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March 28, 2024, 10:47:30 pm

Author Topic: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 1734650 times)  Share 

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chysim

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #210 on: November 23, 2013, 12:51:58 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ENEN20002 Earth Processes for Engineering

Workload:  3x1 hours lectures, 1x1 hour "workshop", 1 single 3 hour practical at some point between approx. weeks 6-9

Assessment: 4 group assignments worth 40%, 1 individual assignment worth 10%, Exam 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, on library website - crowd sourced answers (Google Docs)

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Andrew Western, Sam Yuen

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: The most important thing here as a civil major is the section on soil strength and stability is really well done. The tutes, however, are a different story.

Comments: If your coming from the BENVs stream of Civil Eng as I am, the first few weeks of this course can be pretty monotonous as it is essentially a three-week revision session of Natural Environments.

On a whole, the lectures are pretty dull. They essentially just cover natural processes that govern and pervade engineering. The subject is split into two halves. The first half is on rainfall and runoff and is run by Western, who is good lecturer and pretty good guy. The second half is on soil characteristics and soil strength and is taught by Sam Yuen, who is sometimes a bit hard to understand but is very good and the saving grace for most of the other staff in the subject. More on that later.

Overall, the subject matter is very well taught and laid out. All lecture slides are posted a week in advanced and in .ppt format (my preferences as you can print out in basically any layout you need). The lectures are easy to understand and flow on well between each other. Each week, a set of review questions are posted which require you to have some understanding of the lectures and ability to express it in your own words. They are entirely optional, but I would recommend doing them.

What lets this subject down is the "workshop" experience, particularly the hopelessness of head tutor Adrian Yong. This is a man that cannot provide a straight answer to a question, constantly answering them which vague retorts and questions of his own. While he seems like a nice guy, he is extremely stubborn and a PRAZE (peer/self evaluation) nazi. He's also unwilling to listen to any reason regarding marking or submission leeway.

The workshops themselves are also bad. They consistently don't start till 15 minutes after the hour and thus finish 10 minutes after they should (e.g. start at 10:15 and finish at 11:05). They are extremely boring and monotonous, ranging from filling in excel spreadsheets for week 1-6, to listen to the tutor speak for week 7-12.

In the first workshop, you are allocated a group of three (not that I think group allocation is a bad thing) in which you will work for each of the four group assignments. None of the assignments are too difficult, but require a bit of time and some knowledge of excel. If you have a decent group you shouldn't have any issues.

The exam was fairly simple and similar to tute questions and past exams. It is a hurdle and is apparently the reason most people fail, but if you known your stuff you'll have no issues.

Overall this is well organised and well lectured subject. The subject matter is reasonable interesting (for a civil engineer), but the subject is let down but the terribleness of Adrian Yong and the extremely boring and mismanaged workshops.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2015, 09:23:04 pm by chysim »
UoM | Bachelor of Environments (Civil Systems): 2012-2014 | Master of Engineering (Civil): 2015-2016 |

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chysim

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #211 on: November 23, 2013, 01:15:45 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: SCRN20014 Film Genres and Auteurs

Workload:  1x1.5 hour lecture, 1x~2.5 hour screening, 1x 1 hour seminar

Assessment: Close Analysis Task (1000 words) 40%, Participation 10%, Final Research Essay (2500 words) 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Bound book of readings (massive)

Lecturer(s): Mark Nicholls, Kate Stevenson

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A great subject if you're into film, but the assessment can be a little vague and subjective and there's lot of reading.

Comments:
As an engineering student who has always been interested in film (my highest score for VCE was Media) I chose this as breadth and am very happy that I did.

The subject concentrates of the films of Martin Scorsese as the auteur in question. Each week you watch a different Scorsese film and have a lecture on it. Films include Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Raging Bull and Last Temptation of Christ among others.

Mark is a really good lecturer. He rarely provides lecture slides and lectures are not recorded, but he is extremely passionate and somewhat obsessed with Scorsese. Though a little hap-hazard, his lectures are candid, demonstrative on the subject and invite discussion.

In the same sense, Kate is a fantastic tutor. She leads discussion very well, respects opinions is very knowledgeable on Scorsese and film in general and is quick to answer emails. The tutes are enjoyable and really important for a full understanding of the subject.

The first major assessment task is to do a close analysis (i.e. shot by shot analysis) of one specific scene of Taxi Driver. This is made easy as there is essentially practice for each of the first 6 weeks of semester as you are required to analysis the film in 20 minute segments. So the assignment is basically writing up any scene that you found interesting and providing screen shots to illustrate your analysis.

In the first 6 weeks, the reading is not really essential. Most of the time in the tutes is taken up with talking about the close analysis. After this is done however, the discussion of the tutes is mainly focussed on the readings. The readings can be quite lengthy and are a bit of a chore (usually between 30-60 A4 pages a week). However, most of them are quite interesting and valuable.

The second assignment is the final essay. It is due on the first day of exams and involves comparing and contrasting two films either watched in screenings or in the "recommended supplemental viewing" in relation to the key themes of the course. The essay does have a question, but it is pretty broad and can be changed and manipulated as you need it.

Each of the assessment tasks were enjoyable to do but also the source of my only complaint of the subject. They are far too poorly defined. A rubric is non-existent and the criteria is somewhat hazy. As it was my first time doing and Arts subject, I found it a bit difficult to know what was expected of me. However, this is inviting of creative freedom and a welcome change to the sometimes overly defined criteria of an engineering subjects, where the assignments of a 200 student cohort can often be indistinguishable.

This, and the lack of lecture recording or slides, were the only things that pulled my rating of this subject from a 5 to a 4.

But overall, the subject was very enjoyable and has me looking for another SCRN/CULS breadth to do next year.

For those thinking of taking the subject next year (i.e. 2014), I believe Mark is taking a year off, so I'm unsure how this will affect the subject.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2015, 01:54:35 pm by chysim »
UoM | Bachelor of Environments (Civil Systems): 2012-2014 | Master of Engineering (Civil): 2015-2016 |

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Starlight

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #212 on: November 24, 2013, 10:15:54 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: GENE20002: Genes and Genomes

Workload:
3*1hr lectures/week
1*1hr problem class/week (optional)

Lecture Recordings: Yes, with screen capture. The problem classes are NOT recorded.


Assessment:

1 mid-sem test (10%)
two online assignments (7.5% each)
2 hour exam (75%)

Past exams available:
About 3 uploaded on the lms (2006, 2008, 2010) and one 1998 exam on the library website if you're keen.
The 2006 exam had the written solutions available on the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation:
A J Griffiths et al, Introduction to Genetic Analysis, 10th Ed. W H Freeman and Co.

Worthwhile getting this (i.e. from the library or search online).

Lecturer(s): Meryl Davis, John Golz

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Lectures: Most of the lectures for genetics had clashes with other subjects so I listened to the lecture recordings at home, and it was perfectly okay to do so. The lectures could be a little boring unfortunately and sometimes a bit confusing (mainly John's stuff). Meryl's material came straight out of the textbook and some of John's stuff could be found from the text. A lot of the time I felt as though the lecturers were over-teaching us what we had to know for the exam, for example all these different protein names for DNA repair systems which we didn't need to know as far as I was concerned.

Problem Classes: I thought these weren't too bad, sometimes they were a bit too in depth for an exam which was entirely multiple choice. Worth going to nonetheless especially as they aren't recorded.

Mid-Semester Test: The questions on this exam were at least 99% repeated from the past exams published on the LMS. If you practice the past exam questions well enough then you should have no problems getting at least 90%. The class average was late 60's or early 70's percentage wise and probably because most of them did not do the past exam questions.

Assignments: The first assignment set by Meryl was very straightforward- It was based off an article and there were multi-choice questions based on it. The second assignment was not so straightforward as it required you to use a computer program at the uni, I would encourage you to discuss this particular assignment with your peers as I found it quite confusing. Neither of the two assignments had any content that was on the exam.

Exam: Not as straightforward as the mid sem-test unfortunately. It was a 2 hour long exam and all multi-choice questions (The whole subject's assessment is multichoice). There were some questions worth 2 points and others worth 4 from memory. Just practice the past exams and revise your lecture notes and you should be okay (also look at your problem class questions for review). This subject is probably 80% Rote learning and 20% understanding.

« Last Edit: December 20, 2013, 08:59:01 am by El2012 »
2012-2014. BSc: Neuroscience. University of Melbourne.
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13collenmax13

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #213 on: November 27, 2013, 02:43:57 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: DASC20010 Applied Animal Physiology

Workload: 2 x one-hour lectures a week, 12 hours of practicals (3 three-hour and 2 one-and-a-half-hour), NO tutorials

Assessment:
Mid semester exam - 10%
Two practical report on two out of the five practicals - 20% (10% each)
Post-prac test on three of the five practicals (not assessed through the report) - 10% (3.33% each)
Final exam - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, approximately 7 (no answers)

Textbook Recommendation:  Animal Physiology: From Genes to Organisms (Sherwood, Klandorf and Yancey 2005 or 2012) - it is important, but I found borrowing from library was sufficient

Lecturer: Peter Cakebread

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
Lecture Content
1 - Introduction to physiology
2 - Plasma membrane
3, 4, 5 - Nervous system (central nervous system, peripheral nervous system and sensory physiology)
6, 7, 8 - Muscle physiology (skeletal muscle, metabolism in muscle and cardiac & smooth muscle)
9, 10, 11 - Circulatory system (cardiac physiology, blood vessels & pressure and blood components)
12, 13, 14 - Urinary system (fluid & acid balance, kidneys and urine regulation)
15, 16, 17 - Respiratory system (respiratory mechanics, gas exchange and control of respiration)
18, 19, 20 - Digestive system (overview of digestion, chemical digestion and absorption)
21, 22, 23 - Endocrine system (hormone production, function and regulation)
24 - Physiology research as a career (not testable)

The Assessments
The MST was quite easy. It was presented on the LMS and consisted of 60 questions and 1 hour was given to complete it. Material assessed was to the end of the circulatory system lectures. As long as you have made thorough notes on the lectures you can just flip through out notes and find the answers.

3 of the practicals were in the lab and 2 (the 1.5 hour ones) were in the animal house (below the MSLE building) involving sheep. The post-prac questions were just that - 10 questions on the practical. The two assignments involve writing practical reports, where bulk of the words come from analyzing the data and doing research using research papers to find justifications. Make sure you get a early stat of this as it can take a while.

The final exam was fair, but I found it slightly difficult. It is a 2 hour exam and a number questions from the past papers are reused with some rewording, so having done all the past paper would set one well. The format consists of 30 multiple choice worth 30 marks and about 5 written responses worth 90 marks, more than 5 questions are given so you can pick which question you want to answer.

My Opinion on the Subject
Although this subject is titled Applied Animal Physiology, it lacks the applied animal part quite significantly. Firstly, this subject is not similar to Comparative Animal Physiology which examines a whole range of different animals and uses a different approach to physiology; the physiology discussed in this subject is centered on domestic animals. I suspect however, although having not done the subject Human Physiology, that Human Physiology and this subject would be quite similar.

I found the content thoroughly interesting and this subject was a well presented introduction to physiology. This subject to me felt like a hidden gem, not many people come across this subject for one reason or the other, perhaps as it is offered Domestic Animal Sciences. The workload was not excessive nor lacking was at a perfect level. The difficulty was also neither excessive or lacking. For the final exam you just have to understand and memorize all the mechanisms and you should be well set. If you are going to do a physiology major or similar major this subject is highly recommended.

spalvains

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #214 on: November 27, 2013, 09:45:03 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: DASC20010 Applied Animal Physiology

Workload: 2 x one-hour lectures a week, 12 hours of practicals (3 three-hour and 2 one-and-a-half-hour), NO tutorials

Assessment:
Midsemester exam - 10%
Two practical reports - 20% (10% each)
Post-prac test on three of the five practicals  - 10% (3.33% each)
Final exam - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  4 were given to us on LMS, with a few more on the past exams website - none with answers.

Textbook Recommendation:  Animal Physiology: From Genes to Organisms (Sherwood, Klandorf and Yancey)

Lecturer: Dr Peter Cakebread

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 1 / 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
I just wanted to give my own opinion on Applied, since the above post definitely doesn't reflect how my friends and I viewed the subject (not that I want to badmouth you, 13collenmax13! I'm happy you found the subject well presented, and to be honest I'm jealous a little). Please be aware that I took this alongside Comparative Animal Physiology, so in my head the two were compared, and I'm a cell and developmental biology major, meaning that I have a background in cell signalling systems and the like - I took no physiology subjects until this semester.

Assessments
The midsem test was multiple choice and online, which could be done open-book and at home. I disliked the format - you had to finish one question before opening the page containing the next. The questions themselves were okay, but some of them were badly written. With the textbook open and Google handy, I lost a decent amount of marks to stupid questions (and potentially my own frustrations).
The two prac reports, in my opinion, were terrible. They were on pracs 2 and 4, respectively, and a decent amount of time was given for each (around 2 weeks, 1500 words), but there were very little instructions on what Dr Cakebread wanted, and whenever someone took the initiative and asked on the online discussion forum if, for example, he wanted statistical analysis, or if were were supposed to omit obviously incorrect data, he would answer with "it depends!". I know some people like open-ended assignments and the freedom to choose what parts of the prac report to focus on, but when I got my mark back and it was significantly lower than those I had received in Comparative Animal Physiology, even though I was following the same rules given, and with exactly five words of feedback on the report and nothing else to explain the loss of marks, I was highly annoyed. So much so that I gave up and wrote a terrible report for the second assignment, only to receive exactly 1 mark (out of 100) lower than the first. I am unsure whether the reports were badly marked, or if someone else marked each one, but it was irritating. My friends in the subject also noticed silly discrepancies in marking (for example, one of them had a note that one of her graphs was supposed to have a heading - we use captions instead of headings, and I had no note on mine). The feedback from the first was supposed to help with the second report, but they had problems getting everyone's out on time, which probably contributed to the bad feedback.
The exam was two hours, and honestly the memory of it makes me laugh. Everyone around me in the exam hall were giving each other looks of annoyance during reading time. For some reason, the exam format had been changed between the previous year and this year, without any warning (at least, my friends and I had no clue, though others may have, I'm not sure). This year, 2/3 of the marks were given to 6 long-answer questions, which you could choose out of 8. In previous years, there were more questions, separated into two sections, so each question wasn't worth as many marks. An unfair proportion of these questions were on the digestive system, which was only one of the 7 systems studied. Also, each of these long-answer questions had 18 marks appointed to it, and with no previous exam answers given, I had no idea how long/detailed an answer had to be to receive all 18.

Other
The pracs themselves were a mixed bag. A few were interesting - we ran a glucose tolerance test on sheep, and measured PCV of horses (diagnosing one of them as dehydrated). The others were kinda boring. The lectures themselves were jam packed with flow charts that had way too much information on them to be interesting or helpful. I definitely recommend using the textbook to try and get through the information.
I felt that the only thing I have learned in this subject was how to rote-learn badly taught information. Perhaps if you come from a physiology background it may be better, but to someone who was learning it all for the first time, it was not a good introduction to the subject, and Comparative Animal Physiology handles it a lot better. As someone who wants to go into post-grad vet science, the constant linking of information to disease in domestic animals was good, but not enough to save this subject.
Although it is 'Applied' physiology, it is not taught that way, only tested that way. We learnt each system separately in lectures, but then were supposed to link them all together in the exam. Although we were warned of this ahead of time, I found that this was a bad way of preparing us for the exam.
2011: VCE
2012-2014: BSc (Cell and Developmental Biology) - Animal Cell Biology specialisation
2015-2016: Masters in Laboratory Medicine

|J|

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #215 on: November 27, 2013, 11:52:15 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20061 Music Language 2: Chromaticism & Beyond

Workload:  2x1 hour lectures and 1x1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  10 weekly assignments (60%), 10% "listening test", 30% final exam. Must complete all assessment requirements to pass the subject. (80% tutorial attendance is also a hurdle requirement)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, but the exam is similar to the assignments

Textbook Recommendation:  The recommended textbooks are "Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter. Harmony and Voice Leading, 4th edition, New York: Thomson Schirmer, 2003 or 2011" and "Kent Kennan, Counterpoint 4th edition, Prentice Hall, 1999.", but I didn't use one.

Lecturer(s): Dr Kevin March

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 [H1]

Comments:

Lectures:
This subject is a music theory subject which will explore classical music from late Baroque through early 20th century. It is a core subject for Bachelor of Music students, and if you are interested in music theory or music composition (classical), then this subject is for you.
Throughout the semester, you will learn about harmony and form:
The first week of the subject is “revision” of basic harmonic functions and voice leading principal which have been learned in Music Language 1: the Diatonic World, which is the prerequisite of this subject. Although it is only revision, pay attention to all of the lectures, since there are some topics which have not been covered in Music language 1 (eg.  Basic Harmonic Progressions).
In the second and the third week, you will learn about non-harmonic tones, mixtures, diatonic 7th chords, half & full-diminished vii7 chords and secondary / applied dominants. Follow the lectures for secondary / applied dominants carefully since they show up frequently throughout the semester.
The next three weeks will discuss about modulation to closely related key (static modulation and pivot modulation) and form. The formal topics which will be discussed are: Early pre-sonata form, contrapuntal devices, canon and fugue. Personally, I found that it is quite difficult to notice what type of modulation is used. Moreover, I found that the formal analysis (which you will do in the assignment) is quite subjective and the assignment for canon is the hardest assignment in this subject. (Note: in the canon assignment, when it asked you about measure, don’t forget to include the beat. For example, you should answer “bar 15 beat 1” instead of “bar 15”. I lost quite a lot of mark just because of this.)
In the next week, you will learn other types of modulation: chromatic, common tone and enharmonic modulations. These types of modulations can be classified as modulation to distant key. Again, I found this topic quite hard. I found that there can be several interpretations of what modulation is used, but you should be able to find the best interpretation of what modulation is used in the excerpt.
After dealing with harmony, you will learn about form again for the last time in this subject. You will learn about early, expanding, late and hybrid sonata forms.
The rest of the subject is about harmony again. You will learn about altered & consecutive dominants, extended tertian harmony, Phrygian II (Neapolitan 6th), common tone diminished 7th chords, augmented 6th chords, median relationship and Tristan chord. Pay attention to Neapolitan 6th and augmented 6th chords. (Applied dominant, Neapolitan 6th and augmented 6th chords are three important chords in romantic period)

My opinion:
If you want to do well in this subject, focus on your weekly assignments. Always double-check your assignments. In the composition part, make sure that you don’t make any parallel 5th and parallel 8th as you will get penalised heavily if you make any. Be clear, indicate any inversions if the chord is in inversion, and do not forget the previous lectures because some of them will show up frequently in the assignments and the exam. Also, do your weekly listening because memorising 40 pieces is not something you can cram for one day. (However, if you are fine in losing about 2% of your mark, you can ignore this, because the listening test format in my semester is similar to the assignment. The difference is that there might be a question like “what is the title?” or “who is the composer?”.) Finally, to prepare for the final exam, re-reading your assignment might be a good idea because the format is similar to the assignments. My final exam consists of two parts: formal analysis and harmonic analysis. The harmonic analysis in the exam is quite complex and you need to quickly realise what harmonic function and modulations are used in the excerpt (My final exam harmonic analysis is the first 2 minutes of “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius. Download the score and perform harmonic analysis if you want a rough idea of how the exam would be). Overall, it was an interesting subject which you can apply to “add some colour” to your music through the use of chromatic chord.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2014, 03:06:29 am by |J| »

Ballerina

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #216 on: November 28, 2013, 10:58:30 am »
+6

Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005: Genetics and the Evolution of Life 

Workload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 36 hours of practical activities pre-laboratory activities and computer workshops (independent learning tasks), averaging 3 hours per week and 6 one-hour tutorial/workshop sessions during the semester.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment or 120 hours

Assessment:  A 45-minute, multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%); work in practical classes during the semester, made up of a combination of written work not exceeding 1000 words, assessment of practical skills within the practical class, or up to 5 short multiple choice tests (20%), completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); an assignment not exceeding 1000 words (5%), a 3-hour written examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (60%). 

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No. Sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation: 

◊ R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009

◊ Excellent in explaining and expanding on concepts clearly. I would recommend purchase mainly due to Dawn's lecture notes. Though long, they're in shorthand and are easier to decipher after reading the prescribed textbook pages.

Lecturer(s): Dawn Gleeson, Rick Wetherbee, Theresa Jones.

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80

Comments:

◊ Dawn Gleeson: runs a tight ship. Reminds me of a furby.

◊ As the coordinator of the subject, her organization skills are impeccable. She would spend the beginning of many lectures with 'housekeeping' notes, and the subject was run smoothly and meticulously. There was only one main limitation throughout the subject, to be mentioned later.

◊ She gives most of the lectures, and if you only show up to one lecturer's classes, I'd choose hers. Genetics for me personally was the most difficult to grasp in the course. It's very analytical and relates to strategic problem-solving. Theresa and Rick's content involves only rote memorization. Watching Dawn solve genetics problems is valuable, pay attention.

◊ She also does not gloss over details which require prior knowledge. As a result, the class is manageable as a breadth.

Rick Wetherbee: is a self-proclaimed alien abductee. I'm not sure if he's teaching next year due to retirement. Eccentric and scintillating. He appears after a long, consecutive run of Dawn's content and is a wonderful break from molecular biology and genetics. 

Theresa Jones: is gorgeous. Great communicator and my favourite part of the course. No idea whether zoology is the most fascinating thing to happen to science, or if it was just her. Her evolution lectures are also intriguing.

◊ The only limitation of the subject was the midsemester test and assignment. Average scores were notoriously low due to poor management and execution. This didn't occur last year, and hopefully won't occur next year.

◊ If you commit to revising for the pracs, it's easy to score 9-10/10 for all of them. Highly recommend taking full advantage of this due to the 60% exam. However, be fastidious. Tutors will take 50% of your in-house marks for putting a graph title on the top instead of the bottom. Try to score Michelle Lupton's class, she's an angel. An angel of rationality.



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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #217 on: November 28, 2013, 02:47:18 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2  

Workload:  Contact Hours: 36 one hour lectures (three times a week), and 24 hours (12 x 2 hours) of practical classes and tutorials. 3 hours of research participation (hurdle requirement).

Estimated time commitment: 108 hours per semester.

Assessment:  One three hour examination comprising multiple-choice questions to be undertaken in the University examination period. (60%)
Laboratory assignment(s) of not more than 2000 words to be submitted during the semester. (40%)
Students must complete all components of the assessment and achieve an aggregate score of 50% in the subject to be eligible for a pass.
Participation in three hours of research activities and attendance at 80% or more of laboratory classes are hurdle requirements.


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No. You are given multiple choice questions without an answer sheet from each lecturer. Some - the 'exact' questions, not only the general format - will appear on the exam. Compare your answers over and over with different people and use the LMS forum. Free points.

Textbook Recommendation:  ۞  Eysenck, M.W. (2009) Fundamentals of Psychology. Hove, Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Palgrave Macmillan
 and
Haslam, N. (2007). Introduction to Personality and Intelligence. London: Sage are commonly referred to.

۞  Don't purchase Eysenck. Some recommended pages are assessable but it's an overnight loan at the library, and only takes a few nights to completely cover back-to-front. Very useful when finding the answers to the multiple choice questions which may appear on the exam.

۞  Haslam is offered online for free. This semester it was expected we read the entire book sans one chapter. The author is the same person who lectures the personality psychology segment. He asked us to read it repeatedly and hinted it was assessable. I was the only person of all my friends to read it.  When I sat down to complete the exam, not a single question referred to that book.

Lecturer(s): Judi Humberstone, Yoshi Kashima, Nicholas Haslam, Nick Allen, Christopher Groot.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013.

Rating:  2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

۞  Developmental Psychology - The subject is not to my preference, but Judi taught it very well and breathed science into the subject. Hardest part of the exam because she asks 'which is more correct' questions that require nuanced understanding.

۞  Social Psychology - Attend lectures or download the lecture capture, Yoshi's notes are scarce and his actual lecturing is more detailed. Charismatic lecturer who makes social psychology interesting. Most of his exam questions were from the aforementioned MCQ.

۞  Personality Psychology - Haslam also has scarce notes, the actual lecturing is more detailed and will allow a deeper understanding.

۞  Clinical Psychology - Nick taught this sensitive topic very tactfully and respectfully. I believe this was his last year teaching it unfortunately.

۞  Quantitative Methods - The statistics taught are very simple, but the lecturer doesn't explain them well. The tutorials are (only) helpful here; math is best taught by working through problems. The tutorials also cover additional quantitative methods which appear on the exam, but aren't in the quantitative methods lectures.

۞  A rule of thumb I've found is that most tutorials which have a mandatory attendance are the tutorials which are least useful. For useful tutorials, such as those for BIOL10005 or CHEM10004, there was no compulsory attendance because students could be depended on to show up anyway due to the value of the sessions. This rule of thumb applies to Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2 (MBB2)'s 80% mandatory tutorial attendance.

۞  The lab reports which comprise 40% of the total marks should be attended to very carefully. Psychology is a pedantic subject and the arbitrary rules of academic writing apply. Visit an academic skills advisor to be on the safe side. Try and score Thurlow, he is fantastic. Some of the other advisors are more adapted to helping international students with basic English, but Thurlow truly understands academic writing.

۞  A requirement this semester was to include no use of statistics in the lab reports. This was explained as not wanting to give an unfair advantage to BSc students over BA students. They really mean no statistics. This does not just exclude t-tests and chi-squares. If you report the median of your data, you will get marks off. If you use the word significance or correlation, you will get marks off. Not for finding the r value of a correlation, but using the word correlation. Considering statistics is taught in the same subject, it was contradictory to exclude the use of statistics to such a severe extent.

۞  The exam is straightforward. It is the first exam for which I have left early.

۞  'Participation in three hours of research activities' refers to the 3 hours you must donate to the projects of honours, masters or PhD students studying psychology at UoM. It is stated repeatedly this is a hurdle required for you to pass the subject. This is unethical, because coercion shouldn't be used to acquire participants for psychology experiments. The Code of Ethics states that all human participation should be voluntary. After raising my concerns, I took the very downplayed alternative of writing an essay instead.

۞  Overall there are good points to this class e.g. interesting content and nice tutors. A good choice if you are looking for a light credit. But the subject lacks some coherency and doesn't do justice to psychology, which deserves to be treated as a science whether the subject is classified as arts or not.

« Last Edit: December 23, 2013, 01:51:18 pm by Ballerina »

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #218 on: November 28, 2013, 03:55:58 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10001: Biology of Australian Flora and Fauna 

Workload: 36 x 1 hr lectures, 5 x 1 hr tutorials, 10 x self-study activities (2 of which are assessed)

Assessment:

2 x Self-study Activities (ILAs) (12.5% each)

Let's start the proceedings with the most poorly handled part of the course! Upon beginning these assignments (two chosen at random each year by the staff to prevent collusion with former BIOL10001 students), you will discover that Trisha Downing is hypocritical and makes mountains out of molehills. She is a self-proclaimed believer in the fact that she had it harder when she went to university and will, make no mistake, deduct marks for things that aren't even incorrect after contradicting herself five times on the LMS discussion board. If you have Trisha as a tutor, SWAP TO EMMA'S TUTORIALS IMMEDIATELY; Emma is straightforward, extraordinarily friendly and very fair. Email her if you have problems, and only resort to the discussion board if you have to (if Emma is away doing botanical work, for instance).

ILA 3 was about soil and nutrients, and how these related to plants in various ways. I won't bother describing the ILAs themselves as you'll have a different combination of them next year, but what I would like to highlight is this; Trisha not only consistently gave strange, contradictory feedback on question queries, but contradicted herself regarding a 1000 word limit SEVEN TIMES on the discussion board. SEVEN. There was a minor student uproar and in the end I don't think the world limit was imposed; it was far too restrictive for what the assignment entailed. I flipped my table, wrote 2.5k words and got 100% for this; Emma actively dislikes Trisha and doesn't seem to care too much about what she says. ILA 7 was about the reproductive biology of mammals and was also handled like a pile of liquefied cow excrement. Trisha told us we had to put four variables onto a single graph. Then, the night before the final day we had to work on the assignment, she "discovered" that it was, in fact, meant to be three graphs. She helpfully provided (an unhelpful type of) graph paper and told us we had to do that instead. It transpired that this was the ONLY CORRECT WAY to present the graphs. Fuck you, Trisha, you had three weeks to figure this out. Needless to say, students were all in an uproar (furore even) over the whole debacle and Emma actually took our tute group aside and told us she strongly disagreed with Trisha and would mark us fairly. Of course, given how strange Trisha's explanations were, most people answered the entirety of the graph questions inappropriately anyway.

With regards to the marking of these assignments, it wasn't particularly harsh. Trisha will possibly take away marks for things that aren't really incorrect, but Emma is very reasonable. I lost 1 mark (of 12.5) for forgetting to alphabetically order my reference list and 1 mark for misinterpreting my graphs on ILA 7, but these mistakes had nothing to do with the actual content of the assignment; if you invest time and effort into presenting the content you should come away with an H2A or H1. I WILL say that doing outside research is important for a good mark on your ILA, as is correct in-line citation practice. reCite is your best friend. Note that you can reference websites and the like as this is not a research essay; standards for the quality of references are surprisingly low. Overall, these assignments were handled very poorly and were a lot more effort than they were worth, letting the otherwise well-run and interesting subject down a huge amount.

1 x MST (15%)

The mid-semester test is an entirely multiple-choice affair of 25 1-mark questions, and is quite well-structured. As I understand, from next year onward it will switch to an online format, but I assume the test is taken under tutor supervision on university computers. If not, this is a free 15%!
This test was designed to cover a wide range of the topics covered by lecturers, and, provided you had studied the lectures (1-15 were tested, in week 8 of semester) was not particularly difficult, though there were a few obscure questions. This test, more than anything, really serves as a covert warning for the exam itself, showing that this subject isn't as bludgy as you thought and you do actually need to know things in detail. Only 3 people from a 300+ cohort achieved 100% on the test (one of them was a Masters student), but the vast majority of people sat comfortably in the H2B-H1 range. Don't underestimate this subject; please study the relevant lectures properly for this test, because some very specific things come up! The saving grace is that no understanding is really required; you just have to know the facts to do well (but there are an awful lot of them).

1 x Large, Intimidating Exam! (60%)

This exam proved all of my hitherto unfounded fears about this subject. It wants detail. A lot of detail. The exam is entirely fair in that it only tests what was in the lectures, but you need to know EVERYTHING that isn't explicitly peripheral. And I mean everything. There was a question about how the Northern Pacific seastar affected the populations of spotted handfish, which came up as a seemingly random aside during Jenny Martin's lectures. There were so many little nitty-gritty details in the multiple choice (some of them anyway) and the fill-in-the-blank questions that I'd wager a large number of people were quite shocked by the exam. Don't neglect the fisheries lecture because it seems unstructured or tangential; there was a highly detailed Section B question worth 7% of the exam on this and I'm very glad I decided to spend the morning looking at this lecture, the only one I hadn't studied extensively (or at all).

The exam, by the way, has three sections (multiple choice+T/F, fill-in-the-blanks and "short" answer). Section C (short answer) was exhausting, and I spent 2 and a half of the 3 hours available in the exam completing this section, worth just 74 of the 180 marks. The questions are, mercifully, broader and more open this time, though you will need to detail some specifics if you want all the marks. The questions were mostly fair, though some were strange and unwelcome, like Ian Woodrow's "three features of a CAM plant question" (he really taught us only one, the obvious 'stomata closed at night' feature), which almost felt like he wanted to know about the many features of xerophytes. I stated the aforementioned reason alongside their storage of CO2 in malic acid and their usage of a PEP carboxylase enzyme pump (but explicitly stated they shared these features with all or some C4 plants). Jenny Martin also asked us to discuss biodiversity of our oceans with reference to upwellings, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and geological events; this question was quite strange and required you to think outside the box using little snippets of her and Jan Carey's lectures to provide a sensible answer; she never discussed this topic in direct relation to the other three, so the question made you think actively (a good thing), but was objectively ill-worded, as her discussion of geology and the intermediate disturbance hypothesis was quite ephemeral (necessitatingthe self-derived answer). The remainder of the questions were very sensible, but my wrist died by the end of this exam; there was SO MUCH WRITING for that 43% of the exam I wanted to cry by the end. I suspect you could get away with writing far less than I did, but I was keen to cover all bases due to the amount of detail that could be assessed and not put in my answer. These questions will all be answerable if you've studied properly, and completely awful if you haven't (though you can probably write something down based on your own logic and bullshitting ability for half of them), and that goes for the entirety of the exam. STUDY EVERYTHING PROPERLY AND LISTEN TO THE LECTURES AT HOME OR YOU WILL MISS OUT.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture. I strongly recommend you download these all and relisten to them; you WILL miss important details the first time around. Use your printed slides to help figure out the pacing and topics the lecturer is covering.

Past exams available:  There is a single sample exam posted on the LMS late in the semester, but it's effectively useless; no short answer solutions are given and the multiple choice/fill-in-the-blanks are entirely unrepresentative of the actual exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus. 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009

Lecturer(s): Mike Bayly, Ian Woodrow, Katherine Handasyde, Jenny Martin, Jan Carey, Terry Walshe

Mike Bayly: Lectures 1-6

Mike (who looks a bit like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo but with bulging eyes) is one of the subject coordinators and covers the topics of Australia's geological history, Australian rainforest plants, sclerophylly and the plant families Fabaceae, Mimosaceae, Myrtaceae and Proteaceae. He is friendly, highly approachable and extremely helpful, and his lectures are moderately paced and easily digestible; you may find yourself at least a little interested in plants by the time his lecture series concludes. It's worth noting that he really wants you to learn the detail from his lectures and I strongly advise you to get a good handle on it before the mid-semester test. He puts online quizzes up for self-assessment of his material, so take these every so often to ensure you've committed his topics to heart.

Ian Woodrow: Lectures 7-11

Ian is also a botanist and covers the invasion of the prickly pear (genus Opuntia) into Australia, CAM plants and adaptations, the managing of energy loads via latent/sensible heat loss and the adaptations of xerophytes to their environments. He speaks at a glacial pace, but when listening to his lectures I found that many of the most important facts came from the rare spells in which he spoke too fast to write everything down the first time. His lecture content was actually quite interesting, even if he was not. Be prepared to remember things you think were peripheral from his lectures, like the name of the chemical people once used to kill the prickly pear, the name of the pigment the cochineal mealybug yields and the two identification tests for a CAM plant (one of which is incredibly silly).

Kath Handasyde: Lectures 12-22

Kath covered an enormous range of topics in quite a lot of detail; these included the adaptations of animals to desert, alpine and rainforest environments, the importance of rainforest, an unbelievable amount on Australian invertebrate diversity and the importance of ants and termites in our ecosystems, invertebrate conservation, Australian birds and mating systems (apostlebirds are fucking cute), Australian frogs (emphasis on reproductive diversity) and Australian reptile diversity (do learn the family names and ins and outs of this lecture in a lot of detail). Kath's questions are well-structured and put together, testing a large number of concepts in a cute little one-liner or multiple choice, and are also very fair, provided you've studied her lectures. Kath herself is wonderfully enthusiastic and a great lecturer, but speaks at a breakneck pace; if you only listen to the recordings from one lecturer, make it hers.

Jenny Martin: Lectures 23-24, 29-33

Jenny covers Australian mammal diversity and reproduction, then returns later to talk about Australia's marine habitats and diversity, upwelling zones, the fauna and importance of temperate waters, coral reefs and fisheries. Jenny is a very friendly lecturer and does a good job of lecturing, but occasionally is stumped by questions, since she is lecturing outside her field of expertise for five of her lectures. Her questions on the exam were quite hard and specific, but I can't hate her for it.

Jan Carey: Lectures 25-28

Jan covers marine algae, with emphasis on seaweeds, then moves briefly onto freshwater plants/protists before going back to the ocean to discuss seagrasses, mangroves and finally coral reef flora. Her lectures were quite boring in person, but I found them fairly well-structured during revision. Make sure you don't neglect her sections on the uses of marine plants and their ecosystem importance. While most people found Jan and her lectures dull, it can't be said that she taught unimportant concepts or that she didn't teach a well-rounded area of the subject. Her exam questions were quite forgiving and left room for interpretation in the short answer.

Terry Walshe: Lectures 34-36

Terry (very poorly) covers some concepts in conservation biology very briefly, such as the importance of stochasticity, the Lazarus effect, Solow's equation and Population Viability Analysis. His lectures make no sense when you listen to them, but if you take notes during them you'll find they make sense to you later. Use the lecture recordings, slides and Google and revising his content adequately will probably only take a couple of hours. It's a fairly laidback addendum to the main bulk of the subject, but make sure you DO study it. Google anything you're confused by; I promise it isn't that bad, even if he's an egotistical dick.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester Two

Rating:  4.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 (H1)  :D

Comments:

Biology of Australian Flora & Fauna was, overall, a fantastic introduction to the fields of botany, zoology and ecology (with quite a few nods to the importance of geography, meteorology and geology) with relation to Australia, which is (as you will discover) a very large place with an intriguing history and biota. Most of the relevant comments have already been made above, but if you are looking for a science elective that exposes you to new things or if you think you may be interested in zoology and botany, this subject will hopefully convince you that you're interested in these fields. For me, it consolidated my choice to study zoology and made me actually find plants interesting, and it's not really that hard to pull an 80 with some effort, so taking this subject could be quite eye-opening and beneficial to your average as well. From this subject, you take away a suite of knowledge that should provide a stable foundation for understanding Australian biology, but more than that it helps to give a general feel for relevant fields and provides you with a better understanding of how various macroscopic and microscopic scientific professions can come together to analyse a habitat, ecosystem or ecological issue. What this subject covers are things glossed over rapidly or not even considered by the core biology subjects, so if you're into life science I strongly recommend it. Just make sure to land in Emma Lewis's tutorial session.
VCE: Chemistry | Biology (2011) | English (2011) | Environmental Science | Mathematical Methods CAS

2013-2015: BSc [Zoology] @ UoM | DLang [German - DISCONTINUED]
2016: GDSc [Botany] @ UoM
2017-2018: MSc [Biosciences - Zoology] @ UoM

Summer: BOTA30006

S1: BOTA20001 | EVSC20004 | BOTA30003 | BIOL90001

S2: GEOG20009 | BOTA30002 | BOTA30005 | EVSC20003 | NRMT90002

Subject and major reviews incoming :)

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #219 on: November 28, 2013, 06:27:36 pm »
+7
 Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001: Pharmacology, How Drugs Work

Workload:  3 lectures a week, 2x3 hour practicals throughout semester, (3-4)x1 hour tutes, 3x1 hour workshops

Assessment: 
•   Three Self Directed Learning tasks (SDLs), worth 10% in total
•   One Practical report and one online quiz based on what you learnt in the second prac, also worth 10% in total
•   Mid-semester assessment (20%).
•   A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes.

Textbook Recommendation:  You don’t really need a textbook

Lecturer(s):

•   Jane Bourke
•   Graham Mackay
•   D. Newgreen
•   T. Hughes
•   C. Wright
•   Alastair Stewart
•   P. Crack
•   C. Laska
•   M. Hansen
•   J. Ziogas
•   J. Fitzgerald
•   K. Winkel
•   M. Lew

Year & Semester of completion:

Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  4.8/5

Your Mark/Grade: 93

Comments:

This is probably one of the best, if not the best, subjects I’ve done so far. It’s one of those subjects that require a fair bit of rote learning - though much less than anatomy or pathology – and a fair bit of application – about the same level as physiology – as well as problem solving. I’ll speak about some of the topics we would cover and then talk a little bit about the SDLs and practicals.

For the first week or so you get an introduction on how drugs basically work. Where they bind, what effects they can have when they do bind, the ways in which they can bind, how to measure their efficiency etc etc. So basically just a general overview.

Once they’ve set the foundations down, the rest of the course is basically looking at different systems in the body and different classes of drugs and how they work. For example, we would have one lecture covering each of the following ‘classes’ of drugs:

•   Contraceptives
•   Antidepressants
•   Performance enhancing drugs
•   Drugs of dependence – Illicit drugs and alcohol
•   Drugs that treat pain
•   Drugs to treat obesity
•   Drugs that increase academic performance

Other lectures would focus on drugs that are used to treat certain conditions or drugs that work on certain ‘systems’, so we would have lectures covering:

•   Drugs that treat asthma
•   Drugs affecting the nervous system
•   Drugs affecting the cardiovascular system
•   Drugs affecting the immune system

We would also look at toxicity of drugs and how we can harness that toxicity to treat diseases, as well as how drugs are regulated and controlled and what’s done differently now in regards to designing drugs.

For most of the lectures, there will be a bit of anatomy and physiology involved. You’ll need to learn the underlying ‘normal’ pathway and mechanisms, and then using that knowledge, figure out which steps in that pathway can be blocked or activated in order to induce the desired effect, and know which drug can be used to block or activate that step.

^That’s basically most of the subject. There will be a lot of pathways you’ll need to wrap your head around and you’ll need to memorise the names of a lot of drugs that can effect different parts of those pathways. You’ll basically have to ‘play doctor’. You might be given questions like, 'a patient has high blood pressure, could prescribing Losartan be a possible form of treatment? If yes, explain how Losartan could lower blood pressure. If no, name a drug that could be used to lower blood pressure and explain its mechanism of action.'

It might not sound like it due to the high number of lecturers, but the whole course is put together really, really well and I honestly couldn’t find a fault with any of the lecturers apart from the guy who taught venoms, his lecture slides were useless. By the end of the semester all the content just came together really well and my mates and I all thought this subject was the most applicable to the ‘real world’ out of all the subjects we’d done so far. Every time we heard one of our non-pharma friends talk about a blocked nose or whatever we would just instantly think of ways to treat them.


Tutorials

You should definitely go to the tutorials. There are only 3 for the whole semester, and the second one in particular gives you an idea on how much depth you need to go into – which is a fair bit, and the tutors also tell you exactly what they look for in an answer that gets full marks. So for that reason alone, they’re really worth it.


Workshops

The workshops are pretty useless. They give you an introduction to the SDLs for some of them, which should only really take 10 minutes, but they manage to drag it out into an hour. The other ones are just to tell you about other pharmacology subjects and possible careers in pharmacology. But yeah, I thought they were pretty useless.


SDLs

The SDLs themselves can be pretty boring but unfortunately there are a few things on them that you will be tested on. Basically you’ll have to download a program from the LMS for each of the SDLs and print out an instruction booklet that will guide you through the programs and print out a worksheet that you’ll have to fill out and submit. It’s pretty easy to get 100% if you know your content well enough from the lectures. Definitely take your time with these so you can get as many marks out of them as possible, it’ll make your swotvac that much less stressful.


Practicals

These just involve using parts of rabbit or hamster intestine and dropping drugs onto them to see if they contract or not. A fair bit of graphing involved and the first one was pretty draining. The second one was kind of interesting though. You pretty much need to use what you’ve learnt from the lectures to figure out which drug you’ve been given by observing the effects it’s having on the intestine, which is fun enough I guess.

The first one requires you to fill out a worksheet, kind of similar to the SDLs, and the second one is marked based off an online test you do at home.


MST

The Mid - Semester test had two pages worth of short answer questions and the rest were multiple choice questions. I found it a fair bit easier than the actual exam but that could just be due to regular exam pressure or because there was so much more to know for the exam. The format of the multiple choice sections is pretty much identical to the exam though. It's worth 20% of your mark so make sure you're well prepared for it m8.

All in all this subject is a lot more interesting than it sounds. It never gets dull since there are so many areas we learn about, but at the same time you never really feel all that overwhelmed because they're all a little bit related.
I only really did this subject as an alternative to fulfilling the prereqs for third year Physiology subjects because there weren’t any spaces left in research phys. I thought I was going to hate it, but now I’m seriously considering switching majors and doing Pharmacology.

Hope this helps!
« Last Edit: June 28, 2014, 07:45:14 pm by nubs »
ATAR: 99.15

BSc @ UoM
2012-2014

ex oh ex oh

Groudon

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #220 on: November 28, 2013, 08:29:18 pm »
+9
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20020 Chemistry: Structure and Properties

Workload: 3x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week, NO PRACTICAL CLASSES

Assessment: 5 multiple choice tests (1.5 hour time limit) roughly every two weeks (corresponding to each lecturer's respective sections) where the top 4 scores are averaged and count for 20% of overall mark, 80% final exam of 3 hour duration.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 4 available.

Textbook Recommendation: There are no recommended texts. Prescribed texts are:
McMurry, Organic Chemistry, 8th Ed. Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2012.
P Atkins and J De Paula, Atkins’ Physical Chemistry 9th Ed. Oxford University Press, 2010.
P. Atkins, T. Overton, J. Rourke, M. Weller and F. Armstrong, Shriver and Atkins' Inorganic Chemistry, 5th Ed., Oxford University Press, 2010.
However, to be honest, you should be perfectly fine without buying these. The lecture notes, tutorial questions and exam problems cover everything you need to know comprehensively.

Lecturer(s): Uta Wille, Alessandro Soncini, Evan Bieske, Stephen Best.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Lecturers: I found the lecturers very good for this subject. Uta and Evan were great, Alessandro was good and although I was worrying about Stephen, he definitely had improved from last I had him as a lecturer (Reactions and Synthesis for S1). I would say that the lecture notes are very good, aside for some of Stephen's sections where he annoyingly overlays autoshapes and text boxes over successive slides. The main problem I had with this subject was that for some of the sections, particularly Alessandro's, the practical use of the content was completely hidden away until the last lecture. This made it hard to stay motivated to learn the content up until that point for me.

Finally, BEWARE OF STEPHEN BESTS' SECTION. When I took this class, he taught us at the end of the semester, and his section is BY FAR the most packed with content. There is a lot to remember in his part, so even though you may feel like the semester is winding down, do not underestimate his section.

Uta's Section: Uta's lectures cover the stereospecificity or lack thereof of reaction mechanisms like substitution, addition, elimination and electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions on aromatic and heteroatomic aromatic systems. Also, her section covers more ways to classify stereoisomers in addition to the regular R and S, E and Z you would have done in Chem 1.

Alessandro's Section: Alessandro's lectures cover symmetry in chemistry which is a real test on how you can visualize molecules rotating/reflecting/ inverting etc. This is something you wouldn't have encountered before, and perhaps dusting off your model kit would be helpful to you. There is some simple maths to do in this section.

Evan's Section: Evan's lectures cover quantum chemistry in more depth than in Chem 1/2 including the particle in a box, harmonic oscillator, morse oscillator and a particle on a ring/sphere. The bulk of his section consisted of focusing on vibrational and rotational transitions for molecules. There is some pure memory involved this part and a good amount of simple math formulas to remember.

Stephen's Section: Stephen's lectures cover coordination chemistry and reactions of these complexes, and catalysis. There is a LOT of memory work involved this part and the amount of content is probably comparable to at least 2 of the other sections combined.

Assessment: The assessment is exactly the same as was for Reactions and Synthesis. The tests are relatively simple assuming you are able to complete the tutorial questions with confidence and without looking at the solutions, and I would suggest trying out some past exam sections as preparation as the questions can be similar. Of course the 80% exam is very daunting, however there is no way to avoid it, and the limited number of practice exams can make preparation a little tough.

Recommendation: If you are doing a Chemistry major, I believe you have to do this subject, however since I am a Chemical Engineering (Systems) Major, I took this as a science elective. While the lecturers were good and the assessment was quite fair, I've given the subject an average rating because:
- The lecturer's often don't make it clear on how the course is practically useful/make it clear at the very end of their sections.
- I felt that some of the sections were basically memory tests (Evan's and Stephen's parts) which limited more creative questions.
- To be frank, some of the course content just totally disinterested me by preference (eg. some parts in Evan's quantum chemistry sections).
Seeing that you may be locked into doing this subject if you are a Chemistry major, you will probably enjoy this subject if you like the more theoretical aspects of chemistry and physical chemistry.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 10:24:05 pm by Groudon »
VCE: Graduated 2011, ATAR 98.60
2012-2014: Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Chemical Systems (UniMelb)

Groudon

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #221 on: November 28, 2013, 09:10:40 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: CHEN20007 Chemical Process Analysis 1 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 2 hour tutorial per week, 2 x 3 hour laboratory sessions per semester 

Assessment:  Official assessment description: Four assignments spread throughout the semester, each of no more than 750 words (10% each). Two of these assignments are associated with the laboratory experiments.
One written two hour end-of semester examination (60%). 2014's CPA1 class may be different but my assessment comprised of:
- 1 group (3-4 members) written assignment consisting of a higher difficulty question with multiple parts. 10% of final mark.
- 1 group (3-4 members) oral presentation assignment (NOTE: You are marked individually) on either a manufacturing or safety case study allocated to you. 10% of final mark.
- 2 lab reports written individually. 10% of final mark per lab report. 
- 60% final exam (HURDLE REQUIREMENT).
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. There are 5 available.

Textbook Recommendation:  There are no prescribed texts, however you will most likely be recommended in class by Shallcross  (REPEATEDLY) to pick up a copy of his Physical Property Data Book. I would strongly recommend you to pick up this book especially if you are a Chemical Systems Major as it will become an invaluable resource in CPA2. Although you will not be using the steam tables in CPA1, it is useful to have a set of psychrometric charts and general compressibility charts on hand with you for CPA1.

Lecturer(s): Assoc. Prof. David Shallcross (absolute legend).

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1.

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Lecturers: Shallcross has been teaching this subject for 30-odd years and it really shows. He knows the subject extremely thoroughly and is very engaging. His notes are very clear and have some examples that you will go through in class like in Calculus 1,2, Linear Algebra etc. Seeing that this is basically the first Chemical Engineering subject that you will likely take, Shallcross offers a great introduction to some of the fundamentals of Chem. Eng.

The key sections in the course that you will learn about are:
- Material balances (THE MAIN TOPIC THAT APPLIES TO ESSENTIALLY ALL OTHERS).
- Humidity
- Non-ideal gas behaviour
- Safety and process equipment

Assessment:
Overall, I found the assessment very fair and finally having an exam that has a weighting less than 80% was very nice!
Oral presentation - This assignment is a good practice for public speaking and actually meeting some of the people you will likely be seeing for the next 4 years. The assessment comprises of 2 sections actually, where (if I remember correctly), 75% of the mark is associated with your INDIVIDUAL presentation, and 25% is associated with a "written critique" on a peer's presentation. In my opinion, the written critique isn't very useful and you basically have to bs some of it. To do well on it, be very attentive to the student you are critiquing and make notes during the presentation on each section you will need to write on.

Written assignment - This assignment is again a group assignment and is essentially a more difficult tutorial question with multiple sections to it (ie. a), b), c) etc.) Typically part a) is quite simple, part b) is difficult and will take some time to do, and part c) involves plotting your results from part b). A peer assessment form is available for this assignment where you critique your own and your peer's performance which is great, especially if you get partnered up with a slacker.

Lab reports - These lab reports are quite simple and involve some questions to complete. There is a particular format to follow (ie. Abstract, Intro, Questions, Conclusion, Appendices), so make sure you follow it to avoid losing any marks. The actual labs themselves were not particularly exciting (simply measuring heights, temperature etc. with time).

Exam - The 60% exam was very fair and if you keep up to date with the provided tutorial sheets, you will be very well prepared. I will stress here that YOU SHOULD KEEP UP WITH THE TUTORIAL SHEETS! You may be finding it difficult, but don't put it off as more work will pile up. Ask your peers for assistance (if you are finding it tough, it is likely many more people are as well), the tutors or the lecturer even. From personal experience, I did put off a good amount of tutorial sheets for several weeks and had to force myself to study literally 7am - 12 pm for 3 days nonstop before the exam to be as prepared as I normally am. Do not put yourself in that position as I did haha.

Recommendation: If you are a Chemical Systems major, you will be doing this subject and it is a great introduction to some of the fundamental concepts in Chemical Engineering. If you are considering this for a science elective, then I would say you would enjoy this subject if you like doing applied math problems/questions. In retrospect, a lot of the questions (involving material balances) are just like doing a puzzle, so I suppose if you like doing those then you will like the subject! I will warn those considering chemical engineering that you will NOT be doing a lot of chemistry. You will however be using concepts like using moles quite a bit for material balances.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 10:24:22 pm by Groudon »
VCE: Graduated 2011, ATAR 98.60
2012-2014: Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Chemical Systems (UniMelb)

Groudon

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #222 on: November 28, 2013, 10:07:55 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: CHEN20009 Transport Processes

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week, 2 x 3 hour lab sessions per semester.

Assessment:  A mid-semester test worth 15% held in or around Week 6 of the semester (1.5 hrs).
Two lab-based assignments spread throughout semester and worth a total of 10% (250 words each, not including equations, graphs and diagrams)
Five minor assessable questions spread throughout semester and worth a total of 5% (50 words each, not including equations, graphs and diagrams)
An end of semester examination worth 70% (3 hrs)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. BUT, YOU CANNOT RELY ON THESE. DO NOT TAKE THIS LIGHTLY, YOU WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY FAIL IF YOU DO THIS. THIS IS SINCE THE LECTURER ONLY RECORDS THE LECTURE NOTES, BUT THE CRUCIAL INFORMATION YOU WILL HAVE TO COPY DOWN IS WRITTEN ON THE WHITEBOARD AND IS NOT RECORDED.

Past exams available:  Yes, 10+ available WITH NUMERICAL SOLUTIONS provided by lecturer.

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended texts are as follows:
Bird, R.B., Stewart, W.E., and Lightfoot, E.N., Transport Phenomena, second edition, Wiley, 2002 and onwards

Coulson, J.M., and Richardson, J.F., Chemical Engineering Volume 1, sixth edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999

However, these are not important for success in the class. The notes, and CRUCIALLY, the problems you work through in the lectures and tutorials are enough to do well.

Lecturer(s): Dr Dalton Harvie.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013/S2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This subject was a definite step-up from any previous subjects I had undertaken. The difficulty can be extremely daunting for the first few lectures, but with enough practice, you will find that the problems can become simpler and even repetitive in a sense. This is since the course covers momentum, heat and mass transfer which involve the exact same concepts just from another perspective. So by the nature of the course, you will be doing revision in a sense with each new section.

Lecturers: Dalton is a great lecturer who knows the subject extremely well. He does record the lectures, but he simply records the lecture note and his voice while he writes out solutions for the problems you will work through in class. These problems will take up a significant amount of time out of the allotted lecture times, and I cannot stress enough that you should attend lectures. As I wrote before, you will most likely fail the class if you do not attend. That is harsh to write, but I feel it is the truth. Keeping up with the tutorial questions is also extremely important as content will continue to pile up and can become overwhelming quickly.

Assessment: The assessment for this class involves:
- 15% mid semester test that covers momentum transfer and a small part of heat transfer (depending on how far you get in the course). I found that doing the relevant tutorial questions and past exam papers was the best way to prepare for this. Something to note about the MST and exam is that Dalton separates "standard" questions which account for 80% of that assessment, and "diamond" questions which account for 20% of that assessment. These diamond questions are of a higher difficulty.
- 2 lab question sheets based on the experiments you will be doing that account for 10% in total. These questions are not your typical lab questions, rather they will require a good amount of time to think about which is why the due date for these can often be around 1 month or more after you complete the experiment. Note that this due date is set for everyone, so if you complete the experiment a month before the due date or 1 week before the due date, they will be due at the same time. Be careful when you timetable your pracs for this class if possible!
- 5 "diamond" questions from each tutorial sheet worth 5% in total. Even though each question is only worth 1% each, it is important to take these seriously so you can get feedback on what is expected of you in terms of working out for the exam and general feedback on what you could improve on.

Recommendation: I have given this subject such a high rating since if you put in the work to understand what Dalton is talking about, the types of problems you can work through by yourself are very interesting like analysing the mass transfer of oxygen through contact lenses and the cornea. Even though this is by far the most difficult subject I have come across so far, it is very satisfying and intellectually stimulating once you understand it. For Chemical Systems majors, you will have to do this subject as a prerequisite, but for others, I believe this can be taken as a breadth(?)/science elective. If you are considering doing this subject, be prepared for a significant workload and I would suggest you have a good background in mathematics (integration mainly).
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 10:24:41 pm by Groudon »
VCE: Graduated 2011, ATAR 98.60
2012-2014: Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Chemical Systems (UniMelb)

Groudon

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #223 on: November 28, 2013, 10:53:48 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: CHEN20008 Chemical Process Analysis 2 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 2 hour tutorial per week (handbook for 2014 lists 1 hour however), 2 x 3 hour laboratory sessions per semester.

Assessment: Four assignments spread throughout the semester, each of no more than 1500 words (10% each). My assignments consisted of:
- 10% group oral presentation (NOTE: Marked individually) based on an allocated manufacturing or safety case study. This is exactly the same as the presentation in CPA1.
- 10% HYSYS assignment (individual).
- 10% lab report
- 10% lab report
One written two-hour end-of-semester examination (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 5+ available from lecturer with some available online. Numerical solutions were given for the 2012 S2 exam.

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed text is: Shallcross D.C., Physical Property Data Book for Engineers and Scientists, 2004, IChemE. It is crucial you have a copy of this book, or at the very least a set of steam tables on hand. You will be using this almost every time you sit down to do a tutorial sheet, and the steam tables/charts provided in the exam will be the same as those in Shallcross' book, so getting familiar with them early is a good thing. The recommended text is: Felder, R.M., Rousseau, R.W., Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes, 2005, Wiley. This is not crucial for success at all however. 

Lecturer(s): Dr. Chris Honig.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013/S2

Rating: 4.8 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This subject is essentially an extension on what you will have learnt from CPA1 which makes sense since those 2 subjects were actually 1 subject before the Melbourne Model ("Chemical Process Analysis"). The core knowledge you will gain from the subject involves energy balances and you basically build up the complexity of such problems you can do over the bulk of the semester (eg. heats of reactions, heats of mixing, shaft work, adiabatic/non-adiabatic, isothermal etc.). In addition, Chris added a new section to the course for S2 which involved thermodynamic cycles (Carnot, Reverse Carnot, Brayton, Otto and Diesel) as well as some process equipment sections which were very interesting.

Lecturers: Chris is for the most part a really good lecturer, however the general consensus among most of the students was that the pace of the subject was too slow. It was great that he wanted to reiterate key sections, however he went a little overboard. Perhaps in future years he will speed up based on feedback however. He does know the course very well, the notes are clear and quite similar to CPA1 and he does try to foster a community sense in the cohort which was really nice (he actually learnt around 80% of the cohort by name).

Assessment: My opinion on the oral presentations and lab reports are exactly the same as those for CPA1, so please see that review for that. In terms of the HYSYS assignment, this was definitely quite difficult for a lot of the cohort as this was essentially the first time we had learnt how to use the program. In addition, Chris had to make revisions to the assignment weeks after it was released multiple times which was slightly annoying, however he did give ample time to complete the task. In terms of the exam, it was very fair and doing the tutorial questions and past exams will be enough to prepare you.

Recommendation: I really enjoyed this subject as the content was interesting to me, and if you have done CPA1, expect a similar experience, especially in terms of the oral presentation assignment (which is identical to the one in CPA1) and the lab reports. As for difficulty, the workload is not extreme, but keeping up with the tutorial sheets is important.

« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 10:24:55 pm by Groudon »
VCE: Graduated 2011, ATAR 98.60
2012-2014: Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Chemical Systems (UniMelb)

Groudon

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #224 on: November 28, 2013, 11:53:26 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20011 Environmental Chemistry 

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week for 8 weeks (weeks 1-8); 1 x one hour tutorial per week for 6 weeks (weeks 4-10); 1 x 3.5 hour practical class per week for 6 weeks

Assessment:  40% from 6 practical reports, 20% from semester-long team project which takes the form of a ministerial briefing based on an allocated environmental chemistry issue, 40% exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available:  Yes, 10+ available.

Textbook Recommendation:  No prescribed textbooks. Recommended textbooks include:
D. A. Skoog, D. M. West, F. J. Holler and S. R. Crouch, Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry, 8th Ed., Thomson, 2004.
G. W. van Loon and S. J. Duffy, Environmental Chemistry. A Global Perspective, 2nd Ed, Oxford, 2005.
Environmental Analytical Chemistry, Eds. D.Perez-Bendito and S.Rubio, Elsevier, 1999.
C. Baird and M. Cann, Environmental Chemistry, 3rd Ed., Freeman, 2005.
These are not crucial for success, however I did find that "Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry" was useful in research for the practical reports.

Lecturer(s): Spas Kolev, Trevor Smith (there is one other lecturer, however unfortunately I cannot remember his name. His section was very small, based on green energy and essentially served as an intro to the group project).

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1.

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
I took this subject as a science elective, and found it generally enjoyable. You will notice that the practical component is worth as much as the exam, so you should take the reports quite seriously. The pracs were quite easy and you are given the chance to use instruments for gas chromatography, HPLC and flame AAS which was nice after learning about them in Year 12 (Spas' section actually does devote a good amount of time in revising the background of these instruments as well as correct use of significant figures).

Lecturers: Spas and Trevor are both quite good lecturers and have good notes that are sufficient to understand what is needed for the exam. In general, the key areas covered involve the environmental chemistry of the lithosphere (eg. contaminants to the lithosphere), hydrosphere (contaminants to the hydrosphere) and atmosphere (eg. photochemistry in the atmosphere, stratification of the atmosphere etc.).  If you do take this subject, be aware that the exam and general content aside from the group project is a MASSIVE MEMORY TEST. If you are comfortable with rote learning stuff, then you will find the exam very easy, however you may have to devote more time if you find it difficult to memorise things. Also, the "tutorials" for the class are utterly useless. Since the content is quite cut and dry in the sense that the answers are essentially just being able to recall facts, I would suggest simply printing off the tutorial questions provided, then working through them by yourself to test how much you can recall. If you cannot remember them, just look through the lecture notes!

Assessment: I've already mentioned the importance of the pracs and exam beforehand, so the other key assessment I will write on is the group project. This accounts for 20% of the total mark, and quite honestly, probably causes a lot of people to dismiss doing the subject due to the workload. Firstly, you work in groups of 3-4 people, and you are basically acting as a scientific consulting group to an Environmental Minister on an allocated environmental issue (for eg. my issue was whether electric cars should be introduced now/10 years in future/ 50 years in future/ never?). You have to take a collective stance among your team on the issue, and build up a report of about 8-10 pages with a focus on the environmental implications of the issue. All in all, I found that project very valuable as I built my teamwork/leadership skills and I actually learnt a lot from my other teammates (of whom, 2 of which were masters students). This report is typically due in the last week of semester, however you do have to do a short oral presentation to a portion of the class and one of the lecturers detailing your research and stance, however this does not account for any mark (it is only a hurdle requirement).

Recommendation: As I mentioned before, I found the subject enjoyable in the end because of the practical component and the group project which initially made me quite nervous given that there was a chance I could have been stuck with slackers for a semester. However, the rating I have given is above average only since the exam is a pure memory test. There is no variation in the questions that can be asked (ie. The question might simply ask for the name of a certain organic contaminant.), and this can make the content very dry. I suppose you would enjoy this subject if you want to get some experience in using HPLC, gas chromatography, UV/VIS spectroscopy, flame AAS etc., or want to learn the fundamentals of how environmental chemists view the hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere. 

« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 10:25:12 pm by Groudon »
VCE: Graduated 2011, ATAR 98.60
2012-2014: Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Chemical Systems (UniMelb)