Abstract:

Forensic Genetics is a subject in the “Genetics and Genomics” master's program at the Universitat de Barcelona. This subject was first taught in 2007, coinciding with the first year of the new master’s part of the European Higher Education Area. The course was designed to offer classroom sessions with broad and engaging content, organized into lectures, computer sessions, and a conference by a police officer expert in Forensic Genetics. The course is divided into fourteen lessons, and for each one, we provide informative slides which are uploaded on the Virtual Campus from the Universitat de Barcelona, being accessible to all students. Three of these lessons, the most descriptive, are not explained in the classroom by the teacher and are worked on autonomously by the students. Teachers deliver lessons in eight sessions of two hours each using many criminal cases, most from Spain, to illustrate the topics. Then, in the ninth session, a police officer presents his experience and develops a summary of the whole course from a police point of view. Questions are held at the end of the officers' presentation. The tenth session (the last one) is devoted to calculating different parameters to quantify the genetic evidence and the paternity tests. Students carry out the computations in a computer classroom, and teachers are with them, asking or solving questions and problems interactively. The computer programs are free so students can work with them at home. Finally, we believe that the evaluation must be both accreditive and formative. For this purpose, our evaluation is composed of two exercises: 1) a summary of a paper and 2) ten forensic genetics questions that have to be answered by students. Regarding the first one, each student selects a recent paper on forensic genetics and summarizes it in a report with a maximum of five pages. The student has to give his/her opinion on the article, and written communication skills are part of the evaluation. The ten questions are simulated cases. They can work in groups or ask for help outside the university. We aim for them to think about a forensic case and deduce the answer using the information received during the course. Although they can work in groups, each student must fill in his/her official answer format. This activity is very motivating and has great acceptance from our students. Students' evaluations are incredibly positive, and we are very happy with this teaching experience.

Keywords:

Forensic Genetics, virtual campus, police conference, computer sessions, formative evaluation, accreditive evaluation.