Exam 3 Preparations

Hi Blog followers...

I suspect you're here for a little bit of advice on Exam 3. On Sunday night, I put forward some advice in the form of 9 practical exercises that you could do to get ready for the Critters portion of Exam 3 (See "Puttin' Critters ON (and IN!) the Table"). I happen to think that those 9 exercises are a wonderful way to prepare for most of the questions that Prof S might ask about the 3 Critter Days that we've had in class.

As you and I both found out in class on Monday (and via the exam review questions posted by Prof S on the course Angel site), there will also be questions regarding the Citizenship Projects, Ecology, Biogeochemical Cycles, and Biodiversity/Conservation. Instead of a single Blog to deal with these topics, I've decided that I will make digital myself available in person in Kedzie Hall tonight from 6:30-8 pm. There, we can spend an 1-1/2 hours or so digging into the past lecture slides together. I promise you won't regret giving up the time.

And, don't forget, Prof S will be fielding questions in Kedzie today at 4:30 pm and then online through the Angel discussion board starting at 9 pm. For some thoughts about the Critter Days, however, read on...

Lecture 14-15 (6/19 & 6/22): Puttin' Critters ON (and IN!) the Table...

My apologies to everyone for my absence from the Blog over this past week, but I was at a conference in Notre Dame giving a presentation to some other university-types about teaching & learning in university science courses...

I know you're likely already thinking about this, but I thought I'd chime in as you are looking ahead to this Wednesday's Exam 3. In particular, I want to get you thinking about some things you can do on your own to get a better handle on the "Critter Days" (thus far, Lectures 6, 10, 14 & 15).

In a previous Blog ("What's Up With 'Critter' Days?"), I began to connect the various Critter Days to some of the big ideas presented in the course, but in this Blog I actually want to give you some practical things to do between now and Exam 3 (and, I've been told by a reliable source that Critters will form "the heart" of Exam 3).

Puttin' Critters ON a Table...Part I

I want you to imagine a large table or desk in front of you--clear it of all items. Go back through your lecture notes and extract all of the names of the different groups of "Critters" that Prof S has discussed with you. For example, groups like "prokaryotes," "extremophiles," "protists," "seed/seedless plants," "liverworts," hornworts," "mosses," "club mosses," "ferns," "gymnosperms/angiosperms," "fungi," "vertebrates/invertebrates," etc. (this is not an exhaustive list!). Put each of these names on separate notecards. For those of you up late studying, I've been told that the exam will concentrate mainly on 5 or 6 main "groups" of organisms: Archaea, Bacteria, Protists, Fungi, Plants, and Animals. So, you can economize your study time tonight by not paying as much attention to groups of organisms that are 'finer grained' that those 5 Kingdom-level groups (plus Archaea, which is a Domain group).

Now, I want to show you a couple of different exercises that you could do with all of these notecards:

• Exercise #1: One way you could talk about the critters is you could say that Prof S has shared information about the Archaea, the Bacteria, and the Eukarya (or Eukaryota). Put these 3 names on 3 new notecards. Whether you realize it or not, these 3 names cover ALL of the critters he's talked about in the course. Take the notecards you initially created and arrange them according these 3 "Domains" (i.e, taxonomic categories). Which groups belong to the Archaea? The Bacteria? The Eukarya? Can/do any of the notecards belong to two categories at once?
  

• Exercise #2: Another way you could talk about the critters is you could say that Prof S has shared information about consumers, producers, and decomposers. Whether you realize it or not, these 3 names also cover ALL of the critters he's talked about in the course. Just like in exercise #1, take the notecards you initially created and arrange them according these 3 categories. Which groups belong to the consumers? The producers? The decomposers? Can/do any of the notecards belong to two categories at once?

• Exercise #3: Yet another way you could talk about the Critters is you could say that Prof S has shared information about autotrophs (including photoautotrophs and chemoautotrophs) and heterotrophs (including photoheterotrophs and chemoheterotrophs). Whether you realize it or not, these 2 names (well, 4 names) also cover ALL of the Critters he's talked about in the course. Just like in exercises #1 & #2, take the notecards you initially created and arrange them according these 3 "Trophic" categories. Which groups belong to the autotrophs (as well as the 2 types of autotrophs)? The heterotrophs (as well as the 2 types of heterotrophs)? Can/do any of the notecards belong to two categories at once?

You've just gone through some exercises that put critters 'on' a table. Hopefully, with the help of your lecture notes, your textbook, and maybe even some reliable online resources that you may have used to help you complete the exercises, you're getting a better sense of the different ways that you'll be expected to be able to talk about the different types of critters found on planet Earth. Now, lets go through another exercise that again puts critters 'on' a table.

Puttin' Critters ON a Table...Part II

In Lecture 11, Prof S presented you with some ideas that he called the "Tools of the Trade," which made a big deal of things like "taxonomy" and "phylogeny." Here's an exercise to get you ready for Exam 3 that connects to taxonomy.

A Linnean-based taxonomy is shown at right. It is a nice representation to illustrate how biologists use certain 'nested' categories to organize or classify organisms into different groups. All life on Earth fits into the category called "Life" down at the bottom (in purple). But as we move 'up' the categories we get more and more specific, until finally we're talking about different species of organisms (in orangish).

Here's what I think you could do...

• Exercise #4: First, make separate notecards for each of the categories in the image at right and lay them out on a table such that they mirror the arrangement in the image. Second, gather ALL of the notecards that you created prior to doing exercises #1-3. Third, try to arrange these notecards according to the categories. Which ones are "Domian" terms? Which ones are "Kingdom" terms? Are there any "Phylum" terms that Prof S emphasized in his lectures? What about "Orders" or "Families," are any of the original notecards we created commonly associated with these terms? Late night addition: Again, you needn't concern yourselves too much tonight with the groups of organisms 'smaller' than the Kingdom-level (see comments in red above).
  

• Exercise #6: Now take the 3 notecards: Archaea, Bacteria, Eukarya. Where do these fit in relation to the Linnean taxonomy?

• Exerciese #7: Now take the 3 notecards: Consumers, Producers, Decomposers. What are your thoughts about placing these 3 notecards in relation to the Linnean taxonomy? Is it easy or difficult to place these cards in this organizational scheme. Explain this ease or difficulty in a paragraph (pretend it's a practice essay question on Exam 3--see if you can write a half-page answer.)
  

• Exercise #8: You should ask the same questions of the 4 terms from exercise #3: autotrophs (including photoautotrophs and chemoautotrophs) and heterotrophs (including photoheterotrophs and chemoheterotrophs). How hard or easy is it to arrange these notecards according to the Linnean taxonomic system? Explain this ease or difficulty in a paragraph (pretend it's a practice essay question on Exam 3--see if you can write a half-page answer.)

Puttin' Critters IN a Table...

Here's one last exercise, but a very important one...

Exercise #9: Instead of using a table or desk and spatially arranging notecards, create a written table for this next exercise with 4 columns and lots of rows (one row for each of the different groups of critters discussed by Prof S). Here's how I think the table might look:


At the end of each of the 4 main Critter Days, Prof S did a summary slide--but not in a tabular form--that he called "Critters and the Big Picture." Each slide had the same 3 questions for you to answer on it!

I don't know about you, but this sounds to me like a very important set of questions for you to be able to talk intelligently about on an exam. In case you need some clarification on the questions (i.e., "Big Ideas") at the top of the columns, here are some translations to help you begin to fill out a table like this...

• Related to Scale? In the language of this course, this is a question about time and space scales. Space scale: How much space does this organism to take up? Do you need a microscope to see one? Do you find these organisms alone or in groups? Where in an ecosystem would you most likely find them, i.e., what is their preferred habitat? Time scale: What do you know about the general evolutionary history of these organisms? Have them been around in their current state for a long time or are they a relatively new group of organisms?

• Related to Genes? In the language of this course, this is a question about the form of their DNA and their reproductive strategy. Is their DNA typically found inside of a nuclear envelop or not? How do they pass their genes on to future generations? Are they sexual or asexual reproducers? Do they produce seeds? Spores? Live offspring? Eggs? Etc. Late (Tuesday) night addition = One thing I forgot to consider in this list of gene-related issues is something about genes at a larger scale: So, what kinds of unique adaptations do the different groups of organisms mentioned above possess?
  

• Related to Matter/Energy? In the language of this course, this is a question about how these organisms get the energy they need to perform life functions. This has direct connections to the terms found in exercises #2 & #3 above: consumers, producers, decomposers, autotrophs, and heterotrophs. However, this is also a question about what role(s) these groups of organisms play inside of things like the "Matter Cycles" that Prof S talked about in Lectures 15 & 16. For example, what (if any) major role(s) do critters like the fungi play in the Carbon Cycle? What (if any) major role(s) do critters like seed-producing plants play in the Phosophorous Cycle?
  

So, maybe you need to have more than 5 columns for this table? Maybe you want to break the last column up into separate "Matter" and "Energy" columns? Maybe you want to break the first column up into separate "Space" and "Time" columns?

Final thoughts...

Any way you decide to do it, my sense is that completing these 9 exercises between now and Wednesday's exam will play huge dividends for you. Of course, I haven't seen the exam yet, so I'm hedging my bets on the fact that Prof S told me last Monday that the Critter Days will make up "the heart" of Exam 3.

If that has changed between last Monday and today (Sunday), it would be news to me. But then again, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn't in class this past Wednesday or Friday because of a conference. Did Prof S make any more specific announcements about Exam 3 in either of these last two classes? If he did, then maybe one of you could use the comment feature of the Blog to fill me in.

Anyone? Post-Blog update: This issue is addressed briefly in the "Exam 3 preparations" Blog.