints remain the most commonly used forensic evidence the world over. In most jurisdictions, fingerprint examination cases outnumber all other forensic examination casework combined. It continues to expand as the premier method for identifying persons, with tens of thousands of persons added to fingerprint repositories daily in America alone – far outdistancing similar databases in growth. Fingerprinting has outperformed DNA and all other human identification systems to identify more murderers, rapists and other serious offenders (fingerprints solve ten times more unknown suspect cases than DNA in most jurisdictions).

Although some reporters and authors claim that fingerprints have long enjoyed a mystique of infallibility, the opposite is true. Fingerprint identification was the first forensic discipline in 1977 to formally institute a professional certification program for individual experts, including a procedure for decertifying those making any investigative errors. Other forensic disciplines later followed suit in establishing certification programs whereby certifications could be revoked for any error found.

Fingerprint identifications lead to far more positive identifications of persons worldwide daily than any other human identification procedure. The American federal government alone effects positive identification of over 70,000 persons. A large percentage of the identifications, approximately 92% of US Visit identifications, are affected in lights-out, no human involved computer identification process with 100% accuracy based on only two fingerprints.

By: Elizabeth Morgan

Science research » Forensic Scientists

Forensic Science Lesson Plans

Fingerprinting in Forensic Science