Course policies
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| Shared contact: neuroinstructors@case.edu | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Contents
- 1 Contacting the Instructors
- 2 Supplementary Textbooks
- 3 Computers in Class
- 4 Educational Goals
- 5 Structure of the Course
- 6 Student Guide
- 7 Survival Guide
- 8 Learning How to Learn
- 9 Rationale for Assessment
- 10 Assessment
- 11 Team Assignment
- 12 Introduction to NeuroWiki
- 13 Quick Guide to Editing Neurowiki
- 14 Academic Integrity
- 15 Recommendation Letters
- 16 Overview of Course Content
- 17 Critical Thinking and Analysis of the Technical Literature
Contacting the Instructors
Unless you have reason to contact a specific instructor, please direct all your questions, comments, and concerns to the address above. Your correspondence to this address will be received by all instructors.
Supplementary Textbooks
Neither of these textbooks are required, but reading relevant chapters in them will help you during the first half of the course:
- Principles of Neural Science, Kandel, Schwartz and Jessell, 5th edition, McGraw Hill
- Foundations of Cellular Neurophysiology, Johnston and Wu, MIT Press
Computers in Class
The course requires work on computer simulations, surveys and entries to NeuroWiki throughout the semester.
Please bring your laptop to class.
We will have a small number of laptops that we can lend to you if you need one.
Educational Goals
- Primary Goals
- Demonstrate mastery of the fundamental principles of neuroscience.
- Analyze neurons and neural circuits for behavior using the fundamental principles of neuroscience.
- For advanced students, read and understand the technical literature in neuroscience to
- instruct others about what is known, or
- weigh evidence for a debatable current hypothesis, or
- propose new research.
- Secondary Goals
- Work in teams to solve complex problems.
- Formulate and test scientific hypotheses.
- Analyze critically and write clearly about experimental results.
Structure of the Course
- Solving problems based on simulations of neuronal components, neurons and simple circuits to understand how they work.
- For advanced students, writing a neuroscience Wikipedia article, critical review or grant, in stages.
Student Guide
- To master the fundamental principles of neuroscience, you need to develop a "feel" for how neurons and neural circuits work.
- Accomplishing these goals requires steady application throughout the semester.
- We have done our best to break down the process of learning into small, manageable pieces
- We also are available to answer your questions, provide you with useful hints, and Neurowiki provides you with both the key concepts and the simulations that allow you to master the material.
- Each part of the course builds on the next. If you master one part, you will find it much easier to master the next part; by the end of the semester, you will find that tasks you thought you couldn't possibly do are now relatively easy.
- Tips for the semester:
- Read the relevant sections of Neurowiki before class.
- Be an active reader; try to understand the ideas presented and think about their implications.
- We have also provided supplementary videos. These should help you see how to think about problems, but they do not cover all the material; make sure to do the reading!
- Look at the problems (read the whole problem set) and think about them before class. If you want to explore the answers using the simulations, you are encouraged to do so.
- Once you are in class, spend your time focused on the problems.
- Solving a problem requires formulating a plan, trying different approaches, and not giving up too quickly.
- Use your lab notebook well. Copy in the problems and put them in bold; add pictures of your results, and carefully describe and explain what you've observed. Make sure to answer the questions!
- Taking pictures and recording data allows both you and the instructors to reproduce what you've done; especially if something has gone wrong, this allows us to help you fix it.
- If you make good entries in your notebook, you will find that earlier entries can serve as helpful references to you later in the semester.
- If you start to feel frustrated, talk about the problem with your teammate, with the other members of the class at your table, and with your instructors.
- Don't give up; all these problems can be solved. For many of the problems, there is more than one right answer.
- Never be afraid to ask questions.
- Instructors will give you hints and suggestions; these will help you learn to solve problems yourself.
- During conceptual check offs, make sure to ask questions about aspects of the results, or material in Neurowiki, that weren't clear to you.
- Take advantage of office hours.
- Budget time every week to do the reading before class, and to work on problems that you didn't finish in class so you are ready for the conceptual checkoffs during class.
- Come to class; skipping class will ensure that you fall further and further behind.
- Regularly check how you are doing. We give points after every class, so you can always check your progress, class by class.
- If you feel you need additional points, do the extra credit work.
- If you are an advanced student, well before Fall break, start thinking about potential topics for a Wikipedia article, a critical review, or a grant.
- Choose a topic that really interests you; we will help you determine if it is feasible.
Stay caught up with the course throughout the semester!
Survival Guide
Learning How to Learn
- The whole point of taking a course is to learn something new.
- What makes learning possible?
- Within your brain, you have neurons whose properties and connections can change with experience.
- Thus, learning about neuroscience helps clarify the mechanisms of learning.
- In general, though, we don't directly manipulate our neurons.
- Rather, we act on them indirectly.
- Discovering the best way to act on your neurons will improve how you learn.
- Each of us is a unique individual, and so the best learning style may be different.
- Here are some components of learning to think about:
- Motivation - How excited are you to learn the material, and how interesting do you find it?
- Context - How well can you relate what you've learned to what you already know?
- Environment - Do you need quiet to learn best, or do you like more stimulation?
- Learning style:
- Do you like to hear the material spoken?
- Do you prefer reading it?
- Does it help you to understand something by building it?
- Does it help you to discuss it with someone else?
- Exposure - How many times have you heard, used or thought about the material?
- Assessment - How will you know that you know the material?
- Approaches taken in this course:
- Active learning - rather than listening to lectures, you work in class on problems that enhance your understanding of the material
- Continuous progress - rather than having discrete exams, you continuously build on the knowledge you've acquired earlier in the course
Rationale for Assessment
- How can you tell if someone knows something?
- Example of carpentry:
- Knowing the names of tools
- Knowing about how things are made
- Building one chair or table
- Building many different things
- Teaching someone else how to build things
- Designing and building your own furniture
- Who would you hire to build something for you?
- Example of carpentry:
- Course assessments:
- Can you apply what you've learned to solve new problems?
- Can you apply what you've learned to understand new data?
- Can you write clearly about what you plan to do, and what you've actually done?
- Can you teach someone else what you've learned?
- Can you think of new problems to solve?
Assessment
Undergraduate Students (registered as BIOL 373)
Points Description Attendance 24 Attendance in class Lab notebook 31.25 Lab notebook on NeuroWiki containing answers to problems, design and analysis process Conceptual checkoffs 24 In-class in-depth check-offs of conceptual understanding of material Pre-Unit Quizzes 4.75 Quizzes prior to each unit Post-Unit Quizzes 12 Quizzes after each unit Surveys 4 Surveys of personality, attitude, and learning/teamwork Total 100
- Extra credit possibilities:
- Comments on course material (up to 2 points)
- Term Paper (up to 10 points)
- Term Paper Presentation (up to 3 points)
- One problem set has an optional section worth extra credit (1 point)
- Filling out the course evaluation form at the end of the semester, and certifying that you have done so (1 point)
Graduate Students (registered as BIOL 473 or NEUR 473)
Points Description Attendance 12 Attendance in class Lab notebook 25.25 Lab notebook on NeuroWiki containing answers to problems, design and analysis process Conceptual checkoffs 20 In-class in-depth check-offs of conceptual understanding of material Pre-Unit Quizzes 4.75 Quizzes prior to each unit Post-Unit Quizzes 9 Quizzes after each unit Surveys 4 Surveys of personality, attitude, and learning/teamwork Term Paper 25 Note: A graduate student cannot obtain a grade of A or B in the course without submitting a term paper representing a reasonable effort. Total 100
- Extra credit possibilities:
- Comments on course material (up to 2 points)
- Term Paper Presentation (up to 3 points)
- One problem set has an optional section worth extra credit (1 point)
- Filling out the course evaluation form at the end of the semester, and certifying that you have done so (1 point)
Team Assignment
- During the semester, you will work in teams of two.
- Although some students prefer to work alone, we have found that teamwork has great benefits:
- Explaining a problem to someone else, discussing results and their meaning, and helping another person understand a key concept reinforces knowledge.
- Students often have different learning styles, and can learn a great deal from paying attention to how someone else learns and understands material.
- Being able to work with others is a skill that can be invaluable for the future.
- Students may request to work together:
- Teammate requests must be submitted to the instructors no later than 5 PM the evening before the second day of class.
- We will strictly enforce this deadline to ensure that teams are not disrupted beginning the second day of class.
- After the deadline, we will randomly assign students to teams.
- We will regularly assess how teams are doing. Here are some helpful guidelines to creating an effective team.
Introduction to NeuroWiki
NeuroWiki gives you access to the materials that you will learn during the semester, and the opportunity to suggest ways to clarify this material. It will also provide you your own pages for creating a lab notebook which will be part of evaluating your performance in the class.
Pages created by the instructors will not be available for direct editing; you may make comments on the Discussion page, and if your suggestions are incorporated, you will be given credit for them. Thoughtful, helpful edits to text will gain you points; poorly written and incorrect edits will be penalized as described in Comments on Course Materials.
Once you've logged into NeuroWiki, you will have the ability to edit text. Editing text will be activated starting during the second week of class. Because you must sign in with your CWRU ID to edit, no edits will be anonymous. Each edit will be recorded, so that we can keep track of and evaluate what you've done (as can other students).
Notice the tabs at the top of each page. Here are brief descriptions of the tabs that you will use:
- Page and Read display the fully formatted page.
- Discussion allows you to discuss material on a page without altering the page itself.
- Edit allows you to edit the text that appears on the page.
- In edit mode, a set of small icons appears above the box into which you can enter or change text.
- These icons allow you to change the font face (e.g., bold, italic) to add links within the NeuroWiki or to external pages, change headings, insert horizontal lines, or embed files.
- View Editing help for explanations of each icon.
- View history provides a full history of the edits to that page, including the author of the edits and the time the edit was done.
At the bottom of the page, there are three very useful buttons that appear in edit mode:
- Save page saves all of your edits
- Show preview allows you to view the page before saving your changes; you should use this frequently, especially at the beginning
- Show changes shows the changes since the last edit
- Cancel will remove your changes
- Editing help provides useful tips on editing
Quick Guide to Editing Neurowiki
Academic Integrity
It is a violation of the academic integrity rules to use text or figures from a previously published paper or from the Internet in a term paper or on NeuroWiki unless you
- provide appropriate citations in both text and bibliography, and
- place the text from the other sources within quotation marks.
It is important to understand that taking other people's ideas and/or words without proper attribution is a form of stealing, and is unacceptable.
Here is a detailed description, with examples, of Plagiarism.
See the CWRU Academic Integrity Board Website for details of the official Case policy on Academic Integrity.
Please realize that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
If we discover a violation of the integrity policies, we will be required to give a zero on the assignment, and to report the students who were involved in the integrity violation to the appropriate Dean (either Undergraduate or Graduate).
Reporting of an integrity violation will require that a special form be filled out, and will become part of the student's permanent record.
This is especially important for this course, as there is no final exam.
Remember these two principles:
The rules apply to everyone, including you.
Recommendation Letters
Dr. Chiel receives many requests for letters of recommendation.
He does not wish to write letters that will not help a student.
Thus, he will not write a letter unless he knows the student well (i.e., he has had the student for at least two different classes, or the student has worked in his lab) and he can write a strongly positive letter on their behalf.
You may also find it useful to look at this essay to determine how not to behave if you hope to ask him for a letter of recommendation some time in the future: How Not to Get a Letter of Recommendation. This essay is contained in "Great Letters of Recommendation" by Dan Osborne and Lilly Chow.
Overview of Course Content
- Fundamental questions about nature
- What does it mean to understand a phenomenon scientifically?
- Topics covered in the course
- The Goals and Promise of Neuroscience
