Irvine Valley College
Administration of Justice
Colin McCaughey
Orientation
for ONLINE courses:
The
following information pertains to all AOJ online courses that I teach.
Welcome to online learning in
the Administration of Justice program at
Technical
Requirements for Online Courses at Irvine Valley
College: Can also be
viewed at http://www.ivc.edu/DistanceEd/pages/techsupport.aspx
The following is a list of basic requirements you must meet in
order to be successful in completing this online course. In addition to the
hardware and software requirements listed below, you should be very familiar
with using the Internet, retrieving and sending email documents, opening and
attaching word and excel documents to email documents, as well as a working
knowledge of using both Word and Excel.
- Computer: PC – Pentium III or higher with
Internet Access: Pentium IV preferred. MAC – G3 or better.
- Operating
System: PC – NT,
2000, XP, or
- RAM: 512 MB or higher
- Internet
connection speed:
56kbps or higher speed – Hi-speed
(DSL) recommended!
- Sound
Card:
Recommended with speakers
- Plugins: Audio – RealAudio/Realvideo.
Its web site is found at http://www.realaudio.com:
Video: Video plugin software may be required to see video presentations of
course materials. The recommended plugin is RealPlayer. Its web site is
found at http://www.real.com. Quicktime (www.apple.com/quicktime ). Adobe
Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat
).
- Browers: Internet Explorer (preferred) Safari (MAC), or
Netscape Communicator.
Please Note: The AOL browser is NOT recommended.
You may use AOL to connect, but you then need to use one of teh following
browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla, or Firefox. If using a MAC OS,
it is recommended that you use the Safari
browser.
- Cookies: All students, especially those
who connect to the Internet through AOL, must be sure the cookies’
setting under the Preferences tab is set to “Accept All Cookies”.
Software Requirements:
You
must have, and know how to use, a
word processing program. I primarily use
Microsoft Word, but can also accept
documents from any word processing software.
If you are using a program other than MS Word, you must save your
document in the plain text (.txt), Portable Document Format (pdf), or html
format. Also, I recommend that you have Adobe Reader and Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer. I may include
PowerPoint presentations for some chapters that will help you to better understand
the course material.
Help Desk:
Students
enrolled in online classes at
The Blackboard Course Website
My
online classes utilize the Blackboard course website software. If you are not familiar with Blackboard,
please take the time to review these training tutorials. You can log into the Blackboard course
website from three different ways. The
easiest and most convenient is to use the link directly from your Class Listing
in MySite. To log in to Mysite, you will need your user
name (first initial and last name and then a one or two digit number (i.e.
jdoe33) – this information should have been provided to you when you registered
at the school- then your password (use your IVC email password that you use to
access Mysite and email). Once you have
logged into MySite, you will see a computer icon next to the online class that
you are enrolled in. Click on the icon
and it will bring you directly to the home page of the course. Once you access the homepage, you will see a
list of navigational links on the left side of the page. These links will get you to the different
areas you will need to be successful in the course.
If
the link in Mysite is not available, another way to access the course is via
the Blackboard link on the IVC
Homepage. Select Blackboard and then
select Login. Use the same login
username and password for MySite above.
The last way is to access Blackboard via this link. Same username and password as MySite. If you are having trouble logging in, refer
to this help site.
There are several
important areas to pay attention to in the Blackboard course website. First and foremost is the Course Information link. This link will contain the course
syllabus, your directory for the entire semester. The syllabus contains all of the important
information for the class, specifically how to complete assignments, dates of
assignments, and weekly reading assignments. It also contains any other
information that you may need for the course, including textbook information,
learning objectives, grading information, and an overview of typical weekly
assignments. If after reading the
syllabus and you still have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Another
key area of importance is Assignments. This is where you will find your assignments
that are due for the week. Also, you will find links here to submit your weekly
written assignments. The assignments
area may direct you to access Course
Documents for other weekly materials.
This is where you will find weekly lectures, test and quizzes, and any
other supplemental reading or handouts.
The Discussion Board is used
weekly to supplant any topics that we would generally discuss in the classroom
setting. There will usually be a
discussion each week, and your input is mandatory!! External
Links will list links to websites that relate to the weekly topic. I do track access to the external
links!! Communication provides a link to email me or any other classmate,
and also provides a roster of classmates.
Staff Information will
introduce you to your instructor and provides contact information, including
email, phone, and office location on campus.
Last but not least, is Student
Tools. Student tools gives you an opportunity
to keep up with your grade and weekly scores on assignments. Student Tools also provides a link to the
Blackboard user manual. Please use this link first if you are having
any issues with Blackboard.
****YOUR BLACKBOARD COURSE
WEBSITE WILL BE ACTIVATED AND AVAILABLE ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE SEMESTER!!****
IVC
Off-campus Library Access
At times, you
will be required to access library databases in order to read articles that
will supplement the text readings and the weekly material. Both IVC and Saddleback offer off-campus
access to their libraries for registered students. Please review the directions for accessing
the Off-campus material for both the IVC and
Student
Email
The
Blackboard course website will be our primary mode of communication. Blackboard allows the sending of email from
within the software itself. However, the
only email address that Blackboard recognizes is your IVC student provided
email account. In order to receive
emails from me about class information, material, and assignments, you will
need to check your IVC email frequently.
There is a way around this by forwarding your IVC email account to your favorite
email that you check regularly. Please
refer to this page
on how to forward your IVC email account.
Online
Orientation Presentation
(You must
view this presentation prior to starting the course!!)
Prior to viewing this presentation,
make sure you are familiar with the Blackboard Course information and the
Off-Campus Library Access information from above. Once you have reviewed this
information, please click on this
link for the Course Orientation.
If you have any questions after completing the orientation, and they are
not answered on any of these pages, please email me at cmccaughey@ivc.edu
TYPICAL
WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS
Each
week, the student will be required to follow the directions listed under the
Weekly Assignments listed in Blackboard.
This is an example of a typical
weekly assignment:
1. Read the
assigned chapter from the textbook
2. Read/view the online
lecture for the assigned chapter (online lectures are posted in the Course
Documents area of the Blackboard class website)
3. Visit the websites listed for the week in
the External Links of the Blackboard website, and utilize this
information when completing the assignments and discussion board.
4. Respond to the weekly
question posted on the Discussion Board of the Blackboard website. Your
original response to the question must be posted by 11:59 PM on Friday,
and your response to at least two other students’ original posts must be
completed by 11:59 PM on Sunday
night.
5. Reply to anyone who has
posted a response to your answer AND respond to at least two
other students who have posted original answers to the weekly question on the
Discussion Board of the Blackboard website
6. Other online reading and
research assignments
7. Tests / Quizzes
*****Weekly assignments start on Monday and all work must be submitted by 11:59 PM the following Sunday or you will not receive credit for the work!! Please pay attention to these deadlines! Students have a tendency to wait to the last
minute to complete assignments and that is when most students in my classes run
into problems, as other things come up, computers don't work, or the internet
goes down. These are not acceptable
excuses for late work so do not bother even asking! Also, blackboard issues or outages are NOT an
acceptable excuse for late work, unless the outage is several days long. Please keep this in mind when scheduling your
assignment completion.
Textbook
Information
Yes I do use
textbooks in my classes and the majority of material in the class is taken from
the textbook. All of my tests and
quizzes are based upon specific information that is taken from the course
textbooks. Many students attempt to
complete these classes without textbooks while using the Internet as the sole
source for information. Just so you
know, many of these students end up failing my class and having to repeat the
class in a future semester. Don't see
yourself short by trying to get by without a textbook. Textbooks are available for immediate
purchase at the IVC Bookstore on campus.
Books may be purchased online from the Online IVC bookstore
(look for the link at the bottom of the page).
You may purchase your textbooks wherever you find them the cheapest, and
you can even rent some textbooks at Chegg.com. However, be careful with delivery times when
purchasing at other than our bookstore. I really do not care how you obtain
your textbook as long as you have it for the first day of class and slow
delivery is not an excuse for not completing your assignments!!
Required and
recommended textbooks will also be listed in the specific course syllabus. In order to give you a head start in
obtaining your books, I have listed the required texts below.
These are the
textbooks that are required for the AOJ ONLINE COURSES:
AJ 2 –
Introduction to the Administration of Justice
Criminal Justice (7th
Edition) by Joel Samaha (Cengage Publishing)
There is also
a Study Guide that is available. It is
not a mandatory book, but will help with the tests and quizzes.
AJ 4 –
Criminal Law I
Concepts of
AJ 5 -
COMMUNITY-ORIENTED POLICING/COMMUNITY AND HUMAN RELATIONS
Community Oriented Policing: A Systematic Approach to Policing (4th
Edition) by Willard M. Oliver (Pearson-Prentice Hall Publishing)
AND
Images of Color, Images of Crime
(3rd Edition) by Coramae Richey, Marjorie S. Zatz, and Nancy Rodriguez (Roxbury
Publishing)
AJ 102
– Criminal Procedures
Criminal Procedures (3rd
Edition) by Judy Hails (Cengage Publishing)
AND
The Innocent Man by John
Grisham (hardcover or paperback)
AJ 106
– Police Field Operations
Patrol Operations and Enforcement
Tactics (11th Edition) by Payton and Amaral (Criminal Justice
Services Publishing)
AJ 111 – Law
Enforcement Administration
Police Administration:
Structures, Processes, and Behavior (7th Edition) by Charles
Swanson, Leonard Territo, and Robert Taylor (Pearson/ Prentice Hall Publishing)
AJ 112 –
Police Supervision
Effective Police Supervision
(5th Edition) by Harry More and Larry S. Miller (Lexis Nexis
Publishing)
There is also
a Study Guide that is available. It is
not a mandatory book, but will help with the tests and quizzes.
AJ 119
– Introduction to Corrections
American Corrections (8th
Edition) by Clear, Cole, and Reisig (Cengage Publishing)
