Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

This course has two parts, and two instructors. We’ll introduce ourselves below. There are two required attendance times. On Tuesday, you are required to attend the Laboratory part of the course on campus, in Building 7, Room 123, taught by Instructor Olena Kolotushkina, from 3-5:50pm. On Thursday, you will attend the Lecture part of the class from 3-5:50pm by logging in virtually, using Zoom. The lecture part of the class is taught by Instructor Josephine Pino

Meet your instructors! Josephine Pino (lecture)

Hello everyone!  Please call me “Josephine” or “Professor Pino”. 

I’m excited to teach BI 101 again. The great thing about teaching synchronously, is that we will be together in real time even though it will be in Zoom. By way of introduction, I want you to know that I love teaching, and I particularly love nurturing a sense of community and collaboration in my classes. I’m going to do my best to make your biology learning experience engaging while we all learn and discuss things together.  (I learn many things from my students every day. You all never cease to amaze me!)  I made this little 4 minute video to introduce myself.  

If you feel like reaching out by email or even by audio or video, I’d love to hear from you at josephine.pino@pcc.edu. This class will include instructor “office hours” which I often refer to as “student hours” because they are for you.  You can use them to meet with me to get assistance or even just to chat about biology and careers and life as a college student.

Olena Kolotushkina (lab)

Hello! I am Olena, and I will teaching the lab part of our biology course. I find biology fascinating, and I hope this fall we will learn many new and interesting things together. 

Like any science, biology comes with developing and testing new ideas and this is what we will do in the lab. For some activities, we will work in groups, for others - individually, and whenever you need help, I am there for you. And if you happen to have a question outside our lab time, please do not hesitate to email me anytime.

About the course

BI 101 class introduces the properties of life, morphology and physiology of cells, cell chemistry, energy transformation, and the basic principles of ecology (this is from “Course Curriculum Outcomes Guide, or “CCOG”) 

Textbooks

Lecture: Biology 2e (free electronic version will be available in D2L and also can be found here)

Lab: BI 101 Lab Manual (free electronic version will be available in D2L)

Class Overview and Attendance

Lecture: We will be together 3 hours per week, remotely,, with opportunities to learn together in a variety of ways.  You will spend a lot of this time in breakout groups working with peer teammates on assignments based on the prior week’s video lectures and accompanying guided learning assignments. These assignments are designed as a way to process and think about the concepts you’re learning, and about how these are connected to life outside the classroom.  When you are together in groups, you’ll build onto this learning, together, for your graded group work. Your learning will be assessed in a variety of ways, including assignments and exams that require clear written communication.

Lab: We will have weekly in-person meetings on Tuesdays at 3-5:50pm. During these meetings, we will work with lab exercises related to the lecture topic, and attendance and completion of the lab work is required.

Contact information

Josephine Pino at josephine.pino@pcc.edu  

Olena Kolotushkina at olena.kolotushkina@pcc.edu

For the lecture part of the course, you will be attending virtually, so you are required to have use of a device that can run Zoom. If you are new to using Zoom, please visit this webpage. Microphones are very strongly encouraged for use during our virtual Zoom class meetings. Students who are unable to use the microphone function will be required to participate by communicating (a lot!) by typing via Chat and in Google Docs during every synchronous class session.  Participation and collaboration is a big part of the course!

Required group and individual assignments require the use of Shared Google Apps such as “Google Doc”.  Resources for learning how to use  Google Apps  are at this PCC Learning Technology Website.