Principles of Biology

There are no teachers

Fact: Many people feel that they learn by listening to someone talk and that talking about a topic is the same as teaching. In actuality, learning can be accomplished in a variety of ways and the job of a teacher is to guide a student through the process of learning. Learning is not simply memorizing facts or a group of words, but is instead understanding the relationships between those words and the processes being described. So, simply listening to something or reading about it and memorizing words is not the best way to learn for many people.

While it is true that the lectures in this course are short, we do certainly teach. Teaching cannot be solely defined by someone giving you a traditional lecture, and thus the absence of a traditional lecture cannot be equated with the absence of teaching. Additionally, regardless of the format of a course, and no matter how many or how skilled the teachers, learning IS something that you always do "on your own." Nobody can learn for you. We help you learn in many different ways in this course. You will have many tools (textbook, studio manual, web tutorials, study guides, etc.) to help you learn. However, you have to take advantage of them in order to learn, just like you have to take advantage of teacher-provided tools in a more traditional lecture class.

Fact: The course uses computers as a teaching tool in a studio-model format. The studio format, which integrates lecture and lab, is perhaps the most effective instructional format yet devised. Computers are an integral part of the course, but students also benefit from ALL of the approaches that modern educational research has identified.

Beyond the 2-hour studio class there are additional opportunities to learn the material:

  • Computer tutorials are available outside the classroom from our password-protected web site.
  • If a student needs more time to complete an experiment, or more one-on-one instruction, we provide open studio hours staffed by GTAs. See your syllabus for details about the times for these sessions.
  • To ensure that students know what they need to learn during the studio sessions, we provide objectives and study guides for each class.
  • For those who want to learn more about any given topic, we provide additional web resources for more in-depth coverage of important concepts for each module.