Course Syllabus

Ecology for Teachers

BIOL 5311

Course Syllabus

Instructor

Dr. Mark McGinley

Associate Professor

Honors College and Department of Biological Sciences

Room 215 McClelland Hall

mark.mcginley@ttu.edu

The best way for you to contact me during this course is via email (I spend much of my life attached to my computer and I am usually pretty good at getting back to people via email).

Course Outline

The purpose of this course is to provide a content knowledge in the fields of ecology and evolution to practicing teachers. The ecology portion of this course will examine ecology of individuals, populations, and communities and introduce you to the techniques that ecologists use to develop hypotheses (including mathematical modeling) and test their hypotheses in the lab and the field. The evolution portion of the course will discuss the apparent controversy between science and religion and discuss topics of micro and macro evolution.

Required Readings.

There is no textbook required for this class. The readings for the ecology portion of this course will come from this class will come from the Ecology for Teachers Reader published in the Encyclopedia of the Earth.

Course Blog

I have created a blog for this course (my initial effort at blogging). The Ecology for Teachers blog can be found at http://ecologyforteachers2013.blogspot.com/. This blog will offer a means of communication among all members of this course. I will post regularly (at least weekly) on this site and I encourage you to use this as a forum for interaction. I am not going to grade your participation in the blog, but obviously the more that you share your thoughts on the blog, the better indication I will have about how the class is going.

Expected Learning Outcomes

Explicit expected learning outcomes for each lesson are located in the Ecology for Teachers Reader.

Methods for Assessing the Expected Learning Outcomes

The expected learning outcomes will be assessed using a midterm exam, a final exam, and a project. Students in this class will be involved in the Student Science Communication Project with the EoE. You will be required to write an article suitable for publication by the EoE. All articles that meet my approval will be submitted for review by the EoE and articles that are accepted by the Topic Editor will be published. More details of this assignment will be coming.

Grading

Midterm Exam (Due February 28th) 20%

Cumulative Final Exam (due May 2nd) 20%

Articles for EoE  60%

Because it is not always possible for me to make the grades fall on a 90, 80, 70, etc. scale, I will let you know the grade that your score would have earned after each assignment. This course is not graded on a curve, so it is possible for all, or no, students to earn a particular grade.