Subject Code/Name: PHYS30005: Muscle and Exercise Physiology Workload: 3 lectures per week, that's all.
Assessment: 2 MST 15% each, 1 assignment 10% and final exam 60%.
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture etc. But lectures could use laser pointer to point out a particular feature of a slide. The laser pointer is not available on the lecture recap.
Past exams available: No. No examination preparation material is provided, except for a very few amount of practice questions that was gone through in the review session. You don't need those material anyway I will come back to that point later.
Textbook Recommendation: Too many. However the slides are sufficient. I would still recommend "Jones, D., Round, J. & deHaan, A. Skeletal Muscle from Molecules to Movement, Churchill-Livingstone" and "Houston, M.E. Biochemistry Primer for Exercise Science, Human Kinetics" Lecturers tend to use graphs from these two books. They are available in library, but limited quantity.
Lecturer(s): Dr René Koopman - Prof Gordon Lynch - Prof Mark Hargreaves - Prof Matthew Watt - Dr Kristy Swiderski - Dr Kate Murphy - Dr Marissa Caldow - Dr James Ryall - Dr Paul Gregorevic -
Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester 1.
Rating: 3.9 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: TBA
Comments: Okay, so just 1 day after the exam week, I decided to write up this review. There are a few available reviews for this subject, but they are very old and pretty much outdated. Many things have changed since those reviews and certainly this subject is a lot better than previous years. The quality and assessment has been improving a lot, and I will come back to those points later.
My review is consisted of the following part: 1. What you will study, why you could consider to choose this subject. 2. Teaching quality and my personal study experience. 3. Pre-final Assessment 4. Final Exams 5. Conclusion.
1. What you will study
Here, this subject is splitted into these portions: Metabolism, Muscle mass regulation and From stem cells to muscle repair and homeostasis. Each portion is consisted about 10-11 lectures and 1 review session/workshop.
Two MSTs are constructed 1 lecture after each topic is completed. The assignment is at the end of metabolism and is about the metabolism only.
Now given the above basic information, I would like to be a bit more specific.
Firstly, why should you consider this subject? Well, you must be a physiology major student to enrol in this subject. From second year physiology subjects, like PHYS20001 by the lovely Charles and BIOM20002 by David Williams (En-huh) you should notice that physiology is about understanding the process which human body works. Those kind of purely rote memorisation in subjects like anatomy or pharmacology will not be working properly for this subject. If you love understanding rather than rote memorisation, then this subject is great for you. Furthermore, physiology is a subject that involves many other broad subjects. For example, to understand membrane potential, you need to understand the Nerst's Equation of electric chemistry. Those muscle injury is also related somehow to physics. If you like merging what you have learned together, then this subject is suitable for you.
In the first part of this subject you will be learning metabolism. You will learn the basic substance metabolism of carbohydrates (CHO abbr in this subject) fat and amino acids. Then you will learn the body homeostatic response to exercise and fatigue. The next topic is about muscle mass regulation. You will be learning the muscle synthesis and breakdown regulations, their cellular pathways ( not difficult) and diseases like sarcopenia and cancer cachexia. In the final topic you will be learning muscle generation, both neonatal and during injury. Finally you will be learning muscle plasticity, what the muscle will adapt to the new environment.
Now, a friendly advice, this subject does involve some cellular pathways. I guess you can’t really avoid cellular pathways unless you study the anatomy subjects. However, the cellular pathways involved in this subject are a lot less than those biochemistry or immunology subjects. Personally I really hate studying those pathways, so that's why I performed very bad in MCB (BIOM20001). However, personally I believe this subject involves a lot more 'easier' pathways and is certainly less 'offensive' than MCB. Indeed, this subject will regard human as a broad continuity, rather than been dissected into different part like immunology. You will need to memorise some pathways in metabolisms, like how fat is transported into the mitochondria, but they are pretty straight forward and does not involve too much rote learning.
2. Teaching quality and my experience
Overall, the quality of this subject has been improved greatly since 2013. In the first topic metabolism, you will have Rene as the principal lecturer. He is a bit talky and does not include all necessary material in his slides, which means you have to listen to the lecture. Further more, he loves using laser pointer. In lecture recap, the recording will not show the laser pointer, which means if you want to succeed in this subject, you must go to the slot to listen to the recording by yourself. However, he does include a few things that he did not mention in the lecture which really sucks.
Then you have Prof. Gordon Lynch. He is amazing, very professional and includes every examinable material in the slides. He teaches a few lectures in metabolism and muscle mass regulation, but the bulk part of the muscle regeneration lecture. He seldom writes dodgy questions. However, he uses laser pointer as well. That is a problem.
Other lectures pretty much just come and go. They are quite friendly as well, if you have question, even very basic ones, they will not be upset when you present your questions at the end of their lectures.
Finally, I wish to mention "Mark Hardgraph". In previous reviews, you could see that Mark received consistent low ranking. Now I guess the faculty has received bad subject reviews and reduced his lecture to merely 3 times. Now at the top of the slides, he includes the key take away message. This does solve some problems. However, his lecture style is still pretty poor. If you can't make it to his lecture, don't feel too bad about it.
Now I will discuss how I study this subject. Basically, I focused on the lecture slides, which saw a steady increase in its importance as semester progresses. Except for Rene, all examinable materials are contained in the lecture slides. You need to put the slides alongside with your notes together when you write up summary notes. Those reference books are important in the very beginning of the semester, but become useless at the final topics. You could use OCR to transcribe scanned version of the book into words that you can store in the computer. Finally go to the lectures. Those lecturers are using laser pointer and if you don't go then you may miss the main point.
3. Pre-final Assessment
Well, I guess this is the part of subject that is getting interesting. In this year, the regular assessment is quite difficult, but the final is very easy. The examination format is pretty much similar to the ones in PHYS20001, consisted of MCQ (A to E) and EMQ(A to Z). Not too much to say about MCQ, but for the EMQ in MST, we do have some difficult questions written by Rene. An article was pulled from one of the journals, containing some of the information we have studied. We were then asked to fill in the blank, using both what we have learnt in lectures and the information given in the article. Personally I find this really challenging. Except for this, the questions written by Gordon and other teachers are straightforward. When I mean straight forward, I mean either you know the answer and solve the question within 10 seconds, or you don't know the answer, could not solve it in 2 minutes, and ended up guessing.
The assignment is not well assessed in this semester. Basically, we were asked to solve some problems within a scenario. Marks are given, not penalised. This means that you can have one assignment error-free, but still receive less than expected mark because you have missed some points. Furthermore, the question this year was not well-articulated and was ambiguous. I guess the lecturer received some bad complaints and decided to give everyone 10% extra marks.
4. Final Exams
In this year, the final exam was really straight forward. I find this exam the easiest physiology exam I have ever taken. There was only about 4-5 questions that requires you to think carefully, but the remaining are straightforward. Again, when I mean straight forward, I mean either you know the answer and solve the question within 10 seconds, or you don't know the answer, could not solve it in 2 minutes, and ended up guessing. Most marks are awarded to the students who have been doing their best during semesters. So that's why some students ended up early leave.
Finally, I would like to give you some suggestions about the final exams. When the reading time commences, you need to check the question papers to make sure that the words are printed correctly. Then, I would suggest you to begin with the EMQ, because they are quite time consuming. Memorise those answers. When the reading time finishes and writing begins, write down the answers for the EMQ immediately. This will spare your time, and give you a lot calmness to tackle the rest of exam.
5. Conclusion
Overall, I believe this subject has improved in the past 4-5 years. Now its teaching quality is a lot better, so does its assessment. This subject is very well assessed. You should choose this subject if you want to do physiology in the future.