How to succeed in the Physiology of Exercise couse

Here is a lot of information about this Physiology of Exercise course. The information will help you to do your best as a student in the class.  Please read it thoroughly right now, and refer back to it if you have questions about the course.

INSTRUCTOR

Kathy French

Pacific Hall 3123B

534-5938

kfrench@ucsd.edu

LECTURES

Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00 - 9:20 a.m., Center Hall 105

SECTIONS:

A correct schedule of sections will be handed out in lecture on January 10 and will also be on this Web site. Attendance at sections is not mandatory, but it can be useful, because problem sets and their solutions are typically discussed in sections. Sections are also an excellent time to go over any questions that you have about material in the lectures or reading. Sections will not meet the first week of the course; they commence the week of January 14.

TEXT

Exercise Physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human Performance, 6th edition, by McArdle, Katch, and Katch. The syllabus lists assigned reading in the text; this material will be covered in the exams.

THE COURSE OUTLINE: An outline of the course material is included in this Web site. Each set of lectures is accompanied by the figures that are likely to be used in lectures AND that are not taken from your text. This outline is not an effective substitute for attending lectures nor is it a detailed outline of the lectures.

A NOTE ABOUT FIGURES IN THE TEXT AND IN THE COURSE OUTLINE: Information is packed densely into figures; paying attention to every figure will teach you a lot. Some material in this course will be presented only in figures, and if you skip over the figures you will miss out on this information. Because being able to read an interpret figures is so important, exams are likely to include figures for you to interpret or expand on.

GETTING YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED I will always try to answer questions in class, but if you are shy about asking questions during class time I have set up several ways to answer your questions outside of lecture time.

(1) One way to get your questions answered is to come to my office hours. Office hours are set up to serve you. They are the times when I am certain to be available to you, and I strongly encourage you to make use of them. To help you I have established two different kinds of conference times per week:

10 a.m. to 11 a.m. each Tuesday in Pacific Hall 3502 This room will accommodate several students at a time, and this office hour allows you to get questions answered efficiently if you don't need privacy. In addition during this time you can listen to the answers to other students' questions, which may clarify course material for you. Another benefit: you don't have to wait out in the hall for your turn, although you will need to share the time with any other students who attend.

I will also hold a second office hour each week, which students will help me choose. I will be in my office during this time. My office is small and can comfortably accommodate only one student at a time, but it provides privacy if you want to discuss matters that aren't for public consumption. Please wait in the lobby by the elevators until it is your turn. You may have to be patient.

You can definitely count on seeing me during my scheduled office hours. In addition I try to be available at other times by appointment, but due to many demands on my time I may not be able to manage it.

(2)You can ask questions via e-mail, and I will reply as promptly as I can. My address is kfrench@ucsd.edu , and as long as you have questions that can conveniently be answered in this format you can get prompt responses during times when I might not otherwise be available. An added benefit of e-mail is that I sometimes post (anonymously) on a window of my office printouts of e-mail discussions that I think may be of general interest . If you stop by, you can read questions that other students have asked and thus benefit from their curiosity.

Important request: Because I receive an overwhelming amount of junk e-mail, I have installed a spam filter on my computer. In addition, I rarely open messages from senders whose name I don't recognize. Because the class is large, I may not recognize your name, so PLEASE INCLUDE "BIPN108" IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF ANY E-MAIL MESSAGE that you send to me. I WILL THEN RECEIVE IT, READ IT, AND REPLY. IF YOU DO NOT INCLUDE BIPN106 IN THE SUBJECT LINE, THE CHANCES ARE HIGH THAT I WILL NEVER READ IT.

HOW TO FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE COURSE. You have three possibilities:

(1) Announcements about course business may be made at the beginning of lectures.

(2) The course has this Web site where I will post all important information

(3) Some information (like the schedule of sections and information regarding exams) will be posted in my office window.

(4) Lectures in the course will be Podcasted (podcasts.ucsd.edu). The Podcasts are NOT intended to be a substitute for attending lecture, and if I find that attendance at lectures is poor, I will discontinue the Podcasting.

PROBLEM SETS will be posted on this Web site each Friday afternoon. They consist of questions and problems like the ones that will appear on exams.

Some notes on problem sets:

(1) All material on the problem sets is regarded as part of the course. Problems are intended to teach you new material and new relationships, as well as to allow you to practice using material from lectures and from the text. Everything you learn from the problems and from their solutions is fair game for exams.

(2) Most of the problems require you to use information, not simply to memorize and regurgitate it. The exams in this class will ask you to apply what you have learned to explain, interpret, or make predictions based on information in the problem, and the problems give you an ideal opportunity to practice that kind of thinking before you get to an exam. Physiologists think in terms of problems, not in terms of memorization. "What would happen if . . .?" or "Explain what happened when . . ." are typical physiologists' questions.

(3) You can NOT learn physiology without working problems. That aspect of learning physiology is more like learning physics than it is like reading descriptive biology. In order to "do physiology" you really MUST be able to work problems. You will perform much better on the exams if you have studied physiology as you would physics or math. That is, do the problems in writing on paper by yourself or in a study group in which you actively participate. You cheat yourself if you just read the solutions and say "Oh yeah, that makes sense." Once you've read the material, work problems!

(4) Solutions to the questions will (a) be discussed in section, and (b) will appear on the course Web site at the end of the week in which they were discussed. If enough students ask for it, they can also be made available through Soft Reserves. Be sure you let me know if you prefer to buy solutions through Soft Reserve.

EXTRA HANDOUTS Extra copies of all handouts (there aren't many) will be available in a plastic bin in the main hall outside my office.

EXAMS:

(1) GRADES: Your grade for this course will be based on your performance on two mid-term exams and a final. Each mid-term exam will be worth 100 points and will consist of short-answer questions and problems. The final will consist of short-answer questions covering the last third of the course material (i.e., the equivalent of a third mid-term exam) and a multiple-choice comprehensive section covering the entire course. Thus all material in the course will be covered by both short-answer questions and multiple-choice questions. The final will be worth 200-225 points.

(2) EXAM SCHEDULE: Midterm exams will be given in the evening, and there will be no lecture on the day of an evening exam. The final exam is scheduled for Thursday, March 20, 8 to 11 a.m.

(3) PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING NOTICE REGARDING MAKE-UP EXAMS

You are expected to take the exams when they are scheduled. If you have an appropriate reason to miss the scheduled exam (reasons are enumerated below) you MUST check with me immediately after lecture one week before the exam is schedule. This requirement, of course, does not apply if you are too sick to come to school on the day of the exam, but for all other situations, checking with me a week in advance is absolutely necessary.

To be fair to your fellow students, make-up exams can be arranged only in the following three circumstances:

(A) You are too ill to take the exam. In order to take a make-up exam or to be excused from taking the exam (whichever is appropriate in your situation), you must:

(1) telephone or e-mail to let me know you are ill as soon as it is possible to do so (before the exam, if it is at all possible) and

(2) you must bring written verification from a physician that you were too ill to take the exam when it was scheduled. Please be sure that this statement includes an estimate of when you will be able to resume normal activities. I'm sorry, but I can't excuse you if you were ill before the exam, but are well when it actually takes place.

(B) You have an extremely pressing need to be out of town on the day when the exam is scheduled and you have arranged with me in advance to take a make-up exam. It will help in making arrangements if you bring written confirmation of your need to miss the regularly scheduled exam when you ask to schedule a make-up exam. In addition, you will need to bring corroborating documents along with you to the make-up exam.

(C) You are enrolled for academic credit that will count toward graduation in another class that meets at the same time as the exam. In this case, you will be required to bring written confirmation of your conflicting course to the make-up exam.

PLEASE NOTE: I am sorry, but having another mid-term scheduled on or near the day of our mid-term is not a reason to take a make-up exam.

Cheating policy: I take seriously my responsibility to protect the grades of honest students. If you are caught cheating in this course, you will receive a grade of 0 for that exam, and I will notify the Office of Student Conduct, who will contact the Dean of your college. Cheating damages the grades of your fellow students, and it undermines everything that we do in the University. It will not be tolerated in this class.

(4) Getting your exam back after it is graded: On each exam you will be given the opportunity to sign a waiver making it possible for us to put your exam in the hall outside my office, so it will be available to you at any time when Pacific Hall is open. If you sign the waiver, you can pick up your graded exam at a location that will be announced in lecture when the exams are ready. Grading usually takes about one week.

PLEASE NOTE: If you do not sign the waiver, your exam will be returned to you during my Thursday a.m. office hour immediately after the exams are ready to hand back. If you miss that time, I will send your exam if you give me with a self-addressed envelope, stamped with sufficient postage (39 cents is likely to be enough for midterms).

BOOKS ON RESERVE: Course reserves for this course are at the Bio Med library. The following books will be on reserve. Please use them if you are confused and need clarification about material in the course or if you want additional information about topics that you find particularly interesting. Note: f you read several sources, you will almost certainly find that the authors of various books and articles disagree with one another, with your text, and/or with what you hear in the lectures. Disagreement about some topics is a common feature within fields in which there is very active research; don't be surprised.

At least two copies of the text should be on Course Reserves.

McArdle, W.D., Katch, F.I., and Katch, V.L. (2006) Essentials of Exercise Physiology 3rd edition. (A less advanced book than your text, but written by the same authors)

Powers, S.K. and Howley, E.T. (2007) Exercise Physiology: Theory and Application to Fitness and Performance, 6th edition, Boston: McGraw Hill Publishers.

If you compare these books, I would very much like to hear which you like best.