Hello marine biology students.
In this short video I would like to give you
an overview of this course and also a quick
tour of the Canvas page.
Here we can see the Canvas page and some of
the items I would like to direct your attention
to you first would be the syllabus.
The syllabus is laid out as a series of questions
to provide information about the course, information
about myself as your instructor, and also
just some background about what to expect
in the course, the major learning outcomes
or learning objectives for the course, and
also the materials that you'll need.
The textbook we'll be using for this session
is Marine Biology 11th edition by Castro and
Huber, published by Mcgraw-Hill.
Now, you aren't going to need an electronic
access code for McGraw Connect or anything
like that, just the textbook.
It could be physical or digital whatever works
best for you.
The schedule for the course is also available
and it's broken up by week, although the modules
will be published regularly throughout the
course of the session.
So while you can see all of the assignments,
many of these links are not going to take
you to that destination assignment until that
module has been published.
A quick overview of the major assignments,
There are going to be weekly interaction assignments.
These will often be in the form of discussion
questions, but sometimes you'll be sharing
different ideas or thoughts or even possibly
media of various sorts, whether they're videos
or pictures about marine organisms.
There will be course assessments.
At two points during this semester you will
be answering ten short essay questions as
a form of exam.
You'll have a week's worth of time to answer
those questions during both of those.
And again, they can be found in the schedule
both on week three and on week seven is when
these assessments will happen.
There's also a major project where a significant
amount of your points in the course will come
from.
In this major project you are going to get
to decide what the final deliverable is.
It can either be an audio podcast, about ten
minutes in length, and that can either be
an individual solo project or a group of two
students could work together on that project.
Or maybe you prefer writing essays and so
an informative essay in APA format is an option,
about 7 to 8 pages.
Or maybe you really enjoy making videos or
video editing and so a short informative video,
about five minutes in length or so, could
be another possible deliverable for that project.
There will be several intermediate steps throughout
the way, whether it's in the form of an outline
or turning in your sources or even a draft
that will be reviewed by a peer before the
final draft which will be graded by me will
be submitted.
Some information about how to be successful
in this course and in college in general is
also available.
And then lastly, a breakdown of the grading
structure and where the points are coming
from.
And your discussion questions make up about
10% of your grade in the class, Assessment
1 and Assessment 2 are each worth 25%, then
that major project and all of its subsequent
parts are about 40% of your grade in the class.
At the bottom of the syllabus you will find
the due dates for the published assignments
and as more assignments become published,
you'll see them show up there as well.
Now, a brief word on how to navigate this
page.
We will be using modules, so if you select
“Modules” you will see all of the currently
available or published modules, which at this
point is simply the first one.
By selecting that module, you'll be able to
see what the learning outcomes for that week
are, you'll have the lecture notes and lecture
videos available to you, the recommended readings
from our textbook, and also any assignments
that you happen to have that week.
Along with, each module will have a B.M.O.M.
or a bizarre marine organism of the module,
and so for Module 1, that bizarre marine organism
is the hagfish.
I'll let you learn a bit more about hagfish
through those videos and text.
Well, I'm definitely looking forward to this
semester.
I think it's going to be a lot of fun and
exciting and hopefully you walk away from
this semester with a new appreciation for
the diversity of life within the oceans.
Again, I'm Dr. Silva, your instructor for
this course and I look forward to meeting
you.
Bye!
