Cheap latex, high-end thrills: A fantasy exercise in search and seizure

Quite often Computer Forensics students are afforded little or no opportunity to gain experience when it comes to retrieving digital evidence from a crime scene. For our offering, the exclusion was attributed to a lack of resources in terms of time, physical space, and equipment. To circumvent the aforementioned short-comings, we tapped into the imaginations of our students to introduce a search and seizure exercise by means of role-play simulation, which is seen to be a form of active learning. This paper describes how we adapted the problem-based learning activities approach employed by the Universities of Sunderland and Glamorgan, to offer our students a similar student-centered learning opportunity, supplementing the lack of a professional crime scene environment with a storyteller to fill in the details of what the students experience during their role-play simulation. We review our version of the search and seizure role-play simulation against the lessons learnt at Sunderland and Glamorgan, examining how future implementations can be revised to reflect best practices in offering our students improved learning opportunities.