Experimentation and challenge: on-line criminology at the University of Bologna (Italy)

Approximately since the second half of the 1990s, it has been heatedly debated in Italy as to how and whether data communication networks can offer new learning contexts. In this first phase of intellectual turmoil and experimentation at various levels which, in my opinion finished April 17th, 2003 when a decree was issued, signed by both the Minister of Education and University and the Minister of Innovation and Technology which also establishes Open Universities in Italy, my three year experience while in charge of an on-line course on criminological topics carried out in an undergraduate course for “Security and Social Control Operators” (Faculty of Political Science “Ruffilli”, University of Bologna). I believe that this on-line course represented a real challenge for four different reasons: 1) it was inserted in the syllabus of a three year undergraduate course which had recently been established and was the first university course in Italy intended for the training of operators to carry out an activity which calls for being able to manage modern investigative, security and control strategies; 2) it dealt with the teaching of criminology and it is useful to emphasize that, in Italy, criminology has a difficult time freeing itself from similar disciplines (legal medicine, criminal law, sociology, psychology), even while knowing that it has to maintain a good relationship with them; 3) it dealt with one of the first on-line courses activated at the Faculty “Ruffilli”; 4) it was intended for the university training of the Marshals of the Carabinieri. The on-line teaching activities I organized and managed were preceded by a lesson requiring physical presence and were accompanied by my availability to receive the students face-to-face numerous times each week. The course, in its three years of activation, had the overall participation of 418 students; it was received with favour and interest on the part of the participants and also gave me the possibility to reflect on the potential and the limits of this teaching method. On the one hand, I feel the use of data communication technology is fundamental in liberating teaching from physical presence and established schedules in order to give university students the possibility of personalizing their educational courses on the basis of their needs as well as allowing them to take advantage of university teaching as lifelong learning, also reaching sectors of the population which, for various reasons, find it impossible to take part in “traditional physical presence university education”. On the other hand, I think that the use of e-learning should be concentrated on those areas in which there are major advantages and which would therefore be used strategically for specific pedagogic ends. In fact, I have realized that, if one wants a high quality on-line course, it is necessary to dedicate a lot of time to it, much more in comparison to a traditional course requiring physical presence. A remarkable technological and human resource investment is necessary involving a large amount of change and, more precisely, challenges which, perhaps, not everyone is ready to face.