How is this course organized?

To-Do Date: Jan 20 at 11:59pm

The Canvas Site Organization 

I have organized this course into modules. There are two types of modules in this course: 

    • Weekly Modules: that list out the assignments, readings, lab work, quizzes for that week
    • Special Topic Modules: we will be working on several special projects and the information for those will be kept in a module but will also show up in the week in which they are assigned. The projects are
      • Microgreens Project
      • Field Journal Project
      • Scientific Claims Assessment Project

The Course Content Organization 

The major class content is organized into the following major units:

    1. Introductory Unit:  Course Introduction, Introduction to Biology, Scientific Inquiry
    2. Diabetes Pandemic.  What is diabetes and why is it on the rise?  What can we do about it?
    3. COVID-19 Pandemic: What are viruses and how are they treated? How do we treat the public health vs. the individual health?
    4. Climate Change.  What's the big deal about climate change? How does this affect fire ecology locally? What are the impacts predicted in the future, and most importantly, what can we do about it?  
    5. Laboratory Unit: what is the process of science? How is science done? What are the strengths and limits of science?

Each of these units will have a combination of asynchronous work and in-class group work or discussions.  

 

Within Each Unit

Content:

      • In order to teach you the content for each topic,  the modules will  contain a series of pages, readings and videos. 
      • After each page of content there will be some way to monitor your understanding of the material. This might be a discussion, an assignment, a short quiz or a series of questions embedded in a video (these quizzes will allow  you several attempts).
      • The most important thing we can do as a learner is to actively work with the material and determine what we do and do not  understand ( this is called metacognition). We can then find help to fill in the gaps we have discovered. 

Content Quizzes: 

      • For each module,  there will be a quiz on that week's content.
      • You will have 3 attempts at each quiz.  These will be open book, open notes quizzes.
      • I recommend that you take your first attempt before you begin doing the readings and video watching.
      • Make a note of the type of information you need to answer the quiz.
      • Then you can take notes on that information when reading and watching.
      • The 2nd attempt will be much more successful and allow you to go search for the information that you are still missing, so that your 3rd attempt is clear sailing!
      • Quizzes must reflect your own effort and cannot be done in collaboration with other students.  The SRJC Academic Policy will be stringently enforced if cheating on quizzes is suspected.

Unit Assessment:  Problem Sets  

      • At the end of each unit there will be a Unit Assessment consisting of problems, short answers and paragraph essay questions. 
      • There will be ~ 2 Unit Assessment Questions per module, and will be given to you at the  beginning of the module.  
      • The entire Unit Assessment will be due at the end of week unit but you will be able to work on it as you go along.
      • This will be open book, open notes AND you may work on it with anyone you would like - myself, fellow student, tutor, etc
      • BUT, your answers MUST be in your own words. 

  

t.