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K3NUpdate

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #660 on: November 23, 2017, 04:14:11 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: INTS10001 International Politics

Workload:
•   2x 1 hour lectures (two sessions per lecture) per week
•   1x 1 hour tutorial per week (11 tutorials throughout the semester, with the first tutorial beginning in week 2)

Assessment:
•   750-word essay due mid-semester (20%)
•   1750-word essay due towards the end of semester (roughly week 9) (45%)
•   1500-word take-home exam during the examination period (35%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Not sure, maybe?

Textbook Recommendation: John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). To make your life a little easier for this subject, I do recommend buying this textbook, mainly because most – if not all – of your required readings are from this book. The textbook also costs around $60-70 brand new, so I think it’s rather affordable compared to other uni textbook costs. Better yet, you can also get it second-hand for even cheaper!

Lecturer(s): Daniel McCarthy and Robyn Eckersley.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments:

Subject:
   As someone who has some interest in politics and needed an interesting breadth subject to do, I chose to do INTS10001 with the expectation that it would give me a well-rounded understanding of what International Relations is. That is, understanding the development of the field, the political theories, schools of thought and…well, all things politics.

I wasn’t disappointed.

   This subject would probably be best described as being an introduction to the field of International Relations. For those who have done VCE Global Politics during high school, you’ll likely find that the first half of this subject will be a very different beast. What I mean here is, a lot of the content in INTS10001 places emphasis on appreciating some of the history behind IR and developing a thorough understanding of the main competing political theories. While this may seem pointless at first, you’ll realise throughout the course of the semester that these theories are important frameworks to analyse the rationale and decision-making of state/non-state actors in contemporary IR, which is necessary for the second half of the subject.

   So, the subject kicks off with a brief overview of IR, where you’ll learn about the Hunter-Gatherer Bands, the feudal system in Europe and the Peace of Westphalia (1648). You’ll find that each event that is covered in INTS has its own significance in the development of our understanding of the modern state, and also the debates that may arise from it. This part of the subject will go on for 1-2 weeks.

   After covering the history, you’ll then start learning about all the main IR theories, such as realism, liberalism, neoliberalism, neoclassical realism, constructivism, Marxism, etc. Before learning the theories, however, you’ll learn about what anarchy is in the IR context (and no, the anarchy you’ll learn is not the anti-establishment firebrand kind!), and then proceed to learn how these theories go about explaining this.  You’ll also touch on ethics and cosmopolitanism. This’ll go on for 3-4ish weeks and may be quite a lot to take in. However, if you keep up-to-date with this part of the subject and understand each theory inside out and know how to compare/contrast them from others, you’ll find that your arguments in your essays will be so much more concise and watertight. Not only that, it’ll mean less work later when you’re doing your 45% essay and take-home exam!

   After learning about IR theories, you’ll (finally) be able to do some of the modern stuff, where you’ll learn about key international political issues like climate change, humanitarian intervention, refugees and so forth (yes VCE Global Politics 3&4 students, this is where your examples and knowledge will come in handy here). By this point it is an expectation that you’ll be able to apply the IR theories to the issues raised in these case studies and form an opinion based on the frameworks you use.

Lectures and Tutorials:
   In short, the lectures were very, very interesting. I found that Daniel was an engaging, thought-provoking lecturer who would interact with the student audience that attend the lectures and encourage questions, some discussion and debate around the concepts/rationale behind the political theories. He’d begin every lecture with a photo/image of an individual/place/object, which he uses as a way to set the scene for the topic he’ll be covering. The way he works in analogies and examples into his lectures in such a subtle manner that is, at the same time, unambiguous is quite something, really.

   Robyn was also a great lecturer who would deliver the content clearly and in a logical manner. At times it may be a little difficult to follow the point she tries to get across, however overall you can see that Robyn is very passionate in her work and in that sense, she also delivers an engaging lecture with a slightly different ‘flavour’ to it.

   As some reviewers may have commented earlier, your tutor will make or break the experience in this subject. However, I’ll also add that the people in your class and yourself also plays a part in that experience. What I mean here is, by starting up a discussion about some of the stuff covered in the lectures, you’ll find by the end of the tutorial there’ll be things you might’ve not thought of! 

   In addition to the above, do make sure you do the required readings, or at least be prepared to discuss the topic in the tutorials. Otherwise, it’ll be super awkward when the tutor asks you a question about your opinion on the topic!

Assessments:
   Overall, the assessments were self-explanatory and straightforward to do: a selection of essay questions where you’ll choose one to discuss/argue on. The exam was actually meant to be a sit-in exam initially, but it was decided it would become a take-home exam to be done in three days during the exam period.

        Now, to do well in the essays in general, the first thing is to be able to understand the IR theories comprehensively (as mentioned earlier). The second thing is to be able to bring your own examples into your discussion, and by using good examples and analysing them with IR theories you’ll find that your argument seems so much more convincing. At the same time, however, also be warned that a bad example or a questionable argument may also prove to be counterproductive and weaken your argument.

One more thing: Tutorial attendance is a hurdle requirement in this subject, where you need to turn up to at least 75% of the tutorials to pass the subject.  That works out to be 9 out of 11 tutorial sessions, so make sure you turn up to them!

Verdict:
   All in all, the subject definitely required a considerable amount of time and effort to do well, although in general I enjoyed International Politics. I wouldn’t recommend this subject for people who want a cruisy breadth subject to boost their WAM or are not interested in politics. It can be mind-boggling, especially when you reach the part in the subject where you tear down the IR theories and scrutinise them. I guess if you’re the sort of person who has a knack for philosophy, history and/or politics and needs an introductory subject into the world of International Relations, this subject might be the one for you.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 10:12:44 pm by K3NUpdate »
2015: Mathematical Methods (CAS)
2016: English Language | Specialist Mathematics | Chemistry | Physics | Global Politics
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2020 - : Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting and Finance) @ The University of Melbourne

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #661 on: November 24, 2017, 12:15:00 am »
+6
PHRM30002 Drugs Affecting the Nervous System 

Workload: Three lectures per week – 36 in total. About six of these lectures were used as tutorials.

Assessment: Two online quizzes and a short assignment worth 10%. Mid-semester test worth 20%. Final exam worth 70%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2010, 2011 and 2012 available.

Textbook Recommendation: Lectures should be suffice.

Lecturer(s): James Ziogas, Phil Beart, Peter Crack, Michelle Hansen, Christine Wright, Cathy Laskar and a handful of others.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017.

Rating: 3.9 out of 5.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Okay, so I did this subject because I enjoyed second year pharmacology and I thought this would a good continuation/extension from last year. Overall, concepts were not overly difficult and the subject was not that content heavy so hard work should entail good grades.

The first twelve lectures were really boring. You learn about the different transmitters: glutamate, GABA, serotonin, catecholamines, neuropeptides etc, their targets, synthesis, breakdown, and mechanism of action, storage and so forth. Lecturers taking this lot were really dull and boring, e.g. James Ziogas and Phil Beart. David Hoyer had one of the most bizarre lecturing styles I’ve ever experienced in university, I did not get anything out of his serotonin lecture.

Good news is after this lot the subject gets amazing! A bunch of amazing and engaging lecturers come through (Crack, Hansen, Wright, Habgood, Laskar etc.). You’ll learn about the blood-brain-barrier, neurotoxins, pain (greatly extended from last year), anxiolytics, hypnotics, anti-depressants. For me, the best part of this lot was when we got to spend each lecture on one specific disease and learn about the disease in detail (like epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s), what drugs work, what the effects are, what the implications are and what we need to do in the future to improve. For me this was the most interesting part of the course.

Study tips:

I made a long drug/transmitter/toxin table covering every single drug mentioned in the course. I would then use the lectures as a guide to how much detail I would need to know each drug. I made notes for each drug and then reviewed every now and then. I thought this was really effective, there were so many different drugs mentioned it would be too hard to cram all of them before the exam.

Despite the practice exams being really old, I would recommend doing one or two of them. The wording and types of exam questions that came up were similar to the past ones so it was good practice doing one past exam – it allowed me to know what to expect in the real thing and also how much I would have to write to get full marks.

Quizzes and assignment (10%):

The two quizzes (worth 2.5% each) are online and timed. The first one had twenty questions whereas the second one had ten. All questions are TRUE or FALSE format. This should be an easy 5%, the questions are not too bad. Get through the lectures before doing the quiz, have your lecture notes beside you, have Google open and try and find some buddies to help you out.

The assignment is just answering a past extended response question. I think Peter gave most people the full 5%. So just answer the question and use the feedback/tutorial as preparation for the exam as you will have to answer four extended response questions similar to this in the exam.

Mid-semester test (20%):

Very fair test, average was about 75%. Most of the questions are straightforward; some of them require some application and thinking that are meant to trip you. Prepare well for it and you should be okay.

Exam (70%):

I thought the exam was really fair – no questions designed to trip you, everything was recall. It rewarded students who have worked hard throughout the semester.

There were 40 multiple-choice questions and five-extended answer questions (20 marks each). You were required to answer only four extended questions. Some of the extended questions were in parts, whereas a couple just had one big question worth the full 20.

Use reading time to get through each of the extended questions and pick the four you want to do.

The multiple-choice questions were all straightforward, nothing to trip you up, similar, if not easier compared to the mid-semester test. However, there were about four questions from the addiction lectures (the last two lectures in the course) that I felt were weird. IDK if it was just me but the addiction lectures in the course were really abstract and I found the MCQ a bit hard to get my head around. Most of the MCQ were post-midsem lectures; there were about 2 repeat questions from the mid-semester test (like pretty much the same questions, but differently worded).

The four extended-response questions integrated different lectures from the course. We were required to recall content from different lectures and then integrate the content within the response. Aim to write concise, fully fleshed out paragraphs with diagrams as well. The diagrams are optional but Peter LOVES diagrams so including them will really help out with getting the full marks. I’m so shit at drawing and stuff yet I still included some diagrams that probably did not make sense lol but just wanted to show Peter I was listening throughout the course.

I aimed to write as much as I can for each of these questions while keeping in mind what the question was asking for. This was my first ‘’written’’ exam this year so I was stressed out a bit, but honestly it wasn’t that bad at all.

Overall:

Was a pretty decent subject! After the twelfth lecture most lecturers were good and the content was interesting. Assessment was fair throughout the course, nothing there to trip you. This is a subject that will reward hard-workers and also give them a good pharmacology background before they go into post-graduate study.

Feel free to send me a PM if you have any further questions, all the best!
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M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #662 on: November 24, 2017, 01:55:18 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10002 Introductory Financial Accounting

Workload: 
1 × 2hr lecture per week
1 × 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
Tutorial Participation (10%), composed of Attendance (2%), Participation (2%) and Tutorial Assignments (2 × 3%)
Assignments 2 × 7%
Online Quiz 6%
End of semester exam (3hr) 70%   

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1 full exam with solutions, plus many other scattered questions with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: Financial Accounting, Reporting, Analysis and Decision Making, 5th ed, Carlon. Not really needed, but did provide a good review of everything. I’d recommend getting a cheap PDF from StudentVIP
 
Lecturer: Warren Mckeown

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: Overall, a pretty good continuation from ARA. The coursework is relatively straightforward once you get the hang of it, and this definitely felt like my easiest subject throughout the semester. That being said, you still need to work consistently to do well.
A lot of the content from the reporting side of ARA is carried over, but you go into more/specific details for some types of accounts on the different GPFS. You’re also introduced to journals and debits/credits in week 2, and these skills are used throughout the rest of the course. This is apparently revision for people who did VCE accounting. When I first read the relevant material this related to this I was very confused, but after doing some questions it became very straightforward. You then cover a bit of ratios/analysis, and finally GST.
Lectures:
Advertised time is 2hrs, but many finished within 1.5hrs :) Slides were a bit all over the place (especially compared to ARA), but contained everything you needed to know. Warren would provide a good explanation of things, and on most occasions worked examples/illustrations, which showed you exactly what/how to do the questions. Best to be there in person for the illustrations, as usually both projectors were used.
Tutorials:
I found all the tutors I met in this subject really dedicated and helpful. Tutorials were very useful. Concepts were first explained/reviewed, and then you’d discuss a worksheet previously given (you’re expected to attempt all questions, but this wasn’t really required, so it probably sufficed to just try all major questions). The full 4% for participation/attendance is easily obtainable if you make an effort to do just that. The assignments were also pretty straightforward, but make sure you read them carefully (I got an absolute shocker mark on the first because I didn’t read it properly).
Assignments:
Assignment 1 was the cause of a lot of annoyance and stress for many students. You had to manually journalise some transactions related to a fictional company, then create the trial balance and GPFS on excel. The actual work was straightforward, but it was a very tedious and time-consuming assignment.
Assignment 2 required you to do the same thing as the first (for the company’s next month), but specifically using accounting software. The Uni labs contain the software, but I was able to do it all at home by downloading an MYOB 30 day free trial (which worked out perfectly as they gave you less time than this to complete the assignment). Once you got the hang of it, it became much more enjoyable than the first.
Quiz:
Some practice quizzes of the same format are given, so best to at least try one before attempting. Pretty much that same thing as tutorial questions, just make sure you’re careful with reading the questions and inputting answers. 
Exam:
Was honestly a lot harder than I was expecting, so I’m glad I still studied for it like normal. There’ll be an approx. 50/50 mix of theory and practical/calculation questions, so make sure you know how to do everything (or as much as possible :P ). Still, there’ll always be a decent amount of stuff you’ve seen before.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2018, 04:41:43 pm by M909 »
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Jasmine J

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #663 on: November 24, 2017, 11:58:23 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10004 Chemistry 2

Workload:
3 × 1hr lecture per week
1 × 1hr tutorial per week
3 hour practical (6 experiments in total)

Assessment:
Practical 20%
Online Quiz (3 mid semester quizzes) 6%
End of semester exam (3hr) 74%   

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes (usually the past 5 years) with solutions.
Textbook Recommendation: Lecture slides are sufficient but Chemistry3 2e by Burrows textbook is recommended
 
Lecturer:
Professor Richard O'Hair - Organic Chem (He's really good!)
Associate Professor Craig Hutton - Organic Chem
Professor Robert Lamb - Kinetics (He's awesome)
Dr Alessandro Soncini - Quantum Mechanics
Associate Professor Guy Jameson - Electrochemistry & Introduction to d-block chemistry
Dr Stephen Best - Coordination Chemistry and Transition-Metal Chemistry

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments
Tips: Do your best for practical as the demonstrator seems to be more lenient in giving full marks for the prac report compared to in semester 1 chem 1.

Go to tutorials and get involved in answering the questions! My tutorial class group were pretty engaging and the tutor seems to like it that way. Plus, you'll learn more.

The extra help classes in Learning Centre are really useful and the tutors are more than happy to help you (Don't wait until swotvac cause there would be a lot of people getting last minute explanations from them)

Organic chemistry:
Prepare and organize your organic chem notes (reaction mechanism, reagents used and the products of the reaction).  It will be an advantage if you know your organic stuff really well since the exam tend to emphasize on this part (Khan academy videos helped me a lot in understanding this stuff although the lecturers were really good as well). Familiarize yourself with the mechanisms etc by doing lots of practices perhaps draw a good mind map for the reactions.

Quantum Mechanic,
Some might find it hard but you'll do alright if you have any background physic knowledge from year 12 etc. though there were a few new topics. Prof Alessandro is good in explaining this but keep in mind that he tend to go over them really fast.
Spoiler
Most of us did pretty bad in quantum mechanic mid semester quiz because we thought it would be quite simple
For kinetics, Prof Robert Lamb is a really cool guy and his lectures are pretty laid back and chill. He makes it easier to understand the concept with extra jokes aside. Content wise, kinetics is probably the easiest among the other topics.

For Electrochemistry, its pretty straightforward with some calculations needed, few of them were quite similar to year 12 chemistry chemical processes and the cells etc. The lectures were not the best of all but they were okay.

Inorganic Chemistry
Now, personally, everything was a rush. We were learning new stuff until the very last day of lecture in week 12. I still remember how some people nearby our seats in lectures sighed in disbelief a few times whenever new (and daunting) stuff being thrown at us. Don't get me wrong, Prof Stephen lectures were good and he made it really clear on what will and will not come out in the exam. I took his advise and re-watched the lecture capture again before finals and he was right; the stuff he emphasized on really did came out for the exam.

Overall, chemistry 2 is not as scary as it turns out to be. The topics we learnt for semester 2 and the way they were structured was coordinated quite well. However, you'll definitely come across a few people stating that chem 2 is one of the subject with relatively high failure rate but I feel like it's just an exaggeration if you set aside a good amount of time to revise everything. Just don't fall too far behind and you'll be fine! :)
« Last Edit: November 26, 2017, 01:53:04 pm by K888 »

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #664 on: November 25, 2017, 01:44:17 am »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10003 Engineering Systems Design 2

Workload:
-3 x 1hr lecture per week
-1 x 3hr workshop/tutorial per week (starts in week 3 - on average, they are ~2.5 hours)

Assessment:
Modules:
-Digital Systems: 3 written group assignments, 1 in-class test and team assessment during workshop (10%)
-Programming: 2 solo assignments, 1 in-class test and team assessment during workshop (10%)
-Mechanics: 3 written group assignments, 2 in-class tests and 2 team assessments during 2 different workshop sessions (10%)
-0.5% attendance mark AND ASSESSED PRE-PRAC for each workshop (total 5%)
-Online MC Practice Exam (5%)
-End of Semester Exam 3 hours long, 40 marks MC, 60 marks SA (60%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture (the actual lectures are projected from iPad presentation to board)

Past exams available:
Yes, online graded practice exam that is fully MC. Also, several past exams were given online but they were only the Short Answer sections (I believe a change was made around 2011 which introduced the MC section). These however had no solutions, so you had to go to tutor sessions during SWOTVAC to obtain the answers. You can also browse the online ESD2-only forum for solutions from your peers.

Textbook Recommendation:
I bought the recommended textbook and used it infrequently. You definitely don't need to buy it. The lecture material is good enough for you to do well.

Lecturers(s):
Dr Gavin Buskes - Digital Systems
Assoc Prof Adrian Pearce - Programming
Professor Andrew Ooi - Mechanics

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments:
I liked this subject, but I get the feeling that many people may also loathe the subejct. I didn't do ESD1 and there is virtually no content that carries over. I think the main reason why people didn't enjoy it is due to the Programming section, where they introduce you to MATLAB. Most people probably did not actively practise coding during the semester and found this component difficult. Coming in from Accelerated Mathematics 1 (MAST10008), where the subject taught MATLAB, I didn't find the MATLAB section too difficult. That being said, this subject teaches MATLAB on a more conceptual and holistic way. Those who enjoy programming/coding will tolerate and enjoy MATLAB.

Spoiler
Digital Systems: The subject started by introducing different number systems, such as binary, hex, octal and others. These were quite enjoyable and are easy marks on the exam. Eventually, we started learning Boolean algebra and logic gates, which form the core backbone of this component. Make sure you learn the logic gates proficiently so that you can construct the required circuit by yourself. During the assignments, you work in teams of 3 so it is easy to slack off a bit. Also, make sure that you remember the stuff you learn in this component or revise it thoroughly during SWOTVAC as it is quite early on and you will likely forget some of the details. Also, make sure you prepare thoroughly for each workshop session as cumulatively they are worth quite a bit. The combinational circuit design was probably the hardest part of the subject for me, as they gave some weird questions in previous exams that I found difficult. This can probably be overcome through more practice and preparation both during the semester and in SWOTVAC. Luckily, the actual drawing/coming up of the circuit was only worth 2 marks in this semester's exam.
TL;DR: Make sure you learn the logic gate and design stuff well enough to carry your team should you be assigned bad team members.

Spoiler
Programming: This section involved Assoc. Prof Pearce teaching us how to use MATLAB and different aspects of coding to consider when approaching programming problems. You are introduced to concepts such as loops (for, while), conditional statements(if-elseif-else), graphing in MATLAB and formatting these graphs etc. If you have any experience in programming whatsoever, you will likely enjoy this more than if you have no experience at all. The assignments were pretty good but some of them were time-consuming, mostly because you have to think of how to solve the problem and ensure that your method works consistently. The workshop quiz and assessment should be fairly do-able, and you just need to make sure that your methods work to obtain the marks. All-in-all, you need to actually practise MATLAB to do well in it. By that, I mean that you should do all the assignments by yourself, critically analyse your methods and compare them with others to see how they differ, and generally be confident enough so that you can write your code down by hand the first time (as in the exam - you are given a problem and you don't have access to MATLAB during the exam). This includes getting familiar with formatting in MATLAB.

Spoiler
Mechanics: Coming into uni from Spesh, Methods and Physics, I didn't find this section too hard. The lecturer Andrew Ooi is funny and engaging, and if you pay attention to the lectures and write good notes, you will do well in both the assignments and the exam. Also, this section requires that you be at least competent in MATLAB, as you use the software to solve problems given to you, generally by producing graphs of force and optimising values, or by using MATLAB as a calculator and to solve matrices. The group assignments during this section were probably the least enjoyable experience for me, as my team was kinda useless and I had to carry (think of 7pm -> 4am solo carrying lol), mostly because they weren't so good at MATLAB. My piece of advice is to learn MATLAB well so that you don't lose marks excessively here.

I didn't really do any 'textbook' questions in this subject during the semester, but I did try to make an effort to do the online MC questions as they were made available. Doing these will help you out in the online MC test worth 5%. All-in-all, I feel that if you write good notes, revise the Digital stuff and get on top of programming, with somewhat of a background into mechanics (i.e. spesh or physics), then you are set to do really well, and is a well-deserved H1 to obtain.

Spoiler
Final Exam: The exam wasn't too bad, 40 MC questions each worth 1 mark, then 3 Short Answer questions based on each major component (Digital, Programming, Mechanics) each worth 20 marks, and comprised of multiple parts (i.e. a) -> f) etc). The MC questions aren't too tricky and should take roughly a minute per question. The Short Answer questions can be tricky, particularly the Digital Systems aspect, but only the last 1 or 2 parts of it. It still asks for stuff like binary to decimal, hex to decimal, Boolean algebra and such. Therefore, the actual combinational circuit design would be worth at most like 3-4 marks. For Programming, you essentially want to be good enough to just freehand write your code and be able to tell whether it will work as you intend it to or not. These questions are relatively easier than the questions you'll tackle during the assignment, so be rest assured that if you know your stuff, you will do well. The Mechanics component isn't too tricky either. Think of it as slightly more complicated spesh stuff. Also, the last question involved differential equations but it wasn't hard - it was to do with exponentials and so on.

Overall, I did this subject as part of my Bio-Engineering major, and it was pretty decent. If you are given a good team, write good notes, prepare for each workshop in-class assessment and do well in the assignments, you will do well. The exam itself shouldn't be too bad as long as you prepare decently during SWOTVAC. That being said, although I enjoyed the subject, I will repeat my opener: many people may found this subject bothersome, especially those who have no background in programming whatsoever.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2017, 01:51:04 am by alanyin1 »
2016 ATAR: 99.85, Melbourne High School
2017-2019: Bachelor of Biomedicine (Bio-Engineering Systems Major) at The University of Melbourne
2020-2023: Doctor of Medicine at The University of Melbourne

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #665 on: November 25, 2017, 07:44:46 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30009 Structural Theory and Design 1

Workload: 
- 1x 1 hour lecture per week
- 1x 2 hour lecture per week
- 1x 2 hour tutorial per week
- 2 x 1 hour labs per semester

Assessment: 
1 x Home Lab (5%)- Group
2 x Design Assignments (10% and 5%)- Group
1 x GUNT Lab (5%)- Individual
1 x Techno Lab (5%)- Individual
3 hour end of sem exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, all the way from 2010. All had solutions provided except for 2016

Textbook Recommendation:  None that I know of, but having a copy of the standards is useful.

Lecturer(s): Jonathan Tran, Philip Christopher, Ryan Hoult plus a range of guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Probably my favourite subject this semester. ST&D1 may seem like a lot of work (especially if you don't keep up to date) but isn't actually that difficult given you put in enough effort. It is the first of a series of 3 ST&D subjects which continue into the Master of Engineering Civil and Structural streams,so most of the content is quite introductory in terms of complexity.  Much of the content covered aligns with AS 3600-2009 and AS 4100 so I would recommend getting a copy of them (if you haven't already from Materials). Barely any formulae are provided on the exam so there is A LOT to memorise and some of the formulae are extremely long and tedious. I would highly recommend learning how to derive them (derivations are all quite straightforward and definitely vital to grasping a better understanding of the subject) but memorise them as well to save time on the exam.

Lectures:
In total, every week had 3 hours worth of lectures. However, the last lecture was either a guest lecture or an assignment debrief so essentially you only had two lectures of content a week. This did cause the pace of lectures to be slightly rushed during a few weeks, but nothing too bad if you took some time to review them. The content from guest lecturers were assessed in the exam, but only 5 marks out of 120 were allocated to them. The lecture slides covering actual content are fairly complex and messy, so make sure you actually attend/watch the lectures.

The first week was taken by Jonathan and essentially just a review of the statics section from Engineering Mechanics so the content was assumed knowledge covered very quickly. The only minor extension was the introduction of a switch function which was extremely useful.

Weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 11 were taken by Philip who covered the bulk of the design section of the subject. The three major materials covered were timber, steel and reinforced concrete. Most of the content was heavily related to the two design assignments and a large chunk of the exam. However, design philosophy and method (week 5) and design detailing (week 6) weren't really assessed in the exam so you can probably skip over that during revision. Overall,  Philip explained the content very well and clearly. He was also very engaging and interactive, offering rewards such as pens and medals to students for answering questions. Only problem was that he made too many tangents during a few lectures which didn't leave enough time for the actual examinable content to be comprehensively covered.

Ryan took the lecture for the remaining few weeks which covered deflection, indeterminate beams and instability and elastic bending- this mainly related to the GUNT and techno labs.  Personally, I liked his way of teaching the most out of the three lecturers. Very clear and concise in explanations. He wasn't as engaging as Philip, but covered the content at a more comfortable pace.

Tutorials:
I found the tutorials quite useful, especially since the questions on the tute sheets were very similar to those asked in exams. Solutions were released at the end of each week so you didn't necessarily have to attend them. The tutors were also very helpful and willing to answer any questions you had regarding the content and assignments.

Assessment:
Of the 5 assignments, the home lab, GUNT lab and technolab were all easy marks. Practically everyone got the full 15%. The two design assignments required a lot more work (way more that the 15% they were worth) but I personally really enjoyed them. It was nice how they were related to the content and really assisted students in understanding the difficult formulae and concepts presented (unlike some second year subjects such as Earth). The lecturers and tutors were very lenient on the marking so almost everyone got close to full marks (if not more because there were bonus marks).

Now, the 70% exam daunted me initially but after doing all the practice exams, I had felt pretty confident. The questions asked in all 8 past exams didn't change much and they only took me one and a half hours to complete so I walked into my exam thinking I was going to ace this. Gosh I was wrong.  Unfortunately for us poor souls who took the subject in 2017, they decided to change the exam quite drastically and made it a lot more difficult. I hadn't expected some of the content to be assessed- they decided to include a hollow section instead of the I section students were more familiar with. The questions become more heavily worded and design based- it felt like I was doing a design assignment under exam conditions in a tight time frame. The paper was also error-riddled which made things a lot more difficult. I did manage to complete about 95% of the paper in the 3 hours given but was barely confident in my answers. Fortunately, the ST&D1 team scaled the marks so I still ended up doing pretty well. Pretty sure the exam in 2018 will be a lot more straightforward.

Overall:
Solid, well-taught, well constructed and well coordinated subject.You will find this subject rewarding if you enjoyed the statics part of Eng Mech and have an interest in structures. Definitely a good introduction into ST&D2 and ST&D3 and a key subject if you are looking to do Masters of Structural Eng (as well as Civil). Do be aware that this subject can be tough and a lot of content is covered. But you can do well if you keep up to date and put in enough effort (avoid cramming everything during swotvac).
« Last Edit: November 26, 2017, 07:30:20 pm by Yi_Liu »
2014: Completed VCE | ATAR: 98.25
2015-18: Bachelor of Science (Civil Systems) | H1 Average
2016-17: Exchange to Tsinghua University
2018-20: Master of Engineering

Feel free to PM me about Unimelb subjects :D.

Yi_Liu

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #666 on: November 26, 2017, 09:09:19 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ENGR30002 Fluid Mechanics  

Workload:
- 3x 1 hour lectures per week
- 1x 1 hour tutorial per week
- 2x 2 hour labs per semester

Assessment: 
- 2x lab reports (10% each)
- 2x assignments (10% each)
- 3 hr end of year exam (60%)
- Optional quizzes (+1% if you passed them all)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, from library website, without solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Daniel Heath, Marco Ghisalberti

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Straight-forward, technical subject that I found to be easier than Engineering Mechanics (at least assignment wise) and very enjoyable. A small portion of the content in the first few weeks (hydrostatics, flow regimes) was touched upon in ESD1. Daniel and Marco have been teaching the subject since 2015 and have been a pretty good job. They have very different styles of teaching and who you prefer is up to personal preference. 
It is usually recommended for civil students to take the subject in semester 1 and chemical students to take it in semester 2. This is because Marco (who focuses in civil eng) takes the course for 9 week while Daniel (who focuses in chem eng) for 3 weeks in the first semester and this is reversed in semester 2. However, I took the subject as a civil student in semester 2 and didn't feel like I was at an disadvantage.

Lectures:
Daniel took the course for the first six weeks to cover hydrostatics, conservation of laws, pipe flow and pumps before Macro took it for the next three covering dimensionless parameters, open-channel flow and fluid forces on walls. Daniel then came back for the last three weeks to cover tank mixing, compressible flow and multi-dimensional flow (Navier Stokes Equations). As a mentioned, the way the two lecturers taught differed drastically. Daniel usually had very long and detailed lecture notes full of text. Marco's notes were much more concise and  only partially completed. He would complete them with the students during lectures (you would print his notes and bring them to class to write on, similar to calc 2). Personally I preferred Marco's teaching method (it's easier for me to learn by writing). I found Daniel's notes were more difficult to digest and I felt like he put too much attention on detail and missed highlighting key concepts. I would recommend taking more time to review Daniel's lectures. However, both lecturers delivered the content well and provided clear explanations.

One major complaint I had this semester was the pace of the lectures during the last two weeks which covered the topic of multidimensional flow. Being the last topic we covered and riddled with partial differentials, it was definitely one of the more challenging sections of the subject. Daniel's notes for this topic was 200 slides long and we only had about 4 or 5 lectures to cover everything so we literally flew through it and students were forced to do a lot of self learning. The equations which Daniel presented were also more complex than the ones Marco presented in semester 1 (he had them in less simplified forms).

Tutorials:
The tutorials weren't really necessary. You could definitely do well with just the tutorial sheets since solutions were released two week after the tute (or you can find them somewhere floating around online). Some of the tutorial questions were kind of challenging and not really related to content covered in lectures.

Laboratories:
The first lab covered fluid flow in a smooth pipe and second lab covered pumps. Both were very straightforward and you could probably finish up half an hour early. The lab reports were also quite easy and as long as you knew what was going on, could easily get above 18 out of 20.

Assignments:
The assignments were usually questions from past exams or something similar. They weren't very difficult as long as you kept up with the content. Definitely read the questions properly though to avoid losing easy marks.

Quizzes:
The quizzes were introduced as a trial since the fluid mech team want to roll them out as an official assessment component next year. For this semester, they were optional and you would get an extra 1% if you passed them. Unfortunately, they were a bit of a joke. Whoever wrote them seemed to have no idea what was covered in the lectures. The questions made no sense and were error riddled. I gave up wasting my time on them after a few weeks. I really do hope that they improve them for next year, especially if they do become part of the actual assessment.

Exam:
Unfortunately, no solutions were provided to the past exams for Fluid Mechanics.  However, I would definitely recommend doing them, at least the ones from 2015 onwards. Marco wrote 75% of the semester 1 exams and Daniel 25%. This was reversed in semester two. Daniel did let us see the solutions  to past papers during consultation given that we  had actually done them and just wanted to check our solutions. The exam for Fluid Mechanics was probably the one I was most worried about because I didn't really know what to expect. Fortunately, the paper this semester wasn't very difficult if you did your revision properly. It was very fair and written quite well, covering most of the key concepts from the lectures. Daniel mentioned during consultation that the paper wasn't hard but lengthy, but most of the cohort managed to finish up and leave early. Be aware that Daniel like to include theory questions in his exams is you're taking it in semester 2.

Overall:
Well-taught and well-coordinated subject that is very technical and enjoyable. Not too difficult to do well in given you keep up with the content. As with all other subject, I would not recommend cramming everything during swotvac as a large amount of content is covered.
2014: Completed VCE | ATAR: 98.25
2015-18: Bachelor of Science (Civil Systems) | H1 Average
2016-17: Exchange to Tsinghua University
2018-20: Master of Engineering

Feel free to PM me about Unimelb subjects :D.

Yacoubb

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #667 on: November 27, 2017, 06:34:30 pm »
+8
Major: Microbiology and Immunology   

First Year Subjects: 
- BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and Organisms
- BIOL10005 Genetics & the Evolution of Life
- CHEM10003 Chemistry 1
- CHEM10004 Chemistry 2
- PSYC10003 Mind, Brain and Behaviour 1
- PSYC10004 Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2
- UNIB10006 Critical Thinking with Data
- CULS10005 Media, Identity and the Everyday Life
First Year WAM = 83 (H1)

Second Year Subjects:
PHYS20008 Human Physiology
MIIM20001 Principles of Microbiology & Immunology - 90 (H1)
CCDP20001 Street Art
ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure
PHYS20009 Research Based Physiology
MUSI20150 Music and Health
MIIM20002 Microbes, Infections and Responses - 84 (H1)
BCMB20002 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Second Year WAM = 86 (H1)

Third Year Subjects:
CORE SUBJECTS:
MIIM30011 Medical Microbiology: Bacteriology - 82 (H1)
MIIM30014 Medical Microbiology: Virology - 84 (H1)
MIIM30002 Principles of Immunology - 88 (H1)
MIIM30015 Techniques in Immunology - 87 (H1)
NON-CORE SUBJECTS:
MIIM30003 Medical and Applied Immunology
PHYS30005 Muscle and Exercise Physiology
MUSI20203 Peak Performance under Pressure
POPH20001 Genetics, Health and Society
Third Year WAM = 85 (H1)

Year of completion: 2017

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Average Mark: 85 (H1)

Comments:
Let's face it - any time someone tells you they're thinking of a Micro/Immuno major, or as we like to call it, the 'MIIM major', at least one person in the room gasps. Arguably, it is one of the most challenging majors of the Human Biosciences, particularly due to the enormous amount of content and memory involved. In saying that however, if you do enjoy all things related to Microbiology and Immunology, I highly recommend this major, for reasons I will outline below. I thought I'd give a little background to how & why I decided to do a MIIM major (you'll find me referring to this major as MIIM throughout).

At the end of first year of Science, I was deadset on a Human Structures & Functions Major. Why? Because I want to do Med and it seems like the logical major to do. A lot of content covered in this major will reappear in Medicine, so why not get a head start on it all and get that knowledge under your belt? After second year Anatomy (ANAT20006), I was quite sure that although it was a pretty decent subject content/difficulty wise, it wasn't something that I was extremely passionate about. What really consolidated my passion for a MIIM major though, was actually sort of an accident. In second year, semester 1, I had Biochem, Anatomy and my breadth, Street Art, all set. All I needed was one more subject. I was quite unsure of what I wanted to do in my first semester, and ultimately gave in to doing Principles of Immunology and Microbiology (MIIM20001). It was my filler subject, and on my first lecture, I remembered justifying this preference based on the passion I had for the VERY little Immunology and Microbiology I had dabbled in during first year.

Doing this subject opened my eyes up to all things MIIM related, and I loved the subject so much that I prioritised it over all my other subjects. It wasn't all bliss, though - I would have anxiety attacks frequently just thinking about the amount of detail I needed to memorise everything in. I had never been in a situation where I had to memorise so much content, and I literally couldn't fathom how anyone could expect students to memorise so much. Nonetheless, my passion drove me to persevere, and it was my first subject I ever received in the 90s for. So, this led me to doing MIIM20002, the follow-up to MIIM20001, which was definitely a lot more focussed on the Microbiology aspect. By the end of semester 1, I was convinced I wanted to major in Immunology alone, but MIIM20002 changed my mind to doing a Microbiology and Immunology major (more on why I recommend this later).

Some FAQs:
1. Is there a lot of memory involved in a MIIM major?
Yes. Be prepared to memorise a LOT. The majority of this major is not application, but simply rote learning copious amounts of viral life cycles, cytokine functions, components of the complement cascade, the mechanisms of CRISPR, a gazillion different types of antibiotics. This is the point where I recommend that anyone who cannot memorise a lot of information steers away from this major. It can be an extreme turn-off, and extremely daunting having to memorise so much. I know a lot of my friends don't appreciate the MIIM major because they cannot see the relevance of memorising so much information. I would be lying if I didn't feel the same way sometimes. However, the content is so interesting that I believe it definitely outweighs the copious amounts of info you need to remember.

If however, you've got a good memory, the MIIM major is probably the most loyal major. Why? Because a lot of the times, the marks you gain are purely based on knowledge. If you know something, you get the mark. If you don't know it, you don't get the mark.

2. Is it easy to H1 subjects in the MIIM major?
This is a little subjective, and although I did achieve a H1 in all the MIIM major subjects, it was NOT easy. I don't think it is easy to H1 any subject (except for Music and Health and Peak Performance under Pressure - seriously guys these are the best subjects to do with a MIIM major because I don't even think they're legit subjects lol). Anyway, the reason I say it isn't easy to H1 MIIM subjects is because there is a lot of work and effort that needs to be put in to achieving that H1. If you are committed to memorising all the details, knowing many pathways, remembering lots of functions, etc., then you're definitely on your way to achieving a H1. If you aren't, then don't expect a H1.

3. Immunology, or Microbiology/Immunology major?
Okay so I kind of alluded to this above. After doing MIIM20001, I was convinced I wanted to do an Immunology major alone. I didn't really enjoy memorising all the different microbes and features of their life cycle at first. The reason for this was because of what I mentioned earlier - I never needed to do so much memory. However, when I did MIIM20002, I developed my memory skills, and I attribute my memory skills now to doing a MIIM major haha. Once I overcome my fear of memorising, which occurred at the end of semester 2, I considered my options. The best thing about a Micro/Immuno major over an Immuno major, is that it is really great to contextualise the Immunology you learn, to specific details about the different microbes. Personally, I loved Virology and Bacteriology in third year - they were so difficult with the amount I needed to memorise, and I would often be having anxiety attacks the morning of exams convinced I wouldn't remember everything. Nonetheless, I have completed them now and in hindsight, I think I achieved a H1 because they were SO interesting and fun to study. So, I think a MIIM major is so great purely because it allows you to explore the application of Immunology, and then contextualise it to Bacteriology and Virology, which provides you with an insight into the world of all things Bacteria and Viruses (Virology > Bacteriology by the way, just saying).

4. How is the MIIM Department?
Okay the MIIM department is the best department in the whole university. Across the three years of my degree, some of the departments have been so incompetent and I literally cannot fathom how they conduct themselves. Our results for a Muscle and Exercise Physiology MST were released 6 weeks after the test, and it was literally 40 multiple choice questions. Meanwhile, my Principles of Immunology MST results were released 2 days after the MST, and involved multiple choice and short answer. Yes yes, there are more people doing Phys than MIIM subjects. Yes yes, a department isn't good just because it gives results early. SO I'll go into more reasons why the department is great.
-- The MIIM department is always prepared to help. On so many occasions, people have been ill, received difficult information like not getting into Medicine, and the MIIM department does everything they can to help. I had a friend who was literally excused from a practical after finding out some difficult news, and the coordinator of the subject (Dr. Odilia Widjburg) made sure she was okay. They genuinely care for their students, and want them to do their very best.
-- The MIIM department is always prepared to provide feedback. There are consult sessions after all MSTs and they provide you with feedback to review your MSTs. This is something I didn't have access to in any other subjects I've done in my degree, and I found that they provided the opportunity to really engage with the lecturers, and develop a close relationship with them where they weren't so scary.
-- They actually listen to their students. If students find that there was something unclear in the lectures, they make the effort to actually clarify these things.

5. What are good subjects to do in addition to the core subjects?
Easy breadths. When I say easy, I mean easy going breadths with minimal work required. Some people may not necessarily agree with me on this one, but my personal opinion is that because the subjects in MIIM are so full-on, its great to have a reprieve by doing some decent subjects. I did 2 breadth subjects that were quite relaxed, and I found this helped me concentrate on my MIIM subjects to the best of my ability.

6. How do you memorise so much information?
I found that doing diagrams and flow charts definitely helped. The best approach to these subjects is to go over the lectures straight after sitting through them, because usually you consolidate about 70%, and get the overall big picture, and then spend time memorising the finer details. Acronyms are also your best friend - I found these so helpful on so many occasions and these will help you remember all the massive lists of information you can expect to be given for these subjects.

7. Is it a good major to do and follow up with Honours?
This is one of the most compelling reasons I recommend a MIIM major - there is SO much opportunity for Honours. I am going to do an Honours year next year, and I found that I was so in awe of the immense space for development because of the vastness of the space in the MIIM world. From Virology, to Bacteriology, to Immunology and Medical applications of all 3, there is something that is suited to your liking. The lecturers are also so great, and are part of the reason why these honours projects tend to be so compelling.

8. Techniques in Immuno or Micro?
- OKay so I did techniques in Immuno. It was a good subject; however, from what I have heard, and from what I have experienced, there is a lot more interesting content in Techniques in Microbiology. I cannot be the judge of this because I'd have to have done one, but in terms of Techniques in Immunology, this is probably the most application you'll do in the major because of the laboratory-basis of the subject.

All in all, doing a MIIM major has been the best decision I have made in my academic life thus far. It was not only interesting, but also such a great challenge, and although I've had so many moments doubting my capabilities, fearing not being able to remember everything, or just simply not being good enough, I have come out the other end proud of my achievements. The friendships I've formed, and the repertoire with the lecturers in this department, are all so dear to my heart. Highly recommend this major, and if anyone has any questions, please feel free to PM me!
2013-2014: VCE
2015-2017: BSc. at University of Melbourne. Majoring in Microbiology & Immunology.
2018: Honours - Restoring immunocompetency in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
2019-2022: Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Deakin University

Completed VCE Biology in 2013 with a study score of 47. Offering tutoring in VCE Biology for 2020 in Geelong region! PM me for more details.

Boobah

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #668 on: November 30, 2017, 12:01:08 am »
+6
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law

Workload: 
1 × 2hr lecture per week
1 × Online Tutorial

Assessment:
2X 1 Hour Multi-Choice Test (2X10%=20%),
End of semester exam (3hr) 80%   

Lectopia Enabled:  The first hour only of the Thursday lecture was recorded- I beleive this was the first time the lectures for this subject had been recorded in any capacity.

Past exams available:  1 Practice exam with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: First Principles of Business Law, 10th Edition: You must buy the textbook. Test and Exam questions often directly refer to the text and lecture slides are summarised based on the assumption you have read the text.

Lecturer: Arlen Duke

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments: Business Law is commonly perceived as a 'bludge' or an 'easy' subject. Largely due to the Multiple choice format and lack of tutorials. Whilst I would agree that the average time to be spent on BLAW to do well would be lower than other subjects, to do well requires a very thorough understanding of the course content and consistent work throughout the semester is required.

If English is not your first language, you may get caught out on the wording of the questions and specific legal terms. So unless you have a particular interest in this content, or you have to do it as part of your accounting major- don't do this subject. i.e don't do this subject for the sake that 'its easy and will boost my wam'.

The course is broken down into three key sections.

Section 1 is law making through courts and parliament as well as a general introduction to the legal system. For those who have done VCE Legal Studies, lots of revisited content here and the first test in week 4 can be easily nailed.

Section 2 involves 5 weeks on contract law, this information is very useful for day to day life in thinking about whether or not as an individual you are binding yourself to legal agreements. I found this very applicable to day-to-day life. This section was very dense content wise though so make sure you are on top of this for the second test.

Section 3 looks at Tort Law, the Australian Consumer law and Agency, again lots of new content each week but allows you to learn about a broad range of topics.

Lectures:
Arlen wrote very succinct lecture slides which enabled him to usually have the lectures done in about 1hr- 1hr 20 mins. This was nice however it meant a lot of the key learning had to be done in your own time from the textbook as I found the tests and exams tested the textbook content more than the lecture slides.
Arlen was a very engaging lecturer, his clarity and succinct teaching style was greatly appreciated by students.

Tutorials:
No tutorials in this subject. Just e-tutorials which I personally found useless and unnecessary. Before each test/exam workshops are held to go over the practice test questions. These would be good if you had issues understanding why you were wrong for a question, but I feel like you could have the same benefit by asking a friend.

Tests:
Test 1 focussed on really intricate details of the textbook for chapters 1 to 3. If you study hard possible to do very well.
Test 2 was much more difficult as it covered a very large amount of content and cases. My advice would be to stay on top of the content over these weeks to avoid starting from scratch with your revision a week out like I did.
 
Exam:
Pretty tough, a few obscure questions testing very specific details of the textbook. Definitely worth trying to fit as much on the cheetsheet as possible, because you never know what obscure point may be tested. Having a good set of case summaries is very helpful as well.

In summary, this subject was a very welcome change of pace from a first year of BCom filed with maths maths and more maths. Would happily recommend to other bcom students- but I also recommend doing this in second semester once you have settled into uni so you can really smash this subject.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2017, 12:34:43 am by K888 »

dddknight

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #669 on: December 15, 2017, 01:07:18 am »
+5
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20003: Molecular Analysis of Cell Function  

Workload:  2 x 1 hr lecture per week, 2 x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment:  2 x MSTS (10% each), 1 x online test (10%), final exam (70%!!!!)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes. 1

Textbook Recommendation:  Alberts et al Molecular Biology of the Cell, 6th edition, Garland Science (good for reinforcing concepts)

Lecturer(s): Heather Verkade, Terry Mulhern, Paul Gooley and Marie Bogoyevitch

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Since the previous review of this subject is outdated, I thought I would write a more recent review of this subject. Compared to BCMB20002 and BCMB20005, this was a light subject in terms of the work demanded. The best way to describe this is to think of it as a sequel to BCMB20002. If u understood a majority of what BCMB20002 was saying, you'll find that grasping this subject is not too challenging.

Lectures: Compared to most subjects, this subject is special in that it only has 2 lectures per week. The first lecture of the week dealt mainly with the theory of biochem and molecular biology while the second lecture dealt with the techniques seen in the field. Our lectures were at times hard to understand at first but once you took time to go over them at home, they were pretty straightforward. I liked all of the lecturers and it was clear that all of them were very passionate about the topics they went through. Heather's summary questions are helpful as always and were good steering points when reviewing my notes. 

Tutorials: Perhaps this would have to be the most challenging portion of the subject. The first tutorial of the week dealt with questions that challenged you to think about how to deal with specific situations in the lab. During that one hour, I found myself struggling due to their unfamiliarity and how it was based on conceptual thinking rather than parroting information from your notes. The second tutorial of the week dealt mainly with questions on the assigned scientific paper of the week. These tutorials required you to have conceptual thinking and familiarity with the paper. Terry's tutorials were definitely the hardest to answer because as we all know, he expects us to know things in and out rather than just memorising. What makes these tutorials much harder is the fact that within the classroom, almost no one talks. Word of advice - do talk during these tutorials and with unfamiliar classmates, it makes the tutorials more interesting and less painful to go thru. Occasionally, we get mock tests over a topic that was recently completed and they were extremely helpful when you chose to study for it and do it in test conditions.

Assessment: The 2 msts are your standard BCMB20002 msts and I found them testing mainly slabs of information. They were pretty fair in their assessment. The online activity is an annotation of scientific papers in order to prep u for the tutorial. This assessment had its pros and cons. On one hand, it did try to engage u with the paper so that you weren't completely lost in tutorials and I have to say that this activity did train my analysis of graphs and figures and how to read a scientific paper more efficiently. However, there were times the papers were out of this world and had content I could not understand at all. Perusall makes an appraisal of the annotations to assign a grade out of 3. Problem is sometimes the annotations I felt were intelligent was seen as lacking in perusall's view. Other times, very insignificant comments with regards to the topic were seen as good to perusall. It's a mixed bag of good and bad and I do think it's hard to find that balance. The final exam was what I have to say is... manageable.. The final exam is 70% which is a huge chunk which makes me wonder what's the purpose of working so hard for the 30% assessment. Section A were MCQs while Section B were short answer questions. Within these questions, you had 50% conceptual based questions (tutorials) and the other half tested your theory. If you studied, you most likely will have a bit of time to spare to go thru any errors in your paper. Study thru your notes and the tutorial questions and it should be "manageable". I say this with quotation marks because I was sure I did poorly after the final exam but lo, and behold a miracle struck.

Overall: All I can say is that this is really a nice and chill subject. Things weren't going out of control in this subject and while 2 lectures couldn't be delivered, Heather could give us recordings from the previous years which weren't really big issues because they were uploaded quickly. I would recommend this to students who want to pursue a BCMB major or are just interested in the concepts dealt with in BCMB20002. It felt much lighter when BCMB20005 was completed as well. People interested in improving their scientific paper data analysis skills in science/biomed will find this subject very useful as well. P.S The only reason i put 4.5/5 is mainly because there was no welcome message during the first week :p Made the subject feel a bit strange and unsettling..

PM me if you have any other inquiries.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2017, 02:55:29 pm by dddknight »
BSci @ Unimelb (2016-2018)
Year I: BCMB20002 BIOL10004 BIOL10005 CHEM10009 HPSC10001 MAST10010 PHYC10005 UNIB10006
Year II: ANAT20006 BCMB20002 BCMB20003 CLAS10004 FOOD20003 MUSI20150 PHRM20001 PHYS20008
Year III: BCMB30001 BCMB30002 BCMB30004 BCMB30010 NEUR30002 NEUR30003 PSYC10003 SCIE20001

Yousha

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #670 on: December 19, 2017, 07:24:55 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: From the Solar System to the Cosmos (PHYC10008) 

Workload:  3 1-hr lectures each week (Mon-Wed-Fri 9 am when I did it). 8 3-hr Workshops/practicals in the semester (marked).

Assessment:  25% Practicals, 15% Weekly Quizzes, 10%  30 min MST, 50% 2-hr Final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes.

Textbook Recommendation:  The Cosmic Perspective

Lecturer(s): Rachel Webster, Michelle, Jack Line

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Marks: 90 (H1) (Study a little more than I did and you'll definitely get around 95)

Science Credit: Yes

Available as a Breadth: Yes for Bachelor of Commerce, Arts, Music, Design and Environment.

Comments: I really liked this subject. The lecturers were great and the content was really interesting. If you have not read about, watched videos on or heard of the size of the universe, it will be a really humbling experience too. This is a very easy subject for both science and non science students, provided that you are good at understanding concepts and rely on that instead of rote learning. I think rote learners might do well in this subject too but I would not recommend that approach. Those who are scared of not having prior knowledge of physics and mathematics should not be worried since there are no complex calculations in this subject and all basic concepts that are required are taught in the lectures.

As the name suggests you will study the objects in the universe, how they formed, evolved and will continue to evolve (theories and evidence supporting these theories). The subject is well organised (unlike my review) and you will usually not feel rushed or lost during the semester.

Assessment
The weekly quizzes (10 in total) are fairly easy and scoring at least 10% (out of 15%) should be a piece of cake for everyone. The mid semester test was very easy too although my peers did not perform that well (median of 16 out of 25). The labs are easy to score in provided you put in the effort, prior reading is not a must to score well but I think that instead of wrapping it up in less than 2 hours each week, giving it the extra half hour will certainly help in both scoring better and understanding things. The final examination was again fairly easy and anyone who has attended the lectures will surely score well. Overall, it is a subject in which a little sincere effort can lead to a score in high 90s.

Note
I do realise that this is not an ideal review but writing reviews has never been my strong suit. Please be forgiving and do not lash out on technical mistakes since this is the first time I am reviewing a subject. If you have any suggestions to help me improve my review please do not hold back and feel free to send a DM if you want to know more about this subject. Thanks!
« Last Edit: January 22, 2018, 04:58:02 pm by Yousha »

Knarf

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #671 on: December 19, 2017, 09:44:27 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10006 Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment 

Workload:  3 x 1-hour lecture per week
                   8 x 2.5-hour practical
                   1-hour problem-sloving session per week

Note: the schedule of practicals is given on the back cover of your lab manual. And I know on the handbook it says pracs last for 3 hours but when we were doing them they only gave us 2.5 hours. It might be different in the future so just be mindful of it.

Assessment:  Practicals (Prelab + Lab report completed during practical) - 25%
                        Ten online weekly assignments - 10% (1% each)
                        One written assignment (Interactive Writing Task) - 5%
                        End-of-semester 3-hour exam - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. Past exams up to 2012 are available but only past three years' papers are provided with solution.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook is Physics for Global Scientists and Engineers, Volume 1 or Physics for the Life Sciences 3E. I 'found' the latter one but only used it once. So they are not really necessary. Aside from textbook you will definitely need to buy the lab manual for pracs and problem-solving sessions and a logbook for writing reports.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof Michelle Livett covers thermal physics, fluid and radiation and imaging. Prof Ann Roberts covers electricity and magnetism.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1(89)

Comments:
Before doing this subject I was really surprised to find out that there wasn't a single review of it here. Considering the relatively large cohort with both biomed students and science students, I didn't know if it was simply a coincidence or people were just so bothered with physics that they just wanted to get it over with. Now that I have finished it, my overall attitude towards this subject is positive. You will be provided with enough resources for learning and assessments. The coordination of this subject is not sublime but they do a decent job. Assuming that you have done physics in high school, you won't find this subject challenging if you keep yourself up to date with the content.

Lectures:
 A/Prof Michelle Livett and Prof Ann Roberts are both good lecturers and they present their content in a very clear fashion. For the majority of lectures you won't need to memorise much. It's not necessary to memorise formulas for they will be provided in the exam. But you must pay attention to any derivation shown on slides or handwritten by lecturers on camera because they can be assessed. In-class demonstrations are also examinable. So make sure you know what happens and why it happens. The only part of course which involves some memorisation is radiation and imaging. But it's really nothing compared to biology.

Problem-solving sessions:
I find myself unqualified to comment on them because I have never been to any one of the sessions. I heard that they didn't take rolls and the only thing you did in class was to solve questions in group on board. So I figured why not just do those questions on my own. Now you can be as lazy as me by not going to the sessions (which is highly not recommended), but you can't go further by not doing questions on problem-solving sheets. Because in my year the examiners decided to put two of those questions directly onto the final exam paper. Even if it won't happen anymore, you will still find many questions in the exam to be variants of those from problem-solving sessions. So be sure to do the questions.

Practicals:
Personally, I never enjoyed any of the eight practicals. And this is predominantly why I gave the rating of 4 out of 5. When I was reading reviews of this subject on studentvip, some student mentioned how 'awesome' the practicals were. So I walked in the lab with some expectations but gosh did it turn out to be disappointing. The time management for pracs was weird. They were 2.5-hour long when they were supposed to be 3-hour long. And for the first prac everyone was rushing in the end. Some students went 20 minutes over time to finish their report. Then for the second prac, most people walked out 30 minutes early. Furthermore, the criteria for lab performance is ridiculously arbitrary. You can lose mark for 'distraction' during pracs even though nobody knows what it means. You can possibly lose mark for asking your demonstrator questions because it shows that you are unprepared for pracs, which leads to my next point that your practical experience and mark hugely depends on your demonstrators and they are nowhere near as good as those in chemistry last semester. I asked my demonstrators quite a few questions each prac and never lost a mark for that. But some people in other labs weren't that lucky. As for the report, it's basically copying stuff from the manual and answering questions. Prelabs are done online. They are mostly multiple choices with few questions where you need to fill an answer. Overall my tip for practical is to write your report as well as you can and hope for the best.

Assignments:
1. Weekly online assignments:
These online assignments come out every Friday and are due next Monday if I'm not mistaken with the schedule. Your best ten results will be picked for the 10% final mark. I think the thing worth noting about these assignments is that some if not most of the questions are harder or even much harder than those you get on the exam. Don't stress too much if you are stuck with some questions or you think you've spent too much time on them. It always took me quite a while to finish one assignment. Moreover, in my year, one question from assignment showed up on the exam paper. Therefore do take your time and work through them.

2. Written assignment:
Somewhere around the middle of semester you will get this IWT (interactive writing task) assignment. The purpose of this assignment is to help you familiarise with essay-style question which will show up in the final exam. You need to choose one of three topics for your piece. Topics include guideline questions so you are basically still answering questions and putting them together fluently. Your first draft is not marked but reviewed by two other students and a tutor. You will also review drafts of two other students who work on different topics. Your reviews are marked so don't just say stuff like 'good job'. Be as constructive and considerate as you can. After receiving the reviews you will develop your draft based on them and submit your final piece which needs to include how you use the reviews. Everything is done online. Your reviews and final piece are what are marked. I don't know what the weighting is but I think I wrote more for reviews than for my final piece. Feedback and sample pieces will be provided later in the semester.

Exam:
You might be thinking that with three questions being given before the exam from problem-solving session and online assignment, the final exam in my year should be easy. But the most challenging part of the exam is the sheer amount of stuff to write. There should be quite a few students who weren't able to finish in my cohort. In fact, if I spent any time thinking of those three questions, I wouldn't be able to finish on time considering I only had few seconds left. There won't be too much time for you to think so try to write as fast as you can. As for difficulty, I think it's fair. It's easy to spot some patterns in the way they write questions from the past exam. For example, thermal physics is usually about someone walking, running or cycling and how heat processes are occurring, electricity is very likely to have a question on a three-point-charge system and radiation and imaging is probable to have an essay-style question. You won't see anything you haven't seen before. Therefore the best preparation is to go through your lecture slides and make sure you know how to solve all the questions you have seen in problem solving sessions and assignments.

Overall, this is a decent subject which is not too hard to do well in. From what I've heard it is better coordinated than Physics for Biomedicine. Therefore for biomed students, if you are eligible for Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment, do pick it. And if you have any inquiry about this subject, feel free to PM me ;).

Edit: Apologies for being misleading here. Students with study score of 25 or more in VCE Physics 3/4 or equivalent have to do Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment. I thought we had a choice but apparently I was muddled :-X.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2019, 04:52:09 pm by Knarf »
Unimelb Bachelor of Biomedicine 2017 - 2019

sweetcheeks

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #672 on: January 01, 2018, 11:40:10 am »
+6
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10004: Biology of Cells and Organisms 

Workload: 2x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week, 5x 2 hour practical every 2 weeks, 5x 1 hour skills workshop alternating with practical

Assessment: Exam 50% (hurdle), 25% practicals, 20% 4x module tests, 5% assignment

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: One sample exam as well as extra extended response questions

Textbook Recommendation:  Biology: An Australian Focus (provided as an interactive e-book)

Lecturer(s): Alex Johnson, Andrew Drinnan, Lauren Salo, Mark Green, Mark Elgar

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2017

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89 H1

Comments: I really enjoyed this subject and felt that it was taught extremely well.

lecturers
Alex Johnson: Alex gave lectures on cellular biology, which were my personal favourites. His voice was extremely pleasant and he spoke at a perfect pace. The content was quite straight-forward. The lectures covered the different components of cells and how they function together as well as the origin of these components.

Andrew Drinnan: Andrew gave lectures on plants, as well as cellular respiration and photosynthesis. He was more interested in telling us random facts about plants rather than delivering the content he said he would. However, the parts he taught were quite simplistic and he gave quick summaries at the end of each lecture of the important information that we would need to know (and his exam questions reflected this)

Lauren Salo: Lauren’s lectures were on physiology. For the most part she was very thorough in her explanations and the content was delivered exceptionally well. However, she kept running out of time and would carry over content to the next lecture, resulting in her final lecture only being half completed, which was a shame as it was an interesting lecture.

Mark Green: Only gave 2 lectures on reproduction and they were fantastic. He continually applied the content to real life and at the end of the second lecture did a quiz asking questions that most people should know the answer to (about birth control etc.) and gave out razors and condoms to people who got the answers correct.

Mark Elgar: Mark taught the evolution aspect of the course, which consisted mostly of rote-learning. I didn’t find him to be very engaging but the content was quite easy to remember. He would give monologues about an evolutionary scenario, which came up on the exam word for word. His monologues are still embedded in my memory long after the subject, so he did a good job of ensuring that the content was learnt.


Assessments
Exam: 50% hurdle consisting of 3 sections with approx. 180 marks. Section A is multiple choice, some worth one mark others worth two. Section B is a fill in the blank, quite straightforward for the most part. Section C is the only section where answers need to be written and the questions can vary wildly. This year the examinable content was not just that taught in lectures but also on any extra material (skills workshops, practicals, tutorials, videos and textbook readings).

Module Tests: Each module had a test worth 5% (4+5 were combined). Some of the questions could be a little contentious with ambiguity between several answers (admitted by the tutors), however they encompassed the content delivered in lectures and were a good feedback tool, however they weren’t available in feedback mode like chemistry.

Assignment: The assessment unanimously hated by the cohort. We were given some data on the molecules involved in photosynthesis and told to write a lab report on it. Hardly any information was given and the word allocation was extremely low (less than 300 for the entire thing). Don’t have high hopes for getting a good mark with this.

Practicals: The pracs for the subject were quite simple and easy to get full marks on if you followed the demonstrators advice. I personally found most of them to be rushed (much more than chemistry) but easily completed if you keep up with the demonstrators. Unfortunately you are not told what you are being marked on until you get into the lab (or if you have friends who have already completed the lab). Some of the labs I found that I would only complete the tasks we were being assessed on due to time constraints.

Tutorials
The tutorials are quite useful depending on what tutor you have. I had Michelle and she was fantastic, she knew exactly where most students would be having trouble and put a great deal of effort into helping us understand it. There are plenty of worksheets that are completed (depending on the tutor) which make fantastic revision material. The tutor will also tell you what is coming up in the future (assessments, practicals) so that you don’t forget. 

Skills Workshops
These were a new addition this year. The aim was to boost our ‘scientific’ skills (understanding data, writing experiments, hypothesis, written responses etc.). The intention was good but the delivery was not very helpful. I found them to not be very clear in what we supposed to be learning. Often the examples used were obscure and a bit difficult to understand. The content is exam assessable, usually in the form of part of the section 3 content (e.g. write a hypothesis for this experiment, analyse the data).


Advice for the exam
The exam is a real mixed bag. The first section, consisting of multiple choice has questions that require logic and critical thinking and others that are purely memorisation. Some of these questions may be a little bit contentious, where you have to decide which is going to be the best answer.

Section b involves filling in the blanks of a paragraph using a word bank. This section is not too challenging as long as you remember some of the buzzwords from the semester.

Section C is an extended response type question and is where most students do the worst. This is where the skills workshops were meant to help. The questions could be anything (you are told who is writing each questions during the final tutorial) and are more there to test your scientific thinking than simply being able to regurgitate information.

During SWOT VAC the biology department ran a series of lectures to assist with section C. If they run them, I highly recommend that you attend them as they provide extra section C questions and the criteria required to get full marks.

One practice exam is released. Often there will be questions on the practice exam that will also appear on the exam.




sweetcheeks

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #673 on: January 01, 2018, 08:38:41 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005: Genetics and the Evolution of Life 

Workload:  2x 1 hour lectures per week, 5x 2 hour practicals every second week, 5x 2 hour workshops alternating with practicals, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 20% from 4 module tests (3 online, one completed in tutorial), 5% assignment, 25% practical assessment, 50% exam (hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  One sample exam provided, with answers and additional section c questions

Textbook Recommendation:  Biology: An Australian Focus (provided as an interactive e-book)

Lecturer(s): Dawn Gleeson, Hayley Bugeja, Theresa Jones, Lauren Salo (guest), Andrew Drinnan

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) 89 (H1)

Comments: Compared to BIOL10004 this subject is badly run. It was disappointing to see the quality slip so much (I will discuss further below)

Dawn Gleeson, the queen of cat pictures, took the first set of lectures looking at genetics. For the most part, she was quite easy to understand but could be a little robotic at times. She provides a general introduction to genetics including the different classifications and genetic linkages and how diversification occurs. Her examples were set out extremely well and easy to follow and she provided us with plenty of extra practice questions. There will be a lot about drosophila.

Hayley Bujega: Her 3 lectures were easily the worst of the lot. It seemed like she was reading the information straight from her computer and there was little engagement with the audience (we had the least amount of people turn up to her 2nd and 3rd lectures). I also felt that there was some content that she didn’t understand so she struggled to explain certain concepts. She was covering gene expression but I didn’t feel like I learnt anything from her lectures, it just seemed to be endless talking without much explanations. She also made continual mistakes during the lectures which she didn’t always correct. I was better off with the tutorials and the textbook.

Theresa Jones: Her lectures started off a little frustrating as there was a video we were required to watch prior to her lecture that we were not informed about. This resulted in the lecture being pretty much a waste. She did apologise for this in her second lecture, as she did not realise we were not informed, and actually went through the content of the video. Overall, her lecture content was delivered with a high level of enthusiasm and very professionally. She taught the zoology section and she had an endless knowledge of cool facts about animals that allowed for a good way to remember them.

Lauren Salo: Although she only filled in for one lecture of Theresas’, Laurens’ lecture was by far my favourite of the semester. She was very engaging and physically demonstrated some of the concepts she was trying to explain, making it much easier to understand.


Andrew Drinnan: Andrew gave lectures on the evolution of the protists, fungi and plants. The lectures were quite interesting but we were required to remember a vast amount of information (such as the different types of chloroplasts in various protists and were in the timeline plant adaptations appeared). He did a good job of showing us the level of content expected so as not to allow us to become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information provided.

Dawn Gleeson (again): Dawn returned to give the final three lectures on population genetics. These lectures were quite straightforward, mostly going through examples of scenarios (which follow the same format each time) and there wasn’t too much that needed to be explained.


tutorials
I found the tutorials to be excellent in helping with revision, as we were shown ways to summaries the different topics into easy to understand ways. There is also content learned delivered that is exam assessable (such as human evolution)

I had Lauren Salo as my tutor. She is absolutely brilliant, an excellent teacher who knew how to explain any concept. Unfortunately, she did have to take about 3 weeks of personal leave and I had to attend other tutorials. The other tutor was great, however he was covering the content in a different order so that resulted in me missing out on some content (such as the human evolution)

Skills Workshops
The Skills workshops were a big let down (as they were last semester). Their purpose is to help build upon the foundations of being a good scientist (research skills, writing skills etc.) but they fall short of being useful. They seemed to be worse than semester 1. I understand what they are trying to do but they need some serious restructuring.

Assessments

Module Tests; Each component of the course has an associated test worth 5%. The first was completed in the tutorials and the rest online. I found some of the questions to be very contentious and there was issues with several of the tests not marking people correctly or some questions not having any correct answers. This was dealt with straight away, however some questions that had incorrect answers were not fixed.

Assignment; like semester 1, the assignment was the worst assessment. It involved looking at two genes associated with drosophila and required an analysis of the genes (linkage, dominance, sex linked etc.). Very little information was provided making it near impossible to understand exactly what was wanted

Practicals: I enjoyed the practicals, my demonstrator (Ian) was extremely helpful in promoting an understanding of what we were meant to be learning and would provide as much help as he could when asked. Again, like BIOL10004, we are not told what we are being assessed on until the day. Assessments were usually a quiz combined with us having to demonstrate satisfactory completion of practical tasks (such as finding cells on microscope). There were 2 post prac tests that required us to have our (fully completed) practical notes. This was a little bit annoying as I had to ensure that I could find the correct pages and also that I had filled in the correct information.


Exam: The exam was really no different than BIOL10004. Each module was weighted depending on how many lectures there were. I liked the exam as I found that the questions asked were well thought out. The section C questions were easier than BIOL10004, much less scientific thinking.

Some of the questions from the sample exam were the same or very similar, which was a great confidence booster.

Unfortunately, there was a mistake with one of the section b questions (one too many to fit onto the sheet) and instead of being told to disregard the last part, we were informed to cross out the entire question. I still completed the question, as I felt that it would be a disadvantage to myself as it was my best section (17 marks out of 45 for plant/protist/fungi section) and Dawn emailed us afterwards informing us that we were meant to complete the question.

Why I rated this subject poorly
You can probably see that I have been very negative with this subject review. I absolutely loved the content that was covered in the subject, however the way it was run was such a let down from BIOL10004. We were expected to do extra readings from the textbook and other sources on the LMS (which is fair), however these were usually not clearly listed and often placed in the wrong section, making it difficult to keep track of what was to be learnt. For example, when it came to Theresa’s lectures, we were expected to watch the set of videos on animal classifications so that we would understand the lectures. Unfortunately, we were not informed of this and the videos were not located under the correct section. The LMS was a complete mess, with mazes of folders, usually located in the wrong sections. I had to show some of the tutors where the human evolution video was located as they couldn’t work out where it was placed.

The reason for so much content to be learned outside of lectures was due to the drop from 3 lectures to 2, resulting in the lecturers not having as much time to deliver all the content required. This would not have been problematic except for the complete lack of organization and structure.

I hope that in the future the subject will be run better, as it is a very interesting subject and essential for many majors.

Advice for the subject
Go into the subject with a positive attitude. Sometimes the content may seem boring but it provides a great baseline for seeing what fields you may want to continue studying in.

Continually revise, as there is a lot of content in the subject and you will need to memorise a lot (names of animal classes, names of protists). I suggest using flashcards (I personally used Anki). Most of you will likely be undertaking Chemistry 2 at the same time and these subjects combined introduce you to a lot of new information and are very demanding so it is essential to stay on top of the workload (otherwise you will have too much to learn during the exam period).



Maths Forever

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #674 on: January 12, 2018, 04:40:57 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: MAST20005: Statistics

Workload: 3 x One Hour Lectures, 1 x Problem Based Class (Tutorial) and 1 x Computer Laboratory Class per Week.

Assessment: Three Assignments (6.7% each, totalling 20%), Computer Laboratory Test held in the last week of semester (10%) and 3 Hour End of Semester Written Examination (70%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, three past exams and solutions were made available on the LMS for 2014, 2015 and 2016. Please note that there was a new lecturer for 2017. However, the past exams were still an accurate representation of what to expect for the exam (even though there were several errors that students pointed out in some of the exam questions and the solutions to past exams).

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed text is R. Hogg, E. Tanis, and D. Zimmerman, Probability and Statistical Inference. 9th Edition, Pearson, 2015. To be honest, I hardly used the textbook. The assignments, tutorial classes, computer class sheets, lecture examples and past exams gave a sufficient number of questions. However, the lecturer did provide a list of additional questions that students could attempt from the textbook towards the end of semester. I would say that these additional textbook questions just give students extra practice!

Lecturer(s): Dr Damjan Vukcevic.

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Rating: 5/5

Comments: As mentioned above, this was Damjan’s first time taking this course. I believe the previous lecturer was Dr Davide Ferrari. Personally, I really liked Damjan’s teaching style and feel that I learned a lot from this subject! MAST20004: Probability or MAST20006: Probability for Statistics is a prerequisite for this subject. So make sure that you are familiar with the special probability distributions taught in these prerequisite subjects since they will be used frequently throughout the semester. In particular, the Binomial, Poisson, Exponential, Uniform and Normal distributions came up quite frequently. You will also need to be familiar with what a random variable is, expected value, variance, covariance, independence, Law of Large Numbers, Central Limit Theorem and Moment Generating Functions (this last topic is not used very frequently in MAST20005).

Like all mathematics and statistics subjects, the key to success is practice, practice, practice! The more questions you can attempt throughout the semester, the more comfortable you will be with the ideas presented in the course. Statistics is all about applying the concepts taught with real data sets. However, one of the focuses of MAST20005 is also learning the derivations of the formulae presented in lectures. You will often need to prove some result using techniques taught in the course in the final exam.

Please note that the subject MAST90058: Elements of Statistics shares common content with MAST20005. Both subjects have the same lecturer, time and place. The subjects are essentially the same in content. The only difference is that MAST90058 has a slightly different focus on what it teaches students. It focuses more on the practical applications of statistics, whereas MAST20005 assesses students more on the derivation of important formulae. This is reflected in the final exams for each subject. The first six or so questions are the same for both courses, but the last two questions are usually different due to the slight differences in the focus of each subject.

A major focus of this course is using the data collected from a given sample to make inferences about the entire population. We are often interested in trying to estimate a particular parameter concerning the population. For example, we may want to estimate the proportion of the population that support a certain Prime Minister. Clearly, it would be too difficult and expensive to collect data from the entire population (all of Australia) just for a simple news poll. So instead we would collect data from a sample and try to infer the population proportion based on the results of this sample of smaller size. We summarise the data from any sample with statistics (e.g. sample mean, sample standard deviation, sample median, sample proportion) and use these to estimate the desired parameter. Point estimation (including method of moments and maximum likelihood estimation) will be covered as well as interval estimation.

Other topics in this course include regression, hypothesis testing (including distribution free hypothesis tests, goodness of fit tests, analysis of variance and likelihood ratio tests), order statistics, quantiles, resampling, Bayesian methods, asymptotic distributions and optimality. This subject will also introduce you to many new probability distributions that may not have been covered in prerequisite subjects. The most important of these are the chi-squared distribution, t-distribution and F-distribution.

Damjan uses a combination of both lecture slides and handwritten examples (recorded on the document camera) in delivering his lectures. The problem based classes are just like the typical mathematics and statistics tutorials with students collaboratively working around the whiteboards. The computer based classes will allow you to use the programs R and RStudio to both enhance your knowledge of statistical inference as well as learn how to use a computational program to find point estimates, construct interval estimates and undertake hypothesis tests in an efficient manner. The lecture examples will be done both by hand and by the aid of R.

ASSIGNMENTS: There are a total of three equally weighted assignments throughout the semester. I found these to be quite reasonable and fair both in the time they take to complete as well as the consistency with what had been covered in the lectures. Please note that a random subset of questions is chosen for marking (just like in MAST20004). Typically, the assignments contain six questions and three of these will be marked. Complete solutions are released after assignments have been submitted and returned to students.

COMPUTER LABORATORY TEST: The test (50 minutes) is held in the last week of semester. This will test your competency with R and will assess how efficient you can be in applying the concepts taught during the semester. You will be allowed to bring three doubled sided A4 sheets into this test as well as HARD COPIES of all of the tutorial sheets and computer laboratory class notes.

FINAL EXAM: The final examination is 3 hours in length. You are allowed to bring a single double sided sheet of notes into the exam and a hand held scientific calculator (consistent with the approved model from the Faculty of Science). R output will be provided in the final exam, but you need to know when you will need to use that output as well as how to read it. As mentioned above, consistent effort throughout the semester will pay off!

On the whole, I felt this subject was well coordinated and supported with interesting real world examples. This area of mathematics is also very applicable to many industries and fields of science. This subject has definitely motivated me to continue with my studies in probability and statistics! If you’ve liked previous courses from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this subject!
« Last Edit: January 12, 2018, 05:11:34 pm by Maths Forever »
Currently studying at the University of Melbourne.