Influencia del relieve en la hidrología de la cuenca del río Genal

As you have probably discovered, a case study is used to help people think critically about finding answers to questions. When using a case study you are expected to use ALL the information you have learned and APPLY that information to come up with a plausible answer or conclusion.

You cannot be expected to get everything right, every time when answering case studies because people are not omnipresent. That

means, we can never know ALL of the information available, and in many cases we actually have very few clues to go on.

The people who most often rely on case studies to perform the duties of their jobs are:

• Doctors and other medical professionals- who must fit clues together to make a diagnosis

• Lawyers and other legal professionals who must fit clues together to persuade a jury and judge, and

• Criminal Investigators who must fit clues together to understand a crime scene

Critical thinking is a major component of case study work. A person who is successful at critical thinking can use learned information in combination with real life scenarios and experiences to form a conclusion.

For example:

Your little sister woke up with a stuffy nose, watery eyes, and a cough.

What is your conclusion about her condition?

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Your conclusion will take into consideration past experiences and learned information and ultimately lead you to the decision that your little sister has come down with a cold. In this scenario we used

Symptoms to make our conclusion. You’ve experienced those symptoms before yourself, and you are pretty certain that she has a cold.

Are you correct? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps her cough lasts for several weeks, does she still have a cold? Probably not.

A case study conclusion can only be an educated guess. We use all of our information together with all of our past experiences to form a possibility.

The same will apply to a crime scene. You will never have access to all the clues, nor will you always be able to interpret the clues yourself.

You must rely on the past experiences and expertise of others in order to be a good criminal investigator.

In both a case study and a criminal investigation you will be “given

access” to certain information. Sometimes this information will set off a “light bulb” and you will immediately understand how it fits into the puzzle.

Sometimes you will have no clue.

When you have no clue as to what that piece of information means you have several options:

• Wait for more information to be revealed

• Ask someone for help, like an expert

• Look for more information on your own

• Sleep on it

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Does that sound funny to say sleep on it? Sometimes you have so much information going through your head that you cannot see the big

picture, you only see the little pieces floating around. You cannot put the puzzle together.

This is quite common when you have a lot of new information presented all at one time. If you give yourself time to sort through things, “sleep on it”, you will often find you have a new perspective the next day and can put things into place.

In a criminal investigation you will find the following to be true much of the time:

• You don’t have all the information

• You don’t understand all the information

• You are presented with many bits and pieces at once and feel overwhelmed

• You will require expert advice to help you form a conclusion

• You will be wrong at times

• You will be frustrated

• You will depend on your team

• You will get great satisfaction when you fit the pieces together

• Experience cannot be substituted with a case study

So why do the case study if you cannot gain real world experience from it? That is the only way we have to prepare people for these critical jobs. Would you want a doctor that had never diagnosed anything to be YOUR doctor? Isn’t it better that the doctor had an opportunity to practice his critical thinking skills before being asked to apply them?

This is why thinking through case studies is important.

Plus it is fun! You will love the case study that will present itself in various units throughout the rest of this course, and you will surprise

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yourself when you can take the information you learned from the course, and apply it to a “mock” investigation.

You can expect the following issues to be presented in the case study:

• A crime scene

• Securing the crime scene

• How to decide what is evidence

• Witness interviews

• Gathering evidence

• Analyzing evidence

• Dealing with suspects

• Present the case in a courtroom

• Calling expert witnesses

• Using scientific evidence and statistics

• Cross examination

• Jury point of view

You will learn about all the major types of evidence such as ballistics and firearms, blood analysis and spatter patterns, flammable liquids and arson, autopsies and death investigation, fibers, paint and glass fragments as evidence, entomology, pharmacology and toxicology,

analytical methods used in the lab, how statistics, emotions, and expert witnesses can be manipulated for juries.

On the next several pages you will be introduced to your case study crime scene. Not all pieces of information are important. Remember when you were first learning to solve word problems and there was extraneous information (information that wasn’t necessary) put into the problem to try and confuse you?

In the case study you will find that not all information is equal. Some of it will count and some of it will be irrelevant. You might not be able

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to determine which pieces are important immediately and will need to practice the four strategies listed in previous pages in order to make a determination.

Assignment:

Look over your crime scene and look back to Unit Two about how to handle a crime scene. Make notes in the appropriate places about typical and/or unusual procedures. Answer any questions presented.

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