Posted May 2004 The black hand of death: A murder mystery in the Learning Place by Ian Fraser
		The Learning Place has become a place of mystery, intrigue and death – at least it has for year 10 English students at Nanango State High School. In an innovative project, the students and their teacher have been collaborating on class planning, learning experiences and assessment, with the Learning Place as an integral part of all activity. As part of student-devised mystery unit, the class arrived at the idea of having student groups devising crime scenes and posting information about them in a Learning Place project room under the guidance of South Burnett Learning Place Mentor, Mrs Cathy Mangan. The other student groups then access each crime scene and attempt to solve the crime.

Core planning has been the responsibility of a group of volunteer students who meet in their own time approximately once a fortnight. Membership of this group varies for each meeting depending on student interest and availability, and consists of the broad range of student competencies and capacities.

To establish the crime scenes, the students determined that each group needed to:

1. set up a crime scene and photograph it;
2. represent the crime scene using diagrams;
3. create a range of possible evidence;
4. construct an interview with witnesses;
5. post information in the Learning Place forum, The Black Hand of Death; and
6. take part in a chat room interview, role-playing the part of one of the people involved in the crime.

Crime scene	Crime scene
Students working at solving one of the crime scenes	Ian Fraser at rehearsals for the musical

When engaging with each of the other groups’ online crime scenes the students took on the role of detectives, requiring that they examine evidence, interview suspects and witnesses both face to face and in the chat room, solve the crime, make an arrest and write a final report. The students collaborated on strategies to use for group assessment of the written reports, witness statements, interview and group collaboration.

Improvement in the following learning outcomes resulted from the unit and had been planned for by the students:

1. Co-operative learning
2. Planning
3. Developing vocabulary
4. Report writing
5. Using a digital camera
6. Problem-solving
7. Interviewing
8. Using an Internet forum and chat room
9. Differentiating between fact and opinion
10. Reaching conclusions based on evidence

A number of the students have commented on the project and their involvement in it:

“I enjoyed using all the technology.”

“I liked everything we did – I learned a lot.”

“I liked being able to work in groups with other people and the variety of things we had to do. I liked being able to use the computers.”

“This unit was really fun and gave your imagination a real work out. It was tough at times, but working in a group taught me to be patient and to work with people that I don’t normally work with.”

Conclusion: The project evaluation identifies a number of conclusions, including:

• Having input to curriculum planning is highly valued by students.
• Such input and control of learning enables students to be metacognitive, and clearly articulate their understandings of the nature of teaching and learning.
• Activities that are hands-on and varied have high appeal to students.
• Making learning fun is crucial to student engagement at this age.
• Students are very capable of devising their own learning activities and assessment program and often come up with innovative and original ideas for classroom activities and assessment.
• This program has dramatically reduced behavioural problems in the class. The students were motivated about attending English lessons, and engaged positively with classroom work and peers.
• The online tools provided by The Learning Place have enabled the activities, and their ease of use added to the interest of the students and their enjoyment of the task.
• The tools provided by the Learning Place reduced the need for paper-based resources and allowed students to access the project from home.
• Student access to networked computers is critical for the success of this, and similar, projects.

This project required significant support for students learning to work collaboratively in groups, but - as one mother observed:

“She (her daughter) is having so much fun with this, she doesn’t realise how much work she is doing.”

If the voices of the students are the ultimate proof of its success – they have learned and they had fun doing it.