Online Courses
In the summer of 2009, the Department of Zoology will be offering online sections of two of our core undergraduate courses: ZOL/PLB 355 (Ecology) and ZOL/PLB 341 (Fundamental Genetics).
Following is a sampler of what students can expect from these courses, as illustrated by the Ecology course. Clicking on this image will take you to a different site where the demo can be run:
Why online courses?
Online teaching has become increasingly widespread at American universities. However, far from merely jumping on the bandwagon, we have given serious thought to the question of how the educational experiences we offer our students can be advanced by offering online sections of our courses. We see three arguments in favor of offering online sections:
- Online sections increase the array of options available to students, hence serving the needs of students who prefer this learning format or find it more convenient when they need to take a course during the summer.
- Opening up summer online sections for those students who prefer them could reduce enrollments (class sizes) in the classroom sections of these same courses offered during the academic year.
- Online courses, done properly, exploit web-based and multimedia tools that can be used to enrich the learning experience in classroom sections, thus leading to an overall improvement in the curriculum.
Regardless of delivery method (classroom or online), our paramount concern is to provide a learning experience that is scientifically rigorous and gives students opportunities for intellectual engagement. By providing this demo, we hope that students interested in taking these classes as well as those unfamiliar with this teaching modality, can get a better impression of the opportunities available with this educational experience.
We expect to show a similar demo for ZOL/PLB 341 (Genetics) very soon.
Questions?
Instructor for ZOL/PLB 355: Dr. Stephen Thomas (thoma549@msu.edu)
Instructor for ZOL/PLB 341: Dr. April Harlin-Cognato (cognatoa@msu.edu
Chairperson of Zoology: Dr. Fred Dyer (fcdyer@msu.edu)