In Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology, students will learn about the many kinds of non-avian dinosaurs that roamed the earth during the Mesozoic Era, from 250 to 65 million years ago. Numerous topics are covered in order to deliver a comprehensive survey of this important group of animals. These include adaptations for attack and defence, anatomy,  appearances, behaviors, birth, deep time, evolutionary theory, feeding, fossilization, growth, integumentary structures, locomotion, major groupings, origins, paleogeography, plate tectonics, reproduction, species definition, stratigraphy, and the extinction event that brought their dominance to an end.

Course material is delivered in a student-friendly short-form fashion, with numerous formative feedback sections. Many lessons are delivered from actual dinosaur dig sites. Students will gain access to a number of special interactive modules designed specifically for this course. These modules will grant users access to their very own virtual fossil collection, allow them to build dinosaur skeletons and provide them with an interactive visual representation of geologic time. This course's unique lesson delivery, combined with a classic quiz structure, will enable students to quickly gain a solid foundation for understanding dinosaurs, their adaptations and behaviors, and their place in the long history of earth.

Week 1: "Appearances and Anatomy" covers the diversity in dinosaur appearances, and will be able to identify major features of the major groups of dinosaurs.

Week 2: "Eating" looks at the variety of food types, feeding habits, and feeding adaptations amongst the major groups of dinosaurs

Week 3: "Moving Around" helps students understand the general modes and styles of locomotion in the major dinosaur groups. The lesson also describes general methods of evaluating hypotheses on locomotion.

Week 4: "Birth, Growth,  Reproduction" provides a generalized life history of a dinosaur, from birth through adulthood, including reproduction. The student will be able to describe major techniques of evaluating growth stages and rates in dinosaurs.

Week 5: "Attack and Defence" examines the behaviours and structures that may have served for attack or defence through the lifetime of a dinosaur.

Week 6: "Death and Fossilization" describes how fossils form, how we interpret the taphonomy of skeletons and bonebeds, and looks at the possible biases taphonomic events may create in the fossil record.

Week 7: "What is a Species" will teach the different ways of defining what a species is. Students will be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different species concepts for different situations.

Week 8: "Evolution" will describe the basic theories of speciation, and discusses how how these different methods of speciation may have occurred, including both hypothetical and empirical examples.

Week 9: "Stratigraphy and Geologic Time" provides basic stratigraphic concepts and the scale of earth history. Students will understand the evolution of dinosaurs through time, including which groups evolved when and where.

Week 10: "Palaeogeography and Plate Tectonics" presents the basic concepts in plate tectonics and the evolution of the earth’s surface.

Week 11: "Dinosaur Origins" will look at the evolution of dinosaurs from non-dinosaurian archosaurs.

Week 12: "Dinosaur Extinction" will examine the end-Cretaceous extinction event, and provide examples of vertebrate groups that both persisted and died out during the event.