Week 6, Chapter 13 -- Starting Assumptions Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Instructions:

Part 1:

Read through the questions below. Write a paragraph, 150 words minimum, in response to one or more of the questions below that interest you. Use D2L's spell checker or your word processor software to spell check your paragraph. (The latter will give you a word count as well.) Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed paragraph in the Starting Assumptions forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

Part 2:

Respond to the Starting Assumptions posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Jessica" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names posted on D2L).
• What constitutes a substantive response? This means that you have read and thought about the original post, and that after some reflection, you are extending one or more of the thoughts in the original post or offering an additional perspective as you might in a good conversation. It is not enough to say simply "nice job," "I liked that," "I think you're right about XXXX," "I disagree," etc. It is OK to disagree or agree, but the goal is to thoughtfully add something else interesting and new related to the content of the original post. At a minimum this should be at least 50 words, and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your paragraph and responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Starting Assumptions assignment. (Do not declare that you have completed these assignments until AFTER you have made your posts. Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Here are the questions to get you started:

• What does the word "biodiversity" mean to you?
• Is biodiversity important to you? If so, why? If not, why not?
• Do you think that some species are more important than others? Why or why not?
• Do you think that finding and classifying new species is an important use for public (taxpayer) money? Why or why not?
• Do you think we have an obligation to future generations to preserve biodiversity? Is it enough to preserve the information in the organism’s genes, or should we preserve it in its natural environment?
• Do you think that private companies should be allowed to profit from the use of organisms they find in national parks in the U.S. or other countries? Why or why not?
• Do you think people ought to be able to patent entire organisms? Why or why not? (See this site for more information.)
• What does the word “germ” mean to you?
• Do you think it’s important to kill all “germs” in your home? Why or why not?
• Why are microorganisms important?
• Have you ever wondered how life on Earth has changed over time?
• Have you ever wondered where new drugs come from?
• There are a lot of ways to classify life -- for example, we could divide life into microscopic and visible kingdoms, or into green, red, yellow, and blue kingdoms. Have you ever wondered how biologists settled on the system they use now?

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM