Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure and Function Workload: (6 x 1 hr lectures per week, 4 x 2 hr anatomy practicals throughout semester, 1 x 3 hr physiology practical throughout semester
Assessment: 2 x intra-semester tests (10% each), Physiology Practical Report (10%), Anatomy end of semester exam (35%), Physiology/Pharmacology end of semester exam (35%)
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available: Yes, on unimelb past exam website
Textbook Recommendation: Eizenberg, N., C. Briggs, C. Adams & G. Ahern. General Anatomy: Principles and Applications. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Silverthorn, D.U. Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach. San Francisco: Pearson, 2007
For anatomy, don't bother getting a textbook. Nearly everything you need you can find somewhere online. Physiology, I would probably recommend getting the textbook, pre-reading is prescribed and basically assessed as well.
Lecturer(s): Lots of people. This year it changed with the cardiovascular ones. I'll go into detail later.
Year & Semester of completion:2013 - Sem 2
Rating: Overall: 3/5
Pharmacology - .6/1
Anatomy - 2/2
Physiology - .4/2
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments: Okay, so I thought I'd give a bit of a contrasting opinion from someone who is going to major in either HSF or Physiology.
Firstly, anatomy.
I can not fault the coordination and lecturing of the anatomy course. Just perfect. Great lecturers, amazing pracs and assessment was always fair. Hence the 2/2.
Pharmacology next.
I was a student of Pharmacology, How drugs work this semester so keep that in mind.
So you have 3 lectures for this, Alastair Stewart, Michael Lew and Graham Mckay. Alastair is deplorably bad however Michael and Graham are fantastic. I would recommend asking the kids who do the pharm subject as an elective for their first couple of lectures as it taught much much better and the content that is assessed is much closer to what the pharm kids learn than what Alastair teaches. Seriously, he really sucks. I felt the assessment was not fair, as while I found that section on the exam easy, it was not really taught by Alastair. Also, yes you do need to learn all the drugs they talk about. Especially Michael Lew and Graham. Just as a side note, while the pharm subject is essentially the same for the first 2-3 weeks is differs completely after that and it becomes much more enjoyable, so don't be deterred from doing a pharm major from what the pharm component is like in HSF.
Physiology.
I'm most likely going to major in physiology so I'll try be as objective as possible.
Even with my love of physiology, this was horribly taught. The are 6 main topics - Neuro, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, reproductive and digestion.
Firstly, I would like to just say physiology is not like other biology subjects, you actually have to understand the content. It's not just memory work.
Alright now into the topics.
Neuro: Taught by David Williams who is the coordinator of the subject. I personally found him a very good lecturer but others found him really average for some reason. Either way the neuro topic, IMO was taught well and assessed fairly.
Cardio: Here's where shit hits the fans. We had a different lecturer for each lecture(about 4 overall) and as such there was no continuity and in addition, the lecturers were doctors who clearly hadn't lectured before. So the content was very poorly taught.
Respiratory: Same deal as cardio except the lecturers were decent this time.
Renal: Very well taught, lecturer is great.
Repro: Very well taught, wasn't assessed at all in either the exams or the MSTs for some reason.
Digestion: Average lecturer. DO THE PREREADING FOR HIM ESPECIALLY, HE WILL EXAMINE IT. Said lecturer is Joel Bornstein
So apparently the year before people complained about David Williams lecturing for the cardio and respiratory section because it wasn't his field of study. Which I think is ridiculous to make such a complaint. In response David recruited all these lecturers who absolutely sucked. Hopefully he should be back lecturing it next year though. In terms of assessment I strongly recommend getting hold of the physiology lectures and watching all the cardio and respiratory ones (the ones on high altitude and excercise especially) as it was assessed on the exam even though we had a total of one lecture slide on high altitude. This is a result of having to cut lectures out to make way for the pharm component of HSF. Assessment for physiology is also quite weird. The whole exam except 2 15 mark questions is them giving you a scenario and they then say "what is the effect on... ventilation rate, PO2, PCO2, pH etc" and you can choose from increase, decrease, no change or not enough information. There is no place for giving an explanation or anything which I find severely limiting in determining a students competency. Also, nearly always you can think of something that was assumed in the question making you think the answer is not enough information when in reality the lecturer hasn't thought of that assumption meaning the answer is something else. Make sense? Didn't think so, but don't worry you'll see when you start the subject and do the practice questions David posts up.
The physiology prac is also very stupid as you had to write a prac report on stuff you hadn't been taught yet in the lecture.
pm me for any questions