BSC 2011L Biodiversity Lab

Spring 2017 Syllabus

TAs name: Chris Haggerty

Office location: SCA 224 or 141
E-mail: cjhagger@mail.usf.edu
Office hours: Thursday 12:30-1:30 and 6-7:30

Lab Supervisor: Mary Mangiapia (for problems that cannot be resolved with the TA)
E-mail: mangiapia@usf.edu
Office: SCA 116

Introduction and Objectives

This course is a hands-on introduction to biodiversity. You will become familiar with
evolutionary theory and the scientific classification scheme and accumulate practice
in identifying and classifying organisms. It is important that you keep up with the
work on a weekly basis and be prepared for class. Each week, you will be required
to read the assigned modules (accessible under the course on Canvas) and
complete an online quiz/competency check before coming to lab in preparation for
the hands-on exercises. Quizzes will be posted by one week prior to each lab. You
will have only one attempt to complete each quiz. Each quiz will be worth 20
points. Your TA will not review any background material at the start of lab. It is your
responsibility to arrive prepared. The lab is self-directed. Your TA is here to
guide you through a discovery process, not tell you what to memorize.
You will only earn an A if you take the initiative to understand the
concepts. Your TA will hold regular office hours in order to answer any questions
that you may have.

Attendance and Make-Up Policy

You are required to attend every lab exercise and to arrive on time. Absences will
be excused for documented emergencies only . Documentation may include a
doctors note (for an illness, not routine care), summons for jury duty, funeral record
or similar personalized documentation. Lab absences due to inclement weather,
unless classes are canceled as a result of University closure, do not represent
extenuating circumstances.
Note: Documentation for illness may be obtained on campus at Student Health
Services. Visits are free of charge, although there may be charges for lab tests,
medications, etc. The Billing and Fee Schedule can be accessed at
http://www.shs.usf.edu/services/fee-schedule.aspx.

Make-ups must be arranged in advance with your TA and must be completed during
the same week as the missed lab because lab supplies are removed at the end of
each week. If you miss your normal lab session but make it up later in the week
with a documented excuse you will not be penalized. However, participation points
cannot be earned for a lab that was missed and not made up, whether the absence
was excusable or not. If you anticipate missing a lab as a result of a religious
holiday, you must inform your TA in writing by the second week of class and provide
documentation of your religious obligation.

Laboratory Participation Policy

Several courses in the Department of Integrative Biology (including this one) require
the use, manipulation, or euthanasia of live animals or the use of preserved animals
as an indispensable part of the laboratory exercises. By enrolling in these courses,
a student agrees to participate in the laboratory experiments that utilize live or
dead animals. Although a student who objects on the basis of religious or moral
grounds need not participate directly in the euthanasia or dissection of tissues, the
student is expected to participate in data collection, write lab reports, and take
quizzes and exams using dissected animals. Failure to participate will have a
negative impact on the final grade in the course. It is the students responsibility to
bring up any concerns to the faculty member in charge by the completion of the
first laboratory session. All protocols for the use of animals in the Department of
Integrative Biology have been approved by the USF IACUC and adhere to State and
Federal regulations.

Materials Required

Biodiversity Laboratory Manual (available at the USF campus bookstore)

Lecture Text Book (Campbell Biology 11th edition)
regular internet access from home or on campus
safety goggles
Lab Coat (to be worn every class)-Lab coats with cuffed sleeves are preferred
although older style lab coats with normal sleeves are allowed. Lab coats are
available for purchase at the campus bookstore.
Note: Students are required to access Canvas via the USF portal
https://portal.usf.edu. You must check Canvas and your USF email on a weekly basis
for information posted by your TA.

Grading
Grades will be updated weekly in the course on Canvas. It is each students
responsibility to keep track of his/her grades and to contact the TA within two weeks
of receiving a grade if there are any discrepancies or questions. After this time
grades will not be open for review. Your lab grade will be calculated as follows:

Homework 280 points (130 pts for HW 1, 150 pts for HW 2)

Midterm Exam 150 points
Final Exam 150 points
Online quizzes 200 pts (20 pts each)
Participation 220 pts (20 pts per week except for week 1 and final exam
week - punctuality, completion of exercises, cleanup, etc.)
_____________________________________________________________
Total 1000 pts possible

The standard college scale will be used (A=89.5-100%; B=79.5-89.4%; C=69.5-

79.4%; D=59.5-69.4%; F=59.4% and below). We will not use the plus/minus
system. There is NO CURVE and NO EXTRA CREDIT. Your TA will post specific
grading guidelines before each assignment is due. Make sure you understand and
follow directions!

Participation
Your TA will check your work before you leave lab each week.

Exams
You will have a midterm exam and a final exam. They will be given during your
regular lab period. Exams may include short answer, essay and multiple choice
questions, may require calculations with shown work, and may include
demonstration of lab skills.
Homework
Two homework assignments will be given over the course of the semester.
Homework must be submitted to Canvas via Turnitin.com before the beginning of
lab. Make sure you know how to submit assignments before the first homework is
due. Assignments must be submitted as either .doc or .docx formats. Your TA
may or may not require a paper copy of your homework assignment. If you hand in
a paper copy, it will not replace the electronic submission of the assignment. Your
TA will only grade your homework if it has been submitted electronically.

Late Assignments -
Homeworks handed in beyond the time when they were due will be penalized 10%
per day. No homeworks will be accepted more than three days after the due date.
Online competency checks are meant to prepare you for lab and so will not be
accepted after the start of lab.

Plagiarism Check Notification

The University of South Florida has an account with an automated plagiarism
detection service called Turnitin, which allows instructors to submit student
assignments to be checked for plagiarism. The instructor of this course requires that
each student submit files electronically via the course webpage. Assignments are
compared automatically with a large database of journal articles, web articles, lab
handouts and previously submitted papers. The instructor receives a report
showing if a students paper was plagiarized and exactly how it was plagiarized.

In order to comply with federal (FERPA) and state privacy laws, students are not
required to include personal identifying information such as name, SSN, and/or U#
in the body of the work (text) or use such information in the file naming convention
prior to submitting to Safe Assignment. Your submission will be placed in the
course grade center in your account that can be accessed by the instructor and
attributed to you.

Academic Dishonesty
Lab exercises may be performed individually, in pairs, or in larger groups of
students. Sharing data with a partner, comparing results with others, and
discussing conclusions is permitted and even encouraged. However, students
must complete quizzes, exams and lab reports INDIVIDUALLY. Copying
and/or verifying answers from another students quiz or exam are prohibited.
Likewise, permitting another student to view your answers is prohibited. If you
suspect that your work has been copied, notify your TA immediately.
Lab reports must be written INDIVIDUALLY by each student. Students may not show
their work to another student, accept another students work for review, work
together on a lab report, copy the words of another student or modify another
students work, irrespective of whether the student is in the same section, in a
different section, or is a former student. Assisting a student by sharing your own
work, either in the current semester or at a future time, constitutes academic
dishonesty. This applies to all sections of the report and to the creation of all
figures, graphs and tables.

Writing lab reports over topics unfamiliar to you requires library research. Do not
use direct quotes. When using the published thoughts and ideas of another in your
paper, it is essential that the words be paraphrased, or rewritten in your own words,
AND the source be cited. Do not cut and paste! Passages that have been cut and
pasted, then re-worded, are rarely sufficiently paraphrased. Plagiarism, or using
anothers words or ideas without crediting the source, is a form of academic
dishonesty. Students may not plagiarize a published source or posting on the Web
in any section of a report.

Academic dishonesty will be prosecuted to the full extent of university policy.

Possible penalties include a grade of zero on an assignment, an F for the course, or
an FF for the course (failure for academic dishonesty). Although a first offense
may not result in an FF, a second offense is guaranteed to. This includes the
potential case in which a student plagiarizes but by chance is not caught initially,
then commits a second offense which is caught and leads to the discovery of the
first offense. IGNORANCE OF THE RULES WILL NOT ABSOLVE OR REDUCE
CONSEQUENCES. See pages 45-46 of the current undergraduate catalogue for a
description of academic dishonesty and its consequences
(http://www.ugs.usf.edu/catalogs/0708/adadap.htm (Links to an external
site.)).

Copying from yourself - Students who are retaking the lab course may not submit
the lab reports that they submitted previously. However, they may draw from their
previous report to complete the new report. Graphs and tables must be new,
containing the data obtained in the current semester. The Results section must
likewise describe the current set of data. The Discussion section may include
content from a previous report so long as it is consistent with the new data. It
should also contain any new conclusions or observations. Students may submit the
same Introduction they wrote for a previous report. The Methods section should
describe precisely what was done in the current exercise.
Plagiarism Tutorial: To ensure an understanding of plagiarism by all students,
each student is required to complete the tutorial located at
http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/plagiarismtutorial.php (Links to an external
site.), then complete the post-test quiz and email it to your TA before the
beginning of lab during the week of February 13th. This assignment will be
worth 20 points in place of an online quiz for that week.

This is a USF Learning Outcomes Assessment course. Your written work may be
evaluated after the course is completed to assess how well the IB Department
prepares its students in the areas of discipline-specific knowledge and skills, critical
thinking skills, and communication skills. Assessments will not affect your grade in
any way.

Conduct/dismissal from the lab

Students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that encourages learning
in the laboratory. Disruptive, distracting or dangerous behavior will result in
dismissal from a lab exercise or the course. Reasons for dismissal also include the
use of cell phones during class, failure to meet lab dress code and lack of safety
goggles.

Cellular phones
The use of cell phones for any reason - making or receiving phone calls, text
messaging, performing calculations, keeping time, taking photos (unless expressly
permitted by the TA) - is prohibited in the laboratory. If you bring a cell phone to the
lab, make sure it is turned completely off and put away before class begins.
Headphones or earpieces of any kind are likewise prohibited for use in the lab.
Violation may result in a reduced participation score for that exercise or dismissal
from the laboratory.

Notification regarding students registered with the SDS office

All memos of accommodation must be presented to your TA (a copy must be
provided to the Lab Supervisor as well). Lab quizzes and practical exams are
necessary testing experiences for which double-time accommodation is difficult.
Please meet with the Lab Supervisor to discuss accommodations.

Emergency Preparedness
In the event of an emergency, it may be necessary for USF to suspend normal
operations. During this time, USF may opt to continue delivery of instruction
through methods that include but are not limited to: Canvas, Elluminate, Skype,
email messaging and/or an alternate schedule. It is the responsibility of the student
to monitor the Canvas site for each class for course specific communication and the
main USF website and email for important general information.

The Department of Integrative Biology has policies and instructional guidelines in

addition to those found in this syllabus which may relate to specific circumstances.
These policies may be found at http://biology.usf.edu/ib/instructors/2009-
2010InstructionalGuidelinesSVERSION.pdf.

BSC 2011L Lab Schedule Spring 2017

Week of: Exercise*:

Assignments due

Jan 9-14 Syllabus and safety rules; Scientific Method, Disprovable trees

Jan 16-21 Martin Luther King Holiday No labs this week

Jan 23-28 Inoculate bacterial culture plates,

Online quiz
Fruit Fly Lab Week 1

Jan 30-Feb 4 Origins of Life; Prokaryotes

Online quiz
Fly Lab Week 2

Feb 6-11 Introduction to Eukaryotes; Protists

Online quiz
Fly Lab Week 3

Feb 13-18 Scientific Writing and HW 1 assigned

Plagiarism tutorial
Fly Lab Week 4 (counts as
online quiz)
Feb 20-25 Plants I Seedless Plants
Online quiz
Fly Lab Week 5

Feb 27-M4 Plants II Seed Plants ;

Online quiz;
Fly Lab Week 6, Homework 2 assigned
Homework 1

Mar 6-11 Midterm

Fly Lab Week 7

Mar 13-18 Spring Break No labs this week

Mar 20-25** Fungi, Parazoa and Radiata

Online quiz

Mar 27-A1 Lophotrochoza

Online quiz

Apr 3-8 Ecdysozoa

Online quiz

Homework 2
Apr 10-15 Deuterostomia
Online quiz

Apr 17-22 Final Exam

* Lab Exercises are subject to changes or modification. Your TA will notify you of
any changes.
** The last day to withdraw from a course without academic penalty is Saturday,
March 25th. Students who drop BSC 2011 lab must also drop BSC 2011
lecture. The department will not grant permits to drop the lab and remain
in the lecture. Students who drop BSC 2011 lecture may remain enrolled in
BSC 2011 lab by submitting a petition form (obtained from the TA) during
the week prior to the drop date.
Teaching Laboratory Safety Guidelines

The following Safety Guidelines are to be strictly adhered to in all

teaching laboratories. These rules apply to students, teaching assistants,
and instructors. The signed document should be turned into the TA, and
the TA should give this document to the Teaching Lab Manager.

No food, drinks, or smoking in labs.

Goggles are to be worn when any chemical, in any amount, is used including
preservatives and stains. Goggles also need to be worn when there is the
possibility of an object impacting the eye.
Appropriate footwear must be worn at all times. The feet must be adequately
covered (the foot must be totally covered up to the ankle). Therefore sandals,
backless and open-toed shoes are not acceptable.
Clothing appropriate for laboratory safety must be worn. Clothing (pants or
skirt) must be worn which completely covers the entire leg from the waist to
the ankle. Clothing (shirt, blouse, etc.) must be worn which completely
covers the torso from the waist to the neck. Shoulders must be completely
covered and sleeves must be worn that cover the arm from the shoulder to at
least halfway to the elbow. Therefore, tank tops, halters, shorts, cutoffs, etc.
are not acceptable. Some labs may require the use of a lab coat and/or
gloves.
Long hair should be tied back when using a Bunsen burner.
Jewelry, particularly dangling necklaces or earrings with the potential to
interfere with or be contaminated by an experiment should not be worn.
Backpacks should be placed in the shelving units provided.

Safety Suggestions

Materials are to be disposed of immediately after use and in the proper

containers.
All bottles, flasks etc. are to be labeled completely with full chemical names.
Never leave an experiment unattended.
Never leave a solution on a hot plate unattended.
Hotplates that have been turned off, but are still hot, should have a warning
note in front of them.

IF THERE IS A SERIOUS ACCIDENT, CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY. OTHERWISE

CONTACT THE TEACHING LAB MANAGER.
I have read the safety guidelines listed above and understand that non-compliance
will result in my dismissal from the laboratory until I do comply, and I will not be
allowed to make-up missed work resulting from that dismissal.

Sign___________________________________________ Course #_______________

Print Name______________________________________ Section #_______________