Introduction and guidance
Introduction
This free badged course, How police history can inform policing today, lasts 24 hours and is comprised of eight weeks. You can work through the course at your own pace. The eight weeks are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:
- Policing by consent
- Race, ethnicity and the legacies of historic policing
- Women and policing
- Managing and professionalising the police
- Policing and technology
- Policing public order
Each week should take you around 3 hours. There are a number of activities throughout the course where you are asked to note down your response. A text box is provided for you to do this, however if you would prefer to record your answers in another way that is fine.
At the end of each week there is also a quiz to help you check your understanding. And, if you want to receive a formal statement of participation, at the end of Weeks 4 and 8 there is a quiz which you need to pass.
After completing this course, you should be able to:
- demonstrate knowledge of police history
- understand the relevance of police history to contemporary policing
- discuss a broad range of historical examples
- evaluate the importance of key developments in police history
- undertake self-reflection on the core functions of policing.
Moving around the course
In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you will find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.
It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.
The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.