Structure of Bio. 204-260 Principles of Biology: Cells

Spring Semester 2005

Welcome to the Online Bio. 204-260 course – Principles of Biology:  Cells.  The laboratory component of the course known as section 261 is contained in the Bio 204-260 too.

This course content will cover approximately 15 to 16 out of the first 18 chapters in Campbell’s Biology - 6^th edition published by Benjamin Cummings and the online websites that have been created for each chapter which collectively are called an epack.

The course is divided into Four Units or Content Modules including:

            Unit 1 Chemistry of Life will cover Chapters 1- 5 as the first reading assignments and the links to the lectures, review questions for each chapter and laboratories for Unit 1 is on its Organizational Page.

            Unit 2 Metabolism will cover Chapters 6 – 10 and the links to the lectures, review questions and the

   laboratory for each chapter is on Unit 2’s Organizational Page.
 

            Unit 3 Cell communications and Genetics will cover Chapters 11 – 15 and the links to the lectures, review questions and to the laboratory for each chapter on Unit 3’s Organizational Page.
 

    Unit 4 Chromosome and Molecular Inheritance Chap. 16 –18 and the links to the lectures, review  questions and laboratory to each chapter is on the Unit 4’s Organizational Page.

How to Know What’s Important to Learn

To help you learn the material in each unit there are Review Questions for each chapter and by answering these questions you will know what I considered important in a chapter.  
 

(You may send your typed answers to the review questions to Dr. Dunn by email prior to a Chapter Test for feedback on your thought processes concerning the material in the chapter so that you will have a better chance to get more questions answered properly on the Chapter Test.)
 

Also if you turn in the review questions to all of the chapters in a whole unit to Dr. Dunn by an e-mail attachment a week or so before the end of the semester you can earn what is called GRADE REPLACEMENT and Dr. Dunn will check over your answers to the review questions prior to your taking the comprehensive final so hopefully you will do better on the final and this will more likely help you get the grade that you would want.  If your grade on the final is higher than the one lowest unit's grade, then Dr. Dunn will drop your lowest unit grade and replace with the higher final grade.  The higher final grade will still be averaged with your units grade for the Lecture grade component of the course grade.)

 

Every chapter in the textbook has had online web components created for it by Pearson Educational group to assist you in learning its instructional material (collectively they make up the epack) and each chapters' web   component has a list of objectives concerning what the major concepts and principles are for each chapter in each unit and they will inform you what is important for you to learn as well as do the Review Questions.   

 

Plus in the course I have included Narrated Lectures and Non-narrated Lecture versions of Powerpoint Presentations available and will also cover the instructional material found in each of the chapters and for which you will be responsible.  You must have a PowerPoint player if you chose to listen to the lectures in the PowerPoint files while in Unit 1 I offer a version  the narrated lectures in a very compressed format that you will only need the Java plug-in’ applets to play these compressed narrated lectures.

A Laboratory for each chapter consists of Assigned Activities that are in the epack for that particular chapter or ones selected from other recommended websites.  A Page of Assigned Laboratory Activities has directions to the location of the activities which are in the epack or are to other url addresses that is listed on the lab page.  There are four or five labs that can be optional and some of them have a $5.25 fee if you chose to do them because they have been created by another group of educators Biology On-Line labs.  These are highly recommended labs to do, AND you are required to do all 15 or 16 lab activity quizzes for each chapter in the course, but

I will count only your top 13 lab activity quiz scores to calculate YOUR LAB ACTIVITY QUIZ AVERAGE.  Dr. Dunn recommends that you do all the activities in the lab associated with material in the chapters so you will get the best grade on the lab activity quiz grade as well as helping you with the chapter's test.

Locating the Components in this Online Bio 204 Course

            You will be able to link off any Unit's Organizational page to the Narrated Lectures and Non-narrated versions of PowerPoint presentations for each of the chapters we use for the course in the textbook; as to the links to the list of laboratory assignments for the chapter, and link to Review Questions. 

(Powerpoint player is essential to have if you are going to hear and learn from the lecture presentations) and for student who do not have powerpoint on their computers - I have created a set of the same lectures in files that are so compressed that a PowerPoint player may not  be necessary at least in the first unit but every student in the class will have access to the lectures regardless so they need a PowerPoint players at least by unit 2  – but for the Impaticised or compressed lectures you will need what is called the JAVA Plug-in which can be found in the browser tune-up for the webct courses in webpage called Requirements and Recommendation webpage.  These compressed lecture files are called impaticized files and have extensions on the end file so that they can be recognized by what they call .imp file extensions.)  

  The first organizational page of each unit can be accessed in the course

by any one of the following three ways: 
 

1) by going to the today's date on the course Calendar on the Homepage of the course.  It will also give you the due dates for when you should be doing the chapters’ readings, the lectures, and the laboratory assignments prior to taking the Chapter Test for the lecture and the Lab Activity Quiz on what intellectual experience you gained from doing the activities for the laboratory component of the course; and
 

2) on the Table of Contents which can also be found on the Bio. 204 course’s Homepage which will take you directly to each Unit’s first organizational page and therefore provide the links for the different styles of the PowerPoint lectures for each chapter in the units. The Unit’s first organizational page will also give you a link to a Chapter’s Laboratory’s Page of the Assigned Activities for each of the chapters in a unit and to the Review Questions.
 

3) by the Course Menu which is located in the small window in the left navigational column will take you to directly to each Units’ first Organizational page and therefore also provide links to the various styles of the narrated and non-narrated lecture powerpoints, the review questions as well as to Page of the Assigned Laboratory Activities for each chapter in a unit.

Epack’s Online Chapters

Online chapters are Special Online Websites, that were created for each chapter in the text book by Pearson Educational organization and are collectively referred to as the epack. You can go to each chapters' online websites off the Homepage of the course by clicking on the Course Materials icon and then you will be taken to the List of Chapters and then by clicking on a particular numbered online chapter you will be taken to it and there you will find the many helpful components on online websites for each chapter in the unit that you are studying. 

Discussion of the Instructional Components in

each of the Online Chapters

Each of the Online Chapters’ Websites will include:
 

1) Objectives for the online chapter which will also guide you about what you are responsible to learn from each chapter and in the lectures and laboratories.
 

2) Activities which you will be asked to do as part of the laboratory section of this  course as well as Case Studies which are mini–research experiments.  You will sometimes be asked to perform as an assignment and to write a report for the laboratory covering the concepts in a particular chapter and if you do so and are asked to post it in Discussion area you will also earn the right to drop one of your lowest lab quiz grades before averaging them to get your lab score calculated.
 

3) Activity Quiz in each online chapter will be the quiz you take covering that Laboratory’s Activities and/or the Case Studies for each chapter that you performed and which will count towards your overall laboratory grade.
 

4) The Chapter Pretest and Chapter Quiz can be used for trying out sample questions to practice content questions before you take the real Chapter Test or Laboratory Activity Quiz that will count toward your lecture grade for the chapters in a Unit.
 

5) A Chapter Test on each chapter in a unit will provide the set of exam questions to be graded that will contribute to your lecture grade for a unit. The lecture component grade for a unit for will be equal to sum of all the points earned from getting the right answers to the questions on all the Chapter Tests for the chapters in the unit.  There is a Chapter Test with 20 questions per chapter and in a unit there are 5 chapters which will equal 100 possible points for a unit.
 

6) Extra Web Links provide you with addresses to other websites that can go to that will provide you the
            explanations and activities that cover the same material in that was in the chapter from slightly different perspectives to help you understand the material in depth.

Grading in the Course

The overall course grade will be based on two grade components:
 

1) A Lecture course grade will be based on the average of your Four Different Units’ Lecture Grades + the comprehensive final over the whole semester.  Your overall course grade will be determined by counting lecture average as 2/3 of your overall course grade.  A Unit’s grade is the percent of the correctly answered questions from the total number of questions found in all of its Chapters’ Tests ( for a total of 100 questions per unit) covering all of the lectures and reading assignments included in a unit.   A particular Chapter’s Test Grade is the sum of the number of correctly answered on that one chapter’s test.
 

2) Your Laboratory grade which will consist of your average grade of all of the grades that you have gotten on the  Activity Quizzes from the 13 of the 18 possible chapters in the course that you will have taken by the end of the semester and this lab average will count 1/3 of your overall course grade.

Remember you can find the due dates for doing the lectures, a chapter’s reading assignment, for the laboratory activities and also for taking the activity quiz on each of the chapter’s laboratory as well as finishing the Lectures and Chapter Tests on each of the chapters by going to the course calendar on the homepage of the course and going to the dates.

 Getting Started 

If you want to go straight to a Unit’s lectures for a particular chapter or to its laboratory go to the first   organizational page of its unit which you can also link to off either the Calendar, Table of Contents or
Course Menu’s.

If you have any questions please contact me at dunnc@uncw.edu or call me.  Thank you.

Carolyn S. Dunn

502-749-7943