Biol 3090: Our World of Infectious Disease
Brief Overveiw
Infectious disease impacts every human, plant and animal on earth, providing a rich source of biological questions. How does a pathogen evolve? What causes a pandemic? How is environmental change influencing disease? In this course, we will explore these questions and many more related to infectious disease across the world. Click on the PDF link to browse the current syllabus.
Course Objectives
By the end of this class you will:
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Be able to broadly categorize various microbial pathogens and appreciate common mechanisms of pathogenicity and transmission.
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Appreciate the ‘interesting biology’ that allows these microbes to cause disease.
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Respect the challenges that infectious diseases impose on the world and reflect on regional differences.
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Associate current disease control methods with various pathogens.
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Appreciate how various professionals work together to effectively control infectious diseases.
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Take the responsibility to investigate popular science (news) on infectious disease and accurately share these facts with your peers and family
Course Assessment
Class Participation/Assignments 30%
Class participation as well as group and individual assignments will be assessed in many ways, including but not limited to, blog postings, question sheets, online surveys and participation in discussions with peers and guest speakers.
Quizzes 30%
It is important to understand some basic facts about the microorganisms that contribute to infectious diseases. There will be (4) quizzes used to test the students understanding of important details and themes across diseases.
Semester Project 40%
In order to understand the impact of infectious disease on different regions of the world, small student groups will be formed based on interests of specific regions and disease. Each group will research impactful diseases in their world region and summarize important information on a factsheet. The group will then focus on a single disease to produce a virtual museum with the help of the UVA Digital Media Lab.
LEARN 3D PRODUCTION
If you have an interest in building 3 dimensional augmented reality products for scientific and teaching applications, please see the "What We Create" tab for an opportunity to become part of our production team.