ATS1281: Understanding Crime: An Introduction

All in all, this unit was pretty good (especially for a first year unit which usually aren’t very in-depth). The subject content was interesting most of the time, and the unit was structured (and the content assessed) pretty well. Lectures covered the following topics: Crime and Criminology in general, Classical Criminology, Positivist Criminology, the Ecology of Crime, Strain Theory, Social Learning Theory, Labelling and Control Theory, Gender and Crime, Crimes of the Powerful and ‘Doing’ Criminology. I will note, however, that at times the content did seem quite dry, and the tutorials weren’t very beneficial. That being said, I probably would recommend the unit – especially if you’re after a relatively interesting unit with a lighter workload and few contact hours.

- 5%. Students are given a template for their essay plan, and outline their contention, arguments (and how these link to their contention) and evidence. As long as you follow the essay plan template and your essay seems to be on-track and relevant, you should receive 5/5 marks.

- 40%. The exam is closed book and students are given 2 hours writing time and 10 minutes reading time. Our exam was divided into two parts – one part an essay, and the second part a series of short-answer questions. For both parts, students got to choose which questions to answer out of the available options (e.g. 1 out of 4 essay questions, and 2 out of 4 short-answer questions).

The lecturers changed, depending on the topic. I can’t actually remember their names, except for the unit coordinator, Jarrett Blaustein. In my opinion, Jarrett was the best lecturer and was the most engaging. However, the other lecturers were pretty good too – except for one, whose lectures were very disengaging and dry.

- 45%. The essay is worth 45% of your overall mark and should be around 1,500 words (+/- 10%). The essay question, marking rubric and other information are supplied early in the semester on Moodle, as well as a heap of information on how to write the essay.

- 10%. Students complete Moodle quizzes throughout the semester. These are based on the weekly readings and the Academic Skills Development videos. Each quiz is worth 1% or 2%, and you usually have at least 10 days to complete each quiz in your own time. Students also had more than one attempt on these quizzes, meaning you could basically each quiz once, see the correct answers and do it again to get 100%. Therefore, these quizzes are easy marks.

No – however, students were given a fair bit of information on what the exam questions would be, so you can prepare for the exam based on this information.

3.75 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture.

I purchased the prescribed textbook, however it isn’t really essential. Whilst the online quizzes are based on the textbook readings, you can probably get by and still get 100% on each quiz without it.

1x 1 hour lecture each week.
1x 1 hour tutorial each week (compulsory).

2017, Semester 1.