Preparing for January

I pulled up last year's detailed course outline to start deciding what to cut and what to rearrange.

Given the shorter term this year, and the timing of the mid-term break, I think I'll move more of the fundamental evolution material into the first two weeks. This will give us a solid grounding in evolutionary principles and processes before we get into the nitty-gritty of genetics.

That will also let me schedule the midterm in the last class before the break, before we get into the technicalities of how natural selection works. And I'll be able to cut a week from last year's post-midterm material on evolution, leaving us enough time to get into sustainability and ecological principles.

But the above assumes that I'll still teach the same content, just crammed into fewer classes. That's not what I want, so I still need to work on cutting factoids to give more time for thinking. And on the classroom activities (clicker questions) that get us all thinking and discussing, rather than just transmitting information.