Welcome to the course

Hello and welcome to ‘Small and Mighty: Introduction to Microbiology’, a three week course produced by the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading.

I’m Dr Glyn Barrett, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University and I’m delighted to present this online course. The academic content was developed by my colleague, Dr Geraldine Mulley, Teaching Fellow and Admissions Tutor for BSc Microbiology taught at the University of Reading.

Microbes may be invisible to the eye, but they dominate every environment on Earth – including you. On this course, you’ll explore a general introduction to the field of microbiology and investigate the amazing diversity of microbial life.

Meet the team

Each week I’ll be meeting with my colleagues from the Department of Microbiology and Department of Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Reading.

In the course discussions, Dr Mulley and I will be joined by course mentors Agnieszka Mrozinska and Megan Dymond between Monday 5th October and Friday 6th November. You may like to ‘Follow’ the team, to view their responses to common queries. By doing this, any comments made will appear in your activity feed on your profile, which you can filter by ‘Following’. To follow a profile, click on the link to their profile and select the pink ‘Follow’ button under their biography.

Additional resources

To help you as you move through this course, we’ve provided some additional materials which you may like to keep to hand as you work through each week:

Glossary	To help you get to grips with the terminology used within the course, we have provided a glossary which you may want to print and keep to hand as you go through the course. The glossary can be found at the beginning of each week.
Notes template	The layout of this editable PDF template matches the Step structure of the course. You may like to print this and use it to take notes against each Step as you work through the course. Alternatively, you can download it and edit it on screen. You’ll need the free version of the Acrobat Reader software to download, save and work on the file. You can work directly on the web version but note that your work will not be saved.
Additional resources	You will find additional resources at the end of any Step where we feel further information may be helpful to provide additional context around the themes explored. These will usually be under the ‘Downloads’ or ‘See also’ headings.

Now you’ve met the team and know what to expect from the course, we’d really like to meet you.

What interests you most about microbes? Which area of microbiology do you feel is most important to you; health, food or environment? What are you hoping to gain from the course?

If you’re mentioning the course on social media let us know by tagging us with #FLintromicrobiology on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.