Detailed Syllabus

I have organized this class around ten important concepts in plant ecology:

You will explore these concepts in a series of discussions, field trips, writing assignments, and lab experiments. Each week, you will read one or more chapters from your textbook for background information, and one or more articles from your reading packet for other points of view or to extend this background to local plant ecology. Each week's field trip or lab experiment will apply the concepts to concrete examples.

Come to class each day prepared to discuss the topic of the week. This means you must read the assigned material ahead of time and think about it. Write out questions, comments, ideas, connections, etc. The week's assignment will concern the material coming up that week, not the previous week’s work I will not give exams or quizzes. You will earn your grade by completing five two-page writing assignments, several short lab reports, and a longer research report. You will have the opportunity to rewrite all assignments for a better grade. Both the original and the rewrite grade will count toward your final total. Because of the tight schedule and the opportunity for rewriting, I will give late papers no more than half credit.

Graduate students will do additional research and give oral presentations. I will discuss projects and presentations with graduate students separately.

Essay assignments will concern conceptual issues; some require you to compare divergent schools of thought in plant ecology. I expect you to think critically about the issues, not simply parrot what your text or reading says. By the way, to compare means to point out both similarities and differences. When I say "compare" I mean what most people mean when they say "compare and contrast."

The short lab reports and the research report will present the results of field sampling or laboratory experiments in the standard format of a scientific paper. See Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences by Victoria MacMillan for details. You will write your research report in stages. You will turn in one or two sections at a time, and I will grade them and return them to you. You will turn in rewritten versions as part of the completed research report. Both the original grades for each section and the final grade for the completed report will count toward your final grade. You must do all writing assignments on a word processor, and print them out double spaced, with one-inch margins. I will read not one word beyond the assigned length.

I require you to write all assignments in E’ (pronounced "E-prime"). E’ consists of the English language without the verb to be. In E' one would not write "Chocolate is good" but rather "I like chocolate" or "Chocolate tastes good." Rather than writing "Data were gathered at five sites" you should write "Students gathered data at five sites." Anything you can write in English, you can write in E’. Look carefully and you will find that I have written this handout in E’.

From time to time, I will require you to review other students’ work. On these occasions, I will also grade the papers, and only my grade will count. To preserve confidentiality, you must use only the last four digits of your Social Security number to identify yourself on all written assignments. No other indication of your identity may appear anywhere on the assignment.

I have organized this class to resemble the process of doing science. Scientists read books and papers not to memorize potential test-answers, but to understand concepts, to relate data to competing schools of thought, and to reach their own conclusions. We test our own ideas and the ideas of others by examining them critically, looking for logical inconsistencies or disagreements with fact, and by designing and carrying out experiments and observations in laboratory and field.

Scientists must communicate their ideas clearly and forcefully orally and in writing. You can have the most brilliant ideas in the world, and mountains of data to support them, but unless you persuade others of their truth, your efforts will count as nothing.

Scientists criticize each other’s work, and accept criticism from their peers. When a scientist submits a paper to a journal, the journal's editor sends it out to other scientists who work in the same field. They review the paper and send their criticisms to the editor, who passes them along to the author. The author revises the paper and resubmits. Review and revision can go through several cycles before the paper appears in print.

We will carry out the same activities in this class. The reading assignments will introduce you to important concepts in plant ecology. The writing assignments and classroom discussion will encourage you to examine these ideas critically, and to improve your communication skills. The field and lab projects will require you to gather data, analyze them, and to interpret them in light of the concepts you have learned. You will participate in the peer review process both as author and as reviewer. You will learn not only to accept criticism, but also to give constructive criticism and to evaluate others’ criticism of your work. As a bonus, seeing other students’ papers can often give you ideas for improving your own.

I emphasize writing because unclear writing reflects unclear thinking. If you truly understand something, you can write about it clearly. I know from experience that thinking clearly means rethinking, and writing clearly means rewriting. I place strict length limits on writing assignments to force you to rewrite them, and by rewriting, to improve them. This requires you to spend more time struggling with the ideas, deciding what to include and what to leave out, and above all how to organize your thoughts. I want you to analyze, evaluate, and interpret; to winnow the chaff and keep the kernel.

The same rationale applies to E’. By forcing you to eschew the verb to be, I force you to rewrite and rethink. We use the verb to be without thinking, and as a result write weak sentences. Often this lets us get away with unclear thinking. Recasting these sentences makes them clearer, more concrete, and more forceful. Thinking about how to rewrite a sentence (or a paragraph, or an entire paper) does more than focus our attention on the mechanics of expression, it forces us to think about what we really want to say and how best to say it.

I allow you to rewrite every assignment for an improved grade to further encourage rewriting and rethinking. I require you to use a word processor to make revision easier. I hope you will make these habits, and use them in your other classes. These habits will improve your comprehension and retention of material, reduce your study time, and improve your grades.

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Charles Welden maintains this page, and may change it at any time.
Copyright 1999 Southern Oregon University. Send comments or questions to welden@sou.edu