Hawaii Pacific University
BIOL 3081 Ecology Lab Section ____
Semester and year, meeting times
Instructor: Name, contact information and other relevant information about the instructor.
Course description: Laboratory component of BIOL 3080. Includes introduction to, and analysis of,
ecological journal articles.
Course prerequisite: BIOL 2053, CHEM 2053, MATH 1123 and concurrent enrollment in BIOL 3080
General Education Requirement: If BIOL 3080 is also taken and passed, this course satisifes the
requirement for an Upper-Division Research and Writing course for Natural Science majors and other
majors whose programs of study permit them to take any Upper Division Research and Writing course.
The combination of BIOL 3080 and 3081 is the required option to meet this requirement for
General Education Student Learning Outcomes and the Five Themes: HPU’s general education
curriculum is focused around five themes. As an upper division research and writing course (in
combination with BIOL 3080) this course emphasizes the Communication Skills Theme and the Research
and Epistemology Theme and provides students with opportunities to achieve the following related
general education student learning outcomes:
Written and oral communication and critical reasoning
Students will demonstrate critical reasoning in organizing thoughts, feelings, concepts, and information
for effective, clear, and accurate oral and written communication. (CS 4)
Students will use reasoning skills, such as identifying assumptions, considering multiple perspectives and
positions including one’s own, making inferences, and drawing conclusions, to advance an argument
supported by reasons and evidence. (R&E 4)
Students will use basic ecological principles taught in the Ecology Lecture to explain data collected in
lab. These skills will be evaluated with brief homework assignments and larger research exercises
and research manuscripts. Students will find and use published information from a variety of printed
and electronic sources to support a topic of their choice within the discipline taking into account
evidence that supports and refutes the premise of the chosen topic. This skill will be evaluated with
a scientific manuscript and literature review paper. Students will make oral presentations in which
they evaluate published papers, and will present their own papers oral to the seminar as well as
critique each others’ presentations.
Information Literacy
Students will develop the information literacy needed to determine the validity of information sources
and apply these skills in communication environments. (CS 5)
Students will analyze the content, argument, and rhetoric of sources; evaluate the credibility, reliability
and validity of sources; consider the influence of contexts. (R&E 3)
Students will critically read and relate information verbally from papers published in the scientific
literature. In a scientific seminar environment students will verbally present assigned papers to the
class with the assumption that the audience is not familiar with the material. Presentations will
include a synopsis of background materials, statement and explanation of hypotheses, descriptions
of methods, explanation and critical analysis of results, and synopsis and critical analysis of
conclusions. In subsequent meetings students will critically discuss assigned papers from the
scientific literature. Following seminar presentations of papers the class will discuss whether the
author(s) followed the proper scientific format for manuscripts, discuss the appropriateness of
methods, data analysis, data presentation, and conclusions. Students will also do a literature
review.
Performing Research
Students will identify a research question or problem, gather and organize relevant information, apply
appropriate problem-solving strategies, and communicate the results to others. (R&E 2)
Students will utilize methods and technologies appropriate to the discipline to investigate research
questions, generate predictions, test hypotheses and/or solve problems. (R&E 7)
Students will:
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Write scientific manuscripts evaluating hypotheses regarding resource limitation using the
standard format in the areas of population and community ecology. These skills will be
evaluated with brief homework assignments and larger research exercises and research
manuscripts.
Use appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze field data from population and
community level studies. These skills will be evaluated with brief homework assignments and
larger research exercises and research manuscripts.
Students will demonstrate functional understanding of the statistical concepts of standarddeviation, standard-error, and simple analysis of variance through homework assignments,
research exercises and research manuscripts.
Perform biodiversity analysis using graphical techniques, rarefaction, and Shannon diversity
analysis. These skills will be evaluated using in-class exercises and a scientific manuscript.
Remember that all UDRW courses must meet the following four requirements. This information does not
need to appear on the syllabus but is a checklist for instructors in planning the course syllabus.
1. These courses should require students to work with scholarly sources (such as those from peer
reviewed academic journals). For example, students may write research papers drawing on these kinds
of sources (either literature reviews or original arguments synthesizing information from these sources)
and/or do written assignments or give oral presentations where they summarize, critique or compare
and contrast such sources.
2. These courses should provide explicit instruction in how to find appropriate scholarly sources for the
relevant discipline.
3. These courses should provide explicit instruction in how to avoid plagiarism and cite sources in a
documentation style appropriate to the discipline.
4. These courses should prepare students to conduct research at the professional level required in their
discipline.
Note: Purple text shows places where specific course information must be filled in. Red text contains
explanatory notes to the instructor which should be deleted before using the syllabus. Blue explanations
should be rephrased as needed to fit the course by the individual instructor. Course-specific student
learning outcomes below may vary slightly depending on the instructor and are provided as an example.
Course-Specific Student Learning Outcomes for BIOL 3081
After the completion of this course the student should be able to:
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Critically read and relate information verbally from papers published in the scientific literature.
In a scientific seminar environment students will verbally present assigned papers to the class
with the assumption that the audience is not familiar with the material. Presentations will
include a synopsis of background materials, statement and explanation of hypotheses,
descriptions of methods, explanation and critical analysis of results, and synopsis and critical
analysis of conclusions.
Critically discuss assigned papers from the scientific literature. Following seminar presentations
of papers the class will discuss whether the author(s) followed the proper scientific format for
manuscripts, discuss the appropriateness of methods, data analysis, data presentation, and
conclusions.
Write scientific manuscripts using the standard format in the areas of population and
community ecology. These skills will be evaluated with brief homework assignments and larger
research exercises and research manuscripts.
Use appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze field data from population and
community level studies. These skills will be evaluated with brief homework assignments and
larger research exercises and research manuscripts.
Use basic ecological principals taught in the Ecology Lecture to explain data collected in lab.
These skills will be evaluated with brief homework assignments and larger research exercises
and research manuscripts.
Use appropriate computer applications for data analysis and presentation. These skills will be
evaluated with brief homework assignments and larger research exercises and research
manuscripts.
Find and use published information from a variety of printed and electronic sources. This skill
will be evaluated with a scientific manuscript and literature review paper.
Perform biodiversity analysis using graphical techniques, rarefaction, and Shannon diversity
analysis. These skills will be evaluated using in-class exercises and a scientific manuscript.
Students will demonstrate functional understanding of the statistical concepts of standarddeviation, standard-error, and simple analysis of variance through homework assignments,
research exercises and research manuscripts.
Students will be able to evaluate the distribution and abundance of populations composed of
individual or modular organisms using appropriate plot-based and/or plotless techniques. These
skills will be evaluated with brief homework assignments and larger research exercises and
research manuscripts.
For the rest of these required syllabus items see the details in the faculty handbook. Delete this note
once the syllabus is complete. For online courses there are some additional requirements given at this
link.
Texts List textbooks with ISBN’s and include this language as well
All textbook information (pricing, ISBN #, and e-books) for this course can be found on the HPU
Bookstore website: hpu.edu/bookstore.
If you have any questions regarding textbooks, please contact the HPU Bookstore at:
Phone:
808-544-9347
Or e-mail:
jyokota@hpu.edu
mmiyahira@hpu.edu
Assignments and mode of evaluation
Summary of important dates and deadlines (if the schedule is a separate document and due dates are
not given with the description of the assignments).
Class rules and policies (including regarding attendance, late work and academic dishonesty)
Schedule of events (may be attached separately)