ECOL100 Introductory Ecology
Credits (ECTS):5
Course responsible:Ronny Steen
Campus / Online:Taught campus Ås
Teaching language:Norsk
Course frequency:Annually
Nominal workload:Structured teaching: 25 hours. The students own effort: preparation for lectures, reading: ca. 100 hours.
Teaching and exam period:This course starts in Spring parallel. This course has teaching/evaluation in Spring parallel, .
About this course
The subject deals with how organisms live, how they adapt to their environment through evolutionary processes, and how they interact with other organisms and the physical environment. Basic concepts in ecology are presented, including evolution and natural selection, interactions between organisms (competition, predation and mutualism) and their environment, population dynamics, ecological communities and food chains, change over time (succession), ecological processes and conservation.
The subject will highlight five levels: organisms, populations, community, ecosystems and the biosphere.
Learning outcome
Knowledge:
- The candidate must have basic insight into how plants and animals affect each other and the environment they live in (based on five levels: organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems and the biosphere).
Skills:
- The candidate must be able to interpret interactions between organisms and their environment, and identify factors that affect the ecosystem's structure and function.
General competence:
- See the value of ecological connections and the importance of sustainable development.
- Have knowledge of scientific concepts (theory, issues and challenges), which can be used across a number of scientific disciplines.
- Have personal, research-based views on ecology, which is important to be able to solve problems through evidence-based knowledge.
- Lectures, teaching videos, assessments and discussion questions.
- Students can contact the teacher with questions.
- Written exam: 3 hours (multiple choice) in Wiseflow.
Written exam Grading: Letter grades Permitted aids: A1 No calculator, no other aids - An examiner is used for approving the examination questions and number of points for each grade mark.
Multiple choice questions on Canvas:
- Each weekly module will contain multiple choice questions that will be given via Canvas.
- These tasks have a deadline that corresponds to the current weekly module.
- The student has an unlimited number of attempts to answer these questions.
- To be approved, the student must have at least half correct on the multiple choice questions.
Important: Even though the deadline is set to the current weekly module, the student has the opportunity to submit all the way up to the exam period.
Digital "Field experiment":
- This is a practical activity that is carried out digitally via Canvas.
- The experiment will be given as a task, and the student must carry it out according to the instructions.
- The assessment for this activity is approved/not approved.
- Lectures: 25 hours.
- Minimum requirements for entrance to higher education in Norway (generell studiekompetanse)