Socrates in the Modern Classroom: How Are Large Classes in Criminal Justice Being Taught?*

*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. The authors wish to thank Andrew Morabito, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Eloise Clarke, American University, and Sandra Baxter, Applied Research Analysts, for their aid in data collection and their critical comments on an earlier draft. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the three anonymous reviewers.

Abstract

As education budgets shrink and interest in criminal justice at the collegiate level expands, large classes are being implemented in colleges and universities that traditionally have offered only small ones. If increasing criminal justice class sizes are inevitable, it is crucial that we gain an understanding of how large classes are currently taught and the extent to which these teaching techniques are employed in large criminal justice classes. This paper reports on an exploratory survey of criminal justice programs that ascertained the extent to which large classes are being offered, the organization of these courses, and how they are evaluated. These data enable us to identify current practices, speculate on the future of large classes in the criminal justice field and let us document how university/college characteristics are related to the prevalence, structure, and nature of large courses.

*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. The authors wish to thank Andrew Morabito, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Eloise Clarke, American University, and Sandra Baxter, Applied Research Analysts, for their aid in data collection and their critical comments on an earlier draft. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the three anonymous reviewers.

Notes

*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. The authors wish to thank Andrew Morabito, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Eloise Clarke, American University, and Sandra Baxter, Applied Research Analysts, for their aid in data collection and their critical comments on an earlier draft. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the three anonymous reviewers.

1. PowerPoint is the trade name of Microsoft’s presentational software.

2. Blackboard is the trade name of Blackboard Inc.’s educational software.

3. As discussed in the Pedagogy section, active learning describes a process by which students are actively engaged in the learning process rather than passively absorbing lectures (cf. Cooper and Robinson 2000b; Knapper 1987).

4. We eliminated these programs because we are interested only in classroom techniques as opposed to technical learning.

5. The 59% response rate to the first portion of the telephone survey is lower than we had hoped to achieve. However, in the field of educational research, a response rate of around 60% is considered above average. As an example, Gabbidon (2005) recently reported a response rate for criminal justice departmental chairs as 54%. Creswell (2005) indicates that anything above a 50% response rate is good in educational research. We also know that educational surveys are notoriously difficult to field (cf. Carr 2000; Selingo 2003).

6. The respondents were allowed to define what they considered a large class. The definition ranged from 55 to 500 students, with the median being 101 students.

7. For copies of the actual instruments used, please contact the lead author.

8. We were also disappointed with the professors’ response rate. These interviews, however, were much more difficult to coordinate than we had anticipated. In some cases the professor would call back and set up an interview time and the most convenient phone number to call. However, when called at the appointed time and place, the professor did not answer the phone or would answer and ask us to call back at another time. If this was the case, we would continue with instituting the three call‐back protocol. Some professors never called us back.

9. Some of the interviewees were eager to share their experiences, thus causing the interviews to last longer.

10. C is the symbol for the measure of association for nominal data called the Coefficient of Contingency.

11. Our variable categories were created based on natural breaks in the data. For example, classes are categorized as less than 80, 81–149, and 150 because the data fell into thirds. We felt it would be easier for the reader to evaluate the presentation of the data in categories rather than as continuous variables.