Organismal Biology (BIO 190 A and B) Course Syllabus ‐ Winter 2014 Phone x6110 x6048 x6991 x6439 x6389 x8269 x5921 Instructors Office Email Greg Anderson 530A Carnegie ganderso@bates.edu Carolyn Lawson 512A Carnegie clawson@bates.edu Lyndell Bade 345A Carnegie lbade@bates.edu Karen Palin 409 Carnegie kpalin@bates.edu Stephanie Richards 345 Carnegie srichard@bates.edu Ryan Bavis 415 Carnegie rbavis@bates.edu Beth Whalon 512A Carnegie bwhalon@bates.edu Course Meeting Times and Locations Lecture A meets MWF 8:00‐9:20 in PGILL G52 (Keck classroom) Lecture B meets MWF 9:30‐10:50 in PGILL G52 (Keck classroom) Laboratories meet 1:05‐4:00 pm W (L1), Th (L3) or F (L4) or 8:00‐10:50 am Th (L2) Laboratories meet in rooms 430 and 431 CARNEGIE Office Hours and Question/Answer Sessions ‐ Office Hours: every Monday 11:00 am – 12:30 pm and Tuesday 1:30 – 2:30 pm. Additional meeting times available by appointment. ‐ Open Question and Answer Session: Tuesday 12:00 noonish ‐1:15 pm, Commons Required Texts ‐ Biology: How Life Works by Morris et al. ‐ Bates Biology 190 Laboratory Guide – Winter 2014, available at the Bates College Store. Required Technology ‐ LaunchPad access, associated with Biology: How Life Works Text. An access code may be purchased separately, but is included with the purchase of a new textbook. ‐ Lyceum: https://lyceum.bates.edu/login/index.php site to download class lecture material and to register your RFC‐02 Response Card via our Lyceum course page. ‐ RFC‐02 Response Card, available at the Bates College Store. You must have and register your response card by our second lecture to receive credit for in‐
class questions. These questions will count towards your final grade in the lecture‐discussion portion of the course. They are structured to be similar to the TYPE of questions that we will ask on exams. Bates Biology Web Resources ‐ BIO 190 course site: http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/bio101/index.html ‐ Department On‐Line Resources: http://www.bates.edu/biology/student‐resources/resources/ Additional Staff Support ‐ Peer Assisted Learning Leaders: We’ll describe the PALS system during our first class meeting. PALS sessions will be held weekly, with times to be announced. Attendance is optional but strongly encouraged as previous generations of BIO 190 students have found regular meetings with Peer Leaders to be helpful. You can learn more about the PALS program at http://www.bates.edu/writing/pals/ The Peer Leaders for BIO 190 are: Emily White (ewhite4@bates.edu) and Emma Lutz (elutz@bates.edu). ‐ Teaching Assistants (TAs) and Technical Writing Assistants (TWAs) will be introduced in laboratory sessions. The TAs will assist you in understanding and completing the work involved in each lab experience. TWAs are trained scientific writing peer tutors and will be helpful for beginning to learn presentation of information in scientific writing style. The TWAs will announce evening hours when they will be available to meet with you by appointment around the time that writing assignments are in process. ‐ Mathematics and Statistics Workshop: Director Grace Coulombe, x8374, gcoulomb@bates.edu, http://www.bates.edu/math‐stat‐workshop/ Exams and Grades ‐ Students must pass both the lecture‐discussion (exams) and laboratory portions of the course to pass the overall course. ‐ Students must achieve an exam average of 55% or higher to pass the course, regardless of other work in the course. ‐ There will be a quiz, three in‐class exams and a semi‐cumulative final exam. In‐class exams will be at 8:00‐9:20 am (Lec A) and 9:30‐10:50 am (Lec B). The final exam will emphasize material since exam 3 but will also cover general concepts and integrated topics from the whole course. Students will sign an Honor Statement with each exam pledging that they have neither received nor given information about the exam content from or to anyone. ‐ Students requiring test accommodations must arrange with the Dean of Students to provide the documentation and make appropriate testing arrangements well in advance of the scheduled exams. Any exams scheduled through the Dean of Students office must be taken in a timely manner. A student who misses an exam must contact one of the course instructors or the Dean of Students office PRIOR to the exam. Allowing makeup exams and their scheduling are at the discretion of the course instructors. FINAL EXAM for both sections is Tuesday, April 8, 8‐10 am in PGILL G52 (Keck) Final grades will be based on: Final letter grades will be assigned as: Quiz 5% Exam 1 10% ≥ 90% = some kind of A Exam 2 15% 80‐89% = some kind of B Exam 3 20% 70‐79% = some kind of C Final Exam 15% 55‐69% = some kind of D Laboratory 30% < 55% = F Participation 5% Lab will consist of observations, development of basic research and statistical skills, and experimental work. Laboratory participation, worksheets, reports, and other work, as detailed in the lab manual, will comprise 30% of your final grade. Laboratory attendance is required. Incomplete laboratory work and/or skipping laboratory sessions can cause a student to fail the overall course, regardless of exam scores. Response Card (aka Clicker) Questions: Class attendance and participation is expected and will be considered during final letter grade assignment. This will be done primarily by using the RFC‐02 Response Card System. In total, the response card system and online assignments will contribute 5% to your final grade. It is good to note that the Response Card Questions will be similar in content and structure to SOME of the questions you might see on exams. It is also good to note the 5% of a grade is often the difference in a + or ‐! Based on many years of cumulative teaching experiences, we can say that students who come to class prepared and ready to participate generally do significantly better than students who do not. (Just sayin….). LaunchPad online assignments: We will occasionally have online assignments through the LaunchPad site. While not graded, completion of the assignment will count toward participation. A sincere effort to engage with the assignment will help you learn the content. Student Conduct: Individuals or groups committing plagiarism or other academic misconduct will be referred to the appropriate deans for disciplinary action by the College, will receive zero credit for the work in question, and may fail the course. If you do not understand what constitutes academic misconduct, please see an instructor for clarification and see the Bates websites on plagiarism, cheating and falsifying data at: http://www.bates.edu/writing/files/2011/06/Guide to_Working_with_Sources_August_2013_print.pdf . It is important that you understand when you should be turning in work that is your own and when it is acceptable to be working as a group. Please ask, especially with lab assignments, if you are not certain about what constitutes group work and what is individual work. Biology 190: Course Philosophy Learning and teaching are community activities and we are all participants in this community. The Bio 190 course instructors can facilitate learning and teaching but ultimately the responsibility for learning resides with each individual. In Bio 190, we focus on the structure and function of organisms, with evolution as the explanation for both the diversity and unity among living organisms. Our course has three major and related content areas: 
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Making life work, where we consider cells as the organizing principle for life as we know it; Moving from cells to organisms, with a focus on structure‐function relationships, diversity, and evolution; and Ecology, interactions between organisms and between organisms and their environments. We will emphasize the following: 
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understanding the material, applying that understanding to new scenarios, and analyzing the material and concepts presented. This approach is based on Bloom’s taxonomy, with which you may be familiar. This course does not emphasize memorizing; it asks you to use and integrate the information you are learning. One consequence of this is that our exams will not be spit‐back exams. We do not expect you to know everything (we certainly don’t) but we do expect you to be an active, engaged participant in your own learning and that of your colleagues in our classroom. How can you do this? Some suggestions include 
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Come to class prepared. Every day. Do the reading. Do any online questions/quizzes that we post/assign. Study this material every day, even if it’s for 15 minutes. Watch associated animations and videos. Find or form a study group. Go to PALS. ASK QUESTIONS! ===================== Expect to think this semester =================== Learning Goals: We have set some learning goals for this course to guide our classroom and laboratory activities. These goals fall into three broad categories: scientific content, scientific thinking, and practical skills. Within these categories, by the end of this course, we aim for you to: Scientific content:  Recognize that the cell is the unit of life, and identify cellular structures  Compare and contrast a bacterial cell, an archaeal cell, and eukaryotic cells.  Recognize the significance of evolution in molecular, organismal, and population contexts  Understand and describe how energy and molecules move through systems  Understand that cells and organisms are connected systems that operate according to chemical and physical laws  Understand the relationship between biological structure and biological function  Describe the major evolutionary steps in the origin of multicellular organisms  Interpret a phylogenetic tree and apply that knowledge  Understand how information is transmitted within and between cells  Understand how biological organisms self‐regulate through homeostasis  Appreciate that biological systems are adequate, not perfect; evolution is not directional or intentional Scientific thinking:  Apply the scientific method in how science is practiced and conducted  Discriminate between primary literature (e.g., Science, Nature) and lay information (i.e. Wikipedia)  Recognize that what we teach and learn is based on somebody’s observations and experiments  Appreciate how scientific information is communicated through publication and discussion, and is subject to peer review by the scientific community  Recognize that sometimes there is not one right answer, and sometimes scientists disagree Practical skills:  Identify, obtain, and use appropriate resources when researching a scientific question  Identify the relevant scientific information in a chapter, article, or presentation  Identify the purpose of an experiment and formulate a hypothesis  Begin to design an experiment or investigation  Be able to use and focus a microscope, use a pipette, make a dilution, and collect data  Understand how to present data in a usable manner (graph, table)  Begin to use appropriate statistics to analyze data  Start to use scientific‐style writing to communicate ideas and data Course Topics and Readings Part I: Making Life Work: Cells as organizing principle Date Topic M 1/6: Intro to course W 1/8: Organizing principles F 1/10: Making life work M 1/13: Quiz W 1/15: Photosynthesis F 1/17: Carbon cycling M 1/20: MLK Part 2: Moving from Cells to Organisms: W 1/22: Bacteria and Archaea F 1/24: Eukaryotic cells M 1/27: Continued W 1/29: Multicellularity F 1/31: Exam I M 2/3: Plant structure and function W 2/5: Plant reproduction F 2/7: Meiosis M 2/10: Plant growth and development W 2/12: Plant defense F 2/14: Plant diversity 2/17 to 2/21: BREAK!!!! HURRAY!!!!! M 2/24: Fungi W 2/26: Exam II F 2/28: Animal diversity M 3/3: Animal movement: skeletons W 3/5: Nervous system basics F 3/7 Animal cardiovascular and circulatory systems M 3/10: (Continued) Reading Ch 1, 2.3, 2.4 Ch 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 Ch 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 7.7 Ch 8, Ch 5.5 Ch 25 Ch 26 Ch 27 Ch 11.1, 11.2 Ch 28 Ch 29 Ch 30 Ch 11.3 Ch 31 Ch 32 Ch 33 Ch 34 Ch 44 Ch 37.3 Ch 35.1, 35.4, Ch 38 Ch 39 Date Topic Reading W 3/12: Animal metabolism, nutrition, digestion, Ch 40 F 3/14: Animal renal systems Ch 41 M 3/17: Animal reproduction and development Ch 42 W 3/19: Continued F 3/21: Immunity Ch 43 M 3/24: Exam III Part 3: Changing Organisms: Interactions with Each Other and their Environment W 3/26: Species, speciation Ch 22 F 3/28: Evolutionary patterns Ch 23 M 3/31: Evolution Ch 26 W 4/2: Species interactions and Effect of Humans Ch 47, 48 F 4/4: Wrapping Up FINAL EXAM for both sections is Tuesday, April 8, 8‐10 am in PGILL G52 (Keck)