Biology

Chat times for 2012/2013
Mon 8pm ET/5pm PT
Thu 9am ET/6am PT
Dr. Christe Ann McMenomy

How to survive a science course
with special attention to the problems of studying biology online

This guide covers:

Why Study Science?

At the heart of all science is something called the scientific method. The simple version of the scientific method is based on the idea that the objective reality of the universe can be determined by carefully observing phenomena, recording appropriate measurements, then studying the data from these observations for patterns that can be used to describe the general behavior of classes of natural objects. When we can control the circumstances of the observations, we are performing experiments, but often we cannot control all the factors before we make observations. There are scientists who believe that the only valid scientific data is that which comes from controlled experiments; in their view, most of astronomy, meteorology, geology, and many parts of biology are not rigorously scientific. For the purposes of this course, we will use a somewhat looser definition of valid scientific observation.

Man's search for patterns led him to keep track of many biological phenomena from very early in recorded history. Most organisms have the same characteristics, often in the same forms, although they may live in very different habitats. When scientists find similarities in structure, they want to study them to see if there is some common cause behind the similarities. When the scientist finds a reasonable explanation, he or she proposes a hypothesis, a testable statement about the phenomena. Hypotheses that stand up over many repeated observations are combined to make theories; distillations of theories that have no known exceptions may be called natural laws. In biology, we are particularly concerned with chemical reactions and energy storage and release (metabolic reactions), the organization of living matter (cell structure), and similiarities and diversity in life forms (classification of organisms, evolution).

The Science Course Online

Science classes are frightening for many students. They anticipate difficulties with the concepts, with the details, and especially with the math. But science is just one way of thinking about the natural world around us, and anyone can learn to think like a scientist. Don't waste energy worrying about your ability to learn the material; use your energy to learn it! Once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to discover, understand, and appreciate the complexity of God's creation better. You will also be better prepared to take your place as a steward of that creation.

Review the prerequisites for the course. These are the concepts and math skills that you should have mastered in order to succeed in learning the material. The math prerequisites for this course are described in the FAQs page. If you have any questions about your readiness for the course, be sure to ask for help during our first session. I will arrange to work with you so that you can gain the required skills quickly.

Every science course has as its main components lectures, reading assignments, labs, and lots of homework to prepare you for taking quizzes and exams. In addition to these, our online course has this website, the Moodle, and e-mail to provide the functions that would normally exist in talking to your teacher face-to-face, or looking at a bulletin board or whiteboard. Keeping track of all the components can be a daunting task, especially at first, so plan to spend some time becoming familiar with the course website, your text and its companion website, and the Moodle. Once you have mastered the mechanics of using these tools, you can concentrate on learning the material that they contain.

Why are there so many parts to the course? Well, part of the reason is that you learn in many ways. You memorize facts, you comprehend relationships, and eventually, you understand concepts. You learn by reading, by seeing pictures and graphs, by watching demonstrations of processes, by participating in discussions, and by applying what you are learning to specific situations in the homework and labs. You "cement" what you've learned by teaching others. The organization and materials of the course require that you take all these approaches.

Managing Your Time

Make the commitment, now, to spend adequate time on coursework. While this biology course is not as mathematically demanding as some of the others offered at Scholars Online, you cannot do all the work for a given unit on one day ... and you shouldn't do it just before chat session! The table below is a rough guide and a suggested pace for this course. The amount of time you spend on each part of the assigned work will vary greatly from student to student, and your schedule will of course depend on your other commitments. Work out a reasonable work load and stick to it!

Try to do your reading as early as possible. This allows you to think about the questions and material, review it in your mind, and absorb it more critically.

Checklist

Completed? Task Approximate Time Scheduled for...
1 _____ Check Website for instructions 15 minutes Monday/Thursday after chat
2 _____ Read Web Lecture 1/2-1 hour Tuesday/Thursday
3 _____ Take the pretest for a new chapter (companion website) 15 minutes Tuesday/Thursday
4 _____ Read Text Assignment 1 hour Tuesday/Thursday
5 _____ Review animations and other activites (companion website) 1 hour Wednesday/Friday
6 _____ Complete study guide assignments 1-2 hours Wednesday/Monday
7 _____ Post written assignment to class forum 1/2 hour Before class
8 _____ Take the companion website quiz as a drill when completing a chapter 15 minutes Before class
9 _____ Make observations for lab 2-3 hours
10 _____ Perform calculations/reduce data 1 hour
11 _____ Write lab report 1 hour
11 _____ Take Moodle quiz 15 minutes At least once during open period for quiz

Web Lectures

Rather than take our precious chat time by lecturing to you, all unit lectures are posted to the site. You need to read these as well as the text. Most of the Web Lectures have a

As you read the web lecture, make notes on anything that puzzles you, and be sure to raise your questions in class.

In addition, each homework assignment has a short study guide of notes and questions on each section, to help you focus on the important points of that section.

Using the Textbook

As you plan your workload, be sure that you give yourself enough time to

TAKE NOTES! Outline the chapter, even if the text supplies you with an outline. After each section, write down the important points it makes, any items of particular interest, and any questions that you have.

You should spend some time becoming familiar with your text. Read the author biographies; the preface, the table of contents, and the "How to Use This Book" section on pp. iii-xi, xvii-xxxvii.

It is important to understand what agendas your authors have—even the most ideologically objective author has some agenda by which he chooses what to include and how to organize his material. Knowing the authors' material and teaching agenda swill help you learn and organize the material they present and make the most of the learning tools they have incorporated into the text.

One of the material agendas the authors adopt is to help students " acquire a framework of key biological concepts into which they can fit the many new things they learn" (see Focus Students on the Main Ideas of Biology, p. viii). A conceptual framework is like the structure of a house. You can populate the house with any ideas which will fit in the existing rooms. When the idea doesn't fit, it is rejected as incompatible with the basic framework. In science, it is never enough to just collect observations. A scientist must organize and explain the observations, find cause and effect relationships, predict future events, and even account for observations made after theory formation. When a science has a dominant theory such as relativity, quantum mechanics, or evolution in place, the first effort with any new data is to try to fit it into the dominant theory, into the conceptual framework.

The current conceptual framework current in biology is based on the theory of evolution. Most biologists believe that this theory can account for more observations than any other proposed scientific theory, that "evolution elevates biology from a bewildering collection of facts to a coherent study of changing life on a changing planet" (p. ix). Understanding the theory of evolution is necessary to understanding how most biologists currently organize and interpret information and evaluate competing theories. Any proposed theory must provide an equally useful conceptual framework as well as accounting for the observable phenomena.

One of the authors' teaching agendas is to use good graphics to help you understand the material. Many people learn more easily from pictures than from words, and most people learn from both. So don't ignore the pictures—sometimes there is more information in the diagrams than there is in the text! The companion website has animations which are very helpful in understanding processes and dynamic (changing over time) relationships—you should use it frequently.

Study the table of contents and note the organization of material. We are going to start with cell theory, since cell structure is common to all forms of life. Then we talk about inheritance – how DNA and RNA are used to pass information from generation to generation and cell to cell. Most of the information presented in these two units is less than a hundred years old. Then we discuss the basic theory of evolution and how it is used to explain the fossil evidence for plants and animals that no longer exist, as well as the current diversity of species and their distribution throughout the world. In the spring semester we will study the different systems found in complex animals, such as the nervous system and the circulatory system. We then look at systems in plants, in order to describe how they grow and reproduce. Finally, we look at organisms in situ, that is, at life forms as they co-exist in nature. Notice that we move from the microscopic structures found in almost all life forms to the individual habitats of particular animals and plants.

Much of the effort in biology has gone into naming organisms, parts of organisms, and the processes of life and relationships between organisms. It is essential that you learn all these terms in order to understand and master the material. Make a list of the bold-faced terms in the chapter, and drill yourself on terminology regularly. Check your definitions with the glossary in the back of the book.

Each topic is discussed in a numbered chapter module that ends with a question. Be sure that you can answer the question before going on to the next module. At the end of each chapter are multiple choice questions on the material in the current chapter. I will not specifically assign or collect your answers to these textbook multiple choice questions, but I urge you to look through them rapidly to test your comprehension after you first read the chapter. Answer all the questions as quickly as you can, then check your answers in the back of the textbook, and if you get any of the questions wrong, review the material before continuing with the study guide exercises.

I will be using the essay topics in the Describing, Comparing, and Explaining, the Testing and Applying Your Knowledge, and the Science, Thechnology, and Society sections at the end of each chapter as a guide for discussion. You may be assigned to write on one question from these, or on one of the study guide exercises, and present your answer in class each week. You should read through all the topics, not just the ones assigned, so that you understand the essays presented by other students.

Using the Companion Website

The companion website which accompanies the text requires browsers with certain capabilities; if you do not have the right version of Internet Explorer, Safari, FireFox or Netscape, you can usually download and install one from the sponsor site.

The companion website hosts animations and interactive activities for each chapter. Some of the activities tie into specific subunits of the chapter or exercises in the study guide. You should study the materials at the companion website carefully. Often the animations will clarify concepts that are difficult to describe with words or static pictures. In addition, the narrator's pronunciation of the new terms will help you recognize them when you hear them in other contexts. These activities take time but they will help you cement the reading material firmly in place, and show you how it applies to real situations.

You should take the companion website quizzes in preparation for the Moodle ("officially graded") quizzes. Each chapter has a pre-test to help you determine what you already know, and an activities quiz that you should complete after you do the activities at the companion site, and a comprehensive quiz that you should take after you complete all other work for the chapter but before you take my online quiz.

As with the text, take notes on anything that puzzles you. If you don't understand how the examples work, e-mail me or ask during chat, or compare the problem to another homework practice problem solution that you do understand.

Using the Study Guide

Become familiar with the study guide by reading "A Note to Students". Notice that each exercise in the chapter covers material from specific modules. You may chose to do the exercises as you complete the relevant units, or to wait until you have finished the whole assignment and then do all the related exercises for that assignment.

Then look at the exercises for chapter 1. There are seven exercises.

Notice that each exercise tests a different kind of information and your ability to use the material from the chapter in different contexts. You should try to complete all exercises, but if you find one type more beneficial than the others, do that type of exercise first, then work in the others. If you are pressed for time, skip anything which seems to be a duplication of other work you have already done; you can use those exercises as review for midterms and finals. Most of the time, you should complete the exercises and check your work on your own (or have a parent check it); from time to time, we will use study guide exercises as the basis of our class discussion.

Once you have completed the study guide exercises, test yourself again! Testing Your Knowledge and Applying Your Knowledge each contain both multiple choice questions and essay topics. Testing Your Knowledge examines your ability to match terms to definitions, Applying Your Knowledge tests your ability to apply concepts to specific situations. If the answers don't. Both types of questions are used on evaluation like the Biology AP and the SAT II Biology exams, so the more experience you have with these questions, the better you are likely to do on standardized exams. There are more questions here than on either the companion website quizzes or my online quizzes, so use the study guide multiple-choice questions self-test as a diagnostic to determine areas where you may still have problems, if possible, before class. That way you can bring up any issues you have with the material during our discussion of it.

Doing Homework

Homework is not merely useful, it is essential for mastering the concepts of a science course. You will know whether you understand a concept if you can use it to solve a "real-world" problem, and when you can teach it to someone else. We use both techniques in this course. You will be assigned both word-essay questions and calculation problems for each unit. You should work all of these. You will also be asked to post the answer to at least one question and one calculation problem to the class forum. This is your opportunity to explain to your fellow students what you know.

NB: mycroft, the original bot for my science classes, has long since been freed to do other things, like attend class, make obnoxious remarks, and aid stumped students. If you really get stuck figuring out the problem you've been asked to post, mycroft has been known to accept bribes in the form of virtual Oreo cookies to finish your problem for you.

Essay Questions

Essay questions ask you to explain a concept in words. As you answer a science essay question, be prepare to cite calculation information as well as concepts, or give examples.

For example: What are the advantages of breathing air, rather than absorbing oxygen from water? What are the disadvantages?

A good answer will be grammatically and syntactically correct, using proper English, as well as contain the correct information. It will cover more than one point in supporting its argument.

Oxygen is present in far less concentration in water than in air, so aquatic animals must work harder to extract the oxygen required for metabolic functions from water than land animals must work to extract the same amount of oxygen from air. However, not all the advantages are with the land animals, which must struggle to maintain adequate water internally against their dryer environment.

Thinking Like a Scientist/Process of Science questions

Both the text and the companion website activities section have questions that ask you to think about different situations the way a scientist would. They may ask you how you would create an experiment to test for or gather information about a given area. Often they present the results of a particular research project or experiment, and ask you to analyze the results. While you don't usually need to "do math" calculations to come up with the answer, you sometimes need to "think mathematically", looking at a set of numbers for trends or similar patterns. Don't panic on these! Spend the time to visualize the information. Draw a chart of the numbers, if you think it will help you see trends. And always, ask questions in class if you don't understand the point of the question or its answer.

Getting the Most from Chat

Chat sessions are 90 minutes. Plan accordingly, and take a break just before class starts. Do some stretching, go to the bathroom, eat or get your drinks before you enter the classroom. Be sure to try to connect to your ISP and check mail 10 minutes before class if possible, in case any late notices have been sent by the teacher. Give yourself the extra time. High traffic on your ISP or the school server can slow you down and force you to miss the first 5 to 10 minutes of class.

If you have not already done so, post your assigned questions and answers to the class forum before the start of class.

Bring your text, notes, study guide, and paper and pencil to class. If you are comfortable using a desktop calculator and taking notes in a text utility like Notepad (available as different applications on both Windows and Macintosh), you can use those. Take notes during class. If you are logging, you do not need to document things the teacher or other students say, but it is useful to note your own questions and observations as they occur, so that you can study them later.

Take part in the discussion. Ask questions as they occur to you (or note them and ask them at the end of class).

Chat sessions in biology occasionally involve discussion of mathematical calculations used to analyze data and standard chemical formulae to express metabolic reactions.. Because of the limitations of chat entry, we cannot use super and subscript notations. The convention we use is underscore (_) for subscript and up-arrow (^) for superscript. The term x_1 ^2 means "take the value x-sub-1 and square it"; it may be more familiar to you as x12 but we can't write that in Chat. The chemical symbol of 2 hydrogens and 1 oxygen for a water molecule will look like H_2O instead of H2O.

Print the log out. As soon as possible after class, review the log and make notes on it about any points that bother you. Mark important points for review later. Save the log to review before the semester examinations.

Quizzes

There are four sets of quizzes for each unit of the course. The companion website has a pre-test, which you take before you read the chapter. The questions help you figure out which areas you already know something about, and focus your attention on the topics that the chapter will discuss. The activities quiz tests what you learn completing the companion website's interactive activities. The chapter quiz covers all the important points of the chapter. You should take this quiz as a review after we discuss in class the material it covers. You do not need to send me your scores on the companion website quizzes &mdash those are for your benefit. You should take them as many times as you feel necessary. Study any questions that you miss, and e-mail your teacher if there is still a problem.

After you've done the reading, homework, study guide, and we've had our discussion, and you've drilled yourself with the companion website quizzes and flashcards, it is time to take the online quiz. This quiz may be taken only once. It is timed (15 minutes). Your score for the quiz will be recorded. You will receive an explanation of the answers once you have submitted the quiz for a grade. You should note the questions that you miss, and be sure to study the correct answers and the concepts behind them before the semester examination on the unit.

Most of the questions on the biology midterms and finals which I use to evaluate your understanding and progress in biology will be drawn from the study questions in the text and student guide. It is very important that you use the homework questions, exercises, and essay topics in the text and guide as self-tests to prepare for the exams for this course. There will be an online quiz each week which will be based on the chapter material, but may be phrased more like questions you would find on the AP and SAT II Biology examinations. Everyone, regardless of their plans for the course, is required to take all the quizzes, midterms, and finals.

Exams

Start your review two weeks prior to the scheduled examination.

For each chapter covered by the exam

There will be two major exams (semester finals), one in January and one after the last lecture, which you will take during the first week or so in June. These will be mailed electronically to you, and you will take them with your parent or other responsible adult as proctor, and e-mail your answers back to me. Both exams contain a large multiple choice section with questions drawn from the companion website, study guide, and Moodle quizzes, and essay questions that require you to synthesize material from several chapters. The multiple choice section will be closed book, the essay questions open book.

Term Papers (Research Reports)

Part of each semester's assignments is a research paper of 4-7 pages (1000 - 1500 words), written as a research proposal on some specific area of biology, and due at the same time as your semester examination.

You may use any and all resources at your command, including websites, text, other books, magazine articles, etc. You may spend any amount of time on the report that you wish, and you can work on it before and finish it after the exam if you so choose, but it is usually due at the same time as the semester exam.

TOPIC: You may choose a topic from either semester's biology materials, where you can discuss how it is an example of a class of biological objects, what makes the particular object interesting, and how it might be studied. For example, you could choose a cell organelle like ribosomes, a particular gene or genetic defect, or a particular application of evolution theory. You must submit your proposed topic to the teacher and have it approved before continuing your researc.

REPORT FORMAT: The report should include the following sections:

From a grading standpoint, I would like you to show me that you understand something about the general characteristics of one of these areas:

If you chose a particular organelle, for example, you should show how organelles are similar, how they differ and what those differences are based on (e.g, is it on their chemical composition? function? development over time within the organism?), what is particularly interesting about the example you chose, and how to gather scientific data about these objects, analyze them, and draw conclusions from them that tell us about these basic characteristics.

You will upload your paper as to the Moodle assignment location by its due date. It must be in acceptable format (Word DOC (not DOCX), RTF, Ascii text (TXT), PDF, or Mac Pages format). If you use another word processor, please check with me before uploading the file; I may not be able to read it.

Past research topics have included

Study Groups

Yes, of course you may study together — remember that explaining or teaching what you just learned to someone else is one of the important techniques of learning! You may also work together to complete your study guide exercises... but be sure that you can answer them on your own afterwards, since you cannot work as a study group on quizzes or examinations. I encourage you to set up a regular meeting time outside our class discussion session for your study group. You will need to contact your teacher to set up a study chat session.

Doing Labs

The Scientific Experience

One of the basic methods of science is to secure documented observations of periodic or common events in order to make some general summary about the behavior of natural objects. We can do this in several ways.

Special concerns for Biology Labs

Observing living organisms

Most field observations should be designed to collect information without interfering with normal plant or animal behavior, but this is difficult to achieve in practice. In general, any instruments or human interference required to gather and record data requires direct contact with animals, making it difficult to eliminate the interference issue.

Observational methods also pose ethical dilemmas which as us to question whether it is right to perform experiments on the subjects, and to what extent certain kinds of experiments, such as injections with chemicals to test reactions, should be permitted. In designing any experiment, you should consider the legal implications and your own moral stand.

Writing Lab Reports

Your lab report is the evidence of your observations of a particular phenomena. Your observations should be presented in such a way that the data is easy to understand and supports your conclusions, but also with enough detail on how you obtained them that any peer with similar equipment could repeat your experience and confirm your results (or challenge them, as the case may be).

Organization: A good science lab report has at least seven sections:

  1. The abstract: a short paragraph explaining the goal of the lab, the overall purpose or hypothesis, the type of data gathered, and the conclusions:
  1. Materials and equipment: a description of the consumable materials and the observing equipment, instruments used to collect data. For standard equipment, references to the make and model are generally sufficient, along with verification that the equipment was tested for proper calibration.. If the equipment was modified, or specially configured, describe the new settings. If the equipment was specially built, either summarize the intent and purpose of the equipment and methods of calibration, or refer to other documents which provide this information.
  1. Procedure: a list of steps taken to secure the data. This should be detailed enough to allow peers in the field to repeat the measurements you made under simillar circumstances. Any choices you made that might affect results should be stated, along with the reasons you made them.
  1. Raw Data: the numbers you copied from instruments, descriptions of what you saw with your own eys, notes to yourself about odd things that happened, and rough sketches made during the observation. They might also include photographs, data collected by computer, and so forth. Organize this data appropriately in tables, columns, lists, or essay paragraphs with section headers so that you may easily find specific records and easily make comparisons. In many cases, the amount of data collected this way exceeds the space available in a formal report, so you do not need to include all of it. You should select representative samples of this data, and retain your notebooks with the actual raw data for reference if anyone questions your results.
  1. Sample Calculations: at least one each of any calculations you did to determine reliability (statistical analyses) or to figure out derived data (e.g., density from volume and mass measurements). This allows a reviewer (such as your teacher) to determine whether you used the proper technique of data reduction in this situation.
  1. Processed Data: all the processed data on which you base your results in the most useful forms. Frequently this involves creating a table, and may additionally involve preparing graphs to show trends.
  1. Conclusions: your assessment of whether your originaly hypothesis or assumptions are supported by actual phenomena. If your results did not bear out your assumptions, but you still feel the assumption is correct, you should explain the source of the problem (errors in measurement, calculations, equipment), and outline a plane for redoing the observations. When your experiment bears out your hypothesis, your conclusion should place these results in the context of the large field, and could include suggestions for further research.

Because of the nature of fiel observations, there are some kinds of data that you should always include for any observing session.

Resources

Planning Field Observations....

Six of the labs are field labs. These are intended to give you some idea of how a biologist conducts studies of living organisms in their native environments. While these labs are not difficult, you will need to plan ahead for them.

The field labs should be conducted in the same area, so that you can compare your observations of populations and communities over time. You will need to select a place that you can visit repeatedly from September through July, and from which you can remove samples of plant and insect life. If at all possible, the area should have a source of standing water which you can use to get protista (single-celled aquatic life forms). It is best if the area is not heavily landscaped or traveled, so try to find a field or woods away from the road in the back corner of your yard, or better, a park.

Be prepared to work around the weather. You may find that you can't observe your area for several weeks at a time because of rain or snow; do something else with that time and take advantage of weather opportunities.

Current events....

The major stories in biology these days tend to focus on genetics, with cloning, use of human tissues for cell replacement, and gene mapping posing stories that both fascinate us and challenge us socially, technically, and ethically. If you find something interesting in the news, be sure to ask about it in class.

Course wares...

Biology is the not quite as popular a science as astronomy, but you can find a lot of web-based and CD-ROM/DVD based information, especially if you are looking for nature guides. Of course, our own text has a website that you should explore.

© 2012,2013 This course is offered through Scholars Online, a non-profit organization supporting classical Christian education through Internet-based courses. Permission to copy course content (lessons and labs) for personal study is granted to students currently or formerly enrolled in the course through Scholars Online. Reproduction for any other purpose, without the express written consent of the author, is prohibited.