| Instructor | Dr. Morgan Ernest (she/her) | Dr. Ethan White (he/him) |
|---|---|---|
| Office Location | Building 150 | Building 150 |
| skmorgane@ufl.edu | ethanwhite@ufl.edu |
Tuesday, Period 3 (9:35-10:25 am), MCCB 1108
Thursday, Period 3 (9:35-10:25 am), MCCB 1108
The goal of this class is to provide students a basic understanding of how populations and communities change through time and to provide fundamental concepts of how to forecast those changes. By the end of the semester, students will:
This course is a mixture of class discussion of the primary literature and hands-on experience involving data and computing. Completing assigned readings, intellectual engagement with topics, discussion participation, and completion of R-tutorials are the main ways students will learn in this class. Tuesdays are typically concept discussion days. Thursdays are typically R tutorial or other tools discussion.
The course is designed to be in-person. That said, we recognize that folks have a lot of things going on, so if you need to miss some days let us know and we will work with you on how to best keep up with the material.
This discussion is generally centered around the discussion questions that are provided in advance but may also expand beyond them. Our goal is to produce a classroom environment where everyone is comfortable participating in class discussions. We will try to manage discussions so that everyone has a chance to contribute and make sure that folks who are less comfortable interjecting get a chance to participate. We welcome your help in making sure that everyone in the class gets a chance to contribute.
If you don’t feel comfortable talking during class you can provide written responses to the assigned class discussion questions by submitting them to the instructors using the messaging system in Canvas. Instructor notes are also provided via the course website so that students have access to information being discussed in class. The Canvas discussion board can also be used to ask questions and generate discussion with the class related to the topic material.
To help prepare students for paper discussions, and help professors understand things that need clarification during class, everyone is asked to describe things that confused them about reading the paper the night before the paper discussion.
R-tutorials consist of live coding in class where students follow along with the instructor, do informal exercises on their own, and ask questions.
Completed R-tutorials are submitted on Canvas and graded for completion. If you need to miss class on the day of an R tutorial you can follow along with the written R tutorial notes and and submit the resulting R code for the assignment as normal.
The class is focused on in-person interactions, so regular attendence is the best way to get the most out of the class. That said, we understand that life happens.
You can miss two days of paper discussions without submitting makeup work because only 5 out of 7 confusions and participation grades factor into your final grade. If you miss more than two days you should complete the paper confusions for the paper and also send written responses to the discussion questions to the instructors via Canvas. Two to three sentences per question is an approximate guideline for the length of response to each question, but feel free to write more or less as appropriate.
You can miss one day of R-tutorials without submitting makeup work because only 10 out of 11 R-tutorials factor into your final grade. However, tutorials build on one another so we highly recommend completing all tutorials.
Information on UF academic policies, academic resources, and compus health and wellness resources is available on the Academic Policies & Resources webpage.
UF policies related to grades are available on the Grades and Grading Policies webpage.
The details course schedule is available on the course website and on Canvas.