Deporte escolar en Andalucía

Most police work involves reacting to calls for service generated externally to the police organisation. Upon the receipt of a call, a decision is made to dispatch a police officer to the scene or to handle the call in some other manner. These calls can range from instances of serious crime that demand an emergency response, such as an armed robbery or an assault, to those of a less urgent nature such as a burglary, loss of property or auto theft where the situation can be handled over the telephone or via a delayed response. Regardless of the type of incident, the police process the call in the most efficient manner possible. That is, the officer responds to the event with the aim of handling the incident quickly and expediently: hurry to the scene, investigate the event, adopt a solution and return to service to await the next call. In most instances, only the most immediate and superficial symptoms of what might be a much deeper problem are addressed.

This approach to the problems confronting the police has been labelled 'incident-driven policing' (Eck and Spelman, 1 987; Goldstein, 1990). Within this approach, each incident is treated as if it were isolated and disjoint from other similar ones. The exception to this is when the pattern of crimes is analysed for the purposes of identifying or apprehending an offender. While this approach addresses each incident efficiently, the outcomes are largely ineffective. That is, the symptoms are addressed but not the factors contributing to the problem. This means that the incident is likely to be handled over and over again. Figure 7 . 1 shows the general characteristics of incident-driven policing.

A new approach is clearly required. Problem-oriented policing is defined as a strategy directed at solving persistent problems that reside within the police sphere of operation. Thus, a problem must involve a group of incidents that share a common connection, be of concern to the public and be within the scope of police functions. Eck and Spelman characterize a problem as the main cause of 'a group of incidents occurring in a community, that are similar in one or more ways, and that are of concern to the police and the public' (Eck and Spelman, 1987, p42). The problem-oriented approach encourages the police to examine the relationships between incidents (patterns of behaviour, location), persons involved (victim, witnesses and perpetrators) and to analyse these factors in greater depth in the search for a more effective approach. The new approach is summarized in Figure 7 .2.

UNDERLYING CONDITIONS

PROBLEM

Incident Incident Incident Incident Incident

t

t

Police Police

Response Response

Figure 7.1 Incident-driven policing (Eck and Spelman, 1987, p4)

UNDERLYING CONDITIONS

Incident

�

Incident Incident Incident Incident

t

t

t

Police Police _{Other public}

Response Response and private

�·/

Problem-Solving Process

Figure 7.2 Problem-oriented policing (Eck and Spelman, 1987, p4)

Some problems can be eliminated, but it would be unrealistic to expect this as a final outcome in more than a very few instances. A few of them can be dealt with more satisfactorily by organizations other than the police, but simply transferring a problem to another agency is unacceptable unless they can deal with it more effectively. The

most realistic expectation of improved effectiveness will occur in the two areas of reducing the number and seriousness of the resultant incidents.

In New Zealand, problem-oriented policing is currently taught during training at the Royal New Zealand Police College, and there are also courses run for more

experienced officers. In addition, there is a one-day practical exercise on applying the

methods that is extremely labour intensive and also very intrusive in the community. For these reasons and others, a more effective method of consolidating the ideas presented during lectures is required.

7.2.2 Outline of system

POPIT aims to improve the teaching of problem-oriented policing concepts by simulating common situations on the computer, allowing the user to interact and obtain feedback on performance. The objective is to give police officers some appreciation of how they might re-consider their approach to problems and problem solving. They are encouraged to think more seriously about what information within a community is overlooked or under-used, what steps they could take to become more informed and what alternative actions could be taken to achieve various outcomes. Typical kinds of situation that provide useful training materials include domestic disputes, controlling rowdy teenagers in a shopping centre, investigating a stabbing at a local nightspot, dealing with a prostitute who has been beaten up or evicting street kids who are using an abandoned building as a drug dealing centre.

Obviously, producing software that can give a realistic impression by simulating such situations is no easy matter. However, the popularity of adventure-type games demonstrates the interest in this kind of package and also indicates that such an approach is feasible. Malo ne ( 1 98 1 ) was one of the first to point out the motivational effect that computer games can have on student learning. More recently, sophisticated systems such as GEO (Duchastel, 1 989) have incorporated games into an intelligent tutoring system structure. If the student is to get meaningful feedback the operations that the user can perform are limited and have to be anticipated at some level by the computer but, even so, users can get a sense of being involved in a realistic situation and of making decisions that have plausible consequences.

Simulation, too, has been shown to have a stimulating effect on students: see W oolf et al. ( 1 987) and Spensley et al. ( 1990b), for example. The question arises, to what extent can one simulate reality without straining the student's credulity? Obviously, one needs to anticipate to some degree what the user may do but still give him/her the feeling of

having unconstrained decisions to make. This is a difficult problem that will not be totally solved in the near future, but the success of adventure games and, in a more academic environment, Bonar and Cunningham's innovative Bridge system (Bonar and Cunningharn, 1 988), demonstrates that carefully selected scenarios can be analysed in sufficient detail to provide a semblance of reality.

In simulating the activity of a police department and the way that it deals with problems, one is in a complex problem solving environment with its own underlying logic, rules and guidelines. At one level a problem is solved by either making an arrest, administering a warning or by claiming there was no problem in the first place. A decision has to be made at this level (which, of course, may be affected by other actions the officer takes) and which has further ramifications. At a higher level, the officer is encouraged to look for patterns of offences: either people involved, places where they occur or similarities of types of offence. Once these patterns are established, more effective methods of resolving problems can be considered.

There is a temptation to set up a simulation with which the user can experiment and use this as it stands as the teaching system. Such an approach, at least in isolation, is very limited because:

the user may not realize what alternative and more appropriate courses of action were available;

the user may not realize that a particular outcome is unsatisfactory;

even if it is obvious that something has gone wrong the user may not believe that s!he could have taken any action to improve the situation;

it will often not be clear at what point things started to go wrong.

For the above reasons, it was decided to incorporate a coach/adviser into POPIT that interacts with the user as appropriate. Figure 7.3 illustrates the general passage of information through the system during a consultation.

The user interacts with the system via the interface. Slhe has access to scenario events and can also influence events in the scenario. The adviser supplies advice to the user based on information that has been derived from the scenario and from the student model. Note that the adviser picks up the interaction between the scenario and the user via the scenario events record. Also, the student model may be updated from sessional information but this does not take place during the session itself. The scheme described

in Section 6.3 is used for scenario representation. Other aspects of this model (the role of the adviser, the teaching knowledge required, student modelling and the interface) relate to the learning environment rather than the domain model and will be considered in the following sections.

User

Adviser Student

model

Figure 7.3 Passage of information through POPIT

7.2.3 The adviser

The adviser/coach is at the heart of the system. It must monitor the progress of the student, appraising the situation, deciding whether to intervene and, if so, in what way. The starting point here was the seminal work by Burton and Brown (1982). A general view of the information that the adviser in PO PIT uses in order to determine its strategy is given in Figure 7.4.

This model suggests that we have an adviser that takes into account:

the domain model: a general outline of a type of situation.

the current scenario: the current instantiation of the situation. This includes everything that has happened in the system, including the advice that the user has been given so far.

agent models: the main model is the student who is interacting with the system, but models of other agents are also relevant, both for comparison with the user, and also to present him/her with alternative points of view: see, for example, Todd ( 1 988).

teaching knowledge: this includes information relating to common types of errors, misconceptions and how to deal with them, the facts that need to be conveyed and the problem solving approach that is to be instilled.

Domain model Current scenario User Agent models

Figure 7.4 Information used by adviser

Teaching knowled�e

From the above sources, the adviser is able to access all the information needed to formulate advice. For example, it is possible to anticipate the user's view and likely actions in any given situation. Partly because of the nature of the domain, the coach is not regarded as an infallible agent. Also, in common with Curnming and Self ( 1989), it is believed that the student will learn more effectively if s/he has to weigh up the significance and even the veracity of the advice given and use this in conjunction with his/her own judgment.