Abstract:

Awakening attention and interest among young people and students, especially in the context of technical and professional questions, is often very challenging. Teachers must, therefore, exert significant effort to make education more attractive and engaging. In the presented article, we focused on presenting an approach to teaching subjects related to criminalistics with an emphasis on application and the possibilities of involving students in research activities. It is crucial for theoretical information about the issues to stimulate students to critical thinking, which can result, for example, in leading their own project or working on a research-level thesis. Within the research activities, a student can form their problem-solving team, set long-term and short-term goals for the project, clarify the benefits that will result from solving the project, propose a financial budget, and other equally significant aspects of project activity. Criminalistics, as an independent scientific field, represents a very dynamic and interdisciplinary sphere where every student of the subject can find an area of interest and translate this interest into solving a specific research problem. The article is divided into two basic parts. In the first part, we provide the reader with an overview of the classical education of criminalistic subjects at a selected institution and describe common forms of education and approaches to student assessment. In the second part, we focus on the possibilities of guiding and involving students in solving research tasks in the field of criminalistics, as well as preparing students for leading research tasks. The conclusion of the article summarizes the connection between education and research activities and considers the benefits of this form of information acquisition. The presented approach can subsequently be inspirational for institutions teaching similar subjects or can serve as a guide or a scheme that can be applied to other areas of education.

Keywords:

Education, criminalistics, research, research activities, project, students.