Ecology for QBIC (PCB 3043)          Blackboard Link

Spring 2015 - Tuesday and Thursday 12:30 - 1:45 pm in AHC5 - 201

Course Instructor	Learning Assistants: Sean Pena, Patricia Trainer	Journal Club Instructor	Lab Instructor
Dr. Suzanne Koptur	PLTL Leaders: Jackie Moats,	Jenn Sweatman	Nick Palermo
OE 232, ph. 305-348-3103; email: kopturs@fiu.edu
office hours W 10 am - noon; Thursday 9:30 - 11 am; and by appt.	Link to PLTL	Link to Journal Club	Link to Lab

Learning goals:

            Students completing this course should gain foundational knowledge, including:  the worth and role of all organisms and non-living parts of ecosystems on the earth; how organisms adapt to environmental stresses; how organisms are modified in response to their environments; how life histories can be used to evaluate and compare strategies for reproduction and interactions with other species; how organisms and habitats compare in different biomes around the world, and how things have come to be the way they are; energy flow and nutrient cycles through food webs and communities; how communities can be compared in terms of species richness and diversity; the role humans have had in transforming natural ecosystems; the prospects for conservation of remaining biodiversity; and more.  Students will integrate and apply what they have learned to hypothetical and real-world situations, preparing them for challenges they may face in future courses, research, employment, and life.  Students will gain skills in problem solving, information retrieval and synthesis, writing, presentation, and working with others.  Hopefully, you will also become aware of the consequences of their/our/human actions on natural biota, and what can be done to ameliorate negative effects and promote ecosystem health. 

            In our class we will use small-group learning, and students will actively engage in games, contests, discussions, and various assessment techniques to facilitate their understanding of the material.  Course content will be presented in our textbook and recorded lectures and videos available on our course website.  Some activities, and your out-of-class preparations will be assisted with this course website, where lectures by the professor and other resources are held.  There will also be readiness quizzes and other assignments to be completed online to augment your learning. 

We will also explore the quantitative aspects of ecology using exercises and models.  Our textbook has graphing data and analysis problems, which will be assigned to complete outside of class.  The PLTL session each week will focus on strengthening comprehension and recall of important things covered week by week, and is part of the lecture class grade.  The lab and journal club are graded separately, but will complement the lecture class, with exercises in the field and lab to provide real data to analyze as well as solve how best to answer certain questions and test hypotheses.  We plan that all parts of the course will work together to give you a dynamic understanding of this science and its interfaces with mathematics, statistics, and other sciences. 

Grading:

            This course will involve continuous assessment, not all of the graded kind: some will be educative in nature, allowing the instructors to know if students have learned the material, and helping the students to learn more in the process of being assessed. One way this will be accomplished is with quizzes taken in class, first individually, then in groups.  Another way is with student journals, kept online, in which students review the things that are unclear, and the challenges they have faced.

            The writing component of the course has two additional parts:  pop quizzes (essays) in lecture, and group projects called jigsaws.  The five-minute essays will pop up in class throughout the semester, and the best 60% of them will be counted for a percentage of your final grade.  The jigsaws will be done in groups on assigned topics, in stages; we will have some training in library research to help you find references relevant to your topic.  It is advisable to start projects early enough to find relevant references, read the scientific articles, as well as other relevant information found from other sources, and to put together your ideas.   Groups will present their findings in class, and also turn in their papers via TurnItIn.com to verify originality.  Students will review the work of other groups’ papers and presentations using peer-review capabilities of Turn-it-in.  Needless to say, plagiarism is unethical and will not be tolerated in this or any course activity.     

Individual/Group assessments - in class and online	30%
Final Exam	10%
Best 60% of "pop" essay grades, and online journals	30%
Jigsaws – two presentations with written components	20%
PLTL - attendance, participation, and performance	10%

Syllabus for QBIC Ecology (PCB 3043) - Spring 2015

Textbook:  Ricklefs, R.E. and R. Relyea. 2014.  Ecology: The Economy of Nature, 7th edition, W.H Freeman and Company, New York.