This class has been one of my favorites, I enjoyed how my teacher structured the class and I think it helped me do well. There was a lot of room for getting to know my classmates and many of my class members have since become good friends of mine.
Two of the topics that I learned much about from the class were niches and speciation. The tests were also very good at cementing our understanding. The tests often consisted of reading about a scenario of nature and then explaining which biological phenomenon applicable. I find that writing really helps me remember things for the future.
This class struck a great balance between biology and ecology. We got to learn about organism adaptions while also understand how the adaptions are used to fit inside their ecosystem. I would still call this class one of the more general level classes for biology and environmental students as the scope of the course keeps a broad focus on universal biological mechanisms and teaches general terms. Being general however is certainly not a bad thing. The terms and topics we learned have been very useful in my classes. This information that I learned in class has made the reading of science papers easier.
My favorite part about this class was our group project. The project let us use our creativity to explore a question of nature. We were given a large chunk of time to develop our project and work through the mistakes that amateur scientists naturally make. Overcoming those mistakes taught us more than our successes and I felt more confident about research as a result. That is why it is my artifact for this class. My group settled on researching which types of soils fostered plant growth best. We looked at upland and alluvial soils and conducted measurements of pH, organic matter, and bulk density.
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