 Hello there. I am here today to welcome, this video is being recorded for those of you who are enrolled in online general biology for fall 2017 at College of the Redwoods. I thought I'd record a little video for y'all because there are 34 of you who are signed up to take this class. 24 of you are in the class and the rest of you clowns are on the wait list. And I thought, you know, I thought we probably should have a little conversation before you fully commit to this online bio thing just so you have an idea of what to expect from this class. So I have a little like chit chat to go through just some things that I think you should be aware of before, before fully committing to this. Because I receive emails almost every day saying, dude, there's no room in the online bio one class. Can I get in? And it was definitely the first biology class to fill, which is kind of amazing considering anatomy and physio and micro. Those classes are highly coveted and fill really fast. But obviously you guys want an online option for a science lab course. I'm super in. I'm committed. Let's make it happen. But be sure you know what you're getting yourself into. So the first thing that I should tell you is that this is not the first time that I'm teaching this class. I'm so happy about that. I survived my first semester teaching online and some of my students survived as well. We started. I've got some numbers for you just so that you know that I'm not blowing smoke around. Like this is legit. We started on day one last semester with online bio for the first time ever with 29 students enrolled. By census, what, two weeks later, we had 22. For exam one, we had 18 humans take exam one. The average on exam one, are you ready for this? In fact, I got to write this down for you because this is such a crazy number. It was 14 percentage points lower. The exam average was 14 percentage points lower than the average in my face-to-face class that I was teaching at the same time. Exact same exam. My 18 survivors from day one who had decided to commit to doing this class shared with me that they didn't realize that it was actually going to be like they were going to have to study for exams. All the exams are proctored. There are five of them. There are four big midterm exams and there's one comprehensive final exam and all of it, like I said, it's all proctored and they're the same exams I would give in my face-to-face class. The great news is that we closed that gap and the averages after this, the average in my face-to-face class and my online class was the same. So the students in the online class, the survivors in the online class, totally figured out how to study and they improved their performance. Only 15 people took exam two, 13 took exam three and 11 made it to exam four in the final. That is not, the significance of that is not lost on me. To start with 29 and to end with 11, there's a reason why so many people dropped. It was a lot bigger load than they thought. So let me just say something really fast. I'm going to sort of share with you a day or a week in the life of the online class so you have a better idea of what to expect. But there are definitely circumstances in which this online class is freaking magic, like how awesome to be able to do this at home. But it is not easier. In fact, I would argue, dude, I think probably after exam one, I was saying to people like, seriously, drop right now, come to my face-to-face class. I'll let you in, like your golden, just get out of the online class, do it face-to-face. It's going to be easier. But there were a lot of people who needed it online. They couldn't fit it into their schedule otherwise. And if that's where you are, then you have the motivation you need to make this happen. I am hoping that you will also have the mental preparation and the toughness and the grit and the growth mindset to make it happen. Okay, so let's look at what you're going to be doing each week for 15 weeks. So there's no rest for the weary in this class. Like we start out sprinting and we keep sprinting all the way through the entire semester. So every week, take a look at these things. Every week you have two video lectures to watch. You can actually go on to YouTube. You can search for Wendy Riggs. Actually, you don't even have to search because that's exactly where I'm going to be posting this video right here that you're going to be watching. So you can look at the videos that you're going to be watching. They're between 30 minutes to an hour for each video lecture. And it's literally the lecture I would give in my face-to-face class if I taught normal, which I don't. I flip my classes so even my face-to-face students have to watch these video lectures. If you skip the video lecture, you could actually read the textbook. I mean, I'd be super stoked and you'd learn a ton. Students tend to feel like reading the textbook is a little, it's harder because there's so much information in the textbook. And in the video lecture, I totally break it down for you so that you know what to focus on. Okay, but there's two of those every single week. Following each video lecture, there's going to be a discussion. And my goal with this discussion is to engage you in the way that my face-to-face students are engaged during class time. So you're going to have an original post, dude. Original post is due on Monday night. So you have to find time either Monday or like somewhere. You have to find time to watch the video and participate in the discussion. The original post is just what was trickiest, something that you thought was super cool, whatever. The post is pretty straightforward. The next day, so due by Tuesday night, you have to engage in conversation with your classmates. I post questions to the discussion boards. They're exam practice questions. They are designed to provoke conversation and sort of check ourselves to make sure we're on the right track. And you're going to do that twice. So you're going to have one set due by Tuesday night and one set due by Thursday night. And it is a lab class except you have to do the labs on your own. Now last semester, students had to go out and prep their own materials. They had to go to the grocery store and buy stuff. And each week, they would have a grocery list of materials that they needed to perform the laboratory exercises. I'm playing with the idea of putting together a kit for you that you could purchase so that you have everything that you need and you don't have to go to the grocery store. I think that would cut down on the time requirements and that could be super handy. I'm just going to have to mess with that. It's summertime. It's June, which means August is practically here. What? My summer is almost gone. And there's lots of other jobs on my list of things to do as well. So I'm hoping that regardless, if you show up to class, we prep everything for you. And I'm standing right there while everybody's doing the lab. And so if something funky is going on, we can stop and have that conversation face to face, get it taken care of, and we're golden. Here, you got to be on it, dogs. And I mean it. You got to start your lab. When you're going to do it, if you wait until Saturday, which is when the lab is due, there's a discussion component and a notebook component. And if you wait until then to do your lab, you're probably not going to have access to me in any great supply. But y'all are busy, right? And you're going to have to squeeze this stuff in. Labs are designed to take three hours. Some of them don't take that long. Others take longer. And they take longer because, again, you have to prep all your goods. And that's something that we have people do that for us if you're on campus. At the end of the week, due on Saturday night, you're going to have your lab discussion, your lab notebooks. I'm going to have you do some kind of weekly check-in where you're either going to record a video or show up to an office hour and have a video chat with me or my homeboy Caesar, who's going to be rocking the class this semester and helping us out, which is going to be awesome. And then you're also going to have a quiz and all of that stuff. The quiz is over everything that you've done during the week. So really, these things, they're due on Saturday night, but you can sort of do them when you want to do them. So you could definitely get this stuff done earlier. That's a lot. Like people were shocked with the number of hours that it was going to take to pull all that stuff together. And not only, okay, ready? Listen carefully. Look into my eyeballs. Not only do you have to do all that, you have to be learning the content at the same time. So it's not just a, hey, I did the lab. I don't have a flip and clue what I did or why I did it, but I did it. That might get you a few points, but that certainly isn't going to get you exam points. And I'll tell you right now, exams are 50% of your entire grade. So you can't pass the class if you don't perform decent on the exams. Okay. How are you? Holla back. Just yell really loud. I might be able to hear you. Okay. Oh, look, this one's blank because the next thing to talk about are our lab supplies, but I sort of already did that. So you do have to prep your own lab. And I'm hoping that I have it so that it's not super overwhelming. You do have questions for me. By all means, reach out. I threw my email down here, like down, down Rutler. Rutler is my email. So you can give me a holla holla if you need anything. If you want to find out, like if I think you're ready, the first week, we're actually going to have some activities that will help you gauge whether or not you're ready. As soon as I get that stuff up and going, those of you who are already enrolled in the class should be fine. But I just want you to be mentally prepared for what you're getting yourself into. Okay. All of that said, I'm super excited. Like my 11 survivors are my heroes. Like they were awesome last semester. And I already sort of told you that Cesar from last semester is going to join us this semester. And that's going to be invaluable experience and perspective for you guys. So you can totally do it. If you can pass the face-to-face class, you absolutely can do this online class. But you better be mentally prepared to put in some time because that's what it's going to require. So if you have any questions and I'm super excited about this and enjoy the rest of your summer, like do a lot of fun things so that you can hang with me in the fall. Bye. Bye.