Background
The Environmental Microbiology unit is a third year Science unit, which is intentionally issues-based. The policy is to encourage student to take an interest in ways in which micro-organisms may impact on the environment, or vice versa.
A significant component of the assessment (30%) consists of a small research project, initiated, designed and carried out by groups of three students, during the last half of semester.

Students are required to:

To improve student learning and understanding of microbial ecology I have started teaching aspects of microbial physiology and ecology through modeling the scientific process. The classes are designed for students to learn by thinking about scientific data and concepts in a manner that scientists do when they need to learn a new discipline. These lessons are designed to demonstrate to students the relevance of learning different forms of microbial metabolism by placing metabolism squarely within an ecological context. The learning objectives of the lessons are to: