MICB 325 (with Dr. Thomas Beatty)
- Course Taken: MWF 10am (January, 2015 - April, 2015)
- Format: Flipped-classroom style where readings are posted beforehand and lectures are devoted to iClickers. The first half of the course is devoted to essentially understanding plasmid maps, cross-overs and blue-white screening. The second half of the course is a month and a half long case study on how one could determine the signalling pathway of a microbe (Cartenoid synthesis in R. capsulatus). Unfortunately, while the course content is extremely interesting, a lot of people did not feel prepared enough going into the exam because we only saw one case study and did not get a lot of practice. There is homework due twice a week online, but we did not get feedback even at the end of the course.
- Grading Scheme: 35% Midterm, 50% Final (Note: if you miss the midterm even with an excuse, your final will be 85%), 2% Homework Participation, 7% Homework Accuracy, 6% iClicker Participation 90%+ and with up to 2% bonus if a certain percentage is correct
- Textbook: None
- Class Average: 78%
- Personal Experience: Overall, while the content is interesting I found the lecture style not conductive to learning. Dr. Beatty tends to get confused with his own iClicker questions or his questions are poorly worded, so in a 50 minute lecture you will only do about 4 questions. The way midterm marks are distributed was not ideal where 4 long-winded true and false questions were worth 40% of the midterm while a short answer was only worth 5%. However, this was fixed for our final despite the final being longer than expected. The final was difficult especially if students have not been exposed to cloning schemes before since most of the questions were "explain this unexpected result".
- Advice: Practice problems are your friend especially the plasmid map questions.
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