Before you begin an investigation, it’s critical for you to understand your role as an investigator and how you can work efficiently with the Title IX Coordinator. Likewise, you must fully understand the differences between criminal and civil rights investigations, as well as preliminary and formal trauma-informed investigations. You’ll learn how to identify the best investigative model and structures for your campus while also learning the essential investigator skills, such as questioning and interviewing witnesses.

You must thoroughly plan for and strategize your investigation before you conduct it. You will learn how to approach your planning with intention and focus. You will practice a policy analysis technique that will help you identify potential types of misconduct in your incident reports. You will also develop a pre-investigation preparation strategy that will allow you to organize information and design a plan to interview and notify witnesses.

Being an effective investigator means knowing the right thing to do in the moment when conducting your interviews. You will develop effective questions by incorporating definitions from your sexual harassment policy. You’ll learn how to diagnose the facts and analyze investigation testimony using your own policy. You will have the chance to practice techniques for creating a safe interview environment, facilitating an impartial and thorough investigation, and note-taking/documentation.

One of your most important, yet trickiest responsibilities is making sense of all the testimony collected during the investigation. You will learn how to organize the facts collected from your witness testimonies, in a way that aligns with your campus policy definitions. You will learn the critical elements of a final investigative report and tips for writing witness interview testimonies that are fact-based and void of any investigator bias.

Writing factual analyses in your final investigative report is an effective strategy for your decision-makers. You will learn how to identify the undisputed and disputed facts collected during an investigation, including how to document and analyze these facts, how to refine your factual analysis, how to watch out for investigator bias, and how to identify your policies relevant to the facts.

There will be times you need to know how to conduct a credibility assessment when there is limited to no additional evidence or corroborated witness testimony to support either the reporting or accused party. You will practice assessing the credibility of a complainant and respondent, as well as writing a rationale on whose credibility is more believable and why.