Welcome!

This is the webpage being used to host the Fall 2021 Marine Population Ecology & Dynamics course at Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre! On this page you can find all the material for this workshop series, which you are welcome to use whether or not you are a student enrolled in the course!

What can you expect during this course?

Good question! This course is only one course out of the three intensive courses you’ll take if you’re enrolled in the BMSC fall program. While this is a field station and everyone is eager to get out into the field in this beautiful location, our goal here is to provide you with a fundamental understanding of population ecology. image-right

This will involve some parts field work, some parts computational learning. During the course expect to engage in:

  • Lecture material
  • Some very exciting field trips!
  • Paper readings and discussion
  • Computer labs
  • Talks by guest speakers

See the syllabus page and the lecture schedule for a detailed lay out of how the course is broken down and when you can expect to be doing what. In the meantime, check out this site and get familiar with how it works!image-left

Why is this Course being hosted on GitHub?

We are hosting our entire course here on this site where we keep all course materials like lectures, assignment descriptions, and (eventually) lecture and field trip recordings, and also through GitHub Classrooms which we use to support assignment submissions and hold starter code repositories.

Two reasons:

  1. Education shouldn’t be proprietary. This site serves two purposes. First, for students attending synchronously in-person in Fall 2021, it provides a simple place to host all course information. Second, in it’s open format, provides a completely open and accessible platform for anyone with an internet connection to access the content of this course.
  2. It forces students to practice using version control at least a little bit every day. The only way to learn a new tool is to use it. That’s why we host all the materials (even ones that might not traditionally be held on a repository/website like this) here, so that each day, to access the course material and submit/work on assignments, you get some practice interacting with Git/GitHub.

Expectations & Code of Conduct

Some Specifics:

  1. During class
    • If you’re watching TikToks during class, plz drop any funny ones in the slack channel
    • We will not tolerate harassment of any kind during these meetings. If you engage in any type of abusive behaviour in any way, you will be removed from the meeting and will not be allowed to return at any point
    • This is an inclusive space, and we are all learning. Therefore, there is no such thing as a stupid question, and no one will be permitted to behave in any way that diminishes another’s capacity or eagerness to learn
  2. Using this Website
    • This material is free and open to anyone enrolled in this course or not.
    • As this is the first time we are running this class in this format, we built this website from scratch, so there are likely mistakes or broken links on this website. If you notice some such error, please let us know! Use the Contact tab and drop us a line if you find any errors or if you have any suggestions for website navigation etc.

Did we miss anything? If you have further questions about the content of each session, please check out the syllabus and each individual page for more information. Still can’t find the answer? Drop us a line and we can help you out!

In addition, we are committed to making this class accessible to anyone who wants to participate. If there is some barrier to you participating that we can help alleviate, please please PLEASE get in touch with us and we will do everything we can to make sure you can join.