Note:  Although they have the same course numbers, the fall version
of L410 is a distinct course, and it counts for separate course
credit, from the spring version of L410.

Course Format:  Discussion:  9:30-10:45A, TR.

Course Requirements:  Biol L111 and L112.  Recommended:  Biol L211 or
S211; L311 or S311.

Course description:  TOPICS IN CANCER AND IMMUNOLOGY

	I think that it’s important to try to help students to get
better at inquiry (e.g., better at generating, analyzing, and
prioritizing questions and better at seeking and analyzing
information that addresses those questions) and that it’s also
important to try to help students to discover topics that they
genuinely want to inquire about in the first place.  This course is
meant to help students to improve their abilities and inclinations to
inquire about issues concerning cancer and/or immunology that they,
themselves, consider to be important and/or interesting.
	
	In this course, students will do lots of talking and writing
about the questions that they come up with and are investigating.
Most of each class period will be spent in small-group and whole-
class discussions, and most of the homework assignments will involve
creation of rather informal, honest writings that are meant to help
students to analyze and investigate their questions.
	
	I would prefer that only students who enjoy and value
discussing students’ questions and interests enroll in this course.
Students who do not want to promote discussion will probably not only
fail to get much out of this course; they will very likely also
discourage the learning of others.
	We will try to organize the discussion groups in ways that
are most useful to students, realizing that some students will
probably tend to prefer usually being in groups with students who
have similar interests, while other students may tend to prefer
usually being in groups with students who have quite different
interests.

	I don’t care so much which specific topics students choose to
think and learn about in this course, as long as they find topics
that they consider to be sufficiently interesting and/or important to
be worth spending time and effort inquiring, writing, and talking
about.
	I suspect that some students will start off this course
without strong interests in any particular topic and will tend to
become interested in topics that they see that other students are
interested in.  Based on past experience, I predict that a fair
number of students will be interested in learning more about
immunological approaches to fighting various types of cancer and that
some students will be interested mainly in learning more about
various autoimmune diseases.

Required Text:  None.  Some students may choose to rely fairly
heavily on current review articles.  Review articles can be
interesting and informative in their own right, and they can serve to
guide students toward research articles that present key
experiments.

Typical Weekly Assignments:  There will be short writing assignments
for many of the class meetings.  The main roles of these writings
will be to help you to improve your abilities to inquire and to
become genuinely engaged in your learning.  Most of these writings
will probably be rather informal; it’s the thought conveyed in them
that I care most about.  Some of these writings will develop into
larger documents.

Exams/Papers:  There will be no quizzes or exams.  Students will do
lots of writing, though. (See above.)