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Author Topic: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 1735052 times)  Share 

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silverfox

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #675 on: January 17, 2018, 04:00:21 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 - Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload: 2 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week

Assessment: 2-hour end-of-semester examination (70%), two assignments totalling not more than 2000 words (20%), a 45 minute mid-semester examination (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes (2 with full solutions)

Textbook Recommendation: None required - the lecture notes were sufficient

Lecturer(s): Shuanming Li

Year & Semester of Completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 (H1)

Comments:
As an avid statistics and maths student, I thought I would choose a maths-related breadth subject to support my studies so decided to choose ACTL10001. In complete honesty, I didn't know how difficult this subject was going to be until the middle of the semester.

Subject Content
The course is split into three main components: Financial Mathematics, Demography and Contingencies/Insurance. The financial mathematics part of the course was relatively simple, consisting of simple interest, compound interest, annuities in arrear/advance, deferred annuities, and introduced the force of interest. Demography was also quite easy, and was comprised of population models, birth rates/fertility rates, life tables, force of mortality and so on. The contingency part of the course was quite difficult, which is basically where you have to calculate the expected present value of future payments depending on the mortality of that person (which can get quite complicated, and it is not just a 'plug and chug' computation here, you really have to THINK). The course wraps up with overviews of types of insurance and superannuation which is quite self-explanatory, as well as covering the Law of Large Numbers which was interesting. Basically what I thought was difficult was the fact you had to know how to derive every possible formula given from first principles or using past knowledge of proof by induction or any alternative methods; not for the faint hearted! A strong maths ability is highly recommended here.

Assignments
There are 2 assignments, each worth 10%. Both were based on Excel, essentially just utilising the spreadsheets to be able to compute your answer. The first assignment was very simple and covered the first 2-3 weeks of lecture content, however be weary because the markers will deduct markers for stupid reasons (i.e. you will lose 1 mark, out of 20, if you don't name the file correctly when you submit it). The second assignment was much more difficult, which was indicated by the average marks (43/50 compared to 19/20 in the first assignment). Nonetheless, persistence and discipline will ensure you get near to full marks on these. 

Mid-Semester Exam
The mid-sem covered all content from Weeks 1-6. The exam only went for 45 minutes and it was very difficult; most questions weren't too bad, but there were a few there to trick people up. Honestly, this exam was made more difficult due to the short time frame to complete it. If we all had one hour, then the average mark would've been higher (average mark was 18/30 of a 10% exam).

Final Exam
I was honestly frightened walking into this final exam as I felt like I didn't know the derivations and proofs inside-out, however I was (happily) surprised that this exam was incredibly easy compared to past papers we were given as well as past exam questions on the tutorial sheet! The lecturer told us that there were a record number of H1s in this course (~38%), yet still a record high fail rate (~17%). I guess it just depended on how well you prepared and practised the past questions!

Other:
The reason I gave this subject a rather low score was because the lectures were rather haphazard and the lecturer would always fall behind (we didn't cover a huge part of content in the last few weeks). Moreover, the tutorials were quite pointless considering you would have to do the tutorial questions before you come in and the tutor would just write the solutions on the whiteboard, despite them being uploaded on LMS each week. Also, on a personal note, I found it difficult to understand the lecturer due to his accent; however, I totally understand it is very difficult to deliver a lecture (in particular) in a second language, but it really impeded on my own learning so I just stopped going to lectures all together and went through them myself at home. Nonetheless, a good subject if you love some maths and are up for a challenge!  :)
2016: ATAR 99.85
2017-19: BSci (Statistics) @ UniMelb

sjayne

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #676 on: January 22, 2018, 10:05:37 pm »
+2
Subject Code/Name: HPSC30019 Minds and Madness

Workload: 1 x 1 hour online lecture per week and 11 x 2 hour workshops from week 2-week 12

Assessment:
(subject to change)
1000-word report due week 6 (25%)
1000-word History of Psychiatry in 5 objects, due last week of teaching (25%)
A 2000 word critical reflection, due during the end of semester examination period (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:    Past essays provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Madness: A Brief History (R Porter) Oxford University Press 2003 (useful for assignments but not essential)

Lecturer(s): James Bradley

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80 H1

Comments: This subject has been my favourite so far in my degree! I adored the content and became immersed in the history of psychiatry. I believe this should be an area that is mandatory for all psych majors and all future doctors or health professionals. Not only is it fascinating, but it gives an insight into how treatments such as psychiatric medications and ECT, came to be and why they did. The subject works chronologically through the history of the psychiatric patient and treatment up until the modern day. It outlines what it means to be 'mad' or mentally ill, and how society has influenced the treatment and depiction of madness.

All of the lectures are online and this is accompanied by a 2 hour workshop each week. I won't go into detail about the assessments, as they are most likely going to be modified next year to include a group assignment and I don't know which ones will be the same. Weekly online journal entries were used through which we had to nominate items (newspaper articles, images, documents, videos) which would then form the basis of a major assignment.  There was also an essay on the Mind Gallery at the Melbourne Museum and a critical review on society and the history of pscyhiatry.

To anyone intrested in the mind or psychiatry; Give this subject a go! You won't regret it and your life and studies will be enriched. It's worth it. Trust me!
« Last Edit: January 22, 2018, 10:07:17 pm by sjayne »
2015   BSc: psych at unimelb

Alter

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #677 on: March 01, 2018, 10:59:31 am »
+5
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30003: Biomedical Science Research Project

Workload:  There are no classes for this subject, but you're expected to put in approximately 10 hrs of work a week, or a total of 170 hrs for the entire subject.

Assessment: 
Literature review (due early in semester to see if you're on the right track) (0%)
Oral report (15 min) or poster presentation due towards end of semester (30%)
Written report (~3000 words) due end of semester (60%)
Supervisor assessment of research competence, based on student's contributions to project design and completion (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No classes

Past exams available:  No exam

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbooks but you'll need to be in touch with your supervisor or a lab member about finding relevant literature to your research topic.

Lecturer(s): n/a, coordinated by Joel Bornstein

Year & Semester of completion: Summer 2018

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I would absolutely recommend this subject to anyone that's interested in the idea of doing honours or following research in some way in their future life. I used this subject to gain a taste of what it was like working in a lab to see if honours was a good alternative to medicine for me personally. I left the subject with a much stronger understanding of how research actually works and also gained real scientific skills that I hadn't throughout the first two years of my degree. Namely, by being a part of lab meetings, journal clubs, and having to write up a written report as per standards in my field, it felt like I was truly engaging in science, which you're only provided a diluted and dumbed-down version of through the first two years of biomedicine/science.

If you're not at all interested in honours, it goes without saying that you should definitely not do this subject - it is not easy, and just because it has no classes doesn't mean it's a bludge. This subject demands discipline and motivation to carry out your experimental design, because you'll probably spend the majority of your time working by yourself or carrying out tedious or trivial jobs to make your project perfect. If you're not genuinely interested in your project, it will definitely be obvious to not only your supervisor, but to whoever you present your oral/written report to.

People that want to do this subject need to have "excellent results" in discipline-relevant subjects (typically H2A or above) and permission from the departmental coordinator before they are enrolled. What this means is that if you're interested, you really need to be prepared early and have all of the administrative stuff ready to go well before your project starts. For example, I used semester 2 of 2017 to find an appropriate lab and contact the relevant coordinators to see if my project was appropriate for the subject.

In terms of assessment and what you get out of the subject, your supervisor will play a large role, so make sure they're someone you get along with decently well. In particular, your supervisor can be responsible for up to 60% of your grade, so it's important you're on the same page with them. The oral  presentation is unlike anything offered in level 1 or 2 subjects and as such it can be pretty difficult. I'd recommend starting work on it early and discussing with lab members about your progress. It is not something that you can freely improvise and you'll need to do some practice runs before you get it right.

The subject experience will also differ greatly between people, because no two people will have the same project. Similarly, there are projects from a wide range of different departments within the faculty, so I've kept this review to be fairly broad.

tl;dr: This is a great subject because it allows you to credit real lab experience towards your degree, and facilitates learning real scientific skills. If you're interested in research or you're contemplating honours, I'd highly recommend it.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2018, 12:05:31 pm by Alter »
2016–2018: Bachelor of Biomedicine (Neuroscience), The University of Melbourne
2019–2022: Doctor of Medicine, The University of Melbourne

BNard

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #678 on: June 18, 2018, 11:28:18 am »
+1
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20002 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 
Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial (recorded) a week

Assessment:  2 Mid Semester tests, each worth 10%, Weekly online quizzes that sum to 10%
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, 3 on the LMS that related to the current content, some older with mixed relevance

Textbook Recommendation:  Lehinger's Principles of Biochemistry (7th ed reccomended, I had 6th). You must obtain this textbook, as the weekly quizzes are solely based off the readings from it.

Lecturer(s): Terry Mulhern, Paul Gooley, Heather Verkade, Paul Gleeson

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester  1

Rating:  4/5

Comments:
Although apprehensive in the first few weeks, I came to enjoy this subject.
Terry Mulhern: L1
As someone who barely scraped through Chem 2, the first lecture in which Terry introduced thermodynamics again had me scared that this subject was going to be much more 'Biochemistry' than 'Molecular Biology'. However, he explained it concisely and clearly, and didn't go into too much detail for anything. This barely featured in assessment, apart from a general knowledge (mostly logic) of how unfavourable reactions can me made to 'go'.
Paul Gooley: L2-7
Paul's lecture style was probably the least engaging in my opinion.  He covered the levels of protein structure and protein evolution. However, it was fairly methodical and required more understanding than memorisation
Terry Mulhern: L9-11
Terry came back to cover Protein function and enzymes. This was probably the most confusing part of the course for me, with a few different formulas an graphs relating to enzyme kinetics and inhibition that we needed to understand and remember, but it was not weighted heavily on the exam.  As this is not a calculator-based subject, there was much less focus on applying formulas and more on understanding where they were relevant.
Heather Verkade: L12-23
Heather's lectures, although much simpler than the previous content, were the worst in my opinion.  Her lecture slides contained little content, and so you needed to take very detailed notes of what she was saying about them  or rewatch the lecture later.  Her lectures focused on DNA: Replication, Transcription, Translation, Structure and some work on receptors and cell cycle regulation. I found that for the DNA processes, I ended up finding explanations of them elsewhere on the internet to aid my notes writing, as her explanations were jumbled, confusing and often ambiguous as to what was important and what was not. She would often jump around lecture slides in a random order to explain the steps of a process, or just not include some steps altogether.
Paul Gleeson: L24-27
Paul's lectures on biological molecules and membranes were by far the simplest part of the course.  Much of the content, especially on molecules, was repeated from first year and the new content was very easy to understand and apply. The part of the exam that assessed this section was basically marks in the bank - very simple and predictable.
Terry Mulhern: L28-33
Terry returned to jump into metabolism in the last few weeks of semester. This was a daunting series of lectures, in which he advised us that we would need to remember the names and be able to visually identify every compound involved in glycolysis and the Krebs cycle. It moved pretty fast, and we finished off with some lectures on hormonal control of metabolism.  This was the part of the exam that I was most concerned about, but it turned out there was little to worry about.  There was only one  major question (a part B fill in the gaps 10 marker) that assessed this part of the course, and I was able to complete it without any memorised knowledge of the names of the enzymes etc. I found that all the MCQ that related to this part of the course only required some logic and an overall understanding of the purpose of metabolism and which parts of the body need it to function etc.

Tutorials: These were held as mini lecturers in a theatre, and were recorded. They were presented by whichever lecturer was presenting at the time, and thus varied in quality.  Terry's were probably the most helpful, as he went through a lot of problems that would otherwise have been confusing.
MSTs: These were MC quizzes held in exam conditions and were quite fair.  The first focused on Enzymes and proteins, and the second on Heather's Molecular biology content.
The exam: Was very, very similar to one of the past exams put up on the LMS, and thus I'm sure most people did very well (bye bye scaling). Very fair overall, with a decent distribution of marks for different parts of the course.
2017 - 2019: UoM BSci (Path)

junyper

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #679 on: June 19, 2018, 11:13:22 am »
+2
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductary Microeconomics 

Workload:  Two 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 
•   Tutorial attendance/ participation (10%)
•   Online MCQ test (5%)
•   750-word assignment (10%)
•   1250-word assignment (15%)
•   Final exam (60%)

Echo360 Available: Yes

Past exams available: 
There were two past exams posted on LMS (2016 and 2017), where only one of the papers was provided with sample solution. There are lots of past exam papers which you could find on the library website.

Textbook Recommendation:
•   Principles of Microeconomics
•   Microeconomics: Case studies and applications
Personally, I would recommend the Principles of Microeconomics textbook if you have no prior knowledge in economics, as the readings would definitely help you understand the content better. There is an ebook available on the unimelb library website, so you don’t have to buy the textbook unless you’re more of a hardcopy person. As for the case study book, it’s not necessary to have it.

Lecturer(s):
Tom Wilkening and Eik Leong Swee, depending on which lecture stream you are enrolled in

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Sem 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Content covered in the subject includes competitive markets, welfare, firm theory and game theory. There are many graphs to memorise and some basic calculation involving differentiation. Topics I found most interesting are price discrimination and game theory.

To do well in the subject, you should really attempt the pre-tute worksheets each week as well as attend all tutorials to understand the content of the subject better. Lectures are not compulsory as you could always watch the lecture capture at home. For the very first assessment for the subject (online MCQ), I would recommend finding a few friends to complete it together to increase chances of getting a better score. The questions are mostly the same with different figures.

The assignments for this subject were quite interesting, although some questions are quite ambiguous and caused some confusion for students. Checking the online tutor frequently would help clear some doubts you have. For our first assignment, the first question was about ride-hailing apps and the second question was about import quotas and tariffs. The questions don’t seem too hard, but it isn’t easy to score well. I did better for the second assignment, which was about the milk industry and a case study of your choice. First part of the assignment consists of a series of question based on an article, and second part is to choose an article and apply some aspect of economic activity. Both parts were equally weighted.

As for the lecturers, I was enrolled in Eik’s lectures but went to Tom’s lecture once. I did not have a preference for any of the lecturers, but Eik usually goes at a relatively fast pace and Tom teaches rather slowly. Eik uses doc cam for the first half of the semester and switched to an iPad to directly draw the graphs on the slides, which were great because the previous graphs drawn during lectures were not shown on lecture capture. Tom’s graphs were usually recorded on lecture capture. He also goes through a few case studies during lectures which were in the tutesheets.

To revise for the final exam, redoing all the tutorial worksheet will help a lot. Don’t bother reading the lecture slides again because it does not contain much information. If you need to refresh your memory regarding certain concepts, refer to the textbook or watch the lecture capture. 
« Last Edit: July 07, 2018, 02:58:07 pm by junyper »

clarke54321

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #680 on: June 23, 2018, 03:42:33 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: MULT10015 Language

Workload: Two 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  1x 500 word annotated bibliography, 1x 2000 word analytical essay, 2x 750 word essays (exam period)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Sample prompts are provided for the final essays

Textbook Recommendation:  All relevant material is provided on the LMS

Lecturer(s): Anthony Pym, John Hajek, Tim McNamara, Mary Tomsic, Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen and Justin Clemens

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2018

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I’d classify this subject as a foundational linguistic one. It provides students with a nice introduction to some critical ideas (linguistic relativity, LADO, language and empire, language and race, performativity, language acquisition and translation) and key thinkers (Saussure, Lacan, Freud, Butler, Austin, Whorf, Chomsky, Jakobson). Despite the breadth, the connections between topics was tenuous at times, and made the course feel somewhat disjointed. It also didn’t help that tutorials were limited to around 45 minutes.

As concerns the lecturers, they were often engaging and clear in their explanations. At times however, there was the odd lecturer who deviated from the key readings, which was frustrating (given that students may only use material on the LMS for essays). While it is easy to become complacent, and reliant on the lecture slides, do not overlook the readings. Life will be made so much easier come SWOTVAC when you are preparing for the final exam. This is especially the case, because the exam topics are phrased in a way where students are required to cover 2 different areas in the one piece; thus 4 in total.


Assessment 1:

This is a small, 500 word, annotated bibliography. I’d strongly recommend that students use the Unimelb annotated bibliography sample as a template for this response. It provides all the features that should be included in this form of writing. Additional information can be found under the subject information tab on the LMS. A 10% + or – word count quota is granted for this assessment (like all the others). Essentially, tutors are looking for a clear, insightful and accurate (as concerns referencing) response.


Assessment 2:


With this essay spanning 2000 words, adequate time must be dedicated to it. Many students left it to the last week and subsequently found that they didn’t have enough to write about, couldn’t respond to the essay question in a holistic manner, or were just pressed for time. For many, this was the first ‘proper’ tertiary essay. Hence, it can take a while to adjust to new introduction formatting, referencing conventions and overall paragraph structures. If I recall correctly, there were 8 different prompts to pick from, making this a very fair task. Just ensure that all the key words and phrases of the prompt are defined in the introduction.


Assessment 3:

The final exam comprises two essays of 750 words. I was quite disappointed with the prompts provided. Despite the lecturer telling students that translation (the last topic) would not be formally assessed, 2 of the 6 topics pertained to translation. Also, in comparison to the practice essay questions, the ones released were quite limited in scope. If possible, I’d strongly suggest that students dedicate the full 5 days to this task.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2018, 01:35:22 pm by clarke54321 »
BA (Linguistics) I University of Melbourne
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clarke54321

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #681 on: June 23, 2018, 08:28:40 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: LING10002 Intercultural Communication

Workload: Two 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 1x 1500 word ethnographic task (address terms), 1x 2500 word ethnographic task (narrative inquiry)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available: NA

Textbook Recommendation:  Jackson, C. (2014). Introducing Language and Intercultural Communication. London & New York: Routledge

Lecturer(s): Dana Chahal

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2018

Rating:  3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I would recommend this subject to anyone interested in the social side of linguistics. The course covers the topics of conversation analysis, the use of address terms, narrative inquiry, identity and non-verbal communication. While the textbook elaborates on these topics, it doesn’t add anything particularly critical. I’d suggest that students pay close attention to the assigned readings, as these will provide you with material that is highly relevant to the assignments.

I place a great emphasis on the readings because the lectures were poor. Unfortunately Dana spent most lectures merely reciting the textbook. The only reason that I continued attending lectures was to engage with my peers, and listen to their original understandings of the content. Luckily the tutorials provided a greater opportunity to clarify points of ambiguity.


Assignment 1:

This 1,500 word essay took the form of a research report and focused on the use of address terms. As noted by previous reviews for this subject, the assessment instructions were terribly vague. Hence, it is fundamental that students continue to ask their tutor questions regarding the required content, layout and word limit (ie. do extracts contribute to the limit). And it really is important that tutors are your first point of call, given that there was often conflicting desires among the lecturer and tutor.

In terms of the actual content, students are required to undertake their own ethnographic observations and collect empirical data (namely address terms). The better performing students narrowed down their question to a particular context. For example, some analysed addressed terms in a certain café or sports club. It’s also easier to find targeted research if you can localise the scope of the task.

Invariably, there will be critiques handed down by your tutor when you receive your final mark. For the sake of the next essay, I strongly advise that you meet with your tutor and discuss the essay. They appreciate it if you approach them with an open mind, rather than a mark bargaining one.


Assignment 2:

The second essay was yet another research report, which concerned itself with narrative inquiry and its capacity to study language, culture and identity. To extract what is known as a critical event (a significant life moment involving the aforementioned themes), students were required to interview a partner. The evidence taken from your partner should then provide the basis for your research questions. That is, if culture shock was the focus of the discussion, students could analyse the way narratives help elucidate the way one copes with transition. This is the same for topics such as bilingualism or overseas exchange.

Again, make sure that you clarify points of uncertainty with your tutor. Some tutors are more rigorous than others. For example, if I wanted to analyse the significance of features like the passive voice, inclusive language or hedging statements, I had to affirm this with scholarly reports (even if I spoke about these points for one sentence).
« Last Edit: June 25, 2018, 06:33:28 pm by clarke54321 »
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silverfox

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #682 on: June 24, 2018, 04:33:50 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: MAST20031 - Analysis of Biological Data

Workload: 2 x one hour online lectures per week, 2 x one hour interactive lectures per week, 1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week

Assessment: 6 online quizzes, held fortnightly throughout the semester (15%), 3 assignments, due weeks 5, 9 and 12 (25%) and 2 hour exam, held in examination period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available: One practise exam, one past exam (no solutions).

Textbook Recommendation: None required - the lecture notes were sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Meghana Kulkarni and Jose Lahoz-Monfort

Year & Semester of Completion: 2018 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments:
As someone who is planning to major in Statistics, I decided to try out this (relatively) new subject, first introduced in 2017. I got the vibe off a lot of people in the course that they didn't like the subject, and with some good reason. Firstly, the subject did not require any maths prerequisites, but was heavily maths-based (only one first year Biology subject was required). Hence, a lot of those majoring in the biological pathway (zoology, etc) struggled a lot with the heavy math content. In fact, I did as well. A lot of very new and difficult concepts were introduced throughout the length of the course. The problem with the subject, however, is that the main content of the subject was shown through 'online lectures'; basically 10-30 minute clips uploaded to the LMS each week, presented by Davide and Ben, in which they discussed the relevant material we had to know (rather thoroughly). However, the course also has interactive lectures (in person), in which Meghana and Jose would cover some typical exam-style questions, which were rather handy, but always ran 1-2 weeks behind the content shown in the online lectures. I think that the subject might benefit by having the online lectures actually shown in person so students can gain a clearer understanding of the subject content, and the interactive lectures be turned into tutorial-style classes. Another problem with the interactive lectures was that they aren't recorded, and so many people (including myself) missed out on some due to personal/other circumstances which was a bummer. Full solutions to the interactive lectures are provided, at the very least. That being said, I found the practice classes very useful, particularly as I'm following a statistical pathway. Essentially, these labs taught you how to use R (a statistical software package) to display, manipulate and interpret data. In particular, how to display, manipulate and interpret LOTS of data in your set (I mean, 1,000 data points - who would want to manually calculate the mean of that?).

Subject Content
This first two weeks of this subject starts off with a review of high school statistics (so summary statistics, graphs, types of data, sampling, probability distributions (binomial, poisson, normal)). Thereafter, the course dives into sampling distributions and the calculation of 95% confidence intervals for sample and population means (i.e. one sample z-tests and t-tests), introduced the likelihood function and maximum likelihood estimator (which is actually a very neat way to find the best estimator), hypothesis testing, how to calculate P-values, t-distributions, bootstrapping, Chi-Squared goodness of fit tests, contingency analysis, relative risk, odds, two-sample t-tests (i.e. comparing two means). Up to this point basically everything we learned involved how to calculate 95% confidence intervals and carrying out a hypothesis test based on the data obtained.

The second half of the semester involved the idea of designed experiments and importance of good experimental design (blinding, blocking, randomisation, etc) and how this can be applied to biological experiments. This idea was used to determine an appropriate sample size of a certain experiment, given the margin of error required. Then the subject dived into ANOVA and introduced the F-distribution and F statistic, which was actually really interesting but also could get very confusing. This was used to find that the log-likelihood ratio statistic follows an approximate Chi-Square distribution (Wilk's Theorem) which can make analysis much easier. Then we continued on with linear regression, correlation, covariance, slope, intercepts and their 95% confidence intervals and interpretation. Things became increasingly complicated when multiple regression and interaction was considered (with Lasso regression as well), and finished this section up with logistic regression (general linear models). Finally, the last section of the course involved model selection (the Akaike's Information Criterion, cross-validation and the Bayesian Information Criterion); that is, which model is best for your data given a trade-off between complexity and goodness of fit? (which becomes very important when you have multiple parameters to consider). This is followed by a brief introduction to Bayesian Statistics which is very interesting; basically treats the estimator as a fixed parameter value compared to that in frequentist statistical inference!

Now, this was very full-on and statistically based, and the only 'biology' part of the course came in only with examples and problems. Hence, I think this subject should be called 'Introduction to Biostatistics' or something else instead to accurately reflect its course content (as it is a MATHS focussed course, not a biological focussed one!).

Assessment
The assessment comprised of 6 online quizzes held fortnightly (no time limit), 3 assignments and one final exam. The online quizzes were relatively easy and simple to score high in (only 5 of the best 6 quiz marks are considered for the 15%, so you have room to screw up one). It's open book and you can just go through your notes; it's used more of a revision tool if anything, no nasty surprises. The 3 assignments were very arduous, however. They required you to use R to carry out computations, and much of the assessment was focussed on topics that were yet to be covered in the interactive lectures. Nonetheless, you have about 2-3 weeks to complete these assignments, which should be enough time to think through some of the problems and achieve relatively high scores in.

The final exam was relatively fair, in my opinion. It wasn't too different from the practise and past papers provided, with just a few questions different in content (which did throw must of us off).

Overall, I understand this is a relatively new subject and am sure that after making changes to the subject to what most people thought needed changing, that it'll be a solid subject in years to come. Definitely recommend to anyone doing statistics or biology majors!  :)


« Last Edit: June 26, 2018, 01:11:15 pm by silverfox »
2016: ATAR 99.85
2017-19: BSci (Statistics) @ UniMelb

jre233002

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #683 on: June 25, 2018, 06:29:35 pm »
+6
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.

M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #684 on: June 26, 2018, 05:57:44 pm »
+3
***Note to mods: There is another review for this subject (#440 on page 30) that must have slipped under the radar

Subject Code/Name: ACTL20001 Financial Mathematics I

Workload: 2 × 1hr lectures per week, 1 × 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment: Group (3-5) Assignments 2 × 10% , Mid Semester Exam 10% (45 minutes), End of Semester Exam 70% (2 hours)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 3 past final exams with solutions, plus 1 past mid-sem exam with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Official book for this subject is Compound Interest and its Applications by Fitzherbert and Pitt - Probably not vital but provided many extra questions with worked solutions, and is also used in this subject's successor ACTL20002

Lecturer: Ping Chen

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (85)

Comments: I found this to be quite an interesting subject, and a good/logical continuation from ACTL10001. Although it is considered the first "real actuarial" subject, I can't see how anyone who was able to satisfy the maths prerequisites for this subject would struggle too much. That being said, you can't slack off, and need to know and understand all the formulae presented, as well as the underlying concepts - But the actual proofs are not too hard to understand and learn, and you only actually have to remember a few key formula, and the relationships between similar ones.

There were 4 major topics in this subject (the first 4 chapters of the textbook); Chapter 1 was about interest, discount and force of interest rates, chapter 2 went into cash flows (mostly annuities), chapter 3 focused on loans and business project evaluation and chapter 4, which was all definitions, was about types of asset classes.

Lectures:
Lectures involved Ping talking through the slides, as well as annotating them and providing additional information. She was very organised with the timing of the lectures throughout the semester which was a plus. The lectures themselves were definitely helpful to watch, although I usually had to do my own study/practice later to actually absorb the material. I was also able to watch most of them with the lecture capture without drama.

Tutorials:
Tute's in this subject were also identical in structure to those in ACTL10001 - You're given the questions beforehand, and then your tutor takes the class through the solutions, but worked solutions are uploaded at the end of the week (Which significantly hinders attendance). However, I found this subject's tutes more useful, as my tutor would provide a nice summary and go into more detail with the really difficult mathematical proofs (Although these types of questions were usually way above the expected exam standard). You'll get the most benefit out of these by trying the questions beforehand, then working through and correcting any mistakes after seeing the solutions.

Assignments:
There were two group assignments, which consisted of 5 or 6 exam style questions. As I mentioned in my review for ACTL10001, this essentially removes the "hard" factor of actuarial exams (Time, memorizing formulae, silly mistakes), and thus getting full or close to full marks in this section of assessment is the norm. Fortunately, this can boost your grade, and help shield the effect of silly exam mistakes/exam pressure. You're also free to chose your groups.

Mid Semester Exam:
While it only covers chapter 1 and the basic annuities taught in ACTL10001, you really have to know your stuff and be on the ball for this one. There's not much time to check over your answers or think about questions for long. However, it was quite similar in format to the past exam (2017's mid sem), and no real trick questions. Average was 21.7/30

Final Exam:
Was more difficult than the mid-sem, but you had quite a bit longer to think things through and review your answers (And I personally scored around 10% higher on my final exam than my mid-sem). Required an understanding of the 4 chapters taught (but no calculations for chapter 4 content), and had a fair few "different" questions. If you work through all the lecture slides (your number 1 place to start for revision),  have done the tutorial questions (There were a few exam questions very similar to these) and had a go at the past exams to get used to the timing, you should be fine. Note also for actuarial students taking this subject (probably all or almost all), your final exam mark in this subject, plus your final exam result in ACTL20002 are the only things that contribute to your CT1 exemption, and the actual result needed is not set in stone, but 75+ should be safe.
VCE, 2015-2016
BCom (Econ) @ UniMelb, 2017-2019
MCEng (Elec) @ UniMelb, 2020-?

kiwikoala

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #685 on: June 26, 2018, 09:21:11 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: COMP10002 Foundations of Algorithms
With the C language.

Workload:  3x 1 hour lectures, 2 hour tute (1st half mini lecture on lecture of the week/last week, 2nd half working on assigned exercises or assignment with tutor + helper on hand)

Assessment:
15% Assment 1, C programming project. Implement +, * and ^ operators that work over 100 digit numbers. There was a template that covered the main loop, you just had to fill in the logic. Around 350 lines.

10% Mid semester exam. Task was to write 3 functions of ascending difficulty. Being comfortable with basic C syntax and language should be enough to score decently, after that marks will be lost based on how lucky/skillful you are at handwriting code.

15% Assessment 2, No template, analyse the sentence fed using data that was also fed in. The open ended bonus mark (can't get higher than 15%) could take up a lot of time if you fully went for it. I just implemented what Jianzhong hinted and that gave me the mark. I had 400 lines.

60% Exam. Quite fair, around 20 marks on more theoretical based questions with the rest (40 marks) on writing functions and code that are testing C language skills or algorithms taught. There is always a tough last question apparently but this semesters was straightforward and the difficulty was just implementing the logic of the question rather than any conceptual "aha"

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No, 2 sample exams were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Alistar Moffat's book, Programming, Problem Solving and Abstraction with C, it's a stripped down textbook of C designed for this subject with some algorithms at the end. Not necessary but is quite handy as it is the most concise C language textbook out there for this subject.

Lecturer(s):Jianzhong Qi, I like him. His jokes made me laugh even though they're terrible. His accent wasn't a problem for me personally but if you are really concerned take this class in semester 2. He was very knowledgeable and had an uncanny ability to understand the point of questions his students asked him when they made no sense to me.

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester 1

Rating:  3.5+ depending on how much you like programming = 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: High H1

Comments: The first 5 weeks of learning C was almost exactly like learning the equivalent construct from Python, a cruise if you were half decent at Python. Then it will spike in difficulty if you aren't careful when the heavier content such as pointers and algorithms are covered.

2 projects really depended on your programming skill could stretch from 5 (literal hackerman) - (when you give up) hours. I crunched as much of the specification as I could in 1 day (gave up cause I hit a bug or an design problem), completed it (fixed the problem but not neatly) in another day and fine tuned/cleaned the code when I felt like it until the due date. It can be done in a weekend.
Just stay up to date with the content in class because it builds on top of each other.

People did pretty decently in assignments, on average ~12/15, marked quite leniently according to tutor. Mid sem average was 6.5/10.

In this subject every mark is 1%. There are half marks though.

Common feedback was that the pace is much too slow at the start and too fast for the harder algorithmic/theoretical content. Otherwise I had fun writing code in an interesting language such as C.

To score well you need to find time to do exercises and play with the content taught in class. This is like math.

I did about 8/14 chapters of the textbook which covered most of basic stuff learnt in Python in about 2/3 weeks in the Summer. This made my life a lot easier and gave me more time to be settled into C and allowed me to cruise the first 5 and lesser so for the next 3 after that. I really recommend people dive into the language taught for any programming based subject you pick up.

The tutorials weren't very beneficial if had done exercises already, but I attended them all and the tutor and helper were very knowledgeable and helped deal with everyone's bugs and questions about C's nuances or lecture content. Alex Zable had Kahoots which was a blast!

NOTE: I didn't do COMP10001.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2018, 10:44:40 am by stevenhuyn »

M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #686 on: June 28, 2018, 12:45:42 am »
+7
Subject Code/Name: COMP20005 Engineering Computation

Workload: 3 × 1hr lectures, 1 × 2hr workshop

Assessment: Assignment 1 (10%), Assignment 2 (20%), Mid Semester Test (30 minutes,10%), End of semester exam (2 hours, 60%), where there is a hurdle requirement of 12/30 for assignment 1 and 2 combined, and 28/70 for the test and exam combined

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  There were two sample exams and a past special exam, all with solutions. There were also 3 samples provided for the test, also with solutions - Note for code/programming writing questions, solutions are not the only possible correct answer.

Textbook Recommendation:  Programming, Problem Solving, and Abstraction with C by Alistair Moffat - Pretty much vital as most the practice problems in workshops are taken from the book. The book also provides a very good summary and explanation of the concepts, examples with the full code and extra questions to work through

Lecturer(s): Alistair Moffat

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (78)

Comments: This was a really well taught subject that could be both challenging and genuinely enjoyable. As many other reviews both here and elsewhere will say, Alistair is a very passionate and engaging lecturer, which really contributes to the subject experience. The key to doing well is to code throughout the whole semester, and also practice hand-writing your code as well. If you're like me and don't live on or very close to campus, download the (free) software (Jedit, MinGW) needed to do the lab work at home.

The only prerequisites for this subject are some form of first year linear algebra and calculus, so you don't really need programming experience to enroll in this subject. That being said, ENGR10003/ESD2 is listed as the recommended background knowledge. I took this subject the summer before, and found that it helped with the first few weeks (since it gave me the basis gist of the programming skills/concepts used), as well as with some of the theory behind number storage, which wasn't really directly taught in Eng Comp such as binary and hexadecimal number conversions. It wouldn't be impossible to pick this stuff up without ESD2, but would definitely required more effort and research.

The subject will mainly teach tools used for programming - Numbers in and out, branching/selection, loops, functions, arrays, pointers and structs. After being introduced to this, you start to look at the theory behind how numbers are stored (E.g. Types of binary, floating point representation ect), and types of problems that utilize the skills taught such as root finding, numerical integration, computation involving matrices and simulation.

Lectures:
Involved Alistair talking through a bit of the theory, but primarily showing programs and how they work, as well as other illustrations of the concepts (E.g. By writing on paper, getting the audience involved). Although attendance was strongly encouraged, I usually only attended around 1 a week due to timetabling and found that the lecture capture was sufficient. However, they are definitely worth a least watching, as you pick many important tips and tricks, as well as code you might not see elsewhere.

Workshops:
Was split into two distinct phases; the first hour would involve your tutor explaining/reviewing the concepts, and group discussion of questions. The second hour involved you working individually on prescribed book questions, while the tutor/s would assist if needed. You could probably get away with not attending if you have experience with programming and are clear on the expectations, but as someone new to programming I found them to be very helpful, especially for assignments. On a slightly related note, the tutors were also all very dedicated, offering help and answering questions promptly on the subject discussion forum on the LMS throughout the whole semester.

Assignments:
Both assignments were very time consuming and challenging, but could also be enjoyable and easy to get stuck into. A rubric, as well as samples from past assignments were provided, so expectations were very clear, but applied strictly so be careful to check thoroughly. You are assessed on the presentation of your program, structure/approach and output. Submission must be done through dimefox, which involves a few steps, and possibly downloads if you want to do it from home. It took me a while to figure out, but became easy once I got the hang of it - Definitely take him seriously when he says to submit as you go, or at least submit a practice before due date is close (you can submit as early and often as you want). The results distribution for both assignments was (and usually is) very top heavy, so although it requires a lot of thinking, if you start early and put in the effort, great grades are very doable in this aspect of assessment.

Mid-semester test:
Although it only tested basic concepts (selection, loops and functions), it was a tough test (From the test page, "mean=4.6; median=4.0"!) and many felt pressed for time. Make sure you review the practice tests, as well as book questions and problems from workshops, but don't be too discouraged if you're not happy with your mark as it's a stressful test with very limited time!

Final Exam:
Was surprisingly a bit easier than expected (Probably due to the lower than usual test scores in this semester/year), but don't expect this in the future, especially if Alistair is your lecturer. The structure of the exam is outlined pretty clearly in the exam prep lecture slides so you pretty much know the types of questions to expect. In general, there will always be enough "basics" so that anyone who made some effort and knows the basic tools of C can pass, a 90/95er separator which is very difficult but worth a small number of marks and questions at the levels in between, testing the slightly more complicated C tools, and the theory based questions on topics such as number representation, and practical computation problems such as integration. I'd highly recommend going into the final exam being able to quickly code simple mathematical functions (Specifically exponential and factorial), insertion sort or some other sorting algorithm, swaps with pointers, exit failures, and whatever else seems to be frequently needed. In fact, I'd also recommend this for the test, but only involving functions using the skills taught thus far.
From the exam page, the final mark distribution was "min=5.0; max=92.0; mean=64.2; median=67.0; sd=16.1; 14.8% below 50"
« Last Edit: June 30, 2018, 09:48:24 am by M909 »
VCE, 2015-2016
BCom (Econ) @ UniMelb, 2017-2019
MCEng (Elec) @ UniMelb, 2020-?

silverfox

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #687 on: June 28, 2018, 04:39:10 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10006 - Critical Thinking With Data

Workload: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week.

Assessment: Six short assignments: three written amounting to a total of up to 600 words and three 1 hour on-line assessments, both due at regular intervals throughout the semester (30%), 10 weekly on-line revision quizzes, made up of 10 multiple answer questions (5%), one 1200 word written assignment due at the end of semester (15%), a group project involving production of a poster and a 4-minute oral presentation due after mid-semester (10%), 2 hour written examination (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, all past exams since the subject was created in 2008 with (brief) solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: None required - the lecture notes were sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Dr Paul Fijn

Year & Semester of Completion: 2018 Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (92)

Comments:
This was a very interesting subject to take as breadth. As someone who is planning to major in Statistics, I wanted to take a subject that was relevant/would complement my studies, so this subject caught my eye. Honestly, it gave a very solid introduction to (basic) statistics and data analysis, with tutorials being very thorough in detail (reviewing key concepts) and lectures being rather interesting. If anything, this subject made me critically analyse the data we were provided in news articles, research journals, etc., which is a very useful attribute to have in life and a future career. Now, whenever I read a source and its associated data, I'm able to determine whether it is reliable or not.

Subject Content
The subject starts off with introducing data quality (particularly in reports and articles) and the context of data. That is, who wrote the source, is it reliable (i.e. are there any financial motives?), and what actual context is the data in. Then we are introduced to variation in data (and hence data that has no variation should be worrying), followed by samples. Here, the subject focussed on the different types of sampling (simple random sample, stratified sampling, clustered sampling), which ones are most efficient to use in various contexts, as well as types of bias and how they arise (recall bias, self-selection bias, response bias, etc.). After about 4 weeks, the subject then dives into experimental design, particularly the key strengths of experimental design (randomisation, blinding, blocking, replication, control/placebo, etc.) and uses case studies to reflect these features (particularly randomised controlled trials in medicine).

Next, the subject focusses on graphics and the principles of 'good' graphics (visual summaries), followed by numerical summaries (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, correlation) and how to interpret these statistics. Then, for a few weeks the subject focusses on observational studies. These are rather interesting as, compared to experiments, one can not determine causation directly from observational studies, and the Bradford Hill criteria are outlined in order to determine if causation is warranted.

From here on in, the subject becomes more 'maths' based. Paul discusses statistical models (binomial, poisson, normal distributions), probability (as well as odds, relative risk, sensitivity, specificity), introduces confidence intervals and P-values and concludes with meta-analysis (basically combining everything together).

Assessment
Now, there is a LOT of assessment in this subject. The online quizzes were, on the most part, relatively easy (you get 3 attempts) but most questions were a 'tick all that apply' kinds of questions, and most options were very trivial and similar to each other which kind of detracts from the purpose of the course. The short assignments were very annoying, if anything. The written assignments had strict 200 word limits (which you easily go over for your first draft), and you feel like you can barely get anything in. The online assignments were basically an online quiz worth 5% each, similar to the online quizzes except you had 1 hour to complete it and only one submission was allowed. The major assignment consisted of a group project as well as an individual essay which focussed on a case study (observational study). The group project involved the production of a poster and speech, which was relatively easy to do well in, but the essay destroyed most of us. I think the tutors were rather subjective in their marking as it wasn't entirely clear what they wanted in the essay, but alas. The final exam (worth 40%) was very fair, and there were no nasty trick questions.

Overall, this subject could probably benefit from having less assessment pieces (19 assessments kills a student) and the requirements in each assessment task be made more apparent/clear. Regardless, I think this was a very good introduction to the basics of statistics and critical thinking, and I would recommend to anyone wanting to get a taste of stats!
2016: ATAR 99.85
2017-19: BSci (Statistics) @ UniMelb

dddknight

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #688 on: June 28, 2018, 06:53:53 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30002: Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics 

Workload:  3 lectures/week, 1 tutorial/week and 2 computer lab sessions

Assessment:  A computer based assignment (5%), 2 x MST (10% each), a written assignment (20%) and a final exam (55%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2012 to 2014 and 2016 as well. Past format MSTs included.

Textbook Recommendation:  Alberts et al, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 6th edition (Not really necessary)

Lecturer(s): Stuart Ralph (Introduction to Bioinformatics)
                             Ian Van Driel (Genes and Chromosomes, Oncogenes)
                             Marie Bogoyevitch (mRNA world)
                             Danny Hatters (Genes and diseases)
                             Elizabeth Hinde (Protein - protein interaction quantification)
                             Paul Gleeson (Tumour Suppressor genes)

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I'm writing this review because the past review provided is no longer available and the format of this subject has changed quite a lot from past years. This subject is a pre-requisite for people interested in majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology. Based on what i've heard, some people do this subject as part of biotechnology as well. This subject has a major focus on the molecular biology side of the major. Please be warned - I will try to be as objective as I can in this review because this subject has made me frustrated on many occasions and has a different atmosphere compared to BCMB20002 and BCMB20003.

Lectures - I'll start with the positives of the lectures. What makes this subject great is that all the lecturers have slides that have comprehensive notes that are very detailed and explain everything you need to know. You won't have the issue of lack of info on the slides. It was clear the lecturers did know what they were talking about and explained clearly 80% of the time. The content was interesting at times by exploring the CRISPR/cas9 system used for gene editing or miRNA therapy. If you're like me in that you are used to only studying the biology, you may find the bioinformatics section confusing as it moves towards a bit of computing but that's fine. It's hard to grasp at first but with enough time and thinking, it will make sense.

The biggest issue with the lectures was that things felt very uncoordinated. On paper, the topics mentioned above felt like they should link to one another but it was a mess. The final section on cancer felt like we moved away from everything we learnt on finding genes and were asked to memorise oncogene and tumour suppressor gene names. The content was given to us and there was no flow from one topic to the next when the next lecturer took over their block of lectures. There were moments where content was being repeated but it didn't really help keep things connected. When revising for the final exam, it felt like each block of lectures were separate subjects and was hard to keep them together.

Tutorials - The tutorials were a disappointment when compared to BCMB20002 and BCMB20003. It was a simple Q and A session where people were given a week in advance to send questions via emails or bring it up during tutorials. This is a poor method to conduct tutorials and this was evident in 1 tutorial where the whole 50 min slot consisted of only the lecturer talking and answering questions from their email sent by students. It felt like a lazy attempt to conduct a tutorial. It was clear from the flipped lecture by Stuart that it was possible to conduct these kind of tutorials where we would answer MCQs based on a scientific paper (similar to the subjects i mentioned above). Danny's tute was also good in that it forced us to have discussions on a question with one another.

Assessment - The computer tutorial is a breeze and shouldn't be extremely difficult to complete. There were 2 computer sessions replacing our tutorials and we would follow instructions on a worksheet and get an idea of conducting a bioinformatics search. You would then have to answer a set of questions which aren't difficult. A free 5%. You can bring your own laptop to the computer lab and do the search from there. 

The 2 msts are now similar to the ones in 2nd year. Marie's questions were a bit tricky but all in all, they should be a breeze as well and aren't too complicated. For myself, I freaked out a lot in prepping for these assessments but they were honestly not too challenging. For those who did this subject, it was clear why the lecturers were lazy in the 1st MST. On a side note, it's not really clear why we aren't given detailed feedback compared to 2nd year. On another side note, the feedback given was fast based on university standard (2 days) but slow if compared to 2nd yr biochem.

The assignment is based on a topic that's given by each lecturer of the course and we pick one based on what we find most interesting. I felt what made this assignment stressful was that we had very little guidance on what to do or how we were supposed to write it. The tutorial helped in some sense but it provided little help. BCMB20003 does help in that it builds you up to read scientific articles more easily. The process of writing the essay was painful but I would say the marking is less strict than techniques but I can't really say for sure.

The final exam is the monster itself. No matter how well you did for everything else, it doesn't guarantee a H1 for this subject. The final exam is a written exam with no MCQs. This has been the format for this subject for the last few years. While it's great that the weightage of the final exam has been reduced, the difficulty has increased and this took me and my friends by surprise. In the past, it was a 3 hour paper that awarded 100 marks. Now, it has become a 2 hour paper that awards 120 marks. Each lecturer is given a section based on their content. What sucks is that only a small section of their content will be examinable so you could be extremely unlucky and not study for those sections or not given enough attention. I felt extremely defeated at the end of this exam because it felt like I wrote too little. I felt like they should have at least told us the new format of the exam but very little info was given for this.

Overall: The final exam was what made me question to continue pursuing a biochemistry and molecular biology major. It can be extremely dry if you're not interested in the molecular level of the cells especially if you hate genes. To top it all off, this subject can be quite daunting in that the lecturers don't seem like they're interested in educating us. During discussion on the facebook group (yes, no piazza), much discussion was happening for the past papers but the lecturers wouldn't help guide us when we were stuck on things. I understand that the answers may be given away for the final exam but it was honestly not too engaging. Do this subject if you really love molecular biology and don't mind looking at experiments throughout the semester. Here's hoping that Terry makes it interesting next semester.

PM if there are any questions :)
BSci @ Unimelb (2016-2018)
Year I: BCMB20002 BIOL10004 BIOL10005 CHEM10009 HPSC10001 MAST10010 PHYC10005 UNIB10006
Year II: ANAT20006 BCMB20002 BCMB20003 CLAS10004 FOOD20003 MUSI20150 PHRM20001 PHYS20008
Year III: BCMB30001 BCMB30002 BCMB30004 BCMB30010 NEUR30002 NEUR30003 PSYC10003 SCIE20001

clarke54321

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #689 on: June 28, 2018, 09:32:48 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001: Principles of Business Law

Workload: One 2-hour lecture per week

Assessment: 2x quizzes throughout the semester (10% each) and a final examination (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No. A practice test is provided, however.

Textbook Recommendation:  First Principles of Business Law (textbook and enclosed e-tutorials) - latest edition. While Arlen summarised key content from the textbook on the lecture slides, the textbook is still necessary. It clarifies and expands on crucial concepts covered. Further, the enclosed e-tutorials contain quizzes and interactive activities, which complement the quizzes nicely (in terms of style and structure).

Lecturer(s): Arlen Duke

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2018

Rating:  4.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Principles of Business Law (PBL) is an excellent introduction to law at a tertiary level. It certainly confirmed my desire to study the JD in future years. The holistic structure of the course is very logical, with topics such as the Australian parliamentary system, legislation and case law preceding the more technical realm of contract law. While some of the ideas underpinning contract law were complex, Arlen made these more than clear with his articulate and thorough explanations. Indeed, Arlen’s hypothetical cases (presented in the second half of the lectures), sought to consolidate the sometimes disparate material from the first part of the lecture.

A commonly perceived drawback of this subject is the absence of tutorials. I, however, did not believe this to be an issue. Through a diligent use of the e-tutorials and the PBL tutor (whom one could either visit during consultation hours or via email), all relevant queries could be addressed.


Quiz 1:

Like the second one, this quiz contains 40 multiple choice questions. Given that students will have only covered 4 cases by this stage (relating to case law), Arlen looks to the finer nuances of the textbook to test knowledge. It is therefore critical that the lecture slides are not the only material being consulted.

PBL’s approach to results was disappointing. While students receive their marks on the LMS, they cannot access their quiz again and review their mistakes. Only a small dot point relating to very general knowledge is provided (ie. review court hierarchies). To me, this defeats the whole purpose of the quizzes, and learning in general.

Quiz 2:

By this quiz, around 60 case studies will have been studied. And so, I would classify this assessment as being much harder than the first. While the quiz is open book, it is extremely easy to run out of time if you do not have a clear understanding of each case’s material facts and ratio decidendi. Many of the questions involved Arlen relating several cases to a hypothetical problem. Students needed to interpret the essential ‘hooks’ of the hypothetical, and reconcile them with the corresponding case. Other questions involved a series of statements, which students had to validate or reject.

Final exam:

The final exam was more difficult than the quizzes. Arlen tended to focus on some areas much more heavily than others, which resulted in major areas of the course becoming lost or entirely absent. In turn, a comprehensive understanding of every lecture must be attained by students. An interesting trend that occurred in both the quizzes and exams was Arlen’s propensity to incorporate examples that he had provided in lectures. So, if you are astute in lectures, some answers may come more easily in the exam.

Unfortunately, a printing error occurred in this exam, resulting in 9 questions being omitted. This was a poor mistake, which precluded students who had studied the course from being able to distinguish themselves. Apart from this glitch, the exam was of a reasonable standard.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2018, 09:58:57 pm by clarke54321 »
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