Course Title: Justice Management 2 (Program Implementation and Evaluation)

Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: Justice Management 2 (Program Implementation and Evaluation)

Credit Points: 12

Course Code	Campus	Career	School	Learning Mode	Teaching Period(s)
POLI1082	City Campus	Undergraduate	365H Global Studies, Soc Sci & Plng	Face-to-Face	Sem 2 2006, Sem 2 2007, Sem 2 2008, Sem 2 2009

Course Coordinator: Una Stone

Course Coordinator Phone: +61 3 9925 2799

Course Coordinator Email:una.stone@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Location: Bldg 37, level 4, room 20

Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

There are no pre-requisites for this course

Course Description

This course is intended to introduce students to contemporary developments, concepts and practices that have shaped the way in which programs and policies are delivered and evaluated. The course focuses on the issues involved with evaluating both small and large scale programs to effect change in the human services sector, particularly in the criminal justice field.

Through the lecture series, tutorial readings and discussion of case studies during tutorials this course aims to develop students’ skills in thinking critically about evaluation of program design delivery and effect and design of evaluation. Emphasis is placed on understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to evaluation and how they are applied in different contexts. It includes ethical issues, and standards of evaluation practice, as well as consideration of the politics, utilisation and impact of evaluation.

Occupational Health and Safety audits are generally conducted by an independent professional auditor, or team of auditors. In this course you will learn how to participate in a quality audit. You will also learn the actions necessary to systematically manage occupational health and safety.

Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

Competencies relating to the management of OHS include:

Contribute to the implementation of information and data systems
Contribute to the implementation of OHS strategies, systems and plans
Support integration of OHS within the overall management approach
Identify OHS implications of proposed changes to the workplace and provide advice to control risks
Identify implications of all sources of change to managing OHS and provide advice regarding these changes
Evaluate the effectiveness of the approach to managing OHS

At the completion of this course you will be expected to:


• understand the key concepts and processes in program implementation and evaluation
• critique the key concepts and processes as they relate to contemporary society and the student’s individual area of interest;
• develop an awareness of how effective programs are designed, implemented and evaluated;
• be able to describe a wide range of models of evaluation and discuss their benefits and limitations for different evaluation situations and how they might be appropriately combined in any given evaluation design.
• be able to analyse different definitions of evaluation that are used by those undertaking or commissioning evaluation and to discuss the implications of these definitions;
• demonstrate their capacity to apply relevant learnings to professional situations they are currently facing or may encounter in the future.

Overview of Learning Activities

Learning activities will include lectures, group activity and private study.

Research demonstrates that students retain only a minimum of information transmitted through lectures. In this course, lectures will be used to:

• Expose students in a concise manner to content that may take them longer to cover on their own.
• Present material not easily available elsewhere.
• Arouse interest.

Where appropriate lecture summaries will be made available on-line through the distributed learning system. Students are expected to read the prescribed materials before the session to which they relate. During the second hour of lectures some time will be devoted to discussing assessment requirements and how you will complete these. This will vary as we progress through the semester, and your information requirements change.

Group tutorials
There is also an hour -long weekly workshop which offers a mix of formal input, group activities and group discussions in which small groups will work on a variety of learning activities

Self-directed work
We also expect you to allocate an appropriate amount of time to read, take notes, think, write and work on the assessment activities. Some of this time will be spent in a library, while other time needs to be set aside for research activities or for study in the form of reading, note-taking, thinking and essay drafting. We recommend that you set aside about four to six hours per week for these activities. On occasion you may need to set aside even more time for certain activities. It is your responsibility alone to ensure that this is done.

Overview of Learning Resources

The resources for this course comprise lecture materials, handouts and  tutorial readings . You will be expected to read widely, particularly when completing assessment tasks, as the lectures and readings only provide an introductory overview of topic areas. You will also need to spend considerable time collecting resources from the library and on-line electronic journal databases.

Overview of Assessment

The assessment for this course will consist of 2 written assignments plus tutorial group presentations.

Written assessments:

1. First you will assess an evaluation using the program evaluation standards developed by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation at the University of Michigan.

2. Then having developed a critical appreciation of an evaluation, you will develop a proposal of your own for a ‘dummy’ data collection and analysis exercise which emulates part of an evaluation.