A Matter Of Life And Death: Relevance And Rigor In Continuing Professional And Continuing Higher Education In The Pursuit Of Justice

In recent years, advances in the “hard sciences” coupled with the increasing incidence of post-conviction exoneration of accused parties have forced a new criminal investigation paradigm on law enforcement practitioners, a paradigm for which they are inadequately prepared by either their formal education or continuing professional education. The increased reliance on tangible, scientific evidence is a contemporary complexity of practice that must be addressed by programs of higher education if we are to meet our obligation, as educators, to provide a sound body of relevant knowledge for the practice of the discipline. This paper explores the need for the reform of curricula in criminal justice programs to make room for this new, inter-disciplinary, investigative paradigm, to protect the rights of the accused, and to better serve society by restoring confidence in the criminal justice system

Grantmakers on Funding Social Issue Media Projects

This is a chapter from a longer piece. The collaborations documented here demonstrate a shared space of values. They also respond to driving necessity, as new communications media both permit greater interconnections, and also challenge the terms of business as usual. Our public television services no longer can presume an audience grateful for an alternative to commercial TV. Public television leaders now distinguish the service on the basis of its role as a community resource and partner. Funders now routinely build communications components -- the video, the Web site, the study guides, the 800 number -- into their projects from the beginning, and look for them to help build the project as it develops. Social action and community organizations find themselves operating both locally and globally, as they plug into media resources that can extend and achieve their goals, and build their networks of contacts. These organizations need each other as much as they need powerful media tools

Unpacking High-Impact Instructional Practices and Student Engagement in a Teacher Preparation Program

The literature on SoTL contains numerous studies examining the relationship between High-Impact Practices (HIPs) as adopted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), student engagement, and student learning outcomes as measured on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). To further understand how these practices might affect student engagement and learning within college courses, this study examined the relationship between HIPs, reported student engagement and reported learning outcomes in a teacher preservice program. Focus group interviews and a modified version of the NSSE survey were used to “unpack” how these practices related to student engagement and learning in five courses with 94 enrolled students. Major themes from the analyses included the importance of applied learning, collaborative assignments, understanding diverse points of view and constructive feedback on assignments as essential components of engagement and learning. Implications for teaching and future research are discussed

Basic Parameter Estimation of Binary Neutron Star Systems by the Advanced LIGO/Virgo Network

Within the next five years, it is expected that the Advanced LIGO/Virgo network will have reached a sensitivity sufficient to enable the routine detection of gravitational waves. Beyond the initial detection, the scientific promise of these instruments relies on the effectiveness of our physical parameter estimation capabilities. The majority of this effort has been towards the detection and characterization of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence, e.g. the coalescence of binary neutron stars. While several previous studies have investigated the accuracy of parameter estimation with advanced detectors, the majority have relied on approximation techniques such as the Fisher Matrix. Here we report the statistical uncertainties that will be achievable for optimal detection candidates (SNR = 20) using the full parameter estimation machinery developed by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration via Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods. We find the recovery of the individual masses to be fractionally within 9% (15%) at the 68% (95%) credible intervals for equal-mass systems, and within 1.9% (3.7%) for unequal-mass systems. We also find that the Advanced LIGO/Virgo network will constrain the locations of binary neutron star mergers to a median uncertainty of 5.1 deg^2 (13.5 deg^2) on the sky. This region is improved to 2.3 deg^2 (6 deg^2) with the addition of the proposed LIGO India detector to the network. We also report the average uncertainties on the luminosity distances and orbital inclinations of ideal detection candidates that can be achieved by different network configurations.Comment: Second version: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted in Ap