Workload and time-management
The workload in this course is probably high. My estimate (using the
Wakeforest
University Courseload Estimator) comes to about 15 hours per week,
based on ~20 pages of engaged reading per week, ~40 pages of
research-level writing per term, and 3 hours of contact time.
YMWV.
Time management
Time management is crucial in this course and you will need to start
full-speed right away and not let up until you cross the finish line.
Pause for a few days, break the habit, and it will be hard to get back
to your best performance mode. Our due dates are quite open and give you
a lot of flexibility if you keep one thing in mind: the due dates are
the last dates on which assignments can be submitted. Never
wait until the last date, you will run out of time to do other things.
So get everything done as early as possible. The UofT Assignment
Calculator looks helpful, although I think it could be nicely
customized for this course.
Study habits
The single most important factor that determines how much you profit
from a course is how actively you engage with it. This does not
necessarily mean visible activity, but it means empathy:
thinking along with the material and always striving to discover its
meaning for you, yourself, your interests and likes and dislikes. One
important way to promote this is to engage continuously, because it is
frustrating to fall behind and this frustration will make it even harder
to get back on track. And another aspect is keeping focussed:
for example, taking notes during “lectures” is a great way to make sure
you are actively listening.
Extensions for course work
Try not to require extensions. If you need
an extension, this already means that planning has gone wrong. Just
adding a few more days is not going to fix that – on the contrary, you
may just be digging a deeper hole for yourself since this is probably
not your only course. So if that happens, we should better jointly be
talking to your registrar, whether you are getting all the learning help
you need, and if there are perhaps some unresolved accessibility issues;
perhaps we need a completely different study plan. We can work around a
lot of issues to help you learn to your best capacity.
That said, here are the cornerstones of how this course interprets
and implements Faculty policies: the key idea is that extensions
must be fair, reasonable, and equitable.
- Submissions due before the drop date (Wednesday, November 16
2022):
-
No extensions will be considered for these submissions. Such an extension
would not be “fair, equitable and reasonable”, i.e. granting this to
individual students would violate the requirement to give all students
equal opportunity to succeed in the course. In fact, if you find
yourself so far behind in the course that you are unable to submit
meaningful work for assessment by that date, I highly recommend that you
drop the course – you will not be able to complete the rest in time
either.
- Signing up for the Oral Tests:
-
The dates for the Oral Tests will most likely be bunched into the end of
November, due to the ridiculously late drop date. If you fail to connect
to the Zoom meeting at the scheduled time, this is equivalent to a
missed midterm exam in terms of applicable Faculty policy: “if the
reasons for missing your test are acceptable to the instructor, a
make-up opportunity should be offered to the student where practicable.”
Acceptable reasons will be considered if they are justified, if
the consideration is “fair, equitable and reasonable”, and if the reason
is documented through one of the four types of “official” documentation:
UofT Verification of Illness or Injury Form, Student Health or
Disability Related Certificate, a College Registrar’s Letter, and an
Accessibility Services Letter. Scope for a “practicable” make-up
opportunity for the Oral Test will be extremely limited however.
- Submissions due before the last day of class (Monday, December 5
2022 23:59):
-
Since the course does not have a final exam, the Faculty requires grades
to be marked, collated and submitted a few days after the last day to
submit course work in the Fall term. Thus the final deadline for all
course work is Monday, December 6 2022, 23:59 EST. Given the grading
requirement, I cannot normally grant extensions beyond this date. The
Faculty allows so called informal extensions to be granted “in
extraordinary circumstances”; in those cases too, the requirement to be
“fair, equitable and reasonable” will apply, i.e. you would need to
demonstrate that the need for the extension was due to unavoidable
circumstances that go significantly beyond what was expected of the rest
of the class, and submit “official” documentation to me. If that
happens, (i) we would determine an adjusted submission date, (ii) I will
initially submit a mark of 0 for the missing submissions, and (iii) I
will submit an amended mark, after that date, if appropriate. Note that
the Faculty requires that such extensions don’t go beyond a few days
after the end of the Final Examination Period. If you require an
extension beyond that date you need to submit a formal petition through
your College Registrar.
In summary, everything about extensions is quite onerous, and it will
be much better to work towards finishing your coursework far ahead of
time – and you can!
This Course is a “Safe Space”
This course will do everything to ensure that all are
welcome, and protected from harassment, judgmental
behaviour, and harm. As a professional learning environment, the goal of
this course is to foster and encourage engagement and creativity, to
acknowledge strengths, to be helpful with weaknesses, to establish an
enjoyable community on a basis of mutual trust, and to nurture personal
growth. These are not empty words, they mean something to me and I trust
that we are all in complete agreement.
I often see that students are embarrassed to speak up in class, are
hesitant to discuss mistakes, feel that they would prefer to ask
questions anonymously, etc. Please realize that these are already signs
of a toxic environment that needs to be addressed, and they diminish
what you could get out of a course. Your questions, whatever they are,
are not only valid, they are valuable.
I wish that this characterizes how we will come together and conduct
this term – however, the outside world may be different and thus I do
not permit sharing of discussions, contributions, conversations etc.
outside of class. This applies in particular to social media, including
reddit, facebook, whatsapp, tiktok, discord etc. etc.
Sharing information about the course, its participants, and/or
contents with others, in a way that discloses identifying information,
or links material or events to specific individuals will constitute a
breach of our “Safe Space” policy.
This is a simple principle that I need everyone to respect:
What happens in the course stays in the course!
Actually this merely implements in a specific way what the Student Code
of Conduct requires of us all anyway. If you have any doubts or
questions about this, please don’t make assumptions but contact me for
clarification.
Names
I will use the first and last name that I find in my class roster,
unless you request me to use a different name. You can change your
“display first name” for UofT online services here. In Zoom meetings, I have
to be able to identify your as a student in the course, and I will
remove without warning any participant who I do not recognize as
a student of the course. You can set your name in your Zoom
user profile, or change it even after you have joined a meeting,
from the “participants” list. If you have a Chinese name, please add the
汉字 on your _About me…” page in your Google docs folder – I can’t
distinguish 怡 from 毅 from the English alone and would like to
pronounce it correctly.
Land
It has become customary in academia to acknowledge the original
owners of the land we live and work:
I wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto
operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the
Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today,
this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from
across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work
on this land.
The above can be found on the site of our Indigenous
Initiatives and land acknowledgement is considered a “protocol”.
Though, I do have mixed feelings when I encounter this formula – (i) it
seems too smooth, and too ritualistic to address the complex history of
colonialization and genocide in Canada in a meaningful way; (ii) it does
not really do, to profess a protocol without an understanding what your
role is in this protocol, at this time, on this occasion; and (iii),
such an acknowledgement can only be a small part of a relationship, a
beginning. Thus I hope you can take this as an
opportunity to add meaning to the protocol, understand what the words
mean, reflect on the history of land ownership – specifically, our
campus is part of the “Toronto Purchase” – learn
more about the actual Treaty
boundaries, here and elsewhere; and figure what out is meant by “Turtle
Island”. This all is a part of engaging with the
world around us with respect, which in turn is the key to grow, in and
through the encounter.
Recordings
No Lecture Recordings, but …
Even though I do not plan to create shareable video recordings of
lectures and the like, exceptions may arise and thus the following
disclaimer applies and is assumed to be agreed on by you through your
participation in the course. Two considerations guide us in principle:
copyright considerations and privacy
considerations.
According to the
University’s
Provostial Guidelines:
The unauthorised use of any form of device to audiotape, photograph,
video-record or otherwise reproduce lectures, course notes or teaching
materials provided by instructors is covered by the Canadian
Copyright Act and is prohibited. Students must obtain prior written
consent to such recording. In the case of private use by students with
disabilities, the instructor’s consent must not be unreasonably
withheld.
As the instructor, I may at times record this course, including your
participation, and such recordings may be made available to students who
are registered in the course, for viewing or listening remotely. As the
Provost emphasizes, course videos and materials belong to the author of
the recording and are protected by Canadian copyright law. You are not
permitted to download, copy, or share any course or student materials,
including but not limited to audio, video, images, or text - without the
explicit permission of the copyright holder. In any case, any
course-related material is for your personal use only. Any exceptions
must be arranged in advance, with the consent of all involved
parties.
Since this is a University Policy, Students who violate these terms
will be subject to disciplinary actions under the Code
of Student Conduct.
Do contact me for any questions about recording and use of videos in
which you appear, in particular in case you have significant reasons to
opt out of recordings; in that case we will need to construct
alternative arrangements specific to your circumstances.
Documentation of Assesments
I will generally record class-sessions and exams for
documentation, since some of you receive marks at these occasions.
Such recordings will not be shared, except as may be required by the
University, for the purpose of administering the course. For example, we
may need to review recordings to justify marks, or while resolving
allegations of academic misconduct and the like. In that case, material
will be strictly shared privately, on a need-to-know basis, and all
recipients will be committed to the same terms.
Accessibility
This course is different in many ways from other courses you have
taken or will take, and the accommodations that our accessibility
counselors make may not actually work well since they don’t actually
know the course. So, if you have any special needs, get in touch with me
and we’ll work out the best way to support you. No big issues here, we
do this every term.
Academic Integrity
This is the last item, but potentially the most consequential one. In
order to work together in a mutual trust-based relation, this course
takes academic integrity very serious. So serious in fact that it has
its own learning
unit. Academic integrity is often erronously condensed to concerns
about cheating and plagiarism, but it is in fact a question of personal
growth.
Such growth is the actual goal of the course. Computational
biology is the path.
