BI/0043 (sec
1)
Diversity and Adaptation of Seed Plants
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Professor: Schmitt
Course format: Lecture w/lab Number of respondents: 13 Total Enrollment: 17
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"Diversity and Adaptations of Seed Plants" will teach you the skills to identify plant families and understand their features and adaptations in order to characterize and understand their ecology in terms of diversity and adaptation. BI 20 is a prerequisite for this course, but students affirm that interest in plants is absolutely necessary.
Professor Schmitt led the course through 100+ plant families with contagious enthusiasm. Students found her engaging and open to questions. Classes used various media sources during lecture: overheads, slides, videos, handouts, that students considered very important to learning course material, but simultaneously overloading the students with bombardments of information. Most students did find Professor Schmitt available to talk about personal goals and individual help to develop skills integral to the course.
The courses used a textbook and course packet and survey respondents expressed their difficulty with many pages assigned for required readings. The textbook was useful for reference only, looking at pictures, and students said most of this material was covered very well in class. They said the course packet proved to be much more helpful to understand plant biology, success in exams, and cover material not emphasized in lecture. Throughout the semester students had mid-term and final take-home exams, weekly quizzes on plant identification, and a plant collection.
Students spent three to six hours each week on course work. Many struggled with the magnitude of assigned reading and spent more time on memorizing when preparing for quizzes. Students described this course as valuable for anyone with even remote interest in plants because one will learn valuable skills. But, to get the most out of this class, one should enjoy the subject matter enough to learn a new language and vocabulary on angiosperms to achieve the course goals.
View BI/0043 in the Brown Online Course Announcement.
