Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Thanks for your interest in BI 222 (CRN 20939). Here are some additional details about how the course will be structured:

Books?

The primary text is “Human Heredity: Principles and issues” 11th edition, by Michael R. Cummings (Thomson, Brooks/Cole). - while this text is in the 11th edition older editions work just fine & are often available for much less. You do not need access to the online textbook site so you don’t need a new edition of this text. Used and older editions are great! You may want to wait until the class starts to purchase the text - that will be fine. 

This is a fully online course! 

Students in this course are expected to enter the course several times a week. Each time you log into the course, be sure to check for any new announcements, email, discussion messages, and calendar postings.

Remember that online courses push most of the responsibility for the material onto the student and so demand a higher level of student responsibility for staying on top of the material. The course has weekly responsibilities that are not available after the week they are due so you will need to stay on top of the course! Students are sometimes surprised by the amount of time a course like this will take - recall that for a 3 credit class the expectation is about 10 - 15 hours a week of time spent on the class for an average student. 

Flexibility

One of the big advantages of a fully online course is the added flexibility it provides. While each week you have a lot of flexibility for when you complete the course requirements, these need to be finished each week and their availability ends at the start of the next week - this means you really need to make sure you will have time, likely a few times a week, to interact with the class material. 

If you have any additional questions about this course, please email me at mjordan@pcc.edu.