BSC 2011L Biodiversity Lab

TAs name:

Fall 2016 Syllabus

Travis Flock

Office location: SCA 224

E-mail:

tflock@mail.usf.edu

Office hours:

Thursdays, 2:00-3:00pm/3:00-4:00pm by appointment

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 and the lowest quiz grade for the course will be dropped before the final grade is
calculated. 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

BSC 2011 Biodiversity Laboratory Manual (USF Campus Bookstore)

Lecture Text Book (Campbell Biology 10th 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 will be 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
quiz)

200 pts (20 pts each, lowest score dropped *plagiarism tutorial counts as

Participation

220 pts (20 pts per week except for week 1- 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=59.569.4%; 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 September 5th. 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 Fall 2016

Week of:
due

Exercise*:

Aug 22-27

Syllabus, safety rules; scientific method, inoculate bac. plates

Assignments

Aug 29-Sep 3
Quiz

Origins of Life-Prokaryotes and Microscopes

Sep 5-10
tutorial

No Labs, Labor Day

Sep 12-17
x2

Scientific Writing and Statistics, Homework 1 assigned

Phylogeny, Fly Lab Start-Week 1

Online

Plagiarism

Online quiz