tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335392292024-03-15T18:10:15.454-07:00RRTeachingI teach genetics and do research in evolutionary microbiology at the University of British Columbia. This blog is about my teaching, and about other teaching-related ideas and issues.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-19557965727059426822016-07-09T12:44:00.003-07:002016-07-09T12:44:50.142-07:00Genetics News 2 readership<h4 data-mce-style="padding-left: 30px;" style="padding-left: 30px;">
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Thanks for clicking on the link in the Genetics News email. By visiting this page you've told the Useful Genetics staff that you read the July 9 (Part 2) edition.</div>
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Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-59640845856200638262016-07-07T14:56:00.001-07:002016-07-07T14:56:41.694-07:00Genetics News readership for Useful Genetics Part 1<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;">Thanks for clicking on the link in the Genetics News email. By visiting this page you've told the Useful Genetics staff that you read the July 8 (Part 1) edition.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;">Feel free to leave a comment below if you'd like to help us make these emails better!</span></span>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-35081661857039610872016-07-07T14:49:00.000-07:002016-07-07T14:49:34.811-07:00Control postNothing happening here folks.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-86199032035824848642016-04-20T13:55:00.000-07:002016-04-20T13:55:16.394-07:00Post-Oreskes thoughtsI haven't posted anything here for ages. But I teach about climate change now (see <a href="http://blogs.ubc.ca/biology345/" target="_blank">here</a>), so RRTeaching seemed a better place for this than PPResearch.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvPaRzD_9dr-5Geri2PQlxsavqF54eB_qAEmeZ93qWHOdrWQcv2TwNWoXq5EW8YFQ-Q-E3W6Xa84fVeLdzba2ofC57MZ_PwhVmBUT5aljY2NZWC6kMT6nY-kMWTrJsxyvweaCt/s1600/Oreskes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvPaRzD_9dr-5Geri2PQlxsavqF54eB_qAEmeZ93qWHOdrWQcv2TwNWoXq5EW8YFQ-Q-E3W6Xa84fVeLdzba2ofC57MZ_PwhVmBUT5aljY2NZWC6kMT6nY-kMWTrJsxyvweaCt/s400/Oreskes.png" width="400" /> </a></div>
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Last week Naomi Oreskes gave a public lecture in downtown Vancouver about her research into climate change denial. This post was originally going to be about what I came away from the talk with, but now it's expanded into a '<i>Here's what I think about anthropogenic climate change</i>' statement.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>So here's what I think: </b><br />
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Almost everyone in North America (and probably much of the rest of the world) falls into one of two camps:<br />
<ol>
<li>People who aren't doing anything to prevent global warming because they either deny the climate-change science or think technology will save us from its consequences.</li>
<li>People who are taking token actions to prevent global warming, and wringing their hands about the other camp.</li>
</ol>
<b> Camp 1:</b> The deniers: Ultimately, people who cast doubt on the science behind climate change (or believe those who do), do so because they don't like the actions that the validity of the science implies. They may argue that these actions would infringe on personal freedoms, threaten democracy and destroy jobs, but the bottom line is that they don't want to give up the good life that fossil fuels let us all lead.<br />
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The techno-solution group: Many people, including some who accept climate-change science, are predicting that the free market will male lifestyle changes unnecessary - that
entrepreneurs will develop cheap practical technology that either
replaces fossil-fuel energy or removes the unwanted CO2 from the
atmosphere. It could happen, but almost certainly not without nuclear power.</div>
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<b>Camp 2:</b> Those of us who accept climate-change science shouldn't feel smug, because we still haven't given up the good life that fossil fuels provide. Sure we recycle, we occasionally bike or take the bus (if it's not inconvenient), and maybe we drive a hybrid car. Maybe we vote for candidates who promise to institute a carbon tax. Maybe we even pay for carbon-offsets when we fly.<br />
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But given the massive scope of the problem, these are tokens. Literally: they mark us as 'good' people, but they have no significant impact on the problem. We are deluding ourselves when we think
that our individual actions will make much difference. Not even if everyone in developing countries followed our example. Not even if everyone in the world followed our example.<br />
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<b>Some people are doing more:</b> Some of my UBC colleagues are doing their best to make the issues clear to the public - unfortunately this mostly serves to shift people from Camp 1 to Camp 2. (I'm doing this in my <a href="http://blogs.ubc.ca/biology345/" target="_blank">Human Ecology</a> course.) But some are also working to provide the government with solid advice about the best options. For one example, see this report: <a href="http://www.sustainablecanadadialogues.ca/en/scd/acting-on-climate-change?id=51" target="_blank">Acting on Climate Change</a>. In principle this could encourage government action that really could make a difference, but in practice I think the obstacles (social, political and especially economic) are too high.<br />
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<b>So what do I think is going to happen?</b><br />
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Probably not the worst-case scenario, but a lot worse than the 2 °C people have been hoping for. </div>
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The worst-case scenario is that the we don't stop returning fossil-fuel carbon to the atmosphere until we run out of fossil fuels - until we've burned everything that could possibly be extracted and burned. This would be much worse than the IPCC's worst-case 'business as usual' scenario ('RCP 8.5'), because RCP 8.5 assumes that we decide to leave some fossil fuel unburned. <br />
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Here's a discussion of the <a href="http://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/what-if-we-burn-all-the-fossil-fuels/" target="_blank">burn-everything consequences</a>. Global average temperature would rise by about 16 °C; polar temperatures by about 30 °C. Much of the planet would be uninhabitable, and much of the rest would not be suitable for growing food. So we'd be crowded and starve, unless we had already gotten too depressed to reproduce.<br />
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Most researchers assume that the short-term effects of increasing CO2 will be sufficiently horrible that governments (?) will impose drastic measures before we run out of fuel. Maybe, maybe not.</div>
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But we're certainly not going to turn things around before we hit a 2 °C increase in global temperature, and probably not until we're well on our way to much higher temperatures.<br />
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<b>Take Canada as an example: </b> We burn a lot of fossil fuel, and not just to keep warm and transport goods across our big cold country. The biggest greenhouse-gas producing category (25%) is production of the oil and natural gas that we sell to others or use ourselves. (This latest data is 2013.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuMsy8xvy1ojBEzrNQ9P_T6fhFQMQeVg_O_uHk8eSolwKC6hISvr3LYu1qdUk8Jy23P8UfSJQS6AkcAmGIsDuV5GZ6j1MdJVqeZJep29aMuuYlVN7R4B_rAM1Pyj5_Ml7zf2yL/s1600/Canada-gg.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuMsy8xvy1ojBEzrNQ9P_T6fhFQMQeVg_O_uHk8eSolwKC6hISvr3LYu1qdUk8Jy23P8UfSJQS6AkcAmGIsDuV5GZ6j1MdJVqeZJep29aMuuYlVN7R4B_rAM1Pyj5_Ml7zf2yL/s400/Canada-gg.png" width="400" /> </a></div>
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And we're likely to keep burning a lot. The latest report came out in February (Canada's Energy Future 2016; <a href="https://www.neb-one.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/ftr/2016/index-eng.html" target="_blank">download here</a>). They conclude:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Total energy use in Canada, which includes energy use in the energy production sector, grows at similar rates in all EF 2016 cases, and GHG emissions related to that energy use will follow similar trends. </blockquote>
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They developed energy-use predictions for six different scenarios. In addition to the 'reference' scenario, they consider the implications of not building any more pipelines, of higher and lower natural-gas prices, and of high and low exports of liquefied natural gas. Note that these are all market and distribution factors, and that these, not individual behaviours, are what determine how much energy Canada will use in the next 25 years.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0oRPyn6XZg_17IWE5uBoZhx7WUopPoERXQX6Y2jckvmqtCF9bmD7ET50tStKXWGnwCMTjIpFsL9pnM1_h8i2qDrZ7SeYdjUJep24Vl4DOZfrGz07nXH3tVInryQRN5Cwyg8R/s1600/Scenarios.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0oRPyn6XZg_17IWE5uBoZhx7WUopPoERXQX6Y2jckvmqtCF9bmD7ET50tStKXWGnwCMTjIpFsL9pnM1_h8i2qDrZ7SeYdjUJep24Vl4DOZfrGz07nXH3tVInryQRN5Cwyg8R/s400/Scenarios.png" width="400" /> </a></div>
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Sadly, even market factors don't make much difference. The different coloured bars below represent energy-use predictions for the different scenarios. They all predict the same thing - a modest INCREASE in energy use over the next 25 years, a bit higher if natural gas prices are high.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1aQ7AXeh7JcU1EaDkHOa1x8Rkb4ApkLn795uUUzIv-QXEDApLOWQ-werkX3zNnSjhjEUt10U87OCv9OnUncLvLHSGMEn0fS5x8RMMXG8UJxpkEz3C_Jo2z0um5JUZwO1IwEhI/s1600/Energy+future+scenarios.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1aQ7AXeh7JcU1EaDkHOa1x8Rkb4ApkLn795uUUzIv-QXEDApLOWQ-werkX3zNnSjhjEUt10U87OCv9OnUncLvLHSGMEn0fS5x8RMMXG8UJxpkEz3C_Jo2z0um5JUZwO1IwEhI/s400/Energy+future+scenarios.png" width="400" /> </a></div>
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At the Paris conference last fall, our new Liberal government committed to the 'Intended Nationally Determined Contribution' made by the Conservatives last spring,</div>
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">"Canada
intends to achieve an economy-wide target to reduce its greenhouse gas
emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030."</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
That sounds pretty good (though note that the level we're reducing from has been raised from the 1990 levels originally used). But it's not where the Energy Report says we're headed.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-5dk8aWCICnREW6n4gT1Hu7JtU9oAk8Su9Tt3ASQ_HXHrvXNXYs3no-SOIZ2s10A7msx7pJABrYh4-PwspFiqR658K98RBquRY7ZwsrwRid54YIM9jUnaI1xpnrCJm1SJV4MS/s1600/Wherewereheaded.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-5dk8aWCICnREW6n4gT1Hu7JtU9oAk8Su9Tt3ASQ_HXHrvXNXYs3no-SOIZ2s10A7msx7pJABrYh4-PwspFiqR658K98RBquRY7ZwsrwRid54YIM9jUnaI1xpnrCJm1SJV4MS/s400/Wherewereheaded.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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There's nothing in the government's plans, nor in the behaviour of Canadians, to suggest a different future. ("Spend $300 million on new technology!" "Have a conference with all the provinces!" "Engage the public!""Include indigenous peoples!")</div>
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Of course Canada is only a small player in global emissions, 1.6% of the total for 2011. But we're supposed to be the good guys, at least now that the Liberals are back in power. European countries are certainly doing better than us, but I doubt that we'll see any better reductions by the USA, or China, or Russia, or India.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsxMJ55DUWwJ8DMZxD-QwEJUXP6UZhUrTtI815X_D-Cq94t_y90Scwo_4YRTKBqifN5WEtV84pM-VZ6O4atyeO_lA8_ZQBiut7NWl0P_Cupe2swUYZXc7jaiziegKK8ICsg0f5/s1600/Worldemissions.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsxMJ55DUWwJ8DMZxD-QwEJUXP6UZhUrTtI815X_D-Cq94t_y90Scwo_4YRTKBqifN5WEtV84pM-VZ6O4atyeO_lA8_ZQBiut7NWl0P_Cupe2swUYZXc7jaiziegKK8ICsg0f5/s400/Worldemissions.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>People aren't going to change:</b> It's a waste of time to bemoan the
behaviour of others, or to say that we need to eliminate greed or
corruption or self-interest. Anthropogenic climate change is the
Tragedy of the Commons writ on a (literally) global scale. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4OnvGxmgF5b9ZFGo5jkb6tdEEEeaFaHkoEcGRkdry_GvMwd0J-X-pSRqO1GWw4KU_jYfi188xilWwGzyrmxkp0IOLcQvH0bFS_U6Nm-3IF4id6EiARZWJ-FtWSY5uYz1ZyEi-/s1600/Overgrazing.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4OnvGxmgF5b9ZFGo5jkb6tdEEEeaFaHkoEcGRkdry_GvMwd0J-X-pSRqO1GWw4KU_jYfi188xilWwGzyrmxkp0IOLcQvH0bFS_U6Nm-3IF4id6EiARZWJ-FtWSY5uYz1ZyEi-/s400/Overgrazing.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgezyztq_Y9U4gb93btML_jzt5xrZ2WjLjzr7OQN8wsD2JPFhZFUZYSQTZwB7h3u9lEujGkgdwdUSOL2wDv3VVQoLE4o43KaRxqM7oJlYGTCllwkcNgX4cH6ddmlDgH6eXW9hbe/s1600/TragedyofCommons.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgezyztq_Y9U4gb93btML_jzt5xrZ2WjLjzr7OQN8wsD2JPFhZFUZYSQTZwB7h3u9lEujGkgdwdUSOL2wDv3VVQoLE4o43KaRxqM7oJlYGTCllwkcNgX4cH6ddmlDgH6eXW9hbe/s400/TragedyofCommons.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-20860043744168721202015-04-15T17:49:00.000-07:002015-04-15T17:49:03.429-07:00Alternatives to 'genotype' and 'phenotype'I just posted the following tweet, but realized that it needed a bit more elaboration.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbA_yledhCcFAM0PyUQzXDOxikrJgiovh2A85d8AC7xe8Frlg8zon4i0JiPCnYoFzs1Fvdlawkq3n68kNXWe8bHQhz7kX2_Xk-Kl4o97CJyoWzq9FSnpkO6s3h4bXDhyphenhyphen07sGrQ/s1600/tweet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbA_yledhCcFAM0PyUQzXDOxikrJgiovh2A85d8AC7xe8Frlg8zon4i0JiPCnYoFzs1Fvdlawkq3n68kNXWe8bHQhz7kX2_Xk-Kl4o97CJyoWzq9FSnpkO6s3h4bXDhyphenhyphen07sGrQ/s1600/tweet.png" height="56" width="400" /></a></div>
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The meanings I want to capture are the following:<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>'Genotype': </b> the genetic differences between different people (or other organisms)<br />
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<b>'Phenotype': </b>the differences in traits/characteristics/properties between different people (or other organisms)<br />
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This is for a new blurb for Useful Genetics. Part 1 of Useful Genetics teaches how genotypes differ and how they cause phenotypic differences. Part 2 teaches how genotypic and phenotypic differences are inherited.<br />
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The terms need to stand alone - I'm not looking for analogies to incorporate into explanations of what 'genotype' and 'phenotype mean'.<br />
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For 'genotype' I could maybe say 'DNA differences' or 'gene differences', but I can't come up with any way to capture the real meaning of 'phenotype' in one or a few non-technical words. It needs to not exclude any of the ways that phenotypes differ (appearance/metabolism/behaviour/disease risk etc).<br />
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Ideally the words would apply comfortably to both people and other organisms, but it's most important that they apply to people.<br />
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Suggestions?<br />
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<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-79353411181015264502013-04-27T07:06:00.003-07:002013-04-27T07:06:37.854-07:00Useful Genetics, three days inFour days before our first lectures appear (Module 1: How different are we?), here are the latest stats:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNHN7_FvxxolC-Yc4uZzMuxnBDAMAbYwwNyB4uKPXgSywjsoFhmdZT7qusvRfksQnP0eF88hFRzGxKUmJndfs34n0wOEjvGDozmEh_l7pk_TD3PLr8uK6ojQrg1mf3Km5bj80/s1600/UG+stats+Apr27.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNHN7_FvxxolC-Yc4uZzMuxnBDAMAbYwwNyB4uKPXgSywjsoFhmdZT7qusvRfksQnP0eF88hFRzGxKUmJndfs34n0wOEjvGDozmEh_l7pk_TD3PLr8uK6ojQrg1mf3Km5bj80/s320/UG+stats+Apr27.png" width="320" /></a></div>
About 1000 students have done our two surveys and the Preparation self-test. These numbers are quite reasonable - it's well-established that most of the students who register for a Coursera course are just browsing. We'll be interested to see how the numbers change once the lectures begin.<br />
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We're increasingly glad we opened the course a week early. The night before last some students began reporting that they couldn't download or stream videos, though most students seemed to have no problem. It took the Coursera engineers about 24 hrs to identify and fix the problem; I'll have to ask them whether it was caused by something that we did incorrectly or just some bug in their system. But I'm really happy that this happened before the lectures start. (One of my goals is to set a very positive tone at the start of the course, letting the students see that we're being helpful and responsive, so later they'll not panic when problems inevitably arise.)<br />
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There's already lots going on in the discussion forums. We've inherited a self-titled 'Genetics Gang' from Mohammed Noor's Coursera course Introduction to Genetics and Evolution; they seem knowledgable and enthusiastic so I'm expecting them to be an asset to the course.<br />
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The file containing our DNA replication stop-motion animation is gone for good (lesson: don't create important new files inside a Dropbox folder). I don't know if we'll have time to recreate it, so I guess I should provide an explanation for the students. Maybe in the next 'announcement', when we announce the availability of the Module 1 materials on Wednesday.<br />
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<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-2792646323118221762013-04-25T06:58:00.000-07:002013-04-25T06:58:14.567-07:00Useful Genetics is now a real course!We went live yesterday, a week before our first lectures will be available. Students are viewing the introductory videos, taking the surveys and self-test,a nd posting on the discussion forum.<br />
<br />
Only a few minor bugs:<br />
<ul>
<li>Some students couldn't download the Open Genetics textbook. We thought this might be because the ualberta server was struggling (though there wouldn't have been <i>that many</i> students) so we put a copy on the Coursera server and the problem went away.</li>
<li>Students found an error that had snuck into the grading of one of the self-test questions.</li>
<li>Students report that the audio volume is too low on the introductory videos. We can adjust this for future videos.</li>
</ul>
It's quite exciting to have real students at last, but I really need to get the next videos prepared and recorded, and the TA and I need to get more quizzes done.<br />
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The TA and I spent yesterday morning trying to make a little stop-motion animation of DNA replication, in honour of DNA Day (today). We'd announced in our introductory email that we were going to do this, and I had the excellent iStopMotion program. We only got 5 seconds of replication recorded (moving everything around was very fussy and time-consuming), and the animation was pretty rough, but it looked OK and we were going to frame it with cute title and 'The End' animations. But the recording file that was saved didn't include the images we'd recorded! <br />
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I spent a couple of hours searching for another version of it, sending emails to the TA, troubleshooting the problem by recording different clips and saving them to different places. This revealed that all files that I saved to a folder in my Dropbox had this problem, but a file saved to another location was fine. More time invested in composing an email to iStopMotion. But they responded very promptly, sending me a file that they say will solve the problem. Here's hoping - we could make a much better recording if we did have to redo the whole thing, but we really can't spare the time.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-43915413809382078522013-04-23T06:36:00.002-07:002013-04-23T06:51:37.435-07:00Useful Genetics is about to go live!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's high time I got back into blogging (I don't know why I stopped).<br />
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Our Coursera MOOC, <a href="http://www.coursera.org/course/usefulgenetics" target="_blank">Useful Genetics</a>, goes live tomorrow! The first set of lectures (Module 1: How different are we) won't be made available for another week (May 1), but we want to make the introductory materials available sooner, both to help students get ready for the course and to give them a chance to complete our introductory surveys before getting distracted by the lecture videos.<br />
<br />
In addition to short Welcome and Course Logistics videos, we have three quizzes/surveys:<br />
<ul>
<li> <b>Community survey:</b> This is a 'tell us about yourself' survey. The information it provides about student interests and background will help us tailor the course to the students and also be used for later research into teaching strategies.</li>
<li><b>Preparation self-test:</b> This is an ungraded quiz on the background students should bring to the course (we'll be happy with solid high-school-level molecular and cell biology). Each question has a recommended reading in an on-line high school biology textbook. We'll also use the data for research into teaching strategies.</li>
<li><b>Genetics Knowledge survey:</b> This is a modified Genetics Concept Inventory. We're asking students to show us what genetics knowledge they already have, but we expect it will also reveal a lot of misinformation. Again, the data will be used for research into teaching strategies.</li>
</ul>
As of today we have about 26,000 students signed up, but participation data from other MOOCs predicts that most of these will fall away within the first week. We don't regard this high 'drop-out' rate as a failure, but as a reflection of the nature of MOOCs. The openness of MOOCs allows many people to sign up 'just to see', and most of them have no serious plans to complete the course. Many of the rest will, quite reasonably, take a smorgasbord approach, sampling the materials and taking what they can use.<br />
<br />
Because this is a new course, and a new approach to genetics, planning and preparing the lecture videos is an enormous amount of work. The first and second week's lectures are in the can (well, on the server), but I realized yesterday that the draft material for the next two weeks needs a major overhaul. Modules 3 and 4 cover how genotypes determine phenotypes, for both simple loss-pf-function mutations and natural genetic variation; I hope to get them all done before May 1.<br />
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I'm recording the videos in my office rather than in the video-production studio run by UBC's Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology. This setup took a very long time to get working properly (many stupid glitches up until a couple of weeks ago) but now it's working OK. Recording in my office gives the videos the non-slick feel I want them to have, and gives me much more control. The editing turns out to be quite simple, partly because I'm happy with low production values.<br />
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CBC television's main news program, The National, will be doing a feature on MOOCs tomorrow night (April 24) - they recorded a lot of video with us in February so I'm hoping Useful Genetics will get some nice Canadian publicity.<br />
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(Now I'm off to write a long-overdue post on my research blog, <a href="http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/" target="_blank">RRResearch</a>...)Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-60007191834029653432013-03-04T08:31:00.000-08:002013-03-04T08:31:04.398-08:00Teaching personal genomics - the commercial issues(Apologies for the long interval of dead air...)<br />
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I'm working on the video lectures for my upcoming MOOC <a href="http://www.coursera.org/course/usefulgenetics" target="_blank">Useful Genetics</a>, and I'm stalled at Module 5, on personal genomics. I know from our preliminary survey that this is something many students will be especially interested in. <br />
<br />
One factor that makes these videos different from the rest is that I'll be discussing services that are provided mostly by for-profit companies. When I taught this in my face-to-face class, I found that students were particularly sensitive to this -- when I said positive things about 23andMe's interface, or marveled about how inexpensive genetic testing has become, they worried that I might have a commercial interest in the providers.<br />
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Another issue is copyright. I don't think I can use images from commercial providers' pages without their permission, but obtaining such permissions is likely to be a big pain in the butt.<br />
<br />
So I guess the solution is to avoid mention of specific providers, and just discuss the general types of services that are available. Students will want to know how these analyses work, what kinds of information they provide, why consumers might choose to use such services, how to choose a particular provider, and how to interpret the information they obtain. <br />
<br />
The students can discuss specific providers and their services in the forums. My job is to provide the information and issues that will help frame these discussions. I think I'll want to explicitly explain this approach in the overview video for this module.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-50349427231421958132012-12-08T20:37:00.003-08:002012-12-08T20:37:24.078-08:00First lecture videoYikes! I just recorded my first draft of a lecture video, and it's 25 minutes long! This is twice as long as I want my videos to be.<br />
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I don't feel that I covered a lot of material, but I'll see how long the next few are before panicking...Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-91004231706231672652012-12-07T07:07:00.001-08:002012-12-07T07:07:08.088-08:00I have a plan (for developing the lecture videos)Yesterday most of the people involved with UBC's Coursera afforts met to discuss how things were going. One result of this is that I've changed my plan for preparing the ~60 lecture videos. <br />
<br />
The general plan has been that I'll record the videos in my office, using the built-in camera on my laptop, and a good external microphone and lighting provided by CTLT. We had set this up using my main office computer (a new MacBook Pro), but switching back and forth between recording and everything else I need to do with that computer was going to be a big hassle. So yesterday I re-set it up a 5-year-old MacBook Pro that I don't use any more (battery dead, a bit unreliable).<br />
<br />
I had been assuming that I'd just start recording some, and then rerecording them as needed to improve the content and the presentation. But now I think I'll instead try to quickly develop the content (mostly PowerPoint slides) and record them all as voice-over-annotated-PowerPoint, with no video of me (camera off). Once I've done them all I'll go back through them, deciding what needs changing, what self-test questions to add, and when and where video of me should be added, and then I'll rerecord them with the camera on.<br />
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This is good in several ways. First, it removes the issue of my appearance from the initial development and recording of the lectures - that's the part I was finding most stressful. Second, the revisions won't start until I have the full set of lectures done - that will help ensure that the whole set is coherent. Third, it maximizes the amount of recording experience I'll bring to the final recordings. Fourth, it means that we'll quickly have a full set of lecture videos to help us develop all of the associated material (resource links and the various assessments). Finally, because the camera will be off, I can move the whole recording setup to a little desk on the other side of the room rather than cramming it onto one side of my main desk.<br />
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If I set a goal of doing at least one voice-only video per day, starting today, I should have a full set by early February, maybe sooner. Revisions will take time, but the re-recording should go fast, because I can probably do a full week's worth in a single day.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-61469480513878604252012-12-02T16:42:00.001-08:002012-12-02T16:53:36.312-08:00MOOCs and universities - a tragedy of the commons in reverse?(This is an idealistic and probably not-very-well-thought-out post. Comments and critiques are welcome.) <br />
<br />
Ecologists often refer to the '<a href="http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTragedy_of_the_commons&ei=udC7UIKeNYKOigKCiIGQCg&usg=AFQjCNG55DUKNrDcTTBu_otrs6JnRKeNTQ" target="_blank">tragedy of the commons</a>', the destruction of a shared resource due to uncontrolled overexploitation by individuals. The concept was popularized by Garrett Hardin; he described it <a href="http://dieoff.org/page95.htm" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;">"The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a
pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will
try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an
arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries
because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of
both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land.
Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day
when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality.
At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly
generates tragedy. </span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain.
Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks,
"What is the utility <i>to me</i> of adding one more animal
to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive
component. </span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">1. The positive component is a function of the increment of
one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the
sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +
1. </span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">2. The negative component is a function of the additional
overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the
effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the
negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is
only a fraction of - 1. </span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational
herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to
pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But
this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational
herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is
locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd
without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the
destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best
interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the
commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."</span></blockquote>
The outcome is destruction of the commons by overgrazing, and the unsavory solution is land-privatization, with individual landowners fencing off the land they graze. Each privately fenced pasture has only a limited carrying capacity, but private ownership provides the incentive to ensure that its capacity is not exceeded, thus preventing its degradation by overgrazing. The same problem is now being seen in the world's oceans, with local restrictions on fishing seen as the only practical solution to the destruction of shared fish stocks by overfishing.<br />
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I'm now wondering if the introduction of MOOCs into the higher education ecosystem might have the opposite effect - converting what used to be private resources for the elite into a shared commons of learning.<br />
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Under the current system of higher education, each university is a private stock of learning, with access available only to those who pay the tuition and meet the entrance requirements. This has been inevitable because education can only be provided face-to-face to small local populations of students, and because the costs of this delivery are borne by the individual universities. Most attempts at distance-learning had limited success, still needing substantial personal interaction and entailing high costs. In ecological terms, the carrying capacity of each university is small, and tuition and enrollment limits prevent overuse.<br />
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Viewed simplistically, the major cost components of university teaching are (i) course development; (ii) course delivery, and (iii) assessment of student learning. Course development remains expensive, but the other components have changed. The internet greatly reduced the cost of distributing information, but the development of web-based 'learning management systems' such as Moodle and Blackboard is really what changed the economics. These systems allow instructors to efficiently deliver information to defined groups of students, and to track the activities of the students. Most important is their ability to carry out automated testing, where instructors design test questions that are automatically graded by the learning management system, These questions allow students to easily test their own understanding, and allow instructors to carry out formal (graded) assessment of learning progress without the need for human grading. A further advance is the availability of software that supports peer-grading, first training students to assess the written work of fellow student, and then managing the distribution of work and recording of results. These automated methods of evaluation reduce or eliminate the need for instructors and teaching assistants to grade student work.<br />
<br />
Learning management systems make MOOCs possible, and MOOCs change the economics of higher education. Once educational resources have been developed, the internet allows them to be delivered to large numbers of learners with no geographical limits and at very little cost. Learning management systems allow students to be tracked, guided and assessed, again at a cost that's not only low but largely independent of the number of students.<br />
<br />
Much of higher education can now exist as a global resource (very well-mixed, not patchy and local). The 'carrying capacity' of a single MOOC (the number of students that can be taught) is very high, maybe even unlimited. The cost to a university of providing a single MOOC is quite small, relative to its total budget. If each of the approximately 10,000 major universities around the world were to provide just one MOOC, the learning commons would likely cover just about everything that is now taught in undergraduate programs.<br />
<br />
Like the individual herdsmen in the tragedy of the commons, the individual universities would pay an individual cost (course development for their MOOC) and gain individual short-term benefits of their MOOC (reputation, public relations). They would also pay a long-term cost, that of reducing the market for formal university education on which their success depends. Like the cost of a degraded common pasture to all herdsman, this cost is experienced by ALL universities, not just those that provide MOOCs, so it is not an effective deterrent to MOOC production.<br />
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The critical difference from the tragedy of the commons is the effect on the commons (the global population of learners and MOOCs): rather than being degraded by this shared use, the commons would be enriched.<br />
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In the very long term this process might drive many universities out of business. That might be its own kind of tragedy, but as long as the modest cost of providing individual MOOCs could be met in some other way, it would be a triumph for higher education.<br />
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<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-47241439173192724322012-11-23T07:37:00.000-08:002012-11-23T10:48:47.091-08:00Recording videos for Coursera - the technologyWe (me and the guys of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology) have started working out the best conditions for recording all the lecture videos. We have a lot of factors to consider - for most of these Coursera provides detailed advice, which we're modifying to suit our circumstances. This is all very new to me, so what I've written below will probably sound very naive to anyone with video experience.<br>
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<a href="http://rrteaching.blogspot.com/2012/11/recording-videos-for-coursera-technology.html#more">Read more »</a>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com65tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-43207368496166134062012-11-07T08:25:00.002-08:002012-11-07T08:25:36.699-08:00Planning the Useful Genetics weekly modules<b>Part 1. Genotype and phenotype</b><br />
<br />
<b>We should have one learning objective for each video (one video for each learning objective) </b><br />
<br />
<b>1.</b> How much humans are the same genetically, and how much we differ. DNA, genes, chromosomes and genomes are all both physical entities and informational entities. One video for each of these (with usages and representations)?. Ploidy and the basic cycle of sexual reproduction. Populations, races and out of Africa. SNPs?<br />
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<b>2. </b> How DNA molecules become different. Comparing DNA sequences. Polymerases. Mutations happen and are passed on to the next generation. DNA repair. Mutation rates and frequencies. 70 new point mutations in each baby, most from Daddy. Do we need to worry about mutagens (yes for cancer, no for babies)? Start considering how DNA differences affect what genes do (this will also teach more about genes). Genes and proteins - what proteins do. The genetic code.<br />
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<b>3. </b> Lots about how DNA differences (mutations and polymorphisms) affect proteins and protein functions (or not). Heterozygosity issues. 'Mendelian' and 'quantitative' effects (not these terms). Chromosome differences, aneuploidies. Gene families. Homologous genes in other species let us use animals as 'models' for human diseases.<br />
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<b>4. </b> Predicting phenotypes from genotypes. Sex chromosomes, X inactivation. Genes and cancer. Thinking about risks and probabilities. Genes and behaviour.<br />
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<b>5. </b> Personal genomics. What can we know (will we be able to know) about our genotypes? Gene-typing. SNP-typing. Exome sequencing. Genome sequencing. Transgenic organisms. Genetic modifications (GMOs). Gene therapy. Forensic DNA identification. <br />
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<b>Part 2. Inheritance</b><br />
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<b>6. </b> Can I start with something catchy? The mechanics of inheritance. DNA structure again. Chromosome structure again. Mitosis: the problem and the solution. Meiosis uses this solution but now problem with new solution. Mating" gametes don't know their genotypes, random encounters. Following genotypes through. Physical molecules and information again.<br />
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<b>7. </b> Consequences of the mechanism of inheritance. Almost all variation was present in a parent. Probabilities. Interacting with risks and with other genes. Errors in the mechanism (cause translocations, aneuploidies etc.)<br />
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<b>8. </b> Linked genes, genetic maps, sex-linked inheritance. Chromosome rearrangements and fertility. Paternity and relationship testing. Inbreeding/selfing.<br />
<br />
<b>9. </b>Heritability. Twin studies. Environment and chance play big roles. The 'missing heritability': contributions of gene interactions. GWAS. <br />
<br />
<b>10.</b> Epigenetics. Mitochondrial genes. Mosaicism. Fetal DNA in mothers. Other cool stuff we can now understand.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-41894232788498382482012-11-03T14:56:00.001-07:002012-11-23T10:12:14.720-08:00Seriously beginning to prepare for Useful GeneticsMy Useful Genetics MOOC now has more than 8000 students signed up. It won't be offered until May (6 months form now), but there's so much preparation that I'm already in danger of panic unless I get things under way now. Last week I meet with the CTLT (Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology) team, and then with the instructional designer specifically working on my course.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://rrteaching.blogspot.com/2012/11/seriously-beginning-to-prepare-for.html#more">Read more »</a>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-74105712794431694552012-10-09T06:35:00.000-07:002012-11-12T01:41:19.991-08:00Avoiding the 'exercise bike' problem with MOOCsOver the past few days I've been reading what seems like hundreds of articles and blog posts about MOOCs. This is mostly because I've discovered a number of sites that aggregate these articles in convenient ways. I've given up trying to remember everything I read about MOOCs - I'm just letting the flood wash over me and seeing what might stick.<br />
<br />
But I want to think a bit more about one article (or is it a blog?): <a href="http://theconversation.edu.au/moocs-and-exercise-bikes-more-in-common-than-youd-think-9726" target="_blank">MOOCs and exercise bikes: more in common than you'd think</a>. Although some writers see the high attrition rate of MOOCs to be evidence of failure, I've been taking more of a toe-in-the-waters view - the barriers to signing up for a MOOC are so low that of course lots of enrollees will subsequently decide not to continue. <br />
<br />
This article suggests a different perspective, that of the well-meaning learner who somehow loses motivation. Just like with that exercise bike, they feel bad about dropping out, and really wish they could have continued. Sometimes they will have stopped for a solid reason (bike equivalent - sprained ankle), but for many it was just lack of motivation. They know that they're missing a lot by not keeping up with the work, but their motivation fades and they're left with another failed attempt at learning.<br />
<br />
So how can I build features into <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/usefulgenetics" target="_blank">Useful Genetics</a> that will help students stick with the course and get the full benefits of the course and the personal reinforcement of being a successful learner? <br />
<br />
One part of the solution is course-specific - building relevance into every week's work. For Useful Genetics, week 1 is likely to be highly motivating (how people differ), but the next few
weeks material may be very dry (gene expression, how heredity
works), and I can see a lot of attrition happening here unless I make a special effort to prevent that.<br />
<br />
Another other part of the solution is more general. What features of courses make them easier to stick with to completion? I haven't seen much discussion of this yet. Maybe this is one of the things that course-analytics can help with. (If any readers know of studies, please post them in the comments.)<br />
<br />
The exercise-bike article mentions the motivational benefits of being part of a group. I don't think this motivation can come from the discussion forums; there are too many participants. Face-to-face study groups are great, and I can encourage students to form them, but these won't be an option for most people. But there might be a way to have people form interest-group-based online study groups, for genetic diseases or dog breeding or political concerns or whatever. Perhaps, once I see the feedback from the 'Why are you taking this course' part of the initial survey, I can encourage the formation of many small discussion groups focused on the specific motivations students describe.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com161tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-46015662821454894042012-10-07T14:39:00.005-07:002012-10-07T14:39:59.758-07:00Doing for math what I want to do for geneticsKeith Devlin is teaching a Coursera course titled <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink">Introduction to Mathematical Thinking</a>, and he's blogging about the experience <a href="http://mooctalk.org/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
In his <a href="http://mooctalk.org/2012/10/06/mooc-planning-part-8/">latest post</a> he discusses the relationship between what his course aims to teach and what is usually taught in post-secondary mathematics courses. To paraphrase slightly, he contrasts the formalism of pure mathematics ("chess on steroids") with the role that abstract, pure reasoning plays in dealing with the more messy issues of the real world. Few students can really appreciate the former, but they all can benefit from the latter, so that's what his course teaches.<br />
<br />
This is a lot like what I hope to do with genetics, since I want to replace much of the formalism of Mendelian analysis with reasoning how genetic effects play out in the world our students live in.<br />
<br />
He's planning to use calibrated peer review for his final exam. I'll be very interested to see how this works in Coursera because I want to make extensive use of it in Useful Genetics. I've used the standard version of CPR in my BIOL 234 genetics course (see <a href="http://rrteaching.blogspot.ca/2011/02/calibrated-peer-review-is-developmental.html">here</a> and <a href="http://rrteaching.blogspot.ca/2011/03/calibration-part-works.html">here</a>), but Coursera describes their version as 'beta' so I don't know how good or solid it is.<br />
<br />
<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-21240289074810240272012-10-06T12:59:00.002-07:002012-10-06T12:59:40.373-07:00Thinking about Peter Sloep's commentsPeter Sloep has some thoughtful comments in his <a href="http://www.scoop.it/t/networked-learning-learning-networks">Networked Learning Scoop-it</a> on my <a href="http://rrteaching.blogspot.ca/2012/10/preparing-for-mooc-ocalypse.html">MOOC-opalypse post</a>. Here's his comments in purple, and my responses in black:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">The line of argument followed in this essay is a familiar
one: MOOCs are there to stay, there are all these apocalyptic
predictions about the disappearance of colleges and universities as we
know them, hence, to stay employed, I'd better make the student
experience worth their money. Apart from the observation that it is a
bit ironic that only now that jobs are on the line we start thinking
about giving value for money, there are many problems with this kind of
argument.</span><br />
<br />
I was joking about being concerned about my job; I'll probably be over-the-hill by the time academia feels the big impacts of MOOCs.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">First, Rosie argues from the assumption that
MOOC-courses are bound to improve shortly. I am not so sure, I actually
think that on the average, when more people jump on the MOOC bandwagon,
the quality will go down. Yes, the better courses may be tweaked to
offer a better learning experience, for instance by replacing the fora
with more intelligent ones that help the learner find sensible stuff
amongst the massive number of not-so-useful entries.</span><br />
<br />
If most of the people who jump on the MOOC bandwagon are only doing so because it's trendy, we might see a decrease in average course quality. I don't think that's likely - I expect most institutions will try to produce good courses, and as more courses are out there, competition will motivate improvement. But even if the average course quality is no better, having more courses will mean we have more good courses.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Second,
Rosie guesses that flipped classrooms, which provide tutoring next to a
(free) MOOC, won't convince the students. That depends, I would say.
Read Jonathan Marks' contribution, sitting next to this one. Also, she
believes "nobody knows enough about how learning works to do a credible
job of this". That simply isn't true. There is a long tradition of
research on distance education which explains how to do this online and
much research on learning in face-to-face settings other than classrooms
and lecture halls which offers valuable insights (see my blog on Katie
Vale's presentation, below). It is true, though, that this research has
often been ignored by people used to and happy with ordinary lecturing.</span><br />
<br />
I stand by the 'nobody knows enough...' statement. There's a fair bit of research and some valuable insights (including those that motivate flipped classrooms), but not nearly as much as we need.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">Third,
Rosie then concludes that "[...] one advantage a university gains by
offering Coursera courses is that the enormous numbers of students and
the online record-keeping make it possible to collect unprecedented
amounts of data about student learning. But in practice most of the data
will be worthless unless we carefully design our courses as learning
experiments.' Under the label of learning analytics such data collection
is already taking place and delivering insights. And, yes, it does make
sense to carefully design courses as learning experiments. That is
precisely what Harvard is doing with its EdX platform (again, see Kathie
Vale). I would hope many more colleges start to do so, designing other
learning environments than the default lecture hall and learn from the
experience.</span><br />
<br />
I couldn't find the Kathie Vale link, nor anything by Googling her. I read the Wikipedia entry on Learning Analytics, which reinforced my impression that this is primarily a set of tools we can use in our learning experiments. Learning analytics can be applied to 'found' data (e.g. any Coursera course) but is going to be most valuable in the context of carefully designed experiments.<br />
<span style="color: purple;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: purple;">In summary, I don't believe the apocalyptic
predictions about MOOCs for one minute. The educational landscape,
shaped by learning needs and wants on the one hand and forms and
environments for learning on the other, is too vast and rugged to be
surveyd to the full by a search party led by commercial MOOC providers
alone. However, it is a good thing we start to question the traditional,
much trodden roads to learning. If that is what they manage to achieve,
we should thank them for that. (peter sloep, @pbsloep)</span><br />
<br />
I don't really think that the rise of MOOCs will lead to the collapse of universities. Not because universities deserve to be preserved in their present form, but because the whole structure of higher education is so very very conservative that even apocalyptic forces will cause only slow incremental changes. But I'll save this for another post.<br />
<span style="color: purple;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-4657042568948897252012-10-05T18:56:00.003-07:002012-11-12T01:57:23.846-08:00Preparing for the MOOC-ocalypse<i>MO-OCalypse? MOOC-apocalypse? (Oops, apocalypse is one of those words that, if you look too closely, always appears wrongly spelled.) </i><br />
<br />
A UBC colleague who's also going to be producing a Coursera course got me thinking about the future of the university.<br />
<br />
He starts with two reasonable assumptions: First, the diversity and quality of Coursera-like courses is going to increase rapidly over the next few years. Second, universities/faculty members/students are discovering that face-to-face lecturing in large classes is not the best use of student or faculty time and effort, and they will move toward 'flipped' classes where students use class videos and other online resources to learn the course content and then use classroom time for problem solving and interactive learning.<br />
<br />
Creating the online resources for a flipped course is a big investment of technical resources and instructor time. So, for both instructors and administrators, it will make sense to instead use the resources of any appropriate Coursera courses. Contemplating this for very long leads one to various philosophical considerations, such as "Since Coursera courses are free, why would students pay to go to university?" and then "Yikes, what will become of my job??!!!"<br />
<br />
For a university education to be perceived as worth the tuition, it won't be enough to supplement the free Coursera material with scheduled classroom peer-teaching experiences and a tutorial taught by a graduate student. The university needs to develop integrated programs with hands-on and face-to-face experiences that are seen as worth the cost.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, nobody knows enough about how learning works to do a credible job of this. So if the university is to avoid selling programs with little demonstrated value, it needs to gather the information that will let it create genuine value.<br />
<br />
Ironically, the best way to prepare for this MOOC-opalypse may be to become part of the problem by teaching a MOOC. In principle, one advantage a university gains by offering Coursera courses or other MOOCs is that the enormous numbers of students and the online record-keeping make it possible to collect unprecedented amounts of data about student learning. But in practice most of the data will be worthless unless we carefully design our courses as learning experiments. That sentence makes it sound like designing a course to be a learning experiment is something I know how to do. It's not. And I'm not likely to have the time to do this even if I had the expertise. <br />
<br />
On the other hand, my course is best-positioned to become an experiment, since it's the least developed of the three UBC Coursera offerings. UBC has offered Climate Literacy as a fully online Continuing Studies course (non-credit) for several years, and I think Introduction to Systematic Program Design is going to be an online version of CPSC 110. Although Useful Genetics will build on what I've taught in BIOL 234 - Fundamentals of Genetics, it's basically a new course. But if we're going to use Useful Genetics as an experiment in online learning we need to start now, because it will be too late once I've developed all the components.<br />
<br />
So I'm emailing UBC's Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology (CTLT) to ask if they have a support person assigned to work on course-evaluation development for the Coursera courses.<br />
<br />
<b>Later:</b> CTLT responded that this will be discussed at a meeting they're organizing with the Coursera instructors. I think this means "Not yet, but maybe..."<br />
<br />
<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-55381033338633914362012-09-26T17:30:00.000-07:002012-09-26T17:30:24.318-07:00First week<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfb0NKm1LBYypVWeOfZ8hTCDaJS53lz3E4pgrm-viYcohEnMQzEkUYc23ohwfi8isxp5ItuFHOawr30CnYwJqWG-VEA2eokPWrmmMirgEIRAp5CuMZz9uDzvim8J8trppOFhP2/s1600/Coursera3500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfb0NKm1LBYypVWeOfZ8hTCDaJS53lz3E4pgrm-viYcohEnMQzEkUYc23ohwfi8isxp5ItuFHOawr30CnYwJqWG-VEA2eokPWrmmMirgEIRAp5CuMZz9uDzvim8J8trppOFhP2/s400/Coursera3500.png" width="400" /> </a></div>
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Well, my Useful Genetics course has been up on Coursera for a week, and 3500 people have signed up. Although that's not dazzling by Coursera standards, if signups continue at this rate there will be about 50,000 students by the time I send out the 'Useful Genetics starts soon' email in April. I expect about half of the enrollees (is that a word?) will then say 'What was I thinking - I've no time for this!'.</div>
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Yesterday I met with the instructional technology people to discuss options for recording the many short videos we'll need. The first decision needs to be between recording in my office or recording at UBC's Telestudios down the hill. The latter would give better video quality and save me having to learn how to do it myself, but I'd be giving up the ability to make last-minute changes and to easily update videos from one session of the course to another. </div>
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And this morning I had coffee with instructors for UBC's other two Coursera courses, <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/climateliteracy">Climate Literacy</a> and <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/programdesign">Systematic Program Design</a>. We're coming from very different perspectives and experiences (both academic and pedagogical), so pooling our information and questions will be very valuable.</div>
<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-15544360530839250492012-09-19T09:17:00.004-07:002012-09-19T09:17:50.893-07:00Useful Genetics!Next spring I'm going to be teaching a 'massively open online course' (a MOOC) titled Useful Genetics. You can read all about it here: <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/usefulgenetics">https://www.coursera.org/course/usefulgenetics</a>.<br />
<br />
The motivation for this course arises from the opinion piece I published a few months ago in PLOS Biology - <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001356">"Why do we have to learn this stuff?" a new genetics for 21st century students</a>. My goal will be to teach an academically rigorous genetics course that cuts out the no-longer-relevant stuff and emphasizes the parts useful to non-scientists.<br />
<br />
It will be sufficiently different from conventional genetics courses that I think I'll have to develop most of it from scratch, including learning how to make videos. Luckily I'll have the support of UBC's awesome Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology.<br />
<br />
The current icon and promo video were made in a rush (UBC didn't get everyone on side until the last minute. The video is OK for now, but the icon is slick and content-free:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI49NR93zJhPC6Ip-iT8tfbxkfz4z6s5APhyPjxhMK0Ls-8XPv5vVRftY4DUyeQhuM4NSpWkmbSxyCH-P1Smz1o3zSjpTM1wpNdrNfIgzrGL5c6Z2d2xkYFsIfmVJsKg6CUDkm/s1600/Slick+icon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI49NR93zJhPC6Ip-iT8tfbxkfz4z6s5APhyPjxhMK0Ls-8XPv5vVRftY4DUyeQhuM4NSpWkmbSxyCH-P1Smz1o3zSjpTM1wpNdrNfIgzrGL5c6Z2d2xkYFsIfmVJsKg6CUDkm/s320/Slick+icon.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I hope to soon replace it with something like this:<br />
<br />
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<br />Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-43934292874680602332012-07-05T09:23:00.004-07:002012-07-05T09:23:52.163-07:00Should we really give Mendel the boot?My Perspectives article about reforming genetics education is up at PLoS Biology (<i><a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001356">Why do we have to learn this stuff? A new genetics for 21st century students</a></i>). There's lots of chatter on Twitter, but I gather that nobody likes using the commenting system on the PLoS Biology site.<br />
<br />
I really want to get feedback on the article, so I'm hoping people will post their reactions and ideas here.<br />
<br />
To get things started, I'll reiterate my main point:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="color: blue;">The first goal of a modern basic genetics course should<span style="background-color: white;"> be to provide students with an understanding of genetic principles and processes that will be useful in their non-academic lives.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span></b></blockquote>
If we agree on this, then we can discuss how best to accomplish this goal (what will be useful and how should it be taught). If not, let's discuss what the main goal should be.Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-25380003262623366622012-05-11T10:07:00.004-07:002012-05-11T10:07:57.967-07:00Giving Mendel the bootThis is a teaser for my opinion piece on how the teaching of genetics should be changed, which has now been accepted by PLoS Biology. It should be out soon, so below I'm just going to put the title and the blurb:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">"<i>Why do we have to learn this stuff</i>?" </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">A new genetics for 21st century students.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
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<!--StartFragment--><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZMs2y4Ye-1oQ-tU-zFeuqDiXUO9_wUSQayL6HhRLW7QvVKU67VWpKnpXvrJXRN_JfqXB6w-4y-VziZF9bN9QAJqgBoWvjSj-ow-s68vi08bNOSlwyFS1WXGmEBs8Nha9Eb_z/s1600/Mendel.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZMs2y4Ye-1oQ-tU-zFeuqDiXUO9_wUSQayL6HhRLW7QvVKU67VWpKnpXvrJXRN_JfqXB6w-4y-VziZF9bN9QAJqgBoWvjSj-ow-s68vi08bNOSlwyFS1WXGmEBs8Nha9Eb_z/s200/Mendel.tiff" width="200" /></a><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our students
will go out into an astonishing new world of engineered genes and personal
genomics, so why is the standard genetics syllabus stuck in the 1950s?</span></i><br />
<b><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></i></b>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-46024349851547371232011-12-17T13:18:00.000-08:002011-12-17T14:43:43.107-08:00A modern genetics problem<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">This problem was on the final exam of our new Fundamentals of Genetics course. It's an example of what I'd like our students to be able to do.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0h_876YN0xg41MmL45wVRjExc2TXNtJv1Y_nu60I46hl-2Egu7NY8Ak12a63upZ-TWzQXXm__UXGOWnlelB_JaS_WAubGhZHWOy730xMtLokP0rhmorAbzkoAaKGOPna9o0IB/s1600/23andMe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0h_876YN0xg41MmL45wVRjExc2TXNtJv1Y_nu60I46hl-2Egu7NY8Ak12a63upZ-TWzQXXm__UXGOWnlelB_JaS_WAubGhZHWOy730xMtLokP0rhmorAbzkoAaKGOPna9o0IB/s640/23andMe.jpg" width="488" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-size: 14pt;">(10 points)</b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The ideogram above shows a normal child’s genome, with her chromosomes coloured by 23andMe to show the results of genotyping her DNA and the DNAs of her maternal grandparents.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Blue segments indicate blocks of alleles shared with her maternal grandmother, and white segments indicate blocks of alleles shared with her maternal grandfather.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Hatched segments could not be analyzed because they have too few SNPs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>a. (1 point)</b> What genetic process is responsible for these blocks of alleles?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>b. (2 points)</b> When and where did this process occur?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>c. (2 points) </b> What property of the child’s maternal chromosomes 11 and 14 is unexpected? Why is this property unexpected?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>d. (4 points) </b> Suggest two different kinds of events that could explain this unexpected property. Give rough estimates of the probabilities of the events you propose.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>e. (1 point)</b> The black triangles above some chromosomes show the locations of SNPs linked to effects on nose shape. What do these predict about the child’s appearance?<o:p></o:p></span></div>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33539229.post-40496661569005621342011-12-17T11:39:00.000-08:002012-05-06T07:59:15.689-07:00What genetics should all our students learn? ("Stop, we're teaching the wrong stuff!")Several years ago I was asked to take charge of developing a new second-year 'fundamentals of genetics' course, to replace our program's long-standing third-year course (a legacy from David Suzuki and Tony Griffiths). So I put together a committee of genetics instructors (profs, sessionals, a TA), and we developed a new set of learning objectives and an ordered list of topics to be covered (a syllabus). The committee then disbanded , leaving me to implement its work, first as a small pilot class (last winter) and then as a regular course (just finished).<br />
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We thought we had been quite radical, because we'd made a very big change in how our course would teach the two big concepts students needed to master - how genotype determines phenotype and how genetic information is inherited. Traditional genetics courses start with Mendel, and, following in Mendel's footsteps, use analysis of crosses to reveal all the basic concepts of classical genetics; this is Suzuki's 'Genetic Analysis' approach. Our new syllabus began not with Mendel but with three weeks about how genotype determines phenotype (no crosses yet), followed by two weeks just about how inheritance works (leaving phenotypes out entirely) Only then would it introduce Mendelian genetics, and then use the standard genetic analysis framework to teach the more complex concepts.<br />
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It wasn't until I started to teach the pilot section that I realized we'd been much too conservative. We'd simply assumed that the goal was to teach students the standard 'classical genetics' concepts. But what we should have done is first thought long and hard about what students should be learning in a modern 'fundamentals of genetics' course. That is, what genetics facts and concepts will our students actually use, not just in later courses but in the rest of their lives?<br />
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Way back, the answer was that students needed to learn genetic analysis, for two reasons: First, analysis of how phenotypes are inherited in crosses used to be the most powerful tool for understanding how organisms work. Even if students weren't going to go on to do this analysis themselves, as biologists they needed to understand how it was done. And following in the footsteps of the great geneticists was thought to be the best way to learn it. Second, genetic analysis is hard, and learning to do it trains the mind in rigorous thinking. Genetics students' experience at solving complex genetic problems was expected to make them better at solving all kinds of problems, in everyday life as well as academia.<br />
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Although genetics has changed dramatically, this motivation has largely been left unquestioned. Although I didn't buy the 'following in the footsteps' part, I accepted the rest. But the importance of classical genetic analysis to biology is shrinking day by day, displaced by powerful molecular methods. Worse, improved understanding of students' learning suggests that most genetics students pass their exams using pattern-matching rather than the general problem-solving skills we thought they were developing.<br />
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So, what should today's biology students take away from a 'fundamentals of genetics' course? What will they use in later courses? What will they use in the rest of their lives? Are there other concepts that every educated person know about?<br />
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So here's a partial list of learning objectives for a modern course in the fundamentals of genetics. Yes, I know these aren't all phrased as actions students should be able to do, they aren't in a sensible order, the list is incomplete, and the syntax isn't even consistent. <i>PLEASE</i> give me suggestions for improvement in the comments.<br />
<ul>
<li>Students should be able to detect basic errors in news coverage of genetics stories.</li>
<li>Students should be able to understand why a genetic test or sequencing aids medical diagnosis and treatment.</li>
<li>They should understand how genetic differences affect health risks.</li>
<li>Which genetic principles apply to all organisms.</li>
<li>The extent to which the differences between individuals (humans and other species) are due to differences in their genes.</li>
<li>How the phenotypes of diploid organisms are affected by interactions between different versions of a single genes, and between different versions of different genes.</li>
<li>How offspring inherit genetic information from their parents (how meiosis and mating work).</li>
<li>How genes and genomes change over the generations and over evolutionary time.</li>
<li>At a simple level, how control of gene expression leads to differentiated phenotypes (a special case of gene interactions).</li>
<li>They should be able to think about ethical and societal issues arising from genetics. </li>
</ul>Rosie Redfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06807912674127645263noreply@blogger.com11