Biology 101

For the last month or more I have been studying biology via a new program offered to death row prisoners through the education department that allows us to have DVD players in our cells so we can watch college level lecture videos. The course I signed up for (“Biology: The Science Of Life”) is in six parts (12 DVDs with a total of 72 lectures by professor Stephen Nowicki of Duke University) and is produced by The Teaching Company as part of their “Great Courses”-series that I’ve seen advertised in magazines like National Geographic on occasion. So it’s good stuff (academic quality) and watching the lectures is more enjoyable for me than 99% of what I see on commercial T.V., even though Nowicki isn’t much of a lecturer --- he stumbles over his words constantly. Personally, given the video format, I think they should use professional speakers, not professors at all. They should just let the professors develop the material, then maybe coach the lecturer from the sidelines.

We get the DVDs (two at a time) but no textbooks, even though the booklet that accompanies the DVDs lists several texts as “essential reading” (by title and chapter for each lecture). So I ordered one of the text books (Campbell & Reece, BIOLOGY 6^th ed.) which because it is an outdated edition didn’t cost much at all (less than $15, including shipping and handling). The text makes the course even more enjoyable for me, not to mention more educational too. But it’s a huge book with over 1300 pages (not all of it covered by the lectures), so I feel like a small dog with a brand new big bone to chew!

At the end of each part (12 lectures) we are supposed to answer some true/false questions and then get a certificate for completing that part. But since they (the education department here at USP Terre Haute) haven’t put together any questions for this course yet (they ask me for a generic essay on the material covered instead, which I’m sure no one would ever read if I wrote it) I’ve been writing the questions myself and giving them twenty questions, with detailed answer explanations, so they can choose ten to type up and make part of the program (for other prisoners to do in the future, though apparently I’m the only one who signed up for biology so far). It seems I always find some way to contribute to the education departments of every prison I’ve been in (I’ve actually lectured, and developed entire courses from scratch in the past, including a complex on-line “Introduction To Computer Programming” course that provided interactive lessons and quizzes), and I’m always happy to do so.