The first third of the course will focus on designing sampling plans for environmental studies. The second third will begin to cover topics related to analyzing environmental data including discrete and continuous probability distributions, tests of significance, confidence intervals, environmental monitoring, impact assessment, and assessing site reclamation. The last third of the course will deal with techniques to handle data correlated in space and time including time series analysis and spatial data analysis and will touch on censored data and risk assessment.
Get The Book
You can order on-line the book at sites
such as Amazon
and Barnes and Noble
or any of the online textbook sites. Privately
owned, local bookstores will also order this book for you as requested.
Organization of the Course
The course website is organized into
Sections. There are sections that contain information that you
will need about the course including the Syllabus, Modules, how to
Contact
me, and how to get Help. The Blackboard link gives you access to the interactive tools
we will use including the Assignments, Threaded Discussion, and
online Gradebook.
First take a few minutes to move around the course
Website and look at what’s available under each section. Take a good look at the
Syllabus
and Modules. The syllabus
discusses what resources are available to you and what is expected
of you as a student. The Modules link is key to the course and
includes the module topics, the pace, due dates,
and examination dates. These dates are also given in each
Learning Module sections. For now, just get familiar with
the organization of the website. If you have any problems at
this stage, email me.
Let me briefly review the main points of the
organization of the class.
This is a web based course. That means that
you will be working through the Learning Modules on your own
computer and at the time of day and day of week of your choice.
Participation in the Threaded Discussion is
required. This will give us an opportunity to interact and create a
learning community in the course.
These are not live so you can review postings and send your own
posting anytime of the day or night prior to the due date.
Some people think of web based courses as
self-paced. However, experience has shown that this is not
effective from either a student or instructor perspective.
Instead, the course will be organized in a traditional way with a
lesson each week, assignments with particular due dates, and exams.
You must keep up with the coursework, material may be accepted late
but it will always incur a penalty in grade. Working ahead is
fine; however, you must participate in the Threaded Discussion each
week even if you are ahead of the group and you must take the
examinations at the designated times.
Homework should be submitted by the due date and
time. The primary mode of submission will be through Blackboard. If there are problems with
this, homework can also be sent to my email address.
Ok, when you are ready to begin
work in the course, go to the Modules section and review the
Introductory material there.
