Omics Academy offers an online learning environment enabling participants to gain access to curricular content including scientific papers, media content available on You Tube, activities with ChatGPT, as well as writing exercises, and other activities. The purpose of Omics Academy is to provide participants with a "buffet style" access to a variety of topics, content, scientific studies and results with opportunities to think about and develop solutions to real world problems facing animals in the wild. The buffet style affords each participant access to all content, yet allows each participant the freedom to pick and choose their own trajectory and pace through the curriculum.
The Omics Academy 6-Week Participant Centered, Self-Directed, Summer Science Experience is open to high school students that have satisfactorily completed high school biology and high school algebra. The summer science experience is also open to undergraduate students for which there are no prerequisites. High school students have biology and algebra as prerequisites because the summer science experience relies upon the concepts learned in these classes as a preparatory foundation, participants wishing to enroll must provide evidence of satisfactory completion of these two courses. Copies of course grades in these two classes over the academic year will suffice. Additionally, participants must have a parent or guardian complete an enrollment permission agreement.
Students and parents of students, please be aware that the summer science experience will involve exploring some topics such as animal injuries and deaths, environmental challenges, and the impact of human activities on animals. This will include reading scientific papers and/or viewing pictures, images, and/or videos depicting deceased or injured animals, as well as reading descriptions of harm caused by human actions in scientific papers. Only through awareness can accommodations be made to reduce the impact of undesired consequences on animals. These aspects of the course will not be the major focus, however parts of the course will explore causes of marine mamma and primate survival;
The summer science experience offers high school and undergraduate participants exposure to scientific concepts in the fields of animal biology,animal conservation, the scientific method of inquiry, exposure to scientific publications produced by real scientists and opportunities to contemplate real-world consequences occurring at the human-animal interface. Participants will be encouraged to use emerging artificial intelligence technology in the form of large language models, in particular Open AI's ChatGPT. Under the terms for use of Chat G P T, Open A I states "ChatGPT is not meant for children under 13, and we require that children ages 13 to 18 obtain parental consent before using ChatGPT." Parents enrolling their high school students in the Omics Academy summer experience must agree to provide permission for their child to use ChatGPT. Please refer to the Terms of use for ChatGPT specifically.
Participants will be expected to access information generally available on the internet through searches or references to specific content available on You Tube. Under the terms of use for You Tube, it states:"You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service; however, children of all ages may use the Service and YouTube Kids (where available) if enabled by a parent or legal guardian. If you are under 18, you represent that you have your parent or guardian's permission to use the Service." Parents who enroll their children in the summer science experience agree to provide consent for their child to access content produced through google searches as well as content that is available on you tube.