Course Syllabus

RiceX BIOC300.1x Proteins:  Biology's Workforce

A TOUR OF PROTEIN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION

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This course provides a tour of proteins — from their basic structure and function to techniques for purification and characterization of individual proteins. Proteins are the key product of our genetic material and come in an astounding range of structures with surprising and essential functions for living organisms. A background of high school chemistry and biology will be assumed in the material presented in the course. A brief review of key concepts that will be important from those courses is provided in the introductory segment with links to sources on each topic for additional clarification.

Organization:  The course is organized into 4 weeks of lectures and 1 week for the final exam. Each of the first 4 weeks will have video lectures with associated questions, homework, and a weekly quiz. The final week will be for the final exam. The grade allocation is indicated below. 

The graded portions of this course are your individual responsibility, and the quizzes and final exam should be completed without consulting your notes or other materials.

Grading Rubric:

Note that one of the four quizzes and one of the four homeworks will be dropped in determining the points (i.e., your lowest grade on each of these two assignments will be dropped). All assignments are due at 18:00 UTC. This link provides information on conversion of UTC to your time zone!

Optional Materials: In addition to the required sections, a series of optional materials are provided each week to enhance your learning:

 (1) Supplementary Materials, comprising videos, descriptions of crystallographic and NMR structures, and a list of links to resources for topics covered.

(2) Test Your Skills provides a case or historic article relevant to the material with questions (and answers available).

(3) What's New? focuses on new discoveries that link with the lecture material and poses questions that we invite you to address in scheduled Discussion sessions. We also invite you to share your own discoveries of relevant publications using the tools discussed in the Introductory Section.

Time and Workload:  The estimated workload is 4-6 hours per week, depending on your background level and your working style.

Textbook:  No textbook is required, but the following resources provide useful reference materials. This course was designed using textbooks by Bruce Alberts and colleagues on molecular and cell biology listed below, and other resources such as OpenStax provide texts on biology.

•Essential Cell Biology, 4^th Edition, Alberts et al., Garland Science. This book is at a more accessible level than the original book listed below.  

•Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5^th and 6^th Editions, Alberts et al., Garland Science. These texts provide a deeper dive into the material. In the Course Schedule link, we provide links to the relevant sections of the 4^th Edition of this book, which are posted on a searchable site at National Institutes of Health. This material is older, and we recommend that you reference the most recent editions for today’s “take” on the material; however, access to the 4th Edition is facile.

•Biology, free online from OpenStax College Biology, covers many of the basic concepts in this course (though in different order and depth). 

Please note that these are excellent resources for enhancing your understanding and to clarify any specific questions, but the entirety of the content for which you are responsible will be provided through the required videos and other materials on this site. Optional materials are designed to facilitate your learning and to allow you to dig deeper if you wish.

Honor Code:  The edX Honor Code forms a solid base from which the courses offered to the larger community can be effective and useful. While we encourage collaboration and learning communities — ask your questions in the Discussion! — please avoid asking for or posting answers to the specific grading assignments. Those who violate the parameters delineated in this Syllabus may have their progress erased and their accounts disabled.

Collaboration Guidelines: Interacting with fellow students is a great way to learn material and to hear other perspectives, but it is important that the work that you do in the graded portions of this course is your own. The course staff will be removing posts and responses from the discussion forum that go beyond these guidelines. Please remember that the edX Honor Code applies even when you are not on the site. If there are repeated instances of working outside these guidelines, your progress may be erased and your account disabled.

Working with someone else on the practice questions or discussing the general approach to solving a problem is acceptable. Giving or receiving assistance for the quizzes, homework, and exams is not acceptable. That is, discussion, copying, asking for or receiving answers or explanations to quizzes or exams before the deadline has passed are NOT acceptable.

Certificate:  To earn a certificate for this class requires achieving an overall grade of 60%.

Questions with Each Video:  You are allowed three attempts to answer these questions. Take a little time to reflect between these attempts! 

Weekly Quizzes and Weekly Homework Questions:  These questions will be similar to those with individual videos (a mix of question styles). You will be allowed two tries for each set of quiz questions with no review of the videos. You will be allowed two tries for each set of homework questions. These assignments are due weekly as indicated in the Course Schedule. Recall that your lowest quiz and lowest homework grades will be dropped in determining your final grade.

Final Exam:  The final exam will have components similar to the quizzes, but will be ~50 questions and will cover all of the material presented in this course. The exam opens and closes at the times indicated on the Course Schedule. You will have only one try for each set of 10 questions for the final exam.

Practice Questions:  The questions with each video will provide a sense of the types of questions that will be on the quizzes and on the final. 

Discussion Forum: The discussion forum provides a link between you as a student with other students and with course staff. This forum is designed to be a useful resource and a mechanism for BIOC300.1x participants to engage one another. We will publish a schedule in the Course Info tab for specific times during which the forum will be monitored to allow specific discussion of the "What's New?" items and of the Reflection Questions following each lecture segment.

The course staff will be proactive in monitoring this forum and will remove inappropriate posts and responses. Again, the edX Honor Code applies both inside and outside the forum to anything relevant to this course. Repeated violations may result in your progress being erased and/or your account being disabled.

Key Guidelines for the Discussion Forum

•Use the established forum categories.  Making your own categories ends up confusing the conversation.

•Search before asking.  Your question may already have been addressed in the Discussion, so try to see if there is an answer in place before creating a new post.

•Write clearly and provide a concise and descriptive title for your post.  Provide sufficient information for others to understand your question or problem. Which assignment are you discussing, what part of the assignment, what is unclear? Correct spelling and grammar will help others understand and enable useful responses. Avoid abbreviations, excessive punctuation, and ALL CAPS to make your post clear.

•Upvote helpful posts.  You can click on the green “plus” button so that effective posts and/or responses can be found readily, and you can search by these votes to find the most interesting posts.

•Notify staff regarding bugs and errors in the system. If you see a "bug" in the site materials, please use the "Technical Issues" section of the Discussion to notify course staff of any courseware-related problems. Please use this section ONLY when reporting courseware issues.

•Use the discussion forum to facilitate learning.  We encourage questions, clarification requests, contributions to the conversation, but focusing the dialogue on the topics related to course content will make this forum most effective.

•Be polite.  This forum is effectively a global classroom, with students from around the world and with very different backgrounds. This setting is the opportunity to create a positive community, so please report any posts that are inappropriate, abusive, offensive, may infringe on copyright, or in any other manner violate the edX Honor Code that applies to this course.

Attributions:  For each week, a list of attributions for figures is provided. We are deeply grateful for the permission, particularly from Garland Press, to utilize figures that convey effectively the specific points that are addressed in this course. We are especially grateful to Garland Press for permission to use not only figures but also the videos found in the Supplementary Materials that so effectively illustrate specific points in the lectures.

Accessibility and Accommodations:  Your experience in this course is important to us! We strive to provide content that is accessible to all students. If you need course accommodations because of a documented disability that may affect academic performance, please communicate your approved accommodations to the course team at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course. All discussions will remain as confidential as possible.