Hopefully, I can use this thread for my experiences in semester 2 at university and also open it up to any questions from anyone reading.
If anyone has any questions (that aren’t too personal) in regards to anything – be it VCE, university etc please post in this thread rather than using the personal message feature so everyone can benefit.
So, in my first semester this year I completed BMS3031 which is a third year “capstone” biomed unit called Molecular Mechanisms of Disease. It was probably one of the most difficult subject (and content heavy subject) I have taken to date. This semester the vast majority of my study time was probably put into this subject with my other two subjects just kind of fitting around what I needed to do for this one. It covered many topics from cancer, infection/immunity, neurodegeneration and even DOHaD amongst a few others. Note that the topics covered in this unit changes year by year to stay up to date with any discoveries in the past year. This was a “double subject” so it meant it was worth 12 credit points and was double the workload – e.g. double the number of lectures of a normal unit and all of this alongside both a workshop and tutorial. Apparently, there was meant to be another 2-hour seminar, but they removed that this year.
Just a note that I might reuse some information from here when I make a review for the subject in the future.
Weekly the lectures were in 2-hour session blocks with a 10-minute break usually in the middle. They were quite content heavy but that is to be expected with a biomed unit. The best part of the lecture series for me was that many of the lectures were linked so it helped with understanding and learning of the concepts.
Workshops were also placed throughout the semester we had 6 THEORY workshops on different topics – from memory each topic got a workshop except for the last one which was neurodegeneration. You could think of a workshop as the equivalent of another lecture or two depending on how much content was covered. However, I felt learning the workshop content was aided very well by structured questions to go through and also the ability to work with our friends and make new friends. Often at the end of the workshop the unit coordinator would randomly select a group to present the answers from the workshop – the coordinator or lecturer present at the time would correct any mistakes which was helpful for those students and all the audience to make a note of. Also, workshops had quite a bit of overlap between some lectures (not all of them though – some was completely differnet content). Usually at the end of each workshop there would be a quiz which was worth a small percentage of the unit grade. For this first workshop we also had a quiz at the very start of the workshop but they removed that for the following 5 workshops.
In this timeslot throughout the semester we also had some “Professional Development” and Careers workshops which I think are the same ones you can take through connect. For some students this stuff could be pretty useful if you haven’t had much experience in work or needed help finding work and getting prepared for a career after graduation.
As I said – alongside these workshops we also had tutorials. This ran for 2 hours in classes of about 20-25 students with 3 tutors. Each week we would be doing something different – for instance, one we week when went into detail of a case study for a patient taking warfarin and the medication not working and trying to explain why it wasn’t working and what we could do to help her - since our preceding lecture series was on pharmacology. We also had a week where we looked at certain ethical issues surroudning the scenario where a scientist had faked their data. Analysing the consequences of this and what we can do to prevent it and maintain trust within the community. Generally, these types of weeks the assessment was only 1-2% and submitted in-class or for the more difficult tasks 48 hours post class.
The MST for this unit occurred in week 7 during one of the lecture slots. However, this test “only” covered the first 3 weeks of contents (precision/personalsied medicine and pharmacology). So, it was on all the lectures and the two theory workshops. Overall, I found the MST to be a good difficulty - definitely some questions you had to put a lot of thought into but also one’s where you could easily answer in a matter of seconds.
The big in-semester assessments were MATs – Major Assessment Tasks – there were three of them and they were each worth 10% each. Probably the most controversial part of the unit – very mixed feelings about these tasks. Personally, once I got used to how it ran and what was expected after the first MAT I thought the second and third were quite manageable.
The first two MATs were done in groups randomly chosen. The topic of the first one was certain drugs that act as therapeutics for certain diseases (cancer, schizophrenia, AIDS, Rheumatoid Arthritis). A lot of this dependent on how good your group was imo. The second topic was the career, findings, future of a lab head at Monash University. So, you would research a certain researcher’s career and also delve into their findings. Finally, the last MAT was on Biomedical News and Views article. It is basically something a little bit simpler than a literature review but more complex than a good media article. Definitely more aligned with the science side of it rather than media reporting though. The aim of is was to convey a certain finding (in the past two years) in a context and language that someone who didn’t have a background in the specific area of study would understand. Although you could assume basic scientific knowledge. E.g. Analysing a new cancer thearpy so that a physicist could understand it.
The exam was an e-Exam, so each student was assigned a computer at the exam venue. The exam was 190 minutes in length with no reading time. The experience was probably a bit better than I expected, it helped that they gave us blank sheets of paper if we wanted to write anything down – which I found helpful. But, I think not many people used it. Each section of the exam was written by a differnet lecturer or multiple lecturers, so it was split up into 6 different sections. (The two topics from the MST was not covered here).