#Dna transcription and translation steps upgrade#
#Dna transcription and translation steps plus#

#Dna transcription and translation steps upgrade#

I need to catch up and upgrade my lecture notes. Not that anyone can possibly keep up with all the advances in all the areas of Biology which is so huge, but at least big updates that affect teaching of introductory courses are stuff I need to know. I am also worried that, since I am not actively doing research in the lab and thus not following the literature as closely, that some of the things I teach are now out-dated. I am not exactly sure when am I teaching the BIO101 lectures again (late Fall, Spring?) but I want to start rethinking my class early. Thus they recently gave us much more freedom to design our own syllabus instead of following a pre-defined one, as long as the ultimate goals of the class remain the same. We are experienced, and apparently we know what we are doing. They also write a final paper on some aspect of physiology.Īnother new development is that the administration has realized that most of the faculty have been with the school for many years.

I think that worked well but it is hard to do. A couple of times I used malaria as a thread that connected all the topics - from cell biology to ecology to physiology to evolution. Thus I follow my lectures with videos and classroom discussions, and their homework consists of finding cool biology videos or articles and posting the links on the classroom blog for all to see. Thus I have to strip the lectures to the bare bones, and hope that those bare bones are what non-science majors really need to know: concepts rather than factoids, relationship with the rest of their lives rather than relationship with the other sciences.

#Dna transcription and translation steps plus#

In this period I have to teach them all of biology they need for their non-science majors, plus leave enough time for each student to give a presentation (on the science of their favorite plant and animal) and for two exams.

The quality of students in this program has steadily risen over the years, but I am still highly constrained with time: I have eight 4-hour meetings with the students over eight weeks.

Every now and then I muse about it publicly on the blog (see this, this, this, this, this, this and this for a few short posts about various aspects of it - from the use of videos, to the use of a classroom blog, to the importance of Open Access so students can read primary literature). As you may know, I have been teaching BIO101 (and also the BIO102 Lab) to non-traditional students in an adult education program for about twelve years now.