BIOL 202: Course Home Page

The goal of BIOL 202 is for you to acquire a solid foundation in the field of molecular biology and genetics. You will learn the molecular structures and processes involved in genetic inheritance, transcription, and translation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes, as well as the tools used in modern molecular biology.

Although the material is not inherently difficult to understand, there is a lot of ground to cover and a fair amount of terminology to learn. Follow our step-by-step Study Plan for maximum learning and success in this course. If you are not self-motivated, or you prefer one-to-one instruction, this class is probably not for you.

Since this is a four-credit course, its contents will be approximately 33 percent more extensive than a regular three-credit course. The time devoted to studying will vary from student to student, but we estimate that the minimum will be in the range of eight to ten hours per week. You will probably be more effective if you study in blocks of one to two hours. Weekly homework assignments must be submitted each Friday by 11 pm. The online quizzes will be held every two to three weeks and must be submitted by 11 pm on the assigned quiz day. Please note that all times listed refer to Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

Required Textbook

You can purchase this textbook from the Higher Grounds bookstore at the Friday Center either in person, online, or by using the book order form.

Technical Requirements

In addition to Carolina Courses Online's standard technical requirements, it is highly recommended that BIOL 202 students have fast Internet access. It is also recommended that students have access to a fax machine, scanner, or digital camera for homework submission.

Course Requirements

You will be able to access your grades for your homework, quizzes, term paper, discussion forum participation, and midterm exam using Blackboard's Gradebook feature. This way you can monitor your progress throughout the semester. (For information on Blackboard, see Course Mechanics.)

Grade Protests
If you think that we have erred in grading your exam, please write a brief explanation of the problem and e-mail it to one of the instructors within one week of the day of examination grading. We reserve the right to completely re-grade exams and to re-evaluate all answers provided by the student (not only the answer in question).

Submitting Homework Assignments

Each week you must submit several homework problems for grading. Many assignments require you to draw one or more diagrams or to provide missing information in diagrams. To create the drawings, you may use a variety of software packages, including Microsoft Paint, which is included on Windows-based computers under the Start Menu (Programs > Accessories > Paint). You may also use the drawing features of Word, Powerpoint, and so on. Another option is for you to draw the figures by hand and scan them or take a picture of them with a digital camera. In any case, please save the files as .jpg or .gif files.

Please note: Submitted drawings do not have to look professional or sophisticated, as long as they show the required information. We are not grading your graphics skill, but rather the concept you convey in the figure. However, we will not accept figures that you found online and pasted in as your homework answer. The version of the homework answer you submit to us is regarded as final and is the one that we will grade. Your answers should be clear and to the point.

How to send and label your assignments: Assignments must be submitted by e-mail by 11 pm Friday of each week (unless otherwise stated). Save your assignments in one of these file formats: rich text format (.rtf file), MSWord (.doc file), or PDF (.pdf file), and name your files in this manner:
Lastname_Firstname_assignmentnumber.filetype (for example: Smith_Ann_HW1.doc).
One point will be deducted from your weekly homework grade if you do not follow the described submission process.

Late assignments: Assignments submitted after 11 pm Friday will lose 5 points every 24 hours for the first two days. For example, submissions received on Saturday at 1 pm would start with a 15, while submissions received on Sunday at 1 pm would start with a 10. Any assignments not received by 8 am Monday morning will receive 0 (zero) points because answers to the homework questions will be posted on the Blackboard site at that time.

Quizzes

There will be four online quizzes that consist primarily of multiple-choice questions on the covered material. The quizzes will reinforce the material, while helping us monitor the progress of the class and identify areas that need clarification before moving to new topics.

Quizzes are timed (20 minutes each), and will be available in Blackboard from 5 am Thursday until 11 pm Friday (see the Course Schedule). Quizzes not submitted by 11 pm Friday will result in a zero because the answer key will be posted in Blackboard at 11:05 pm Friday. You are responsible for timing yourself while taking the quiz (Blackboard's timer only works with some browsers). No notes, study guides, or Web pages may be used during quizzes.

Please note that "I wasn't feeling well" or "I had computer issues" are not adequate excuses for missing a quiz. You are responsible for having a backup plan in case you have computer problems on the day of a quiz. You must contact us as soon as you think you might have a problem taking a quiz or exam, and you must submit a signed excuse with contact information. If we approve it, then you will drop that quiz.

Term Paper

As part of your course grade, you will prepare a term paper summarizing and synthesizing current thinking on a specific topic in molecular biology and genetics. You are expected to discuss the topic and outline of your paper with us well in advance of the due date. Allow enough time to write and revise your paper prior to the due date. Topics and outlines must be approved by the instructors by the date shown in the Course Schedule. You can contact us through e-mail or the discussion forum.

The paper outline is limited to one single-spaced page (Times New Roman, twelve-point font size) and should be broken down to introduction, main part and conclusions/future research ideas. For each of these parts there should be detailed subparts that will outline the information you will cover. A sketch with bullet points is ideal. Try to incorporate only essential information but enough for us to understand and guide you as best as we can.

Papers are limited to three single-spaced pages (Times New Roman, twelve-point font size, excluding references and figures) and will be graded as follows:

The literature review should include only papers published in peer-reviewed journals. A good source for such publications is NCBI-Pubmed.

Regarding the format of references, there are a number of equally correct citation styles that different journals use; as long as you are consistent, the particular style is not important. If in doubt, use a style such as (Author(s), Year) for in-text citations, and something like the example below for the references section:

In scientific writing it is rare to directly quote a source verbatim; more commonly, we paraphrase and use a reference to denote that. However, it is legal to directly quote if a phrase is particularly well suited for your paper.

For more information on how to search and correctly cite scientific references see the Biology Research Tutorial on the UNC Library site.

The completed paper is due on the date shown in the Course Schedule. It should be submitted in a Microsoft Word (.doc) or .pdf format and named in the following manner: Lastname_Firstname_term_paper.filetype (for example: Smith_Ann_term_paper.doc).
Points will be deducted if you do not follow the described submission process.

Term papers lose 5 points every 24 hours for the first two days they are late, after which they receive a grade of zero.

Discussion Forum Participation and Evaluation Method

The discussion forum is an important component of this class, and as part of your course grade you must participate in the online discussion forum.

Online discussions are intended to clarify material from the text and encourage analytical thinking. Your online contributions will not only help us see how well you are learning, but they will also contribute to your classmates' learning experience. Online asynchronous discussions allow you more time than classroom discussions in which to gather your thoughts as you explore ideas and experiences with your classmates. Writing not only records the ideas and thoughts you have; the process of writing itself helps you to think and to understand the material you are learning. Online participation is also a good way for more introverted students to have a voice in discussion.

Remember that postings have to be communicated by midnight Friday; otherwise, they are considered late.

Midterm Exam

You will be required to take an online, closed-book midterm exam. This exam will cover material taught throughout Weeks 1-5 (note that the exam does cover Week 5) and is worth 5 percent of your course grade. You are required to complete your exam within 1 hour and 30 minutes. The exam will include multiple-choice questions as well as short answers and/or drawings. The drawings do not have to look professional; simple hand drawn figures are acceptable. You can either scan or take an electronic picture of your hand-drawn figures and incorporate them into your exam document. If you do not have an electronic camera, scanners are available at copy centers. (You do not have to include the scanning/photographing time in the time limit of the exam.)

The exam will be available online as a Word document in the Midterm Exam section of Blackboard during the time period noted in the course schedule. You can complete the exam entirely in Word or print the exam document, complete it by hand, and scan it. Either way, you must e-mail a single document in one of the formats specified (.rtf, .doc or .pdf) to your instructor by the deadline noted in the course schedule. Points will be deducted if you send multiple documents. A link to the answers will be available in Blackboard's Midterm Exam section on the date listed in the course schedule. Midterm exams will lose 5 points every 24 hours for the first two days they are late, after which they will receive a grade of zero.

Because of technical considerations, there is no way for us to directly monitor the time you spend on the exam and thus you are responsible for timing yourself. We expect you to abide by the UNC Honor code and follow the time limitation. If you do not take this exam seriously, it will impact your performance on the cumulative final.

Final Exam

You will be required to take one supervised, closed-book final exam. The exam will be comprehensive and is worth 30 percent of your course grade. We will provide a Blue Book for you to use as scratch paper for working out and thinking over your answers to the questions of the final, but you must write your final answers in the space provided on the final exam itself. You will need to bring a calculator with you to the exam.

A week before the final exam date there will be an open discussion forum session for you to post questions and discuss them with your classmates.

Schedule your final exam for one of the two days listed in the Course Schedule by contacting Janice Durham at the Friday Center. If you live near Chapel Hill, you may want to take your exam at the Friday Center (make arrangements at least one week before the exam date). If you live in another area, make arrangements to take the exam at an accredited institution of higher learning near you and send the Exam Application Form to the Friday Center so that it arrives at least two weeks before your desired exam date. Two points will be lost from your homework grade (per day) for not arranging your final in time.

You are responsible for properly registering to take the final; failure to complete the final by the due date will result in course failure.

Online Resources

Web Sites

A number of Web sites may be useful as you go through the course. Here are some general suggestions:

The weekly lessons will contain links to other Web sites. Many of these have animations and you will need appropriate plug-ins to view them. Unless noted otherwise, all animations are Flash or Shockwave-based, both of which may be downloaded for free.

Library Resources

Students enrolled in Carolina Courses Online can access online library resources from the UNC Library System by linking to Library Services for Distance Education Students. This site includes information on using general online reference works as well as accessing e-reserves.

You will need to enter your Onyen and password to access the library's online articles and e-reserve readings. The UNC library staff is available to assist any students who have difficulties accessing online library resources. If you encounter difficulties, please visit the library's Web page for reporting a problem.

Honor Code

All work in BIOL 202 falls under UNC's Honor Code. If you have any questions about test-taking, homework, citing sources, and so on, please contact your instructors.

Course Mechanics

Blackboard

Some of your class components (announcements, quizzes, discussion forums, e-mail, and grades) are accessed through a software package called Blackboard, and you will need to login to Blackboard using a unique identifier known as your UNC Onyen and Onyen password.

There is a link to the Blackboard site in the gray navigation bar at the top of every page in this course. Click on that link, and then use your Onyen to log in to Blackboard. Click on the "BIOL 202" link, and you will see navigation buttons on the left side of the screen labeled Announcements, Discussion Forum, and so on.

If you experience problems accessing Blackboard, this is what you should do:

Using E-mail

You will receive e-mail messages regarding the course at your UNC e-mail address. Off-campus users can access their UNC e-mail account using Webmail. You can have your UNC e-mail forwarded to a different e-mail address by clicking "Forward e-mail" at the Onyen Web site.

If you use a filter on your e-mail account, you are responsible for ensuring that it does not prevent you from receiving messages from us, the course listserv, or Friday Center staff. Hotmail users should be aware that Hotmail will block messages sent from within Blackboard because Blackboard uses "blind carbon copy" to protect privacy. We recommend that you use your UNC Onyen e-mail account rather than Hotmail for this course.

Submitting Assignments

It is extremely important for you to save copies of any work you send to us via e-mail. If we don't receive your work, you must have a duplicate copy, indicating the date sent, to prove that you submitted the assignment on time. It is your responsibility to maintain copies of your sent e-mails, as there is no way to guarantee that any e-mail message will be delivered.

Please check your e-mail software to see how it manages sent and saved messages. Some software automatically deletes messages one month after they have been sent; others only save messages if they are filed in folders; others save messages received but not those sent. You may need to send yourself a copy of your e-mailed assignment at the same time you send it to us, or you may need to print a copy of the e-mail message and any attachments to keep in your paper files. No matter how your system works, make sure you know how to save a copy of all work that you submit to us and that you save the copy for several months beyond the end of the course.

BIOL 202: Molecular Biology and Genetics

Course Overview