PedaLEGOgy – Building forensic concepts brick by brick

Since Francis Glessner Lee created the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death in the 1940s, the use of miniature crime scene representations has become an accepted and reliable method of allowing students and practitioners to explore, interact, and learn from representations of crime scenes without risk of contamination. Although Lee’s dioramas are still utilised in teaching and training within the forensic sciences these realistic models are expensive and time consuming to create. This research explores an alternative approach to creating miniature crime scenes through the use of Lego® in a workshop developed primarily for undergraduate students. The workshop was developed to align with the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences CSI Component Standard Matrix and can be easily altered, augmented and re-set to generate new crime scenes to explore different case contexts. The workshop compared two activities: 1) a 30-minute Lego® model activity, and 2) a 30-minute paper-based (non-Lego®) descriptive activity. Questionnaire data collected from 76 students explored demographics, prior experience of Lego® and their engagement in each of the two activities (Lego® verses descriptive).