WEEK 13 LEARNING JOURNAL
Please try to address these questions to the best of your abilities. Please post on your blog by the end of Sunday of week 13 (April 12th).
Congratulations on completing the course (and, if applicable, your degree!)
Three main things in BIOL463
Please describe, briefly, the three things that you learned in BIOL463 and that you consider to be the “most important” ones.
- I learnt a lot of information about planarian regeneration because of the research project
- I learnt more about different techniques that can be used for genetic analysis
- Hox genes and their role in segment identity
- Identify types of knowledge
For each of your three “things”, please try to identify what type of knowledge it represents (Factual, Conceptual, Procedural/Skills, Metacognitive).
- Information about planarian regeneration is mostly factual knowledge
- Information about different techniques could be procedural knowledge and also some factual knowledge
- Hox genes is conceptual knowledge
- What makes “things” stand out for you
For each of your three “things”, please indicate what made it stand out for you.
- I really love learning about planarians, so any information in this matter stands out to me
- I also like knowing about different laboratory techniques , so this stood out for me having this kind of knowledge will be very useful
- Hox genes stood out for me because they just show how complex genetics and development can be, and how much of it we still don’t know about
- Relevance/use
Please describe, briefly, what you expect each of these three “things” to be useful or relevant for.
- It will be helpful if I chose to do any research with planarians ! 🙂
- I think having as much knowledge as possible about different techniques and being able to use them in the appropriate situation will be very important in doing any kind of research, and can reduce research costs/time significantly
- I think Hox genes show us how important transcription factors can be during development. Also the internal regulation of Hox genes by themselves can be used to explain other complicated pathways and patterns.
- Three main things in your undergraduate education
Please describe, briefly, the three things that you learned during your undergraduate education and that you consider to be the “most important” ones. Why do you find them so important?
- Time management – I think this is something that my undergraduate education allowed me to work on, this will be important for me in anything that I do in the future, whether it is working in a company or studying some more – being able to stay on top of things will always be helpful!
- I learned about my skills, interests, strengths, weaknesses. I have gained more confidence in myself and my skills in solving problems. I was also able to discover my interests in the field of biology. These are important because I can use my interests to pursue future career goals and use my problem solving skills when questions arise.
- Biology is messy – unlike math, physics and other areas of study that there is clear formulas to solve problems, there can be many “solutions” in biology as long as they are supported by evidence (ie. no one really knows what’s exactly happening) . I find this important because when I am doing research for example, I am motivated to always question previous findings/conclusions.