Investigate

Get organised

Investigators are alerted to the eco-crime and receive tips on how to begin solving the crime through the website.

By around 11 May, the students should have enough skills to search for information, use the website, plan their investigation and pace themselves in the time available.

But they will need your help to get organised. You’ll need to:

• allocate the research tasks and discuss possible avenues of inquiry
• prepare a schedule for website reports, team discussions (to continue eliminating suspects), presentations and a team wrap-up of their investigation prior to the accusation deadline.

Keep the game on schedule

• The weeks go very quickly. Make sure each group stays on schedule and that the team doesn’t leave everything to the last moment.
• Teams should make their big presentations to the whole class before the final week so each student has as much information as possible to identify the targeted crime site, victim and villain.

Facilitate and mediate

Working in groups

Because time is limited, students will need to establish a clear focus and some ground rules for operating in a group.

You can assist in this process by helping each group to define what they aim to do and making sure each group member has a role.

Information skills

Develop with your students some charts, diagrams or databases for organising and storing information. Below is an example.

Villain information

Villain	Definition	Problems	Victims	Crime site
blue-green algae	bacteria which live in waterways	when fed on lots of nutrients they multiply	toxic to most fish stops sunlight reaching other organisms	found in ...

The final days

You will not need to do much on the final day, apart from facilitating and mediating.

Once the team has made a decision, they should post their accusation on the website.