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March 29, 2024, 02:23:38 am

Author Topic: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 828912 times)  Share 

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Billuminati

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #495 on: December 15, 2019, 02:16:54 am »
+8
Subject Code/Name: BMS1042 – PUBLIC HEALTH AND PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Workload:
1 x 2 hour lecture
1 x 2 hour biostats workshop (optional)
1 x 2 hour epidemiology tutorial (optional most weeks)

Assessment:
20% stats assignment
5% Twitter assignment
2 x 5% timed Moodle quizzes
7.5% media critical review oral (group)
7.5% media critical review written report (group)
50% end of semester exam

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, 2 Moodle trial exams provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Essential Medical Statistics, Essential Epidemiology (about as “essential” as North Korea is a “democratic republic”)

Lecturer(s):
Tess Tsindos (Epidemiology)
Penny Robinson (Biostats)

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  1 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 96 HD

Comments:
Overall impression and lecture content: I don’t really get the point of this unit, maybe it’s supposed to be a introductory research methods/stats unit analogous to SCI1020 for the BSc people. However, we already get taught Graphpad Prism and basic stats in BMS1052 so it’s pretty redundant IMO. Although many activities in this unit are optional, the amount of effort needed to do well can be quite frustrating. To go to every tutorial and workshop, watch every lecture AND read all the ebooks would take a whopping 10 hours, discounting assignment hours. This is even more than my chem electives, which are already infamous for their 7 contact hours. The lectures weren’t ordered in series and I fail to see logical progression from one week to the next.

Tutorial: Done in small groups of 30 people, with 1 epidemiology TA teaching you like a high school class. They were pretty enjoyable and Cat’s awesome at teaching us. We got to conduct self designed RCTs on the relationship between speed of band-aid removal and reported pain levels. Tutorials were more helpful than the lectures TBH cuz they provide more detailed examples and the TA takes you through the concept step by step at a decent pace.

Workshop: The intention is that this is a PASS session of sorts for BMS1042 (they even kick each session off with a kahoot), but in practice, the crowdedness of the room (90+ people) spoiled the whole experience for me. Similar to the physics workshops, the TAs run these like Dora the Explorer too, taking a billion years to go over the solutions and sometimes not finishing in time. Many people including me were working on our other subjects during these sessions and I stopped going after week 5 or so.

Ebooks: For every tutorial and workshop there’s a corresponding ebook on Alexandra Repo. Anything from the ebooks is examinable. Honestly they were more useful than the tutorials and workshops per se, because they clearly modelled these after Khanacademy articles with the interactive check your understanding quizzes.

Stats assignment: Very easy to get a really high score, I got 99% by following the lecture slides steps and interpreting the confidence intervals etc with the stock explanations provided in the lectures. There’s ample time since you’re given nearly a month to do it, including the mid-sem break.

Group project: My least favourite part of the unit. We had to do an oral and a written report comparing the accuracy of a media article and a journal article on a given health issue (we were given impact circadian rhythm on diet choice). I had 4 people in my group and only myself and a Bachelor of Psychology kid were useful. One of my teammates tried to start arguments with me all the time. He was deleting what I’ve thoughtfully written for hours (luckily I backed it up), saying my grammar was trash when he’s saying stuff like “you is right”. The other was a double degree student with engineering, she kept saying how she’s busy all the time with her eng assignments and doesn’t have much time. In the end I had to write almost the whole script for the oral and beg everyone to memorise it. Luckily, the psych girl decided to write her own part that was actually really good, so we carried the group and got 49/50 on the oral. Since we knew the other 2 weren’t useful, we worked on the 2000-word report together and managed to get 64/70. Turnitin gave us a heart attack at 17% match, but Penny reassured us that they’ll check it manually for plagiarism too. Worst part of the group project, CATME got removed so I can’t even complain about those who were being lazy af.

Twitter assignment: Easy 5% of your overall grade, you just post random things like playing dumb ways to die and media/journal articles on a public health issue. I took a photo of my CHM1022 lab manual risk assessment and it still got the marks as a public health initiative. Half of the marks came from an infographic poster on a health issue, I did a mediocre one on smoking and still got full marks.

Moodle quizzes: Tested knowledge from weeks 1-3 and 4-6 IIRC. 20 questions in 30 minutes is not a lot of time, so be sure to have all your lecture notes with you when you start. Apparently these questions were taken from past exams. Easy to do well on if you avoid dumb mistakes and manage your time effectively.

Exam: 2 hours for 60 multis. The practice quizzes were definitely harder than the actual exam. I was expecting tons of complicated epidemiology theory on the exam, but I overestimated it. Better safe than sorry I guess. The stats section was exactly how you would expect it to look like. There were also some questions that were both stats and epi, possibly to illustrate how these studies are heavily intertwined. Nice bonus that the unit name was spelt wrong on the eExam, as “Public health and PREVENTATIVE medicine”.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2021, 03:47:18 am by Billuminati »
VCE 2016-2018

2017: Biology [38], Further Maths [44]

2018: Methods [37], French [38], Chem [40], English [44]

UMAT: 56/43/80, 57th percentile (LLLLOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLL)

ATAR: 98.1

2019-2021: Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash (Scholars), minoring in Chemistry

GAMSAT September 2021: 65/67/86, 76 overall (98th percentile)

2022: Chilling

2023+: Transfer to teaching degree

Billuminati

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #496 on: December 15, 2019, 02:17:36 am »
+8
Subject Code/Name: BMS1052 – HUMAN NEUROBIOLOGY

Workload:
3 x 1 hour lecture
1 x 3 hour lab every second week

Assessment:
40% from all labs
2 x 10% mid-sems
40% end of semester exam

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, only some revision questions in SAQ format while the exam is multi-choice

Textbook Recommendation:  Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, really good textbook, helped me understand lecture content and saved my GPA.

Lecturer(s):
Nic Price
Ari Pinar
Helena Parkington
Brian Oldfield
Siew Chai
Elizabeth Davis
Sonja McKeown

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86 HD

Comments:
Overall impression and lecture content: The unit was structured well until week 10, the vignettes block of lectures which were extremely disorganised. I felt this is because it’s meant to be an odd-sock drawer for content that don’t fit in any other module. Anyways BMS1052 is by far the most intellectually stimulating unit of 1st year biomed, and I enjoyed learning new stuff everyday about how the brain creates the world around us. However, I rate this unit poorly because of the main lecturer, Nic Price’s attitude towards the students. Although he appears normal IRL, he can be quite rude and abrasive on the Moodle forums. Once, I asked him if we could do a role play for creativity marks in our journal club presentation.  He told me that it’s a bad idea and that we would look like idiots. Another time a girl asked him something while typing in a hurry, he told her to pay attention to her spelling, punctuation and grammar on a freakin public forum. Apart from that, the sheer volume of content also made memorisation a necessity, which I don’t like at all. Ari made the foundation lectures mainly taught by Nic more bearable because he’s epic at teaching us instruments in neuroscience research. Helena was an absolute legend at teaching us the ANS, everyone enjoyed her saucy jokes and wicked sense of humour. The dev bio lecturer was clear on what’s assessed and what’s not and was rather motherly, while the learning+memory lecturer just read off her wordy slides. Pharmacology was my favourite of the vignettes lectures, cuz it’s essentially application of our ANS knowledge in a biochemical context.

Mid sems: Nic deliberately provided us with practice quizzes but didn’t give us any answers at all. Everyone complained about this on the forum but Nic debated against it. I respect his decision, but am appalled at how some a*sekissers were labelling us as spoonfed and telling us it’s time to grow up. My mates have a theory that they were being so obsequious to gain favours with the lecturers to maximise their chances of getting into med. I partially agreed with Nic’s decision after he cited his reasoning with relevant education research, but that sort of condescension from some of my peers is absolutely unacceptable: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B_H7Fj2GgsFyQslO8N5HZPg8KH1FRrYm/view?usp=drivesdk. Sometimes, toxic people like these are the reason why I felt biomed has been so detrimental to my mental health and I thought about transferring to BSc many times. Anyways, I proposed a compromise system on the forum where we’re only showed the right answer if we got it right, but it was rejected.  In order to do well in the actual mid-sems, you’ll need to do the practice quizzes and find the right answer for each one, no matter how much effort it takes. The answers are in your lecture slides 90% of the time, but if they’re not, the prescribed textbook has the rest of the answers.

Labs: Similar to our previous physiology unit (1031), the labs were trainwrecks, but nowhere as bad as physics. The scratchie pre-lab quizzes were particularly bad (only scored 7.5-8.5/10) because I’m usually stuck with bad tables. The best labs were the “electrostimulation of dismembered cockroach legs” and “giving yourself an electric shock” ones, they were very enjoyable. The same can’t be said of the sensation lab which was organised very poorly, we had to swap stations way too frequently due to the amount of content and we had incomplete data. Luckily, the post prac quiz wasn’t overly difficult. The worst lab is the journal club group project. So much drama happened in that. I had to carry the group along with a hard working awesome group member. I wrote the script for everyone to memorise but one of my trash members kept telling me that the part I wrote for myself was too boring during a rehearsal. When I asked him why and how I may improve it, he just repeated that my section was crap. I tolerated this for 5 minutes, then I had enough, broke down and yelled at him for his destructive criticism and for him to write his own damned script if you think you’re so smart. He ended up memorising the script I wrote for him. The TAs were pretty unpredictable in their assessment of the oral. When we finished, they told us that we did really really well. However when we got the results back, it was a miserly 80.3%. Nic said we have no chances to appeal our grades since we should’ve asked for detailed feedback on the day.

Exam: Was very similar to the mid-sems in terms of difficulty, 95 multis in 2 hours so you have to work pretty fast and accurately. To prepare for it, I’d highly recommend looking at the mid-sems’ solutions once they’re released to figure out what questions you’ve gotten wrong and will likely get wrong again. Many of the ethics questions were curveballs NGL. In the end, I walked out thinking I aced it, but when the results got released, it implied that I only got 78/95 on the exam, oh well, c’est la vie, at least it’s still an HD.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2021, 03:47:45 am by Billuminati »
VCE 2016-2018

2017: Biology [38], Further Maths [44]

2018: Methods [37], French [38], Chem [40], English [44]

UMAT: 56/43/80, 57th percentile (LLLLOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLL)

ATAR: 98.1

2019-2021: Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash (Scholars), minoring in Chemistry

GAMSAT September 2021: 65/67/86, 76 overall (98th percentile)

2022: Chilling

2023+: Transfer to teaching degree

Billuminati

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #497 on: December 15, 2019, 02:18:09 am »
+7
Subject Code/Name: BMS1062 – MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Workload:
3 x 1 hour lectures
1 x 3 hour lab

Assessment:
30% from all labs
10% mid-sem
60% end of semester exam

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, Moodle trial exam provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Molecular Biology and the Cell 6th edition (not absolutely necessary but was really helpful with the DNA repair series of lectures)

Lecturer(s):
Fasseli Coulibaly
Terry Kwok
Anna Roujeinikova
Jessica Gibbons
Robyn Slattery + her mentor, the legendary Jacques Miller, discoverer of T and B cells and the thymus’ role in immunology

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating: 10 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 94 HD

Comments:
Overall impression and lecture content: BMS1062 has got to be the hands-down best 1st year BMS unit. All the lecturers were extremely knowledgeable and friendly, especially Fasseli, Terry and Robyn who held prof in the park sessions to help students with additional lecture content queries. I found that all lectures were filled with interesting content and we felt supported all the way. The unit was pretty similar to VCE biology, with the exception of DNA repair which is one of the harder modules for me. What brings an already perfect unit to 10/5 would the time when Robyn brought in her mentor Jacques Miller to deliver half a lecture on immunology. He’s famous for discovering the function of the thymus and T/B lymphocytes and we just listened in awe of his presence.

Labs: All of the TAs were really nice, helpful and knowledgeable. My TA (Tanvir) was nice enough to check our work before we submit it to ensure that we will get a mark we’re happy about, but I heard other groups had harsh and rude TAs too. You’ll be doing a lot of gel electrophoresis in the labs, so as many others have noted it gets a bit repetitive. In a gel lab we even got to test our own DNA for the ACE gene to see if we’re genetically athletic or not. Needless to say, given I’m the only person who failed year 7 PE, I got the least athletic genotype. Like in BMS1021, the microbiology labs were my favourite cuz they improved my logical reasoning skills a lot eg figuring out which resistance gene was transferred on the plasmid based on culture growth on antibiotic growth media. One thing of note is that lab coats are still required for computer based dry labs and I didn’t bring mine on the day so I had to get a single-use one. I’d imagine they take getting infected by computer viruses pretty seriously cuz it’s crossing the species barrier /s.

Mid-sem: About what you would expect for a biochem unit, pay attention to the little details delivered in lectures and develop advanced skills in problem solving and logic reasoning. Not overly difficult, tests content from modules 1-3.

Exam: The exam was really long, originally 3 hours for 130 marks but there were numerous typos and questions involving content not taught in lectures. As a result, the final total is out of 127. It extensively tests your problem solving skills as well as detailed understanding of the lecture content. As Fasseli stated in a revision lecture, 75% of the exam was on modules 4-6 and only 25% was on modules 1-3 since they were already tested in the mid-sem. The labs were disproportionately examined, more questions than average focused on them.
VCE 2016-2018

2017: Biology [38], Further Maths [44]

2018: Methods [37], French [38], Chem [40], English [44]

UMAT: 56/43/80, 57th percentile (LLLLOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLL)

ATAR: 98.1

2019-2021: Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash (Scholars), minoring in Chemistry

GAMSAT September 2021: 65/67/86, 76 overall (98th percentile)

2022: Chilling

2023+: Transfer to teaching degree

Billuminati

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #498 on: December 15, 2019, 02:19:02 am »
+8
Subject Code/Name: CHM1022 – CHEMISTRY 2

Workload:
2 x 1 hour workshops/lectorials
1 x 3-hour lab
1 x 1 hour tutorial (optional)

Assessment:
30% from all labs
2 x 2.5% timed Moodle quizzes (organic and inorganic)
10 x 1% pre-workshop quizzes
55% end of semester exam

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, 2 (highly irrelevant) sample exams provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Blackman Chem, digital copy given to us for free

Lecturer(s):
Stuart Batten
Victoria Blair
Philip Chan
Tanja Junkers
David Lupton
Brett Paterson
Kei Saito
Drasko Vidovic

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 HD

Comments:
Overall impression and lecture content: After the dosage of pure awesomeness that was CHM1011, TBH this unit was pretty underwhelming, none of the lecturers stood out as much as Chris even though from the recorded lectures they certainly knew and taught their content well. Maybe if I had taken the time to go to the workshops in person, it would be more awesome, but the only non-clashing session available was in the early mornings and I’m a night owl. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really liked learning about the different reaction mechanisms, Tanja (who also taught BMS1011) did a great job at explaining them, especially given that CHM1022 caters to beginning chem students. I survived by understanding the features of mechanisms eg nucleophile to electrophile. The inorganic section wasn’t ran so well, an entire workshop was a medical case study on how Cr6+ causes cancer, probably advertising for CHM3930 (medical chem). However, the lecture slides were all pretty clear so I could get all the info I need from there as I follow along the recorded lectures. Understanding the key trends of high spin/low spin complexes, transitioning wavelengths, splitting energy etc rather than memorisation is crucial to success in the inorganic section.

Timed quizzes: 1 hour for 10 multis, pretty manageable, just avoid dumb mistakes.

Pre-workshop quizzes: Easy to full mark similar to the CHM1011 ones, except Google is less reliable.

Labs: Well ran but severely flawed. However, Connor (my TA) helped me so much to navigate the sometimes confusing instructions of the online proforma report. There were 2 x 2 week experiments worth double the marks as a typical 1-week lab. They were IDEA experiments and were conducted in groups assigned by your TA. I ended up with a bad group both times and one of the reports were due on the same day as my BMS1062 mid-sem. I had to do a report on an esterification synthesis all by myself (it was a chemical very similar to aspirin), but got full marks on it. I wasn’t so lucky the next time. In both experiments, I had to clean up after Chinese international students who had bad attitudes. Even though I spoke their language and tried to help as much as I can, they still hated me and didn’t listen to my instructions. That’s why for an alloy composition analysis our calibration curve was messed up because they measured one of the samples with a BEAKER, not a burette as I wrote in the instructions. Then in the oral examination, none of my teammates knew the answers to the TA’s questions and since the TA isn’t our usual TA, he was pretty harsh and gave each member a limit of 1 question to answer, which means I couldn’t even help them by discussing the right answer with them. I was happy and not happy at the same time when the TA told us we got 74/95 for the lab, Schroedinger’s sad I know. Karma got to the lazy guys though, when entering their marks, the TA found out that they didn’t do the pre-lab quiz, which means they got big fat 0s and failed the lab. Still pissed that they dragged me down though but I guess sh*t happens. I did have the pleasure of working with a hard working group member who passed with me for both labs, even though his section of theory can have many technical errors in them. At least he’s trying, unlike the other guys, I respect that.

Exam: *incoming rant*. 2 hours for 120 marks SAQ, with 60 in organic and 60 in inorganic, The exam for CHM1022 was an absolute trainwreck, it was nothing like the practice exams given to us at the end of week 12. I was told by the lunchtime tutors that in the past few years, although mechanisms feature frequently on exams and were even once out of the course, it would be worth 5 marks at most. Most of the required mechanisms were very complicated and might actually belong to higher year levels from what I have heard. They brought the pass mark really low and scaled up the exam by a ton, because when we walked out, everyone was complaining that they failed. Luckily, the inorganic section was easier than the practice exams, but I ran out of time for a chelating ligand question as well as the NMR question in organic due to drawing those mechanisms. The good news is that the unit coordinators are pretty eager to improve things since they seem to have recognised the problems this year. They have invited students to a focus group interview just before O-week to survey us individually on how the unit can be specifically improved, our career aspirations as well as why we chose to study chem. I’ll be sure to voice my constructive criticism to improve this unit for future students, as a potential chem teacher in the future I want to play a part personally in the improvement of chem education in such a crucial unit as CHM1022 that serves as a prereq to many other majors.
VCE 2016-2018

2017: Biology [38], Further Maths [44]

2018: Methods [37], French [38], Chem [40], English [44]

UMAT: 56/43/80, 57th percentile (LLLLOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLL)

ATAR: 98.1

2019-2021: Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash (Scholars), minoring in Chemistry

GAMSAT September 2021: 65/67/86, 76 overall (98th percentile)

2022: Chilling

2023+: Transfer to teaching degree

AngelWings

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #499 on: January 04, 2020, 04:51:13 pm »
+10
Subject Code/Name: CHM2922 - Spectroscopy and Analytical Chemistry 
Important Note
Important Note: This review was written in January 2020, after a subject review was requested, but I completed this unit back in Semester 2 2017, well and truly after my uni chemistry days were over. Unfortunately, a series of misfortunes have happened between completing this unit and writing this review (most of my Semester 2 2017 digital notes were unrecoverable), so this entire review is based on whatever paper notes I have remaining (of which there are very few) and whatever memories I have of this specific unit. As a result, this entire review will seem quite vague and may be inaccurate. To add to the list of tragedies, I recall this unit was about to change its teaching structure from 3 lectures to fewer lectures and more self-learning in 2018 onwards, so things may have changed a lot since. If you want a more accurate review, I would recommend DisaFear's 2013 one or Nerdgasm's 2013 one.

Workload:
- 3 x lectures (pretty sure this got cut down signficantly after 2017, as there was talk of this and it appears to have happened, because in 2020, there are no lectures and instead there's 2 x workshops)
- 1 x tutorial
- 1 x 3- 4 hr lab

Assessment:
- Mid-semester test: 20% (hurdle requirement)
- Practicals: 30%
- Assessments: 10% (pretty sure this was in tutorials and Moodle quizzes)
- Exam: 40% (hurdle requirement)

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture (may not be available post-2017 due to changes in the unit)

Past exams available:  Yes, from memory, there were 1 or 2 practise exams provided. Can't quite remember if answers were provided or not. (Refer to Important Note above.) 

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Instrumental Analysis by Skoog et al. (7th ed.) - If I recall, I personally borrowed this a few times from the library, simply to reconsolidate some information taught or get a bit more in-depth at times, when I could. Not really necessary, but was recommended if you were going to do 3rd year from memory.   

Lecturer(s):
- Associate Professor Mike Grace
- Dr. Toby Bell
- Dr. Jie Zhang

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: It was pretty average, but I felt it was good given my circumstances at the time.

Comments:
Overall
The subject overall was a challenging, but doable unit given the effort and time (both of which eluded me as a third year genetics student juggling this unit on top of two third year GEN units, two jobs and GEN3990 [research project unit] simultaneously, trying to get into genetics Honours) and might be made easier if you have any background in physics for some aspects (e.g. Raman spectroscopy), which I personally lack. It was a leg up from CHM2911, but also felt like a lot of different topics and content were crammed into a semester, making CHM2922 a terrible choice if you’re after a bludge unit and this unit is certainly not a unit you want to fall behind in. The reason I gave it a 3/5 was because I have mixed memories of this unit (refer to Important Note) and, due to the situation I was in at the time, having very little time to dedicate to this unit, so it was purely a personal rating. However, even without the personal factors, I still think my rating wouldn't have changed much, as it was a very dense and compact unit that it was pretty easy to fall behind and struggle with very quickly. (Basically, I'd highly recommend that you revise regularly.)     

A lot of the topics were about things that you probably haven't covered 100% well in previous units. If you did CHM2911 before this unit, you'll find that this unit might be more of a 'switch of gears', in that this unit is all about analytical techniques, not chemicals, their properties and theory like previous CHM units. As previous reviews have mentioned, the emphasis of this unit was of analytical techniques used in a forensic setting and how these machines work.

Lectures (Note: From 2018 onwards, I think they removed the lectures.)
Lectures got split up into three main sections, each with their own lecturers. I don't have much recollection of these lectures now, so I won't really review these, but Nerdgasm does a good job of it in their review (minus a few of the equations here and there). Lectures, however, may not even be applicable post-2017 due to changes in the unit.

Tutorials
CHM2922 tutorials were quite helpful in understanding some of the calculations needed for the exams, as well as being a good time to ask questions, if you have the time to do so, and a good time to consolidate some of the theory.

Laboratories and Practicals
The analytical techniques were primarily dealing with the 'cooler' machines you got introduced to very briefly in previous units and then some newer machines that were mostly self-explanatory or somewhat guided if you asked a TA (if they ever got to you). Techniques and machines like UV-Vis, GC and HPLC will seem rather familiar, but others were new, such as the Raman spectroscopy machine.

I don’t think that IDEA experiments returned, so if you enjoyed those in first year, bad luck. However, since some of the steps were sometimes omitted from the lab manual and most of the machines didn’t come with instructions (apart from asking a TA), CHM2922 labs felt quite independent regardless and it all makes sense when you get to the moot court in Week 12 anyway (more on this later). (You had to use the same procedure and analytical technique, because that's how they standardise it so that you can talk about the same case for the moot court.) Also, you got a different TA each time you did a new technique in CHM2922, so sometimes it was a bit of luck how helpful they were. 

I remember having to make a video on an analytical technique at one point for a 'practical' and that many practicals were 1 – 2 week projects. Again, lots of the pracs were dedicated to various forensic cases e.g. was this olive oil adulterated with coconut oil? As Nerdgasm discusses, there's a lot more involvement in the practical reports and I remember spending quite a bit of time on them. One thing that did change between Nerdgasm's time and Sem 2 2017 was that practical reports had to be typed, including your graphs, and all pages of your lab notes had to be signed by your TA and scanned into the same file and sent via Moodle. When you finished the proforma, it was already most of the report filled out for you anyway, so you'd just have to add in the final few aspects yourself, type, graph, scan everything and, finally, hand in electronically before the due date.

The final lab session was the infamous 'moot court exercise' most chem minor/ major students remember when they talk about this unit and located at the practise law court in the Law Library. The moot court was effectively a giant scientific debate about a TA-allocated court case from one of 6 cases that you'd have completed using one of the various techniques you would've learnt and done as a practical across the semester. You were also allocated a specific side (for or against) and wouldn't know what the case was truly about until assigned your groups, court case and side in Week 10/ 11 (I think it was the latter), to be presented in Week 12. This is always noted to be a bit of fun. 

Mid-semester, end of semester exam and other assessments
The mid-semester I can't remember much at all either, unfortunately, but it only assessed the first 5 weeks of content, which was a lot of the stuff you'd probably discussed in VCE Chemistry, if not in first year Chem. My recommendation is to take the mid-semester test seriously, as it is a hurdle requirement.

The end of semester exam, as like many of the other chem units, is a lot more difficult than the practise exam. The practise exam was reasonable at getting the basics down pat for the exam, but not quite the same difficulty as the real exam turned out to be. From memory, the end of semester exam only covered topics after a certain point (if I recall correctly, for my cohort, it was the content taught in week 5 onwards as somehow we got ahead of time).

As for the 10% online assessments/ assessed tutorials listed above, I can't remember anything about them. I have a vague memory of the online assessment not having a tutorial mode, unlike what Nerdgasm had back in 2013, but I could also have simply forgotten about it.       
« Last Edit: January 04, 2020, 08:11:46 pm by AngelWings »
VCE: Psych | Eng Lang | LOTE | Methods | Further | Chem                 
Uni: Bachelor of Science (Hons) - genetics
Current: working (sporadically on AN)
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sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #500 on: January 05, 2020, 10:40:41 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: PSC3041- Applied Analytical Methods (NOTE: This unit was moved to year 2 of BPharmSc as of semester 2, 2019, and renamed BPS2032)

Workload:  3 hours of “active learning lectures” per week (split into 1h + 2h), 6x 4 hour HPLC labs, and 1x brief LCMS lab

Assessment:  60% in-semester (a combination of labs and quizzes. Everything appeared to be assessed by v long quizzes lol. Apparently from 2020 even the exam will be one of those v long quizzes (due to moving to e-exam) that I never really understood, so I’m lucky I did this unit before that :P ))
30% final exam
5% flowchart for final exam
5% concept map for final exam

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture. Although Laurence sometimes covers her mic if she’s telling something important.

Past exams available:  No actual exams available, but your exam is literally a bunch of HPLC chromatographs, and Laurence gives you the virtual lab chromatograms… so I guess also yes?

Textbook Recommendation:  None needed. Laurence and virtual lab were sufficient for this unit haha 😊

Lecturer(s): Dr Laurence Orlando (Unit Coordinator), Dr Darren Creek

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/1

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 72D

Comments: Concepts in this unit were easy enough to grapple, but those quizzes were really long (in some cases 3 hours) and they were written in a way that doesn’t gel well with how I study and remember things :(
However, I enjoyed learning how to use the HPLC machines and was lucky enough during the following winter break to work on the HPLC machines and the virtual lab as one of the project managers. 😊
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #501 on: January 06, 2020, 10:59:12 am »
+8
Subject Code/Name: PSC3211- Industrial Formulation

Workload:  A handful of workshops to make sure you understand your project, 1 presentation block for industry to present their projects, 2x 4 hour labs/week (from after midsem break), a couple of presentation blocks to present to industry.

Assessment:  5% preliminary presentation and 15% preliminary report, 5% for professional emails to mentor, 50% final report, 5% good lab practices, 20% final oral

Recorded Lectures:  No lectures for this unit

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  Aulton’s Pharmaceutics helped heapsssssss when writing that final report!

Lecturer(s): Dr Ian Larson

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/1

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 83HD

Comments: It was an enjoyable unit in the sense of having a hands-on project to research and make stuff for, but my group was absolute trash, barely making any deadlines and me pleading for stuff to be done and made things really hard when it came to crunch time. There was many a breakdown and late night for this subject, and it made me absolutely hate group projects. Thank God for CATME for saving my grade for this one!

Note: this subject is still relevant to the new degree- its new code is BPS3311 from semester 1, 2020!
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #502 on: January 07, 2020, 11:02:04 am »
+7
Subject Code/Name: PSC3221- Biomolecule Formulation and Modified Release Technologies

Workload:  2 lectures/week, a couple of (semi-useful but non-compulsory) tutes

Assessment:  10% pharmatopia module, 20% midsemester test, 20% individual report, 50% final group report

Recorded Lectures:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  I don’t think I used a textbook for this unit!

Lecturer(s): Professor Colin Pouton (unit coordinator), Dr Angus Johnston, Dr Ian Larson

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/1

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 90HD

Comments: It was an enjoyable unit, and I really loved the content covered- so much so, that I chose to do my honours based on a topic in this unit.
After midsem test, I really didn’t have any incentive to go to the lectures, but I still went anyways- sipping tea and listening to Colin :D
Out of all the units I did for this degree- this one’s my favourite!

Note: this subject is still relevant to the new degree- its new code is BPS3321 from semester 1, 2020!
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #503 on: January 08, 2020, 10:28:06 am »
+7
Subject Code/Name: PSC3231- Pharmaceutical Product Manufacture

Workload:  2 x 2h lectures/week, 1 x 3h lab/week

Assessment:
25% final report (on Creams)
16% final DoE excel sheet
6% tablets report (group)
16% DoE quizzes (4x 4% and then a hurdle basic DoE sheet with peer feedback)
4% tablet quiz
2% Tablet batch record
6% Written SOP on equipment
10% Video SOP
5% Creams designed batch record
10% Creams protocol design

Recorded Lectures:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  Aulton’s Pharmaceutics and Handbook of Pharmaceutical Excipients were useful for making protocols

Lecturer(s): Dr Laurence Orlando

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/1

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 72D

Comments: A really full-on unit, which needed to be worked on nearly every day to finish the tasks on time. A program we used for the two reports, Design Expert (a DoE software) was a pain in my butt, but I survived nonetheless. As with the other units I had in semester 1, 2019, this unit was pretty much filled with groupwork, with only a small smattering of individual work.
The DoE template that is your final one takes forever to make- I recommend working on it at least every day or two from when you start making it!

Note: this subject is still relevant to the new degree- its new code is BPS3331 from semester 1, 2020!
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #504 on: January 09, 2020, 11:10:06 am »
+6
Subject Code/Name: PSC3142- Computational Drug Design

Workload:  2 x 1h lectures/week (weeks 1-5,6-10), 6 x 3h computer labs, 3 x 2h workshops.
There was a couple of Moodle lessons to go through before the two SBDD workshops.

Assessment:
8% Structure Based Drug Design lab report (score moderated by workshop mark)
8% Pharmacophore lab report
8% Experimental Design report
8% Bioinformatics report
8% Molecular Dynamics report (this was completed over 2 labs)
60% 2 hour exam

Recorded Lectures:  Yes

Past exams available:  2 were provided, from the previous two years. It was handy to focus my attention on stuff that was difficult. (MedChem units are tough. People kept asking me how I coped with this unit. It was honestly not that bad imo)

Textbook Recommendation:  In Silico Drug Design was prescribed for Structure Based Drug Design. It helped clarify a lot of ideas discussed in lectures, the lab, and workshop.

Lecturer(s): Dr Elizabeth Yuriev (Unit coordinator and absolute gem), Dr David Manallack (who’s now gone on long-service leave and said is unlikely to return to faculty), and Dr David Chalmers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75D

Comments: This unit built upon the foundations taught in PSC3142, computational chemistry. There was a lot of work to be done in the first section, SBDD, as Elizabeth moved the majority of the teaching to moodle lessons. Everything else was pretty breezy and I did pretty okay on the labs (my average was between 76 and 80), but I crashed a bit in the exam, but then again, at the time, I focused too much on the fluffy snake unit oops!
As this is a medicinal chemistry unit, the labs were marked harshly, with ambiguous rubrics, however, I managed to do pretty alright (as I said above haha), despite everyone calling me nuts for doing this unit!
This unit also only ran over 8 weeks due to placement being in the middle of the semester!

Note: this subject is still mildly relevant to the new degree, as from 2020, it is smooshed into a single unit that combines concepts from both PSC2142 and this one. I think it may still be called computational drug design though, but check the current course map to be sure!
« Last Edit: January 09, 2020, 11:14:40 am by insanipi »
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #505 on: January 11, 2020, 01:27:40 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: PSC3212- Product Commercialisation

Workload:  2 x 2h lectures/week (weeks 1-5,6-10), some of these lectures were actually workshops for Connie’s topic though.

Assessment:
20% Mid-semester test (based on in-vitro, in-vivo correlations and bioavailability and bioequivalence studies)
40% Fluffy snake timeline assignment
20% Design-a-GMP Plant group assignment
16% fluffy snake related quizzes (careers in pharmaceutical development timeline (avatars) (6%), FDA and EMA guidelines (6%), drug discovery process (4%))
4% GMP Quiz

Recorded Lectures:  Yes for Laurence and Connie’s lectures, not for the workshops

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  Drugs: From Discovery to Approval, which Laurence linked in the moodle site as she wanted us to read it haha

Lecturer(s): Dr Laurence Orlando (Unit coordinator), Dr Cornelia Landersdorfer

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/2

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 77D

Comments: This unit was delivered in random segments imo. We started by going through the drug development process in week 1 (which is topic 1), and then jumped into topic 3- pharmacokinetics (In-vitro in-vivo correlations, bioavailability and bioequivalence studies). The latter built up on what was taught in PSC2041, and I found it really enjoyable. Topic 1 (drug development) was a pain as it formed the basis of the fluffy snake assignment that literally consumed all my free time this semester- it was truly a lot of work for 40%, and I feel like that it could’ve been worth a lot more imo. Topic 2- GMP was rather dry, but designing the GMP with my friends was pretty fun, so we got over the dryness of that content pretty quickly haha.
This unit also only ran over 8 weeks due to placement being in the middle of the semester!

Note: this subject is still mildly relevant to the new degree, as from 2019 sem 2, it was smooshed into BPS2042 with other content. No more fluffy snake though.
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #506 on: January 11, 2020, 01:39:25 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: PSC3222- Advanced Formulation and Nanotechnology

Workload:  3 x 1h lectures/week (weeks 1-5,6-10), 7 x 3h labs (2 of these were lab olympics)

Assessment:
10% Mid-semester test
60% final exam
20% lab reports (8% for labs 1 and 2, 4% for lab 3; labs 1 & 2 ran over 2 weeks each)
10% lab olympics

Recorded Lectures:  Yes

Past exams available:  No, but Angus gave ridiculously unanswerable practice questions that I tried to answer and couldn’t aha.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don’t recall looking at any for this unit. I did read a lot of research papers to write my labs though!

Lecturer(s): Dr Angus Johnston, guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/2

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 73D

Comments: I was so keen for this unit, but I really started to get demotivated from it because the marking was ridiculously harsh in this unit, and then lab Olympics came along and I had to go eat sad ramen with friends afterwards because yeah, we all weren’t happy with the outcome of how we went in that oops.
Angus’s content however, was nice and clear and concise, and I understood the concepts pretty well, and that really helped in exam study- and actually saved my score!
There was this one lecturer who works for a company that sells biosensors and told us that his lecture was not an ad. Believe me when I say that it was LOL.
This unit also only ran over 8 weeks due to placement being in the middle of the semester!

Note: this subject is still relevant to the new degree, and is coded BPS3322 from semester 2, 2020!
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

sweetiepi

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #507 on: January 12, 2020, 09:44:07 am »
+5
Subject Code/Name: PSC3232- Professional Placement in Formulation Science

Workload:  20 x 8h/day placement (weeks 5-9), 1x 1h workshop weeks 1-5, placement interviews in semester 1.

Assessment:
60% report
20% lab work
20% oral presentation
Reflections (unscored but hurdle)

Recorded Lectures:  N/A

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Dr Laurence Orlando (unit coordinator), Dr Michelle McIntosh (chief examiner)

Year & Semester of completion: 2019/2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 83HD

Comments:
I found it really fun at my placement place, but found that traditional quality control just wasn’t my thing, which was helpful in determining what I’m doing next- going into the research side- which I’ve been interested in diving in more. The people at placement were extremely friendly and helpful, and I learnt a lot that went behind the scenes at a pharmaceutical plant!
I found this to potentially be the least stressful unit, aside from the oral presentation (infront of everyone) of the semester.
Note: this subject is still relevant to the new degree, and is coded BPS3332 from semester 2, 2020!
2017-2019: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Formulation Science)
2020: Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science (Honours) Read my uni journey here!

Springyboy

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #508 on: March 03, 2020, 09:12:46 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: BFX3871 - International study program in banking and finance 

Workload:
1 all day learning session in November at Caulfield campus in November

Remainder was overseas in Europe from January 7 - January 24 2020 as this is an International Study Tour

Assessment: 

Individual Assignment 1 - 20%. This involved you going on to the Financial Times website, selecting 2 articles, reading them and then writing comments about them similar to the comments you see on the bottom of a newspaper article online like The Age or The Herald Sun. The instructions were very vague on this, leaving a lot of us confused as there were no formal requirements even with regards to word count. However, marking was very fair on this and as long as you choose articles relevant to the tour then you'll be fine. The key thing here though was to relate the articles to the organisations visited on the trip, otherwise you were deducted marks.

Group - 40% (Group presentation 20% and wiki 20%). After being enrolled in the study tour and having the Moodle page appear, you were randomly allocated into groups of 3. There were 10 groups overall, due to their being 30 students allowed to go on this tour with the 2 lecturers. In these groups, you were randomly allocated to an organisation that we were visiting on the trip. Before we left for Europe on January 7, we had around 2 weeks to prepare 10 PowerPoint slides to present at Caulfield campus at a learning session on November 25. These 10 slides were designed to explain the organisation, with the last slide listing 5 questions to ask the presenters of the organisation. To maximise your marks, make your presentation as engaging as possible and really do your research, as JP is looking for well-researched and difficult questions that representatives of the organisations will struggle to answer. Unfortunately, the organisation my group was assigned to declined, and the replacement was not announced until later, so the work we did was sort of in vain. The remaining 20% of the marks here went to preparing a Wiki report similar to something you see on a Wikipedia page, but using the guide depicted here. Again little instructions were given on how to structure the wiki, but I developed a way to maximise the design of the wiki, such that it was very easy to navigate. Marking was very reasonable for both of these parts.

Participation - 15%. This consisted of 5% punctuality, 5% attire and how you present yourself at the program, and 5% ability to work as a group and being considerate to others. This was by far the easiest way to obtain marks on the trip, as if you engaged really well then you would be fine. I went a bit beyond this and setup a WhatsApp group where I was the administrator along with the 2 lecturers (1 accounting, 1 banking & finance as we went on the same trip with same assessments) but if you put in the effort you'll receive close to 15/15.

Individual Assignment 2 - 25%. After the study tour was over, each participant needed to write up a report of no more than 2000 words reflecting on the experience. The main thing I learnt from this was keeping it formal and relatable helps to maximise your marks. The weighting was 10% to how this program has changed your perspective about business and 15% to what is the most that you learnt from this program and how this can help you plan and enhance your career. As long as you followed this structure you'd be fine and should receive 80%+ for your mark for this. Just really taking notes all over the program is key to maximising your marks in the report.

Recorded Lectures:  No as all class attendance is compulsory, however if you're overseas then you can send in recordings to the learning session in November.

Past exams available:  N/A as no exam for this subject

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook needed, as all material is covered via the FT website

Lecturer(s): Jean-Pierre Fenech - Also CE for the unit. This was JP's second time taking the study tour, and it showed as his passion and dedication was paramount. It was very easy for me to communicate with him, before, during and after the study tour, and he is a very well-learned lecturer on topics relating to both finance and general life. JP's contacts ensured that we had a really successful study tour. I really appreciate the opportunity for him to be the leader of the banking and finance study tour, and know that he will do a great job managing it in the future.

Year & Semester of completion: Summer Semester A, 2019

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87 HD

Comments:
This is by far the best unit I have ever done at Monash. I was able to meet such a diverse group, and be with them for 17 days, that I have caught up with 5 of the group around 4 times since we came back to Australia. I absolutely loved this tour. The assessments may have been a little dodgy in terms of instructions, but once you got the message they were straightforward.

To get into the program, all participants must fill out a Google form for the program. You must have completed either Corporate Finance 1 for the finance program (BFX3871/BFX5860) or Financial Accounting (ACC2100/ACF2100) as a pre-requisite for ACX3500/ACX5951 before you are able to do this program. However the pre-requisite knowledge isn't that crucial, what is more to get in would have to be your marks in subjects in the past and your personal statement as to why you would like to do the study tour.

30 students are allowed to do the tour, which should theoretically be 15 accounting and 15 banking and finance.
However, this year the makeup was 14 undergraduate finance, 4 masters finance students, 1 accounting masters student and 11 accounting undergraduate students. So 18:12 ratio for finance vs accounting. Despite this, we all blended together as one unified group, and were always inviting each other out on free days / free nights to enjoy Europe.

The study tour consisted of visiting 5 different countries in 17 days. Over this time period, 11 visits to business organisations were conducted. These were both finance and accounting based, and students from both accounting and banking and finance programs went to all organisations regardless of their discipline. At each organisation, a presenter gave an overview of the organisation, and then the allocated group asked questions as they could unless anyone else had questions to ask. These were straightforward, so as long as you came up with valid questions you weren't penalised.

Even with all the business visits, I was still able to appreciate how lucky it was to go on a Monash study tour and get to so many countries in such a short period of time. Switzerland is out of reach for most university students, so even to be there for 1 day was amazing, as I was able to see such a beautiful country even for such a short timeframe. Despite the hectic nature of the program, I was the only person to get sick out of all 32 participants including lecturers, and even that was a minor ear infection which did not prevent me from still going to all business visits. This was credit to the large amount of walking that we did between visits, so be prepared for lots of walking if you go on the program.

Regardless, as a capstone unit this was an excellent way to experience the practical nature of both banking & finance and accounting. The world around us is far different to what we are taught at uni, so if you can do this unit apply for it and try and get in, as otherwise you're missing out. Yes, the organisation may be a little basic at times, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so seize it with both hands and think of applying for it already if you can.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2020, 10:00:34 pm by Springyboy »

DoctorTwo

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Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #509 on: June 24, 2020, 12:41:04 am »
+9
Subject Code/Name: ATS2699 - Parties and Power 

Workload: 
1 x 2 hour lecture
1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: 
10% Quiz
50% Major Essay
40% Final exam
Note that the original assessments included a class test in place of the quiz, and, for me, this unit was delivered online due to COVID-19, so mileage may vary.

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No, and no sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation: 
The textbook requirement is Narelle Miragliotta, Anika Gauja and Rodney Smith (eds) Contemporary Australian Political Party Organisations Monash University Publishing, Melbourne 2015.

I did buy it, but it is also completely available online via the Monash Library, so you shouldn't need to. A chapter from the textbook will usually feature in each week's required reading, and the rest of the readings will be provided online.

Lecturer(s):
Nick Economou

Year & Semester of completion:
2020 Sem 1

Rating: 
4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 75 D

Comments: This unit is a good continuation of the content learned in ATS1945 Australian government and politics. The content is more advanced, but you should be fine if you do all of the readings. The lecturer is clearly very knowledgeable, and he had many stories to tell during each lecture. This was probably the only class where I actually looked forward to each lecture. Although the actual slides are plain and dull, Economou does a great job of making everything exciting, even online. I haven't completed it yet, but my understanding is that the exam will be 10 prompts, each one based on the content of each week, and essays need to be written for 3 of them. This was the same format as the ATS1945 exam. Also, the prompts for the major essay (50%) are available on the unit guide, so I would pick one before the semester begins, and make sure that you focus when the relevant week rolls around. I believe the unit is required for the politics major, and an elective for the minor. If you had the choice, I'd choose this unit if you were interested in party politics and electoral politics. The content really gets into the weeds on the structures of some of the major political parties, and the theory behind electoral politics. Overall a very good unit (although I wish it was face-to-face for me!).
« Last Edit: July 28, 2020, 11:08:21 pm by DoctorTwo »