🚀 go-pugleaf

 	This is a seminar course.  That means that you do the work.  That
is, you find the material, and do the lecturing. I hope that you are 
concerned about speaking.  It shows good sense, particularly
if facing an audience is new to you.  Some fear will help you prepare
for this course.  The question is of course how much will help you.
If you are too terified to give seminars at all, of course this is
not the course for you.  Everyone in the class must speak 
and the audience is composed of people who are going to give
talks.  There are no auditors.  Let us talk a little about the
limitations.  First, to take this course you must speak English
well enough so that your fellow students understand you.  You will
not be graded on gramatical correctness. 

Our subject for the past few years has been "Recent Advances in
Human Genetics". In order to find the recent
advances you will have a computer account at alcor and the instructions
necessary to get documents from online data bases and also the
information necessary to look at everyone's online library catalog.
One objective of this course is to tell you about computerized
methods of finding information.  You will find that it saves you
time and that you will find more recent information easier. By
now genetic databases are well developed. You can find information
by computer in a few minutes, that would take you hours by other
methods.  

	Note that this is a genetics course.  We are exploring human
problems, hence a good deal of medical description of symptoms and much
information about the social aspects of the conditions will be available.
In some cases this is very interesting information and it can be used
to enhance your presentations and paper.  Remember however that it should
not be the primary focus of your work.  You are expected to talk and write
mostly about genetics.  Not more than 5 percent of your presentation
should be devoted to the symptoms and treatment of the genetic problem 
that you are describing.  An exception is the discussion of genetic
methods of fixing the molecular problem which causes the defect.
 Molecular biology such as protein structures and mechanisms
of how the genetic condition works are valuable additions, however the
molecular biology presented must be directly related to the genetics.

Grading Information

1.  First Presentation  This is sort of a trial run to get you
accustomed to speaking.  It counts 10 percent.  See the specific
information for presentation 1 for detailed instructions.

2.  Second Presentation This is the big one.  25 percent.
See the specific information for presentation 2 for detailed instructions.

3.  Class participation. 10 percent 
During previous years some students have put off learning about
the computer until they were forced to do so on the final.  This
hindered their participation in the course, and forced them to
work much harder than necessary.  As a consequence duing the first
three weeks of the course, i.e, concurently with meetins 2,3 and
4 you must do the following things.
1.  Send me email from your alcor account.  My address is 
beckman@clone.  Note that email from another account or from an
outside provider does not forfill the requirement.
2. Ftp the 461.cshrc anonymously from clone and install it on
your alcor account. Note that clone logs your efforts as you do
this.
3. Post to your news group. Your news group is concordia.class.
bio461. You must post from alcor rather than from an outside provider.

	In addition, a portion of your participation grade is based on
responsibility to your audience.  If you notify me by e-mail if
you can not do your scheduled presentation there is no grade 
penalty for the absence with the first group of talks.  Your penalty is
that you must be ready to present for each subsequent meeting, and you
do not know when you will be asked to speak.  You will be penalized
if you are not there when time is found for you to speak.  In
the second group of talks you must speak at the time specified,
since there is a limited amount of class time.  There are certain
legitimate excuses, but in general the fact that you have something
else to do such as an exam or a paper is not an acceptable excuse.
If you become too ill to do your presentation, notify me by e-mail
before the class.  We will try to arrange a makeup.
	Now and then, there has been a person who finds something
to do during class time and only attends when they have to present.
This practice will result in the loss of your participation mark.
Note that this requirement does not mean that you can not miss a
session. It is not a measure to insure attendance but only a
measure to insure reasonable attendance.  
5. Final Exam.  There will be a take home final distributed at
 the last meeting of the class.  It is due at a date that we decide.
There will be the same late penalty as the penalty for the term paper.
It counts 30 percent.  Again, you can not turn in this paper to a
person other than me.
6. There is a term paper worth 25 percent.  It must be on a subject
that is genetics. I might add that sometimes people write papers
which are really molecular biology papers without any genetic
foundation or papers which merely summarize the symptoms of the
genetic condition that they were assigned. Both practices are
unacceptable.  You must turn the paper in to me.  It can not be
submitted to any other person. You can not email this paper to me.



 

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	beckman@clone.concordia.ca
	Carolyn Beckman
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