Studio biology - what is it?

Course and testing structure

The course is divided into 7 units, each with four or five class periods that are devoted to those units. There are tests on all 7 units, and the dates for those tests can be found on your course syllabus (link). You will start with an Introduction to Science and Biology (including two classes on Evolution), then go immediately into the study of Ecology and Ecosystems. After gaining this large-scale perspective, you will move to the study of living things at the smallest scale (molecules and cells), and then move up to the organism level (Genetics, Energetics). The final two units are more traditional (Plant Biology, Animal Biology). The final exam, at the end of the semester, is not a comprehensive exam; it covers only the last unit (Animal Biology). But all of the learning that you have done in prior units will be very important in your understanding of the concepts covered in that final exam

The test questions are all written to evaluate your knowledge of the unit Objectives. More importantly, the objectives for each class period are provided to you at the very beginning of each section of the studio manual. So if you want to know “What do I have to know for the tests?”, the simple answer would be “the Objectives for that unit”. You will gain an understanding of these objectives in many ways, not only from this electronic textbook, but from the studio exercises, the web pages for this class, and from discussions with your fellow students both inside and outside the classroom. In addition we have prepared Study Guides that are also based on the Objectives. For each of the day’s Objectives, we provide a detailed listing of all the places (e.g. textbook, studio exercise, web page, or some combination of those) where you can get the information needed to master that Objective. If you spend your time in the studio wisely, and study with those Study Guides regularly (not just the day before the exam!), you should have a very clear understanding of the material that we think you should be learning in this class. Each question on each exam is written with one of those Objectives in mind, so it should be obvious that the Objectives are the key item on which to focus your efforts.

Your responsibilities

There will be readings in the textbook for every class day (except for the very first day of class); those reading assignments are listed in the Studio Manual, right after the Objectives for every class period. The textbook readings are an introduction to the topics for the studio exercises that day, so you need to read them BEFORE coming to class each day. In order to assure that you do the reading, there will be a short quiz over the reading material for every class period. By the end of the semester, the points for these quizzes add up to approximately the same value as a unit exam. The points should provide some incentive, but as you learn more about this course you should also figure out that learning in the studio classroom is more efficient if you have a good understanding of the material covered in the reading for that day. And more efficient learning in the classroom translates to better scores on the unit exams!