Welcome and Introduction

Welcome to Ecology and Evolution for Teachers (BIOL 5311)! By now most you are all veterans of the Multidisciplinary Science Masters Program. I am excited to be teaching this course because I believe that improving science education is an important issue facing Texas and the USA today. I hope that this course will play a positive role towards meeting that goal.

This is the second time that I have taught this course via distance education.  Although I much prefer to teach in person, I am excited about the challenge of teaching a distance education course. Let me try to give you some ideas about how this course will work.

My Plan for This Course

Required Readings
For the past several years I have worked with the Encyclopedia of the Earth (EoE- http://www.eoearth.org/) an online source of information about the environment. On November 1st I took over as Editor in Chief of the EoE.   Part of the funding of the EoE is being supported by Trunity, a high tech company from the east coast.  Their business model is that ultimately they will be able to develop on-line textbooks using material from the EoE and sell them to students around the world.

We will be part of a grand experiment with online textbooks this semester.  I have created an online textbook , "Ecology Reader: Ecology for Teachers" that should be available on the Trunity website.  My goal is that you will be able to use this book for free this semester (at least the price is right).  Unfortunately, you need a password to access the textbook on the Trunity website.  I am currently trying to get permission for all of you to have access to the book and I will let you know as soon as I have.

In the meantime you can start reading an older version of the Ecology Reader that is currently hosted on the EoE.  http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ecology_Reader-_Ecology_for_Teachers (which you can also read for free)

The required information for the Evolution portion of the course will be available online (websites from the University of California, Berkeley and University of Utah among others) and from Powerpoint presentations that I have developed. (More Info on This Later On).

Course assignments
Obviously, I will need to assess your mastery of the material. There will be one midterm exam and a final exam. These exams will test how well you have mastered the expected learning outcomes for the course. In addition, you will write articles suitable for the EoE. If your article is approved by a Topic Editor your article will be published for everyone in the world to see!!!!

Interaction
The best part of teaching face to face is that it is easy for us to communicate. I imagine that you have all had the experience of being halfway through your brilliantly-prepared presentation when you look at the students’ faces and realize that none of them have a clue about what you are talking about. Similarly, I am sure that you have your presentations interrupted by questions from students that either helped to clarify the material for them and their classmates or opened up new interesting areas to talk about. We won’t be able to share these opportunities in this class. Thus, in hopes of allowing for valuable teacher-student and student-student interaction I have developed a blog. I encourage you to post answers to questions that I ask on the blog, comment on the answers of your classmates, ask questions, or any other clever ways that you can think of you use the blog (this is new territory for me so I am up for suggestions about how to make this course as interactive as possible). You are also encouraged to contact me via email  with any questions or comments that you have.

Suggestions
Here is how I would approach this material.
1) Preview the expected learning outcomes
2) Read all of the reading material
3) See if you can meet the expected learning outcomes
-if you would like to check your level of understanding you can write out answers and submit them via email for me to take a look at.
4) answer the questions posted on the blog (I highly encourage all of you to post your answers online).
5) ask questions
You can ask me questions via email
You can ask me and your fellow students questions on the blog