Back to Instructor Resources Menu
Statement of Purpose
The Instructional Resources area of the BIOL 1407 Course Redesign Website contains a variety of documents you can use freely in your BIOL 1407 classes. You can use all of them or only some of them, put them in the order that suits your teaching the best, and modify them in any way you want to make them better fit your approach to teaching BIOL 1407.
Use of Images in ACC BIOL 1407 Course Redesign Materials:
Many of the resources contain images from various sources. It is very important that appropriate credit be given for these images if you use them.
Many images have the credits associated with them on the same page as the image. You MUST include the credits for images you use from these resources, even if you modify them.
Many images in the PowerPoint presentations and some images in assignments and classroom assessments come from Campbell, et al., Biology, 8th edition (Benjamin Cummings, 2008). If you are also using Campbell, you may use these images if appropriate credit is given. If you are using a different textbook, you MUST substitute similar artwork from the textbook you are using (and, of course, credit that textbook).
Types of Resources Available
Syllabi
Sample syllabi from spring and summer semesters of BIOL 1407 course redesign, illustrating how three different instructors have organized their classes using the instructional resources.
PowerPoint Presentations
Complete set of PowerPoint presentations based on the BIOL 1407 common course objectives, with additional materials added to round out the BIOL 1407 experience according to the instructional philosophy of a team of two of the course redesign team instructors.
Assignments
Complete set of assignments based on the BIOL 1407 common course objectives, with additional materials added to round out the BIOL 1407 experience according to the instructional philosophy of a team of two of the course redesign team instructors. These two instructors used them primarily as homework assignments that were not graded but were assessed on the tests. The assignments gave students additional practice working on difficult concepts.
Some of the assignments contain an area called "Further Explorations". These are a set of activities designed to introduce students to materials outside of the core concepts of the course that illustrated current scientific work on the core concepts, or are just plain interesting. Use them or not as you see fit.
Classroom Assessment
Complete set of classroom assessments based on the BIOL 1407 common course objectives, with additional materials added to round out the BIOL 1407 experience according to the instructional philosophy of a team of two of the course redesign team instructors. The classroom assessments increased active student participation in the classroom by asking students to apply concepts under discussion. They also helped the professor check for understanding of concepts so that misconceptions could be corrected immediately.
Lab Manuals
The BIOL 1407 Course Redesign team developed a lab manual for the course. This lab manual is a series of exercises designed to investigate BIOL 1407 concepts through active learning in the laboratory. The exercises can be done in any order, and you can use some of them or all of them, so feel free to change things up to fit your idea of how the lab should run. This area also includes examples of how two different instructors have taken these basic labs and modified them to fit their instructional philosophy.
Prelab Quizzes
Complete set of prelab quizzes based on the BIOL 1407 course redesign lab manual. These are given through Blackboard before the students come to lab to encourage the students to prepare for the lab activities. There are often numerous questions that cover a topic, so feel free to choose among them the questions you want to use, if indeed you plan to do prelab quizzes at all.
The questions are already in Respondus format. (If you don’t already know this, Respondus is a program used to import tests into Blackboard’s testing program. It is easier to use Respondus to put tests into Blackboard than to build them within Blackboard. The one catch is that the formatting has to be exact, so if you cut and paste questions from these prelab quizzes, be sure to check the format carefully before using Respondus to upload the tests to Blackboard.)
Library of Digital Images
Database of digital images (primarily photographs) covering BIOL 1407 common course objectives and lab activities from the BIOL 1407 course redesign lab manual. These images can be used in any resources you modify or develop from scratch, as long as (1) you include the credit and (2) the resource will be used for educational purposes (and not for commercial purposes).
The ACC BIOL 1407 Course Redesign team would love to hear about how you use these resources and any constructive comments you’d like to make about them.