Hello Everyone,

PHY 317K and PHY 317L will be offered as asynchronous fully online courses at UT Austin this summer (link). Since the majority of students who take these two courses are in the life sciences, I am currently in the process of redesigning the courses to better align the course topics with interests and career paths of students in the life sciences.

We will be using an upcoming textbook called Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences: Principles and Authentic Applications (PDFs of the chapters will be provided to students for free through Canvas). In short, PHY 317K and PHY 317L will be ‘physics with applications in the life sciences using calculus and statistics.’

The expectation is that students will complete certain tasks (e.g., reading, watching lectures, taking quizzes, etc.) daily. Of course, given that the courses are asynchronous there is flexibility, but I don’t want students to be too far behind in completing the daily modules. There will be deadlines for homework assignments and taking exams, but students will have a window of time to complete them. For instance, I will give a specific day to complete a midterm, but it will need to be completed sometime between 9 am and 9 pm of that day. Both homework assignments and exams will be done online.

While these courses are asynchronous, fully online, and taking place during the summer, they will be involved. We will be covering quite a bit of material in a short 6-week session. So please ask me about the workload if you will be taking other classes, working, traveling, etc.

Stay tuned for more information about the two courses. I will also post the two syllabi here soon. In the meantime, please email me at vperera@utexas.edu if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Viranga Perera, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Instruction​
Physics Department​