BIOL463-Fall 2015
Learning Journal Entry #1
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Learning Journal 1
Learning Journals are a tool commonly used in professional schools (medical school,
nursing school, teacher college, etc.) and in the humanities both to help learners engage
in metacognition and to help instructors evaluate students’ learning.
Think about the work you did for BIOL463 so far (in and out of class, formally and
informally), then try to address each question to the best of your abilities. You can then
copy and paste your answers into a Piazza, Facebook or wordpress post.
1.
Factual knowledge
Briefly describe one new piece of factual knowledge that you acquired or
developed since the start of the course.
I was introduced to various potency terms, such as totipotent, pluripotent and
unipotent, as well as the concept of a fate map, which indicates schematically how
the distribution of differentiating cells changes through various stages of
development. In learning that being totipotent implies the capacity to produce all
the differentiated cells in an organism, being pluripotent implies the capacity to
differentiate into any of the three germ layers and being unipotent implies the
capacity to differentiate into only one cell type, I am now able to describe the
fate of various cells in developmental biological terms. This will be crucial for
making reference to various stages of development and creating fate maps in a
clear, succinct way.
2.
Making connections (conceptual knowledge!)
How does this new piece of knowledge fit into what you already knew? What
other facts is it connected to, and how? Does it fit into any concepts? How?
These new potency terms certainly fit into previous conceptions I had about
human development involving the differentiation of the zygote into the various
cell types and allow me to categorize the stages of differentiation that I was
already aware of. The concept of a fate map fits into the diagrams of C. elegans
development I had observed in Biology 335. The potency terms are also
connected to events after development, such as the continual regeneration of
particular organs or parts in various organisms. For example, multipotent
hematopoietic stem cells are present in adult human bone marrow and give rise
to all other blood cells. Additionally, dedifferentiation of unipotent cells back to
multipotent or pluripotent cells is required in complex processes like limb
regeneration in salamanders. On the whole, these four terms fit into very
general concepts of developmental biology applying to all multicellular
organisms, particularly the idea that complex multicellular organisms result from
BIOL463-Fall 2015
Learning Journal Entry #1
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the unequal cell division of a zygote, resulting in changes in gene regulation and
cytoplasmic content that lead to distinct cell types in specific arrangements.
These terms describe the stages of these changes and produce a picture linking
the various stages together.
3.
Other comments (optional)
Please feel free to include any additional comments that you wish to share.
I suppose one comment I would like to make is in regards to just how
integrated and diverse the teaching methods appear to be in this course. The
styles of teaching and learning that have been applied in just the first four
lectures already pose a stark contrast to the traditional ‘sit and listen’ lecture
styles that I have become accustomed to, which is awesome! I like the idea of
students bouncing ideas off of each other in lecture with the professor acting as
a means of clarification rather than as an arbiter. I also like the level of
conceptual thinking and self-reflection that this course provides, which
strengthens factual knowledge. Lastly, the various styles of evaluation, including
both group and individual work seem to reflect the requirements of a scientist
in the 21st century. Overall, I just wanted to reflect on my appreciation of the
design of the course, which is clearly directed towards people that actually want
to become biologists (or scientists generally).