Esteban Fernández-Juricic

Lectures: Fridays 12:00PM - 1:50PM - PH2-107

Labs: Fridays 8:00AM - 10:45AM - PH2-207

Some labs will be TBA (please, see schedule at the bottom of this page)

Prerequisites: Bio 260, Bio 350

Field Methods in Ecology course website: http://www.csulb.edu/~efernand/fmecol/

Instructor: Dr. Esteban Fernández-Juricic

Phone: 562-985-7597 (but you can reach me faster by e-mail)

E-mail: efernand@csulb.edu

Instructor's website: http://www.csulb.edu/~efernand/

Office: PH1-226

Office hours: Wednesdays from 1:30 to 3:30 PM

Announcements

GRADES

Course description:

Design of field research projects, collection and analysis of data, writing and presentation of reports. Emphasis on field sampling techniques. Time availability for field trips and field research projects required.

Course objectives:  

The main goal of this course is that students learn how to design, plan, and conduct a field ecology research project, and how to process, analyze, and interpret field data, and communicate results in oral and written forms. This course is aimed at sharpening the students' organizational, critical thinking, and team-working skills, which are essential for field ecology research. Another goal is to increase the students' knowledge on different field ecology techniques that are used by different local and federal agencies.   

Teaching approach:

Most course activities will be approached through a guided inquiry process. Guided inquiry is a multifaceted process that involves making observations; posing questions; examining the literature to determine what is already known; planning research; using tools to gather, analyze and interpret data; discussing the results of novel experimental evidence; proposing answers, explanations and predictions; and communicating the results. Guided inquiry gives equal weight to knowledge and skills through a hands-on, activity-based focus that relies on strong content. Some activities will be highly structured (considerable instructor guidance through detailed procedures, pre-made data tables and questions that call for fairly specific answers), while others will be less structured (students will have much more responsibility for collecting, recording, and analyzing data). The goals of combining both types of activities are to (a) explore concepts in real-world situations, (b) use evidence to reason through a problem, and (c) use concepts to reach independent conclusions justified by evidence. Communication skills will be improved through presentations and discussions of recent literature and original research conducted by students.

My expectations of students:

• attend classes consistently,
• be prepared for class meetings (read the papers that are assigned for each class),
• participate actively in class discussions and group activities,
• work in groups,
• be respectful of your peers (including myself), and
• take advantage of this course as an opportunity to learn and think!

What students can expect from the Instructor:

• strive to create a positive learning environment in the classroom,
• encourage you to be actively engaged in your learning,
• bring enthusiasm about using the scientific method,
• be respectful and supportive,
• try to challenge you in positive and constructive ways to improve your learning experience, and
• show up to each class on time and well-prepared. 

There is no textbook required for this course. However, students are expected to purchase the materials for two labs from Simbiotic Software $17.75 (Mark & Recapture and Prairie Sampling) by Feb. 15th, 2008: http://www.simbio.com/longbeach.html

For one of the field trips (Catalina Island), students will need to purchase their transportation tickets (Catalina Express), which will be around $60-62.

Evaluation

Grading system:

Graduate students will have an additional assignment (research project proposal) and will have to perform at a higher level of competence than undergraduates for the same grade. 

Slight adjustments may be made at the end of the semester according to the class curve.

Attendance to lectures and labs

It is very important that students attend ALL lectures and labs, because many assignments will be done and evaluated in class. It is not the instructor’s responsibility to repeat material for students who miss class. Each student should expect to be called on by name several times during the semester. This will allow me to get to know each of you and assess your understanding of the main concepts discussed in class. Points will be given for class attendance (including both lectures and labs). All students start with the full point load  and lose points, as determined by the instructor, for absences, late arrivals, or other failures to participate, such as newspaper reading, bubble-gum blowing, and other disruptions.

Excused absences include: (a) illness or injury to the student, (b) death, injury, or serious illness of an immediate family member, (c) religious reasons, (d) jury duty or government obligation, and (e) University sanctioned or approved activities. The instructor should be informed about excused absences within 48 hours.

For more information, please read the CSULB attendance policy carefully at: http.://www.csulb.edu/~senate/Policies/01-01.html 

Make up assignments

Some, but not all, make-up assignments will ONLY be allowed for justified absences (see above). I must be informed within 24 hours of missing the assignment due date. All make-up assignments will be oral.

Late work

Students will be penalized for late work by deducting 7% per day of the total point load of that activity for three days. Afterwards, the work will not be graded, and students will not earn credits for that activity (= 0 points).  

Policy on Withdrawals

It is the student’s responsibility to withdraw from classes.  Instructors have no obligation to withdraw students who do not attend courses, and may choose not to do so. Please, download this file to find information about withdrawing from classes.

Accommodation

It is the student’s responsibility to notify the instructor in advance of the need for accommodation of a disability.

Cheating and Plagiarism 

Written work that you hand in is assumed to be original unless your source material is documented appropriately. Using the ideas or words of another person, even a peer, or a web site, as if it were your own, is plagiarism.

Cheating and plagiarism are serious academic offenses. Students should read the section on cheating and plagiarism in the CSULB catalog.  

Furthermore, students should be aware that faculty members have a range of academic actions available to them in cases of cheating and plagiarism from arranging a conference, to failing a student on that particular work, to failing a student in a course, to referring the case to judicial affairs.

The use of computers.  Announcements and messages from me to the class may come by e-mail through BeachBoard. If you do not check your CSULB e-mail account regularly, but use another account instead, please set your account in BeachBoard so that it will forward messages to your other account.

Computer Help! The CSULB Technology Help Desk is now available for students. You may check the Help Desk at: http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/academic_technology/thd/ or call 985-4959.

Selection of papers (primary literature) for the research project

You should select papers from primary literature (try to balance classic and recent papers). Many journals include ecological articles. You can search for these papers in databases (MY RECOMMENDATION: Web of Science). Otherwise, you can browse the following journals from this website: http://www.csulb.edu/~efernand/links.htm

IMPORTANT: If you do not find a copy of a paper at the Library, you could request it from the Library (free service for CSULB students, but it takes about 10 days to get the papers) or directly from the author through e-mail (stop by my office, and I will explain how to do it). 

Reading primary literature: general guidelines

While reading papers (quizzes, research project) please, try to connect the ideas to the broader context of ecology. Focus on how the paper solves a problem/answers a question/tests a hypothesis.

General assessment of a paper:

• Identify the novelty of the paper.

• Identify the hypothesis/es and prediction/s.

• Identify a flaw in its design or in the analyses or in the interpretation of data.

• Identify the relevance of the study to other areas.

Some specific questions you are expected to ask/answer:

Oral presentation of your term project

I would strongly encourage you to read thoroughly this online resource (Oral Presentation by Jeff Radel) in order to prepare a successful presentation.

You presentation should contain the following sections:

1) Descriptive title (be as descriptive as possible).

2) Introduction – Your presentation should begin with an introductory statement about the topic and its evolutionary/ecological/conservation significance.  This can be broad at first, but narrow down towards a specific question or hypothesis.  It should include the development or rationale for your hypothesis(es) and a clear statement of your predictions.

3) Methods – you should give a brief description of your methods.  This is where diagrams, flow charts, or cartoons of your experimental design can be really helpful in illustrating what your dependent and independent variables or factors were and how your compared them. Please, present the GLM models that you used as studied in class.

4) Results – Your results should be displayed using your graphs and tables that summarize your findings.  Do not show raw data.  As scientists, you have all been trained on how to interpret graphical data.  This is the language we used to see patterns.  You can put your statistical results right on your graphs (namely, p-values, sample sizes, df, t or F –statistics…).  Always ask yourself what type of graph best illustrates your data.

5) Discussion – Here is where you tell us what your results mean.  This can be bulleted text that can step through your explanations of your findings.  You should also be using other studies to back up or support what you found.  Be sure to give credit to other authors. End with a take-home message of your talk.

Finally, practice your talk for time.  Remember, you will only have 15 min. to give your talk.  The more your practice, the more comfortable you will become with the presentation and you will make fewer mistakes. 

Assessment criteria for your oral presentation:

Final exam (research project paper):

Topics

Students are expected to conduct a novel research project that should have a strong field ecology component and write a paper to demonstrate their ability to accomplish the course goals. Two options may be available: (a) a study suggested by the Instructor, and (b) a research project suggested by students (requires Instructor's approval).

The Instructor will supervise these projects closely to ensure the students' success in the assignment. Students are expected to discuss their projects at length with the Instructor, work in groups, review the scientific literature, and gather data in the field. Students are also expected to update the Instructor once per week (deadlines Wednesdays 1 PM) by sending an e-mail (one per group) or stopping by my office during office hours. If any of these requirements are not met, points will be deducted from the group research project point load.

General instructions

• Your paper should include the following sections: Title, Authors (along with their e-mails, phone numbers, and the sections each author wrote), Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, Literature Cited, Tables (with captions explaining their content), and Figures (with captions explaining their content). 
• Each research group will have four students. Within the group, each student is expected to write a specific section of the research paper (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) due at the end of the semester (see below). Pay as much attention to the sections you write as to the whole paper. The Abstract and the Literature Cited section should be written by all group members.
• If you cannot decide which section each group member will write, ask me. I will be happy to help.
• Write clearly and concisely.
• Use double space (not 1.5 spacing) text and 12 point font size (Times New Roman or Arial), and number pages (page 1 is the Title Page).

• Handwritten work will not be accepted.

• Avoid slang and jargon.
• Avoid passive verbs. Use the active voice when possible.
• Define abbreviations the first time that you use them.
• Include headings for each component of your paper.
• You must cite your references following the stylistic format (see below).
• Do not quote from your sources. You should paraphrase and cite.
• You must provide the Instructor with a hard and electronic copy of your paper, an electronic copy of your data sheets (in Excel), the output of the statistical analysis including figures (in Excel), and the sources of information in case you got any data online. 
• Pay attention to your writing (use the grammatical tool provided by Word).
• A minimum of 10 references (all primary literature, not review papers or textbooks) should be read and cited at the end of the paper. This applies to all sections together. If you cite more than 10 references, it will be an enhancing criteria for your final group grade. 

Specific instructions

To learn how to write a scientific paper, please visit and read thoroughly the following online resource:

If you have questions after reading this resource, please do not hesitate to ask me.

Some sections of your research paper require special attention. Here are some tips:

• Before turning in your work, include the name as well as e-mail of the authors.
• If you measured something, it should be clear exactly how you measured it and to what accuracy.
• Use the metric system, please.
• In the Results, you ought to provide the results of the statistical tests.
• Careful consideration should be made regarding the most effective way to show your results. For instance, you may use a graph with means and standard errors instead of a Table. However, if you have a lot of means and standard errors to present (or results from statistical tests) then you should use a Table.
• Please, do not repeat the same results in both a table and a figure.
• Never use the raw output of your statistical software in your Results. Each table of test results needs to be redrawn so that it is clear what exactly is being displayed. Each test should include the p-value and the test statistic.
• Make sure that your data satisfy the assumptions of any statistical test that you wish to perform BEFORE you run the test.
• For all parametric tests (e.g. t-test, ANOVA), your data must be normally distributed and the variances must be equal among treatments. If these assumptions are not met, you may have to transform the data.
• The first paragraph of your Discussion should summarize in a couple of sentences the MAIN (not all!) findings of your study.
• The final paragraph of your Discussion should have the take-home message of your paper (what have we learned with your study?) and how will that affect future research.

Checklist before turning your research paper in:

• Do the Title and Abstract accurately describe the contents of the article?
• Does the Introduction clearly state how the study is novel and set out the reasons for, and context of, the study?
• Is the purpose/goal of the study made clear in the Introduction?
• Are the hypotheses/predictions being tested clearly stated in the Introduction?
• Are the methods and experimental design described in sufficient detail for the study to be repeated?
• Are the results correctly presented?
• Are the tables and figures in poor format or crowed? Do they show what they purport to show?
• Are there errors of fact or interpretation?
• Have any ideas been over- or under- emphasized?
• Do you find any content repeated or duplicated?  A common fault is repetition in the text of data in tables or figures.
• Are the authors’ statements clear?
• Have the authors cited the pertinent literature?
• Is the overall presentation clear and accurate, without wordy or tangential passages?
• Is the paper formatted correctly? 

Please, note that these will be the evaluation criteria.

Examples

The assignment was to study the effects of human disturbance (namely, visitors to protected areas) on the population density, habitat use, and tolerance of an endemic species (in this case, an amphibian). You may download examples of this project written by different students that got different grades to have an idea of the requirements of the research project. Grades: F, D, C, B, A. 

Spring 2008: Class schedule and class hand-outs for download (usually posted by 5 PM the day before the lecture)

IMPORTANT: If you happen to have a laptop, it would be great if you could bring it to the labs, as the number of computers available in the Department may not be enough for all students. Thanks for your cooperation.

Please, note that this is a class based on field activities, which depend on weather conditions, the behavior of animals, permits, and students' time availability. Therefore, adjustments in the course schedule or the course assignments may be necessary. Students will be notified about changes, if any, and, whenever possible, students will be consulted in advance about any changes.