ATAR Notes: Forum

Uni Stuff => Universities - Victoria => University of Melbourne => Topic started by: stonecold on July 03, 2011, 02:23:10 pm

Title: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on July 03, 2011, 02:23:10 pm
(http://i.imgur.com/qwtHJ8E.jpg)
University of Melbourne
Subject Reviews and Ratings

Index

If you would like to make a request for a specific subject to be reviewed, post here: Subject Review Requests

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This is a thread for subject reviews only.  If you have any questions, then please PM the member who wrote the review, or alternatively, create a new thread for more information about a subject.  The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of the university or ATAR Notes.  Keep in mind that despite best efforts, information provided may not be accurate.

We encourage you to review the subject(s) you have completed, even if someone else has already reviewed your subject(s). The more reviews we have, the more helpful this resource will be. Please try to avoid overtly denigrating lecturers and keep your review relatively objective.

Updated to post #849

Arts
ANCW10005: Ancient Near Eastern Language: Egyptian

ANCW20015: Classical Mythology
ANCW20019: Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic
ANCW20025: Archaeology of the Roman World
ANCW30011: Underworld and Afterlife

ANTH10001: Anthropology: Studying Human Diversity

CCDP20001: Street Art

CHIN10003: Chinese 7
CHIN10005: Chinese 1A (2)

CLAS10003: Intensive Beginners Latin (2)
CLAS10006: Latin 1 (1) (2)
CLAS10022: Intensive Beginners Ancient Greek A (1) (2)
CLAS20027: Intermediate Latin Language

CWRI10001: Creative Writing: Ideas and Practice

ENGL10001: Modern and Contemporary Literature
ENGL10002: Literature and Performance (1) (2)
ENGL20022: Modernism and Avant Garde
ENGL20023: American Classics
ENGL30051: Comedy
ENGL30013: Gothic Fictions

EURO10002: Eurovisions

FREN10004: French 1 - Winter Intensive
FREN10006/FREN20001/FREN30003: French 5 (1) (2)
FREN20012: French Travel Writing

GERM10002/ GERM20005: German 4
GERM10004: German 1
GERM10006/GERM20007/GERM30005: German 5 (1) (2) (3)

HIST10006: Making Sense of America
HIST10012: The World Since World War II
HIST20010: The First Centuries of Islam
HIST20013: The Holocaust and Genocide
HIST20060: Total War: World War II (1) (2)
HIST20069: Modern European History
HIST30010: Hilter's Germany and Fascism

HPSC10001: From Plato to Einstein (1) (2)
HPSC20015: Astronomy in World History
HPSC20021: Critical Reasoning
HPSC30019: Minds and Madness

INTS10001: International Politics (1) (2) (3)

ISLM10002: Islam in the Modern World
ISLM20003: The Qur'an: An Introduction
ISLM30018: Diplomacy: Engaging the Muslim World

ITAL10001: Italian 3
ITAL10002: Italian 4
ITAL10004: Italian 1
ITAL10006: Italian 5
ITAL10008: Italian Mid-Year Winter Intensive

JAPN10001: Japanese 1 (1) (2)
JAPN10002: Japanese 2
JAPN10003/20013/30007: Japanese 5

KORE10001: Korean 1
KORE20002: Contemporary Korea

LING10001: The Secret Life of Language (1) (2) (3) (4)
LING10002: Intercultural Communication (1) (2) (3) (4)
LING20003: Second Language Learning and Teaching
LING20005: Phonetics (1) (2)
LING20006: Syntax (1) (2)
LING20011: Grammar of English (1) (2) (3)
LING30007: Semantics
LING30012: Language and Identity

MECM10006: Introduction to Media Writing
MECM20009: Introduction to Media Writing

MULT10015: Language
MULT10016: Reason
MULT10018: Power

PHIL10003: Philosophy: The Great Thinkers
PHIL20030: Meaning, Possibility and Paradox

POLS10003: Introduction to Political Ideas
POLS20006: Contemporary Political Theory
POLS20008: Public Policy Making
POLS30011: Chinese Politics and Society
POLS30019: Australian Foreign Policy

PSYC10003: Mind, Brain and Behaviour 1 (1) (2) (3)
PSYC10004: Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2 (1) (2)
PSYC20006: Biological Psychology (1) (2) (3) (4)
PSYC20007: Cognitive Psychology (1) (2) (3)
PSYC20008: Developmental Psychology
PSYC20009: Personality and Social Psychology (1) (2)
PSYC30012: The Unconscious Mind
PSYC30013: Research Methods for Human Inquiry (1) (2)
PSYC30014: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1) (2)
PSYC30016: Social and Emotional Development
PSYC30017: Perception, Memory and Cognition
PSYC30021: Psychological Science: Theory & Practice
PSYC30022: Trends in Personality and Social Psychology

RUSS10001: Russian 1 (1) (2)
RUSS10002: Russian 2

SCRN10001: Introduction to Screen Studies
SCRN20011: Hollywood and Entertainment
SCRN20014: Film Genres and Auteurs
SCRN30005: The Digital Screenscape

SPAN10001: Spanish 1 (1) (2)
SPAN10002: Spanish 2
SPAN20020: Intensive Intermediate Spanish
SPAN30014: Spanish 5

SOLS10001: Law in Society (1) (2) (3)

THTR20021: Shakespeare in Performance


Commerce
ACCT10001: Accounting Reports and Analysis (CURRENT COURSE) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
ACCT10001: Accounting Reports and Analysis (OUTDATED COURSE) (1) (2) See here
ACCT10002: Introductory Financial Accounting (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
ACCT10003: Accounting Processes and Analysis
ACCT20001: Cost Management (1) (2)
ACCT20002: Intermediate Financial Accounting (1) (2)
ACCT20007: Accounting Information: Risks & Controls
ACCT30001: Financial Accounting Theory (1) (2) (3)
ACCT30002: Enterprise Performance Management (1) (2)
ACCT30004: Auditing and Assurance Services (1) (2) (3)

ACTL10001: Introduction to Actuarial Studies (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
ACTL20001: Financial Mathematics I (1) (2) (3) - renamed as Introductory Financial Mathematics from here
ACTL20002: Financial Mathematics II

BLAW10001: Principles of Business Law (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
BLAW10002: Free Speech and Media Law
BLAW20001: Corporate Law (1) (2) (3)
BLAW30002: Taxation Law 1 (1) (2) (3)
BLAW30003: Taxation Law 2
BLAW30004: Competition and Consumer Law

ECOM20001: Introductory Econometrics (1) (2) (3) - renamed as Econometrics 1 (4)
ECOM30001: Basic Econometrics
ECOM30002/ ECOM90002: Econometrics 2 (1) (2)
ECOM40004: Financial Econometrics
ECOM40006: Econometric Techniques

ECON10002: Seminar in Economics and Commerce A
ECON10003: Introductory Macroeconomics (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
ECON10004: Introductory Microeconomics (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13)
ECON10005: Quantitative Methods 1 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
ECON20001: Intermediate Macroeconomics (1)(2)
ECON20002: Intermediate Microeconomics (1) (2) (3) (4)
ECON20003: Quantitative Methods 2 (1) (2) (3) (4)
ECON20005: Competition and Strategy (1) (2) (3)
ECON30005: Money and Banking
ECON30010: Microeconomics (1) (2)
ECON30011: Environmental Economics
ECON30019: Behavioural Economics
ECON30020: Mathematical Economics (1)(2)

FNCE10001: Finance 1 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
FNCE10002: Principles of Finance (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
FNCE20001: Business Finance (1) (2) (3)
FNCE20003: Introductory Personal Finance
FNCE20004: Introduction to Real Estate Analysis
FNCE20005: Corporate Financial Decision Making
FNCE30001: Investments (1) (2)
FNCE30002: Corporate Finance (1) (2) (3)
FNCE30007: Derivative Securities (1) (2) (3)
FNCE30012: Foundations of Fintech

MGMT10002: Principles of Management
MGMT20001: Organisational Behaviour (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
MGMT20011: Business Negotiations (1) (2) (3)

MKTG10001: Principles of Marketing (1) (2) (3)
MKTG20006: Brand Management
MKTG30008: Neuromarketing


Science (A - L)
ANAT20006: Principles of Human Structure (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
ANAT30007: Human Locomotor Systems (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
ANAT30008: Viscera and Visceral Systems (1) (2)

BCMB20002: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
BCMB20003: Biochemical Regulation of Cell Function (1) (2)
BCMB20005: Techniques in Molecular Science (1) (2) (3)
BCMB30001: Protein Structure and Function (1) (2) (3)
BCMB30002: Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics (2)
BCMB30003: Molecular Aspects of Cell Biology
BCMB30004: Cell Signalling & Neurochemistry (1) (2) (3)
BCMB30010: Advanced Techniques in Molecular Science (1) (2) (3) (4)
BCMB30011: Metabolism and Nutrition
BCMB30012: Current Advances in Molecular Science

BIOL10001: Biology of Australian Flora and Fauna
BIOL10004: Biology of Cells and Organisms (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
BIOL10005: Genetics & The Evolution of Life (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
BIOL10008: Introductory Biology: Life's Machinery
BIOL30001: Reproductive Physiology (1) (2)

BMEN20001: Biomechanical Physics and Computation (1) (2)

BOTA20004: Flora of Victoria (1) (2)
BOTA30001: Marine Botany

BTCH20002: Biotechnology
BTCH30002: Trends & Issues in Agrifood Biotech

CEDB20003: Fundamentals of Cell Biology (1) (2) (3)
CEDB30002: Concepts in Cell and Developmental Biology

CHEM10003: Chemistry 1 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
CHEM10004: Chemistry 2 (1) (2) (3) (4)
CHEM10007: Fundamentals of Chemistry (1) (2)
CHEM20011: Environmental Chemistry
CHEM20018: Reactions and Synthesis (1) (2) (3)
CHEM20019: Practical Chemistry
CHEM20020: Chemistry: Structure and Properties
CHEM30016: Reactivity and Mechanism

CHEN20007: Chemical Process Analysis 1
CHEN20008: Chemical Process Analysis 2
CHEN20009: Transport Processes
CHEN30001: Reactor Engineering
CHEN30005 Heat and Mass Transport Processes

COMP10001: Foundations of Computing (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
COMP10002: Foundations of Algorithms (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
COMP20003: Algorithms and Data Structures
COMP20005: Engineering Computation (1) (2) (3) (4)
COMP20007: Design of Algorithms (1) (2)
COMP20008: Elements of Data Processing (1) (2)
COMP30020: Declarative Programming
COMP30021: Theoretical Computer Science
COMP30022: IT Project
COMP30023: Computer Systems
COMP30024: Artificial Intelligence
COMP30026: Models of Computation
COMP90051: Statistical and Evolutionary Learning

CVEN30008: Risk Analyssis (1) (2) (3)
CVEN30009: Structural Theory and Design (1) (2) (3)
CVEN30010: Systems Modelling and Design (1) (2)
CVEN90016: Concrete Design and Technology
CVEN90024: High Rise Structures
CVEN90035: Structural Theory and Design 3
CVEN90043: Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering (1) (2)
CVEN90044: Engineering Site Characterisation
CVEN90045: Engineering Project Implementation
CVEN90049: Structural Theory and Design 2 (1) (2)
CVEN90050: Geotechnical Engineering
CVEN90051: Civil Hydraulics

ECOL30007: Marine Ecosystems: Ecology & Management

ELEN20005: Foundations of Electrical Networks (1) (2) (3)
ELEN30009: Electrical Network Analysis and Design
ELEN30011: Electrical Device Modelling
ELEN30012: Signals and Systems
ELEN30013: Electronic Systems Implementation
ELEN90054: Probability and Random Models

ENEN20002: Earth Processes for Engineering (1) (2) (3)

ENGR10003: Engineering Systems Design 2 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
ENGR10004: Engineering Systems Design 1 (1) (2)
ENGR20003: Engineering Materials
ENGR20004: Engineering Mechanics (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
ENGR30002: Fluid Mechanics (1) (2) (3) (4)
ENGR90034: Creating Innovative Engineering

FOOD20003: Food Chemistry, Biology and Nutrition (2) (3)

GENE10001: Genetics in the Media
GENE20001: Principles of Genetics (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
GENE20002: Genes and Genomes (1) (2) (3)
GENE30001: Evolutionary Genetics and Genomics (1) (2)
GENE30002: Genes: Organisation and Function (1) (2)
GENE30004: Genetic Analysis (1) (2)
GENE30005: Human and Medical Genetics (1) (2)

GEOM20015: Surveying and Mapping
GEOM30009: Imaging the Environment

INFO20003: Database Systems (1) (2)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on July 03, 2011, 03:10:48 pm
Mod Note (AW): Split the Science subjects due to quantity exceeding character limit. Second half found in this post. 
Science (M - Z)
MAST10005: Calculus 1 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
MAST10006: Calculus 2 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
MAST10007: Linear Algebra (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
MAST10008: Accelerated Mathematics 1 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
MAST10009: Accelerated Mathematics 2 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
MAST10010: Data Analysis 1
MAST20004: Probability (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
MAST20005: Statistics
MAST20009: Vector Calculus (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
MAST20018: Discrete Maths and Operations Research (1) (2)
MAST20022: Group Theory and Linear Algebra (1) (2) (3)
MAST20026: Real Analysis with Applications (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
MAST20029: Engineering Mathematics (1) (2) (3) (4)
MAST20030: Differential Equations (1) (2) (3)
MAST20031: Analysis of Biological Data
MAST30001: Stochastic Modelling (1) (2)
MAST30005: Algebra
MAST30011: Graph Theory (1) (2)
MAST30012: Discrete Mathematics (1) (2)
MAST30020: Probability and Statistical Inference (1) (2) (3)
MAST30021: Complex Analysis (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (5)
MAST30022: Decision Making
MAST30024: Geometry
MAST30025: Linear Statistical Models
MAST30026: Metric and Hilbert Spaces (1) (2)
MAST30027: Modern Applied Statistics
MAST30028: Numerical and Symbolic Mathematics (1) (2) - renamed as Numerical Method & Scientific Computing (3)
MAST30029: Partial Differential Equations
MAST90011: Modelling: Mathematical Biology (1) (2)
MAST90026: Computational Differential Equations
MAST90045: Systems Modelling and Simulation
MAST90053: Experimental Mathematics
MAST90056: Riemann surfaces and complex analysis
MAST90067: Advanced Methods: Transforms
MAST90069: Introduction to String Theory
MAST90082: Mathematical Statistics
MAST90133: Partial differential equations


MCEN30014: Mechanical Design
MCEN30017: Mechanics & Materials (1) (2) (3)

MIIM20001: Principles of Microbiology & Immunology (1) (2) (3)
MIIM20002: Microbes, Infections and Responses (1) (2) (3)
MIIM30002: Principles of Immunology (1) (2)
MIIM30003: Medical and Applied Immunology
MIIM30011: Medical Microbiology: Bacteriology (1) (2)
MIIM30014: Medical Microbiology: Virology (1) (2)
MIIM30015: Techniques in Immunology
MIIM30016: Techniques in Microbiology

MULT10011: Introduction to Life, Earth and Universe (1) (2) (3)

NEUR30002: Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
NEUR30003: Principles of Neuroscience (1) (2) (3) (4)
NEUR30004: Sensation, Movement & Complex Function (1) (2)

OPTO10001: Vision: How The Eye Sees The World
OPTO30007: Visual Neuroscience (1) (2)

PATH20001: Exploring Human Disease - Science (1) (2)
PATH20003: Experimental Pathology (1) (2)
PATH30001: Mechanisms of Human Disease (1) (2)

PHRM20001: Pharmacology, How Drugs Work (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
PHRM30002: Drugs Affecting the Nervous System (1) (2)
PHRM30003: Drug Treatment of Disease
PHRM30008: From Discovery to Market (1) (2)
PHRM30009: Drugs in Biomedical Experiments (1) (2)

PHYC10001: Physics 1: Advanced (1) (2) (3) (4)
PHYC10002: Physics 2: Advanced (1) (2)
PHYC10003: Physics 1 (1) (2) (3)
PHYC10004: Physics 2: Physical Sciences and Technology (1) (2)
PHYC10005: Physics 1: Fundamentals (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
PHYC10006: Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment
PHYC10008: From the Solar System to the Cosmos
PHYC20009: Thermal and Classical Physics (1) (2)
PHYC20010: Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity
PHYC20011: Electromagnetism and Optics
PHYC20016: Elements of Quantum Computing
PHYC30016: Electrodynamics
PHYC30017: Statistical Physics
PHYC30018: Quantum Physics

PHYS20008: (Integrative) Human Physiology (2) (3) (4) (5)
PHYS20009: Research-based Physiology (1) (2) (3) (4)
PHYS30001: Cardiovascular Health: Genes and Hormones (1) (2)
PHYS30005: Muscle and Exercise Physiology (1)  (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
PHYS30008: Frontiers in Physiology (1) (2)
PHYS30010: Advanced Human Physiology

SCIE20001: Thinking Scientifically
SCIE30001: Science Research Project (1) (2)
SCIE30002: Science and Technology Internship

SWEN20003: Object Oriented Software Development (1) (2) (3)
SWEN30006: Software Modelling and Design (1) (2)

ZOOL20004: Australian Wildlife Biology
ZOOL20006: Comparative Animal Physiology (1) (2)
ZOOL30006: Animal Behaviour (1) (2)
ZOOL30007: Experimental Animal Behaviour


Other
ABPL20034: Urban History

AGRI10039: Australia in the Wine World

ASIA10001: Language and Power in Asian Societies

DASC10002: Animals in Society 1: Introduction
DASC20010: Applied Animal Physiology (1) (2)
DASC20011: Companion Animal Biology
DASC20012: Comparative Nutrition and Digestion
DASC20013: Topics in Animal Health

ENVS10002: Reshaping Environments
ENVS10006: Mapping Environments
ENVS10010: Owned Environments

EDUC10050: Understanding Knowing and Learning
EDUC10051: Sports Coaching: Theory and Practice (1) (2)
EDUC10057: Wellbeing, Motivation & Performance (1) (2) (3)
EDUC20065: Knowledge, Learning and Culture
EDUC20068: Sport, Education and the Media (1) (2)
EDUC20069: Deafness and Communication
EDUC20070: Learning via Sport and Outdoor Education
EDUC20076: Auslan and Visual Communication (1) (2)
EDUC20080: School Experience as Breadth
EDUC30070: Applying Coaching Science

EVSC20003: Forests in a Global Context (1) (2)

FINA10036: The Body: Facts and Fictions
FINA20026: Painting Techniques (1) (2)

FLTV10010: Making Movies 1 (1) (2)

MEDS90004: Principles of Clinical Practice 2
MEDS90020: Principles of Clinical Practice 3
MEDS90025: Transition to Practice
MEDS90026: MD Research Project 2

MUSI10017: Guitar Cultures and Practice
MUSI10023: Music Language 1: The Diatonic World (1)  (2)
MUSI10025: Writing About Music: Australian Issues
MUSI10208: 19th Century Music and Ideas
MUSI10209: Glee Singing
MUSI10211: Music Theatre: Singing Rock Musicals
MUSI20002: Impressionism to Postmodernism in Music
MUSI20008: Music Technology
MUSI20061: Music Language 2: Chromaticism & Beyond
MUSI20139: Gamelan Ensemble 2
MUSI20143: World Music Choir 3 (1) (2)
MUSI20149: Music Psychology (1) (2)
MUSI20150: Music and Health
MUSI20161: Alexander Technique for Musicians
MUSI20206: The Business of Music



Please use the following template for individual subject reviews:

Code: [Select]
[b]Subject Code/Name:[/b] [url=insert link here]SUBJECT CODE SUBJECT NAME[/url]  Please insert the handbook link for the subject, and replace SUBJECT CODE SUBJECT NAME with the appropriate details

[b]Faculty:[/b] (insert faculty here)

[b]Workload:[/b]  (specify how many lectures, pracs, tutes ect. and their duration)

[b]Assessment:[/b]  (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)

[b]Lectopia Enabled:[/b]  Yes, with/without screen capture etc.

[b]Past exams available:[/b]  Yes, how many?  No.  Was there a sample exam?

[b]Textbook Recommendation:[/b]  What must you buy?  What is "recommended"?  Do you need it?

[b]Lecturer(s):[/b]

[b]Year & Semester of completion:[/b]

[b]Rating:[/b]  Out of 5

[b]Your Mark/Grade:[/b] (Optional)

[b]Comments: [/b] Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

And the following template for Major reviews (courtesy of T-Rav):

Code: [Select]
[b]Major:[/b] [url=http://insert link here]Major Name[/url]  Replace "insert link here" with the handbook url for the major and replace "Major Name" in the URL tags with the appropriate name of the major. Also delete this text.

[b]First Year Subjects:[/b]  (use the following format "UNIB1070 Principles of ATARNotes Review Writing" Your Mark/Grade (Optional)

[b]Second Year Subjects:[/b]

[b]Third Year Subjects:[/b]

[b]Year of completion:[/b]

[b]Rating:[/b]  out of 5

[b]Your Average Mark:[/b] (Optional)

[b]Comments:[/b]

Mod edit (AW, 9/2/21): Added faculty to unit reviews, as this helps with correctly categorising units for future students.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on July 03, 2011, 04:15:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10005 Calculus 1

Workload:  Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour practical (this is basically a tute where you work off a problem sheet, usually in small groups)

Assessment:  10 x Weekly Assignments totalling 20%.  Calling these "assignments" is a little over the top.  They are basically just a couple of questions which you have to answer and submit each week.  It is a relatively easy way to gain 20%.  Then there is the exam which is worth 80%.  It is held in the first few days of the examination period.

Lectopia Enabled:  No.  You will have to go to lectures unless you are willing to self learn.  Lecture slides are full of gaps where you copy the lecturers workings, so you will have to attend.  There are lots of streams available which makes attending easier.

Past exams available:  Yes. Six past exams were available, and the lecturer posted up the answers/solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture notes are downloaded off the LMS.  DO NOT buy the textbook (Calculus 1 & 2 (Hass, Weir, Thomas, Adams and Essex), Pearson, 2010)).  You will never use it.  If you need additional help, consult a Specialist Mathematics 3/4 textbook, or you can go and get help from one of the many lecturers/tutors during their office period.  You are provided with everything you need to do well in this subject.  (comprehensive lecture notes, tutorial worksheets + solutions, problem book + answers, past exams + assignments with solutions)

Lecturer(s):  Dr. Deborah King (the other lecture streams were taken by Dr. Heng Soon Gan and Dr. Alex Ghitza)

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 94% H1

Comments: If you like maths and never had the chance to complete Specialist Maths 3/4 at VCE level then this is the subject for you.  It is very similar to Specialist Maths 3/4, however a few things are left out and you are NOT permitted a calculator of any kind.  The assessment was fair and with lots of practice, you will be well prepared for the exam.  The lecturers/tutors are usually approachable, however sometimes they oversimplify/assume things because I suppose they expect you to know it from VCE.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mikee65 on July 03, 2011, 06:15:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10002 Logic: Language and Information  

Workload:  Weekly: 2x 1 hour lectures, 1x 2 hour workshop(Problem solving class)

Assessment:  50% 3 hour end of semester exam, 10% mid semester test (40 m), 2 group projects worth 10% each, 4 group assignments totalling 15%, 5% workshop attendance

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, however frequently the lecturers write on the whiteboard and this may cause difficulty following whatever is being discussed at times

Past exams available:  Past 3 years worth of exams are available however no full solutions were prepared until a tutor from his own volition formed the 2009 solutions, cant guarantee he'll write more.

Textbook Recommendation:  Only one text is required and is necessary, Greg Restall, Logic (Routledge 2006)

Rating:  2.5 / 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I only hope students are not mislead to taking this subject through seeing labels of philosophy and logic as interesting, some of it seems a pretence, its mostly tedious math based calculations with some theory which could be mathematically construed as philosophical, best advice I can give is, look over the past exams and that will give you the best idea of what this subject is about. That being said you everything apart from the exam is relatively simple (most students attain 45-50% before the exam), the exam then differentiates H1 from~H1 (negation of H1, something which you will become very familiar with ahah).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: iamdan08 on July 03, 2011, 11:15:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30005 Muscle and Exercise Physiology

Workload:  Weekly 3 x 1 hour lectures (except once every 3 weeks or so where there would only be 2 lectures for the week). There was also a workshop but this was kind of pointless since we were given an assignment that we could do at home.

Assessment:  There are 2 MCQ tests worth 15%, an assignment (mentioned above) worth 10% and the exam worth 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. About 10 years worth, although the course has changed a little during this time so you would have to look for the relevant questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  I think they recommended a textbook, however i didn't use one. The subject is based a lot around the lecturers research and current understanding of much of the content taught changes quite rapidly, so textbooks may be out of date anyway.

Rating:  3.5-4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I thought this subject was pretty good. It is quite interesting and we learn about things such as sarcopenia, muscular dystrophy, muscle development, adaptations to training, performance enhancing drugs etc. (have a look at the handbook for more info). All the content is taught by researchers, and if you are contemplating honours in physiology this could be a good subject to do, as there seemed to be a lot of recruitment by the lecturers for honours students. Some problems i had with the subject was contradictory information at times between lectures and lecturers. There is also quite a lot of information presented, but doable if you can understand the key concepts. The subject is a lot more challenging than i think a lot of people anticipated, but i thought that overall it was quite a good subject and i enjoyed it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on July 03, 2011, 11:58:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30001 Cardiovascular Health: Genes and Hormones

Workload:  Weekly 3 x 1 hour lectures and three 2-hour workshops throughout semester. Course was split into 3 Themes, each theme had around 10 lectures so there were weeks where there was just 1 lecture.

Assessment:  Assignment worth 10-15% and test worth 20% at the end of each Theme.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Questions provided prior to Theme A test. Sample questions for Theme B test (MCQ). No questions provided for Theme C test.

Textbook Recommendation: Relevant research papers uploaded on LMS

Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: You can read the Handbook entry for subject content so I'll just talk about the assessments. Workload was pretty light throughout semester since there were only 10 lectures for each Theme so we could basically forget everything after the Theme test. For the Theme A test, 10 essay questions (1 question from each lecture) were uploaded onto the LMS prior to the test, and 3 of these will be examined. Many students leave test preparation to the last minute so many did not perform as well as expected (Class average H3). I recommend working in study groups for this and prepare early to maximise chances of getting good marks.

Theme B test was MCQ. Some sample questions were uploaded prior to test but that was it. Lots of memory work for this test so make sure you know your lectures well!

Theme C was a let down. They ran out of things to teach so they incorporated the renal/kidney system with the CVS with an emphasis on kidney development. The lectures were rushed and the last 2 lectures were examined in the same week as the test. Test was in short answer form and no practice questions were provided.

The assignments involved reviewing a journal article or responding to a Physiological problem. The more time you put in, the more likely you'll get a good mark.

The major downside for this subject is that there was no feedback for any of the assignments (except grades) and when feedback was requested, only a sentence of feedback was given with no opportunity for consultation.

I recommend this subject for anyone interested in pursuing a major in Physiology.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: simpak on July 04, 2011, 12:16:45 am
Subject Code/Name: HIST10006 Making Sense of America: U.S. Since 1945

Workload:  Two one hour lectures per week, one one hour tute per week.

Assessment:  One 500 word document analysis worth 10%.  One 1500 word essay on a 'topic' covered in class/the reader, worth 30%, due the week before the mid-semester break.  One 2000 word essay on a topic chosen or created by the student, either from a list of around 50-60 or that they propose themselves, worth 50%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with slides and video capture available but not for most AV material.

Past exams available:  N/A.

Textbook Recommendation:  Buy the reader, discussions in tutes (for which your participation is marked) centre around the documents found in the reader, your first assessment is about something in the reader and the second assessment also uses all of the documents in the reader no matter which topic you choose.  You can download the reader, but if you do, print it off anyway because it is good to have the documents in tutes as you discuss them for quotations and annotations.  You do not need to buy the recommended text.

Rating:  4.5/5.

Your Mark/Grade: 81, H1.

Comments: I loved this subject - it was very refreshing and was always interesting, covering all of the modern history I was interested in.  I thought that it was quite helpful for my then media degree because it addressed current issues such as the War in Iraq as well as historically important issues like the Cold War and Presidential ordeals.  I wrote my final essay on Bill Clinton, and screwed it up (ending up with only a 79) because I had 10000 words due on the one day in the exam period and didn't have time to finish it properly, hence my relatively low mark of 81.  However, the subject was really great and always enjoyable!  The class discussions were interesting and made you actually want to go to tutes, which are a hurdle requirement.

My tutor was awesome and even allowed us to send him drafts of our essays before final submission.  The lecturer for this subject, Ara, is grat and always interesting and thought provoking.  Be warned - if you have a clash, she shows a lot of AV materials which you can't access outside of class.  I had a clash with CMEDL (above) and I couldn't see half of the videos because Fran refused to upload the slides for my other subjects.  So I did one of the lectures for this subject at home and I did feel a little lost when I got to tutes the next day when I had missed out on some of the AV material.  So I would recommend going to this class rather than doing the lecture at home.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Peedles on July 04, 2011, 12:29:55 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20009 Research Based Physiology

Workload:  1 x 2-3hr Workshop/Practical & 1 x 1hr Lecture

Assessment:   Written reports of up to 1500 words each due during the semester (20%); Class participation during the semester (5%); Effective PRS participation and contributions (5%), A research-project and written report of up to 2000 words due during semester (30%); Ongoing assessment of e-Learning activities(10%), A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (30%)

Lectopia Enabled: 
Yes but without screen capture

Past exams available:
  4 of the most recent past exams will be mounted on the LMS with only one set of answers released

Textbook Recommendation:
Silverthorn, D.U., Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach 5th Ed., 2010 - Pearson (Same as that needed for Human Physiology PHYS20008 (not necessary))

Lecturer(s): Arianne Dantas & Charles Sevigny

Year & Semester (where applicable) of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade:
H1 (87%)

Comments:
This subject is a Pre-requisite for the Physiology Major. It is also a relatively easy subject to get a H1. All lectures and workshops should be attended since 10% of the overall mark will count towards 'rocking-up'. I recommend doing it co-currently with Human Physiology if you want a pretty chillax semester, as there is a complete overlap between the content in PHYS20008 and Research. E-Learning activities comprise of Pre-Practical Questions, Post-Practical Questions and Collaborative Exercises submitted during workshops. Charles Sevigny is the best demonstrator as he is pretty laid back and always happy to give everyone full marks. Getting a H1 in this subject is purely determinant among the work completed throughout the course of the semester. It is important that you strive to attain closeto to full marks for all assessments before heading into the exam. The Lecturer Arianne Dantas even admits to it as having a high prevalence of H1's. Practicals are relatively straight forwards and any queries are usually ironed out the week following the practical in the Post Practical Lecture. The research assignment I admit was extremely time consuming. In order to have a good idea of what the demonstrators are looking for when marking your research paper it is integral that you complete and submit all drafts (not assessed) (Intro Draft, Method Draft, Results Draft, Discussion Draft and a Full Draft). So technically, since i submitted all my drafts it took about 3/4 of the semester to complete the assignment. Doing a bit at a time will ensure that your work is of a high standard and that you're not cramming it in during the last week. Once this is all out of the way most people who are on top of their work should be on 60/100 in terms of their overall score. Which means no study is necessary for the end of year exam as you need only a 50%-66% to get a H1. You will notice that the exam is just a regurge of previous exam questions so this shouldn't be a problem.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: simpak on July 04, 2011, 12:35:56 am
Subject Code/Name: e.g. Introduction to Media Writing (otherwise known as Professional Writing)

Workload: One one hour lecture per week, one two hour workshop per week.

Assessment:  One group oral presentation on a newspaper, worth 10%.  One online discussion board blog (ongoing) worth 10% in response to readings for the week and ideas presented in lectures.  One 80% folio of '4000 words' (it actually ends up being around 6000) due at the end of the semester, with three drafts due throughout the semester for workshopping - the magazine article, the personal narrative article and the op-ed (or opinion piece).

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available:  N/A.

Textbook Recommendation:  The reader must be purchased.  Word Bytes is optional, and I found it was helpful for some of the writing so you may as well get it, it's only like 20 dollars and is written by the coordinator.

Rating:  1/5.

Your Mark/Grade:: 75%, H2A.

Comments: This was the first H2A I ever received for a subject, and it was a subject I hated indeed.  In fact, it is this very subject which most efficiently prompted me to apply for the Bachelor of Science rather than continue with my degree.  The assessment is a nightmare, as it is difficult to be motivated when all of your articles are due at the end of the semester.  The drafting and workshopping does help, but I felt that the marking of the assessment was slightly unfair for some (one of my friends, who is a brilliant writer and whose pieces I read during proofreading only managed a H3).  Doug does not like giving people H1s.

You are encouraged to submit some of your pieces to major papers and etc.  Maybe it's just that I wasn't so fantastic at the subject or writing for the media but I found it to be a total bore and dreaded going every week to my two hour tutorial.  I spent most of my time in the tutorial (in which you merely workshop other people's pieces as a group) texting my friend next to me about the ridiculous and pretentious nature of the majority of the people in my class, one of whom donned a straw hat for the entire semester and did not take it off.  I was convinced he had a bald spot, but then I stalked him on facebook and was surprised to find he actually has a full head of hair.

Anyway, there is a lot of creative freedom, but that is part of the problem.  Wished the assessment had been due progressively rather than at the end of the semester.  It's not just me that despised this subject - everybody did.  Many call it the subject that 'makes you realise how much you don't want to be a journalist'.  So if you don't mind the possibility of a shitty mark and you're unsure of whether you want to be a journalist or not, I do recommend this subject as it will let you know that you never, ever, ever want your job to be writing for the media.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: iamdan08 on July 04, 2011, 12:48:13 am
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience 

Workload:  Weekly 3 x 1 hour lectures per week

Assessment: Midsemester test worth 30% and exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  No, but some sample questions were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  They recommend Purves Neuroscience, but i didn't use it. I felt the lecture material was sufficient.

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I really enjoyed this subject, particularly the first half where we studied topics such as the senses (hearing, vision etc.). The second half, which included topics such as consciousness i didn't enjoy as much but was still ok. The subject is pretty good in terms of contact hours (just 3 lectures a week). Assessment is straight forward with just the test and exam. I guess this may be a disadvantage to some, as a poor performance in the 30% test could proove costly to your overall mark. There is no prerequisite knowledge, so is a good subject for people who may want a taste of Neuroscience. This is also a core subject for those wishing to major in Neuro. I definitely recommend this subject to those who may be interested and i very much enjoyed it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Peedles on July 04, 2011, 01:01:28 am
Subject Code/Name: ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure 

Workload: 3 x 1hr Lectures and 1 x 2hr Practical every week after Week 5

Assessment:
  On-going assessment on theory and practical work throughout the semester (25%); a 2-hour written theory examination in the examination period (60%); on-going summative assessments (15%).

Lectopia Enabled:
  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:
No, some unhelpful sample questions were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:
Eizenberg N, Briggs C et al: General Anatomy: Principles & Applications, McGraw-Hill 2007 (not recommended). I think going to the Biomed library to borrow out the Grays Anatomy book by Drake and Netter Anatomy Atlas for exam study. They are overnight loans but because you can manually reborrow them, I reborrowed them for the whole semester because i'm cheap ass.

Lecturer(s): Dr Chris Briggs, Dr Varsha Pilbrow, Dr Peter Kitchener, Dr Jason Ivanusic & Dr Virginia Grossman

Year & Semester (where applicable) of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (81%)

Comments: To be honest I found anatomy quite overwhelming (but I think I speak on behalf of a small minority within the subject cohort  :'(). I didn't have a choice in the matter though as it is a prerequisite for Medicine and Health Science Graduate Courses. Chris Briggs who took the Principles lectures for Bones/Upper and Lower Limbs and Jason Ivanusic who took the Reproductive Systems and Respiratory Tract Lectures were the most enjoyable and engaging to watch. I think every lecture proceeding the 2nd week, I had to lectopia again which took like a minimum of 2 hrs per lecture (+including collating my study notes). For a good 3/4 of a semester I think I approached the subject in the wrong way. It is important that you know that ALL ASSESSED material will be in the lecture. I kind of got obsessive compulsive and kind of read all the relevant (discussed in lectures) material within Grays Anatomy and then got completely overwhelmed by it. If your on top of your work, the MST should be relatively easy. Coming from a 500 student cohort the median and average mark was about 20/30 for both tests. I had to screw up both by getting 21 and 22 for each test which sucked because it meant I had to get 80% on the exam to get a H1. The ADSL (LMS 15%) quizzes are very useful. Chris Briggs posts up questions fortnightly which supplement the Lecture material which is intended to help aid in studying for the TIMED online quizzes and the exam if you complete them thoroughly. Images that are put onto these ADSL's WILL BE ON the EXAM so study them and make sure you're familiar with labelling everything.

The practicals were intended to supplement the lecture materials. The university recruits Physiotherapy and Medicine students to conduct each workshop class. There are 6-8 workshop stations within each practical usually on each lecture topic which groups of students rotate around through the duration of 2 hrs. You're able to see dismantled cadavers and have opportunity to touch/poke/prod them. Personally, I found it pretty dry and my legs were tired so therefore I wasn't very fond of it. Make sure you attend it though because they take attendance in some weeks. I don't think the practicals were assessed in any way though. 

The exam comprised of 3 Sections. A Multiple Choice Section which covered all lectures from the last three weeks of semester, A fill in the Blanks section (similar to that in 1st Year BIOL) and a Short Answer Response Question (whereby I had the choice of choosing 4 out of a 8 Questions). It was this exam structure which allowed me to recover from my terrible MST marks as you could be familiar with a bit more than half the subject content and still be able to score well. The Questions were very straight forward, mostly stuff that were drilled in during the semester so make sure your familiar with the key concepts and principles. Take your time in the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Gloamglozer on July 04, 2011, 02:21:21 am
Subject Code/Name: e.g. MAST20026 Real Analysis With Applications

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour practice class per week, 4 x 1 hour computer laboratory classes during semester

Assessment:  12 written assignments worth 20% altogether, 80% exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes - except for lectures 33 & 34 (last two lectures)

Past exams available:  Yes*

Lecturer: Barry Hughes

Textbook Recommendation:  None.  Most of them are either beyond the course or too advanced.  But Barry's top recommendation is worth a read.

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: P

Comments: I've come across a lot of high school students who say that they "love maths".  Perfect.  Then this is the subject for you.  This subject will truly separate those who:

1.  Truly love maths for its art & beauty
2.  Appreciate maths & consider majoring in it
3.  Loathe maths for its proofs, logic and deduction

It is the first subject to introduce pure maths to undergraduates for those who went through the Calculus 1,2 pathway.  It is painstakingly annoying.  You leave out something and/or don't consider all cases - then you can safely assume that you will be penalised.  It will screw with your mind, motivation and confidence.  That is a fact.  It is the nature of the subject and you shouldn't expect it to be "easy".  The lectures were confusing and hard to grasp the concepts.  I have lost count of how many times I have said "WTF?!" in my mind.  Very often you can walk out of a lecture not understanding what the hell went on in that lecture.  And don't worry or fear, you won't be the only one.  ;)

This is why you need to go to the tutes.  If you can walk, then rock up - even if you are dead drunk.  Tutes operate a lot differently from other maths subjects.  Instead of just purely working (pun not intended) on practice problems, the tutor actually goes through the important material in the lectures from the previous week and actually teaches.  Then if time permits, then they'll get you to do some problems.  That is why it is imperative to attend.

Despite the academic rigour of the subject and the difficulty of some of the assignments, the exam that I sat was fair.  It was definitely doable.  It was designed to separate those who had a thorough understanding of the course and those who just "skimmed" the surface.  

Overall though, it was definitely challenging and is certainly an enriching subject to complete.


*In 2010 semester 1, all but one exam was useless.  As almost every semester there was a change in lecturer, there was a change in what was emphasised more in the course.  A sample exam was given generously by Dr. Alex Ghitza, the lecturer in 2009 semester 2.  Other past papers from subjects that Barry taught were also given.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on July 04, 2011, 10:53:58 am
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30007 Human Locomotor Systems

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures, 1 x 3hr workshop/dissection

Assessment:  50% final exam, 30% Flag Race, 2 x 10% MST

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  None, exam outline provided. Final exam was made up of MCQ, short answer and long answer. Flag Race was made up of 30 MCQ where you answer questions based on pictures on a powerpoint slide.

Textbook Recommendation:  Any anatomy text, I recommend Clinically Oriented Anatomy by Moore and an atlas (E.g. Netter). Lab coat and goggles and compulsory for dissections. Dissection notes are provided free on the LMS - thanks to Briggs

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Comments: This subject was planned very well and it was probably the most challenging subject I've done. This subject covers anatomy of the back, upper limb and lower limb, as well as the principles of locomotion. It expands on second year anatomy knowledge with applied examples - E.g. How does a fractured hip joint lead to a total hip replacement? Which nerve in the leg is susceptible to compression and what is the clinical significance? What actions are affected? In addition to the applied anatomy lectures, we had 4 clinical lectures - 2 by an orthopaedic surgeon who showed us various cases of surgeries in his clinic, and 2 by a radiologist who gave a different perspective of anatomy. We also had a few lectures by researchers (biomechanical engineering etc), evolutionary perspectives and neuroscience (neural control of locomotion). Some of the guest lectures (~10) were not directly examined which made the course manageable so it's not 36 lectures full of anatomy to memorise!

The 3 hour sessions are weekly (as opposed to fortnightly in 2nd year). There are 3 dissections on the upper limb and 3 dissections on the lower limb. You will work in groups of 6 with a demonstrator to be shared by 4 groups. Dissections are compulsory and they will tick your names off. There are also 4 workshops where you look at specimens in HALL. Nothing different to second year practical classes. I found these pretty useless since the practical groups were so big and it was hard to hear them.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on July 04, 2011, 11:12:42 am
Subject Code/Name: CHIN10005 Chinese 1A

Workload:  2 x 2hr lectures, 1 x 1hr listening class

Assessment:  50% final exam, 20% listening exam, 15% MST, 10% oral exam, 5 x 1% vocab test

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  None, exam outline provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Chinese text (compulsory)

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Marks: 83% (scaled down by approx 12-15%)

Comments: Great subject for anyone wanting to learn Chinese. You learn around 20-30 new characters per week. The first 2 hour lecture covers the pinyin and writing of the new words for the week. The next 1 hour listening class involves listening to a recording and completing a question sheet. Vocab tests are held at the end of this class. The final 2 hour lecture covers speaking involving role plays etc. Lectures were held in classes of about 25 students so it was easy to ask questions. Classes were very laid back and enjoyable but you had to put in heaps of work learning the new words in order to do well. The assessments were easy so try your best to get full marks in all of them since it is likely that many others are getting high marks and the overall grade will be scaled down. Overall, it was a great distraction from my busy uni life, had a manageable workload and many pretty girls to look at :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: marr on July 04, 2011, 12:43:50 pm
Moderator note: This review was written before the subject was revised. The lecturer's thoughts on the subject can be found here

Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis 

Workload: 1x two hour lecture and 1x one hour tutorial a week.

Assessment: 5% Participation Marks, 5% consisting of 6 Decision Making tasks to be completed within weeks 1-12, 10% Accounting Elements Assignment, 10% Quickbooks Assignment and a 70% exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes. About 8 past exams were available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Accounting in Context, although it is pretty much useless so not worth buying.

Lecturer(s): Matt Dyki

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: First of all if you are reading this and you have never done VCE Accounting/don't have an accounting background of some sort, then stay well away from this subject! It tries to go through the whole of VCE accounting units 1-4 in 12 weeks, which is near impossible not to mention tortuous. Even if you have done accounting before, this subjects goes through concepts very quickly that it is still difficult to keep up. On the other hand, this subject is simply just VCE Accounting just more in depth with 2 new topics. The biggest difference you will find is that, surprisingly, the accounting principles and qualitative characteristics are not even mentioned and that the format of some financial statements have changed with can be hard to get used to.

The two hour lectures are a pain and if you have Matt Dyki then prepared to be bored to death. I suggest bringing/sneaking in food or something else just to make it more interesting (I saw someone read the newspaper in there). To be honest though, it is very difficult to make accounting seem interesting.

Assignments are fine and if you need any help there are weekly consults to go to which are extremely helpful. If you have never used Quickbooks before then there is a optional lecture that will be held which I suggest you go to. The workload is okay, there is quite a bit to do each week but it's all repetitive (You'll be asked to fill out ledgers, balance sheets, profit and loss statements and cash flow statements every week from weeks 1-6). Decision making tasks are easy to get marks for, all you have to do is show that you made an effort to do them. The exam - it's usually early in the examination period I hear but if you've done all the work and understand it then it's not hard to pass, although it's very hard to get top marks because there are always tricks.

I did this subject as a breadth and I regret it. Take heed of my warning at the start of my post and basically, I would only recommend this subject to Commerce students wanting to major in accounting or possibly someone who has done VCE accounting - but either way be prepared to work hard in order to keep up to date.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bridger on July 04, 2011, 02:02:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20002 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Workload:  3 1hr lectures/week, 1 1hr tutorial/week

Assessment:  3 hour written exam held in examination period (70%), one 1 hour multi-choice examination (10%), continuing computer based assessment (20%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, past exams are available. The department provides past exams starting from the beginning of the Melbourne Model years. However, only answers to Multiple Choice are provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Nelson and Cox, Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, 5th edn., 2008 (not necessary, I did not touch the book at all during semester. Despite the lecturers raving about how good it is, I found it discussed material to a level well above what is expected in the course).

Lecturer(s): Irene Stanley, Paul Gooley, Geoff Howlett, Paul? Gleeson, Graham Parslow

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating:  3.5-4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments: Overall the subject is relatively enjoyable. The material covered is very memory based and is less dependent on understanding concepts. The workload is medium, just remember to review lecture material at least week by week and you'll be fine. Don't bother reading Lehninger, I think a lot of people were scared into going and reading it even though it wasn't necessary because at the end of the day they only assess what was covered in lectures.
Topics covered are Molecular Biology (DNA structure and function, RNA and protein synthesis etc), Proteins, Enzymes, Membranes and Lipids and Metabolism. Most topics are reliant on heavy memory work (be prepared to memorize Glycolysis and all Amino Acid structures/names). The CALs are an easy 20%, and the tests that are part of this component are a joke, just attempt the practise test a number of times because the questions are exactly the same in the real test. The Mid-Semester is ok, just remember to study. Covers the first two topics. Exam is not overly difficult, again just remember to study everything because they assess anything mentioned in the lectures (eg. some random fact on how long a sequence of bases is at a particular part of a gene).

sorry didnt know how to get link to work  :-\
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: darlok on July 04, 2011, 07:07:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30021 Complex Analysis

Workload: 3x1 hour lecture, 1x1 hour tutorial

Assessment: 4 Assignments worth 20%, 3 hour end of year exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled: No

Past exams available:  We were given 2 past exams from 2004 and 2005, they were not entirely relevant. Also had access to exams from Semester 1 2010 and Semester 2 2010, again, not entirely relevant due to change in lecturer / style.

Textbook Recommendation:  Jerrold Marsden and Michael J. Hoffman, Basic Complex Analysis, 3rd Ed. Freeman, 1998. Stopped using it after week 4. Didn’t flow in the same way that the topics did, which is very annoying. If you wanted to follow what was happening in the lectures in the book, you would have to switch sections every 5-10 pages. Also, some sections were presented differently in lectures. Some questions from the assignments were pulled from the book, but answers were not present. Would not recommend purchasing the book.

Lecturer(s): Paul Norbury & Alex Ghitza

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2011

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80

Comments: First of all, this is a difficult subject. Although you could probably do semi-decently without fully understanding the concepts, some of the concepts took me quite a while to grasp. It is a subject where almost everything is interlinked, and in an exam or assignment, you may have to use those links to quickly and correctly answer a question. I feel that this is what made the subject difficult for so many. The tutorials were next to useless. In fact, as 50 people were in each tutorial, they were required to call them practicals. They involved being given a set of problems and solving them at your desk. Admittedly, the format may have improved, but I stopped going after the first week. The lectures were decent, with Alex being one of the clearest lecturers I’ve had. Paul would sometimes make mistakes and his handwriting is sometimes hard to read, however he was better at visualising the material than Alex. The saving grace for this subject was the content. If you put some time into it, you will begin to appreciate why you learnt all those seemingly unrelated things. It wasn’t until a couple of days before the exam, when I actually knew what the hell was going on, that I fully appreciated this subject.
As far as offering advice on going well in this subject (I’m not sure if I’m qualified to give it); Make sure you have the mechanics down pat, as they are underemphasised in the lectures. Know your trig functions well, know the basics of complex numbers. The lectures mainly involve proving things that you will use to solve problems in tutorials, assignments and the exam. It is not important to remember the proofs 100%, although doing so will definitely give you more insight into the material. In the assignments and exams make sure to offer explanation of all steps, especially if you are using a theorem derived in class. I lost quite a few points due to this.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Massofbubbles on July 04, 2011, 08:59:43 pm
Subject Code/Name:  UNIB10003 An Ecological History of Humanity

Workload (weekly):   2 x 1Hr lectures, and 1 x 1Hr Tute

Assessment:  A 500 word tutorial paper due the week of your choice (10%), 10 x 150-300 word weekly private blogs (3% each) - none in 1st week and mid-semester break, a 2000 word research essay which was due first Mon of 2nd examination week (50%), tutorial attendance (10%) - must attend a minimum of 9 tutorials.  Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject.

Anyone who missed no more than 3 tutes got the full 10% regardless of their participation.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  None. The text by Ponting is completely useless in terms of assessment. Also, the weekly readings are not required to go well in this subject. (I didn't read the text or any of the readings)

Lecturer(s): Sometimes I found the lectures interesting, but again, they are pointless in terms of assessment. It was beyond me why people were taking notes. When I found some of the lectures boring, I revised for my other subjects.

I really disliked the main lecturer (Richard Trembath). It seemed he was only there to massage his oversized ego.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2011

Rating:  2.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: This is an easy subject. You don't need to do much in it to get a decent mark. I think it helps to not write like a wanker - the way they teach us to in VCE. My tutor actually deducted marks when people wrote things like "In his text "Green History" Ponting continuously and forcefully contends that..." instead of "Ponting states that.." or "Ponting says.."

I spent most of my time trying to think of original arguments for the blogs. Then my blogs just consisted of the argument and a few sentences to support it.

The research topic I chose had nothing to do with anything we were taught, and Google Scholar along with Super-search made it a breeze to get references for just about anything.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is in some way a science subject. It's not. The tutes were extremely painful. If you try to discuss anything above primary school level science people are gonna stare at you blankly for a second, then go back to talking about how they ingeniously discovered that feminism causes capitalism (even though they're just regurgitating what they were told in a lecture earlier that morning).

Overall, although it was a pretty worthless subject, it was an easy H1, the lectures were a welcome break from my other subjects, and I think the blogs were good practice for the GAMSAT.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Massofbubbles on July 04, 2011, 09:43:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002 Biomolecules and Cells

Workload: 3 x 1hr lecture each week, 1 x 1hr tutorial each week, 5 x 3hr lab over the semester.

Assessment:  A 40 minute, mid-semester test consisting of 25 MC questions (10%); Labs - 4 of which are followed by short 10-15 min MC tests (25%) - a short essay on an assigned topic is also included in the 25%, 4 ILTs (5%); a 3-hour exam in the examination period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but without screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, one was put up on the LMS towards the end of the semester.  

Textbook Recommendation:  I didn't use the text (Life), but I probably would have used it if I hadn't done year 12 Bio.

Lecturer(s): I thought all the lecturers were great, but I think Mary might have a small screw loose.
All the info needed to get a high score was in the lectures. I found all the frog egg, fish circulation, and animal taxa stuff to be extremely boring, but thankfully there was only a relatively small amount of it.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2011

Rating:  4.65 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: If you liked year 12 bio, you'll also like this subject. I loved it. It's takes a bit of memorisation, but that's not difficult if you find it all fascinating.
Some of the practice MST and past exam questions were recycled for this year's MST and exam, so make sure you do them :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on July 04, 2011, 10:05:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20005 Techniques in Molecular Science

Workload:  1 x 1hr lecture, 1 x 1hr tutorial, 1 x 3hr practical, 1 x demonstrator session

Assessment:  Practical assessment including weekly lab reports and lab performance (50%), Final exam (35%), Practical exam (10%), MST (5%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Heaps

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't buy the recommended textbook

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2010, Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: There were 12 lectures for this subject which were packed with content. These lectures covered the theory required for the lab report and this was mainly examined in the final exam. There was a MST which covered the first few lectures but was quite easy (similar to sample test provided). The last two lectures were difficult to understand, can't remember the topics but I think it was Genomics and microarrays. Make sure you ask if you still can't understand it.

The practicals are the major focus for this subject. If you don't keep up and hand in lab reports late, there will be penalties and you are not likely to get good marks. And if you don't pre-read the manual and come into class not knowing what to do, you'll hold up the rest of your group (10 students) and lose performance marks. About 42% of the 50% counts towards lab reports and the other 8% are the performance marks. Lab reports are marked out of 10. The maximum mark for each lab report is 8/10. To get the other 2 marks, you will need to consult research papers and expand your answers in the discussion. Trust me, this is hard and a 10/10 is very rare. The highest I've got was a 9.75 :P

The practical exam was held in Week 12 and you had to carry out an assay (Biuret/Bradford). Accuracy is important here. Remember to sign up for all the practice sessions you can. But remember, no matter how much practice you've done, it all comes down to your performance on the day.

General tips: Sit with someone you know because you want to work with someone who you can meet up with regularly to compete the lab report. Go to every demonstrator session and ask many questions. If you (and your other group members) get ridiculously high marks, don't be too happy because your demonstrator is lenient and it will get scaled down. Similarly, if you get low marks, it may get scaled up.

Hope this helps anyone interested in this subject  :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Massofbubbles on July 04, 2011, 10:58:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006 Chemistry for Biomedicine

Workload:  3 x 1hr lecture weekly; 1 x 1hr tute weekly; 6 x 3 hour (usually 2-2.5hr) labs over the semester. 3 x ILTs.

Assessment:     A 30min on-line mid-semester test consisting of 15 MC questions (5%); labs (20%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%). ILTs must be attempted to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, withscreen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, three I think. You could get more from previous/similar courses if you're eager.

Textbook Recommendation:  I wouldn't recommend either text. Just learn what you're taught in the lectures, and texts are in the library (or on the net) if needed. I only used the text once to read the chapter on sugars. Model kits seem kinda pointless, unless you have a long way to go on pubic transport to get to uni.

Lecturer(s): I thought they were all good lecturers. Make sure you learn A.Prof McFaygen stuff, cause he told us a few times that he doesn't want us to remember things, instead we should just "appreciate the chemistry". I did this, and consequently found his questions the hardest - I couldn't remember any of it.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2011

Rating:  4.7 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: I ended up liking this subject way more than I expected. I even ended up loving the inorganic chem, when beforehand I was dreading it cause I hated all the VCE redox stuff. It was great how Bio and Chem sometimes complemented each other, and you'd be like fk yeah, now I know why I should eat more carrots.
This subject - along with bio - have made me really glad that I chose to do biomed :D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tek on July 04, 2011, 11:56:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE30001 Evolutionary Genetics and Genomics

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week

Assessment:  A written class test during semester (20%); three assignments 10% each (In my semester two problem based and one question/essay based) ; a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (50%). The content on the mid-sem is not assessed on the end of semester exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes. However it is the genetic departments policy to not allow screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  not essential

Lecturer(s): various. Some good ones and some bad ones

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 semester 1

Rating:  3.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is focused towards population genetics. So if you did not like it second year then this subject is not for you. The subject really needs tutorials, there were a few lectures where a lot the slides showed steps on how to solve problems. This time could have been used better if there were tutorials, plus more practice problems would have helped a lot. It was a challenging subject, and the exam was quite hard consisting of short answer questions, mini essays and application problems. I only did well because almost half the course (15 lectures) was assessed midsem and like the genetic subjects I have had so far they recycle past exam questions. Overall I found it to be an okay subject, there were some interesting topics, but some lectures just seemed to drag on.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tek on July 05, 2011, 12:43:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE30002 Genes: Organisation and Function

Workload:  3x1hour lectures

Assessment:  One midsem test (MC questions), and two online multiple choice questions based on on a online paper, each worth 10%. A 3 hour end of semester exam worth 70%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes without screen capture

Past exams available:  Multiple

Textbook Recommendation:  Not essential

Lecturer(s): 4 different lecturers. Hynes had the most lectures and a lot of people didn't like him. At first his Lectures were slow and boring (probably because those topics weren't his area of interest), but by the end of the subject he's style and enthusiasm grew on me. However I can see why others did not like him.

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 semester 1

Rating:  4.25 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Out of the two 1st semester core genetics subjects, I liked this one better. The subject focuses on genetic processes like transcription, translation and their regulation; for example we went over the Lac operon and lambda phage regulation in the early lectures. I found it to be an in interesting subject and in general the lecturers were enthusiastic and helpful.

As a Biomedicine student I was slightly disadvantaged because we did not do a second year science prerequisite (GENE20002 Genes and Genomes). It was not too bad because they provided the slides to the subject and if there was anything important they went over it again. Also some of it was covered in the core biomed subject. It was not a challenging subject and is easy to do well in if you try. For example they give you a pdf of the MCQs for the online midsems, so you can go over it heaps of times and with friends. The best way to study for the exam is to go over the past exams as there is a bit of recycling and rejigging.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dcc on July 05, 2011, 03:28:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance

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

Assessment:    Assignments not exceeding 2000 words (20%) and a 2-hour end-of-semester examination (80%). (We had 2 assignments, 1000 words each)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Many past exams are available, but solutions were only provided to a single practice exam.

Textbook Recommendation: Financial Instiutitons and Markets (B Hunt and C Terry), though I didn't use it at all (use your brain - think, dont copy!)

Lecturer(s): Carsten Murawski.

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1.

Rating:  -3 of 5.

Your Mark/Grade: H1.

Comments: A complete joke of a subject.  Lectures are too slow (although you can alleviate this somewhat by listening to lectopia recordings at +40% speed), the content is dry as anything, and the assessments are obviously intended to be a wicked satire of modern tertiary education.

To succeed in this subject, you need only know:


Since the exam pretty much determines your mark for the subject (80%), I was able to maintain a 0% attendance record for lectures and tutorials, which was perhaps the only reason this subject was rated -3 instead of -5.  You have my blessing to take this subject if:


As I alluded in the "Textbook Recommendation" section, I think the key to doing well in this subject is to not be a drone - while I estimate 50% of your mark in this subject comes down to your ability to do mathematics at a primary school level, the rest involves some MINOR CRITICAL THINKING, where you might be rewarded for saying something unique or creative (not necessarily "correct"). **

* - Not a typical situation.
** - I'm not entirely sure if this is true, because I never collected my assignments back so I have no idea how I went on them.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: iamdan08 on July 05, 2011, 11:56:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20003 Biochemical Regulation of Cell Function

Workload: Weekly 3 x 1 hour lectures and a 1 hour tute

Assessment:  There is online CAL's (20%), a MCQ midsemester test (10%) and the exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes there are exams for the past 2 years. There are also similar subjects that you can get exams from (from "old generation" subjects).

Textbook Recommendation:  They recommend Nelson and Cox, Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, however i didn't use it. The lecture notes sufficed.

Lecturer(s): Irene Stanely, Graham Parslow, Matt Perugini

Year & Semester of completion: 2010, semester 2

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I found this subject very enjoyable. The staff go out of their way to help you and genuinely care about the students. All the lecturers are very passionate! As far as the content goes if you are good at memorising material, this is the subject for you! Have a look at the handbook for detail about what is covered, but briefly it covers things such as cell structure and transport, metabolism (a lot of memorisation of metabolic pathways and structures), cell signalling and some plant biochemistry (which i found the least enjoyable). The assessment is very easy. The CAL's are an easy 20% as long as you remember to do them. The test was pretty straight forward (I think it was 20 MCQ from memory). The exam is also pretty straight forward although expects a lot of detail. They really can ask you anything that is on any lecture slide, no matter how much or how little it was emphasized, hence the need to be able to memorise a large amount of material. If you put in the work for this subject it is a pretty easy H1.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Massofbubbles on July 06, 2011, 01:00:48 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10011 Experimental Design and Data Analysis

Workload (weekly): 3 x 1hr lectures; 1 x 1hr tute; 1 x 1hr computer lab

Assessment:  An assignment due in the second half of semester (5%); 10 weekly on-line quizzes  (10%); two relatively short take home computer software (Minitab) assignments (5%), and a 3-hour written exam at the end of the 1st week of the examination period (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but if you have Ray, he hasn't quite got the hang of putting the right things on the screen being recorded.

Past exams available:  Yes, a heap of them.

Textbook Recommendation:  Personally I just used Ray's reader, and didn't use the textbook once. I didn't really understand much in this subject though, so maybe the prescribed text (by the Triolas) is worth looking at. I noticed that whenever I was in the library there was multiple copies of the text available (I was in the 1st semester though - I think 2nd semester is much larger).

Lecturer(s): As a person, Ray has been my favourite lecturer at Melbourne Uni. But unfortunately I rarely had a clue what he was talking about. I think his level of mathematical comprehension is way above most people, so it's hard to understand what he's saying. Most lectures I just sat there blankly, occasionally grasping a few things. He did hammer in a lot of things that I would have never remembered if I had not gone to the lectures though.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2011

Rating:  3 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (78)

Comments: I found the content of this subject to be extremely boring, so I couldn't put in the effort to learn the material. Hence, when I did try to study I found it really frustrating because I didn't understand anything. In the end I just focused on the chapter problems in the reader, and sat there with the solutions until I got most of them. This actually saved my ass because the exam questions were extremely similar to the reader questions.
The maths in this subject is actually really basic, it's more about understanding where to do what, and why (and also trying to decipher Ray's formula sheet).
If you are more stoic than me you should be fine. I spent more of my study time complaining about the subject than actually studying.
I think (but could be wrong) that most of the statistical analysis we are going to do could've been (or already is) incorporated into our other subjects. And like Ray said, by the time we will need to use most of the stuff we will no longer remember it..
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Consuela on July 09, 2011, 03:44:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour tutorial; 1 x 1 hour computer lab which immediately follows the tutorial.

Assessment:  Ten short weekly assignments totalling 10%; A 45 minute MATLAB test worth 10% held near the end of semester; Final exam worth 80%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, about five, however solutions were provided for only two of them. There was also a sample MATLAB test but with no solutions nor the essential m-files.

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture slides are a must, however I think they were all put up on the LMS if you would rather print them yourself. The Anton & Rorres textbook is great to help digest some of the proofs and to consolidate the theory. Definitely borrow it from the library to read through the more difficult sections, but only buy it if you can scrape a second hand copy for $30 like I did, or if you're really keen to do extra problems from the textbook.

Lecturers:  Dr. Craig Hodgson or Dr. Lawrence Reeves.

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 1, 2011.

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is different from high school maths and Calculus 1 and 2, but a whole lot more interesting. Previously, simply working through a large amount of highly methodical problems will grant you success. However, in Linear Algebra I had to literally sit down and think about some of the ideas to get my head around it -- which makes it all the more gratifying when everything clicks! This subject is all about definitions, and usually once you have a clear idea of the definition you'll know how to solve the problem. A good memory or consistent summaries helps with this.
The tutorial worksheets were really helpful as fully worked solutions were provided so you knew how to set out your work. I found the MATLAB test an easy 10% but be aware they don't give method marks for it. No programming knowledge is required for the test even though quite a few lab classes were focused on irrelevant things like coding which i never needed nor bothered to learn.
Overall, this is not an easy subject to immediately grasp, as it covers things you've never come across before. I liked how abstract and seemingly unrelated to real life the content was but if you're doing it as a requisite for engineering you may not agree.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 09, 2011, 06:07:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30005 Algebra

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: Two assignments (10 questions each) worth 10% each totaling 20%; Final exam worth 80%  

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Yes, from 1998 - 2010 (potentially more)

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture notes are provided to you. All recommended textbooks (Michael Artin, Algebra, 1st Ed. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1991 and B. Hartley and T.O. Hawkes, Rings, modules and linear algebra, 1st Ed. Chapman & Hall, London, 1970) are available at the Maths library in the mathematics and statistics building. I personally found the Internet and lecture notes to suffice so I didn't really use the textbooks.

Lecturer: Lawrence Reeves

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 59

Comments: I personally love pure Maths subjects, so despite my mark I thoroughly enjoyed this subject. The subject jumps straight into ring theory at the start and is fairly fast paced, the content itself takes awhile to make sense. The main thing that separates high achievers from low achievers is the ability to do difficult proofs, to be able to do proofs your knowledge of the content must be concrete, you need to practice proofs A LOT (which I didn't do). The subject does have a mechanical side in the sense that you learn techniques to diagonalise matrices, determine which polynomials are irreducible in , etc. Also being able to memorize theorems and give examples is paramount to getting a good score. I guess how I know how to do well in this subject is that in hindsight I know how to not do well. I would definitely recommend this subject to anyone who did linear algebra and enjoyed it. In second year group theory and linear algebra (a prerequisite for algebra) builds up from linear algebra.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 09, 2011, 06:25:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30021 Complex Analysis

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: Four assignments totaling 20%; Final exam worth 80%  

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  Jerrold Marsden and Michael J. Hoffman, Basic Complex Analysis, 3rd Ed. Freeman, 1998. This textbook covers all the content, but not in the same order as the lectures are given. I would definitely get this book since it helps a lot. 

Lecturer: Alex Ghitza and Paul Norbury

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 59

Comments: I personally found the subject quite easy to grasp in terms of the lectures (up until the last few) and the assignments were approachable. The real curveball with this subject is the exam. The exam was very different to past exams with questions on topics that are so subtle that you (well I especially did) can skip over when studying. Alex Ghitza was a great lecturer and just reading over his notes was enough to grasp the material, whereas Paul Norbury was lazier and understanding certain concepts required outside reading (the recommended textbook). The practice classes were pretty stupid, but completing the questions is essential for only them and the assignments and practice exams is the practice material for the exam. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kamil9876 on July 09, 2011, 06:42:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30011 Graph Theory

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 practice class

Assessment: Two assignments first worth 8% and the second worth 12%; Final exam worth 80% 

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Yes, plenty to keep you busy on the LMS but I only browsed through them.

Textbook Recommendation:  We were given a booklet with all the assignments,problem sheets, course content and general advice in the first lecture. Printed lecture notes were handed out whenever we started a new topic. You're also supposed to buy a course reader which is just a printed copy of the textbook Applied and Algorithmic Graph theory though it's only really useful for extra problems, certain tutorial problems and proofs of certain theorems we cbf proving in lectures. It doesn't exactly follow the lecture notes so it's not essential to read it all.

Lecturer: David Wood

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 90

Comments: Great subject even without my bias towards this area of math. A graph is just a bunch of points, some of which are connected and some which are not (like those networks that you may have studied in high school). Pretty simple eh? well it can get very interesting and complicated. That's one of the great things about this subject, that you deal with childish concepts but in a mathematically matured way, which is a nice change from getting bombarded with abstract definitions. Course consists of half proofs/reasoning as well as unfortunately(or for some, fortunately) mechanical computations of algorithms ala accounting. But let me repeat, you're dealing with childish concepts and so the proofs are nice and intuitive despite still being rigorous and sometimes challenging so you may enjoy this more than the usual proofs you may have encountered earlier. The lecturer is great, clear and precise. He is also honest in that he shows his appreciation for the subject as well as his views on math, unlike other lecturers who are completely different people once they start teaching. In a nutshell, interesting variety of problems and theory, enjoyable and sometimes interactive lectures(asks us questions and lets people solve them on the board) and approachable staff.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 09, 2011, 06:51:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC30016 Electrodynamics

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: Two assignments totaling 20%; Final exam worth 80%  

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  J D Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, 3rd edition, Academic Press. David J. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, 3rd edition

Lecturer: Ann Roberts

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: 57

Comments: This was a b$&ch of a subject to be honest! I did not enjoy it at all! One thing is that doing PDE's before this subject helps when you do Green functions, separation of variables and other ugly stuff. To be able of even having a chance of getting an H1 requires you pouring heaps of time into this since each question on the problem sheet can take at least an hour. The assignments were horrible, but the exam wasn't to bad.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 09, 2011, 07:14:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC30018 Quantum Physics

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: Two assignments totaling 20%; One poster presentation worth 10%; Final exam worth 70%  

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  D J Griffiths Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, 2nd Ed, Pearson Prentice Hall 2005, E Merzbacher, Quantum Mechanics, Wiley and B H Bransden and C J Joachain, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Longmans. I personally didn't find the textbook that useful since the lecture notes were comprehensive enough.

Lecturer: Ray Volkas and Andy Greentree

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 74

Comments: I thoroughly enjoyed this subject. What I loved about this subject was how weird the quantum realm really is, also the lecturers are really great. What was also really good, was doing a poster presentation on a field in quantum physics and also writing an essay on a field of quantum physics. Mind you the subject was actually quite hard and you need to put in a lot to do well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on July 10, 2011, 02:50:17 am
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006 Chemistry for Biomedicine

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week (commencing in week 3), 6 x 3 hour practicals throughout semester

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes.  All exams since the subject commenced in 2008 are available.  Solutions were provided, but they did have errors.  Exams for pre-2008 versions of the subject (Chemistry for Biomedical Sciences A/Chemistry for Biomedical Sciences B) are also available if you are very keen.

Textbook Recommendation:  The lecture notes are more than sufficient to do well in this subject.  Early on I read the recommended texts (Organic Chemistry 6th Edition by McMurry and Chemical Principles 6th Edition by Zumdahl), however in hindsight this was a waste of time as they often went into far too much detail. I ended up focusing on the lecture slides only.  The textbooks were occasionally useful for some additional problems or an explanation/definition here or there, but IMO still not worth buying.  Also, unless you really struggle with visualising molecules, you probably don't need the Molecular Model Kit.  You are premitted to bring it into the exam, but who has the time/patience to stuff around assembling molecules in that type of situation.  You are required to either purchase or download the practical and tutorial manuals and will also need a lab coat and safety glasses for pracs.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof. Craig Hutton, Dr. Spencer Williams, A/Prof. Brendan Abrahams, A/Prof. David McFadyen

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 96% H1

Comments: There were aspects of this subject which I really did not like.  It is meant to be a biologically focused fusion of Chemistry 1 and Chemistry 2.  Whilst the lecturers tried to put a biological focus on the content, a lot of the time they just went off on pointless tangents.  At the end of the day this subject is still chemistry so be prepared to learn stuff that in the eyes of many is unrelated to biology.  What annoyed me the most was the amount of content which was left out of the course.  As they are trying to teach first year chemistry in only one semester, they have to chop bits out, which I really didn't like.  I feel as if I have learnt some half baked version of chemistry.  Topics such as Entropy/Gibbs free energy, instrumentation as well as other important aspects went completely uncovered.  I don't really feel as though I can say I have properly learnt first year chemistry.  Moreover, if you are planning to sit the GAMSAT, you are going to have to learn the topics which they have left out yourself.

On the plus side, it is nice to get the chemistry requirement out of the way in one semester for some.  The assessment for this subject was very fair.  Many people complained about chem pracs being boring and unrelated to the content which was often true, but at the end of the day, it is a very easy way to pick up 20%.  The mid semester test being conducted online was annoying as there was a lot of collusion between students.  But it was very easy to prepare for by completing some of those pre-2008 exam multi choice questions.  Save the other exams for later on if you can.  The tutorials for the subject were well run, and the tute content well-prepared you for the exams.  Answers to tute problems were made available for download towards the end of the semester.  The faculty also offers several help classes run by tutors/lecturers in the Chemistry Library which I highly recommend you get down to and ask questions.  Try to go early in the semester because it will not be busy, so odds are you can sit down with a tutor for like half an hour and they will just be able to help you out.  As the exam period approaches, it gets very busy and you have to wait a long time for help, so don't leave all of your questions until then.  There are also online tutorials which you can complete which help to reinforce the lecture content.  I think they are okay and worth doing if you have the time, however they are somewhat outdated so a lot of the content in them is not relevant.  They are certainly not necessary.

The lecturers for the subject were decent.  It is pretty hard teaching a subject like chemistry, and I think they did a good enough job.  Professor Abrahams was particularly good.  He was very sincere and gave a list of content to revise for the exam.  The exam itself was pretty fair.  It consisted of 50% multi choice questions and 50% short answer questions.  It was however by far the longest exam this subject has ever had.  The content was not difficult, but it was a very long exam so you had to work fast.

Although I would have liked the subject to be more complete in terms of a first year chemistry course, I think it was a pleasant change to the type of content covered in VCE.  Whether or not you did well in VCE chemistry is irrelevant in this subject, as well as in other first year chemistry subjects.  So work hard and you will do well![/list]
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Spheniscidaphile on July 10, 2011, 05:05:28 am
Subject Code/Name: CLAS10003 Intensive Beginners Latin 

Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture, 1 x 1hr tute, 5 days a week for 7 weeks (10hrs lectures, 5hrs tutes per week). additionally, a translation passage to complete daily as homework.

Assessment:  1 final exam 30%. 3 in-sem tests, totalling 45%. 2 shorter tests, 15%, 28 daily tests totalling 10%.

Recorded Lectures:  No.

Past exams available:  No sample, but format is explained.

Textbook Recommendation:  you will need the Reading Latin Text and Grammar books. you can't get by without them, and the library won't have enough copies. There is an Independent Study Guide for the textbooks, which contains most of the answers, but it's not cheap and you may have to get it shipped from overseas.

Lecturer(s): Varies

Year & Semester of completion: 2010 summer semester

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 98

Comments:
   This subject should take you from no Latin, to enough Latin grammar to start translating real  (easy) texts.  The lectures focus on grammar, the tutes on reading the texts in the textbook which reinforce the grammar.  At times you know how a paté goose feels, but the tutors are very helpful and really know their stuff, so don't be afraid to ask for help swallowing and digesting all that grammar.  There are daily vocab tests, and all tests/exams are taken without a dictionary to hand, so you really have to work at mastering the vocab.

Even if you have previous language study experience, you may find it hard going at times, just because of the timetable and pace.  This subject is full on. it's doable if you keep on top of it.

5 days a week for 7 weeks. you *will* have no life. BUT, it's worth 25% EFTSL, so this would take care of some of your breadth requirements, and leave you with fewer units to do and so a lighter workload during the year. it's generally 2hrs of lecture until midday, then a tute after lunch.  You could get away with not attending every lecture, but some lectures you must attend, as the textbook won't explain the concepts for that lecture very well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Spheniscidaphile on July 10, 2011, 05:06:47 am
Subject Code/Name: CLAS10022 Intensive Beginners Ancient Greek A

Workload:  4hrs of lectures each day for 12 days. In addition, I spent about 4-5 hours studying and doing the homework outside of class each day.

Assessment:  final exam 30%. in-sem test 30%. daily grammar tests totalling 30%. short tests 10%.

Recorded Lectures:  No.

Past exams available:  No, but format is explained.

Textbook Recommendation:  The Luschnig textbook listed in the handbook is essential if you want to get all the homework done.

Lecturer(s): L. Mcnamara

Year & Semester of completion: 2010 winter semester

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95

Comments:
   This is one semester of Ancient Greek crammed into 12 days, mostly designed for people picking up a breadth, or those who want to do Ancient Greek B in semester 2.  The assessments weren't very hard, so long as you had learned the set reading, translation and exercise homework for each day.  If you've learned Latin before, this subject will be easy, especially as the textbook is to some extent designed for latin students.  The Lecturer, Leanne, is excellent, and manages to explain some reasonably arcane grammar quickly and clearly.  I enjoyed this subject, and it was nowhere near as intense as the Intensive Latin subject offered over summer.  The only downside was that you give up your mid year break.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Spheniscidaphile on July 10, 2011, 05:08:32 am
Subject Code/Name: CLAS20027 Intermediate Latin Language

Workload:  4 x 1hr lectures each week. no tutes. weekly homework exercises and readings.

Assessment:  Final exam 50%. mid-sem test 25%. weekly homework totalling 25%.

Recorded Lectures:  No. Powerpoint slides are presented and uploaded to lms each week.

Past exams available:  One available from library.

Textbook Recommendation:  A New Latin Syntax, E. C. Woodcock. You *need* the woodcock textbook, and access to a decent latin dictionary for the weekly homework. Ideally, this would be the big Oxford Latin Dictionary. I would also recommend a latin primer grammar for revision, such as Kennedy's (available for free at archive.org).

Lecturer(s): Dr. A. Turner

Year & Semester of completion: 2010 Semester 1.

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:
   This subject focuses on advanced latin syntax, and assumes a thorough knowledge of the content of the Reading Latin grammar textbook.  Latin syntax is explained through its historical development and your knowledge is assessed in weekly english-> latin translation and parsing/syntax questions.  the exams will be more or less the same, with an unseen passage for translation, and syntax questions.

   This subject was awesome. Dr. Turner is excellent, knows the subject inside out, and imparts an good understanding of how the Latin language actually works. The Woodcock textbook is a bit dense at times, but contains all you will need for the subject, and more. I would recommend spending the time to read and re-read it, think about it, and then read it again until you understand all of the topics in it. It's not enough to just skim it.
Having said all that, I found this subject pretty hard, and spent *way* too much time on the homework exercises each week. I also feel this would have been a better subject if it were presented over two semesters and combined with some readings or more composition.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on July 10, 2011, 10:54:57 am
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20008 Drugs That Shape Society

Workload:  2 x 1hr lecture; 1 x 1hr tutorial (compulsory)

Assessment:  1000 word assignment (25%), Online quizzes and tutorial attendance (15%), Final exam (60%), Magistrates Court trip

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with and without screen capture

Past exams available:  No, only sample questions

Textbook Recommendation:  Stephens, T & Brynner R, (2001) Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and its Revival as a Vital Medicine, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts ISBN 0-738-0404-8

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2010 Semester 2

Rating:  1.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments: This subject basically covered everything you could discuss about drugs. There were four main topics - alcohol, opiates, penicillin and thalidomide. I've attached the subject outline to give an idea on how the course is structured. For each theme, there were one or two lectures discussing the basic information of the drug, as well as its social, historical and legal issues. Here's a rather interesting quote from the handbook:

Quote from: Handbook entry
Lectures will provide basic information about the processes leading to the development of the drugs, their mechanism of action, the historical context of their impact on society, and how this has been handled legally. Tutorials and small group work will allow students to discuss and debate the issues raised and to put them into the context of their own experiences.

When it says basic information, it really does mean basic. They tell you obvious information like 'Don't drink alcohol because it is bad". The only lectures that were interesting were the law ones where they touched on the legal issues pertaining drug use.

Tutorials were an opportunity to discuss and expand material covered in lectures. A tutor (a later year student) was there to facilitate discussion. So the quality of the tutorial session depended on how well everyone discussed issues. There were times when people didn't care so you wouldn't learn anything from that session.

There was also a Magistrates Court visit where you have to attend court at some point during the semester and fill in a sheet. This is handed in during a tutorial which contributed to the tutorial mark.

The exam was essay-type which requires you to pick 4 questions from a choice of about 5.

Overall, I thought the workload was light but the subject was badly put together (throwing bits of information together to make a subject). It was expensive as well ~$1,000. If I could go back in time I would definitely choose a different subject. Hope this review helps anyone intending to do this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on July 10, 2011, 11:28:03 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20008 Integrative Human Physiology

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures; 1 x 2hr CAL sessions fortnightly

Assessment:  Lecture attendance/PRS (5%); CAL (15%); 2 x MST (30%); Final exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, lots

Textbook Recommendation:  Human Physiology by Silverthorn

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2010 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: This subject is one of the prerequisites for a Physiology major and postgraduate health science courses.  It covers the basic Physiology concepts required for third year Physiology subjects - cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, muscular, renal and some neurophysiology. The lectures were engaging and interactive. Attendance is compulsory and is worth 5% of overall marks. You will be required to lease a PRS clicker at the start of the semester for about $10. You will need this to record lecture attendance and participate in 'poll-the-audience' style questions during the lecture which makes it so fun.

(http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/4988/1fdsp.jpg)   (http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg703/scaled.php?server=703&filename=2fgd.jpg&res=medium)

The fortnightly CAL sessions involved working in a group of 3 to complete a question sheet or going through a computer program. At the end of each session there will be a past exam question which you will complete. Your demonstrator comes around and gives a mark for it.

For the final exam, study the lecture notes very thoroughly as everything in them will be examined. They could just take numbers of a diagram and make you fill them in - easy marks for anyone who remembers ;D such as this :P
http://vce.atarnotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,34453.msg360716.html#msg360716  It was a short answer question so you had to do this in about 12 minutes
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Peedles on July 12, 2011, 01:55:21 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20008 Human Physiology 

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures; 1 x 2hr CAL sessions fortnightly

Assessment:  Lecture attendance/PRS (5%); CAL (15%); 2 x MST (30%); Final exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Alot of Practice Exams

Textbook Recommendation:  Silverthorn, D.U., Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach 5th Ed., 2010 - Pearson

Lecturer(s): Dr Genevieve Morris, David Williams, Charles Sevigny and Arianne Dantas

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2011

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (75%)

Comments: I felt the need to write this review because this year the Exam has changed drastically. As of 2011, lecturers have decided that since Human Physiology is a pre-requisite for many of the graduate health science courses, the exam will be adapted to suit. In past exams, there has been alot of flexibility as students are able to have choice (from a selection of questions) in the questions that they want to answer. The exam has now been set up in a way where there are no longer MC questions and no longer any choice with questions. All questions must be answered and all material covered in lectures/CAL is assessable. (Although, the questions are still similar to the past exams (Short Answer Questions), so it is still a good reference)

Here's the structure of the exam:
INSTRUCTIONS TO STUDENTS :

SECTION A:  Cardiovascular system & Respiratory system
Short Answer Questions. Suggested time - 30 minutes. 25% of total marks. All questions are of equal value.
Answer both questions in the space provided.

SECTION B: Homeostasis, CNS, autonomic NS & endocrine; Digestion & Reproduction
Short Answer Questions. Suggested time – 30 minutes. 25% of total marks. Answer THREE (3) of the questions in the space provided.

SECTION C: Neural Integration, Muscle & Kidney
Long Answer Questions. Suggested time 60 minutes. 50% of total marks. Answer THREE (3) questions in the space provided.

Therefore, it is integral that you do not fall behind. Although, the 2 MST are there to motivate you to keep up to date anyway. What I didn't like about the exam was that, they didn't put point allocations for each question so it was kind of hard to determine how much detail you had to write down.

What i would have done differently? I think maybe doing the Past Papers during the semester as each topic was covered (Past MCQ would have helped for the MST's) and practicing answering short answer questions in detail. I felt that leaving Past Exam Questions to the last minute when I was under the stress and tiredness of having studied other exams caused me to be more focused on getting them done rather than trying to go through each question logically and methodically. This was probably my downfall in the exam. Finally, contribute more to the Discussion Boards and make use of your fellow eager beaver peers.

In addition to the CAL sessions that Edmund mentioned, the subject now has fortnightly MCQ submissions and Blog Discussion which formed part of the 15% CAL grade. The MCQ involved making up a question relevant to the most recent lectures; which I think lecturers used to stock up on good PRS questions for the prospective PHYS20008 cohort. The Blog Discussion (open for a week) involved the Lecturer posting up a Past Examination Question (which they felt was problematic) whereby your CAL group(s) and Demonstrator will then discuss the question. It is also a good forum to post up any queries. Completion of the MCQ and Participation towards the blog form part of your fortnightly CAL assessment grade.

I don't think Human Physiology was a difficult subject to grasp. Although I feel that this subject has set up more hurdles for students to pass in order to achieve a H1 (Hence, all the more reason to keep up to date). I know alot of people who got there Final Result and received a lower score than they expected because of this. Overall, the content made sense, extremely relevant to the workplace (prospective) and enjoyable. 

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Russ on July 12, 2011, 08:14:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB30002 Global Health, Security & Sustainability 

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tute per week

Assessment:  1000 word OpEd piece (30%), 3000 word essay (60%), tutorial participation (5%), oral presentation on a week's readings (5%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No exam!

Textbook Recommendation:  You need it in order to do your oral presentation, but you could probably get away with photocopying your selected readings from someone else. It has material that's useful for the OpEd but not essential. It's a good starting point for your essay but you're not allowed to cite it.

Lecturer(s): Tons. Subject covers so many areas that there are probably 20 different lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2011

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Redacted. PM me if required.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gongchan on August 07, 2011, 05:49:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30008 Drugs: From Discovery to Market

Workload:     Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week (total contact hours: 36) Total Time Commitment: 120 hours

Assessment:      Continuing assessment 10%    Mid-semester assessment 20%    A 2 hour examination in the examination period 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, one provided (subject began last year), past questions from other relevant subjects also provided. However, no past midsemesters available.

Textbook Recommendation:  None prescribed.  Recommended:Pharmacology, Rang et al., Churchill Livingstone, 6th edition, 2007 OR Principles of Pharmacology, Golan et al., Lippincott, Wilkins & Williams, 2nd edition, 2007. Not really "needed"; I didn't look through them last semester.

Lecturer(s): (could have missed some) Michael Lew, Tony Hughes, Ross Bathgate, Alastair Stewart, Gary Anderson, Peter McIntyre

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is required for a pharmacology major. It goes through some basic pharmacological principles in more depth than Pharmacology: How Drugs Work (level 2), and talks about the drug discovery process. The "continuing assessment" consists of online multiple choice tests with a lot of time to look up the answer if you don't know, and a lot of people get full marks on them (or close to it). The midsemester test had a lot of time pressure (and all essay/short answer), and the average mark was 50% this year. The final exam also had no multiple choice and was all essays, and you had to choose 6/7 topics to write on. However, it was less pressured for time than the midsemester.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gongchan on August 07, 2011, 06:04:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30009 Drugs in Biomedical Experiments 

Workload:  Contact Hours: one x 3 hour practicals per week plus two x 1 hour workshops per week (total contact hours: 60) Total Time Commitment: 120 hours

Assessment:      Continuing assessment of practicals during the semester (40%);    Mid-semester assessment (20%);    A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (40%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, one midsemester provided, one exam. (out of two previous semesters)

Textbook Recommendation:  Course Manual (Provided) (no cost). No textbook prescribed or recommended, although pharmacology knowledge from theory subjects will help.

Lecturer(s): (not complete) Michael Lew, James Ziogas, Graham Mackay, Alastair Stewart, Peter McIntyre

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) H1 (barely)

Comments: The subject is a practical subject, available in semester one and two, and compulsory for the pharmacology (biomed or sci) major. Compared to some other practical subjects (from what I hear) it is pretty laid back (not assessed each week), but sometimes pracs can be up to 4 hours long. The midsemester and final exam in semester one felt harder than last year's ones which we had for practice. They can sometimes throw strange questions (non multiple choice) to do with hypothesis generation etc. That said, to do reasonably well in the exam doesn't really require that much hardcore knowledge.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gongchan on August 07, 2011, 06:15:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002 Biomedicine: Molecule to Malady

Workload:  Contact Hours: Three 1-hour lectures per week plus two 1-hour tutorials per semester (note: the tutorials are a timetabling artifact; they are just spots to make up for lectures due to the tests, because they wanted to keep 36 total "learning" lectures I guess). Total Time Commitment: 120 hours

Assessment:      2x Intra-semester tests (20% each) at around weeks 5 and 9;    3 hr written examination in the final examination period (60%). (note: There are 6 themes. Two are assessed in each midsemester in MC format (4 out of 6 in total), but in the end of year exam the last two are assessed for 1/3 of the exam mark in MC format (ie 20% of total like the midsemesters) and the rest is a choice of short answer questions for 4 themes out of 6)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  None, but sample short answer/essay questions given.

Textbook Recommendation:  None prescribed.

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: It was quite interesting to learn about 6 major types of "maladies". Like the biomed cores from second year onwards though, it was not easy, although a lot of people received H1s on the midsemesters.

I guess you don't really have a choice with this subject though; if you're in biomed you have to do it, but if you're outside biomed, you can't do it at all. The choice has already been made for you :P.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gongchan on August 07, 2011, 06:28:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20026 Real Analysis with Applications

Workload:     Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 4 x one-hour computer laboratory classes during semester Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:  Ten to twelve written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 50 pages (20%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%). (no multiple choice)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, however, the lecturer does a lot of working out on the whiteboard which is not recorded.

Past exams available:  Yes, about four, but as someone else on is thread pointed out, only one for this subject was useful because for some reason the lecturers all seem to teach different stuff for this one subject. The lecturer gave us plenty of practice from Accelerated Math 2 past exams though.

Textbook Recommendation:  None prescribed

Lecturer(s): Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5 (in terms of interest if you like math, but don't expect it to be easy!)

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (barely)

Comments: As stated by someone else on this thread, this subject goes into the deeper and more fundamental levels of mathematics. It's very rigorous. It's also way harder than calculus 2 and linear algebra, so I wouldn't recommend it as breadth or an elective if you found those difficult.

I found the depth that this subject went into was quite interesting, although like the other reviewer of this subject, I was frustrated with having to explain almost every minor detail in my working. For instance, you can't just use L'Hopital's rule by saying (0/0) or something without saying f is continous, g is continous bla bla bla, and can't just say the limit of 1/x as x approaches infinity is 0 without further explanation.

The labs were not assessed, but somewhat useful.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gongchan on August 07, 2011, 06:40:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra

Workload:  Contact Hours: Summer Semester: 6 x one hour lectures per week, 2 x one hour practice classes per week, 2 x one hour computer laboratory classes per week.
Semester 1 and 2: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:  Summer semester: Five written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 25 pages (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held at the end of semester (10%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).

Semester 1 and 2: Ten written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 25 pages (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held at the end of semester (10%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  I think so (never used it).

Past exams available:  Yes, >4

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed text: Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 10th edn, Wiley, 2010. (not required). There were course notes which you are supposed to fill in during lectures available at the bookshop.

Lecturer(s): Prof Peter Forrester

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Summer

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is mainly covering the use of matrices in many different ways. I thought it was pretty easy, although that said, I did do well in math in high school. In summer, I got 3 lectures a day for 2 days a week, and for 6 weeks. The first several lectures were quite boring, because the lecturer taught a concept and then did heaps of examples which were slightly different from one another, where you'd expect to "get" the concept on the first example (although that said, I guess not everyone is strong in math). It got better as the semester progressed.

I personally found the labs to be the most difficult part of this subject, due to the coding involved, but very little knowledge of it (apart from quite basic commands) is required for the lab test.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: happyhappyland on October 15, 2011, 09:50:48 am
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law [PBL]  

Workload:  2 hours Lectures a week with tutorials which are done by yourself in your own time (averages around 1-2 hours a week if you want to get a good mark)

Assessment:  Three Semester tests at 15% and end of year exam at 55%; All multiple choice

Lectopia Enabled:  NO!!!

Past exams available:  NONE!!!

Textbook Recommendation:  You have to buy the subjects tutorial book and "textbook". The tutorial book allows you access to the online tutorials.

Lecturer(s): Theres one dude that plays weird music during the breaks. His not that great, really boring

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1

Rating:  0.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) 74

Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

Dont do this subjects, its terrible. The low contact hours and multiple choice assessments might attract you but there is ALOT of rote learning where you memorise cases and regurgitate them. Very pointless subject, it is more LAW than actual COMMERCE (e.g. Accounting or economics subject) and I would not suggest doing it unless you are doing an Accounting Major where you have to complete it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Slumdawg on November 25, 2011, 11:10:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: MKTG10001 Principles of Marketing 

Workload:  1 X  two hour lecture per week, 1 X one hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  One essay based on a marketing concept found within a newspaper article (10%), creating an entire marketing plan for the Windows 7 phone *cough dodgy marketing there cough* (30%), exam consisting of 4 essays (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No, they didn't give out past exams. However, Simon gave out 3 practice questions to give a feel for his type of essay questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Marketing 8e by Kotler is prescribed, it's definitely needed for both assignments (or at least I definitely relied on them to help deepen my understanding of the topics I needed to write on). But I'd probably just borrow it for the assignment because it's probably not necessary for much else, although it is nice to have a good reference guide because the notes can be very brief.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Simon Bell - He was fantastic. Very engaging and I liked his sense of humour. He used really great examples and I actually enjoyed attending his lectures. (Note: Semester 1 and summer semesters have completely different lecturers - Simon is only for semester 2)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011.

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Well firstly I have to say this subject was organised extremely well. We were constantly kept aware of various updates via the LMS and the tutorial content really helped revise the material covered in lectures (as did the assignments). In contrast to other subjects where the tutorials, pracs, assignments, etc. aren't really related to the exam/lectures or each other, I felt like there was a lot of cohesiveness between everything done in the subject which was a refreshing change!

The lecturer was really great and made me enjoy the subject even more. Although prepare your printer for a big ink burner because his lecture notes have pictures on EVERY slide apart from the opening slide which just features the title of the lecture. It kinda annoyed me because the pictures got in the way of writing notes on the slides, but apparently he's a really visual person so you just gotta deal with it. They're also quite brief so you need to constantly annotate your lectures notes otherwise at the end of the semester when you're revising it'll make your life a lot harder!

Throughout the semester you might be feeling the subject content is quite easy (that's what most of us thought), however Simon doesn't like people making fun of his subject so he makes sure the exam is a real challenger. It had 7 essay questions, to which you must only write on 4. However given you only have 2 hours this isn't a lot of time. The thing that makes his questions difficult is that he takes multiple seemingly unrelated topics and puts them together into a question and expects you to be able to link and integrate various areas all in 30 minutes. Crazy huh! I felt quite overwhelmed when I was told of the exam format but when revising I made sure I constantly tried to link various concepts. True to form, the exam featured interestingly tied in topics like segmentation, co-creation and marketing communications all in the one question (which were 3 various topics taught at very different times throughout the semester). So it was actually quite difficult and really tested your understanding of the material rather than your ability to regurgitate facts and definitions. If you hate essays or aren't good at them then definitely avoid doing marketing in semester 2 (I think the exam format is different for summer and definitely for semester 1 which features no essays!).

The two assignments seemed easy enough although were marked extremely harshly with almost half the class merely receiving a pass grade. They need to include copious references, good links between topics, a good layout and other various nit picky things which your tutor will outline (follow these extremely carefully). The one thing here that is extremely irritating is that the second assignment is a group one, of course some people in the group had very different standards and produced pretty average work. Given its heavy weighting I had to spend many extra hours fixing up other sections, which was very frustrating. My tip, only pair up with people you know have similar goals in the subject as you. My group unfortunately featured people aiming for passes in the subject which is fine but not when it affects your own grades.

Overall this subject has been my favourite one this year. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get a basic understanding of marketing. I think the knowledge gained is very useful and has helped me gain a different perspective on the entire field of study.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on November 28, 2011, 05:52:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC30017 Statistical Physics 

Workload:  2-3 1 hour lectures per week, 1 1 hour problem solving class

Assessment:  2 assignments (worth 10% each), 3 hour exam (worth 80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with/without screen capture. Wouldn't rely on lectopia since the lecturer also uses the white boards.

Past exams available:  Yes (~10, although the subject went under another name "620-322 Statistical Physics Advanced (prior to 2009)")

Textbook Recommendation:  You don't have to buy a textbook, but Statistical Physics an  Introductory Course is recommended if you're rusty with thermal physics

Lecturer(s): Dr. Andy Martin

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: Will update when mark is released.

Comments: Statistical physics is an interesting field of physics that I intend to go further with in my studies of mathematical physics in masters. The subject takes thermodynamics and quantum physics and merges them together so you can study how bulk matter behaves at low temperatures (i.e. T 0K) and how quantum mechanics becomes so important. The subject is essentially an introduction to condensed matter physics. The problem solving classes weren't that useful since you're put into a lecture theatre and solve problems on your own.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on November 28, 2011, 06:15:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30029 Partial Differential Equations 

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  1 50 minute mid-semester test (20%), 3 hour exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  1 past exam, 1 practice exam and 1 past mid-semester test

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer: Assoc Prof Antoinette Tordesillas

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: Will update when mark is released

Comments: PDE's is an exceptionally important subject for Applied Maths. The subject covers 6 areas: Method of Characteristics, Fourier Series, Separation of Variables, Fourier Transforms, Laplace Transforms and Green's Functions. I thouroughly recommend attending the tutorials, since Antoinette and another tutor go around helping you.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on November 28, 2011, 06:44:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30024 Geometry 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 tutorial

Assessment:  3 assignments (20%), 3 hour exam (80%)
 
Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  1

Textbook Recommendation: This webpage has all resources Craig gave us

Lecturer(s): Dr. Craig Westerland

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Will update when mark is released.

Comments: I absolutely loved this subject! It covers Basic Topology, Classification of Surfaces, Differential Topology, Differential Geometry and Riemann Surfaces. Although the subject finished on a bad note with the exam being significantly harder than last year's, though this year is only the second year the subject has run.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on November 28, 2011, 07:23:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30026 Metric and Hilbert Spaces 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 tutorial

Assessment:  2 assignments (20%), 3 hour exam (80%)
 
Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  1

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s): Prof Hyam Rubinstein

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011 (hopefully)

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: Will update when mark is released.

Comments: First of all, this subject is not for the faint of heart. It is an intense subject that last year replaced two subjects (metric spaces and linear analysis). The highlight of this subject was that Hyam (probably the best mathematicians at Melbourne University) taught it. The subject essentially builds on what was taught in Real Analysis and linear operators in Group Theory and Linear Algebra.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Russ on November 28, 2011, 08:11:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: Living Longer: A Global Diagnosis

Workload:  1 lecture a week (2 hours), 1 tute a week for 10 weeks

Assessment: 
10 weekly blogs, 300 words = 3% each
'wiki' presentation on a research article = 10%
tutorial mark = 10%
Research Report/Essay = 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  N/A

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: ~H1

Comments: redacted, PM me with questions if required
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mikee65 on November 28, 2011, 08:53:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: Introductory Microeconomics

Workload:  2 lectures a week (50 minutes each), one tute every week (50 minutes)

Assessment:  Lets start off with my favourite

10% tutorial participation :)

10% Assignment 1

15% Assignment 2

5% Mid semester online MCQ test

60% End of semester exam


Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes ranging beyond the scope of the current style and content of the course, ie, IMO its not worth working past 2007 papers,

Solutions are usually provided for 4 years worth of exams prior to the year the subject is taken. (Some solutions will explain MCQ answers, some wont)

Textbook Recommendation:  Gans, King and Mankin 'Principles of Microeconomic' is a must, Microeconomics: case studies and applications by Jeff Borland is optional IMO, however I would recommend it because solutions for problems therein are provided on the LMS.


Lecturer(s): Mr Gareth James (S2), Prof Jeff Borland (S1) (Try to get your copy signed to embellish your ebay advertisement)

Year & Semester of completion:
Semester 2, 2011

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade
: H1

Comments:

Firstly, I recall some students having reservations about taking this subject because Jeff Borland (S1) wont be their lecturer, I will try to dispel this mentality.

This is a subject that everyone can succeed in, ie, obtain a H1,

The resources available to students are almost excessive, via the LMS students have access to: Complete lecture notes posted a week in advance, excerpts from various textbooks pertinent to subject matter, complete solutions to Borlands book, review questions posted every week covering that weeks material with complete solutions, an 'online tutor' which answers any questions about the course and its contents (troubles with questions in exams, lecture notes ect) usually within 24 hours (I strongly advise you make use of this service (the respondent gets paid for his troubles so he welcomes any question, no matter how stupid ;) )) and finally tutorial notes (unfortunately no solutions provided as these get recycled year to year, however the online tutor will answer you if your question is specific and researched)

Outside the LMS: 'pit-stop' tutorials, a dedicated room is announced via LMS, times are provided and students are able to arrive with their qualms to be discussed with a live tutor, finally the lecturer has consultation times during which you may discuss problems with the course or any other concerns.

What does this mean? THE LECTURER IS SUPERFLUOUS, you could literally stay at home with half of the support system this subject provides and scrape a H1.

Points on assessment: The 10% for tutorial participation can be considered 'in the bag' unless of course you arrive late (or not at all) and sit unresponsive with your back to the class, the tutor doesnt expect nervous excitement and arcane factoids about economics, just pay attention and you'll be fine.

A word about assignments, generally the course material can be considered relatively 'easy' which is why these puppies are marked quite harshly (I got ~50% on one), please due your research and read the question, I cant stress that enough, If you answer the question completely and close to correctly it leaves little room for the tutor (who marks your assignments) to justify marking you down, if you argue with them enough as did I, they will bend. For assignment 2, bear in mind that originality is key, leave the mundane classical textbook examples behind and do some research (this will make sense once you read the abstract)

The 5% MST can also be considered 'in the bag', this is basics,

A word on the exam, the bulk of the exam (75%) is written, as such, please make sure your explanation consider all perspectives of the question, are sharp succinct and to the point, no waffle, be expected tho complete the script book with your panicked hand writing in 90 minutes, finally USE DIAGRAMS there's nothing like a diagram to illustrate your arguments.

Finally, really, like the tutorials, questions from the exam are recycled, past exams indubitably are the best indicator of future exams, so do as many as you can and understand every single question that is asked, if you don't there's plenty of support networks available to help you understand the error of your ways and lead you back to a righteous path, on that pious note I will end before my hands fall off.
 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dc302 on November 29, 2011, 02:55:34 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST30021 Complex Analysis

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: 4x assignments 20%; final exam 80% 

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn’t use one.

Lecturer: Alex Ghitza and Paul Norbury

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 88

Comments: This subject is quite interesting, and has a fair balance of pure and applied maths. It is not as ‘annoying’ as real analysis and much more fun. In terms of difficulty, the subject is fairly easy as long as you keep up to date and make notes. Since you do not receive premade notes, going to lectures and writing notes yourself is not only important, but also very handy in not falling behind. In doing so, I only had to memorise some of the theorems and do some practice problems (there is a whole practice booklet to do) and it was fine. The first few assignments were tricky but the exam was very doable (and quite similar to past exams).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dc302 on November 29, 2011, 03:02:23 am
Subject Code/Name: Accelerated Mathematics 2

Workload: 4 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: Midsem 10%; a few assignments 10%; final exam 80% 

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn’t use one.

Lecturer: Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2010, Semester 2

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments: This subject is basically Real Analysis with Applications (and some calculus 2). It is an introduction to the rigor of higher university maths, and introduces concepts important to many areas of mathematics. It particularly helped me in my major of Pure mathematics. Real analysis itself is a prerequisite to 3 out of 4 maths major specialisations, as well as the physics and mathematical physics majors, so you can see how important it is. In terms of difficulty, it can be said to be quite hard, but there does exist a point of enlightenment, and once you cross that, the subject becomes rather easy.

I did not like the lecturer—he made me fall asleep so I stopped going to lectures. Every lecture, a lecture notes sheet is handed out so that alone is enough to keep up to date. Doing exercises throughout the semester is highly recommended, but understanding the concepts is more important.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dc302 on November 29, 2011, 03:10:08 am
Subject Code/Name: Vector Calculus

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment: 4x assignments 20%; final exam 80% 

Lectopia Enabled:  Can’t remember..

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn’t use one.

Lecturer: ...(didn’t go to lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating:  1/5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments: Although perhaps largely due to my bias (being a pure maths major), I found this subject extremely boring, though very easy. Just looking through the lecture notes I knew this wasn’t the subject for me. Vector calculus teaches students about the applications of 2 and 3-variable calculus, in finding quantities such as volume and mass of solids. It is used primarily (I believe) in fields such as mechanical engineering, and is useful to know when studying areas of mathematics like complex analysis and geometry. The work is VERY formulaic, so once you know how to do one type of question, every other question that is similar becomes easy. It is considered to be the ‘maths methods’ of second year by maths enthusiasts (heh). Studying for this subject is of course therefore, quite simple as long as you understand the concepts.

ALSO NOTE: The ‘partial notes’ you receive are NOT partial. They are FULL notes with the solutions in white font. My friends and I became aware of this the night before the exam...although it didn’t make much difference as there is a question book with answers, so doing that is sufficient replacement from doing the examples in the lectures.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tek on December 01, 2011, 11:40:19 am
Subject Code/Name: GENE30004 Genetic Analysis

Workload:  1x1 hour lecture per week, 1x3 hour prac per week, and 1x1hour journal club/tutorial per week

Assessment:  30% prac reports/questions, 30% exam, 15% problem assignments, and 25% journal club assessment (5% oral and 20% written)   

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, however the newer topics make the earlier exams less relevant

Textbook Recommendation:  None, the prac manual is provided

Lecturer(s): 6 lecturers. The quality varies but there were no shockers

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 semester 2

Rating:  4.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 85

Comments: This was probably the best and challenging subject offered in a genetics major. As a prac subject there were only 12 lectures which are loosely connected to the pracs. Topics included genetic cloning (not the kind you're thinking of), sequencing and transgenic organisms. I found the lectures interesting and the amount of content was just right. I did not feel overloaded by information, unlike other subjects i've had where they give you slide after slide with wall of texts. That said, it was not an easy subject, there was a lot of assessment during the semester but it was fairly spread out. However for a bioinformatics assignment worth 5% we were practically left in the dark. I spent a few 2 hour sessions using the specific program and by the end of it was in the same position i started in. I was not alone, before the assignment was due, at any given moment there were probably at least 5 people in the medical computer lab attempting it.

i liked the pracs, sometimes it can get a bit repetitive and formulaic, but overall it was a great experience. As a biomed student who didnt do the second year genetics prac subject, there was a slight disadvantages as there was some techniques that i havent done. However these could be picked up easilily, and if you made a mistake you can rely on the class data and the end of the experiment. In my year it consisted of four pracs spread over multiple weeks with some overlap. The assessment was relatively easy. We never had to write a report just answers questions based on the prac.  The demonstrators are nice and helpful, for example when we had a genetics dinner they halved the amount of questions in the report that was due that week. The journal club is where you are given a journal article and you have to give a 12 minute oral and a 2000 word report based on it. This was useful as it makes you learn about the topic in the paper, gives you a general understanding of how papers are written, and is good experience if you want to continue in research where journal clubs are common. As for the exam, around half of it is based on the lectures and half the pracs. There is a lot of recycling, so the best way to study is to look at past exams.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tek on December 01, 2011, 12:22:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: Genetics MAJOR

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture. department policy to have no screen capture.

Past exams available:  always

Textbook Recommendation:  useful, but not necessary

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 semester 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Averaged a H1

Comments: I'm doing things a bit different by reviewing a major, but I think users will find it useful.
Overall I enjoyed the experience. What I like most about the major is that in all of the subjects we were thought concepts and were assessed on how we can use those concepts. There was hardly any rote learning and the lectures weren't overwhelming with information. The genetics subjects are well organised and its people are nice. One weakness they have is the quality of the lecturers. There are a few lecturers who are monotonal and just plain boring (which is exacerbated by their topics). Most were average to slightly above average. The standouts for me were Dawn and Phil. Most of the exams are relatively 'easy', there is a lot of recycling and they always have a swot vac tutorial where you can ask the lecturer for answers to past exam questions.

Overall i found the major to be intellectually stimulating, while its difficulty was easy to mildly challenging. However, as a word of warning, if you plan on doing the major make sure you are interested genetics. A lot of people can find the topics (such as population genetics) boring and struggle to take in the information. If your not interested in genetics, it is probably on the harder side of the majors.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tek on December 02, 2011, 11:10:35 am
Subject Code/Name: GENE30005 Human and Medical Genetics 

Workload:  3x1hour lectures per week

Assessment: 
5% pedigree analysis/ mcq assignment (used as a review for first year topics)
2x 7.5% midsemester tests made up of MCQs
80% 3hr end of semester exam (MCQ and essay/short answer)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  none, lecture slides are sufficient

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 semester 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: This subject deals with how genetics relates to diseases. This includes specific diseases (eg thallasaemias) and their genetic basis, cytogenetics, cancer, sex determination, transgenic organisms and genetic mapping. As there were a lot of topics, we weren't required to have a deep knowledge of any single one, rather we just needed a general understanding of the genetic concepts. While overall I found the subject to be interesting, there were some topics (and lecturers) to be boring. The assessment was fairly easy. The assignment was basically 1st/2nd year problems/questions and the mcq for the most part weren't too difficult either. The exam was fairly challenging, the majority of the marks were short answer essay type questions, covering the main topics. During my exam review i fell into the trap of answering the past exam questions in my head. In hindsight I should have actually practiced writing and formulating actual answers. As a result I struggled for time in the actual exam.

NOTE: this subject is optional for a genetics major, however most of the people do it anyway. Also this subject is available as a breadth/science elective, but I wouldn't recommend it, as previous genetics knowledge (including third year genetics) helps you understand the topics a lot.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on December 02, 2011, 06:04:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30008 Frontiers in Physiology

Workload: 

Weeks 1-3: 9 optional lectures
Weeks 4-5: At least 2 lectures out of 6
Weeks 6-10: At least 10 out of 15 lectures

Assessment:  20% written assignment on Week 4 and 5 lectures, 2 tests in Week 11 (40%), Wiki group project (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Dr. Sheldon Cooper

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 2

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: A rather dry subject that aims to cover several aspects of scientific research in Physiology such as written communication skills, teamwork and collaboration. The first 3 weeks are not assessed in any way and are a total waste of time. Material covered is useless and not worth going to. There are 2 Cardiovascular Health, 2 Muscle & Exercise and 2 Neurophysiology keynote lectures in Weeks 5 and 6. You need to choose 2 different lecture (from different themes) for the assignment. The lectures in Weeks 6-10 are divided into 3 blocks again, 5 CV, 5 ME, 5 NP. There is a test for each of these blocks in Week 11 and you will need to do at least 2 tests. If you choose to do 3, the best 2 will be counted. The 40% Wiki assignment involves getting into groups of 6 and working on a research project that involves reviewing journal articles throughout the semester.

So you may be thinking that it's too easy :P The first 6 weeks or so is fairly laid back. However, workload starts increasing quickly during the Weeks 6-10 period and you will be pressured to keep up with the material in time for the Week 11 tests. You will find that lectures will be similar to the lectures in Semester 1 (CV Health, M & E Physiology, NeuroPhys), but the pace is much faster i.e. 10 semester 1 lectures crammed into 5 lectures. If you haven't done the CV Health, M & E Physiology, NeuroPhys subjects, you will struggle significantly unless you spend extra time going over the lectures and reading the appropriate papers. The tests are difficult even though they assess just 5 lectures.

My advice is that if you are interested in this subject, make sure you have done at least 2 of CV Health, M & E Physiology, NeuroPhys, keep up with the lectures even though you have already covered some of them in your other lectures and don't leave your Wiki to the last week.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dcc on December 02, 2011, 07:49:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP30021 Theoretical Computer Science

Workload:  2 lectures a week and a tutorial (3 hours total)

Assessment: 2 assignments worth 30% in total and a final exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  One of the lectures had it.

Past exams available:  I think so?

Textbook Recommendation:  The book is pretty essential, I bought it off the internet for like $10 (it costs ~$150 retail)

Lecturer(s): Harald (legend!)

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 2.

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95

Comments: Absolutely fantastic subject, the brilliant continuation of COMP20004 Discrete Structures.  Topics covered (undecidability, decidability, complexity theory, time complexity, space complexity) are very very very very very (5) interesting, and Harald is a great lecturer.  This subject provided me with a much appreciated change in style (proofs are usually intuitive, not a lot of bashing), which is appreciated as a math student. 

The tutorials are done in a group-ish setting, so a lot of fun was had discussing the various problems provided to us.  Also the assignment style is fun - Harald gives super hard assignments (and a lot of time to do them), and its a satisfying experience to finally realise the correct way to do something after 3 weeks of thinking about a problem.  The class is super small (<15 people) and it has a nice atmosphere.  If you can take this subject, do so.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Slumdawg on December 02, 2011, 08:55:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10003 - Genes and Environment 

Workload:  3 X one hour lecture per week, 1 X three hour prac every fortnight and 1 X one hour tutorial each week.

Assessment:  10% Mid-semester test (featuring 25 multiple-choice questions), 25% pracs (featuring one very short assignment but mostly composed of tests at the end of pracs), 5% online independent learning tasks (ILTs) and the big exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture.

Past exams available:  One sample exam available which was quite useful.

Textbook Recommendation:  Life by Sadava is recommended however I never looked at it once for semester 2 biol.

Lecturer(s): Ross Waller, Rob Day and Dawn Gleeson (takes more than half of the entire subject).

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011.

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Well firstly in my opinion I found this subject much harder than its semester 1 counterpart (Biomolecules and Cells), although I think those who had done VCE bio were at a distinct advantage due to their prior knowledge of genetics. This subject starts off quite boring, focusing on the "environment" part of the subject, you learn about the life cycles of fungi, a large number of parasites and a bit of evolution. Then after the first 3 and bit weeks you get stuck into the "genes" component of the subject which is far more interesting but yet more complex. Throughout the semester I thought I was doomed for this subject because I'd gotten behind, missing 10 lectures in a row (yes I know it's terrible but it wasn't intentionally! :P). The good thing is you can definitely catch up on your own if you put the work in, I went to the library for a few days in a row and just listened to the lectures one after the other until I got through the entire series of lectures. I thought Dawn Gleeson's voice would start permeating through my dreams pretty soon considering I'd been hearing her voice in excess of 5 hours each day!

However I must say one of the best things about this subject is the fact that Dawn lectures the majority of it. Some people didn't like her, but I personally found her extremely entertaining (she makes so many dirty jokes it's hilarious!) and she explained things pretty well most of the time. Although a bunch of pictures presented in the lecture aren't in the notes, she only examines what is in her notes (cough Rob Day LEARN FROM DAWN cough) which means not having screen captured lectopia isn't THAT big of a deal. She does however get very behind in lectures, at one point we were 2 lectures behind! But in the end she covered all the content and it didn't feel too rushed so it was all alright.

This subject requires a lot of hours to be put in if you're aiming for a high score because there's just so much content to cover and understand. Then of course because it's genetics you need to be able to apply your knowledge to various problems which takes time. The mid semester test is quite specific, you really need to know your information in detail otherwise you'll get a low score. The pracs are all good and not too hard to score well in, although each test we had usually featured one pretty hard question which was kinda annoying.

Overall thanks to Dawn I really enjoyed this subject, it'd be a 5 out of 5 rating if we didn't have the first few weeks with Ross and Rob who both aren't the most entertaining lecturers and also their content wasn't particularly interesting. The subject is run really well, the pracs help with understanding the lecture content and therefore its overall cohesiveness made the subject really great :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Russ on December 04, 2011, 03:47:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: Genetics, Health and Society

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tute (for the last six weeks only)

Assessment:
3 MCQ tests - 10% each
group wiki and presentation - 10%
2 hour exam - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn’t use one.

Lecturer: Various.

Year & Semester of completion: 2010, Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: It's split into three general sections - for four weeks they teach you about the biology of "genetics", then the next four weeks is an exploration of all the areas that genetics has influenced (art/law/etc.) and then the final four weeks are about the "ethics" of decision making.

It suffers from the problem of being boring for people who already know the structure of DNA, how genetic inheritance works etc until the halfway mark. I enjoyed the lectures, but then again I also took philosophy and creative writing as breadth. If you dislike thinking laterally and discussing questions without correct answers, then this probably isn't something you'll enjoy a lot.

The wiki is, as with all group work, dependent on you getting a good group. The final exam is pretty easy, you get to pick areas to write on, so if you're completely ignorant of all things law then you don't have to discuss genetics and law etc.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bridger on December 06, 2011, 05:28:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20008 Human Physiology

Workload:  3 lectures per week and 6 2-hour Computer Aided Learning (CAL) sessions during the semester

Assessment: Effective personal response system (PRS) participation and contributions (5%); Tasks related to computer-aided learning activities during semester (15%); two 45-minute written examinations held during semester (30%); a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (50%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, a lot are available. However, only the 2011 exams will be set out in the current format (unless this changes next year, although I doubt it)

Textbook Recommendation:  Dee Unglaub Silverthorn - Human Physiology. I found it fairly helpful to understand concepts at first, but once I'd read through it once or twice the lecture notes were enough

Lecturer(s): Charles Sevigny (He said he was finishing up his PhD this year, and won't be lecturing next year), David Williams, Genevieve Morris, Arianne Dantas

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 2

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 74

Comments: I know that both Edmund and Peedles have already written good reviews for this one, but seeing as its a pre-requisite for the grad courses I think it's good to have a few reviews. Ok, well I found that as a subject, the concepts in Physiology were not too hard to understand. However, I feel that the way this subject is assessed is to make it hard for students to do well. Basically there's 2 multi choice tests, each worth 15%, held for us in weeks 6 and 11 of semester. The tests involved a fair few tricky questions that really tested your understanding of Physiology (I fell victim to many of these, so read the questions CAREFULLY). Theres a free 5% for turning up to at least 75% of lectures. 15% goes towards your CAL mark, which involves your participation in the CAL sessions and also participation in the online blog. I found the blogs useless. They were supposed to enhance our understanding, but in each one there would be a couple of people who would just write down a whole slab of text, leaving not much to be answered and not really helping my understanding at all  >:(. I was a bit scathing of the blogs in the student feedback haha. Then that leaves 50% for the exam which is LONG. The format for the exam changed this year, the reasoning being that given Physiology is a pre-req for Med, Dent etc, students need to understand all concepts thoroughly. No more ''answer 3 out of 5 questions in section blah blah''. As I mentioned before, the exam is long, and I only managed to just finish in the 2 hours. For us Section A consisted of 5 MCQ on Kidney/Excretory System which wasn't covered in the two MSTs. Section B had 3 short answer questions and Section C was the same but worth a bit more. Section D was one massive questions with many parts worth a third of the exam's marks. It was not an easy question  :(.
All in all, Physiology was pretty interesting. I think there was more substance to the subject that the other two pre-requisites (Biochem and Anatomy). Not just memory work, more understanding of concepts. In the end though, pay close attention to detail and you will be fine  :).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: username on December 06, 2011, 06:12:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: SCIE30001 Science Research Project 

Workload:  10 hours a week in a lab, but you tend to spend a lot more than that. Most weeks I was in the lab for around ~15 hours.

Assessment:  It varies depending on the department. For the Microbiology and Immunology department, it was:


10% Literature review
10% Ability to record results properly
15% Ability to carry out experiments independently
15% Oral
50% Report on your experiment (thesis)


Lectopia Enabled:  NA

Past exams available:  NA

Textbook Recommendation:  NA, but you’ll be reading at least 30-40 journal articles as research for your lit review and final report.

Lecturer(s): NA

Year & Semester of completion: 2011

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade:  93

Comments:

This subject was a lot of fun, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in working in a lab, or progressing to Honours. You’ll get a lot of good research experience, such as designing/carrying out your own experiments. In the first few weeks I was taught lab techniques, and by the 3rd week I was independently carrying out assays by myself. 

Make sure you pick your supervisor well, because you’ll be with them A LOT for the whole semester. Also, be mindful that although you can nominate when to be in lab, it will require a lot of your time. One girl doing the subject had to complete a 12 hour experiment (all in one day).

Other things to consider:

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on December 06, 2011, 06:31:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: SCIE30001 Science Research Project

Workload: No lectures. Weekly contact hours range from 2-15 hours.

Assessment:  Depends on supervisor. Mine was an extended literature review of about 4000 words and an oral presentation. Not sure how much each were weighted.

Lectopia Enabled:  None

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): R.K.

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 2

Rating: 

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This review may not apply to projects in other departments

My project was based in the Department of Physiology (Basic and Clinical Myology) and was about nutritional interventions to muscle wasting. To get into this subject, you have to have completed some 300 point subjects relating to the topic you are interested in and contact the relevant supervisors. Students are selected according to relevant grades, research interest and interview. This will differ in various labs of course.

Before the start of semester, you will need to set a meeting time (usually early in the week) to discuss anything related to your project and tasks for the week. Depending on your supervisors expectations, the first couple of weeks will involve reading journal articles to build an understanding of the topic. There will then be opportunity to do hand on experiments and collect results. There was once when I had to come in at 7am to continue an experiment I left off the evening before :P My supervisor was kind of laid back so I didn't really have to do an actual project and design an experiment. I think username had a set project she had to do. There was also a weekly lab meeting I had to attend every Fridays at 8am where I got to watch a live lab meeting in progress where the lab members discussed progress in their research work and presented journals.

If you are interested in this subject, make sure you are proactive and take initiative. My supervisor was so laid back to the point that I could go through 10 weeks without having to do anything. I had to keep asking about assessment etc. and he made up some tasks close to the end of the semester. Managed to get together a literature review and presentation in the end :)

I would say this subject can be fairly demanding at times especially close to the end of semester. This subject will give you a taste of what Honours will be like. And if you aren't interested in doing research/Honours, omg don't do it because you'll be bored and won't do well!!!

Edit: Please excuse an grammar errors.... typed it really fast
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on December 06, 2011, 06:41:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: EVSC20003 Forests in a Global Context 

Workload:  5 x 4hr lectures, 5 x tutorials

Assessment:  20 questions (5% each)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes without screen capture

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Forestry in a Global Context (has answers to all the questions)

Lecturer(s): Sands, R

Year & Semester of completion: 2011 September

Rating: 0 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: A ridiculously boring subject on forests. Lectures in the morning are 4 hours long and are terribly boring. Tutorials are held in the afternoon and are a great opportunity to ask questions and get feedback on your assessment.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Peedles on December 06, 2011, 06:58:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20139 Gamelan Ensemble 2 

Workload:  2 hour Practice Class per week and a 2 hr Gamelan concert towards the end of semester

Assessment:  Attendance and participation (50%); a 10-minute practical examination at the end of the semester (25%); attendance and submission of a concert report of three appropriate concerts (500 words each, due weeks 4, 8 and 12) (25%)

Lectopia Enabled:  N/A

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Illona Wright

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
If you are looking for a bludgy breadth subject, then here it is. Although I believe the course is going to change next year (https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2012/MUSI20139). But I've had a read through next years assessment, and I don't think it would make that much of a difference apart from the fact that you will have to sacrifice a few hrs extra of your time LOL.

Practice class involved Illona writing some different types of pieces of music on the board and then the class just playing it. Here is a link to all the instruments you will play if you undertake this subject. (homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~jjordan/gamelan/instruments.html). The first couple of weeks is just experimenting with all the different instruments and differentiating which instruments are your strengths/weaknesses for the concert. Now the attendance/participation is 50%. But they make it quite clear at the start of semester that it is a bell-curved subject. There is obviously some kind of undisclosed points of differentiation when it comes to this part of assessment (especially if there are 60 students doing the subject). I predict that it has to with how you play during the practice sessions, your enthusiasm, your willingness to try out a variety of different instruments, whether your late to class or not and qualities that make you memorable, how you contribute to the practical classes and standout from the rest of the students to your demonstrator. Friend's that have done this in Semester 1 who received 100% for their quizzes and who were sure they received 100% on their test. Got scores ranging from 81 - 88. Bit weird. I only lost 2 marks on my quizzes (22/24) and i'm pretty sure I 100% the test and only got an 81. A friend of mine who got 100% for his quizzes and thought he got 100% on the test only got a H2B. So keep those points in mind if you want to do this subject and want to get a H1. (those who get lower than a H1 will exclaim that their mark was unjustified LOL)

From my knowledge the concert wasn't assessed, but it was more like a hurdle requirement. You needed to attend. You basically just play three allocated pieces that you will practice for several weeks leading up to the event. So don't stress about this.

The online quizzes resemble the Music Psychology quizzes that I had when i did the latter subject. There are 3 quizzes spread towards the later 2/3rds of the semester where you are allocated assigned readings for that quiz (comprising of 8 questions). Then you answer the comprehension questions. Mind you, the quizzes are worth 25% of your mark so getting one question wrong could prove detrimental to your overall score.

The written test was pretty easy. Had to memorise all the Instrument names. Write out Imbal(interlocking) and MIPIT lines of music. Define indonesian musical terms. The test should take no longer than 10 minutes. But once again, since it's 25% and there aren't many questions losing one mark will be costly. So please study for it.

If your looking for a easy pass, this is the subject for you. Alot of people will exclaim passionately that this subject is an easy H1. I guess compared to core subjects it is. But come into each gamelan class having those aforementioned points in mind. You are being closely monitored and are constantly assessed so always be on your game.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this subject is unavailable to BMus students. So even playing field =)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Edmund on December 08, 2011, 06:53:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30008 Viscera and Visceral Systems

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures and 1 x 3hr dissection per week

Assessment:  2 x 10% test and 2hr end of semester written exam 50% and 1 hour practical exam 30%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Clinically Oriented Anatomy, Gray's anatomy, Netter's Atlas, Anatomedia on USB

Lecturer(s): Many

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: This subject covers head, neck, pelvic and abdominal regions as well as the viscera within. The lecture series consists of material from second year anatomy lectures, clinical focussed lectures and current research. Some of the stuff like the thorax, abdomen and heart are pretty much similar to what you cover in second year classes except you have remember a few more vessels and nerves. The only hard part is probably the pelvic region otherwise the rest is straightforward.

There are 6 dissections and 6 workshops throughout the semester. Like human locomotor systems, you will form a group with 5 others and will be allocated a cadaver during the first dissection. Workshops involve examining prosections and working through prac sheets. Make use of these sessions to learn anatomy in 3D and go through the difficult bits with a demonstrator. Tip: Workshops are optional so most students leave after an hour. Stay for the whole 3 hours and you will find that the student to demonstrator ratio is awesome ;)

This is probably the best subject ever. There are not many anatomy courses out there that offer whole cadaver dissection and it will be a great experience. If you are keen on taking an anatomy subject as an elective or an extension to the second year course, this is the one to take. And if anyone is interested in dentistry, there is a series of lectures on head and neck anatomy as well as a clinical focussed lecture on forensic dentistry.

Hope I've convinced everyone reading this to do this subject :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on June 13, 2012, 02:19:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90067 Advanced Methods: Transforms

Workload:  24 one hour lectures, 12 one hour practice classes.

Assessment:  Two assignments worth 20% each, one 3 hour exam worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation: 

Carl M. Bender and Steven A. Orszag, Advanced mathematical methods for scientists and engineers: Asymptotic methods and perturbation theory, Springer. (1999).
George F. Carrier, Max Krook, and Carl E. Pearson, Functions of a Complex Variable: Theory and Technique, SIAM (2005).
• Murray R. Spiegel, Theory and Problems of Complex Variables, Schaum Outline Series.
• Murray R. Spiegel, Theory and Problems of Laplace Transforms, Schaum Outline Series.
• A. David Wunsch, Complex Variables with Applications, Second Edition (Addison-Wesley).
• E. B. Saff and A. D. Snider, Fundamentals of Complex Analysis for Mathematics, Science and Engineering (Prentice Hall).

Lecturer(s): Paul Pearce

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B [74]

Comments: This is my favourite university subject. The course is taught by a mathematical physicist, thus, he'll try invoke physics into as many lectures as possible. The subject starts off by looking at Lagrangian mechanics and then goes on to calculus of variations where you do all kinds of cool stuff with functionals. The subject also goes over the contour integration you would have learnt in Complex Analysis and extends that so you can do more advanced (and much cooler) contour integration. The subject then revisits Fourier and Laplace transforms, which were taught in Partial Differential Equations, but now that more advanced contour integral techniques have been taught, you get to do a couple of transforms by hand. The next part is asymptotic expansion of integrals, in this section you are taught techniques to approximate a difficult integral using methods such as Watson's Lemma, Laplace's method, method of stationary phase and method of steepest descents. Finally the subject finishes off by looking at generalised functions and Green's functions.

My advice is to stay on top of the questions assigned because you learn techniques that can't be learn't in a lecture and he actually threw in a question from the problem set into the exam. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bridger on June 14, 2012, 10:06:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30007 HUMAN LOCOMOTOR SYSTEMS

Workload:  Three 1 hour lectures and one 3 hour practical per week

Assessment:  2 Mid-Semesters (30 MCQ) = 10% each, Two hour theory exam (30 MCQ, 6 Section B short answer questions, 2 "essay" style Section C questions) = 50%, Two hour "practical" exam (90 MCQ) = 30%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:   No. 

Textbook Recommendation:  Drake et al Gray's Anatomy for Students, Moore KL et al: Clinically Oriented Anatomy
Definitely recommend Moore's, very useful. An anatomy atlas also a MUST, so get your hands on one (I used Netter's Atlas, which is a popular choice).

Lecturer(s): Varsha Pilbrow, Chris Briggs, Peter Kitchener, Various guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: -

Comments: Ok well after second year anatomy, I must admit I was fairly disappointed with the co-ordination of this subject. When I say that this subject is full on, I mean it is FULL ON. Not the difficulty, but the amount of content covered in lectures was excessive. If you are going to do this subject, expect it to consume a lot of your time if you want to keep up. My main issues with this subject were the amount of content covered in lectures and the speed at which this content was covered. It was virtually impossible to pick up everything in lectures so I was forced to re-listen to the lecture again online just to understand everything. It didn't help that the lecture notes were overly simplified compared to the actual content in the lecture. In addition to normal lectures on anatomy, there were nine clinical lectures from various guests who worked in some part of the medical/biomedical field. I found these to be fairly interesting, but often it was hard to know how this material would be assessed.
Practicals for the subject were overly packed, due to the department not putting a quota on the subject during enrollment period. Obviously once we were all enrolled they couldn't deny anyone a spot. (This did result in us twice to my memory being told we should all ''reconsider'' doing the subject/major, which even though I saw their point, I thought this was extremely inappropriate of the lecturers to say. It was clear they were struggling to cope with numbers, and as a result there wasn't exactly a ''welcoming'' feel in the subject. Hopefully next year they remember the quota!) There were 12 people per group (all huddled around a cadaver) with 16 groups in my practical, and understandably it was not an ideal learning environment. I luckily had a good demonstrator who was friendly and explained everything really well.
Overall, I felt the subject was taught in a very less than ideal manner. Concepts and facts were explained at a crazy pace, and it was extremely difficult to keep up. It would have been better if more organized, more clear and concise. My recommendation would be do this subject if you are REALLY interested in Anatomy, or it is counting towards your major. Otherwise, do another subject that won't impact your other subjects so much.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: VivaTequila on June 17, 2012, 01:16:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: RUSS10001 Russian 1

Workload: 
Quote from: handbook
Hours: 4-hours. 1 x 1-hour lecture, 2 x 1-hour seminars, and 1 x 1-hour practical per week.
Total Time Commitment:
8 hours per week, including 4 hours of class time. Total 96 hours per semester.
which is blatantly untrue, it's more like 2x 2hr tutes per week, one of them with a Russian native speaker, often ends early and ends up being 1.5hrs each.

Assessment:  10 weekly assignments commencing 2 weeks in comprising 50% (5% each), and an end of semester 2 hour examination worth 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No sample exam, just the assignments and a revision sheet. Nonetheless, it was more than sufficient.

Textbook Recommendation:  Ruslan 1 Textbook and Workbook at compulsory, but I got by just fine without them. You can get more off the net in an easier to understand format than these cruddy books. Don't buy them, it's a massive waste of cash.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Robert Largerberg, Ms Larisa Andreeva, and Dr Jonathan Clarke

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2012

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: -

Comments: It's hard to make up my mind about this subject. The way the subject was taught was fundamentally flawed. As grammar comprises such a large part of Russian, they obviously had to only introduce to us sentences with the accompanying grammar studies. At the end of Russian 1, we still can't say or understand anything in the future tense. That, on it's own, is ok, because Russian is an incredibly complex language. However, considering that such an effort was put into teaching us correct grammar for the sentences that we DO know how to construct, it is absurd that they just taught us disconnected "chunks" of grammar without clearly linking them together.

Without a knowledge of "cases" which are a fundamental component of many languages (not English, however), then it might be hard to understand what I'm about to say. The lecturers taught us the individual cases we were expected to know without contextualising them. In a bizzare turn of events, all the students could speak, read, and interpret most of what was expected, but without understanding how any of it fundamentally worked. The best way I can describe it was that it was taught halfway between wrote-learning sentences, and learning how to construct the sentences.

The high achievers in this subject would have already studied other languages and understood what wasn't explained grammar-wise, or like myself would have anguished themselves actually looking it up and connecting the dots between what was and wasn't explained. Now that I actually KNOW what they were trying to teach because I figured it out using the net, I can appreciate how well the subject is constructed. It's just that there was a massive disparity in the majority of the students collectively misunderstanding how the grammar worked and saying things certain ways "just because", and the logical way that they attempted to teach the subject

However, the native speaker made coming to class worthwhile. She's FOB as all hell, and she embraces it and clowns around makes everyone laugh. My lecturer had some major pedagogy issues too; he couldn't use a whiteboard in any coherent form and he didn't explain things sequentially.

Do this subject if you want to learn Russian and you can afford some time to decrypt the way this subject is taught. What they're trying to teach is fantastic - it is really a great way to learn such a complicated language. They just fall a few miles short of it.

PS No matter how bad you are at learning languages, this subject is a guaranteed pass for anyone because the assignments are piss-easy and make up 50% of the mark. You don't even need to sit the exam (which is also very easy) to get a pass. I always thought languages were hard until I bothered myself with learning this one.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: VivaTequila on June 17, 2012, 01:46:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10005 Calculus 1

Workload: 
Quote from: handbook
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours
3x1 hour weekly lectures and a problem-solving tutorial.

Assessment:  10 weekly assignments worth 2% each (free 20%) and an end of semester exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Not sure. Didn't use it... PM me or edit this if you're a mod if you know the answer.

Past exams available:  Yes there are a few, and they resemble the exam very closely.

Textbook Recommendation:  This should be your only textbook

Lecturer(s): Dr Deborah King, Dr Iwan Jensen, Dr Heng-Soon Gan, Mr Iain Scott

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2012

Rating:  3 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: -

Comments: Subject is spesh, minus a bit. If you didn't do spesh 3/4 and wanted to do it so you can tutor it or if you need it for a major, then this is the subject for you. It covers 6 topics from Vectors, Trig Functions, Complex Numbers (which are all new material on Methods 3/4) and then Derivatives/Integration/Differential Equations, which just introduce new methods of doing what you already know.

The first three topics are easy as pi (pun absolutely intended).
The last three topics should have you ripping your hair out, if you're anything like me.

I thought I was on top of this subject because the assignment marks are legitimately a free 20%. If you do your trig functions at the start, which apply to every other topic, you're halfway there. Vectors and complex numbers are for the most part, lone topics, and they don't merge into the others (save for De Moivre's Theorem and Parametric Equations). They are subsequently very easy because there's only so much you can be assessed on. In Differentiation, you learn how to differentiate stuff with two variables, and that's pretty much the only addition to VCE - it's still quite easy. Integration on the other hand is bum-spanking insane.

Having lost a minimum of 70 marks on the exam out of 150, all I can say is this - if you had to work your butt off in Methods to get an only semi-respectable score, then you will die in this subject. Don't pick it unless you have to, and work hard at it. Do all the questions you're given. Twice. And find more.

Maths at uni is only for those who want to do maths - it is not a bludge by any means and if you are doing this subject, it is for a reason.

Oh, and if you hated long division, save yourself now and do not pick this subject.

My reasons for picking this subject was that I figured doing a maths in addiction to Chem and Bio (which I needed for my choice of majors) would help in terms of critical analysis and being able to understand graphs and stuff in Chemistry. If you're going along the same line of thinking, reconsider it carefully for something like physics instead unless you really have it in you for doing Maths.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 17, 2012, 10:01:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: OPTO10001 Vision: How The Eye Sees the World

Workload:  Three 1 hour lectures and one 2 hour practical per week

Assessment:  2 Mid-Semesters (30 MCQ) = 5% each, Two hour end of year exam (75%), Pracs (15%). A 'hurdle requirement' to participate in online discussions, this may be about the multiple choice question bank where students submit questions, with which 1/4 of the end of year exam's multiple choice is based on. However, I don't think you actually HAD to post something on the discussion forum, I think it was just there for quick replies from lecturers etc.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:   Sample exam questions posted on the subject's main page, but cannot access actual past exams.

Textbook Recommendation:
  Schwartz 'visual perception' was all I needed. Lecturer will talk about the textbook information in the first lecture.

Lecturer(s)
: Andrew Metha, Andrew Anderson, Larry Abel, Michael Pianta.

Year & Semester of completion:
2012, Semester 1

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:
H1

Comments:
This subject is basically an introductory subject on the eye- looking at anatomy of the eye (such as cranial nerves, blood supply to the eye and various parts of the eye's functions), some concepts on light (a little bit of physics in there, but barely any), visual illusions, colour vision etc. I found this subject to be very interesting, however it was quite annoying that it did not have any 'real' tutorials held say once every week or even every two weeks. Rather, there were 3 tutorials for the whole semester, 2 based on the mid semester test content (where students just asked questions, lecturer answered) and 1 tutorial based on the exam (which I hadn't actually listened to as a classmate mentioned a lot of the content wasn't covered). I don't think this subject was structured particularly well in that respect, in addition some lectures weren't ever completely covered and I guess it all just became 'assumed knowledge'. The practicals in this subject were often way too short for the time that I believed should have been assigned (3 hour practicals would have made life a lot easier), however i'd say about 1/2 of the pracs you can virtually do at home with research on the internet. Some pracs required we used a program in the prac computer lab though. This subject also had a lot of content, A LOT so it's important to keep up.

So to sum up:

Pros: An intriguing subject where you are able to learn more about the function and structure of the eye's, a lot of information processing to understand some concepts however. Lecturers were also enthusiastic which made the subject more enjoyable.

Cons: A lot of content as mentioned before, with some lectures left not completed. The time constraints on certain practicals were a little unrealistic.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on June 25, 2012, 07:04:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90045 Systems Modelling and Simulation 

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 computer lab

Assessment:  3 assignments (each worth 15%) and a 3 hour exam (worth 55%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, you're given exams for 2009, 2010 and 2011

Textbook Recommendation:  The lecturer wrote the textbook and thus put a link for the electronic copy on the LMS.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Owen Jones

Year & Semester of completion: 2012

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B [71]

Comments:

Firstly I must say that having a lecture who has Jones and the title Dr is pretty awesome (Do we have Indiana Jones fans?).

This subject is a professional tools subject (compulsory for those doing a MSc(mathematics). This subject revolves around you learning how to program in R and use it for simulations.

The assignments by far are the best part of the subject. This year the three assignments were on:

- Modelling Dam levels: This assignment was to model the level of a dam with given data on rainfall (made up data of course) over 100 days.
 
- Spider Webs: This one was my favourite. Here you used an evolutionary algorithm to model how efficient spider webs become as the number of generations increase. It's cool because at the start you are required to write a program that draws a web given information on what it looks like.

-Modelling household water usage: This was the hardest and most frustrating one. This assignment required you to model a households water savings when it installs a grey water and rainwater tank. The rainwater data you're given is based off data acquired over 100 years in Melbourne, although the water consumption by the family isn't that accurate. Then you have to work out the best tank setup given how much a tank costs vs how much it will save.

The assignments aren't too difficult to get between 90-100% in if you put a fair amount of effort in. The exam on the other hand is purely theoretical and has nothing to do with the assignments. If you look at the exams, they start off relatively easy and get more difficult as the years go on, this year was no exception. This years exam allowed cheat sheets to be brought in (which helps a 'little') and if you got 75% or above, your mark would scale up to 100%.

My advice is to make sure you get ~90% for each assignment, so you can still pass even if you did poorly in the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on June 25, 2012, 07:50:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30028 Numerical and Symbolic Mathematics 

Workload: 1 or 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 3 hour computer lab and 1 x 1 hour computer lab

Assessment:  2 assignments (each worth 20%) and 2 x 90 minute exams (each worth 30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Yes (MATLAB component only), you're given exams for 2010 and 2011

Textbook Recommendation: C. Moler, Numerical Computing with Matlab, SIAM, 2004.
 
Lecturers:  Assoc Prof Jan De Gier (Symbolic Component - Mathematica), Assoc Prof Steven Carnie (Numerical Component - MATLAB)

Year & Semester of completion: 2012

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 [80]

Comments:

This is a pretty tough subject and keeping up to date is a necessity.

The first half of the subject is the numerical component taught by Steven Carnie. Here you start off learning how to use MATLAB and then you learn about how computers process numbers, error analysis and numerical stability applied to solving linear equations and ODE's.

The assignment is doable, although it is still pretty tough. The exam in the other hand was far too long to finish in time so everybody was marked out of 40 instead of 50.

The second half of the subject is the symbolic part taught by Jan de Gier. This part is considered easier, although the trade-off is that MATLAB doesn't crap itself anywhere near as often as Mathematica. Again you start off learning how to use Mathematica and then you look at writing short lines of code that do the same as Mathematica's inbuilt functions, then you look at cobweb plots and chaos associated with them, bifurcation diagrams and then finally solving ODE's symbolically. My favourite part to this was learning that the solution to:



Is:



Then you learn perturbation theory, boundary layer method and finally WKB approximation.

The assignment for the symbolic part isn't too hard, the exam is much easier than the MATLAB one, but again, Mathematica can play up on you.

With both exams, you're allowed to use lecture notes on the LMS and any code the lecturer has provided on the LMS. Make sure you know where they are so you can USE THEM in exams! Doing this will speed up the pace at which you complete the exams!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on June 25, 2012, 08:18:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30011 Graph Theory 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour practice class

Assessment:  2 assignments (first is worth 8%, second is worth 12%) and 1 x 3 hour exam (worth 80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Yes, from 1998 (maybe earlier)

Textbook Recommendation: G. Chartrand and O.R. Oellerman, Applied and Algorithmic Graph Theory, McGraw-Hill, 1993, Freeman, 1998.

 Lecturers:  Assoc Prof David Wood

Year & Semester of completion: 2012

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H3 [65]

Comments:

This subject starts off relatively easy and it's easy to neglect doing any study after a while and then suddenly you're faced with difficult concepts.

Anyway, the subject's content is somewhat intuitive and doesn't go anywhere near as abstract as what the other third year pure maths subjects do, so if you keep on top of the work, the subject should be a breeze. Although David does put the odd unsolved graph theory problem in the problem sheets (which he'll warn you about)

Both assignments are given to you on the first day, so if you already understand the content, you can finish them ahead of the due date (this wasn't the case for me).

This year's exam was split into three components:

- The first part (15% of the exam) was definitions and examples, which you can rote learn out of the notes.

- The second part (45% of the exam) was applying algorithms, you can master this skill by doing algorithm problems ad nauseum.

- The third part (40% of the exam) was doing proofs. This part is what will divide the students into those who get H1's and those who don't. Some of the proofs I found in the exam were quite tricky.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: VivaTequila on June 26, 2012, 02:23:51 am
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003 Chemistry 1

Workload:  6x 3hr Chemistry Practicals (scattered throughout the semester) and 3x Weekly 1hr Lecture and 1x Weekly 1hr Tutorial

Assessment: A 30-minute on-line mid-semester test (5%); ongoing assessment of practical work (20%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%). Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Not sure, never used it

Past exams available:  Yes, ample past exams, 2 per year dating back to ~2004. There is so much revision work that it is an effort to complete it all in the run-up to the exams, so start before SWOTVAC (pre-exam study break)

Textbook Recommendation:  2x Textbooks are recommended, one for Regular Chem and one for Organic Chem. The Organic Chem textbook honestly isn't needed, but "Chemical Principles" by Zumdahl is really very useful. I would recommend buying at the very least an outdated version of Zumdahl (I can testify that they are all the same in content) because there are so many small, pedantic things that you need to study that aren't covered extensively in lectures, such as Molecular Orbital Theory and particular calculations involving Buffer Solutions

Lecturer(s): Too many to list/remember, but this course is run REALLY well, and none of the lecturers were bad. The department is efficient and pragmatic in their operation of Chem 1.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 [80]

Comments: What a brilliant subject. Straight up, I have to commend this for being the best structured, easiest to follow subject. They have ~1,500 kids in the course which they need to look after, set up timetable pracs, and essentially make the course work for, and you know what? They pull it off with aplomb, much better than the Biology department, which had emails running amok, impromptu assignment boxes, and objectively ambiguous instructions for a slightly smaller and more managable amount of students.

Ok so basically I assume that the only reason anyone would pick this is because it's a pre-requisite for anything, and the only people who would consider picking this would be VCE students/UoM entrants who simply want to know what the course covers. As far as I know, you don't pick Chemistry to complement your other subjects in the same way that you might pick Calculus or Data Analysis to do so, with the only exception coming to mind being Biology. I therefore think that people wouldn't choose Chemistry on a whim; I can only imagine that someone who picks Chemistry would study it in it's own right and plan to major in a Chemistry discipline, or perhaps for a Biology discipline. For those reaons I'm not going to do a pros/cons of picking Chemistry - you either will or you won't, depending on what you want your course to do. Rather, I'll just explain what's taught.

You cover, in a nutshell
1. Organic Chemistry (Less on the reactions/polymerisation side of things, and more into understanding molecules in 3D. You'll cover a bit more nomenclature relating to alkenes, a new type of nomenclature relating to stereogenic molecules, and you'll cover (although still introductory material in the world of Chemistry) a LOT more detail into atomic orbitals than you could have ever imagined yourself doing, much less understanding in first year Chemistry)
2. Thermodynamics from VCE level with a physics based understanding (more on predicting whether a reaction will be exothermic/endothermic, rather than just using the informations that it is or isn't)
3. Entropy (understanding where Equilibrium Constants come from; objectively the hardest part of the course. This deals with WHY endothermic reactions CAN be spontaneous, even though VCE says 'generally, they won't be, but there's some exceptions'. This is where fundamental understanding is critical to answering exam questions correctly. There are two approaches here; the first is to memorise all the formulae and learn how to apply them with no inherent understanding of what is happening, or alternatively blow your brains out trying to understand how probability applies to atomic particles in the three different states and using your knowledge of (primarily real/ideal gases) to figure out a lot of crazy conceptual stuff intuitively
4. A whole heap of arbitrary shit relating to Chemistry 1/2 (Electronegativity, Sizes of atoms/ions, Acids and Bases including pH/pOH and Buffers {what is simple in VCE becomes rather challenging}, Metallic Character, and the new stuff covers magnetism, certain chemicals (you're at an advantage if you studied the production of H3PO4 of H2SO4 in Unit 4) and their production, Structures of Ionic/Metallic Lattices (Very complicated)), and exceptions to the Octet rule (explains structures of molecules like PCl5 and XeF4)

In summary: You do all the same shit, but the new topics are:
1. Organic Chemistry: Stereogenic centres (mirror image molecules) / Geometric nomenclature (naming alkenes) / Understanding bonding and applications of understanding bonding
2. Thermodynamics is almost the same but is more physics based; if you've done physics, you'll have a laugh here. If you hate physics, it'll take some study.
3. Entropy is entirely new and is more of a headfuck than anything introduced in VCE. It's to do with equilibrium constants and how people came to them in the first place, and is heavily based around energy. Good luck to anyone who hasn't done VCE physics because I wholeheartedly believed it helped a lot.
4. Lots of Chem Unit 1 stuff expanded which will likely be the foundation for a lot of the stuff in Chemistry 2.

Now tutorials are not compulsory and I found them useless. You can teach yourself the same and more than you would learn in a 1 hour tutorial using YouTube in 30minutes and have a far more fundamental understanding of it. Sure, they work through problems, and by all means they teach one or two problems. However the person delivering the tutorial won't have time to get around to your problems; he'll stand at the front and deliver a lecture to a smaller group of people than a regular lecture and you won't be able to ask what you need to ask. If you have problems, EMAIL the people in the Chemistry department; they actually get back to you and are incredibly flexible with organising times. I also therefore recommend against buying the "compulsory" tutorial book. I  didn't touch mine and wasted all that money on it.

By all means, minus the tutorials, this subject was incredibly enjoyable, the pracs interesting (liquid nitrogen, c'mon! Even polyiodide salts and synthesis of aspirin from 4-aminophenol is damn fucking interesting), and the lecturers clear.

P.S. The better you are at converting between units of magnitude (i.e. nanolitres to kilograms with a given density in the units tonnes per microlitre), the more prepared you'll be for the exam. It's something that you should start doing on your holidays before coming to UoM and taking Chemistry 1, because they always drop a few direct conversion questions on the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 26, 2012, 05:57:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and Organisms

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 36 hours of practical activities pre-laboratory activities and computer workshops (independent learning tasks), averaging 3 hours per week and 6 one-hour tutorial/workshop sessions during the semester.

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  One sample exam given just before swotvac.

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed text is 'R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009' however you can easily get by with lecture notes alone.

Lecturer(s): Rick Wetherbee, Andrew Drinnan, Geoff Shaw, Stephen Frankenberg, Mark Elgar

Year & Semester of completion:
2012, Semester 1

Rating:  4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
H1

Comments: This is a subject that most science students undertake as part of the prerequisite requirement for a variety of majors. I thought that the content covered was very interesting and the lecture notes were reliable to count on. In addition, the exam at the end of semester was incredibly fair for most students, provided they had put in the hours studying when finishing up the semester (i.e. not just during swotvac). There was a fair amount of content to cover, however this is as to be expected from biology. This is from a student who did not do well in VCE biology (C on one exam), and it just shows that putting in the hours in studying for this subject really pays off. What I didn't exactly like about this subject from personal experience is that sometimes it felt as though my work was being marked quite harshly, for example during one prac losing a couple of marks for not 'elaborating on the results' i.e. providing an average to the results written up in the result table, which was not asked in the particular prac. I didn't think the tutorials helped a great deal, considering we had only 1 per 2 weeks and what was discussed during these tutorials was often not mentioned in the lecture slides, however was expected to know. The mid semester test had quite a few hard questions in there that I didn't remember being fully covered in lectures, however studying for this earlier would have ensured better marks. The 5% assignment we are required to complete was once again also harshly marked, and 1/2 of this assignment was based off writing a correct citation, where we received some resources to help us out with this, however even in following the exact rules of these pieces of information, I still managed to lose about 45% of marks from the assignment. At the end of the day, I did enjoy this subjects and most of the time the lectures were enjoyable too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jeppikah on June 26, 2012, 08:30:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006 Chemistry for Biomedicine

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour tutorial per week, 6 x three hour lab/workshop throughout the semester, 3 x ILTs.

Assessment:  A 30-minute on-line mid-semester test (5%); practical write-ups from labs (20%) and a 3-hour written exam (75%). Must pass labs and ILTs to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, exams with solutions available from 2008. Also, there are answers for relevant questions in exams prior to 2008 but I couldn’t find the questions. Perhaps in the Ballieu library as hard copy?

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed texts are McMurry’s Organic Chemistry and Zumdahl’s Chemical Principles.
I bought both books but, in hindsight, I didn’t really need them and wouldn’t get them again. I only used Zumdahl for the last ILT with content that wasn’t taught in the lectures but that stuff is easily Googled. The lecture notes are enough for the exams; the textbooks were more for if you enjoyed chemistry and wanted a more thorough explanation for some things. These books come with the molecular model kit that can be brought into the exam if bought together at the book shop. But really, it’s fun to play with for 5 minutes but otherwise useless and unnecessary.

Lecturer(s): Craig Hutton, Spencer Williams, Brendan Abrahams, David McFadyen.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (94)

Comments: Personally, I really enjoyed this subject. I found it interesting and it wasn’t one of those 100% rote learning subjects. Some people found it challenging but I think it’s only a small step up in content difficulty from VCE chem. I think it’s just that there is double the content to learn in half the time so you have to be organised with your time.

The lecturers for this subject are quite good and enjoyable to listen to. The subject coordinator who took the orientation week presentation was horrible and monotonous so thank god he didn’t take any subjects. (A/Prof Hutton’s New Zealand accent amuses me. Dr. Williams reminds me of Dexter from Nickelodeon. A/Prof Abrahams reminds me of Tweedle-Dee or Tweedle-Dum. A/Prof McFadyen mentions “Prof Abrahams” once a lecturer so I think they’re BFFs. #irrelevant)

Simple VCE chemistry things like significant figures and unit conversions often pop up in ILTs, the MST and the exam. One of the ILTs had questions that were completely irrelevant to the exam but it was pretty easy to get by reading the textbook or just Googling. ILT content is examinable and there is at least one question related to molality or the freezing/boiling point change stuff, which A/Prof Abrahams mentioned only 22% of the cohort got that question right in 2010. There was also these ChemCAL tutorials that are unassessed but recommended but personally, you don’t need them and they are a waste of time.

Heaps of people disliked pracs because of their demonstrator but I got a great demonstrator who was very helpful with questions so I found it quite easily to score highly in the write-ups. (Just a heads up, you lose marks for getting a lower-than-expected boiling point.) Tutes are not compulsory but I found them helpful.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 26, 2012, 09:09:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING10001 The Secret Life of Language 

Workload:  Weekly: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  Problem-solving assignments totalling 2000 words 50% (due throughout the semester) and a 2-hour examination 50% (end of semester).

Lectopia Enabled
:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No.  A sample exam was made available, and as Stone Cold previously mentioned on his SLL post was easier than the actual exam.

Textbook Recommendation: Once again, the course manual must be purchased. It contains tutorial exercises and complements the lecture notes well.

Lecturer(s):
  Associate Professor Janet Fletcher (Introductory lecture, morphology, phonetics/ phonology, language variation, historical linguistics), Maureen Saclot (syntax, semantics), Dr. Susan Douglas (the brain and language, first language acquisition), Dr. Carsten Roever (second language acquisition and bilingualism)

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating
:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade
: H2B

Comments:
Prior to taking this subject, I was interested in learning a little bit more about linguistics since I quite enjoyed VCE english language. This subject did just that, it brought me to concepts in linguistics I hadn't come across before. I thought the lectures were well planned during the semester and the tutorials helped to 'fill in the gaps' about anything that was left ambiguous in the lectures. In addition, the lecturers also gave us the opportunity to attend a 'make-up' tutorial during the Anzac day holiday week, which I thought emphasized further how well constructed this subject is. The only issue I had with this subject was, and as stone cold mentioned in his post on the secret life of language, was that the exam didn't cover certain lectures in the semester (e.g. the brain and language and very minimal on language acquisition) and wasn't a general overview of the subject's workload as such , but rather we were given more detailed problem solving questions (harder than those given on the assignments and the sample exam given out wasn't exactly a great indication on the difficulty of the exam). I thought the assignments through the semester were fair and helped to consolidate topics covered. This was a good subject for anyone really, whether they had done VCE english language or not, and is a good breadth for anyone who has no idea what to choose.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on June 26, 2012, 10:47:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING20006: Syntax

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week (starting in week 2)

Assessment:  2 x Assignments (25% each), 1 x Take home exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.  Still useless though because the lecturer often writes on the board.

Past exams available:  No, but if you ask nicely I guess they might give it to you.

Textbook Recommendation:  Analyzing grammar: an introduction'. Paul Kroeger. 2005. Cambridge University Press.  This textbook is good, but not great.  It covers some of the stuff you learn well, and other stuff not at all.  Probably not worth buying, but luckily it can be found online pretty easily.  There is also a very crappy reader for the subject available from the bookshop.  You probably have to buy it because it will have 1 or 2 useful pages, but it mostly has stuff in it which is already in the lecture slides.  Thankfully it is cheap.

There are also a whole bunch of very badly organised readings on the LMS.  Don't read them unless the lecturer tells you to.  There was one really useful one which pretty much told you exactly how to answer an exam question, because it used the same example.  The lecturer made an effort of putting it up a couple of days before the exam so it was pretty obvious that you should read it.

Lecturer: Brett Baker

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 2

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 97 H1

Comments: Firstly I will start by saying that this is not an easy subject.  If you have no interest in linguistics, English, languages, grammar or problem solving, then stay well away.  Although the workload is pretty light, if you have no idea what is going on, then there is a fair chance that you will fail.  This subject is pretty much like maths.  If you get what is going on, it is wonderful.  If you don't then it might as well be Chinese.  It is recommended that you have done some prior LING study (i.e. Secret Life of Language) to do this subject.  I would probably agree that this will make your job a whole lot easier, especially for the first 3 or 4 weeks.  It would be very challenging if you have not done any linguistics or at least VCE English Language beforehand.

That aside, what you learn in the subject is pretty much the principles of sentence structure and grammar in both English as well as in other languages.  To be honest, the assessment focuses mostly on English stuff and it is this stuff which gets rather hard and complex.  When you do other languages it is usually less complex and slightly easier because I guess they are being more lenient seeing as it is a foreign language.  You don't have to know any languages other than English to do this subject.

The lectures for this subject were average and moderately useful.   The tutes were also average but you definitely need to go along because firstly, attendance is compulsory and less than 75% will result in a fail.  Secondly, the tutes teach you how to solve all the stuff which is important for the assessment, so make sure you go, participate and write everything down.  The lecturer was also decent in that he said he didn't care if we collaborated on assignments, so long as we all wrote out our own work.

The first assignment was pretty straight forward.  2/5 of it was just getting given English words in a sentence and then using evidence to argue for whether the underlined words were verbs, nouns, adjectives etc.  The rest of the assignment involved analysing a foreign data set with NO translations (ours was an Aboriginal language) and then grouping the words into lexical classes (verb, noun, adjective etc.) and giving reasons.  Whilst this sounds hard, it really isn't that bad and they show you how to do it in the tutes.

The second assignment on the other hand was much harder.  The whole thing was about analyzing English sentences, and drawing tree structures for these sentences and then arguing for the tree you draw.  This assignment is mainly about something called the complement/adjunct distinction.  You get given phrase structure rules to help draw your trees, but it is not so formulaic because the sentences that they give you are often ambiguous and therefore require you to think very hard about the structure which you assign them.  You also should draw your tree diagrams on the computer.  I found a program called 'Tree Form' very helpful for this.  At the end of this assignment there was also some sentences which did not follow the given phrase structure rules, and you had to explain why.

Both of the assignments had a nasty trick in them.  It is pretty obvious as to what the trick is, as it will most likely be the part of your analysis which doesn't really make sense or fit in with the rest of the data.  You pretty much just have to keep working on it and you'll eventually work it out though.

As for the take home exam, I cannot really remember much of it, other than it being rather difficult and having only 4 days to do it.  I also had 2 actual exams in these 4 days, so you need to manage your time well.  The take home exam pretty much addressed only the final topic, which was complex sentence constructions.  This is the hardest topic and requires a fair level of understanding.  Still, if you can do the tute problems you should be fine.  I remember a particularly annoying question about subject/object raising and subject/object control on the exam, so make sure you understand this well.  Complement clauses and relative clauses are also an important part of this topic and came up on the exam.  You just need to work through the paper until you have solid evidence and reasoning to argue for your answers.  If you can do this, you can be sure you have the right answer.  If not, then you probably have the wrong answer.  I was really scared by the take home exam and wasn't sure if I had done it right, and ended up with 49/50 on it, so just make sure you back yourself and fully answer the questions.  Also, just note that the lecturer was really anal about people NOT collaborating on the take home exam, and seeing as it is a small subject, there is a fair chance you'll get caught, so don't do it.

As for this subject on the whole, if you get what is going on, then it is somewhat of a bludge.  You don't really have to learn anything by heart as there is no true exam.  Just make sure you are familiar with everything and you can look up specifics at your leisure.  I did minimal study, and just spent countless hours on the assignments and exam, because this is all that really matters.  There's no point learning the extra stuff unless you're really into it.  If you really enjoy analysing things and solving problems, then this is definitely the subject for you.  If not, then steer clear!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cibicl on June 28, 2012, 04:07:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004: Introductory Microeconomics

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

Assessment: Multiple choice online exam (5%), two assignments, one worth 10%, second 15% (25% total), tut marks (10%), exam (60% non-hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. All streams by the same lecturer.

Past exams available:  Yes about four, with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  The textbook used is 'Principles of Microeconomics' by J.Gans, S.King & N.Mankiw. When buying the book you also get a case studies book by Jeff Borland which I never used but is supposedly good. The textbook however I did use every week for readings and it is really good. Really reaffirms the central things we learn - definitely recommend buying it. Older editions are fine too!

Lecturer(s): Mr Gareth James - pretty cool lecturer, explains well, tries to crack the occasional joke and seems approachable.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments: Personally, I quite enjoyed the subject. The first half of it is quite a breeze and the topics are fundamental but relatively easy: cost-benefit, supply & demand, elasticity, welfare, international trade etc. Make sure you understand the whole supply and demand models and that you can draw them with ease as they are central to this whole subject - be prepared to be drawing HEAPS of these curves. They are pretty easy though. The first half of the subject I found quite interesting too. After week 3 (I think?) there is a short multiple choice test worth 5%. Its easy and hardly worth anything so don't stress and it covers the first few weeks, there are practise tests available too.
Just before mid-sem break the first assignment was due which was mainly about international trade. Even though the topic itself isn't too bad, the assignment was a little challenging, easy to pass but hard to score really well in and requires a bit of thought. The tricky stuff is combining different concepts e.g. international trade and subsidy and welfare all into one diagram.

Didn't enjoy the second half of the subject as much which covers the costs of production, profit maximizing strategies and game theory (I did like game theory though!). This is however possibly due to my own fault haha, as I think I lost concentration early on when we covered costs of production and found myself a bit lost. Fair bit of graphing which is annoying, but I recommend just not falling behind and you will be perfectly fine! Assignment 2 was easier then the first one I thought as well! And the very last topic is covered in about 3 lectures I think - Game theory which is pretty cool and easy actually - think everyone enjoyed it!

The exam wasn't too bad from memory, and if I had studied sufficiently :P would have been pretty easy! Only worth 60% and non-hurdle, so I'm pretty sure barely anyone would fail this subject! Do the practise exams though, they are similar and the tut qs are really good too!

This is a compulsory subject for commerce kids, although I heard quite a few kids pick it as a breadth. I'd recommend it, its quite interesting, logical and relatively easy, and so long as you put the work in, should score well! Goodluck :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on June 28, 2012, 04:35:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2 
Workload:   3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week

Assessment:  3 assignments, worth 3.33% each. One mid-semester test, worth 15% and final exam worth 75% (hurdle).

Lectopia Enabled:  Nope, pretty sure no math lectures are?

Past exams available:  Yep, +10ish

Textbook Recommendation:  Calculus 1 & 2 (Hass, Weir, Thomas, Adams and Essex), Pearson, 2010. Do not buy any books. They are not needed when the lecture notes are fairly good.

Lecturer(s): Norm Do (don't know about the others).

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2012

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (97)

Comments: Honestly, probably my favourite subject this semester. It started with some pretty boring limit stuff which always comes up on the exam and the 'tricks' to solve them are always the same. Moved onto hyperbolic functions and complex numbers which were ok, but the real meat of the course was applications and modelling of differential equations which was by far the most interesting. Applications involved spring-mass systems, concentration in tanks and electric circuits. The assignments were an easy 10% if you pay attention in lectures, and if you want to go well in the MST, make sure you do the questions in the green question book because they are almost identical. The exam was very similar to those of past years which made it very beneficial to do practise papers.
All in all, a very good subject, run very well, were you knew exactly was expected of you. Enjoyed it immensely.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: curious111 on June 28, 2012, 05:04:49 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20026 Real Analysis With Applications 

Workload:  Three 1-hour lectures and two 1-hour tutorials per week

Assessment:  Ten assignments worth 20% and One 3-hour exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Not in my semester, but it varies from semester to semester depending upon the lecturer (there is a link to 2011 lectures in this subject here)

Past exams available:  Many are available, lecturer posted answers to both 2011 exams. It should be noted that course content changes a lot from lecturer to lecturer so older exams may have many irrelevant questions

Textbook Recommendation:  There was no prescribed textbook, a few were recommended:

Lecturer(s): Dr Richard Brak

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester One

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 [84]

Comments: Basically, this is an introductory subject to what some might call "proper math" (for non accelerated pathway students). If you thought Linear Algebra was pedantic, then this subject will take it to a new level.

The main idea of the subject is to discuss concepts that you will be very familiar with (eg limits, differentiability, integral calculus), but discuss them in a much more rigourous way than before. The other overriding theme of the subject is PROOFS. You will learn various techniques for proving (usually simple) claims such as proof by contradiction, proof by induction, e-N and e-delta proofs. Just looking through the exam, about half of the questions are "prove that..." type questions. The subject is structured quite well in the respect that you will spend a lot of time in lectures and tutorials covering proof techniques so if you're willing to put the effort in then you won't find the proofs aspect of the subject so daunting. Having said that, if the rigourous proof-based aspect of mathematics doesn't appeal to you then you should probably think twice before taking this subject (unless you need it for something like physics). There are some simple mechanical concepts covered such as evaluating if a series converges or diverges and basic predicate logic using truth tables, but really most of the subject is proof-based. We were supposed to cover Fourier Series but disappointingly it got condensed to one haphazard lecture at the end of semester.

I found the tutorials were a good way of building knowledge in this subject. Often the lectures flew right over my head and it wasn't til the tute that the concepts started to stick. This subject is unique in the sense that there are two tutes a week, which personally i thought was really helpful.

Assignments were weekly from the second week, and there were usually 1-2 questions. They might look hard when you first get them, but spending some time thinking about them will usually result in you being able to nut out the main idea. And even if you can't then it doesn't really matter as I found the tutors were quite lenient in marking them (i got 10/20 for one assignment where the whole idea of my proof was COMPLETELY on the wrong track).

There wasn't a question book handed out like the first year subjects, but there was a problem sheet for each topic of the course. Annoyingly the lecturer left out many answers on the answers handout.

Lecturer is knowledgeable, but has near-illegible handwriting and often messes up when writing things out. You probably won't have him anyway as it seems to change each semester. It should be noted that as the lecturer in this subject changes, so does the content. Eg this semester we covered predicate logic which hadn't been done before in this subject.

Personally, I loved the content and thought the subject was organised quite well. But it isn't for everyone.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 28, 2012, 05:39:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10007 Fundamentals of Chemistry

Workload:   3 x one hour lectures per week, 6 x three hours of practical activities during semester, 1 x one hour tutorial/workshop sessions per week, 6 hours of computer aided learning during semester, 8 hours of independent learning tasks during semester.

Assessment
:  Three 45-minute on-line mid-semester tests (15%); ongoing assessment of practical work throughout the semester (20%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (65%). Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject. .

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Plenty available, about 10 or so have solutions (answers only, no fully worked solutions)

Textbook Recommendation:    S S Zumdahl Chemical Principles, 6th Ed, Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Just borrow from the library or get a pdf or something, it's important to do the questions in the textbook after lectures (extra revision besides tutorials).

Lecturer(s): Dr. Colette Boskovic, Penelope Commons, Associate Professor Jonathan White.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2012

Rating:
4.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Great introductory subject! I thought it was taught incredibly well to those who had not completed VCE Chemistry. I suppose they do move a little fast but after all it's supposed to be VCE chemistry in one semester. I urge any of you who wish to do this subject to regularly attend tutorial sessions, it's just not enough to look at the solutions provided on the LMS, and also go to see the lecturers in the learning lab in the chemistry building (I went there every tuesday 1-2 pm) where Penny Commons answered any questions we were having difficulty with the subject. So this subject aims to introduce the basics of chemistry for example mole calculations, and even though all this stuff has to be taught in one semester they don't just bombard you with all this difficult chemistry, you can easily score well in this subject provided you do the work. So by doing work, I suggest you do the following:

* Tutorials regularly
* Lectures (if you don't understand a specific lecture, i'd lectopia it that night when I got home so I understood it right away)
* Email the tutor if you have any chemistry problems
* Go to the learning lab to get any help, or even just listen to problems other students have, which can just be revision for you anyway
* There are a few chemcal problems you are able to do, i'd do those too
* Make sure to do the zumdahl textbook questions after each lecture (I didn't do the readings, but I think it would be a better idea to refer to those aswell)
* DO AS MANY PAST EXAMS AS POSSIBLE. I can't stress this enough, and if you don't understand a question, go to the learning lab!


I didn't particularly like the practicals in this subject, I found my particular demonstrator to be a little hopeless in actually outlining what to do in the pracs. A few classmates on the other hand told me they had great prac demonstrators though, so I guess it's just the luck of the draw. Topic tutorials would also be of great help in this subject, there were a few topics that I didn't automatically understand and wished I could have brushed up on, but I guess that's why they have the learning lab. If you commit to the subject, the subject will reward you with a decent mark.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jeppikah on June 28, 2012, 10:51:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10009 Food for a Healthy Planet

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lecture per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. There is a 75% minimum attendance for tutorials so attendance is taken.

Assessment: 
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Forums are not recorded.

Past exams available:  Past exams available to 2008. No solutions are provided. Past mid-semester tests also available.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook is required but there is a student reader available for purchase from the bookshop. Not completely essential in my opinion because most of the tutorial readings from the reader is also put on LMS, although not all of them. The reader has extra material that may help you with your research essay but I suppose you could survive without it if you want to save ~$30.

Lecturer(s): Mohan Singh, Richard Roush, Frank Dunshea, Snow Barlow, Mark Hargreaves, Bill Malcolm. Forum speakers were Peter Gresshoff, Jennie Brand-Miller and Kerin O’Dea. Nanette Esparon takes all tutorials.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: I chose this subject because I genuinely thought I would be interested in the content, but there were only few moments where I was actually interested while the majority of the time I was completely bored.

The subject covered a broad range of topics that mainly focused on solutions needed to feed the world in the future and climate change affecting food security. Other minor topics included GM food, nutritional strategies for athletics, obesity, famine, economics of food security, environmental effects of agriculture, etc. There were many different lectures for all the little topics so the subject content felt slightly disjointed. I was interested in the nutritional side but that was poorly taught and only a minor aspect of the subject. If you’re like me, be prepared to put up with a lot of other stuff.

The lecturers for this subject were terrible. Most of them were so monotonous and hard to hear. Some concepts were not explained probably. In hindsight, watching the lectures on Lectopia would probably be better in most cases just so you can hear them properly.

The only exceptions were the forums with reasonably good speakers and interesting content. These forums were not recorded and a forum report was expected a week later but 500 words was pretty quick to do. Make sure you cover all of the main aspects of the report or be prepared to lose marks.

You have a timeframe of about 2 months from when the essay questions are released. Try to start early to give yourself time to do wider reading, which will significantly improve your mark. Also, do yourself a favour and learn how to use EndNote; it makes referencing less of a hassle.

The mid-semester test uses recycled past questions so make sure you do them and know the answer to each one. Same goes for the exam. For the exam, you can take in one double-sided summary sheet of any font which takes out huge portion of rote learning.

In the end, this subject was pretty easy and not that time-consuming to complete and study for with the exception of the research essay.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bridger on June 29, 2012, 12:32:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30005 Muscle and Exercise Physiology

Workload:  Three lectures per week

Assessment:  Two tests = 15% each, Assignment = 10%, Exam = 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation:  -

Lecturer(s): Gordon Lynch, Mark Hargreaves, Rene Koopman, Kristy Swiderski and various others

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A 78

Comments: Overall I found this subject really interesting and enjoyable. The subject was a great learning environment and you could really see the coordinators had gone out of their way to provide a subject that taught students about the latest cutting-edge research in the area. There were two main lecturers for the subject, Gordon Lynch and Mark Hargreaves, who taught muscle physiology and exercise physiology respectively. Muscle physiology covered topics such as muscle injury and repair, growth promoting agents for muscle and adaptations of muscles to training. Exercise physiology covered topics such as the various fuels (carbohydrates, fats etc.) used during exercise and responses to exercise. There were various other lecturers covering other topics in the field, with many presenting information on the research they were conducting. These were really interesting and really gave insight into what doing honours in physiology would be like.
I really enjoyed this subject and found it really interesting. Extremely glad I chose this subject as it was the the main reason for me switching from a Human Structure and Function major to a Physiology major. Highly recommend this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: acinod on June 29, 2012, 05:19:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics 

Workload:  Two 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week (3 hours in total)

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. There's heaps. Solutions are also posted online.

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Microeconomics by Gans, King and Mankiw. There are several versions of this textbook as well as an American version just by Mankiw. However they are all exactly the same except for the formatting like the font and pictures. Definitely recommend it as it was the only textbook out of all my subjects that I actually used for assignments and learning stuff. There's another case study book by Jeff Borland but I never used it despite buying it.

Lecturer(s): Gareth James. Quite boring due to monotonous and slow voice. I fell asleep on countless occasions both in lectures and at home whilst listening.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (92)

Comments: This is a brilliant subject. For those that have never done any commerce or business related subjects like me, this is a great introduction to economics.
Most important thing about this subject is to GO TO TUTORIALS. Not only do you get a free 10% to your mark, but it also helps you understand a lot of the content. Pre-reading the textbook was also something that helped me a lot to understand concepts. The topics were also quite interesting, especially Game Theory. The exam is very similar to previous exams and if you know the basic topics well, you should do fine.
Do note that if you are majoring in actuarial studies that this is a subject for accreditation, so as long as you don't try to fail, you should be good to go.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: acinod on June 29, 2012, 06:16:05 pm
Moderator note: This review was written before the subject was revised. The lecturer's thoughts on the subject can be found here

Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis 

Workload:  One 2-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial (3 hours in total)

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. There's heaps. Solutions are also posted online.

Textbook Recommendation:  Bought it, never used it.

Lecturer(s): There are 3 lecturers:

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: If you've never done accounting before, expect to struggle for most of this course. Your first assignment will disappoint you because everything is so new and bizarre. The second assignment is computer-based and it's just about using a program called Quickbooks to apply some concepts. Should be easy if you're good with computers.  Tutorials are once again like most subjects, crucial to learning if everything is new to you. Practice exams are a SAVIOR! The LMS may even be over resourceful as there are so many things to help you prepare for exams. They even have an exam format that tells you what each question on the exam is generally about, making it even more easy to study for.
The reason I didn't give it a 5/5 is because the assignments do not really relate to the exam. They seem kind of out of placed now that I think back.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: acinod on June 29, 2012, 06:33:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1 

Workload:  4 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week (6 hours in total)

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  There are a few but 2011 is a weird year. Not as similar to past exams as other subjects.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't need it, lectures are your best friend.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Paul Norbury. This guy is a genius. Though he's sometimes too smart for the students as he often goes on about things where the majority of the class has no idea what he's talking about. Other than that, he's voice strangely sounds like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UVlXckI5js. Despite how hard this subject is, he is nevertheless quite liked by all the students. I shall never forget his abrupt "Let's finish here." at the end of every lecture.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: If you think you're good at maths, YOU MAY BE PROVED WRONG once you have a taste of this subject. AM1 is an introduction to university mathematics and trust me it is hard. Countless lectures during the break, where he has gone through several insane concepts and you have no time to absorb it, you automatically turn your head to the person next to you. Of course he also does the same thing and gives you the same look...DAFUQ?!?! If I can relate this subject to VCE Maths, it would be: VCE Maths has a few big topics but the questions are really in depth and really try to test your knowledge. On the other hand, Accelerated Maths 1 is an overload of topics in just a few months, you are required to do an exam which tests you all these topics with quite a few in depth topics. It's really hard to catch up once you fall behind and not even SWOTVAC may be enough. If you want to excel in this subject, make sure you study your ass off CONSISTENTLY. There is no point listening to a lecture and copying down notes if you had no idea what just happened.
Finally, this subject has a few MATLAB classes. It's basically just going into a computer lab and learning how to use MATLAB. Honestly these are kind of pointless and you can learn everything you need for the test worth 5% at the end in like a few hours.
One last word on tutorials, these 'classes' are quite different from your other subjects because you don't actually sit in class and listen. What actually happens is you sit in groups and discuss problems. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: acinod on June 29, 2012, 06:51:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHIN10003 Chinese 7 

Workload:  Two 2-hour seminars per week. (4 hours in total)

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  No!

Past exams available: NONE!

Textbook Recommendation: Bridge: A Practical Intermediate Chinese Course, Vol. 1
This is the textbook, you'll need it for class.

Lecturer(s): Jia Gao and Cai Shen Shen. Jia Gao is the male teacher that speaks more English than Chinese and likes to ramble and mumble a lot. He speaks very slowly. Cai Shen Shen is the female teacher that is a bit more strict than Jia Gao. She speaks only Chinese and likes to crack jokes. Unfortunately my chinese is horrible so I can't understand them as well :( You will have both teachers, one for each seminar.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments: This is Chinese school all over again. I swear to god, nothing has changed from this subject and VCE Chinese except the fact that you now go to Chinese school on a weekday and twice a week. Chinese is horrible. There are no past exams, no lectures recorded, and the assessment and exam is just so weird and not much preparation given. With Chinese, you basically have a textbook and for Chinese 7, you learn half of the book. Half of the book is basically 8 stories/essays/pieces of ~1000 characters each and overall, you will need to learn ~450 phrases.
The mid semester test is basically just memorizing the textbook. That's it. It is basically a few sentences from the textbook translated into English, and then you are required to translate it back to Chinese. WITHOUT A DICTIONARY.
The oral is pretty chill, just a basic general conversation with a partner of ~5 minutes.
The essay you have to hand in is also pretty annoying. Make sure you don't hand it in late otherwise you will lose a lot of marks since it is worth 15%!
The exam. Ok...the exam is just...how can I say... There is a potential to get 100% so easily and I was so stupid to not realize how easy it was to prepare for this. Exam consists of 4 sections:
These 4 categories are just ridiculously easy to prepare for. The first section, although there are 450 phrases that you have to potentially need to know how to make sentences for, it is really predictable to know which ones will be in the exam. It's basically all the conjunction and joining words. The second section is the same as the mid semester. If you remembered how easy it was to prepare for that you should realize it's the same deal here. The third section is EXACTLY THE SAME as a comprehension work sheet that was handed out in the middle of the semester for homework. Exact same article, exact same questions. Finally the essay we have to write is once again EXACTLY THE SAME TOPIC as one that was given out for homework in the middle of the semester. You just had to memorize it and you're set!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on July 02, 2012, 07:01:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine

Workload:  6 x lectures each week, 1 x workshop each week, 3 x CALs (computer aided learning) throughout semester, 3 x practicals throughout semester.

Assessment:  2 x 30 min MCQ mid-semester tests (10% each), 2 x 2 hour exams (35% each), 5 x CAL/prac assessments (2% each).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, including screen capture.

Past exams available:  Both 2010 exams are available from the library website.  Only the short answer and fill in the gap questions were provided from the 2011 exam.  None of the 2011 MCQs were given.  Also, make sure you annoy the coordinator to put up the 2010 and 2011 MSTs because he wouldn't want a repeat of what happened this year, with people just going and getting them off the third years and some people missing out and others not.  The coordinator also refuses to give out any sort of answers or marking schemes for anything.  Exams prior to 2010 are not available, but the old subject "Integrated Biomedical Sciences" has lots of past exam papers available.  I didn't do any of them, but having a quick look at them now they certainly still look relevant so if you want some extra writing practice, they may be worth looking at.

Textbook Recommendation: 


To be perfectly honest, you probably don't need any of these textbooks to do well.  That having been said, luckily they are all available online so you can access them at your leisure if you know where to look.  The two most helpful are Alberts, which is a general Cell Biology book that covers a lot of the course, and Kumar, which covers Pathology.  Seeing as pathology is taught woefully and IMO is the worst part of this subject, it is probably worth reading the relevant parts of Kumar for the topic.  Luckily, Kumar is available online from the library website, so again, no need to buy.  I wouldn't be able to tell you about the other textbooks because I never even looked at them once, despite having them all on pdf.  In reality, all you are ever going to get assessed on in this subject is either what is on the slides, or what the lecturer says.  If you have all of this down, you're sure to do well.

Lecturer(s):


Each topic has had 2 lecturers in previous years, but a lot of lecturers have dropped away recently.  There were also a  couple of guest lecturers in the Genetics and Pathology topics.  All in all, I thought the majority explained their content well.  It doesn't necessarily mean that I liked them all, but I don't really care as long as they are clear.  Dawn and Alex have a tendency to get their stuff confused.  Vicki Lawson cannot go 15 seconds without screwing up her sentence.  Lecture notes across the board were decent.  That having been said, Dawn and especially Roy required you to listen and write down lots of things that weren't on the slides, and believe me, if the lecturer says it, it is assessable.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 96 H1

Comments: This is probably the most whinged about subject in the entire degree.  I think most of the criticism that this subject gets is unfair and unwarranted.  We are studying a Biomedicine degree.  I don't really know what people expected to learn, but if you didn't want to learn about this type of stuff, then I guess you are in the wrong degree.  People often complain that the content is over the top, irrelevant and can just be looked up if you ever need it.  Firstly, this is NOT a medical degree, it is biomedical science.  It is expected that you will learn detailed cellular processes.  Everyone just wants to learn things on a macroscopic scale or things which are relevant to medicine.  This is not what a biomedical science degree is about.  Also, sure you can look a lot of these things up if you ever need them, but you should learn them properly at least once and this makes sure that you actually understand them.  Moreover, this subject is somewhat of a 'taste' of what it is like to study medicine in terms of content and study required, so again, if people cannot handle this, then they are probably going to struggle in medicine.  I also understand that topics such as biochemistry and patholgy are actually studied in medicine anyway, so you are just getting an advantage by learning some of it now.  I am also under the impression that content wise, HSF in semester 2 will be far more intensive than MCB.

Lectures
Looking back (and I say this a lot haha) this subject probably wasn't so bad.  I really enjoyed the first four topics, and could actually see  myself majoring in any of them.  Pathology on the other hand I didn't enjoy.  Whether or not that was because it seemed overly rushed and was badly taught, I don't know.  Initially you will probably find that you will hate everything.  I went back and listened to each lecture after attending, and found it was always easier the second time.  I wrote down all of the relevant points that weren't in the slides and then typed it out into notes.  However you do your notes, make sure you include all of the important pictures and know how to draw them because lecturers love diagrams in the exam.  You don't even have to go to lectures if you don't want to as everything is recorded and I find that I tend to learn better at home or in the library.

Workshops
Calling these workshops is a blatant lie by the university.  It is an extra lecture spot in case the lecturer runs out of time in their allocated time.  Usually, the lecturer will cover some non-examinable extension stuff or do some revision/FAQs in this time.  The cell biology workshop and immunology workshop however were very important and you had to study them.  The content in these two workshops accounted for nearly one-fifth of what was on our second exam.  The cell bio workshop was on cancer, and considering that is this an overall theme on the course, it was fairly obvious that is was going to be tested.  The immunology workshop was on how pathogens evade the immune system.

Mid Semester Tests
Lots of people seem to do poorly on these for some reason and I cannot understand why.  They are multi choice.  It is a pretty simple equation in the end.  If you put in the time and effort to learn everything, then you should do really well on these tests.  95% of this subject is pure rote learning/recall. I don't really think you can be tricked.  The only two things which we learnt that required any level of conceptual understanding were enzyme kinetics (biochemistry) and the lac operon (genetics).  These tests do not cover the last topic (pathology) and therefore there are extra patholgy MCQs on the exam to compensate.  All in all, this is a straight forward 20% take one or two if you have done your work.  As I said earlier, absolutely make sure you get hold of previous years MSTs one way or another because they could repeat the questions and are good practice.

Around a week after the MSTs, the results are published on the LMS and the relevant lecturers explain the questions to you in a feed back lecture.

Pracs/CALs
This is another easy 10% so make sure you go and don't miss any.  The Biochemistry CAL was annoying because you had to hand up a worksheet at the end which is marked.  Everything else was assessed with online MCQ tests either during or after the Prac/CAL.  IMO it is not worth learning anything from the Biochem/Pathology/Cell Bio CALs for the exam.  It would be wise to make sure you are at least familiar with the pracs though, as in genetics, you need to know how to interpret gels for the exam, and you learn a fair bit of stuff on bacterial classification in the microbiology & immunology pracs which could also arise on the exam.

Exam A
For the first time, this exam was completely electronic.  There were 75 marks of MCQs and 45 marks of fill in the blanks/menu style questions which you complete on the Section B/C Answer sheets.  This exam was ridiculously specific, moreso than the MSTs.  No matter how much you learn, I think some lecturer will always have one annoying MCQ which you never thought would come up.  As always, you can expect a few MCQs which have mistakes and get removed.  Alex Andrianopoulos is also pretty lazy and may slip in a few 2 mark MCQs.

The fill in the blanks section is actually pretty hard for several reasons.  Firstly, you can always rely on a lecturer to give you a tiny diagram which is unclear and almost impossible to see.  Secondly, you get next to no marks for each blank (0.5 marks each).  So when you have 14 blanks to complete in just 7 minutes, it is not so easy.  Thirdly, it is so easy to screw up the answer sheet when you are putting in your answers so I urge you to double and triple check the circles you colour in.

You really want to be doing well on this exam to buffer against the written paper.

Exam B
This exam was also for the first time entirely composed of short answer questions and extended response questions.  I like the way they structured the exams this year.  It was far less confusing than in previous years where you had a mix of electronic marking and written answers on the same exam.  This exam was around a week after the first exam.  This is supposed to be an integration exam where lecturers get together and integrate their topics.  This is another lie.  It is very obvious as to who has written what questions, and there was little continuity between lecturers who had 'supposedly' written their questions together.

This exam is not easy at all.  It requires a really good understanding of everything, good memory, fast recall and also the ability to write very fast and also to draw diagrams.  There are lots of heavily weighted questions worth 10, 12, 13 marks on this section.  You get a few simple 3-5 mark questions as well though.  Just make sure you that you absolutely spend no more minutes than marks per question, otherwise you will not finish.  Once you think you have written enough to get the allocated marks, it is probably wise to move on, even if you have more to say.  You can always come back and add in more at the end, time permitting.  For the 10 mark questions, you absolutely must fill the page with writing.  Similarly, the 12 and 13 mark questions probably expect around 1.5-2 pages of writing (font and back) by the time you add in diagrams.  To indirectly quote the lecturer himself, "lecturers love diagrams and diagrams are always appropriate".  That having been said, don't waste ages drawing flashy stuff.  You have to ensure you finish the paper.  I finished the exam with about 8 mins to spare.  When I did the 2011 as a trial, I had literally 2 mins to spare.  You will be very pressed for time so make sure you have a watch and time everything perfectly, right down to the minute.  Your responses can be either in paragraphs or dot points.  Do whatever you feel is best going to address the question in the time you are given.  For some unknown reason I tend to randomly switch between writing paragraphs and dot points in different questions.

I thought that this exam would be really bad for me but in the end it was actually pretty good.  I kind of miss being able to actually demonstrate what you know rather than just filling in circles, so take this exam as an opportunity to impress the lecturer and demonstrate what you know.  They have a marking scheme, but at the end of the day, going into more detail about a process or giving examples is guaranteed to pick you up extra marks.  Also, make sure you write at least something for every question.  Lecturers are pretty lenient and like to give out marks where they can.  Ultimately, this exam is just like any other.  You just have to work out what lecture(s) the question is testing, decide what is relevant and then splurge it onto the paper.

The final lecture in the subject addresses the exams, giving you a breakdown of marks and telling you who has been allocated to write questions with who.  This is useful and allows you to try and predict the integration questions.  For example, we all knew that the 'integration' between cell biology and genetics would be about cancer...why else would the cell biology lecturer spend a whole workshop discussing cancer?  You can work out so much of what you need to know, just from listening to the things which the lecturers say, and even from the way they word questions.  Another example was a lecturer who never made the definitive statement (i.e. only, must etc.) the right option.  This tends to be the case for most MCQs.

Overall tips
There is so much I could tell you about this subject, but I'll try to be concise here:

Biochemistry

Genetics

Cell Biology

Micro/Immunology

Pathology
[/list]
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Slumdawg on July 19, 2012, 01:27:35 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20006 Biological Psychology

Workload:  2 X 1-hour lecture per week, 1 X 2-hour tutorial every fortnight.

Assessment:  20% Essay, 20% Laboratory Report and 60% final exam (120 MC questions).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams available, however 60 practice multiple choice questions were available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Do not buy the textbook, waste of money. The lecture notes are sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Anderson (4 weeks), Dr. Howe (3 weeks), Dr. Humberstone (1 week), Prof. Trinder (2 weeks), Dr. Nichols (2 weeks).

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating: 3  Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (85)

Comments: I was quite disappointed with this subject, the organisation was not great, the lecturers were mostly not great, the exam questions were not great and the cohesiveness of the subject was absent. I didn't feel like much of what was taught actually had much relevance to other parts of the course, it was like they just took a bunch of random topics and clumped it together to make "Biological Psychology".

The course is broken up into 6 components: Memory (Dr. Anderson), Brain Research Techniques (Dr. Howe), Statistics (Dr. Humberstone), Sleep & Emotions (Prof. Trinder), Neurophysiology/Psychopharmacology and Affective Disorders (Dr. Nicholas).

The only lecturer I really enjoyed was Dr. Howe who taught the brain research techniques: EEG, TMS, fMRI. All the other lecturers weren't very engaging unfortunately. I felt that Dr. Anderson's lecturing style was the most bland and unenthusiastic, whilst Prof Trinder who lectured sleep, ironically, put a lot people to sleep.

The two assignments were manageable if you spent quite a lot of time researching properly for them. The first essay was kind of stupid I thought, it was basically the introduction section of a lab report but really long. There were 4 hypotheses to be tested, and many other things that weren't really constructed well. The second assignment was a full lab report in 1000 words which is quite difficult to cut down to, however I felt it was more thought through than the first assignment. It's very important to get good scores on both assignments otherwise it'll be quite hard to get a H1 overall.

The exam was pretty poorly written, Prof. Trinder, Dr. Nicholas & Dr. Humberstone's questions were all fine. However, Dr. Howe and Dr. Anderson's questions featured a bunch of poorly worded questions with multiple errors such as "Al of the above" and "Either A nor B" (This was meant to say "Either A or B" but it got removed due to the mistake). The exam had 2011 written on the front, so it was obvious they recycled the exam considering they never release past exams. I was shocked to see so many errors. There were 24 lectures all up, and 120 questions so each lecture had 5 questions allocated to it. Some questions were very simple, but others were more challenging not because they tested your knowledge more in-depth but rather they were poorly worded.

Tutorials in this subject are alright, luckily I had a great tutor - Jared. Definitely try to get into his tutorials because he's really enthusiastic and did undergrad at Harvard! There was one question on the exam in the memory section based on a video we watched in the tutorial, so make sure you go to tutes! I think it does help understand the clinical applications of the things you learn, e.g. watching real life videos of people with epilepsy, Alzheimer's, sleep disorders, etc. However, the majority of the videos you watch are from the 80s, which is kinda disappointing cos surely there would be much better videos out there nowadays.

Overall, even though I love psychology I think this subject did a pretty good job of screwing it up. I don't regret taking it, I learned some interesting information in the course but I think this subject could be so much better if it were run by different lecturers who put more effort into the subject. I would say the content isn't too difficult, but they do assume quite a lot of prior psychology knowledge so it can be difficult to understand what they're taking about if you've never done psychology before. However, if that's the case I think you can still ace this subject even without having done psychology before if you just work hard. It is very memory and recall based in the final exam, although I think some questions were just so poorly worded having the lecture notes and a textbook would not help at all. If you wanna try psychology out, then don't do this subject it'll put you off the field I'd say.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Slumdawg on July 19, 2012, 01:55:02 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC30012 The Unconscious Mind 

Workload:  1 X 2-hour lecture per week, 1 X 2-hour tutorial per fortnight.

Assessment:  10% Take Home Short Answer Questions, 45% Essay, 45% Final Exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams and no practice questions were given beforehand!

Textbook Recommendation: There is no textbook.

Lecturer(s): Prof Haslam, Dr. Carter, Prof Macmillan, Prof. Saling, Assoc Prof. Boldero, Dr. Fine, Assoc Prof. Hulbert.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (84)

Comments: Overall I did enjoy this subject, I took it as my breadth which was probably not the best choice considering most people choose bludgey breadths whilst I chose a third year subject (silly me). But the topic really interested me, and I think the teaching approach of the subject was quite interesting. Each lecturer focussed on a different aspect of the unconscious mind, e.g. neuroscience, history/freudian theories, neuropsychology, social psychology, marketing, clinical psychology and ethics. No topic was taught for more than 2 weeks, the lecturers regularly rotated which was good. I really enjoyed Dr. Fine's lectures on marketing and ethics, as well as Dr. Carter's neuroscience lectures and also Assoc Prof. Boldero's lectures on social psychology.

The coordinator Prof Haslam is a top bloke and was constantly answering questions on the discussion board and was really approachable. He was just filling in for Prof. Kashima, who normally coordinates the subject and you're lucky he does because he gives out the short answer questions before the exam! My year wasn't as lucky, as Prof Haslam didn't think it was appropriate to give them out before the exam, which is fair enough I also thought it was kinda strange but heck I wasn't gonna complain. Although I do see why they were given out beforehand, I felt like most of the short answer questions could have been better answered by researching proper research articles.

A major disadvantage was that we had no practice questions whatsoever, all we knew is that there would be 48 multiple choice questions (4 per lecture) and 6 short answer questions. The exam ended up being quite fair I thought, there were a few tricky multiple choice but the hardest part was definitely short answer as the questions were quite broad so it was hard to know exactly what they wanted you to discuss.

The tutorials were completely pointless, I think it's hard though to run tutorials for a subject like this because every week the topic is completely different and the tutors were generally only experts in one field (mostly social psych). So they didn't really know that much when it came to advanced neuroscience, clinical, history and marketing lectures. There was also a lot of assigned journal articles and each tutorial we would need to go through them, these were extremely difficult to read as they were describing quite advanced concepts and ideas.

The final essay was worth 45% and is 2000 words, so if you did poorly it'd be a real uphill battle to salvage a good mark. This was really worrying because psych tutors are generally quite frugal with giving out high scores on essays, they'll take marks off wherever they can. There's two topics provided by each lecturer so there's 14 topics to choose from. I chose to do mine on the marketing topic as the lecturer was great and I think there was heaps to discuss. The topics did vary in difficulty but it was good to have the option of writing on whatever area you liked best.

I would recommend this subject to others but I will say that you definitely need to have some prior experience with psychology otherwise it will require a lot of work to keep up. I did like the fact that many different specialities were combined to give you many different perspectives on the role of the unconscious mind. Some I enjoyed more than others but I think this approach was quite good. If you're looking for an easy subject then definitely stay away, it requires quite a bit of work as the concepts described are quite advanced and it's not all multiple choice assessment in the final exam like second year subjects. All in all, a rewarding subject that definitely gives you a new perspective on how our mind operates.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ReganM on July 27, 2012, 09:37:00 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10005: Physics 1: Fundamentals

Workload:  1x3 Lectures a week, 8 pracs, 1 hr tutes a week, and HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS every week.

Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour tutorial per week; 28 hours of practical work (8 x three hour laboratory sessions and up to 30 minutes of pre-laboratory activity) and 10 weekly assignments of 30 minutes each during the semester. (from handbook)

Assessment:      

Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. attendance and submission of work for at least 80% of workshop sessions together with a result for assessed work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with with screen capture. However, the second lecturer (Christopher) said he "hated" using Lectopia, and would walk around the lecture theatre as he talked (without the mic), pretty much screwing over anyone who had a clash or wanted to wag.

Past exams available:  Yes, but some were outdated. I think they tend to change the subject around a bit each year, but I'm not sure.

Textbook Recommendation:  R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2010.

However, I looked for a torrent online and downloaded the eBook. Depends on how much you want to use your book really, I know many people who didn't get it at all. I felt that the book was better at explaining some concepts than the lecturers.

Lecturer(s): Martin Sevior and Christopher T. Chantler.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1

Rating:  1 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H3

Comments:
Really disliked this subject. I did it because I didn't do VCE: Physics and you need to do Physics 1: Fundamentals as a prerequisite fr Vet Science if you haven't done 3/4 Physics (Yes, this will fulfill the prereq). In my opinion it consisted of 45% people who wanted to do a Vet course, 45% people who wanted some Physics knowledge for GAMSAT, and 10% (or less) people who were actually interested in Physics.

I'm not much of a maths nut, but I did alright in mathematics in VCE. I found this subject to have lecturers that sucked at explaining new concepts! They didn't seem to understand that most of us had NO PHYSICS KNOWLEDGE. The slides themselves were scary, with copious amounts of formulas with little or no explanation. They moved pretty quickly, but like any Fundamentals subject, they were trying to teach us 2 years of Physics in 1 semester. The only good thing about the lectures were the demonstrations, and there was like, one every lecture. I guess the lecturers did explain the demonstration to explain to us why they were showing us the demonstration, but sometimes I felt like they were wasting time and that time could have been better used to explain the core concepts.

Every week there's a tute, and my friend and I (who had different tutors) found that out tutors also sucked at explaining the new concepts. Maybe everyone had a high expectation of what Physics we were supposedly taught in Year 10? By the end of the semester the 20 or so people in my tute class had dwindled to maybe 5 or 6 people. The tutors do show up at the Physics First Year Learning center, and they're actually really helpful there. There are all sorts of tutors that show up there, so unless you set a time with your tutor, you'll probably see tutors you don't know there, however they're still happy to help out.

The pracs aren't too bad actually, they were at least semi-interesting and helped me to understand what we were learning, the pracs were not too hard to understand, and if we were stuck our demonstrator was happy to help us (and with the correct prodding give us answers). They lasted for mostly the whole 3 hours, which sometimes did feel like the longest 3 hours of my life, haha.

Now the homework assignments, man, there's one every week. I struggled with these, or at least I did with the first half. I felt like I hadn't learned enough to be able to apply the concepts and formulas to the questions they were presenting. The program they use to present the homework questions was pretty good, it would give you hints which kind fo started from the basics to help you out, however you'd lose marks for using them. You got more marks by completing a question first go etc etc. There's also an assignment you have to do, which was easy compared to the weekly homework tasks, I got 37/40 for it. You're basically given scenarios and asked to explain the Physics concepts behind them.

The exam was 3 hours long, and I wasn't feeling well pre-exams so I didn't do much study, however there were practice exams available to do. The exam itself is no multiple choice, it's essentially all short answer, and you write your answers into a little booklet.

Overall, this subject was really hard and really boring. I was so glad that I got a pass so that it fulfilled my pre-req. The best thing about this subject was that I made some great friends solely due to our mutual dislike for Physics.

On the flip side, my other friend who did Specialist Maths and Physics 1/2 got a H1 in this subject. Part of the reason why I got 65 was that I was completely overwhelmed with new uni stuff in first semester, and I didn't do questions from the book (which I felt could have helped). However, he did still find the subject boring, I guess he just worked harder at Physics than I did.

GOOD LUCK.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on November 12, 2012, 01:39:53 am
Subject code/name: LING10002- Intercultural Communication
Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week
Assessment:
-> 1500 word “Address Terms” assignment – 35%
-> 1500 word “Narrative Inquiry” assignment – 35%
-> End of semester 1 hour Multiple Choice Exam – 30%
75% attendance at tutorials is hurdle requirement – you can afford to miss out on 2-3 tutes :)

Lectopia enabled: Yes
Past exams available: We didn’t have any but future years might?
Textbook recommendation: Language and Culture, Claire Kramsch; Oxford Introductions to Language Study (1999) – a small cute book which is not essential to buy but sets out the content nicely :)
Lecturers: Celia Thompson, Janne Morton, Hyejeong Kim (takes one lecture), Sara Cieseleski (takes one lecture). Tutorials are taken by Hyejeong, Sara, Eleanor and Janne.

Year and semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 83 (H1)

Comments: A very interesting subject which pretty much looks at how language ties into culture and how culture ties into language. This involves looking at main approaches to language & culture study as well as looking at some case studies concerning language and cultural intersections. The first assignment involved us technically eavesdropping on people’s conversations and noting them down so we could analyse the “address terms” used in these conversations and what effect they had. It was a pretty straightforward assignment but make sure you clear up the structure of the assignment with your tutor beforehand otherwise you’ll struggle. Also, for assignments listen to your tutor over the lecturers, as your tutor is the one grading you in the end. The second assignment involved interviewing someone in the Intercultural communication course (either from your tutorial or from another tutorial) and trying to elicit some “critical event” experiences from them; as well as any narratives about language, culture, travel experiences, anything! And then tie these to language and culture studies covered in the course and explain the effect of these narratives and analyse the narratives and excerpts from them. Also, you’ll need to explain narrative inquiry studies as a whole. I found the second assignment a lot more obscure than the first and different tutors seemed to have different expectations about what the assignment should be so it seemed a bit confusing. The second assignment followed the same structure as the first for us so that made things a lot easier. The end of semester exam was quite straightforward if you’d at least had a basic knowledge of everything covered in the semester :) It was 30 MCQ’s and 1 hour duration (though many people finished it within 15-30 mins). Overall, I thought this subject was quite interesting; the lectures were well organised and the tutorials complemented most of the things covered in lectures (e.g. in tutes, we’d go through worksheets and Q’s pertaining to lecture content). I recommend this subject to anyone interested in linguistics and the ‘socio-cultural’ side of it :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on November 12, 2012, 01:44:03 am
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10009- Food for a Healthy Planet
Workload:   2 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour tutorial per week
Assessment:
-> 3 Forum Reports which are each worth 5% and must be submitted 1 week after the forum lecture has been held.(15%) Forum lectures are held throughout the semester
-> Mid-Semester test which covers lectures 1-10 and goes on for 1 hour (15%)
-> Research Essay of 2,000 words from a list of topics or you may choose your own topic related to content studied in class nd get it approved by tutor (25%)
-> 2 hour Exam which has multiple choice and extended answer questions for which you are allowed to bring in one A4 sheet of information (back and front) (45%)
Also attendance is a hurdle requirement and you've got to show up to 75% of tutorials - i.e. you can miss out on two or three :)

Lectopia Enabled?  Yes, but forums are not recorded (though forum lecture slides are put online)
Past exams available: Yes, past exams from 08 were available as well as mid semester tests from past years.
Textbook Recommendation: No actual textbook but there is a (quite thick) subject reader. I didn't buy it though and some of the readings are put up online
Lecturer(s): Mohan Singh, Frank Dunshea, and the forum speakers. Nanette Esparon is the head tutor

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1
Rating:  5 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments: I loved this subject and found it to be really interesting :) My review is a bit biased since I find health/food & nutrition interesting in any case, but I think it is a really worthwhile subject - I don't want to say it's an "easy H1" but if you put in a bit of effort, it's a great subject where anyone can score highly :) It's obviously based a lot around food! So the world food situation, how the food we eat affects us like in terms of nutrition and metabolism, energy production from food in terms of athletes etc, carb loading, global warming and impact on food production, how sustainable current food production methods are, advances in food technology, nutrients, whether current technologies can feed future populations, current problems facing agriculture and food industries, GM foods, etc. I thought the subject was pretty well coordinated although the lectures could get a little dry sometimes. The forums were great and attendance is 'compulsory' though I actually didn't make it to the last forum so I just depended on the forum slides for that - surprisingly got the same mark for that forum report as the ones I had attended so; if you have a super emergency that doesn't allow you to attend a forum, the forum slides should suffice! The tutorials were very productive I think and Nanette was lovely and always willing to help :) I think my FFHP tutorials were really useful compared to other subjects tutorials and complemented the lectures well. The mid-semester test wasn't too hard, given that you studied a bit. It was a mix of MC's and short answers but I did feel as though 1 hour wasn’t enough…so probably write your answers as quickly as possible! The forum reports were quite straightforward and could be done while travelling to uni because they were only 500 words! That said, it is quite difficult to condense the whole forum into 500 words (about the size of this comment review LOL). Tips for forum reports are to use very simple and plain language and explain everything equally rather than excessively focusing on one thing.  Also don’t bother with fancy and extended introductions – be as concise as possible in terms of your intro and conclusion. Research essay wasn’t too hard (the researching though was quite daunting as we needed to draw content from 10 references). The writing up wasn’t too bad though :) I chose my own topic after running it through Nanette and it was based around something that was studied in FFHP (eating disorders). A tip for the essay is to try to get recent academic journal articles rather than really old ones – they put up readings online so best to use recent ones from there. I think, in general, they weren’t tight with the marking scheme in ffhp assessments. The Exam was good and we were allowed to bring in an a4 back and front info sheet so it helped a lot because I just wrote down whatever content I was finding hard or couldn’t be bothered studying on there (thank you size 7 font) :P I finished my exam early but this was mainly because I was rushing due to fear of not finishing on time like in the mid sem test haha..but your hand does die a little because there are a few extended essay type questions – so make sure you practice at least 1-2 essay type Q’s before you go for your exam, otherwise your hand won’t be used to it haha.  All the best for FFHP! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on November 12, 2012, 01:50:51 am
Subject code/name:  EDUC10050 – Understanding Knowing and Learning
Workload: 1 x 1 hour lecture and  1 x 2 hour Tutorial per week (for the first 5 weeks)
Note though that for the first 5 weeks, your tutorials run for 2 hours. For the 7 weeks after that (when you’re settled into your tutoring arrangement), the tutes run for 1 hour.
Assessment:
-> 1500 word essay about your tutoring/learning situation informed by your tutoring experience – a quite reflective essay with no references (35%)
-> 2500 word essay (with references) about your philosophy of learning informed by your tutoring experience and past learning experiences as a student (65%)
-> Hurdle Requirement: 80% attendance at tutorials. Also MUST complete 7 sessions of tutoring a student (of any age) and fill out each session on the “Tutor Record” sheet. Also must obtain a Working with Children Check card prior to tutoring.

Lectopia enabled: Yes, lecture slides are available and lecture audio recordings can be accessed.
Past exams available: This subject has no exam component.
Textbook recommendation: No textbook was required when I did this subject – the lecture slides were enough I thought. However, if you really want to get a textbook then I’d recommend this one: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Perspectives_on_Learning.html?id=rh8QRlzBozQC&redir_esc=y – my tutor was always carrying it around  and promoting its greatness haha though no one bought it :P
Lecturers: John Quay; Amanda Burritt and Viviana Ferrari take the tutorials :)

Year and semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 81 (H1)

Comments: This was my breadth subject and I must say that it’s a really relaxed kind of subject (if you like the idea of tutoring/teaching someone for 7 weeks). A lot of people (myself included) were quite mislead by the 2012 handbook entry of this subject because it failed to mention that we’d have to actually tutor someone for 7 weeks – we thought it’d be all theory based. A lot of people were put off by the tutoring arrangement component of this subject. I didn’t mind it though because I want to be a teacher in the future so it was quite a valuable and enjoyable experience :) The first 5 weeks you get an introduction into how to tutor and different introductory theories regarding learning (such as Plato, Locke, Gestalt, constructivism, etc). The first 5 weeks of tutorials run for 2 hours. From weeks 6-12, however, the tutorials only run for 1 hour (to give you time to conduct your tutoring outside of class). The tutorials pretty much just went over whatever the lecture had covered and could sometimes get repetitive or drag on (especially in the 2 hour tutorials) – we’d make up scenarios and assess how learning theories could apply or not apply to such scenarios, evaluate learning theories effectiveness, etc.  There was a lot of group discussion which was quite engaging most of the time :) In weeks 1-5, you’ll have to get your WWC ready (do it in the first week so your card comes in time). The tutoring arrangement gives you 2 choices; you can either tutor at a homework club (a club where you’ll get one student or a group of students and have to show up there every week or so to tutor them – you’ll get a list of homework clubs around Melbourne so dw about searching them up) and you’ll have to call them up and make the arrangement. OR you can tutor a student privately like I did. The private tutoring arrangement is good if you’ve got siblings or family friends who would benefit from tutoring; e.g. I tutored my little sis in Maths. The two assignments are based around your tutoring situation – the first one involves you talking about and reflecting on your tutoring situation (e.g. the setting, where the tutoring takes place, tools involved at what time it takes place and how these impact your student’s learning). It’s written in first person and no references so can be done in a jiffy. The second assignment is more extensive and worth a huge 65% and involves you explaining your ‘philosophy of learning’ (what you think learning is) and evaluating which learning theories did/did not adhere to your philosophy of learning in the tutoring situation. Overall, I found this subject to be quite interesting and great as a breadth subject if you don’t want to put in too much effort or are interested in teaching/education in the future :) However, remember that the tutoring sessions outside of class are a hurdle requirement so you should be prepared for that when deciding to take on the subject. All the best with UKL! :)
Edit: Also, at the end of the subject the coordinator will send you a certificate for contributing to the tutoring of your student(s) which you can attach to your resume :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: VivaTequila on November 15, 2012, 07:33:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10004: Chemistry 2

Workload:
Semester 2 Only
Weekly: 3x 1hr Lecture, 1x 1hr Tutorial
Throughout the Semester: 6x 3hr Laboratory Practicals

Assessment:
75% - Exam
20% - Laboratory Practicals (note that each practical is worth 3.3%! That's substantial!)
5% - Online Mid-Semester Test

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available: Yes, there is no lack of past exams available and solutions are provided.

Textbook Recommendation:
Must Buy:
Laboratory Manual (or retain from Chemistry 1; it's the same book for both), and therein, you'll need a lab coat and some protective glasses.
Do not need to buy:
Tutorial workbook (E-Copy provided on the Learning Management System [LMS] so if you have a laptop, don't buy it)
The prescribed textbooks. There's one for general Chemistry (Zumdahl) and there's one for Organic (Mc. Murry). They are both EXCELLENT textbooks, and will no doubt be highly useful for you. But, on the flip side, they are both highly expensive. Do a cost benefit analysis - I did have both of them but only because I got them new for half price. I probably wouldn't have bought them both if they were full price, because I didn't use them all that much.

Lecturer(s):
Professor Richard O'Hair - Organic Chem
Professor Carl Schiesser - Organic Chem
Associate Professor Trevor Smith - Quantum Chem
Associate Professor Michelle Gee - Kinetics (she's awesome)
Dr. Paul Donnelly - Redox Chemistry and Coordination Chemistry

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 - Semester 2

Rating:  4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Will update when results come out.

Comments:

Despite everything you are about to read, I just really like Chemistry, and the subject was pretty well coordinated - the Chem department has done a good job of picking topics that are highly applicable and relevant to studies in Chemistry. The way the tutorials are structured is great. The Learning Lab is also fantastic. Really, there's not much to complain about. But I did have some major disagreements with the way in which some of the topics in this subject was taught. So what you'll read is mostly negative, but rest assured that this IS a good subject - I just want to voice my opinion.

Okay so basically, in contrast to Chemistry 1 which mainly elaborated on aspects of the VCE course, Chemistry 2 covers 5 topics - 4 of which are (for the most part) brand new.

The topics, in order of instruction, are:
1. Organic Chem (2 lecturers)
2. Quantum Chem (1 godawful lecturer)
3. Kinetics (1 awesome lecturer, such a chiller)
4. Redox Chemistry, and;
5. Transition Metal Chemistry (one lecturer for both and he's a pretty cool guy too)

So I'll elaborate on each and every topic, just to give prospective students a feel for what you can expect.

Organic Chemistry

Organic Chemistry was all about teaching us different mechanisms of reactions - where the electrons go, and some qualitative explanations for why they do so. Now the lectures for this section of the course weren't bad - the lecturers were clear, and the material made sense - but that was only in the lectures. Outside of the lectures (i.e. in SWOTVAC), the material became grossly complicated when nobody had any idea what the heck was happening in Organic.

A few things led to this problem.

The first was that lectures were not recorded. The second is that there were no lecture notes for Schiesser's part of the topic. The third is that there were very limited resources provided to learn the material. But, probably the biggest problem of all is that they didn't teach us anything surrounding the reactions; we learnt the reactions - then next thing you know, we're studying quantum. Nobody was there to teach you how all of these reactions led to organic syntheses, or indeed, dynamic problem solving when you get things wrong. There was no "This reagent probably should be used in preference to this one because of reasons x and y" - it was simply reaction mechanisms, so when it comes to guessing what's happening in the syntheses during the exam, it was literally just best guess.

You had to learn an odd 15-20 functional groups (no problemo) and then understand how and why they react in the ways that they do. In the examination, they normally give you a series of steps in a synthesis, and you need to identify missing reagents and structures in order to figure out the parts that they aren't giving you, based on what you are supplied with before and after. THIS WAS NOT TAUGHT IN THE LECTURES.

Whilst Organic Chemistry could have been very interesting, what was assessed was completely unfair; it was not taught, so they shouldn't be allowed to examine it. Hopefully this changes in future years.

The next topic was Quantum Chemistry.

And it was a shitstorm of useless information.

Now before I get slammed for launching a baseless polemic against the Chem dept, I want to use an analogy to show why I believe the university's methodology in teaching Quantum was fundamentally flawed.

My analogy is this: you don't need to know how a combustion engine works in order to drive a car. You don't need to be able to understand it's internal mechanisms in order to behold, utilise, and appreciate the result - that is, a highly useful outcome of being able drive a car.

This will apply in what what you're hopefully about to read. Still here?

Quantum Chemistry is concerned with understanding the development of atomic theory and our model of the atom. The outcomes are undoubtedly useful - energy is quantised, just as energy levels are quantised. The wave equation allows us to solve many things about the atom; for instance, the mathematically derived (and now well understood) shapes of orbitals that form chemical bonds and account for the chemical properties which you've (until now) taken for granted.

So it's all good and well to study Quantum Chem. But unfortunately, the way it was presented to us was completely redundant and superfluous.

The fundamental problem with it is that they tried to explain the trials and tribulations of the academics of yesteryear - those chemists who were debating the nature of the atom and establishing the groundwork of quantum mechanics - to first chem students without philosophical doctorates in particle physics. It's just not going to work.

In fact, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that first years are going to be able to understand what is wrong with Quantum Mechanics. It actually is impossible for this to occur without an appreciation of much more sophisticated theory.

Now why is this a problem? Because they tried to teach it to us under the pretense that we'd be able to understand. What do I mean?

Well, the subject was basically taught to us as a chronological progression of the historical evolution in atomic theory. First there was Democritus and his infamous cronies, and it all made sense up to the Bohr Model. They logically explained every shift in thinking and the experiments which disproved the previous versions of the atom.

And then what happens? Quantum Mechanics. Why? Neither the lecturer, nor the textbook(!!!) made us privy to the answer. To paraphrase the textbook, the transition from Bohr to Planck/Quantum Theorists basically said at the start of the chapter "It was becoming apparent that the Bohr model was incorrect."

And that was all that was said on the matter.

The rest of Quantum continued in a similar fashion - learning abstract equations which held little relevance to a first year Chemistry student (and indeed, rote learning for the sake of salvaging a Chemistry 2 score), and it was shit all around.

Now back to my analogy:
If the farmer who earns his dosh from his tractor can utilise the end result of the scientific revolution that was the combustion engine without much understanding of it's internal mechanism - then great, the world is a better place. Let me liken the farmer to the first year chemistry student. The farmer has no way of knowing, living rurally without an education, how the combustion engine works, just as the philosophical doctorate deprived first year chem student doesn't have the groundings to understand how quantum mechanics is going to work. There's simply no way in hell that either of our two friends are going to understand it. So what are the options:

1. You can teach them from the ground up how it works, or;
2. You can show them the end result and how to utilise it without understanding how or why, because it will still yield a useful outcome.

The university went in between both of these options. They tried to teach us everything from first principles, but there were gigantic Grand Canyon sized gaps in understanding. It was taught to us under the pretense that it all makes sense to us, when really we didn't have a chance of getting it. This has special significance for the next topic, because Michelle Gee did in fact realise that her audience of first year's didn't have a chance at understanding some of the material she was to present to us, so she went with the second option.

Finally, Quantum was shit because the lecturer couldn't explain anything. The infamous "Photoelectic Effect" was elaborated on and explained over the duration of about 4 weeks in VCE Physics, and given less than a 1hr lecture in Chemistry 2 - and even then, it was OBJECTIVELY ill-explained. I was paying special attention to the lecturers explanation of the Photoelectic effect, and he didn't adequately explain it at all - everything he said was ephermeral and incomplete; there was no logical introduction to what it was, how scientists arrived at the conclusion, and what the implications of it were - yet it was still assessed in it's finest detail (most definitely not covered in the lecture or the lecture notes) by the lecturer. Thank you, VCE Physics, for allowing me to have some chance at guessing the Multi Choice for this topic.

But I'm ranting heaps - let me progress onto the next topic, which was Kinetics.

Kinetics was relatively well taught - simply by virtue of the fact that the lecturer was switched on to her audience.

Kinetics is the branch of chemistry that is concerned with how fast reactions progress due to their intricate mechanisms - which are often much more complicated than they seem thanks to Collision Theory. She taught everything so well from first principles that EVERYTHING was left making sense.

Now, Kinetics has a fundamental prerequisite of differential equations - something not touched on in VCE or Calculus 1. This meant that 90% of her audience wouldn't have had the faintest clue of what she was actually doing when it came to integrating what's known as rate laws. You could copy exactly what she did, but it didn't mean you understood it.

Now, she recognised that it was beyond the scope of the course to learn differential equations and differential integration. So what did she do? Well, she couldn't have gone with the first option and taught it from first principles. So she just decided to give us the answer to the problem and yield and utilise the ultimate result - formulas that come from differential equations. Students were given 6 formulas to remember if they couldn't derive them - which was perfectly fine. One, apparently, does not need to understand how differential equations work in order to calculate useful rate information about chemical reactions. This is like our farmer friend who doesn't need to understand the combustion engine that propels his tractor in order for him to do something useful. It was fantastic that she actually realised this, unlike the Quantum lecturer. Kinetics was an eye opener and highly enjoyable if you like Chemistry - it's the only real section where algebraic calculations came into play. I'd liken the problem-solving aspect to Stoichiometry - you need to analyse what you've got to figure out how to get what's asked for in the question using similar techniques.

Redox

...was highly enjoyable. What was monstrously difficult in VCE actually becomes quite easy in Uni. There's only a few advancements, like concentration cells and the establishment of the Nernst equation (should have been taught in VCE IMO) which really rounded off the idea of galvanic cells. Would have loved to see some electrolysis, but they skipped over it.

Transition Chemistry
MgCl2 -> Mg2+ + 2Cl- is a lie.

Introducing Ligands and what metal ions actually do when in solution. This was a real eye-opener and it explains a hell of a lot - like how rust removers work, and how biological systems interact. The lecturer is highly educated, not only in science but also in arts and philosophy, and it was a pleasure to listen to him. Nothing to say here - just great lecturing in a brand new topic that really opens your eyes.

So with that.... Advice for doing well in Chemistry 2
- Get on top of your Organic reactions early; make exhaustive notes on everything and generally focus your attention to this subject when it's being taught because it will come back to bite you on the ass in SWOTVAC if you leave it too late
- Go to tutorials to learn what Quantum is all about because the lecturer is hopeless. Get your questions answered from tutors at the Learning Centre often.
- Actually strive to do well in the Chemistry pracs because they're worth a substantial amount. A great way to improve your yield in first year is to find any similar-coloured white powder that you've been trying to produce and simply add it to your bag at the end. Worked for so many people, so many times - and an extra mark or two on each practical really adds up.
- With Organic, spend less time learning all of the introductory Organic - focus more on the redox aspects and how to identify redox organic reactions because they take up the majority (60% on organic redox alone) in the exam.

Wow, this ended up being a lot longer than I initially intended.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 15, 2012, 09:37:40 pm
Subject code/name: LING10002- Intercultural Communication

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

Assessment:
-> 1500 word “Address Terms” assignment – 35%
-> 1500 word “Narrative Inquiry” assignment – 35%
-> End of semester 1 hour Multiple Choice Exam – 30%
75% attendance at tutorials is hurdle requirement – you can afford to miss out on 2-3 tutes :)

Lectopia enabled: Yes (with screen capture)

Past exams available: No, see my comments on why this may be the case when I discuss the exam.

Textbook recommendation: Language and Culture, Claire Kramsch.

Students probably have some conflicting opinions as to whether it's essential that you buy this book.

The reasons why I regretted buying the book are as follows:

- It didn't cover much of the assignment-based content and hence I didn't use it as a reference.

- There was literally one question on the exam that was related directly to the book, thus 98% of the exam was lecture- based.

- You're paying about $30 for a book that contains like 100 pages.

Lecturers: Celia Thompson, Janne Morton, Hyejeong Kim (takes one lecture), Sara Cieseleski (takes one lecture). Tutorials are taken by Hyejeong, Sara, Eleanor and Janne.

Year and semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I have quite a few things to say about this subject, so i'll just split what I found enjoyable and what I did not.

What I liked about the subject:

Lectures: Not too content heavy, just the way they should be. It turned out to be pretty relaxing away from the BsC course.
                        The information followed a sequential order, where the lecturer on Tuesday might have discussed the topic Socialization and identity 1 for example, and then Thursday's lecture was Socialization and Identity 2, so essentially you got two different perspectives on the one topic.


The Exam: In my opinion, the exam covered the most basic concepts that were discussed during the semester so it was more that you understood the concepts as opposed to memorizing slabs of information. It was one hour long and was quite straightforward (multi-choice), I assume that past exam questions are recycled.

Tutorials: I found extremely helpful mainly in reference to the assignments. We were able to address our tutor (and the assignment marker) on some ambiguous instructions that were outlined in the assignment description and marking guide.

What I did not enjoy about this subjects

Assignment marking:

Assignment 1:
Initally, I thought the tutors were pretty generous with their quite detailed explanations on what could be improved on assignment 2, so I wasn't overly concerned with missing out on a H1 since it was only my first year and I was still learning some things about how to write up a proper assignment, for example using the appropriate APA reference style.

Assignment 2:
I had improved 0.5 marks from my last assignment.

This was a let down.

Why?

-  I treated assignment 1 as a learning experience. I had looked at where I lost marks for the previous assignment and had made sure not to repeat the same mistakes

- I had followed the marking criteria that was outlined for assignment 2. During lectures and tutorials the teachers consistently explained that the marking criteria was the best indicator for getting a good mark, for both assignments I found this hard to believe. I just felt as if no matter how hard I tried, the marks didn't pay off. I checked in with my tutor for both assignments and both times I was given a response something like "That's great, you're on the right track, I look forward to reading your assignment".

However this may not always be the case:
Of course, it's subjective. It seemed to me as if assignment marking had poor inter-rater reliability, and had I been assigned to a different tutorial class than perhaps I may have received different marks. I don't want to sound all bratty about not receiving a H1 for either assignment, but it honestly felt this way.

Ultimately, as a student you pick subjects that you believe you can do well in. Having studied English language during VCE I thought I had some of the tools to really get a good grasp of this subject, but a lot of the time it was incredibly ambiguous in how it was you could actually excel academically.


The bottom line: Having completed two arts subjects as breadth units this year, I have been swayed into pursuing a university breadth subject in future. I would recommend this subject to anyone who was thoroughly interested in linguistics, has some background knowledge in the field and would be content in receiving marks that were lower than expected at some times (and it doesn't help that arts subjects are marked on a bell curve).


Thanks to: Yearningforsimplicity, haha as you can see I stole some components of your review.




Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 17, 2012, 07:50:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC10004 Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2

Workload: 3 x 1hr Lectures and 1 x 2hr Lab session/ Tutorial

Assessment:

-  Laboratory assignment(s) of not more than 2000 words to be submitted during the semester (+ - 10% rule applies) (35%)
- Laboratory class participation during a lab report presentation of a class-conducted experiment (5%)
- One three hour examination comprising multiple-choice questions (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: No, Sample exam questions are given out by the lecturers during the semester (for example for 2/6 topics, the exam questions were identical which were social psychology and quantitative methods. Note that these have no solutions so i'd advise joining a study group or checking the posted solutions by students on the discussion board. The other 4 topics had questions that mainly gave you an indication of how they would be worded or some possible content to study for ahead of the exam)

Textbook Recommendation: Essentially you won't need a textbook for this subject. One of the topics (social psychology) had a few questions from the textbook that were on the exam, but you can probably just consult with a study group about those particular answers.

Lecturer(s):

In order of presentation

Dr Judi Humberstone: Developmental Psychology (8 lectures)

Professor Yoshi Kashima: Social Psychology (8 lectures)

Christopher Groot: Quantitative methods (3 lectures)

Professor Nick Haslam: Personality Psychology (9 lectures)

Professor Nick Allen: Clinical Psychology (8 lectures)

Orientation lecture: The first lecture was just an introduction to the subject, given by Dr Simon Cropper who from my understanding took some of the lectures for MBB1.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 2

Rating: 4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This was my first glimpse into the world of Psychology, having never studied the subject during VCE nor semester 1 (MBB1). There were maybe one or two times where I felt a little disadvantaged, for example Quantitative Methods, and for these cases I consulted the staff on the discussion board (where lecturers and the head tutor regularly check in to answer students questions), and my problems were solved :)

I'll be honest, for most of the time I didn't really enjoy the subject, I just found a lot of it to be full of content that was completely irrelevant to the exam so they could have condensed the content in the lectures. The parts I did enjoy were: Social Psychology, Personality Psychology, Quantitative Methods and just research in general on the essay (essay topic was based on social psychology it may change next year).

The Assignment:

2000 words. The topic (No Man Is an Island) was a little ambiguous at first since I had no idea where to start but after the lab session which was based on an introduction to essay writing helped clear up a lot, and gave some direction. I guess I was pretty lucky to be assigned to a class where the average was H1/H2A, I know for some of the other classes this wasn't the case though. You are given a LONG time to write the essay (like a month and a bit), so if you work efficiently it's not too bad :)


Lab sessions

These were 2 hour sessions held each week from week 2. A lot of the time, I thought what was discussed was a little disconnected to the lecture content (for example we looked at children's display rules which was literally a lecture slide during developmental Psychology). However there were also times where I thought the tutorials were very helpful, for example outlining different ways of measuring personality and the disadvantages/ advantages of each which was based on one of the lectures.

The Exam

About 50% of the exam was based on multiple choice questions which were assigned by the two lecturers from social psychology and quantitative methods, so definitely check the discussion board for student posted solutions or form a study group for discussion.
I thought the questions that were given from clinical and developmental psych were a little difficult however.

All in All: Having done this subject I know that Psychology is not something i'll be pursuing during my future studies, however other people may enjoy this subject. I thought it was fairly well organized and the staff were always helpful, hence my rating :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Guo on November 20, 2012, 01:04:17 pm

Subject Code/Name:PHYC10001

Workload: Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 3 hour practical (8 of the 12 teaching weeks)

Assessment: 10 x Mini Weekly Assignments, 1 Major assignment, 8 Practical reports and final exam

Past exams available:  Yes. With solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Physics for Scientists and Engineers: A Strategic Approach with Modern Physics, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2008  - Very helpful - You should really buy it!

Lecturer(s): Dr. David Jamison - This guy is awesome, Dr. Robert Scholten - He is alright

Year & Semester of completion: 2011, Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 96% H1

Comments: If you are really good at physics and problem solving, then this subject is right for you. However, it is very fast pace compared to all the other subjects I had due to it being the advanced stream. But if you want a challenge, then choose this subject
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on November 20, 2012, 05:42:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90011 Modelling: Mathematical Biology

Workload:  1x2hour lecture per week, 1x1 hour practice class

Assessment:  3 assignments (worth 25% each), 1x2hour exam (worth 25%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation: 

Edelstein-Keshet, L. Mathematical Models in Biology. McGraw Hill, 1987.
Murray, J. D. Mathematical Biology. Springer Verlag, 1990 (or the new 2 Volume Third edition, 2003).
Britton, N. F. Essential Mathematical Biology, Springer, 2003.
Dr Vries, G., Hillen T., Lewis, M., Muller, J. and Schonfisch, B. A Course in Mathematical Biology. SIAM, 2006.

These are only recommended for learning a bit extra on the material.

Lecturer(s): Kerry Landman

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Will release once results are released

Comments:

I thoroughly enjoyed this subject. Kerry is a great lecturer and you get a taste of what mathematical biology actually is, and what it tackles.

Mathematical biology is a relatively new field of maths, and in this subject you'll look at:

- population growth
- epidemic modelling
- biological invasion
- pattern formation
- tumour modelling

At the start you look at discrete models (e.g. the discrete logistic equation )

To be expanded on
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on November 20, 2012, 06:00:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90069 Introduction to String Theory 

Workload:  4x1hour lectures

Assessment:  2 assignments (worth 20% each), 1x1hour exam (worth 60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available: No

Textbook Recommendation:  http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/string/string.pdf

Lecturer: Omar Foda

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: Will release results upon release (maybe)

Comments:

This subject is not for the faint of heart. I come from a physics background, but I found the subject difficult from the first lecture.

You're introduced to tensor notation that (I found) is difficult to grasp, and the problem lies in not having masters level physics subjects as prerequisites (i.e. General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory). The lecturer tries to get around this, but (in my opinion) it didn't work.

Due to the difficulty of the content, the assignments were changed to summarising the lecture notes and expanding on calculations given in Tong's notes (and a chapter from a textbook).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 20, 2012, 07:06:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005: Genetics & The Evolution of Life

Workload: 3 x 1hr Lectures, 1 x 2hr Tutorial every second week, 1 x 2hr Practical every second/first week (depending on whether you are group B or A)

--> Group A's have their pracs earlier

Assessment:
-A 45 minute, multiple choice test held mid-semester (20%)

-work related to practical classes during the semester (25%)

Including  pre-and post laboratory activities

Prepracs: As the name suggests, these are short tests (10 questions) that are to be completed on the LMS. They aren't timed and most of the content refers to the practical workbook, amongst the information relating to the specific prac. They are usually 1 mark but may be worth 2 marks out of the 10 marks allocated to your prac.

Postpracs: Timed 15 minute tests opened for 24 hours after your completed prac (open usually an hour after the prac). These just relate to content covered during the prac, and can be worth anywhere from 4-7 marks out of the 10 marks allocated to your prac.

In addition:
Completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%)

Note: This year the staff decided 10 ILTs that made up the 5%, the main reason was to reduce the number of questions for each one (used to be about 18 now it's 10), there is one pretty much every week, so when you pass an ILT you get 0.5%

- an assignment not exceeding 1000 words (5%)
- A 2hr 30min examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (60%)  (Where 98% of what is examined refers to lecture material. )

N.B: After looking at the 2013 handbook for BIOL10005, the assessment that I have mentioned above has changed. See: https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2013/BIOL10005

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Like Semester 1, one sample exam is given. This Semester the content was much more similar to the actual exam than last sem.

Textbook Recommendation: Subject handbook recommends R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2010

(No you don't really need it: It's for further reading, clarification etc.)

Lecturer(s):

In order of presentation

Dawn Gleeson: Genetics and population genetics (Lectures 1-16 , lectures 33-36)

Rick Wetherbee: Botany (lectures 17-24)

Theresa Jones: Zoology (lectures 25-32)

Genetics
Definitely the most enjoyable for me. Basically it's VCE genetics but a little more in-depth.

For example,

Linkage
* Learn how to calculate the map distance between two genes on a chromosome, alleles in cis/ trans arrangement etc.

Polygenes
* How is it that blue eyed parents can have a brown-eyed baby? Well it's possible!
* Learn about genes that contribute 2 or more alleles.

Recessive/ Dominant Epistasis
How one allele at one locus can mask the affect of an allele at another locus, hence affecting genotypic ratios

The VCE stuff: Includes similar genetic problems such as complete dominance (monohybrid, dihybrid crosses), incomplete dominance, co-dominance, lethality (recessive and dominant), pedigrees, DNA replication, PCR, DNA manipulation and techniques, transcription/ translation

Then there's population genetics
Learn about allele frequencies/ genotypic frequencies etc. assuming and without the Hardy- Weinberg Principle

Botany
* There was some things that were repeated from last semester e.g. seed plants, flowering plants, primary and secondary endosymbiosis.
* The lecture material that was presented was clear.

Zoology
The least enjoyable part of second semester bio IMO.

We literally were under the impression we had to learn about the characteristics of five major phyla including number of germ layers, fate of the blastopore etc. It was a whole lot of ROTE- learning that did not have to be done since it was barely covered on the exam. There was also a whole bunch of other classes and phyla that were presented and we didn't have to know.

However, vertebrate evolution and the hominid stuff relating to VCE was the most enjoyable. The Prac complimented the Zoology component of the subject.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012 Semester 2

Rating: 4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Just a few comments on what was assessed:

Mid Sem Test
25 multi-choice questions, about 7 were worth 2-3 marks and required mostly understanding genetic problems. The questions that weren't marked as high were ROTE learning.  They give you a sample MST and although the questions aren't the same, I thought the content that was on that was pretty similar to what was on the actual test.

Assignment
Doesn't appear to be on the 2013 study design so I won't discuss this.

Exam
Definitely harder than semester 1 but similar format (Section A multi choice, Sections B and C fill in the blanks, section D 3 essay type short answer questions)

Overall: I became much more interested in the genetics component than VCE and the lecturers were mostly clear in how they presented their material. The Prac classes were pretty interesting and the mid sem test was fair.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 22, 2012, 08:39:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10004: Chemistry 2

Workload:   3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hr practical per week (started from mid semester this year), 1 x 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
- A 30-minute on-line mid-semester test (5%) (covered organic chemistry, i.e. Weeks 1-4)
- ongoing assessment of practical work (20%)
- a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%)

Note: - Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject
                   -Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled: Only the kinetics (6 lectures) were recorded. Why they didn't record the other lectures baffles me.

Past exams available: Yes, years prior to 2004 are not representative of the current study design.

Lecturer(s):

In order of presentation

Professor Richard O'Hair (Weeks 1 & 2)

Professor Carl Schiesser (Weeks 3 & 4)

Associate Professor Trevor Smith (Weeks 5 & 6)

Associate Professor Michelle Gee (Weeks 7-8)

Dr. Paul Donnelly (Weeks 9 - 12)

VivaTequila covered a lot about the lecturers but i'll expand on some stuff I found quite difficult.

Weeks 1 & 2 Organic Chemistry
In general, the lecturer seemed genuinely interested in what he was teaching which always makes it easier for students.
Most of what was taught eased us into the major components of organic chem that was covered in weeks 3 & 4, Richard covered the following topics:

- Factors affecting acidity/ basicity in organic compounds, such as electronegativity, sp_ hybridisation etc. and how it relates to the stability of these compounds and how they perform as a nucleophile/ electrophile

- Introduction to organic mechanisms and curly headed arrow notation (movement of electrons)

- Role of the nucleophile (electron rich species) and electrophile (electron deficient species) in organic reactions

The main issue I had was how the lecturer decided to encompass some aspects of Chemistry 1 organic chemistry (this was evident in past exams from about 2008-2012). These included Newman Projections, Chair conformations and showing mechanisms of reactions with certain reaction types. I had completed Fundamentals of Chemistry in Semester 1 so naturally I found this difficult to teach myself from scratch and I think a lot of other students were a little surprised with how they were expected to still know this stuff.

- Reaction types: SN1, SN2, E1 and E2.

Weeks 3 & 4 Organic Chem
Lecturer was great except it was a little hard grasping his short hand curly- headed arrow notation for reaction mechanisms.

What was covered:

Major reaction types: Nucleophilic Addition, Nucleophilic Addition + Elimination, Grignard Reactions, Oxidation, Reduction

There was a bulk of memorisation for organic chemistry, we were expected to know the mechanisms/ results of what felt like an endless amount of reaction types (they decided to spare us with Oxidation reactions though).

Weeks 5 & 6- Quantum Mechanics
Without a doubt the most difficult topic of Chem 2 and I think most students would agree. Lecture Material was insufficient and he essentially just told us to read the textbook. The Exam essentially related to the quantum mechanics section of the textbook.

Weeks 7 & 8- Kinetics
Without a doubt the BEST topic in chem 2. I found it really interesting and dare I say it fun. The lecturer was great and would always ask the students if we understood something or whether she wanted us to go through a specific problem.

Weeks 9-12- Inorganic Chemistry
The first 4 lectures were essentially a recap of VCE oxidation/ reduction reactions and electrolytic/ galvanic cells. We learned about concentration cells, Kas, Ksps etc. with the nernst equation. I thought the stuff on Ksp wasn't adequately covered in the lecture notes though. Then you go on to learn about batteries, transition metals, metallic complexes...

The lecturer was pretty good for this component too :) 

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 

Comments: The major issue I had with this subject was some of the material (quantum mechanics) was poorly introduced to students and also the organic lecturer deciding to add in some chemistry 1 content to the exam. I think most students (including me) expected to never have to learn newman projections/ chair conformations again and it would have been beneficial to revise these concepts in Chemistry 2.

My advice to do well:
- Visit the learning centre regularly (chemistry building)
- Complete all allocated questions from the textbooks (Mcmurry Organic chemistry, Zumdahl)
- Use Chemcal, there's a whole bunch of feedback tests, online tutorials etc.)
- Try to complete the tutorial questions before the tutorial
- Try to keep calm and don't stress. This was somewhat of a difficult subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Plan-B on November 25, 2012, 12:56:42 pm
Foundations of computing COMP10001 

Workload:  Three 1hr lectures and one 2 hr workshop per week.

Assessment:
- Three projects 30%
- Mid semester test 10%
- Workshop (IVLE) assignment 10%
- 2 hr exam 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  I cannot remember.

Past exams available:  Yes. O mid semester test and one end of year with solutions provided. Many more on e-library.

Textbook Recommendation:  Do not buy. Waste of money unless you are hardcore about this subject.

Lecturer(s): Tim Baldwin. He was a very enthusiastic lecturer for what could have been a very very dry subject. He loved anime and sounded like Mr Bean. Haha. He knew his content well and did his best to engage the audience through guest lecturers, his humor, in lecture prizes (bags, toys, books and candy!) and well written assignments. However, I am unsure if he is lecturing in 2013.

There were many guest lecturers from top companies such as Google, Twitter and the Australian Government (security department or something) who came to gave insight into possible careers for others. Whilst I skipped many of them to sleep in, they would have been great for others keen in pursuing such a career. They do not aid your assignments one bit, but do come up in the exams as theory questions.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1

Rating:  Out of 5
Objectively: 4/5
Subjectively: 2/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is an introduction to I.T. You will learn basic programming in Python (for decision making) and HTML (for presentation), and use this to apply many data extrapolations, presentations and statistical/probability simulations. Objectively, this subject was very well coordinated. Assignments were superbly written with the last assignment actually being quite interesting. We had to create a program that could play a card game that would then be played against every other student, tutors and lecturers. Top scoring students would receive the higher marks. This may seem daunting, but the way in which your skills in this subject slowly developed ensured you had the tools and capabilities to do well.

The tutorial worksheets was essentially a free 10%. We basically created output the worksheet asked us to do. They were not difficult, but rather a source for exposing thought processes and basic python and html syntax.

The exam and midsem in itself were not super difficult too, but did require some form of preparation to pass and score. There is in paper coding coupled by a lot of theory questions that came from guest and theory lectures. You are expected to be able to deduce, interpret and apply basic Python and HTML syntax for the exam. The theory questions were what caught most students (including myself) off. But looking back, appropriate review of lecture slides and tactful BSing would be sufficient.

Subjectively, this was the very subject that made me switch from Science to Commerce. You have to be interested in programming to push through  and to be willing to learn beyond the lectures to be able to complete the assignments. Depending on your problem solving skills and intuition with programming, assignments can take excessive amounts of time to complete.

Furthermore, the online IVLE system in which programming code and weekly workshop sheets (worth 10%) are submitted is infuriating. I, amongst a handful of other students had a buggy account that prevented us from typing code past 200 lines of code. Whilst this forced us to be more efficient, it was in a sense, an unfair disadvantage. One would expect that an I.T subject would provide adequate I.T standards for all students. -_- That being said, we were in a very small minority, and the lecturer and tutors did try to help (to no avail).
A further note, perhaps specific to this lecturer is that they do not accept late submissions. I happened to be one day late on an assignment and lost 10% immediately. This did further sour my mood of the subject despite my own error. Luckily, it was not a hurdle.

This however is supplemented by a more comprehensive online tutor/forum where questions, ideas and fun topics posted by students can be answered and responded by tutors, lecturers and other students. This was a good environment and the right step for promoting learning within a subject. This should be a learning tool considered by other subjects in science and commerce departments.

In summary, do this subject if:
- You enjoy patterns, problem solving and devising solutions
- Enjoy I.T (more or less a necessity imho)
- Pursuing a computing major
- you have the patience to troubleshoot your assignments and code
- you have the  ability to self learn beyond course material
- you want an eye opener to the sheer power and vast possiblities that have been created by information technology.

Do not do this subject if you:
- are going to choose this subject because you can't think of one
- are lazy and may be late on assignments
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Elnino_Gerrard on November 30, 2012, 11:34:21 am
Subject Code/Name:ELEN20005 Foundations of Electrical Networks

Workload:  Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 2 hour workshop

Assessment:  5 problem solving assignments totalling 10%. 5 workshop quizzes based on past 2 weeks workshops worth 10 percent. Being able to finish the  workshop tasks was worth some marks as well totalling another 10 percent.
The assesments were every alternate week. i.e. If an assignment was due one week,the quiz was the next. So basically we had something every week.
Ofcourse exam worth 60 percent.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. 
Past exams available:  Yes. No solutions though. However solution to the past sample midtest was given.

Textbook Recommendation:  The course manual must be purchased from the uni bookshop.  It contains the course lecture notes which are extremely thorough and brilliant.Voids the need to buy the textbook.

Lecturer:  Dr. Brian Krongold.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 86% H1

Comments: By far,the best subject I have done at university. Not only due to the interesting content,but also due to to the fantastic lecturer and the workshops where we wired up circuits on a breadboard.
The lecturer explains concepts like none I have come across before (He's American,Ive noticed all American lecturers Ive had are brilliant). He also works really really hard and it only encourages u to work hard.
For example,every week he'd email us not only the important announcements but also a detailed summary of what was covered in the workshops/Lectures this week,along with a preview of the next workshop. The lecture notes,mind you are smashing and dont need you to buy the textbook at all. I dint even look at the textbook once.They were my *only* source of reference. 
Also the lecturer made a visit to almost all of my workshops,either helping out people/ resolving any doubts..which I thought was a great touch. You can see he puts his teaching ahead of his other work.

Now to the workshops : Incredibly enjoyable. The first session involved wiring up circuits that we sussed out on the prelab  on an software called orcad. Subsequent sessions,involved actually physically building the circuits analysed by on the prelab on breadboards. Got really exciting during the digital session,specially with the daancing lights etc. Getting to see the various logic gates in action was pretty cool too.

The workload : Lets be honest,even though not the most difficult subject theres a fair bit to do. Pre labs every week. Assingent/quiz every week. But looking at the effort the lecturer puts in,I dint mind it.

Definitely recommend this subject. Smashingly coordinated,amazingly taught,I had fun too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bridger on December 08, 2012, 05:54:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30008 Viscera and Visceral Systems 

Workload:  3 lectures per week and 1 three hour practical

Assessment:  1. 2 MCQ tests of 30 questions (10% each) 2. Written Examination 50% 3. "Practical" MCQ Examination 30%


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No, only practise questions provided

Textbook Recommendation:  An anatomy atlas (I used Netter's), anatomy textbook (Gray's Anatomy, Clinically Oriented Anatomy by Moore)

Lecturer(s): Jason Ivanusic, Jenny Hayes, Chris Briggs, Erica Fletcher and various guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 78 H2A

Comments: Overall I enjoyed this subject. Found it to be more interesting and better organised than Locomotor Systems. We studied anatomy of the thorax, abdomen, pelvis and perineum, head and neck. The actual anatomy wasn't too hard to grasp and the assessment was fairly straightforward. Class averages for the two MCQ were around the low H1/high H2A range. As in first semester there were two exams, one with six written questions aswell as multi-choice on anatomy covered through the course and the other a MCQ exam consisting of questions relating to pictures of dissections and also questions based on the "practical" classes (questions such as "if you were to make an incision at the point what structure would be lying directly underneath). The course was well organised and the lecturers this semester were fairly engaging. Practicals were structured the same as first semester (however you were able to organise your own practical groups in Viscera), with groups being guided by an instructor through dissections of the thorax, abdomen and pelvis/perineum. All in all a good subject to do if you want to continue with some third year anatomy
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Slumdawg on December 31, 2012, 12:13:21 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20007 Cognitive Psychology 

Workload:  1 X 2 hour Lecture per week, 1 X 2 hour Tutorial per fortnight.

Assessment:  50% Lab Report, 50% Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No, about 30 practice True/False questions were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Do NOT buy the textbook unless you're really desperate during semester, I never used it.

Lecturer(s): Meredith McKague (Nature of Cognition, Psycholinguistics), Daniel Little (Memory, Stats, Learning, Knowledge, Categorisation), Phillip Smith (Attention - Object & Spaced based models, etc). We had each lecturer for 4 weeks.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2.

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: This has to be my favourite subject at uni to date! It was bloody brilliant, easily the best Psychology subject you could ever do. It's hard, it requires real understanding of the theories and experiments because the final exam questions really did test your understanding rather than rote recall. I found all of the lecturers to be brilliant, some of the best the Psychology department has to offer! I found Dr. McKague's lectures the most difficult to grasp, not because she was a bad lecturer (she was in fact really great!), but because the concepts she discussed were really advanced and required some careful consideration before you can fully understand them. For the entire first 4 weeks I was really concerned because I found the content really quite difficult, but after reviewing it at the end of the year all together it really did come together so well and I felt I really understood her material from there on. It makes you really appreciate her lecturing and content, because if you spend time on it you'll realise you've learnt some pretty powerful stuff in just a few short weeks.

Daniel Little the coordinator is awesome, one of the best coordinators ever! He's always on the discussion board answering questions, you can tell he's 110% committed to making sure the subject runs really well. He's a really good lecturer as well. He starts off each lecture with an interesting story and eventually links the content of that particular lecture back to the story he began with. You can tell he put a lot of thought into his lectures! He does have a lot of content though. This is where Meredith and Dan differ, learning their stuff is difficult but the difference is that Meredith usually only has about 30-40 slides in a 2-hour lecture whereas Dan usually has double or triple that amount. Meredith's material was more challenging conceptually, but Dan's was more challenging because there was a lot of it.

Phillip Smith covers attention for 4 weeks, that may seem a bit over the top, but he covers so many interesting theories. I thought they might be a tad dry to begin with, but I eventually came to really love this section of the course. Attention is such a critical part of our lives so it was interesting to see how many theories have attempted to accurately describe it and yet there are still limitations. I felt like each lecture was really well constructed by Phillip and I could clearly see why he decided to include certain experiments. This all leads to his final lecture with some neuropsychology on spatial neglect which I found extremely fascinating since it really furthered my knowledge of the very interesting neurological condition.

The lab report is probably the only thing I don't like about this subject. Not because lab report's are ridiculously hard or anything, but you can easily get a mean/harsh tutor marking your paper and automatically you can get a grade lower than you deserve. This is particularly annoying when the lab report is worth half your entire grade and can practically snatch away any chance of a H1 in the blink of an eye. Our lab report was on eyewitness accounts with police lineups, it was a really great topic but also quite challenging. Each year the lecturers (usually the coordinator) set a new lab report topic so if you do the subject next year you'll get a different topic.

The exam is all multiple choice (96 Questions in 2 hours), but don't let that fool you. This subject is difficult and thus the questions are also quite difficult. I have to say though, unlike every other Psychology exam I've ever sat (from VCE to the other Uni Psych subjects I've done), this is the ONLY exam to not feature a single dodgy/ambiguous/unfair question. The only reason why the exam was written so well is because the lecturers were so great and clearly cared a lot about the subject so they made sure the exam questions were well thought out. I think most people found Meredith's section the hardest, simply because she had a lot of questions that had option D as "Both B and C", where option B and C were two very close answers where one could easily be wrong but both seem semi-plausible. So those questions really tested whether you truly knew your stuff, those who didn't wouldn't have done well at all with those questions. I personally found Daniel's questions the hardest though because they really required you to have quite detailed knowledge of the experiments and theories he mentioned, but if you studied well you'd be fine.

For those people thinking of trying this as a breadth subject with no prior psychology experience, you may feel like you've dug yourself a great big hole during the semester because it will be very difficult initially. But be consistent and work hard and you'll probably do well. I wouldn't say you're severely disadvantaged, but having a psychology background is definitely most important for a tough subject like Cog Psych. Maybe try an easier psych subject beforehand, but if you're committed to working hard on it then go ahead!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Slumdawg on December 31, 2012, 12:51:25 am
Subject Code/Name: Personality and Social Psychology 

Workload:  1 X 2 Hour Lecture per week, 1 X 2 Hour Tutorial per fortnight.

Assessment:  Lab Report 40%, Exam 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No, but 3-4 sample questions were provided for each lecture.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook and you wouldn't need one anyway.

Lecturer(s):
o Simon Lahem (Social Psych - Morality, Social Influence, Intergroup Conflict, Evolutionary Psychology) - 4 weeks
o Garry Robins (Stats - Correlation & Regression) - 2 weeks
o Luke Smilie (Personality - Intro & Explanations of Personality) - 2 weeks
o Jenny Boldero (Social Psych - Attitudes, the Self, Self-Regulation, Relationships) - 4 weeks

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2.

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (85)

Comments: This subject is pretty good, some topics were definitely boring and others were definitely extremely interesting, I enjoyed it overall but the subject definitely had its limitations. I really liked all of Jenny's lectures and Simon's - basically all of the social psychology stuff. But I really didn't like the stats and personality psych components. The tricky thing about Simon's lectures is that he mentions about 30 different experiments in each of his lectures, and you need to memorise all of them! When you combine that with the experiments other lecturers mention you're memorising close to 150 experiments all up, that's a heck of a lot if you're trying to cram during SWOTVAC!

The lab report was okay, the topic was moral judgments but the hypothesis and method we used were really quite confusing and you really had to understand the terminology of moral psychology. Just like any other lab report it required a lot of research and reading on the discussion board. Make sure you put in a lot of effort to ace the lab report because it can save you for the exam!

The final exam has only 90 MCQs, to be completed in 2 hrs (nearly everyone finishes in 1 hour). There are 30 questions each from Simon and Jenny and 15 each from Luke and Garry. The exam was NOT well written at all and that's why some of these university psychology subjects are really rather disappointing. The only sections that were well-written were those by Luke and Jenny (although 1 or 2 of Jenny's questions I thought were a tad dodge). Garry and Simon's questions featured multiple really dodgy questions with a few things we were never taught in lectures, so that was very annoying.

Overall I did enjoy this subject, despite the dodgy exam. You'll learn some really cool stuff, such as you're more likely to be distant to your paternal grandfather than your other grandparents due to paternity uncertainty, imitating others subtly makes them like you more, 50% of your personality is inherited from your parents, and opposites generally don't attract (contrary to popular belief) except in circumstances where there is a dominant/submissive relationship. I found all of these insights quite interesting, and you'll be taught many more cool things like that along with the experiments that support them in this subject :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on January 22, 2013, 03:07:05 am
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20002: Microbes, Infections and Responses 

NOTE: As of 2013, this subject is available to BOTH Science and Biomedicine students and has replaced the Experimental Microbiology stream previously in place for Science students.  This subject is a prerequisite for all students looking to major in Microbiology, Immunology or Defense and Disease.

Workload:  3 x 1 hr lectures per week, 6 x 3 hr practicals throughout semester

Assessment:  5 x pre-prac online quizes (1% each), 4 x prac reports (5% each, only the best 3 are used), MCQ mid-semester test (20%) and MCQ/written end of semester examination (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.  It is a very good subject to lectopia.  My attendance rate in this subject was woeful.

Past exams available:  No.  There are review lectures during the semester where practice questions are given out and addressed by the lecturers.  The teaching staff also gave us some written questions at the end of the semester to practice on.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't buy them.  They are not required.  The slides and lecture material are all that is needed in this subject.  The teaching staff themselves said they are only examining what is covered in the lectures.

Lecturer(s): Sandra Uren (Co-coordinator), Helen Cain (Co-coordinator), Lorena Brown (Co-coordinator).
Damien Purcell, Roy Robbins Browne and Tim Stinear also gave a lecture each.

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 H1

Comments: I will begin by saying that this is the best subject that I have taken at university to date.  The coordinators are all fantastic and ensure everything is very well organised to guarantee that this subject is an enjoyable experience.  They were always friendly, enthusiastic and had the best interests of students at heart.

Going into this subject, I wasn't sure whether I would like it.  I have never been fond of practical work and was mainly taking the subject to keep my options for Micro/Immuno and Genetics majors open (as many biomeds do). I found the practical work to be thoroughly enjoyable.  The demonstrators were all very helpful and it never felt rushed or poorly explained.  The pracs tied in directly with the lecture material and helped to reinforce the lecture content.  I personally enjoyed the way the each of the pracs were set up as case studies and involved finding the cause of an infection given a patient's symptoms and samples.  Practical assessment was also pretty good.  The pre prac quizzes are free marks.  The prac reports on the other hand are not and take some work.  Still, you are given a proforma for how you should structure your report and also given information on the material which you should be discussing in your report.  If you follow this closely, averaging H1 on the reports shouldn't be a problem.  Getting above 9/10 on a report is very difficult because it is just about impossible to address everything in the 700 word limit and I guess demonstrators are just picky about small things and unless your report is close to perfect in their eyes, you will lose marks.  Nonetheless, we did get our reports back with feedback written on them to help us improve on our future reports.

Moving onto the lecture material, I would say this subject is somewhat similar to MCB, for those who have done it.   There is lots and lots of content to get through and a lot of stuff to remember.  For a 12.5 credit point subject, I would say it is one of the tougher ones.
Like all subjects, it starts off easy.  The first 2 weeks are spent revising and extending on basic microbiology and immunology learnt in first semester, covering topics such as bacterial structure, virulence determinants, manipulating the immune response and vaccination.

The middle block of this subject is where the content becomes very intensive.  This block lasts about 8 weeks during which you cover three different types of infections and their common causes, mainly the bacterial and viral ones, but you also might look at a few parasites as well.  Firstly you cover gastrointestinal tract infections.  Here you learn everything from the organism, symptoms, molecular basis for pathogenesis/replication, immune response, treatment and lab testing/diagnosis.  As you can imagine, there is a hell of a lot to remember and lots of names are similar (e.g. you have bacteria known as EPEC, EHEC, ETEC).  My suggestion is to make tables because it helps to cut out unnecessary content and makes things a lot easier to memorise.  The other types of infections covered are respiratory tract infections and sexually transmitted infections.  The layout of these lectures is similar to the GIT lectures, although there was less of an emphasis on knowing the specific molecules involved here which made it a bit easier.

In this block there is a lot of integration.  You have a lecture or two on basic lab techniques for identifying bacteria and also a lecture on culture media.  These are helpful for prac class.    There are some lectures on the role of the mucosal immune system and natural flora.  These were very interesting but also difficult and important.  They also throw in some lectures on epidemiology, disease spread and management of the various types of infections.  These more 'random' lectures are usually only addressed with MCQs.  Nonetheless, learn them properly because the MCQs always try to confuse you and they may still ask for some of it in the written component of the exam.  I suggest you do learn the epidemiology lectures properly because although they seem unimportant and like they are common sense, knowing the examples discussed will make your life much easier in an exam rather that having to make stuff up.

A lecture on antibiotics was given which was basically about the mechanism of action of various antibiotics and their names.  There was also a lecture about vaccine development and non-protein antigens.  These seemed really important and are worth paying close attention to.

The final part of the course addresses health care associated infections (HCAIs).  It covers content such as hospital outbreaks and management, causes, antibiotics resistance, spread and transmission, sterilisation/disinfection, phylogentic analysis, more epidemiology, opportunistic pathogens and immunocompromised hosts.  It was one of my favourite parts of the course because it was very clinical and all based around a health care setting.  Again, a lot of this stuff was common sense but it is important that you actually learn it the way it is presented in the lectures because that is how they expect it written in an exam.  Be sure to learn the chain of infection and the various ways in which interventions can be made at each link, because this was heavily emphasised and came up on the exam.

In terms of assessment, the MST was 40 MCQs and covered roughly the first half of the course.
The exam had 50 MCQs (60 marks) and 5 short answer questions (5 x 12 marks = 60 marks). 
Each SAQ was broken down into smaller subparts (e.g. a) 6 marks, b) 4 marks, c) 2 marks) and overall each SAQ covered one of the 5 topics:
-Immune system
-GIT infections
-Respiratory tract infections
-STIs
-HCAIs

This exam structure forces you to learn just about everything which is presented to you.  You have to answer all questions and parts.  The exam is very fair.  It is clearly written based on the lecture material and if you have done your work it is very straight forward and there will be no nasty surprises.  I will reiterate that this subject is like MCB.  There is a lot of work to get through, but if you do it, it is not bad at all.  If you don't work regularly and slack off, then you are going to struggle.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on January 30, 2013, 01:08:48 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure and Function

Workload:  6 x 1 hr lectures per week, 4 x 2 hr anatomy practicals throughout semester, 1 x 3 hr physiology practical throughout semester

Assessment:  2 x intra-semester tests (10% each), Physiology Practical Report (10%), Anatomy end of semester exam (35%), Physiology/Pharmacology end of semester exam (35%)

Unlike for Science students, there is no percentage or formal assessment attached to the PRS clicker questions used in physiology lectures.  Lecture attendance is not recorded and attending lectures is optional.  I therefore suggest you save yourself the $10 or $20 clicker rental charge at the beginning of the semester.  They will try to scare you into renting one in the first lecture but I honestly suggest you don't get it.  They are nothing more than a stupid novelty and if you lose or don't return it, you pay for a new one otherwise your results are withheld.  I can guarantee that your learning experience will not be hampered by not getting one.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, all papers since 2009 when the subject began are available from the library website and LMS.  The anatomy past papers were all very useful and similar to the actual exam.  Seeing as a new coordinator has taken over in 2012, the physiology component of the assessment has completely changed and the past physiology papers are basically all useless because the new physiology coordinator does not use essay style questions whereas the previous one did.  The past pharmacology questions however are recommended as they too were repeated on the actual exam.

I strongly recommend you look at past Human Physiology (PHYS20008) papers for physiology practice, as this is more along the lines of questions which you will be asked.  There are probably over 50 of them available on the library website, although they may be under the name 'Principles of Physiology'.  If you would like more anatomy practice, then you would probably have to contact students in science studying Principles of Human Structure (ANAT20006) for extra work.  Likewise, contact Pharmacology: How Drugs Work (PHRM20001) students for additional pharmacology resources.

Textbook Recommendation:

Unfortunately, there is no getting away with it.  You must have access to the two books in my opinion.
General Anatomy: Principles and Applications is co-authored by anatomy lecturer Chris Briggs and covers the general anatomical principles only.  It is therefore useful for only about a week but the lectures given have all the content/images taken from this book, so you pretty much need it.  Try not to buy it though.  It is overpriced and only necessary for about 7 lectures.  Either borrow it from the library or perhaps a science student who no longer requires it.

As for a textbook which covers regional anatomy, none is recommended.  The lectures are usually sufficient and cover the content which you need to be aware of.  This is probably a good thing because as someone else has mentioned in an anatomy subject review, reading and trying to learn anatomy from a textbook is both overwhelming and excessive.  Nonetheless, occasionally you may need to look something up.  Gray's Anatomy for Students is the most popular anatomy book.  Clinically Oriented Anatomy is also decent.  In terms of diagrams of muscles, bones, organs, joints etc., I found Netter's Interactive Atlas of Anatomy (CD-ROM) to be very good.  All of these resources are available online.  The good thing about anatomy is that Google is your friend and you can often look up diagrams and basic info without even really needing a book.

The Anatomedia USB Stick is a little hit and miss.  The layout/design/user interface is terrible.  However for ~$18 from the uni bookshop, I guess it is still worth it.  It has some decent diagrams of dissected cadavers and has a lot of the answers to many questions posed in past exams and ADSL (Anatomy Directed Self Learning) tasks.  Again, it is more of a 'look up' resource for when you need to find small bits of info or get a diagram clarified.  Certainly do not waste your time reading through the entire program, as it will take you an eternity and is both overwhelming and pointless.

Human Physiology: An integrated approach by Silverthorn is 110% required as the prescribed pre-reading for all physiology lectures comes from this book and the pre-reading is indeed examinable.  Thankfully, the 5th edition is available online if you look around.  You don't need the 6th edition.  Everyone I know used the 5th edition and was fine.  This book is not that great in my opinion.  The explanations are often indirect and tend to use silly analogies.  The diagrams are good though and they often come up on exams with spaces missing.
 
I also used another book for physiology called Human Physiology: From Cells to Systems, 7e by Sherwood.  Most of the time I found I preferred the diagrams and explanations in this book.  They seemed much more direct and to the point.  This book is also available for download online. Between these two physiology texts, I think you have all the physiology content covered.

In terms of Pharmacology, the department recommends Rang and Dale's Pharmacology.  I found an e-text and had a quick read through it.  I personally found it woeful and confusing.  The pharmacology lectures and slides should suffice.  If not, then as mentioned above, get additional resources from students studying second year pharmacology.

Lecturer(s):

Physiology

Anatomy

Pharmacology

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:   2.4/5 (Overall)

I have split it up by department and topic to be a bit more objective.  For mine, the overall coordination and physiology lectures/practical made this subject a complete pain...one which I never want to re-live again.

Your Mark/Grade: H1 93

Comments:

I will make some general comments before commenting on each topic area.

HSF has been the least impressive subject which I have taken in this degree and in my opinion undermines the whole point of having a biomedicine degree.  It is a subject which combines anatomy, physiology and pharmacology.  In theory it sounds great but in practice it does not really work.  Firstly, there is no integration whatsover between the topics.  One department comes in and lectures their part (e.g. anatomy of the kidney) and then another department comes in after and lectures their part (e.g. physiology of the kidney).  So far this sounds great.  The first part of the problem is that the lectures are not tailored for the biomed course.  They are the EXACT SAME as the lectures in science which really makes you question the point of the whole exercise.  On top of this, about a dozen anatomy/physiology lectures get ripped out of the course to make way for the pharmacology component.  You miss out especially on important physiology lectures to make way for some ordinarily taught pharmacology, which creates even more confusion.  The most pointless part of the whole subject is after making a half assed effort to try and "integrate" the topics in the lectures, the anatomy and physiology exams are separate anyway.

...the point is that this subject is little more than what you get in science, except taught, coordinated and examined very poorly for the most part. /end rant

Anatomy
I found the anatomy component by far the most enjoyable and best taught part of this subject.
Chris Briggs is a legend and Jenny Hayes is basically the Anatomy version of Sandra Uren from Microbiology.
Jason Ivanusic is okay, although he absolutely hates answering questions by email.
I think the key to anatomy is to get over the initial phase, especially the 'Principles' lectures. 
These are boring and somewhat confusing.  Luckily, all of the content from these lectures is taken from the textbook so it is worth having access to a copy.  Once you begin learning about actual bones, muscles and specific organ systems, it becomes a lot more interesting.  A key theme with the anatomy content seems to be relating things back to diseases, so it is worth basing some of your learning around this.

Physiology
I will try to be objective here, but I absolutely hated physiology.  This was all mainly due to the lack of any kind of quality teaching.
The main lecturer would never finish his lectures and would waste copious amounts of time reiterating the same point and rubbishing on with PRS.  The best part is that he expects you to know all of the content in the prescribed readings, so you will need some form of the textbook and on top of this you are going to actually have to read it.  Stephen Harrap and Mary Wlodek were fairly decent, but as they are minor lecturers, they have basically no say with what ends up in the exam.  Joel Bornstein... words cannot describe how bad he is so I will not even bother to try.

Seeing as the lectures in HSF and Human Physiology are usually the exact same (as are the exam questions, but I will get to this later), my best advice is to get a hold of some of the Human Physiology lecture recordings given by Charles Sevigny.  This guy is an absolute legend and teaches everything clearly, quickly and best of all he is very entertaining.  He is the only reason I got through this subject.

Pharmocology
There is not a lot to really talk about here other than to say that if you are concurrently taking the second year pharmacology subject, then you have a bludgy 10 lectures whilst if you aren't, you will have your work cut out.
Graham Mackay is a really nice lecturer and explains things very well and concisely.  His content is also good in that you can shrink it down into a couple of tables which you can then just memorise.  No one seems to like Alastair Stewert very much.  Granted, he is somewhat boring, but he is actually good at explaining things.  Michael Lew on the other hand seemed very disinterested and almost like he didn't want to be there.  He was more interested in going off on tangents and telling pointless stories than he was in lecturing.
Best of all, he explained a concept completely wrong so watch out in case he makes another confusing blunder.  Overall, I liked pharm but found that it was taught poorly and this will always leave a sour taste in your mouth.  The department recommends 'Rang and Dale's Pharmacology' however I found that this did not help at all.  It is probably best to focus on the lecture content and try to ask questions if there are things which are unclear.

Pracs
The anatomy pracs are optional and there were four of them.  They are more of a learning aid than anything else.
They are cool though so it is definitely worth trying to make the effort to go.  Some of the demonstrators are good and others are not so good so try and find one who wants to teach rather than just leaving you there to work stuff out for yourself.  The anatomy pracs are not assessed in any way.

The physiology prac is a nightmare.  Our prac was on the cardiovascular and respiratory response to exercise, something which was never addressed in the lectures.  Once you have done the prac and gotten your data (which is train wreck and makes no sense), you then have to write up a discussion and explain the results.  The fact that the content is never taught and the data is inconsistent makes this a major drag.  We were left trawling through textbooks, journals etc. trying to make sense of everything. 
It is best to work with friends on this because it is the only way you will come up with a semi-decent discussion and get some of the right answers.  I also believe that the prac content changes each year so this may be good news if you are taking this subject in the future, because you may get something that was actually taught.

Anatomy Exam
Thankfully, this exam is rather straight forward.  It has MCQs, fill in blanks and essay questions.  Our year however did not have any choice with respect to essay topics and we had to do them all.  The good thing with this exam is that it only addressed the lecture content and better still, many of the MCQs and some of the essay topics were the exact same as from past exam papers.
The prac content and ADSL worksheets were not assessed, but these would make for good revision if you had the time.

Physiology/Pharmacology Exam
This exam contains combined Pharm (25%) and Physiology (75%).
The Pharm component is really good and relatively straight forward.  Again, there is a lot of recycling questions from past papers so if you are familiar with these and know the lecture content well, then this part will be fine.

Ever since the new coordinator has come in, the past essay style physiology questions are ABSOLUTELY USELESS.  Do not waste your time on them.  This new coordinator prefers to test 'concepts' and hates marking long essay questions so he is unlikely to put them in the exam.  He has introduced new menu style/fill in the blanks questions.

Anyway, with this exam, it did not even cover all of the content taught.  The coordinator decided that because Renal Physiology was already tested in the MST, he did not test it again in the exam.  Instead, he took a random question from the Human Physiology exam and gave it to us.  Likewise, he could not be bothered writing a new cardiovascular question so he took that from the Human Physiology Exam as well.
Better still, the digestion and reprodution questions were also taken from the Human Physiology exam.
If you are wondering which exam I am talking about, it is the exam which the Human Physiology students sit in the exact same exam period.

Therefore, the moral of the story is to make friends with Human Physiology students because firstly, they actually get taught the lecture content properly and this is what the exam is based on...so this is what I recommend you focus on.  Secondly, the HSF exam is likely to contain copious amounts of ripped off questions from the Human Physiology paper, so you can potentially know a lot of what you are going to get asked by simply finding out what was on this paper, assuming it is before the HSF paper.

Honing in on the questions which are likely to get asked on this paper, basically, David Williams is obsessed with questions where you are given a bunch of scenarios and then have to choose whether a parameter will increase/decrease/not change or whether there is not enough information.  He has done this with neurophysiology and also with respiratory physiology.  These questions are an absolute pain.  It requires you to think like him.  Sometimes you are allowed to make assumptions whereas other times you are not and the correct answer is 'not enough information'.  Good luck trying to work this out because only he knows what is going on in his mind. 
Also, it is very much worth going through past Human Physiology papers.  There are literally over 50 on the library repository.
The neurophysiology and reproductive questions on our exam were taken from these.
Again, focus on the ones which require filling in tables, one word/line answers, circling stuff etc.

Basically, in case you haven't noticed, physiology is a nightmare and you will have your work cut out in this subject trying to work out what you need to know, mainly because very little of it is taught in the lectures.  The best chance you have of succeeding in this subject is to collaborate with friends and together try and work out some of the ridiculous answers to some of the questions which will be asked on the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sinner on February 07, 2013, 04:48:07 am
Subject Code/Name: ANTH10001: Anthropology: Studying Human Diversity 

Workload:  1 x 2 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial each week)

Assessment:  An ethnographic observation exercise of 1000 words (25%) due week 5, a 2000 word essay (50%) due in week 11, and a one hour (1000 word) test (25%) due during the examination period.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, a couple of links to external material now and then.

Past exams available:  No.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Andrew Dawson

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2

Rating:  3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 77

Comments: Being a science student, I chose this as a breadth subject for reasons I have forgotten. I can't exactly say I enjoyed the subject, but it gave me time to cool my head off compared to the workload of the other Level 1 Sciences. I might have chosen another subject instead, but at least this didn't turn out bad.

For each week you have readings (a couple PDF files containing about 16-30 novel pages) that you have to read as the content will be discussed in the lectures and tutorials. The readings of each week focus on a different area of anthropology, such as kinship, cannibalism, ethics, etc.

I'll admit that I often skip the lectures and look them up later on lectopia. From the lectures I listened to and the ones I went to, the lecturer, Andrew Dawson, had his lectures rather well done with the aid of supplementary materials such as videos. Sometimes he does offer his own opinion of the topics in discussion, so don't fear if you don't agree with what he says. You may offer your own opinions in assessments and discussions, as long as they are backed with reasoning, evidence, and don't go overboard.

The tutorials were good and complemented the readings and lectures well, as well as clarifying some concepts and definitions of anthropology. My tutor, Maria Melo, was great to say the least. She was easy to approach, kind, and did not display any bias or spite to anybody.

As the assessment of the subject is wholely based on assignments and tests, I'll go over each of them briefly with short tips.

- Ethnographic Observation Exercise (25%): Basically a 1000 word essay on a certain everyday action, habit, or custom. (e.g. Family dinner, slumber party, etc) Your goal is to explain why they are doing it; the purposes of the action(s) in question, with anthropological topics such as materialism. It is important that you pay attention to details (observation exercise) of the event and explain them. Just keep the flow smooth and don't go over 1000 words + 10% words

- Test (25%): I question myself again on why they call this a test, because it's not really a test in the sense we are familiar with at all. All you have to do is take 10 of the readings, summarize them, and write a cumulative 1000 word (recommending 100 words each) summary on the readings. With preparation you can pretty much ace this. Just pick 10 readings you interpret the best, summarize them (I find writing/typing them down in bullet points greatly helpful), and type out summary paragraphs of each and make sure they don't go over 1000 by much. Now you have an idea of what to write, your job on the test date is just to write this down on paper! Easy stuff, this preparation also saves you time in the real test.

- Research Essay (50%): So you have a list of questions on different anthropology topics, and you're supposed to write a 2000 word paper on them. Sounds easier said than done, especially with the test date not being far from the essay due date, which during the exam period. Just your standard Uni essay procedure. Check out books, cover lots of material, use examples, you know the drill.

For the essays, try to use a lot of citations as that's also part of the rubric. Additionally, making drafts and having your tutor look over them always helps.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nubs on February 21, 2013, 07:31:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL10002: Literature and Performance

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

Assessment: A text-based exercise of 800 words worth 20% (due early in semester), an essay of 1200 words worth 30% (due mid-semester) and an essay of 2000 words worth 50% (due in the examination period).

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  There are not any exams for this subject.

Textbook Recommendation: 
W Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Oxford Worlds Classics
W Shakespeare, Othello, Oxford Worlds Classics
D Lynch and J Stillinger, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume D: The Romantic Period, Norton
J Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Oxford Worlds Classics
C Dickens, Great Expectations, Oxford Worlds Classics
C Bronte, Jane Eyre, Oxford Worlds Classics
H Ibsen, A Doll's House (Four Major Plays), Oxford Worlds Classics
A Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (Five Plays), Oxford Worlds Classics
And a subject reader

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2012

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 74 (H2B)

Comments:
What they don’t tell you is that VCE Literature is assumed knowledge, which made it much more difficult for me.

Every student in the subject I had encountered had done Literature in VCE, which made the first essay very easy for them, and the poetry part of the course much more manageable, as it was no different to what they had encountered in VCE Literature.
I was very lazy. I don’t believe I read a single novel or play that semester, and for the last essay (a research essay on your choice of two novels) I only used summaries from the internet and some expert essays, so this subject is quite manageable, especially if you are willing to put in the work and have done VCE literature.

I found the lectures quite interesting and they went into far more detail than you ever would have experienced in VCE, so if you enjoy language analysis this subject is probably going to interest you a lot. That being said, more often than not the content in the lectures did not relate to what we did in the tutorials and what the essay prompts were asking for.

If you haven’t done VCE Literature but were quite good with the Language Analysis section of VCE English, then you won’t have much to worry about. Most people I knew had gotten similar or lower scores in this subject than I did anyway, so if it interests you and you are willing to do a lot of reading (which I wasn’t) then you will definitely do well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nubs on February 21, 2013, 09:41:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHIL10003 Philosophy: The Great Thinkers

Workload:  3 (2x 1 hour lectures each week and 1x 1 hour tutorial for 11 weeks)

Assessment:  Three short papers: 2x500 words (12.5% each), and 1x1000 words (25%) due during the semester, and a 2-hour, closed book, written exam during the end of semester examination period (50%).

Collin decided for 2012 that he would let people do a regular essay instead of sitting the exam if they had a satisfactory reason. It could just be that you perform terribly in exams. All you had to do is tell him that and he would let you do a take home essay instead, giving you approximately two weeks to write it. Unsure on whether or not he is going to give this option again.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, but a huge list of potential questions were given. I was told every question on the exam had come from the long, long list.

Textbook Recommendation: 
Subject Reader

Lecturer(s): Dr Collin Marshall

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2012

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments:
You may enjoy ‘recreational’ philosophy or you may have an interest in history. That does not mean you will enjoy studying it at university.

To succeed in this subject you need to be able to present arguments fluently and back them up with solid logic, as well as making compromises for viewpoints you simply don’t want to acknowledge.

I was not a huge fan of this subject, Descartes especially was incredibly painful to study. Hume and Kant on the other hand were somewhat interesting, as was Plato. Contrary to what the handbook says, we do not study Marx and Machiavelli.
Plato tackles the issues of piety and the subjectivity of knowledge, while Hume and Kant focus on morality and reason.

So far Collin has been one of my favourite lecturers, second to only Professor Lamb (Chemistry). The tutorials were also very refreshing and a great way to break up the predictable and repetitious science tutorials. We’d just sit in a circle, be asked a question by the tutor and discuss it at length. They were definitely the highlight of the course.

Coming from a Maths background supposedly made the concepts much easier to grasp while a number of the Arts students were failing to comprehend the trail of logic and ‘rational’ thought that was applied by these philosophers in explaining their theories.

That being said, the essay tasks we were given were dreadful when they were on theories you disagreed with completely. For my essay on Descartes, Hume and Kant, I was asked to explain one of their theories, present an objection to them, and then give a counter objection on the philosopher’s behalf. Arguing for a theory you disagree with wholeheartedly was not an easy thing for me. The hardest part would be to find a counter objection. You try to use logic to contest a viewpoint, and then you need to find a way to contest that objection which should have been perfectly logical in the first place.
More often than not I would find gaping holes in the counter objections I gave which just infuriated me more. Yeah I’m pretty OCD like that.

I enjoyed the first two lectures on Descartes, then it all went downhill very, very quickly.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed Kant and Hume, I disagreed with them on a number of points, which, I reluctantly had to argue for.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on February 22, 2013, 01:13:41 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10003 - Engineering Systems Design 2

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour workshop per week

Assessment:
5% attendance for workshops (0.5% per workshop provided you completed pre-workshop on LMS),
30% compromising of 20% homework tasks, 6% from 4 tests, and 4% from in-class assessment (the 30% is split equally between Mechanics, Programming and Digital Circuits sections),
5% Online Student Questions forum (answer 30 questions and contribute 3 questions)
60% End of Semester Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (I think, honestly never watched a lecture online if I missed one)

Past exams available:  Yes, ~3 from the library and 1 (I got the 2011) provided at the end of the semester.

Textbook Recommendation:  Dr. Buskes has complied a book from from different authors which is surprisingly good. You definitely do not have to buy it, but it will come in handy for ENGR20004 - Engineering Mechanics and FoEN - Foundations of Electrical Networks (not that you'll need it for FoEN with Brian's notes). The golden rule is that you should not buy university books in first year. The notes provided are, in my opinion, sufficient to score well in any subject.

Lecturer(s): Gavin Buskes (Electrical Engineering), Rao Kotagiri (Programming), Andrew Ooi (Mechanics - Civil and Mechanical Engineering)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2012

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments:
With ESD2, you begin your technical electives at the University of Melbourne. This subject covers the principle of digital circuits (electrical engineering), programming and an introduction to statics (through structures) and dynamics (through modelling aerodynamic affects on projectile motion, torque around a point among other things). Succeeding from a very boring subject about ethics and Chem Eng in ESD1, ESD2 really did ramp up the difficulty a bit and was much, much more interesting that it's predecessor.

Digital Circuits: Electrical Engineering

We'll start with digital circuits. In this topic, you learn about the abstraction of analog circuits to create digital ones, and how these logic circuits behave. You start off with number system and bases, with particular reference to base 2 (binary), base 8 (octal) and base 16 (hex). The Hamming Code and other error correction techniques and their implementation is taught in detail, and is covered as well in workshops where you program a PLD to implement it. You'll be learning how to represent digits and letters in ASCII code and how to transmit them efficiently. I found this part of the course pretty easy, but make sure you master the basics (especially in Hamming Code) otherwise you'll get lost.

Logic gates (AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, NOT, XNOR etc), their truth tables, Karnaugh maps and Boolean Algebra is covered and taught how to create larger combinatorial circuits with those. I found that this section of the course started of incredibly easy, but then ramped up towards the end when they started creating larger circuits such as 4 bit comparators starting from first principles. Boolean Algebra was a little weird to start off with, but now, after doing it in ESD2 and FoEN, it's become almost second nature after you've mastered truth tables and memorized Boolean laws. The rest of the course, for EE, is used on design principles and how to tackle problems in order to find the "best" solution.

I found that the assignment questions for EE, especially towards the end of Assignment 2 and Assignment 3, quite difficult and requires you to be proficient at the lecture topics. They are true design problems, such as creating a large (I mean, large) combinatorial logic circuit in order to meet the specs. Make sure you pay attention in workshops because these questions usually end up on the exam.

Matlab Coding: Software Engineering/ Computer Science

This is by far the worst portion of this course. Learning how to code using lectures just failed in my opinion. The best way that I learned how to code was by getting MATLAB myself and practising. This portion of the course runs through operators, function, input-outputs, branching, loops, iterations, "games", cryptography and algorithms. The MATLAB assignments, like the EE assignments, we're pretty difficult if you did not have MATLAB yourself. YOU NEED TO PRACTISE CODING. GOING TO LECTURES WILL NOT BE ENOUGH! The programming question on the exam is quite easy, and just relies on you being able to use imbedded functions and how to write functions. No need to stress if you are finding the long-winded assignment questions hard.

Structural Analysis and Aerodynamics: Mechanical/Civil Engineering

Probably my favourite part of the course. We started off by doing a recap on springs, both linear and non-linear and parallel/series equivalents. Non-linear analysis was run through, but not in depth. Resultant forces in vector notation is run through quickly, including a recap on addition of vectors and via cosine and sine rules. Rigid bodies come in now, where the application point of the force must be taken into consideration. The principle of transmissibility (PAY ATTENTION IN THIS LECTURE) is taught and how to use it is vital. Moments, torques and couples are covered, and various methods of finding moments about a point is discussed. Resultant forces are brought back and covered in more depth, specifically to the x and y- intercepts of the resultant force via moment calculations. This is something I always took for granted. Even if you sum up the force vectors, where does that vector R start and finishing in order to get the same torque on the body.

Structural analysis begins after all of this, and we start by looking at different reaction forces due to different types of contact. The method of joint and sections for structural analysis is run through in depth and buckling forces and ultimate stress failure is covered. The assignment about struss analysis with wind forces applied at an angle of -90 < x < 90 was by far the coolest MATLAB analysis I've done at university.

The Mechanical section covered Euler's method of solving differential equations via MATLAB which is very useful for later assignments and subjects (or so said my tutor). You basically create a replica function for the ode45 (D.E. solving in MATLAB) and discuss how to apply it to projectile motion with air resistance and pendulum problems with the string length changing (think Spiderman swinging and pulling in his web as he does). These type of D.E.s are quite difficult to solve because they are coupled differential equations, so I found this section and method very interesting and applicable to engineering problems. Dynamics is recovered quickly and advanced. I found that the lecturer tried a little too hard to be funny and didn't teach enough, and I wasn't the only one with that opinion. Regardless, when he did teach, he did it well.

Digital Circuits: Electrical Engineering - 9/10
Matlab Coding: Software Engineering/ Computer Science - 3/10
Structural Analysis and Aerodynamics: Mechanical/Civil Engineering - 9/10


If you're an Eng. Sys major, you have to take this class. It's pretty good, I'll admit, but some aspects did suck hardcore (programming). Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I did.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on February 26, 2013, 01:54:18 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10004 - Physics 2: Physical Sciences and Technology 

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures per week, 1x3 hour practical per week (total of 10 practicals, leaving Week 1 and another free), 1 hour "Problem Solving" Class

Assessment:  25% Practical/Lab Work, 15% Homework Tasks, 60% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, ~4 for PHYC10004 specifically. Look up Physics B for more (dating back to 1999). They are essentially the same subject.

Textbook Recommendation:  BUY PHYSICS FOR SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS. YOU'LL THANK ME LATER.

Lecturer(s): Roger Rassoll for Quantum Physics (Part 2) and some other guys that escape me for Electromag (Part 1).

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2012

Rating: 3.5-4.75 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments:

So, Physics 2. This is where you'll basically see a cohort of 70% engineering majors, 5% Mathematic majors and 20% Physics majors. Don't get me wrong, I found this class incredibly interesting and enjoyable. However, the lectures lacked information that was found (and needed) in the book, and the labs, like all first year Physics labs, weren't integrated into the lecturer curriculum well.

The course begins with basic electromagnetism, beginning with Coulomb's Law and beginning Maxwell's equations for Electromag in Lecture 2. Gauss's law is covered through the concept of an electric field from various charge distributions, including but not limited to: spheres, infinite rods, infinite planes, point charges and disks. Electrical conductors and the electric potential (better known as voltage) is discussed at length, using calculus to define both.

Electrical device's come up next, where capacitors are looked into detail along with their practical applications. Kirchoff's laws of current and voltage are run through extremely quickly, but that's ok because they are pretty easy. Magnetic fields and how they arise are next, where the Biot-Savant Law and the Lorentz force law will be taught. Pay attention to these because they are necessary. The magnetism portion of the subject completes the 4 Maxwell Equations. REMEMBER THESE EQUATIONS OFF BY HEART. The will be used to derive many expressions in exams and tutorials. They are also pretty neat.

As a general note for the Electromagnetism portion of the course. This course uses surprising large amount of calculus for modelling. I know that mathematics is the language of Physics, but a lot of students, including myself, was not expecting this. Line integrals and setting up integrals for Gauss's law and the Biot-Savant Law are extremely common. Finding the electric field due to a charge distribution is elementary compared to finding the voltage (electric potential) parallel to a rod at a distance r from each differential charge dq of the rod (this uses summation/integration).

This is the reason I advocate buying the book. The book covers the calculus behind the physics extremely well, with many examples that are too long for the lecture to include. I whole-heartedly believe that this book taught me extremely well in terms of how to tackle each problem and what the relevant physics and mathematics to use were.   

After the electromag portion of the subject, there is 1.5 weeks of Fluids and Thermodynamics. This doesn't really get covered in depth, however, it would be good if you could read the chapters in the book as the assessed material was harder than the lecture material indicated.

The quantum portion of this subject isn't taught very well. I'd like to say that it has nothing to do with the lecturer, but it does. And it's not because the lecturer was bad, it is because the material is just weird to explain for 1st year undergraduates (I believe) (IE: WTF is an infinite potential well of energy?). Many equations will be rehashed from Year 12, however, in a tad more detail. Once again, this is where the textbook shines as it explains all of the topics in much more detail and provides a much better understanding for future classes and the exam. Buy it, and study all the chapters. I still have this book and I'm proud that I could finish all of it through two Physics courses at UoM.

All in all, a very good subject that has interesting topics. However, it could be taught more throughly. This is mediated by the purchase of the prescribed text book.

With the book: 4.75/5
Without the book: 3.5/5
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nubs on February 27, 2013, 03:27:03 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10005: Physics Fundamentals

Workload: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour tutorial per week; 28 hours of practical work (8 x three hour laboratory sessions and up to 30 minutes of pre-laboratory activity) and 10 weekly assignments of 30 minutes each during the semester.

Assessment: Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes

Lecturers : Martin Sevior and (I think) Christopher Chandler. I’m about to make some pretty negative comments on the lecturers for this course, so if Christopher Chandler wasn’t actually one of the lecturers please let me know so I can remove his name

Textbook Recommendation: 
R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2010.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2012

Rating: 1.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (H1)

Comments:
This subject is for students who did not do VCE Physics, and is intended to cover much of the content in the VCE course, as well as going into much greater depth so you are ready for the second semester subjects. As a result, this subject is much harder than VCE Physics would be, and by the end of it you should know nearly as much as the students in the regular Physics stream. The only difference between the two subjects is that the regular stream uses more calculus.

The Lecturers were not great to say the least, I don’t think there was one student in that course that would disagree with that. They made the subject incredibly boring, ripping out all the interesting parts and leaving us with an incredibly mind-numbing teaching method. Motion was my favourite part of the Specialist Mathematics course. These lecturers made me HATE motion as well as every other topic they taught. Seriously, these guys were terrible and they don’t ever deserve to teach students again. Or even talk to them. They shouldn’t look at them either.

We were basically taught, or forced, to memorise rather than understand. When either of them did try to explain something, it wasn't done very well.

All this subject really is, is a bit of theory and knowing how to apply the theory using a bunch of different formulas. Some of the kids found the subject really difficult because of a lack of experience with maths and the lecturer’s inability to explain the theory well enough so that students could effectively apply it. The tutorials on the other hand were much better and helped significantly.

That being said, the homework assignment answers can all be found using Google, and it is entirely possible to get above 100% on each of them. My average for the semester was something like 102%
The practicals were also pretty easy to get through (with my instructor anyway). They could be somewhat enjoyable if you had good partners, but not always relevant to the course. Most people got 9s and 10s for all of them, so they’re pretty easy to score well in.
So, yeah, if you do well on those two parts of the course, then you only need something like 20%  on the exam to pass the subject.

My exam also included a lot of questions from the tutorials and (from what I was told) past exam papers. A very boring subject for your average maths student, and a very easy subject to do well in if you make somewhat of an effort (i.e. typing assignment questions into Google). Only take it if you need to, I can almost guarantee that you won’t find it very interesting, and you’d be better off learning it on your own if you’re only doing it for interest’s sake, or for the sake of your GAMSAT preparation.

If you've done well in Specialist Maths but haven't done Physics in High School, you're allowed to (with permission) to do Physics 1 instead of Physics 1:Fundamentals. There really isn't much of an advantage of doing this, because like I said, there isn't a huge difference between both the courses, just that Physics 1 uses a bit more calculus, and Physics 1: Fundamentals explains the things that are sometimes assumed to be assumed knowledge for the Physics 1 stream.

That being said, you wouldn't be at significant disadvantage if you were to do Physics 1 without doing Physics. You'd have to teach yourself a lot of the content throughout the semester so you're prepared for lectures, but you virtually have to teach yourself everything anyway for the Fundamentals stream. The lecturers are that bad.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ReganM on March 20, 2013, 11:17:30 am
Subject Code/Name: BOTA20004 Flora of Victoria

Workload: Contact Hours: 21 hours of lectures and 33 hours of practical work, including excursions full-time over two weeks in early February
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Essentially 2 weeks of class. 2x 1h15m lectures in the morning, 1x 3hr prac in the afternoon. 2 excursions (one a week).

Assessment: Mini assignment on one of the excursions (10%?), written assignment due start of sem 1 (25%), exam (65%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (I think?? I never used Lectopia, I went to the lectures).

Past exams available: Some practice exam questions provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Some recommended books but no need to buy (it's only 2 weeks man).

Lecturer(s):
Mike Bayly - Main guy, super interested in the topic, was really great to listen to. Was also practical demonstrator guy.

Other assorted lecturers who were "guest" lecturers. Can't remember all their names. ): Made it really interesting, one or two were pretty boring, but overall they were pretty good.

Year & Semester of completion: Summer Semester 2013.

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Going to divide this up.

Time Commitment
Honestly one of my favourite subjects I've taken. It only took up like 3 weeks (incl. 1 week of exam period) of my summer, and it was super enjoyable! I didn't study *too* much but I'd go over notes on the train before I got to uni etc. Since there were 2 lectures and a prac nearly everyday it was pretty essential to stay on top of things. Was draining to go to uni from 9-4pm every day, but since it was only for like 2 weeks I was fine with it.

Lectures
Well set out, wasn't too complicated. Our lecture content was really about plants in Victoria. Included topics like fire adaption, where they grow, variation, etc. We also had lectures on regions of Victoria such as the Mallee and also lectures on grasslands and conservation. Really good mix of topics. Also not too many "new" words so I felt like I understood everything without having to do pre-reading.

The lectures were a bit longer than normal ones, about 75 minutes each one, and there was a 15/30 minute break in between (I forget, LOL).

Practicals
They took attendance. No need for lab coat, but a dissection kit is handy (although they have supplies). Mostly the pracs were on identifying features of a plant as well as identifying plants themselves (trying to figure out what family/genus it belongs to). It was pretty fun actually, I thought of it as "Choose your own adventure" except with plants.. since you used a key to figure out what plant it was, haha.

They didn't last the full 3 hours, it was pretty relaxed. The practicals didn't have a test but the content was examinable. My friend and I often left like 30-45 minutes early.

Lots of knowledgable demonstrator/tutor people too.

Excursions
We had two, one for each week.

One was too Anglesea, near the beach (but we didn't go onto the beach itself). We looked at plants, walked around a forest etc.

Other was to Mt. Macedon and a mallee type area. It was cold that day so I wish I had worn more layers! LOL.

Anyway, for one of the excursions you are given an assignment, normally the first one (Anglesea) but if you missed it you could do an assignment for the second excursion. It was like a double sided page to fill in, haha. I recommend you go on these and try and get into Mike's group because he has unreal knowledge of plants (although all of the group leaders did).

Listen to the group leaders since what they say is also examinable, content on the exam included what kind of plants were dominant in those areas.

Overall
Super enjoyed this subject! Although I am a biology nut and I was vaguely interested in plants to begin with (ie. I didn't find the botany pracs in year 1 that boring).

Seriously, if you're interested in this topic, lighten your workload for a semester and do this for 2 weeks in the summer!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 13, 2013, 06:36:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002: Biomolecules and Cells

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 18 hours of workshops (1 hour of theory workshop and 2 hours of practical workshop per fortnight)

Assessment:  A 45 minute multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%); work in practical classes during the semester including assessment of practical skills and written work not exceeding 1000 words (30%); completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a written assignment not exceeding 500 words (5%); a 3hr examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (50%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Sample exam provided with answers. I feel that the answers were a bit dodgy though. Do the sample exam, because one of our Section D questions on the actual exam was just ripped off the sample.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook is "Life" by Sadava et al, which I found quite useful while writing all of my summary notes (I referred to it most of the time, in conjunction with the slides). The lecturers sometimes copy slabs of the textbook and paste it on a powerpoint (I found a whole paragraph just ripped off the book in one of the lecture slides). It's got good diagrams, and it's pretty easy to read. I found a lot of the stuff in the textbook that was relevant and useful in getting a bit more background knowledge and understanding towards the lecture material. It's good supplementary material, but you should know how far you should go into the details from the lecture slides.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Geoff McFadden, Prof. David Gardner, Dr. Matthew Digby, Assoc. Prof Laura Parry (reminded me of Julia Gillard), and Dr. Stephen Frankenberg. All of the lecturers are good and very passionate about what they teach. Prof. McFadden focuses on cell biology, and likes to use videos and diagrams so you'll have to annotate a lot on his slides. Prof. Gardner also likes to use diagrams and the occasional video, and is a pretty funny and nice guy. I mean, he showed us his stress sperm and sperm USBs. He mainly focuses on digestion and reproduction/development.  Dr. Digby focuses on the endocrine, nervous and immune systems. He was a good lecturer I thought, but a few friends thought he was just reading off slides. Prof. Laura Parry focuses on the cardiovascular and renal systems. She really likes to use the textbook and her slides are full of text, so you don't really have to annotate much with hers. Dr. Frankenberg takes taxonomy, homeostasis and cell tissue; he isn't bad as a lecturer but the material is a bit stale.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)
 
Comments: Coming into university, there's a lot of material to digest, but it's Biology so it's to be expected. You will struggle at retaining all the information if you don't regularly revise and summarise though; there's a constant bombardment of new information. If you liked Year 12 Biology, you will love this subject because it is basically a more in-depth combination of Unit 1 and Unit 3 of VCE Biology. It is very focused on the animal side of Biology, so you learn nearly nothing about plants, apart from the fact that they have chloroplast and have cell walls.

The first third of the subject focuses mainly on cell biology, which is generic Year 12 stuff with a bit more to it. The majority of the subject focuses on the systems of the body; mainly digestion, circulatory, respiration, endocrine, nervous, renal, and immune systems. The lecturers like to hammer in the fact that you're in what they call "the highest density of Biomedical research in the southern hemisphere", and you'll get lectures about stem cells and animal models in biomedical research too. Taxonomy is the last bit of the course, and generally the most boring part that everybody hates. The material for taxonomy isn't hard if you summarise it, but people will struggle to understand it (it's not the most interesting aspect of Biology, really!). For taxonomy, I made a list of mneumonics to cram remember the species in each phyla and the general order of evolution (i.e, when you're looking at domain Eukarya and travelling down to the mammalian line, symmetry is the first divergence, then the number of germ layers, then blastopore development, then jaws...etc).

So while the subject material is very good, I have to say, workshops and tutes were not too useful. Attendance in workshops steadily decreased as the semester went by. The workshops sort of function as a mini-lecture and usually one supervisor will just talk to you about the lecture material, and make you do worksheets from the workbook. Kinda pointless. I only found one workshop useful. Tutorials are held just before your pracs and rather than clarifying information, it's more focused on explaining the practical you're about to do next. My tutor also got us to do worksheets when there was nothing to add on for the practicals.

The practicals are very good, and relate to the material very well. Each practical is worth 10 marks. You get one mark by passing the pre-prac test, 5 marks for assessment during the prac, and 4 marks on your post-prac test which must be done within 24 hours after completion of your practical.  Each practical is composed of "Activities", some of which are assessed and some of which that aren't. The first practicals you do consist of looking at cells through your microscope, making all these drawings, and then the fun begins. You'll dissect a mouse and look at it's digestive system, then it's reproductive system, and you'll also dissect a sheep's heart. Just a warning, the Biology department doesn't supply gloves.

The assignment is really a joke and the take home portion requires less than an hour to do. They give you a news article which has something to do with medical research, and then you have to find the original journal publications the article was based on. You then have to cite all the authors using APA and Harvard referencing correctly. In one of your tutorials, you'll finish up the assignment by writing an "essay" on a topic they give you (i.e, Describe the structure and function of a particular organelle).

The MST consists of 25 MC questions and, given that you've studied, it isn't too hard to do well.

ILTs aren't that hard either. You get something like 1% for each ILT you pass, and there are five of them. Very easy way of getting 5%. They consist of an online tutorial and a quiz. You can easily full-mark them if you have both the tutorial and the quiz open at the same time.

The exam is very fair. Section A consisted of 65 MC choice, of which Q32-65 were worth two marks. Section B and C are kinda like "fill in the gap" questions, where they ask you to slot in words in a paragraph they've written for you, or they'll make you label a diagram. Section D has three "essay" type questions and is the hardest part of the exam. I made up a list of practise Section D questions for each lecture and just wrote practise essays at home, which helped a lot coming into the exam.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this subject and it was very well-taught. Try to stay on top with all of the content if you can!

(Also, this is the subject in Biomedicine that is primarily responsible for the sucky 8AM starts three days a week. But I think it's worth getting up to listen to the lectures first-hand, anyway.)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 13, 2013, 07:18:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING10002: Intercultural Communications 

Workload:   2 x 1 hour lectures (repeat leactures will be available) and a 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. There will be no tutorial in the first and last week of semester.

Assessment:  Two 1500-word research assignments 70% (due mid-semester and end of semester), a 1-hour examination 30% (during the examination period). The first assignment is on the use of Address Terms, and the second one involves interviewing a person from your tute and eliciting a "critical event" from them. These assignments have to be written out like a research paper, so you need Introductions, Literature Review, Methodology, Findings, Discussion, and Conclusions (your Appendix and References aren't counted in the final word-count). The exam is relatively straightforward if you've gone through the lecture slides. It consists of 30 MC questions, to be completed in an hour.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, some lectures had no audio recording.

Past exams available:  No past exams. They give you a few "sample" questions in the last lecture, and then the rest of that lecture is spent making up sample questions of your own and quizzing other students.

Textbook Recommendation:  Kramsch's "Language and Culture", which you will use for like the first or second weeks and then forget about it. I did use it for reference in my assignments though. The lecturers upload readings but honestly, unless you have a real interest in it, you don't need them.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Celia Thompson and Janne Morton for the majority of your lectures. Dr. Hyejeong Kim and Dr. Amanda Bayliss each take one lecture.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (75)

Comments:

There isn't a lot of material in this subject, and I didn't regularly revise. It's very manageable and a good relaxation from science-based subjects. The assignments are important because they're worth more than your exam, so try do well in them. A lot of people tend to do badly on the first assignment (even Masters students), mainly because of structure. Clarify it with your tutor, as they'll be the one marking your assignment. In fact, show up to their office with a sort of draft and just ask them if it's ok to talk about this and that, which is what I did for assignment two.

I didn't bother going to the lectures and I don't think you need to. A lot of the time the audience will do group activities (which don't really help) and the lecturers will go off on interesting tangents that are sort of related to the material, but are really more of a personal anecdote. Listening at home is sufficient, and you can skip all of the tangenty parts.

I think this subject is marked on a bell curve, so try do better relative to other people.

Tutorials are compulsory and attendance is recorded. I found that the tutorials just consisted of an endless avalanche of questions about the coming assignments. We would spend the whole hour clarifying the assignment.

If you're interested in the soci-cultural side of linguistics, I think that this subject would be a good choice.

EDIT: Echoing El2012's sentiment, the assignments are difficult to score well in and it's a pain in the ass to improve on your scores. My tutor said that my second assignment was a very big improvement from my first assignment...and only gave me one mark more.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: VivaTequila on June 15, 2013, 01:46:59 am
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20018 - Reactions and Synthesis

Workload:

3 Lectures/week
1 Tute/week
NO PRACS. NO PRACS. NO PRACS. DO NOT EXPECT CHEM PRACS. I feel this is important - yes, there is a chem subject without pracs.

Assessment:  20% Online Tests, 80% Exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, screen capture works, but on that note the chem lectures are forced into the only room on the entire campus that doesn't use the conventional lectopia. It still works through ECHO, but there are often glitches, and the some lecturers are unsure of how to work the system.

Past exams available:  Sample exams can be found on the digital repository, but they don't provide solutions for they believe students should revise using tute questions. Here's a quote from a near-exam period LMS announcement:
Quote from: Subject Coordinator
Several students have requested solutions to past CHEM20018 papers. School policy is that beyond 1st year, past exams solutions or exam tutorials will not be provided. In higher years, it is expected that students should be able to prepare for exams with the support of the extensive online notes, CA tests, and tutorials with solutions. You should attempt the past exams then consult with the lecturers for each part of the course.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't need to buy anything, just borrow the various books from the library as you need them.

Lecturer(s):
Chronological order as semester progressed:
Organic Chem - Jonathan White (no problems)
Thermodynamics - Ken Ghiggino (no problems)
Inorganic Synthesis: Enthalpic and Entropic Drivers - Stephen Best (major problems, this guy shouldn't lecture, most students found him hard to understand)
Inorganic Synthesis: Coordination Chemistry - Paul Donnelley (stellar lecturer)
Option 1: Theory of Advanced Materials - Angus Gray Weale (I can't vouch for his lecturing in this subject because I didn't elect to do ToAM, but he is a great lecturer regardless)
Option 2: Biological Organic Chemistry - Spencer Williams (another great lecturer)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2013

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Will update when results come out

Comments:

This subject is used by plenty of people going into various majors.
People pick CHEM20018 to:
- major in chemistry
- major in medicinal chemistry
- major in chemical systems for chemical engineering (coincidentally last chemistry subject they need to do with the chem major students)
- some people who major in pharmacology (depends on how they set up their major; some 3rd year subjects require chem)
- others who decide they like chem and pick it as an elective

The subject difficult, in that it is incredibly fast paced. Expect a big step up from first year - here, if you aren't studying each lecture properly (for at least 2+ hours until you understand everything in it), then you're not doing it right and will probably fail. And given that it's an 80% exam, your really will probably fail.

First up - the lectures. The lectures are not bad, but they are very fast paced. I can honestly suggest that if you're on top of your game, you really owe it to yourself to pre-read. I found myself constantly 1-2 weeks behind in this subject because it would take me longer to learn the lectures than the lectures were actually happening, and I could only catch up when cramming for assessments. It was definitely my hardest subject, and by a ridiculous margin as well - the workload is really massive, and they get the ball rolling from Day 1.

The lectures cover a wealth of material; it starts with organic chemistry where you learn everything you possibly could about C=O, reaction mechanisms, and bond formation and breaking. Then it progresses into thermodynamics where you are expected to start using integrals - everything in this is basically physics and maths, and it's essentially the study of physical chemistry and why it is important. You will find this section a lot easier if you properly read the relevant info in the textbook; in my opinion, the lecture notes are too brief and you'll end up really confused if you don't try to learn this properly. From there, you use all of the information in this unit as pre-requisite information in the next which is inorganic chemistry, and it's probably the worst taught component of the course.

I'm going to give inorganic chemistry it's own little paragraph, because I really feel like I ought to explain why it's shit. It's shit because the lecturer is shit (in the sense that he can't communicate the information very effectively), the parts of inorganic chemistry he selected to teach us are shit (he could have picked much better topics), and the assessment (which is based on the shit topics he selected) is also shit (in that it tests very pedantic pieces information). It's no surprise really that it was the section people did worst on for the Online CAL tasks (which I will discuss). You learn about oxide/peroxide/superoxide formation (of all fucking things, great, useful, and helpful right? not.), then you move onto lattice energy and enthalpy of hydration and just generally learning really well how to work with Hess' law. The second half isn't so bad, because it is interesting. I'll give it that. But it still is super shit for the random things that you are expected to memorise.

Then, you move onto coordination chemistry, which, being taught by Donnelley, is a pleasure as always. Super clear lectures, super interesting stuff. You learn obviously about metal complexes and revise a whole bunch of first year stuff, but you actually move a little deeper into redox. By the end of inorganic, you'll have a generally good understanding of how chemistry works - why reactions happen and linking everything to everything. Linking salts dissolving in water to energy transformations to pH to redox to transition metal chemistry. It's a pretty good outlook. Except for pourbaix diagrams - that shit's hard.

Finally, there's an option!. You get to pick from two different topics - biological organic chemistry or synthesis of advanced materials.

I picked biological organic chemistry, which was great. It's a pity it was the last topic in the course, because it made me realise I should have picked Biochem over physiology. You learn about the major groups of molecules - sugars, fats/polyketides, and proteins. It's incredibly eye opening and if you have any interest in expanding on the general structures of organic molecules that you learned in Year 12 chem, then this is really a good pick, and I'm sure it would complement any subject (it helped with Physiology for example because I was able to see how a couple of hormones, like prostaglandins, were actually synthesised). Note: I think there MUST be overlap with biochem, because from what I've seen of my peers' biochem work, it was pretty similar.

I'm fairly sure that Synthesis of Advanced Materials is about getting you to be able to look at anything and tell you everything about what it's made out of. E.g. you look at all of the macroscopic properties of materials - stretch, density, reactivity with atmosphere, how easy it is to fracture, etc. I'm not so sure, but that's the general gist.

Now for the CAL tasks:
There are 5 topics and there are 5 CAL tasks, but only your top 4 grades count towards your 20%. That means that your top 4 out of the 5 CALS are worth 5% each. It's not as easy to get 100% in the CALS as in other subjects, but you get two attempts at each one and the questions do not change, so anyone technically SHOULD be able to do it. I did get 100% for all of the topics except one - can you guess which?
Spoiler
that's right, fuckin' inorganic
. The questions are mostly fair and model the lectures and tutes pretty well. Which is good.

I think the best part of taking this subject was that it actually links all of the main ideas in ways you've never before seen; you begin to think about the world in terms of thermodynamics and whether processes will or will not happen and you also begin to understand connections between phenomena you always thought were unrelated, like pH and redox stability and energy transformations and enthalpies of just about any process you like. The other good part about this subject is it leaves you reflecting that you have learned so much, but you realise that you've only scratched the surface of what Chemistry really is - a lot of the mechanisms you learned are simplified (and still incredibly hard), and a lot of theory still needs to be covered.

The worst part of the subject were
a) inorganic
b) the workload

Might edit this a bit later for readability / might feel like adding stuff
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on June 16, 2013, 07:23:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC10057 - Wellbeing, Motivation & Performance

Workload:  1 x 1.5 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. Lectures/Tutorials run for all 12 weeks.

AssessmentOne 1500 word essay due early in the semester (35%) about Positive Psychology and application to daily life through a Positive Psychology Intervention. One 2500 word essay due at the end of semester before exams (65%) about Positive Psychology principles, connections to practice in a particular field (either Hope, Gratitude or Character Strengths) and how knowledge and principles of PP can be applied to communities and individuals to enhance wellbeing.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed textbook was "Positive Psychology: The Science of. Happiness and Flourishing (Compton and Hoffman)". I'd say although it was "prescribed", it really was more of a "recommended" text - I didn't buy it and neither did most of the other people in my tute. The lectures were quite detailed anyway and if you want further info, there's always the readings (and ted talks and youtube vids Natalie weaves into the lectures), So I'd say you don't *need* the textbook as such! :)

Lecturer(s): Professor Lea Waters and Natalie Brain

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (85)

Comments:
 
I LOVED this subject! Basically this subject is for anyone who wants to learn about positive psychology :) We mostly learn topics regarding PP, such as the different ways in which we can change negative mindsets to positive ones to broaden our thinking and build our skills in life - you'll be drawing on many theories and positive psychology principles, such as Hope, Gratitude, Motivation, Flow, Joy, etc and understanding how you can apply PP principles in life to achieve better outcomes. I thought I could always apply stuff I learnt and the content itself is quite easy to grasp and link together (so helpful when it comes to the essays!) and makes you look at things in a more positive light :)

The lecturers were amazing! Especially Natalie, who was also my tutor. She was just the most kindest and helpful tutor you could have and soooo enthusiastic too haha :D Tutorials were also really engaging and the fact that this subject's tutes were 1 hour (instead of the normal 2 hr tutes in Education subjects) made it feel less dreary (I did an education sub last year and the 2 hr tutes were way too long for the content covered!) so this subject has done well in avoiding that :) In terms of lectures, each lecture is 1.5 hours and there are recordings so even if you have clashes (like I did) you can always listen to the recordings and they'll suffice :)

The assessment part of this subject was also really organised! Before each assessment we had about 30 mins of the lecture dedicated to some guy coming down from Academic Skills Unit and giving us a sort of briefing about how we might structure our essays and how to use APA format correctly and avoid common mistakes. Although this lecture wasn't specifically content based, it did help to make things clearer by means of referencing and paragraph/sentence structures. Both essays do have a reflective component, where you need to personally assess and gauge the effect of PP and its principles both on your life and the implications it could have for communities and society. You do not need to be an "Arts" student to do well in the essays because the essays are more based on how you show your understanding of the content and use APA referencing correctly. If anything, the essays had more of a "scientific" edge (with the use of graphs and data in essay 1) and analysis of experiment research methods in the study about Hope/Gratitude/Strengths in essay 2.

Basically, WMP was a really well taught and organised subject. The use of resources such as youtube videos, TED talks and readings were really selected and inspiring and really linked up to what we were learning. As a Psych major, this subject really showed me a "side" of Psychology that I hadn't been exposed to before in much depth :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 19, 2013, 04:42:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10016: Mathematics for Biomedicine 

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

Assessment:  Ten written assignments due at weekly intervals throughout the semester amounting to a total of up to 50 pages of written work (25%); an oral presentation due during the semester (5%); and a 3-hour written examination conducted during the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture I think.

Past exams available:  No. Sample exam was just exercise sheet questions with an exam layout.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook prescribed.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Steve Carnie. Apparently Dr. Anthony Morphett is taking over next semester.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  3.25 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments:

This is a brand new subject for the Biomedicine degree. It is viewed by many students in the same vein as Statistics and Physics - many students did not like this subject and I can see why. However, that being said - given that you study for the subject, you will find the subject not being as difficult as people initially make it out to be.

The subject covers three areas; population genetics, chemical system kinetics, and epidemic disease modelling. Along the way you will find a lot of new parameters, differential equations, and difference equations. You'll use these to model allele/genotype frequencies, how [A] changes with respect to (s) with time, and how much of the population you have to vaccinate in order to prevent an epidemic. The material itself sounds ok, right? You'll learn about the effect of selection on allele frequencies and genetic drift, you'll learn about Michaelis-Mentin kinetics, you'll learn about why we have epidemics. I think that this subject does fit into the Biomedicine degree more than a Calculus subject would. It's more relevant, I'll give it that. However, it was very hard to understand the maths that was going on in the background.

The lectures, I have to say, were not good. Most of the cohort would sit there and the information would go in one ear and out the other. The lecturer would spend a lot of time showing how equations for this and that are derived, and you're not expected to know how to derive them anyway. They're insanely hard to follow, and everybody is too busy writing to absorb information. It just confused the hell out of everybody and when he finally reached his main point, everybody was just too much in "DAFAQ" mode to absorb it. However, I think what I should've done after a lecture was to go over the slides again, perhaps in the consultations, because after actually battling through the exercise sheets, most of the lectures made more sense and were actually less confusing then people made them out to be.

The tutorials were the only time where I actually did understand what the hell the lectures was about. My tutor was very helpful and clarified a lot of questions for me, even if I didn't know how to do every single question on the tutorial sheet. The maths tutorial isn't like your typical high-school classroom; you work through the tutorial sheet in groups and write on the whiteboard. The tutorial sheets provided also had the necessary formulas which you had to know (AND MOST OF THE TIME WERE THE ONLY THINGS YOU HAD TO KNOW), and it just made a lot more sense without the unnecessary derivation.

Now, the workload. There's no textbook for this subject. The only questions you can find are from the tutorial sheets or the 12 exercise sheets they make for you (which are harder than the exam questions!). The exercise sheets can be quite difficult and annoying. I recommend consulting the lecture slides while you do the exercise sheets, because they also ask you on concepts not found on the tutorial sheets. There are a lot of "show that" questions on the exercise sheets, which gets very annoying and frustrating when you flip to the answers at the back and just see "Proof required" on the answers.

You also get weekly assignments, which are just a bunch of questions that you have to hand in every week. All of them are relatively straightforward and can be done in 1-2 hours. There is a mixture of questions that force you to do maths by hand or with the computer programs they give you. All in all, it's a pretty easy 25% to achieve.

There is an oral assessment which I feel was pretty much just a waste of time. You are each assigned topics about things that happen to relate to what you're studying, and you just talk about it for 5 mins in one of your tute. The topics are divided into maths and history-related categories. Some people had to talk about their working for the equilibrium solution of a first-order difference equation. On the other hand, I just talked talked about Sewall Wright and expanded on a bit of his personal life, as well as the contributions he made to population genetics.

The examination is not too bad; I thought it was fair in my opinion. A lot of us were struggling with the subject and the lecturer made it so it would be harder than the tutorial sheets, but easier than the exercise sheets. There were questions which were basically free-marks, and questions which you would have only been able to answer if you were really prepared.

A lot of people struggled and battled with this subject throughout the semester, me included. What I cannot emphasise enough is that if you have a question or are just feeling too overwhelmed by the subject, is to go to the consultation sessions. You can look up the timetable for the consultations on LMS. The consultation sessions are run by Dr. Carnie and Dr. Morphett, and they pretty much just answer any question you have. I don't think a lot of people made full use of the sessions throughout the semester, due to demotivation and lack of interest really.

I'll just provide a brief syllabus from the top of my head:

Population Genetics
HW equilibrium
First-order difference equations (linear and non-linear) - lots of equilibrium stuff!
Cobwebbing
Linear Stability Criterion
X-linked alleles
Wright-Fischer-Model
Moran Model

Chemical kinetics
Mass Action kinetics
Systems of Ordinary Differential Equations
Michaelis-Menten Kinetics
Hill kinetics
Phase line diagrams
Phase plane diagrams

Infectious Disease Modelling
(By this time, you've already learnt all the relevant mathematical techniques - it's just applying them to the context of infectious diseases)
SI model
SIS model
SIR model
Models with demographics
Critical vaccination thresholds



My advice for this subject is to seek help when you need it (and you may need it a lot), and continue working through all the exercise sheets even if takes you a very long time. You should do all the exercise sheets, tutorial questions and assignments at least twice before your exam, as there are no other resources to help you. It will take a while for your head to wrap around the concepts, and the "show that" questions are very annoying - but very good practise too. Once you actually get knuckling down on the questions, the maths behind everything is not so bad and things will begin to make sense - however, getting the motivation to continue with the questions is difficult when you don't understand any question in the first place. Overall, this is a subject that's very easy to lose motivation on, but the material itself isn't actually that bad when you study for it.

I would probably add that the content in the course was modified halfway through the semester (Week 6) in response to a negative feedback by the cohort (a very high proportion said that they were confused with the subject). Our cohort had a Facebook group dedicated to Mathematics for Biomedicine - where we all lamented and vented out our depression in this subject. Try to get into study groups for this subject - the more help, the better.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 20, 2013, 04:41:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006: Chemistry for Biomedicine

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three hour lab/workshop per week, 1 x one hour tutorial/workshop session per week, 6 hours of computer-aided learning during the semester, 8 hours of independent learning tasks during semester.

Assessment: A 30-minute on-line mid-semester test (5%); ongoing assessment of practical laboratory (20%) and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%). Satisfactory completion of practical laboratory and workshop activity is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Past exams are available from 2009-2012. The solutions for the 2009 and 2010 exams are posted up before the mid-semester test, and the 2011 exam solutions were posted up during SWOTVAC. We weren't given solutions for 2012 because we had to use the "Exam Wiki", where people in the cohort have to kinda come up with the solutions and discuss them.

Textbook Recommendation:  Organic Chemistry by McMurray and Chemical Principles by Zumdahl. You don't need the books, download them if you really want to. The only time I ever referred to a chemistry textbook was to understand hemiacetal/acetal formation. You do need to buy the Tutorial Workbook and the Laboratory books though (and add a lab coat and safety glasses with that too).

Lecturer(s):
Assoc. Professor Craig Hutton (Organic Chemistry)
Assoc. Professor Spencer Williams (Organic reactons)
Assoc. Professor Brendan Abrahams (Redox and inorganic chemistry)
Assoc. Professor David McFayden (Bio-geo-chemical cycles, DNA)

The lecturers are very competent and wonderful to listen to. I couldn't hope but notice that each one has a unique voice. Professor Hutton has a kiwi accent, Professor Williams sounds like he's from television. Professor Abrahams and McFayden both have voices that sort of make you have epiphanies. Professor Abrahams was in particular a very good lecturer (he got SO passionate about cooperativity in haemoglobin - it was pretty funny) and he provided us with a "checklist" of what we needed to know from his lectures for the exam.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments:

I will start off by saying that the Chemistry department is very organised and competent. The lecturers are really good, the tutors are really good (particularly Penny Commons), and there is always plenty of support available if you don't understand something. The learning centre is open 1-2 everyday where tutors come in and answer your question, and there are some additional help classes specific for CHEM10006 every Tuesday and Wednesday, which I highly recommend going to regularly.

Looking back, the subject is not too hard, which you'll only realise at the end of your revision. Of course, while we were learning it, it was just hard keep up understanding a new concept right after another. There's obviously a whole chunk of information they're throwing at you, but this is not a rote-learning heavy subject. Focus more on understanding the mechanisms and concepts that the lecturers try to teach you, because the exam is all about application of knowledge, really.

Most of the assessment you do over the semester comes in the form of practicals, which are worth 20%.  Here's the only bad thing about this subject really. The chemistry practicals aren't boring, but they are irrelevant to the material that CHEM10006 students learn. You'll be doing the same practicals as Chemistry 1 and Chemistry 2 students, so the content of the practicals are suited more to what they learn.  I think the only relevant practical I did was Galvanic Cells. You must do a ChemCAL pre-lab before every practical in order to be allowed into the lab, and you'll have to write up your entire practical report during the laboratory. I recommend doing as much as you can before the practical itself, so have your aim, procedure, and result tables all done. 

There is also a MST which consists of a 15 MCQ online test. Most people colluded for this test and you would often see a crowd of like 5-10 people around a single computer in the library.

As for the stuff you learn, I found it quite interesting and stimulating, but there were definitely some aspects of first-year chemistry that had to be left out (as its impossible to cram a year's worth of chemistry in a semester!). Professor Hutton will walk you through an introduction into organic chemistry, focusing on stereoisomers and nucleophiles/electrophiles. Professor Williams will begin taking you through organic reactions, pathways, and carbohydrates. I highly suggest rewatching his lectures online and DON'T copy the pathways while you're actually in the lecture theatre - you won't have time to absorb the information. (MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE MECHANISMS FOR ORGANIC REACTIONS - apart from when you get organic reactions with reduction/oxidation!)

Professor Abrahams will take you through biominerals, redox chemistry (so you'll learn stuff like the field of stability for the oxidation/reduction of water, as well as how to use the Nerst Equation, and predicting what is biologically available). He then moves onto solubility, coordination chemistry and finally to proteins. Make sure you remember the general overview of the protein structures and the coordination environment.

Professor McFayden focuses on Lewis Structures initially before moving onto the Bio-geo-chemical cycles. Most people get confused with how much they're supposed to know at this stage, because he just tells you to "appreciate the chemistry". What he really means is that  he don't expect you to replicate the whole cycle, but you will have to know which statements based on the cycles are true/false based on deductions made from lewis structures and redox half-equations. All the cycle questions are generally part of MCQ. He then moves onto Acid-Base chemistry, in particular, buffer solutions. For some reason a lot of people struggle with buffer solution questions on the exam papers. He'll then proceed to chemistry on DNA, and you've finished the course, whoo. (This was just a very brief summary from the top of my head btw) (On a quick note - make sure you know your periodic table up to Element 30, because you'll be needing to count valence electrons while drawing lewis diagrams and they won't provide a table for you!)

Tutorials are optional but I highly recommend going to them. You'll be going through the tute book, and the questions in it are generally very good. You can learn a lot out of them. I often went to two tutorial sessions a week because I was keen so I could have more time to understand the material. You should also go to the learning centre frequently if you're falling behind. There are also ChemCAL tutes but seriously, don't waste your time on them.

The ILTs are insanely hard to do because obviously you don't even know wtf they're about until you google them. I was quite lucky in my ahem independent learning and managed to find some ILT notes on google...which kinda saved my ass during the exam time to be honest. The last three questions on the exam MCQ are always based on the three ILTs, so make sure you know the necessary formulas and stoichiometric techniques the ILTs cover.

The exam was quite fair, not too hard but not too easy either. Our exam consisted of roughly 51 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. The past exams provide a good "taste" of what's to come - you'll see the same pattern of questions throughout the years. You can also bring a model kit into the exam but seriously nobody does that. The model kit comes with one of the textbook and my friend literally used it once, thought it was pretty cool, and never used it again.

To cap it off, I did enjoy this subject and I think it was superbly organised. In order to do well in this subject, it's crucial that you understand the concepts and mechanisms they teach you - don't just rote learn, because they're testing how well you can apply your understanding to new situations! That being said, it takes time to understand the concepts and you'd be better off revising in a consistent manner rather than leaving everything to the last minute.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: aaackk on June 24, 2013, 01:17:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law 

Workload:  1x 2 hour lecture, 1x E-tutorial to be completed in your own time (takes approx 1-2 hours to complete)

Assessment:  3x 15% Skills Tasks, 55% Exam. All MC Q

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Not really. There was only one E-Tutorial that had 4 case scenarios for practice.

Textbook Recommendation:  First Principles of Business Law + E-Tutorial registration code (comes standard if you purchase the textbook new). If you purchase a second hand textbook and don't want to fork out $80 for a code, the Law Library computers has the tutorials installed.

Lecturer(s): Tanya Josev

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Comments:
The subject is fairly interesting if you have any slight interest in laws etc. The way the class structure works (with no formal face-to-face tutorial) means you will need to be organised and find time to do the E-Tutorials in your own time. The E-Tutorials are quite helpful, and some questions even reappeared in a different form on the exam. I have a few friends who got by the skills tasks without completing the E-Tutorials, but I personally found them very helpful.

Tanya is a very engaging lecturer and this helped keep the 2 hour lectures interesting. The lectures consist of 2 halves - first half is new content and theory, and the second half involves applying it towards a fictitious scenario.

The exam is very similar to the three skills tasks - all MC Q, and a combination of theory, cases, and scenario/scenarios with accompanying questions. There are a lot of cases to be familiar with for the second and third skills tasks, and the exam (~80 cases). It is not necessary to memorise every detail of the case, only the main details and the ruling etc. I found that it took me a while to rote learn the case names in order to confidently recognise in a list of MC Q options.

Overall, I enjoyed the subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 24, 2013, 02:28:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20018 - Reactions and Synthesis 

Workload/assessment: See vivatequila's post on this subject

Lectopia Enabled: Just thought i'd make a note that the biological chemistry part of the course is not conveyed well on lectopia. If you end up going to lectures, definitely go to these. The lecturer will use his laser pointer to analyze carbohydrates/ fats/ polyketides etc. so you will probably be a bit lost if you don't go.

Past exams available:  Although there are no solutions for the past exams, still worth practicing them. Because of the fact that no solutions a rep provided, you can expect that the tutorial content for the subject parallels quite strongly with that of the exam (except some tutorial questions seemed a bit out of the scope of the course).


Textbook Recommendation:
Mcmurry is pretty good for biological chemistry (carbohydrates, lipids) for nomenclature in particular, and there are a few reaction mechanisms there. The textbook for thermodynamics was alright for the adiabatic stuff but you don't really need it. All in all, you don't need to rely on the textbooks to do well.

Lecturer(s)/ comments:

JMW: Organic chemistry- One of the top two lecturers for the subject. His teaching methods make organic reaction schemes seem a lot more simple than they are conveyed on paper. Also was the tutor for most of the organic section and his willingness to outline a reaction mechanism for a particular problem before getting to the correct answer made things a lot easier. Easy to approach after the lecture if you have any questions.

Thermodynamics - Ken Ghiggino. He was pretty good. Thermodynamics is a matter of applying formulas/ integrals. If you understand these processes and the tutorial questions, the lectures are more of a supplement. He was willing to edit the tutorial solutions at one point to make them clearer when I couldn't understand something.

Inorganic Synthesis: Enthalpic and Entropic Drivers - Stephen Best.
Definitely the worst part of the course. You'll be happy when it's over. The fact that we had a replacement lecture for anzac day made it even more draining. For some reason, I missed out on the tutorials for the first half of his course which made it even more confusing. When I did go to the tutorial for the last 3 lectures of his material the content was definitely conveyed in a much clearer manner. Glad I don't have to see another born haber cycle again.

Inorganic Synthesis: Coordination Chemistry - Paul Donnelly. Probably the most interesting part of the course and a great lecturer alongside JMW. We looked into coordination complexes and their applications to real life situations e.g cancer treatment. The exam content for his part of the course was the most simple. Just a minor point that sometimes I felt I had to step away from the lecture notes and find out some more information on some stuff like d-orbital splitting diagrams (I guess it was assumed knowledge).

Biological Organic Chemistry - Spencer Williams. A pretty good lecturer. Except he had a tendency to compact a lot of reaction mechanisms which made it sometimes difficult to follow. Towards the end of the semester it gets just that more stressful that you have to know how a reaction mechanism works only being given a short hand diagram. This stuff mainly relates to the last 3 lectures of this component, which was probably the hardest. Lipids/ polyketides/ carbohydrates were relatively simple.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2013

Rating:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: H3
 
Comments:
The reason I chose this subject initially was because I had a keen interest in organic chemistry. However, as the semester progressed I realised just how big of a step up the subject was from first year, and it made it just that more difficult that I hadn't done chemistry 1 (only fundamentals). For this reason the parts of the course I found most difficult were inorganic with spb (to be honest I never really improved in that section) and thermodynamics (although I understood later on that it seemed a lot worse than it was). I hadn't completely excluded the prospect of choosing chemistry as a major, however now I realise that it's not for me. However, that doesn't mean to say that i've lost all interest in the subject, I guess i'm just selective for a lot of the topics i like/ don't like.

I firmly agree with vivatequila's stastement that it is incredibly fast paced. It's not a subject that is "easy to do well in/ get a good gpa", you have to put in the hours to see results. I also tended to fall behind 3/4 lectures for the subject until the online tests came up.

Another quote from vivatequila:

"they get the ball rolling from Day 1". This guy knows what he is talking about.

Just thought i'd make a note regarding biological/ organic chem. The exam questions are more based on finding the "major product" for a particular reation, and less so on reaction mechanisms. However, do understand these reaction mechanisms because they make things so much more easier for you.
 
Inorganic chemistry is draining. I'll just state that this is the topic you will probably find the hardest. I didn't find one person that found this part of the topic easy.

With respect to vivatequila's quote:

"I think there MUST be overlap with biochem, because from what I've seen of my peers' biochem work, it was pretty similar".

Basically biochem provides you with the basics of carbohydrate chemistry required for reactions and synthesis. Doing biochem alongside chem helps out for this reason because when you start biological chem in reactions and synthesis you already know how to transform a fischer projection to a haworth and know some content about a, b glycosidic linkages. The biol chem course however goes a lot more in depth, you learn about how to apply keto/ enol tautomerism to carbohydrates, learn a lot more about hemiacetal/ acetal groups and whether a carbohydrate is a reducing sugar etc.

I don't have much to say on the advanced materials part of the course since I didn't take it and didn't have a clue of what they were testing. From the exam questions it seemed quite math based and also an extension of the laws of thermodynamics (sort of like newtons laws I guess where you analyse each one). I heard of quite of a few people during the semester stating they wish they had taken biological chemistry though, so take that from you will. It seemed like for the average chemistry student that biological chemistry is just a lot more approachable than inorganic chemistry.

The online tests:
Pretty simple and straightforward. In saying that I only got 100% for one test, the rest were in the 80s % wise. I'm convinced that they have the "4 out of 5 cal marks contribute to your final mark" because they know that we'll perform worst on the inorganic section. These tests are easier than first year because you can go back and change your answers for the second attempt (as VivaTequila previously outlined). You have 90 mins to complete each attempt which is more than enough (except for inorganic, it's just plain hard and confusing). The tests did take a lot of time out of my studies for other topics because of the whole second attempt thing. Just thought i'd make a note that your SECOND mark counts for the final mark. No matter whether your first or second attempt had the highermark, the second one contributes. You do not have the possibility of seeing if your response for a question is correct/ incorrect the first time.

Just a side note that there is no sort of "help session" like there is in first year at the learning centre. I really think they should open this up for 2nd year students because I know that a lot of students would have benefited so much from that. However, the tutors were approachable and you could meet them during office hours to cover lecture/ tutorial content.

And another comment (on the exam):

The exam is worth 80% so I think that's an important factor on your choices to do/ not to do the subject. Some people cope well with assessments during the semester, others manage to gun their exams so keep that in mind.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Chrissyy on June 25, 2013, 11:09:47 am
Subject Code/Name: GENE20001 Principles of Genetics

Workload: 3x1 hour lectures per week, 1x1 hour problem class per week

Assessment:  There are 3 online multiple choice tests staggered throughout the semester worth 10% each, there is then a 2 hour multiple choice exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, roughly 8 practice exams were available on the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is a textbook prescribed that is really only useful for Alex Andrianopoulos' lecture material on phage genetics as it explains things quite a bit clearer than he does.

Lecturer(s): Ronald Lee (3 weeks): Mendelian genetics
Alex Andrianopoulos (4 weeks): Bacteriophage genetics
Chris Corbett (1 week): Extrachromosomal (non-mendelian genetics)
Phil Batterhan (4 weeks): Population genetics
Steve Hardy (Problem class presenter)

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: -

Comments: This subject was really well coordinated and I found that all of the lecturers were engaging and this was bolstered by interesting and approachable content. I found Ronald's lecture material the most difficult to understand as it is a really big step up from first year genetics and involves complex genetic problems including inversion mapping/translocation mapping/advanced genetic problems involving multiple loci with epistasis/lethality and the material in the problem classes is also really difficult in this section. I found Alex's lecturing style really fantastic - he was definitely the most enthusiastic and easy to listen to and although I was not really interested in phage genetics by the end, at least he was engaging. This section of the course was most easily supplemented with the text book so I suggest you at least loan it out at the library if you are having trouble understanding what is quite a complex/unfamiliar area of genetic analysis. I understood Phil's lecture material the most out of all of the lecturers despite thinking that I would absolutely hate it. At the beginning of his sequence he sends out the exam formula sheet which basically looks like a mess of about 20 or so mathematical formulas related to population genetics. Do not fear! All of these are explained by Phil and he is really easy to understand and a really great lecturer. My only criticism of this subject is in the weighting of the exam - like many science subjects 70% of the assessment was reliant on a good exam result, the online quizzes (bar Ronald's) were easy to score above 80% in given that they are open book but I would have honestly preferred a closed book MST under exam conditions to rid myself of his lecture content for the exam. Ronald is a really great guy but I found myself struggling a lot with the difficulty of some of his problems throughout the semester! The exam was not very well written and luckily for me around 7 whole questions from Ronald's section were stricken due to a printing error. Phil's section is the easiest to do well in as it just involves plugging in numbers to what look like really daunting (but are actually quite simple) equations. Alex's exam questions require a little more thought but they were not unreasonable. Anyone that is interested in genetics should do this subject - I had a love/hate relationship with it throughout the semester given that it was a big step up from first year problems but overall it was quite enjoyable. Make sure you attend the problem classes as many of the online quiz questions are recycled from the problems discussed in these classes and answers to these questions are not posted online!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Chrissyy on June 26, 2013, 11:46:52 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20008 Developmental Psychology

Workload:  2x1 hour lectures per week, 1x2 hour tutorial every fortnight.

Assessment:  2x1000 word lab reports: in the first assessment piece you need to write the Introduction + Method of a lab report, in the second piece of assessment you need to write the Results + Discussion + Abstract sections of a lab report as well as resubmit your Introduction + Method based on any corrections.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen captures.

Past exams available:  No, each lecturer gave a small series of question (between 10-30) to practice with.

Textbook Recommendation:  The textbook for this subject is really unnecessary, unless you're having difficulty with the content don't even bother.

Lecturer(s): Katherine Johnson (Biological Development/Theory of Mind/Autism)
Bob Reeve (Theories of Development/Infancy)
Fiona Reynolds (Development of Language)
Heidi Gazelle (Social Development/Family/Attachment)
Judi Humberstone (Quantitative Methods: Chi Squared)

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: -

Comments: I had a love/hate relationship with this subject. I'll say this from the beginning: the content in this subject is very easy to grasp for the most part, it does not require you to learn any complex ideas about development and it is far less scientific than its Biological Psychology counterpart. If you're looking for a Level 2 Psychology breadth, choose this subject as the assessment isn't too difficult and little extra reading is required to do well. HOWEVER, the administration in this subject was absolutely dismal. There appeared to be a lot of inconsistencies between head tutor requirements and the requirements of individual tutors for their marking and as such a lot of students suffered because of miscommunication. There were differences between classes in terms of the style of reporting (how to report p values, how to report graphs, where to put the 'Design' section of the lab report, whether to include DOIs) and the tutors (well, at least my tutor) was very fickle about small things that were correct in APA 5th formatting style but not in APA 6th style. This was despite instruction from the head tutor that APA 5th style was acceptable. The tutorial component/assessment of this subject was ultimately a disaster. When we were told to write up our Results section of the lab report we were brought into the computer labs (with many students quite unfamiliar with SPSS) and pretty much told to make our own way through the reporting despite most of us having no idea what to do. This really made me despise the subject and a lot of students were in a similar position.

Now, on to the lectures. This was the only real positive of the subject - they were really interesting and all of the lecturers were so engaging and fantastic. I loved all of their presentations styles and you could easily tell that they were all enthused about what they were talking about. In the exam most of the multiple choice questions were quite fair and reasonable and only a few questions out of 30 were regarding explicit memory of readings (which I didn't bother to actually do unless they were explicitly mentioned in the lectures). The exam involved 30 MCQs and then 2 essays to be completed in 2 hours. They suggest dedicating 40 minutes to each section although you can normally smash through the MCQs in about 20 minutes or so and have the rest of the time for essay writing. I thought that the essay topics in this exam were mostly quite average and I'm pretty sure Katherine's questions (which were the most reasonable and approachable) will receive the most responses. Maybe if she receives an overwhelming number they'll make sure that the other questions are a bit easier next time. Overall, the content of this subject is quite manageable it was really just the administrative side of things that really ruined what could have been a really beneficial experience!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 26, 2013, 12:54:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure

Workload
: 3x1 hour lectures per week, 4 x 2 hour practicals scattered through the semester

Assessment:
- 10% ADSL tests (there are 8 of these, each worth 1.25%)
- 2 x mid semester tests (approximately held at the end of week 4 and the end of week 9, 15% each)
- End of semester exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled: 
Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:
No, but you can access past BIOM20002 Human Structure and Function exams on the library archives. Some of the content in these exams is similar.

Textbook Recommendation:  Handbook lists "Eizenberg N, Briggs C et al: General Anatomy: Principles & Applications, McGraw-Hill 2007". I didn't use it and I don't think you need to. Internet is all you need.

Lecturer(s):
Dr Varsha Pilbrow (the principles lectures incl. muscles, the skeletal system)
Dr Peter Kitchener (nervous system)
A/Prof Colin Anderson (embryology)
DR Simon Murray (back and vertebral column, upper and lower limbs)
Dr Junhua Xiao (Ribcage, lower respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract: first part of the series)
Dr Jenny Hayes (the heart, gastrointestinal tract: second part of the series)


Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:
3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A 

Comments:


If you're a rote learner, you are going to love this subject. There is a whole lot of content which is covered, and is to be expected considering its anatomy of the human body.

The lectures:
Basically in your lecture notes, there is a whole bunch of pictures. I felt as if it was not a case of whatever is on the lecture notes is examinable but what the lecturer says is examinable. Writing my lecture notes for the subject took up a lot of my time (2-3 hours sometimes e.g. for the limbs section) because I didn't know what level of detail we had to go to. You'll come to find that they expect you to know such pedantic things like a whole bunch of numbers corresponding to dermatomes and myotomes for muscle movement. All in all I found the nervous system and upper and lower limbs the most interesting.

Assessment:
Mid semester tests were okay. I never felt like there were many trick questions there, so as long as you're prepared you should be ok.

ADSLs:
These are online tests that are held pretty much every week in the semester. You can submit them as many times as you want until you get 10/10 for them. So they are an easy 10%, just make sure to check the "my grades" centre to check that you are consistently getting 100% for them.

The material that accompanies them "ADSL tutorials" are extremely important to go through. As Varsha mentioned, they are very much centered on the amount of detail you have to go to with lectures, and I wholeheartedly agree with this. Oh and the diagrams they give you? Yeah pretty much 3/4 of the diagrams on the exam were from these adsls, so get familiar with them! Make sure you get an early start on looking at the diagrams too and add the adsl stuff in addition to your lecture notes for memorizing for the exam, unlike me who tried cramming all the diagrams in the last 3 days until the exam.


Exam:
Multichoice section on the last 3 weeks of the semester, fill in the blanks section relating to pictures, four extended response questions in response to pictures (ER questions are like a series of short answer questions). As I mentioned before, lots of ADSL stuff in there.

Preparing for the subject:
My rating reflects the fact that there was such little practice materials we could use for assisting us in the subject (except for ADSL type stuff). There are no actual past exams for the subject, let alone any practice mid semester test stuff. In addition, once you have done your mid semester tests, they don't go through the content with you and analyse them after.

Practicals:
I'll get straight to the point, you look at prosections of cadavers. I found the pracs pretty interesting I guess, except I came out every time more confused than I was before because the demonstrators kept telling us "make sure you know this, that, that oh and that too". It became overwhelming because I was always thinking "man we have to know all this stuff in addition to the lecture notes?". I guess the demonstrators were just trying to prepare you well for the exam. They mark your attendance and you are expected to attend  around 75% or something, but there is no actual assessment that contributes to your final mark for them.


I guess what I liked about the subject was the fact it was extremely interesting. Hence, it didn't seem as much of a task to rote learn everything unlike other subjects.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kaybee94 on June 26, 2013, 06:48:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002 Biomolecules and Cells
Workload:  3x1 hour lectures per week, 5x 2hr practicals with 1 hour tutorial beforehand throughout semester, 5x1hr workshops
Assessment:  50% Exam, 5% ILT (5 ILTs), 10% Mid Semester Test, 25% Practical Assessment, 10% Assignment
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  No past exams are available. One sample exam uploaded onto LMS but didn't reflect the style of the exam.
Textbook Recommendation: Life by Sadava is recommended. It complements the lecture notes and ads more depth to your understanding. If there was one textbook to buy in 1st year biomed it would definitely be this one since it is also used in second semester. Beauty of uni is some of the prescribed textbooks are American so you can easily torrent them  ;) Also require a lab workbook and microscope slides and cover slips plus a lab coat.
Lecturer(s):
Geoff McFadden - Biomolecules and Molecular Biology
David Gardner - Digestive System, Reproductive System, Developmental Biology, Stem Cells and Animal Research 
Laura Parry - Cardiovascular System, Respiratory System, Renal System
Matthew Digby - Endocrine System, Nervous System, Immune System
Stephen Frankenberg - Homeostasis, Cell to Cell Signalling and Animal Taxa
Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1
Rating:  4.5/5
Your Mark/Grade:  H1
Comments:   Having never done biology before this is a great introduction to the subject. This subject does require time and effort to be put in since there is quite a lot of memory work. Subject would have been 5/5 if we didn't have 8am starts but luckily it is recorded if you do happen to sleep in or don't take any info into your brain that early in the morning. Assessment is pretty fair overall. We're expected to complete 5 ILTs which involve an interactive tutorial and then a 10 question quiz (5/10 needed to pass) and you receive your 1% which means 5% in the bag already. MST was held a fortnight after Easter break which consisted of 25 multiple choice in 45 minutes. Don't be fooled by the practice MST they give you since it is more difficult but it's still fairly easy. A lot of people score full marks - the average of the cohort was around 21/25. 10% Assignment was what I really did not like. 5% of this is directed towards finding and referencing a biology research paper. The other 5% is for a extended response type of question about cellular biology. The marking depends on how lenient your tutor is. If your tutor is a harsh marker unfortunately you have to make up the lost percentages on the final exam. And trust me if they tell you to write 100-150 words in 10 minutes just go way over, you're better safe than sorry. The practical component was quite enjoyable. We got to dissect a mouse twice as well as a heart. 1 mark is awarded for completing a pre prac test and 4 marks for the post prac and also 5 marks for in prac assessment. The one downside to this subject is the scheduled tutorials and workshops which are blatantly pointless (however this may change in the future). One hour tutorial before practical is spent on doing worksheets which you could easily do in your spare time and workshops are just a tutorial in the lab. Definitely a waste of time and the answers to the worksheets weren't even given to us!
Lecturers were very good overall and the content was stimulating and interesting. We cover cell biology and biomolecueles including prokaryotes, eukaryotes, proteins, enzymes, cellular respiration, cell division, carbohydrates, nucleic acids and a bit on endosymbiosis. Having never done VCE bio before some of this was overwhelming especially cell division and cellular respiration but it ended up being alright. For the rest of the course we cover almost every major body system and the content is by far the most interesting you'll do in any of the subjects imo. Animal taxa was the only bad topic in an otherwise stimulating course. Exam consisted of 65 multiple choice questions worth 100 marks. 50 marks were devoted to fill in blanks/label diagram from a given list of words and 30 marks for 3 extended answers. Exam is fairly straightforward but make sure you know your stuff. Things like animal taxa had around 8 marks on the exam. Diagrams such as the one for inflammation in innate response or maybe a kidney diagram shown by a lecturer should be learnt since they may come up. I found myself around a dozen lectures worth of notes behind so the best tip I can give you is really try to stay on top of bio! It is definitely a very enjoyable subject and you'll find that the lecturers are sometimes pretty amusing too :)   
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kaybee94 on June 26, 2013, 09:17:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006 Chemistry For Biomedicine
Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1hour tutorial per week and 6 x 3 hour practicals throughout the semester
Assessment:  3 hour written exam 75%, Online Mid Semester Test 5%, Practical Work 20%, 3 x ILT (hurdle requirement)
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  We were given 4 past exams. 3 of which had brief solutions. The most recent exam (last year's 2012) had no answers but instead an exam wiki was posted on LMS for students to contribute to and lecturers went over all answers in a 2 hour tutorial during swotvac
Textbook Recommendation:  Organic Chemistry by McMurray and Chemical Principles by Zumdahl are prescribed texts. You definitely don't need either one. Biomed only has one semester of chemistry in first year so it's definitely not worth the money. If you want them on pdf they are available to torrent online but you'll rarely ever look at it anyway. Also required to buy(or print out) tutorial workbook and buy the lab prac manual. Safety glasses or goggles and a lab coat needed in all pracs.
Lecturer(s):
Craig Hutton - Organic Chemistry
Spencer Williams - Organic Reactions and Carbohydrates/Sugars
Brendan Abrahams - Redox reactions and electrochemistry, Solubility (Henry's Law, Solubility Product), Transition Metals, Metal Proteins
David McFadyen - Main group chemistry, acid-base chemistry, DNA chemistry and intermolecular forces   
Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1
Rating:  4/5
Your Mark/Grade:  H1
Comments: The subject consists of organic chemistry in the first 6 weeks and then focuses on inorganic and physical chemistry in the last half of the course. I found that throughout the semester that chemistry was a bit of a drag. Whether it was because it was the 3rd lecture of the day and by 11am we had enough or just sometimes you question if you're learning anything at all. By the end of semester when I did my revision I started to realise that this subject is probably more enjoyable than what my impression throughout the semester. The exam is actually pretty straightforward and the lecturers tend to recycle their questions but tweak it a bit. But there re always one or two tricky questions as always! The exam varies from year to year but the recent trend has been approximately 50 multiple choice questions and 5 extended answers.
For me personally practicals were boring and draining. Since chem for biomed is a mixture of science's chem 1 and chem 2 we only do 6 of the 12 experiments that they do. Honestly probably only one or two related to the content that we were learning. Most of the time we just wanted to hand the damn lab report up and get out of there. A tip for future biomed kids is to prepare for pracs by writing a procedure (if it's an organic synthesis reaction) or just drawing up the tables or a pre written results and discussion etc. It will save you plenty of headaches.
We have 3 ILT tasks that we complete and they're fairly simple. 3rd ILT was the most difficult since it involves learning completely new content - properties of solutions. Google and Zumdahl textbook are your friends. One multi choice from content in each ILT will be on the exam.
The lecturers themselves were very passionate about what they taught and usually made it fairly interesting. I think the only criticism that I have is sometimes they did start ranting on about something pointless that was unrelated to chemistry but other than that they were very clear about what they were teaching. Chemistry is a fairly hard subject to teach so I think they did a decent job. A word of warning is to learn pretty much everything they teach. I know for a fact that myself and many others became complacent with this subject and didn't pay attention to Professor Abraham's material but it is all vital for the final exam. e.g. carbonic anhydrase, ferritin, siderophores such as enterobactin, transferrin etc. He does give a list of stuff we need to know for the exam which is nice of him :) . Tutorials aren't compulsory and you get solutions to the tutorial problems before MST and during swotvac for revision but it's in your best interest to go since you do learn a great deal and the tutors usually go through how to answer problems. Overall the subject has been pretty enjoyable and the workload really isn't a lot. A lot of the content we cover come from VCE units 1-4 witha  slight extension but you get 3 hours in the exam which is more than enough time to do well in.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 28, 2013, 12:02:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20002: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1hour tutorial (lectorial, i'll explain what I mean) per week

Assessment:  3 hour written exam 70%, Mid Semester Test (multichoice) 10%, Continuing computer based assessment 20%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (tutorials were audio recorded, so attend those because they often use the whiteboard)

Past exams available:  Given around four practice exams, three of which had multiple-choice answer solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nelson and Cox, Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, 5th edn., 2008 (I think it's 6th edition now). Lecture notes will probably suffice, depends what type of learner you are.


Lecturer(s):
Irene Stanley- DNA, RNA (molecular biology part of the course)
Paul Gooley- Proteins (up to tertiary structure)
Alana Mitchell- Proteins (quaternary structure), enzymes, enzyme kinetics
Paul Gleeson- Lipids, carbohydrates
Graham Parslow- Metabolism

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1


Comments:

On the lecturers

Irene Stanley
No problems. Some of the questions set in the exam were quite tricky, if there was one topic you had to be confident about in biochemistry, i'd pick DNA/ RNA. Know it back to front, and use lehninger if you have any queries.

Paul Gooley
Pretty good lecturer and knew what he was talking about. Had a tendency to set some tricky exam questions though.

Alana Mitchell
Tendency to make quite a few errors RE: Enzyme Kinetics, probably good to use the textbook again to clarify just to make sure everything is correct. Except she had a willingness to answer student queries and address them in tutorials so I commend her for that. Be aware that the exam structure is different to previous years for her component because she was not the previous lecture (in fact I think the exam had become slightly harder this year because of it)

Paul Gleeson
Pretty good lecturer. Wish he could have expanded a bit more on drawing hydropthy plots though! Apart from that he set exam questions that were fair.

Graham Parslow
Best lecturer for the subject. Always told you what was good to know RE the examinable parts of the course so what was on the exam was pretty much expected. Probably my favourite part of the course just because he was always genuinely enthusiastic and made the best analogies to address something tricky (expect him to say "now when your predators are chasing you" quite a few times)


Overall I found this subject quite dry during the semester. I just don't understand how anyone could find learning 20 amino acids and the 10 steps of glycolysis (including enzyme names, chemical structures) all that interesting.

Sometimes I didn't find the tutorials particularly helpful, like for the DNA part of the course we never tended to finish the actual tutorial sheets. Part of the reason this may have been is because the tutorials were held in lecture theatres (there were three streams a week) and so the tutorial class sizes were really like a lecture class size. So evidently it's going to be quite difficult for a lecturer to silence the class.

The mid semester test was just ok for me. I got something like 66% for it, and it was a bit harder than expected. I was just unsure of what I had to study for. For example, there are a whole bunch of figures you should have a rough idea of e.g. diameter of a dna double helix (a type, b type, z type), number of base pairs per turn etc. So I guess try going over everything as opposed to selectively choosing topics you think will probably come up, this works for some subjects but not all.

The computer assessment task consist of cals and online quizzes. The cals are marked for participation, there may be a few quesitons that come up in them but they don't count towards you mark. So an easy 10% there.

For the online quizzes they give you a practice quiz where the real one will have 10 or so questions taken from the practice one. So you get a chance to submit all the answers and see if they are correct/ incorrect before you see the real one. It all sounds alright but it was incredibly time consuming! So yeah you can get 10% for them but it can take a big chunk out of your study time.

The exam.. eh I don't know. I stuffed up big time on the kinetics stuff just because the content was so different (and a bit more difficult) compared to last years ones!! The format for previous years consisted more of multiple choice type of stuff where this years ones had some extended response type stuff! They really should have outlined the changes they were making to that part of the course.

For me the best parts of the course were metabolism/ lipids. The content for that part was quite fair if you revised it well enough.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Lado on June 29, 2013, 01:53:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: MULT10011 Introduction to Life, Earth and Universe

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three-hour pracs for nine weeks (sometimes the pracs finished early and you might finish after, say, 2 hours)

Assessment:  Ongoing assessment of pracs (totalling 25%), two 20-minute tests during the semester (5% each), a poster (5%) and a 3-hour written examination (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, four (2009-2012)

Textbook Recommendation:  No required texts; 'Life in the Universe' by Bennett & Shostak is recommended but you'd be better off borrowing it from the library.

Lecturer(s): Rachel Webster (Physics/Astronomy), Stephen Gallagher (Geology) and Geoff McFadden (Biology)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  2.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: As an Arts student who never touched Biology or Physics at school, this subject probably wasn't an ideal one to pick. I was in it primarily for the Astronomy part, which was certainly interesting, but the pracs completely lost me. They lost much of the class too, including the second-year Science and Biomed kids who picked this as an elective.

The subject is split into three parts: Physics/Astronomy, Geology and Biology. The undercurrent of the course, which each of these disciplines address respectively, is life – what it is, how it began, requirements for life, the likelihood of finding life on other planets, etc.

The lecturers were fairly good – you'd be wise to turn up to Stephen Gallagher's lectures though, as he has quite an explicit dislike of people who don't attend lectures. That being said, he makes the lectures quite enjoyable so it isn't a chore to turn up or anything. His PowerPoint slides are quite minimal when it comes to information, but plenty of resources are provided on the LMS so it isn't too bad. Rachel Webster and Geoff McFadden's slides are more comprehensive.

The Biology part I sensed was relatively easy for those who had studied Biology previously – I haven't, so it was quite bit to get my head around. Again, this wasn't so much a problem with the subject itself as with my suitability for it.

I think the biggest problem with this course were the pracs – there were nine of them, which ran for three hours. For a breadth subject, it just wasn't worth the contact hours. The pracs weren't terribly well-organised either, and the Physics pracs were simply painful – though she tried, the tutor wasn't great at explaining things and what was advertised as 'simple' maths was actually barely comprehensible, at least for me.

The assessment during semester included two separate tests worth 5% (which was somewhat irritating) and a poster worth 5% (extremely irritating), as well as pracs (for the Biology and Physics pracs you completed a hand-out for assessment, whilst for the Geology pracs you completed a short multiple-choice test at the end of each prac). The 3-hour exam was worth 60%, and is definitely do-able if you've gone over past exams properly – they tend to repeat many of the questions every year.

Overall the subject was okay – though the content was mostly interesting, I just wasn't suited for it, the pracs and assessments were unpleasant, and I would only recommend it as a breadth to students who have some background in Biology and Physics. Otherwise, it's more of a pain than a breadth should be.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kaybee94 on June 29, 2013, 06:56:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10011 Experimental Design and Data Analysis 
Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week, 1 x 1 hour computer lab session per week following the tutorial
Assessment:  3 hour end of semester exam 80%, weekly online quizzes 10%, assignment 5%, computer test 1 2%, computer test 2 3%
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture. However Ray tends to not show the projector screen on the lecture capture as an incentive to actually attend or reward those that do go.
Past exams available:  Three past papers with solutions were given. Revision sets in the back of Ray's reader are mostly old exams.
Textbook Recommendation:  Biostatistics for the Biological and Health Sciences by Triola & Triola. You definitely do not need this book. My heart goes out to those who did accidentally purchase it.  All you need is the reader which is about 300 pages thick from co-op. If you really don't wanna fork out the cash Ray eventually uploads all the chapter text as he's doing the course and everything is on LMS. Recommend saving your valuable time by just purchasing it.
Lecturer(s): Ray Watson
Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1
Rating:  3.5/5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments: Other than maths for biomedicine this is the other subject that cops a lot of criticism in 1st year biomedicine course. The subject really isn’t that bad if you do concentrate and be attentive. I do admit that Ray has a tendency to stutter and stumble a lot and a lot of the lectures you sit there thinking what is he going on about but the most important thing is to sit down after lectures or maybe during the weekend and go through it again. Statistics is one of those things where you do need to look at it about 4 or 5 times before it becomes clear in your head. Ray does take the entire semester’s worth of lectures and I found him to be quite a nice lecturer and seems very approachable in person too. Also he tends to have his microphone volume either turned on low or it’s not close enough to his mouth so maybe sitting somewhere near the front will help. Especially with a subject like this sitting at the back allowed me to zone out a lot more and I wouldn’t know what’s going on by the end of the lecture. 
Topics we cover include experimental design, data analysis, probability and its applications, probability distributions, estimation, hypothesis testing, comparative inference and regression & correlation. First four topics tend to be fairly easy but this builds on to the crux of the course which is estimation, hypothesis testing and comparative inference. If you don’t understand this then there’s a big chance you might fail. Regression and correlation are kind of a standalone topic much like experimental design and it’s not too difficult.
I recommend trying to find Sharon Gunn’s tutorials since she has the most experience in statistics and she’s very nice too. She’ll explain things clearer than Ray most of the time. Tutorials are mainly just discussing a few problems Ray has written up and maybe doing some text problems. The computer labs usually follow right after the tutorial and these use the Minitab program. It’s to get you used to using the program since the 2 computer tests and assignment are based on analysing data and answering questions using the computer program and interpreting output. Tutorials and labs aren’t compulsory. Tutorial solutions posted up on Friday afternoon every week and computer lab sessions are posted up on LMS when semester commences.
Computer tests and assignment aren’t meant to be hard but usually a lot of people struggled with it so make sure you collaborate with friends. With practice exams Ray has given us about 3 of them and you can find heaps on library site with no solutions but I wouldn’t recommend it. The revision sets in the back of the reader are old exams. The multiple choice of the old exams are actually put onto the weekly quizzes every Tuesday so it’s good practice. For the weekly quizzes you get 3 attempts with your best mark being your final but should be an easy 10%. Try to do the problem sets of all the chapters since they are either old exam questions or similar style with numbers tweaked around etc. Hopefully by the end of the semester you’ll see that this subject really is not all that difficult. Memory work is minimal since we get given all the formulas on the summary notes provided in the exam. The subject does get a bit dry but it doesn’t mean that it is difficult. Although around 95% of people struggle with the subject there is no reason to since you have plenty of resources available to you. I’ll reiterate that some concepts will be difficult to grasp and it requires you to look over it several times (especially all the power curve stuff and sample size determination etc.). Subject isn’t exactly enjoyable but workload isn’t really stressful either. You have 3 days to complete the weekly quiz and computer assignments vary from 1-2 weeks.       
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on July 01, 2013, 10:08:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10005: Physics 1: Fundamentals

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1hour problem solving class (both per week) , 8 x 3 hour lab sessions throughout the semester.

Assessment:  10 weekly problem solving assignments + one written assignment towards the end of semester (totals to 15%), practical work (25%), 3 hour exam (60%). You must pass the practical component to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but they are slack with using the projector for handwritten solutions of problems

Past exams available:  Yes about 5 with answers. (No complete solutions, nor written explanations provided, just basic answers)

Textbook Recommendation:  R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2010. I'd say it's pretty essential you get this.


Lecturer(s):
Martin Sevior- mechanics
Chris Chantler- Optics

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1

Rating:  1/5

Your Mark/Grade:  - (not even sure i'll write it here because I think it's going to be crap)

Edit: 76 (H2A) I guess the subject is scaled a lot? :l

Comments:

So you've probably heard some things about physics fundamentals being the worst taught subject from a number of students, and what would I say in response to that? LISTEN TO THOSE PEOPLE. They know what they are talking about. I don't even know where to begin on ranting describing the subject, so i'll just have to split it in components.


Lectures
For the most part I found mechanics to be ok in terms of grasping the basic components. However, there were certain topics e.g. Hooke's Law/ conservation of energy that they just DID NOT explain to the level required for the exam.

Optics was a massive let down. Some of the components I had learnt during my vision subject in first year and I think it just shows how a teacher/ lecturer can really influence your perception on the topics at hand. The lecturer would constantly go off tangent to the material asking questions like "So who here wants to be a vet?", "how many of you here think you're going to pass the subject?". (By the way the answer to the second question was that only half or so of the class put up their hand).

For both lecturers, they would constantly be behind in their material. Basically I had tried to self-teach my self with the textbook all semester. Lecture notes were insufficient.


Practicals

My own demonstrator lacked professionalism on numerous occasions. He would often swear if students did not read the prac manual before the prac began. Of course it is good to read the prac but towards the end of the exam period we do have other priorities. The pracs were ordered horribly and we would often be doing the prac before it was "covered" in the lecture, as a consequence we lost marks.


Tutorials

For me personally not helpful. We never managed to get through more than half of the tutorial questions and some of the questions were just utterly hopeless such as "describe how nasa was able to land their spacecraft safely" etc. etc. (or something along those lines). For the most part it's important to be familar with the questions because ones similar will appear on the exam. Probably best to attend as many tutorials as possible for the fact that apparently they will consider your attendance if you score say 49% and then bump up your mark to a pass. The tutorials made me more confused than I was before attending them.


The exam

I went absolutely terrible in the exam due to studying the wrong concepts. Often you can sort of predict the main topics but it just seemed everything I didn't study adequately appeared such as the human ear, phase shifts etc. I can honestly say though that a lot of the material on there was NOT directly related to lectures e.g. the torque questions/ phase shift questions were significantly harder.


Edit: It's common sense but make sure to include your working for all the questions even if you aren't sure if it's correct!!

The weekly assignments
I'll just redirect you to nubs' post RE the written assignments.


All in all I tried my best for the subject and by the end of it my folder for the subject was massive. The worst part of it all was that the content itself wasn't that bad it's just that the staff did not give it justice. Basically I wouldn't consider the subject unless it's a prerequisite for your future studies (and no that does not include the gamsat, i believe you will be far better off to study it from scratch and not take the subject so that it does not have to contribute to your GPA). I felt as if the subject had a lot of disorder to it e.g. we never even got our mark back for the written assignment at the end of the semester. Think hard before taking this subject, I know I should have.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: golden on July 02, 2013, 07:05:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20007 Genetics Health and Society

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures a week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial (starts in week 5).

Assessment:  3 x in-semester online tests (MC): 5%, 10% and 10% respectively. 1 x group assignment - construct a Wiki based on a book/movie and present it in a tutorial: 15%. 1 x exam: 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  None, but they provided you with sample questions. The quizzes and tutorial sheets could also be used as revision. It's not really about doing 100 questions for revision, it's just about how well you can construct a response that will address the issue at hand (more on this later).

Textbook Recommendation:  None prescribed.

Lecturer(s): Have many lecturers/speakers for this subject, it’s a collaboration of lecturers from different departments giving talks on their take on genetics health and society.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013.

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: As with any subject where there are many lecturers from different departments giving lectures, it will be a subject that many students may feel like there is no direction or cohesion. But on reflection, it’s held together and integrated really nicely. Perhaps you will not realise this until later in the year because you’re too busy studying for BIOM20001.

The lecturers are practically all great communicators and are of high status in the community. As many students discovered, as they were spending time during the lectures Googling the lecturer, you are essentially being lectured by super pros in the field. World renowned, often in the media. Fundamental researchers to what we understand today. The big guns.

Starting off with the first few weeks, it’s all about nature and nurture. The fundamental biological concepts are introduced, and reproduction is explored. Ideologies are uncovered about what we view the world today in terms of nature and nurture. Twin studies, GWAS and epigenetics were touched on. Remember, this subject isn’t all about the details, it emphasises on the concepts. I found this was introduced really well, and the questions that were on the first test corresponding to it was at a level that a large amount of people got H1 on, as once again, it was mainly fundamental details.

The second slot was about personalised medicine, economics, clinical and non-clinical uses of genetic testing. Also, thinking in general about genetic testing with regard to ethics, morals and psychology were undertaken. The test was once again fundamental concepts. Probably on par with the first test in terms of friendliness. Once again, brilliantly taught.

By now, many people have locked in 15% plus minus 1-2%. Then, the course gets fired up to differentiate people.

The final slot was about genetics and the law, paternity fraud, race, visible differences and art/blogging. Once again, good diversity. Many found the law lectures enjoyable. The test for this is quite hard, because it starts to get more specific and the questions more ambiguous. So bulk up is what I am saying.

The tutorials as already mentioned start in week 5; the tutor I had was fantastic. You go through a bunch (4-6 usually) of discussion questions which is often based off a reading or readings that you were provided with earlier and were expected to have read. Because there are relatively few tutorials in total, you cannot afford to miss many.

The Wiki assignment was quite dependent on all members, as most of the time you will all get the same mark (unless someone does no work or a very disproportionate amount of work where they may be separately penalised). There was no guideline as to how much information you could put into it if I am not mistaken. If the group holds together, an H1 should be attainable. There is somewhat an emphasis on creativity.

Alright, by this time I have been relatively positive, with how the lectures, tutorials and overall the subject is great. Let me add to that the pace was just right for me. But there must be things that the subject could change right?
1.   There was easily an emphasis on some lectures (or even portions of lectures) more than others in the testing/examination. You could have studied some lectures that you believed they emphasised on in detail and none of the others and probably do better than the person that did everything but in a bit less detail. Whilst this perhaps is very hard not to do, perhaps some lectures still should have had at least a somewhat more significant contribution to the questions than almost nothing or maybe nothing itself, given that there are relatively few lectures as well (22 direct content lectures, one introduction to the subject, one ties it all up).
2.   Whilst there was nothing significantly wrong with the actual Wiki project itself, the Wiki system that is set for some reason appears to have had many issues, and hence many emails were sent. The mark we got back didn’t have any feedback, nor the scores we obtained for each of the criteria.

Overall, if you’re mildly interested in genetics, you’d find this subject interesting. I know I did. It was just an introduction but to get the viewpoints from the many lecturers opened up a new world away from textbook based questions. It was more applicable to real life coming in from all directions. But if you’re the type that prefers more definite answers, or more specific details, or perhaps even want a subject where you know more for sure where it is going and what is expected of you, then maybe this subject isn’t for you. You will get tested in the exam with many open ended questions, asking things that may not be clear to you. Just imagine something like*:

Someone just found out their niece had a disease x, what do you think they will make of this? What should they recommend to the niece? What can be done? Etc.
Hard to split students? Perhaps. Do they need to split students? Probably. Just hope for the best in how you'll end up being split.

*
Spoiler
Please note that this was not a question they actually gave, but is somewhat similar in style. I am not allowed to specify the actual questions because the paper is not lodged in the Baillieu.

Enjoy.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on July 02, 2013, 07:32:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20029 Engineering Mathematics

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  3 x 5% assignment, 15% mid-semester test, 70% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Yes, ~8 from the library if I remember.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't need to buy any books, just the lecture notes

Lecturer(s): Assoc Prof Marcus Brazil, Dr Christine Mangelsdorf

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  3.5-4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 [H1]

Comments: As an engineering major, this should be your last required mathematics subject in your Bachelor's course. If you're doing Electrical Engineering, you'll need to take "Probability and Random Models [PaRM]" in fourth year, but that's another issue. The problem with this subject (and why I've given a mathematics subject at 3.5 instead of a 5) is because it's approach is very formulaic and their isn't much creativity with the content. Basically, my friends and I agree that once you've done one problem, you should be able to do all of the same type, given you have the formula sheet and what not. Coming from Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra, this was a little disappointing, which is why I stopped going to lectures around week 2 and just learnt from completely notes on my laptop (queue socially awkward penguin meme right now).

In the first lecture, the lecturer basically said that your Calculus 2 mark has a large correlation to the way you will perform in MAST20029. This is because ALL of the knowledge from Calculus 2 is extended, so if you, and I quote "just passed Calculus 2, you'll have to put in a lot more work that those who achieved a H1". Another issue with this subject, and why I like the Monash approach to this mathematics subject is that all engineering discipline undertake this course. That means that some mathematics that is more required in Elec Eng, such as complex analysis and fourier transforms, are taught to Civil students who, to the best of my knowledge, would have little use of those techniques. Splitting this class into Mech, Civil, Chem and Elec, Comp, Biomed would be a little better in my opinion, but that's another topic of discussion.

In this course, you'll cover 6 topics:
- Vector Calculus (extension from Calc 2)
- Ordinary Differential Equations (extension from Calc 2)
- Laplace Transforms (new topic)
- Sequences and Series (new topic for those who completed Calc 2 pre-2013)
- Fourier Transforms (new topic)
- Second Order Partial Differential Equations (new topic)

The topic I found people had the most issue was PDEs and Fourier Transforms, both of which are towards the end of the semester. PDEs had around 4 lectures on them, and it was worth 20/120 marks on the exam. Da fuq? All in all, it was an ok subject, however it got very formulaic very quickly and lacked some of the creativity that was found in first year mathematic subjects. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on July 02, 2013, 09:07:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: SPAN10001 Spanish 1 

Workload:  2 x 1.5 hour tutorial per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 
    2 written assignments (600 words each) during semester [30%](15% each)
    Oral presentation (equivalent to 400 words) during semester [10%]
    Online work (equivalent to 400 words) during semester [10%]
    1 Oral exam (equivalent to 800 words) in week 11 [20%]
    2-hour final written exam (equivalent to 1200 words)during exam period [30%]

Past exams available:  No, though the exams are modelled on the assignments

Textbook Recommendation:  Exploraciones (Blitt/Casas). You do need to buy this textbook new. Part of the assessment predicates itself on having access to the online form of the book!

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (94)

Comments: Overall, this was a pretty fun subject. The most attractive element of it was the class dynamics. There was a really strong sense of belonging to a class, which is a nice departure from the way science subjects are run if you choose to take this subject as breadth.

Studying Spanish at University level is certainly very different to high school languages. The content was covered much, much more quickly and there wasn't as much time for revising the content. Strictly speaking, there wasn't actually time for revision, rather, skills previously learned were revised in the context of a new skill. This was a particularly refreshing way of doing things, as it allowed the content to be covered quickly and thoroughly.

The assessment was fairly basic. Almost all of it allowed you to use your textbook, save for the exams of course. The online activities were easy, with answers provided so you can put them in on your second attempt anyway (they were mainly there as a home revision exercise—a useful one too!). The tareas (assignments) were somewhat more challenging, though with the textbook at hand it was relatively easy to attain a good mark. The oral presentation was in English, and so was just a matter of actually getting it done properly. The oral exam and the exam posed the biggest challenge. The oral exam consisted of a role play, an interview component and a description of an artwork. This certainly posed a challenge to most students, though the tutors were quite fair in their marking. As mine remarked "you have only been learning Spanish for ten weeks, we don't expect you to have all that much to say". The exam was exactly like the tareas, but posed quite a challenge because a dictionary wasn't available to students taking the exam. It would be fair to say that it was probably everybody's weakest piece of assessment.

For students who hadn't studied a language before (probably about 50% of everyone), some of the grammar topics were ridiculously complicated. The biggest criticism I have for this subject is how some of the grammar was approached. Everything was explained very technically, with no pauses to explain what any of the terms meant. Even after having taken French to year twelve, I found it really difficult to follow what the tutors were talking about at times in terms of the grammar, as their explanations were very jargonistic. This put a lot of people off-side, including myself at times, and made things necessarily complicated. Another criticism I would have is that the tutors didn't seem particularly interested in developing the lower band, or the middle band of students. They were particularly focused on making the best students better. This certainly turned a lot of people off the subject, and in an area of study that can be made a lot easier with a bit of confidence, this complicated things a lot for some students. The fact that there were 20 classes for Spanish 1 in 2013, but will only be 14 for Spanish 2 does say something!

At the end of the day, Spanish is relatively straight forward. If you want good marks, you have to be committed to the subject but more importantly, committed to learning a language. There is certainly a feeling that learning the language was more important than doing well on exams, which was particularly refreshing! The class size and camaraderie was a highlight, but at certain times, the way things were taught invited justified frustration.

All in all, a good subject, so give it a go!

¡Adiós!  :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on July 03, 2013, 12:42:34 am
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

Workload:  2hr lecture a week

Assessment:  Group assignment worth 20%, Tute/weekly online tests 10%, Exam 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  One sample exam from the summer of 2012, but I'd expect more for the future exams.

Textbook Recommendation:
Accounting: Business Reporting for Decision Making, 4th Edition by Birt et al, 2012.
Recommended for new accounting students, not recommended for VCE accounting students.

Lecturer(s): Hoggan, Dyki, Davern

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, S1

Rating:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I know Matt Dyki actually browses these boards, so my opinion will be as honest as possible if it is actually used as feedback for improving the current course.

First and foremost, ARA is a very taxing and demanding subject for non-commerce students. This is due to the fact that so much 'assumed' knowledge is required, especially during the first few weeks of financial accounting. Davern and Dyki star as the lecturers for the first weeks of financial accounting, and introduce income statements, balance sheets etc in the matter of weeks. Fundamentally speaking, there needs to be LESS coverage (less topics) but MORE precision (that creates solid understanding) in the consistency of teaching in each of the subjects.

How do you get a H1 in ARA? Don't do the readings, spend your time revising select questions from tutorials, and base your learning of lecture slides. Don't waste your time doing the sample exams. Don't waste your time by taking the weekly quiz seriously (it's worth so little). The rest comes down to luck. Some tutors mark incredibly harshly, where some mark a lot more fairly. Keep in mind that they are in charge for practically 100% of the entire course (assignment is tutor marked, exam is MOSTLY tutor marked, as dyki and hoggan mark 'harder' parts of the exam), so you can definitely bet that luck comes into play, and could cause anywhere from a 5% to ~10% swing in your overall mark.

Lectures were okay, despite the amount of heads I saw nodding off or leaving in the middle of lectures. Hoggan tries to be more engaging, which is commendable due to the dry content associated with management accounting and Dyki, despite looking pissed off the majority of the time, conveys the course material effectively.

Tutorials for this subject are an absolute godsend in comparison to other resources in the subject. The majority of 'learning' and 'applying' will apply in tutorials. The tutor mix for 2013 is exceptional, with most of my mates commending their tutors (one of them noted on a group's assignment "i'm !!!!" in response to its group name: "zyzz"). However, I believe a pinksheet/blue sheet system should replace the current online test system. Weekly online multiple choice tests for this subject were pointless. Not only were they a poor way to enforce understanding (as students could easily cheat their way through with answers for their peers), but the sheer lack of direction in question setting was striking. Lazy assessment, really. Either completely cut the wiley test mark (10%), or introduce two smaller assignments to pinpoint subject areas.

Although I undertook VCE accounting back in 2012, I found ARA to be more time-consuming than VCE accounting, to my surprise. The amount of pointless readings (the textbook acted as a nice haven for me to sleep on) was enormous, and towards the end of the semester, I entirely quit readings and just worked off the lecture slides at my own whim. I strongly suggest future students to only refer to the textbook when in dire need of understanding a concept, as there is a lot of 'filler' material that really should've been pinpointed by the lecturers. The reading guide practically wants you to read the majority of the textbook which is rather unproductive, considering the dry nature of readings.

The problem with such an approach is that an incredible amount of jargon is thrown at students, terms such as: reserves, retained earnings, creditors, debtors, owner's equity which require a very focused effort in order to truly understand each part of each report, in a minimal time frame. When lecturers are asked about a slightly raw concept, students are told to look at the textbook. This is poor teaching, and I realize that Dyki and company want to achieve 'many things in such a short time', but condensing the course into 'bite-sized' sections and LESS actual content, will not only solidify a firm foundation for students, but cut down on subjectivity and discrepancies in marking. Cut out performance evaluation (financial) and perhaps performance reporting (management) and you have yourselves not only a much more concise course, but a more consistent and objective marking scheme to work with.

One of the parts that I heavily disliked about ARA was the enormous focus on judgment/agency theory. This is due to the extreme amount of subjectivity in responses and answers that is exposed in an exam situation for this topic. Despite the fact that Dyki continues to labour on the fact that 'numbers mean nothing', while screaming 'I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU GET' in lectures, and that 'there is no right or wrong answer in accounting', in an exam situation, this spells disaster. I'm sure that if Dyki was reading this, he would see that the answers for Q1 (Agency) for the latest 2013 S1 exam would've be statistically disappointing.

This brings me to what I believe was the worst part of ARA.

The assignment is an absolute joke. Ratio calculation that involves plugging numbers into formulas repetitively? Analysis that is incredibly subjective in nature, that cannot be effectively graded or marked? This may sound like I'm bitching simply because of a poor mark in the assignment, but the fact that SO MANY students complaining about a desired remarking of the assignment that even prompted Dyki to write a full-blown response on the LMS is enough evidence to suggest a scrapping of such an assignment. You simply cannot accurately 'grade' performance evaluation. You said so yourself Dyki, 'there is no right or wrong answer' in accounting, yet select groups were unfairly rewarded with sub-par marks in comparison to less-spectacular groups. I don't care if the average mark was 100/150, everyone should be getting close to full marks if you truly desire students to possess 'complete understanding' of a topic, which frankly speaking, is impossible to grade.

I know a lot of the above may seem like I'm bitching about marks lost and such, but do keep in mind that I (thankfully) scored quite well in ARA. Hope I've provided a honest insight that I'm sure is shared by many of the past students of ARA.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: LeviLamp on July 03, 2013, 01:48:56 pm
BIOL10004: Biology of Cells and Organisms: BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and Organisms

Workload:  35 lectures, 5 practicals (and one additional introductory prac), 5 ILTs and 6 optional workshops. This adds up to about 60 hours of course delivery time.

Assessment:  I'll outline each component of assessment in a little more depth below.

ILTs: A very easily obtained 5% buffer to add to your final mark. You read through all the information the ILT presents and then take a final test on the content. To the best of my knowledge, the ILTs are examinable (but make up a very minor component of the exam), so it might be a good idea to read back over them and try to internalise their key points. The test can be done with the ILT readings/activities open in a separate tab, so you can score well on these (not that it matters, you get the 1% for passing each ILT) simply by looking back at the material covered by each task.

Pracs: Worth a substantial 25% of the final subject mark, it is in your best interests to try and do well in these! The pracs in 2013 involved an introductory (no marks awarded, but sadly this was a hurdle requirement) microscope use prac. It only goes for one hour and is incredibly simple to do well in. You should be made to take an online prelab for this prac; use it to become acquainted with the style of online testing the Biology department uses. The ASSESSED pracs included one on cell structure, one on photosynthesis and leaf structure (isobilateral and dorsiventral leaves are important for some reason, so make sure to not mix them up on the post-prac), water movement in plants (which forms the basis of the 10% assignment), heart and lung structure and function and the analysis of a mouse's digestive system. Please note that first year Biology will allow alternative provisions to be made for those who conscientiously object to dissecting animal remains, though I am unaware of exactly how the department compromises.
Pracs are, on the whole, very slow in pace and often quite dull, though I enjoyed the first, fourth and fifth pracs well enough. Make sure to complete the assessable portion of the prac first; there are always a number of activities set for each prac block and there's never enough time to finish all of them, but as most of them are non-assessable you should be fine ignoring them (though they may come up on the postprac if you're unlucky, you can always read through the prac notes and reason your way through any relevant questions). Prac demonstrators can be kind or harsh with their marking, but if you show that you know your stuff (and listen to what they say in the pre-lab tutorial!) then you probably won't be penalised much. Also, MAKE SURE TO COMPLETE THE PRE- AND POST-PRAC TESTS! Together, they account for 50% of each prac mark, or about 3% of your subject mark, which is -substantial-. The password for the post-prac will be given at the beginning of each practical. If you miss a prac, do NOT get the password for the post-prac off another student and do it to scrounge some marks, as the Biology department is very likely to get mad at you.
Overall, pracs are a rather annoying but fairly easy way to gain marks for these subjects, if you're careful with the post-prac questions and read the prac notes before the prac (something I occasionally failed to do, to my own detriment).

Assignment
What a load of shit. Worth 10% of your final grade, this is the reason the subject gets 4.5/5; it's dreadfully designed, incredibly harshly marked (and inconsistently too, depending on your tutor), and far too short even for people attempting to be concise. The department have stated they won't be changing the assignment because it gives them such a nice grade distribution, and the staff are too nice to get angry at, so you're stuck with this annoying thing whether you like it or not. Be INCREDIBLY pedantic with your referencing, make sure your spellcheck doesn't change potometer to pedometer (and other similar errors), USE a reference in your introduction even if you don't need to read anything to present the information. Use italics for the name of the plant, say "leafy shoots" and not "leaves", subscript for the 2 in CO2, that kind of thing. If you don't, you will lose marks, and it adds up! I still managed to scrounge 8.25/10, but this assignment ruined many people who thought they'd done fantastically. BE AS ANAL AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY BE, and you might find that you're reasonably successful.

Mid-Semester Test
This test covers all of Rick and most of Andrew's lectures, with the unfortunate side-effect of having fewer easy cell biology questions to answer on the final exam. If you study and complete the provided sample MST, you should be fine. I did a fairly modest amount of study for this and still managed to get a 22/25 (the average was 17 or 18, which is quite high!). Don't exhaust yourself studying for this, but at the same time do make the time to go over all the past lectures, lecture summaries and your own notes. This is a fairly easy way of obtaining 8-10% of your final mark.

Exam
I really do have to commend the Biology department for their production of such a fair and rewarding final exam. I'd made a few minor blunders over the semester, and this exam really helped me make up for those (I got about 95% on the exam, and I suspect my dodgy extended response answers were to blame for most of that lost 5%). There are FOUR sections on the exam. Section A is comprised of a number of multiple choice questions which total to give 60/180 marks on the exam. For the most part, if you've studied adequately, these won't be too hard, but may occasionally require you to think about a given problem. There were a few tough ones there to differentiate the students that really paid attention and those who were kind of winging it using their VCE Biology knowledge, so don't get complacent. These are not free marks, and I'd say Section B was far easier to complete.
Sections B and C are both "fill in the blanks" sections, where you pick a number corresponding to a specific word option and fill in the gaps to complete biologically focused sentences and paragraphs, or to accurately label a diagram. Sections B and C can cover pretty much any concept, so be prepared, but there are usually only a few sensible options to choose from for each blank, if it's not completely obvious, so there's lots of room for educated guessing. Mark Elgar's B and C questions are weird in the sense that he prefers to have you form grammatically tidy sentences rather than fill in scientific terms, and Geoff Shaw evidently LOVES sex, but other than that, a very fair component of the exam, and also very heavily weighted. Again, if you studied well, you'll be A-OK (though one or two of the answers may be difficult to get, the VAST majority are quite mainstream in terms of content and shouldn't push you too hard). Section D is the big gamble, but thankfully is only worth 16%. You get NO QUESTION CHOICE, so don't be fooled by the sample exam like much of the cohort (who clearly didn't read the front page :V). They can ask anything they like over these three questions and you need to be able to answer their questions in a logical and coherent manner. There's no way 2013's content will be the same as 2014's, so I won't go into the questions themselves, but PLEASE think about how to clearly write out your answers and make sure you can apply some basic practical skills (there was a prac-style question in the ER worth 10 marks). One thing I will say again; Geoff Shaw LOVES sex. Never before have I written the words "penis", "vagina" and "period" on an exam together, let alone labelled and/or drawn four diagrams of reproductive tracts and systems.
In terms of who sets the fairest questions, Rick's section will make you happy if you put some time into learning his things during the semester, and Andrew's parts were all very fair (though not as easy as Rick's, there wasn't anything to fault and a wide range of topics were examined). Geoff's questions covered a lot of the nitty-gritty details that you wouldn't think would crop up, but they did (alongside many very simple questions, I should add) and so I'd say his exam questions were the most challenging for students. Stephen's were quite easy, though he did try to cause some headaches with less clear-cut questions in Sections B and C. Mark Elgar's questions are very strange, and you will need a decent grasp of English grammar to successfully complete his Section B/C questions, whether or not you remember his examples. On that note, DO learn all his examples, because you WILL need to know them. However, his questions were really very simple if you knew what you were doing.
Really, a very fair exam with few faults or gripes, and I think it did a great job of assessing who knew their shit and who had no clue what was going on.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but occasionally Geoff Shaw forgot to properly set up the recordings. His lectures are better for voice-based note-taking anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. That said, I strongly encourage you to go to the lectures as well as watch them/listen to them again on Lectopia.

Past exams available:  One sample exam. The difficulty is similar to that of the actual exam, and the style of questions each lecturer uses is also quite similar. There was one (maybe?) recycled multiple choice question I noticed on the exam itself, worth 2 marks, so don't expect to blitz the exam because you did the sample exam - STUDY THE CONTENT THOROUGHLY and you will mow down the exam. If you don't revise all the lecture content and rely on having done well on practice tests and online assessments the exam will mow you down instead.

Textbook Recommendation:  R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009.
The textbook is useful, but don't do what I did and attempt to answer questions from it (if you must, draw the line at short answer) because it'll only make you confused and feel like you don't know any of the content. Probably worth a buy if you're continuing with biology in first year, and especially if you're planning on taking BIOL10001 in the subsequent semester.
The Biology department also publishes a loose leaf subject manual that you MUST buy, new, from the university's Co-op store; all practical assessment is completed and marked (!) in this book, and it contains a plethora of useful worksheets, tutorial sheets and other such things if you feel like completing them (hardly necessary but probably useful!) Binding it is a good idea to avoid it becoming crumpled up paper mess.

Lecturer(s): I'll discuss the lecturers individually below.

Rick Wetherby - Life's Origins and Cell Biology
Friendly lecturer, very clear and well-paced with fairly comprehensive notes and useful lecture summaries (provided on LMS). His voice is fantastic. At the end of his teaching stint he'll email you a list of things to revise for the MST and exam. He seems to love the phrase "no trick questions!". VERY keen on endosymbiosis.

Andrew Drinnan - Respiration, Photosynthesis and Plant Science
Perhaps not favoured by students as people tend to dislike or be averse to plant science, but I quite liked him. To get everything out of his lectures, I strongly suggest going home and listening to what he's saying, then taking notes based on that. He moves a little too fast to write down everything important, but rest assured most of what he says IS important. Fairly interesting, his content was interesting as well, save for respiration (don't kill me, I LIKED plant science). Strangely obsessed with marijuana.

Geoff Shaw - Circulatory and Respiratory Systems, Homeostasis, Reproduction and Animal Development
Sex-obsessed old man who really lights up your day. I doubt I'll forget him in a hurry! Covers perhaps some of the trickiest concepts of the course, and also says many important things that aren't covered by his slides. A joy to listen to; I'm sure you'll get a few laughs out of his course segment even if you find the content dull or challenging.

Stephen Frankenberg - Animals and Their Interactions With Their Environments
Rather slow voice, but this is made up for with fantastic pictures and videos. You can tell Stephen is enthusiastic about the course, but he's a little too socially awkward to bring his enthusiasm out. What he covers is fairly simple if you pay attention in lectures. Don't miss anything - the concepts he covers are easier to understand if you have the whole picture. Strangely endearing man who looks nothing like his lecture slide photograph.

Mark Elgar - Evolutionary Mechanisms, Ecology and Animal Behaviour
Fairly pretentious and stuffy, and maybe a little slow with content delivery, he seemed to be most peoples' least favourite lecturer, but even he wasn't terrible, more mediocre and too preoccupied with his research colleagues. He'll tell you he dislikes assessing specifics, but all his specific examples are assessable and will be assessed, so please learn them! What he teaches is very simple and will likely be a welcome break to an intense semester. He really loves lions (and his colleague Melissa ;) ).

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester One.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: BIOL10004 was a fantastically well-rounded introduction to, well, the biology of cells and organisms! It covers a wide range of topics concisely and quickly, but in enough depth to give you an appreciation of how organisms function and exist on our planet. If you did VCE Biology and REMEMBER the content (I didn't remember a single thing, so this subject was like learning biology from scratch all over again), most of this subject should be fairly easy to study for, despite the different methods of content delivery. Lecturers were, on the whole, great and good at teaching their content (though Mark is a little pretentious and Stephen a little dry-sounding) and the tutors and demonstrators tried to turn each prac and workshop into something interesting. The course was easy to study for, easy to take notes for, and not terribly boring, either. Workshops are definitely not compulsory, and if you find yourself bored to death, don't go - I went to two, and while those two helped, I was totally fine without them. Pracs can be boring but might be interesting or enjoyable depending on your prac group. I actually made a few friends through pracs, so if you're feeling lonely, try being outgoing during the prac classes and see where it gets you! The staff also seem to care about students despite the incredibly large number of jaffies enrolled in the subject, which does make you feel a little bit more welcome at uni. I don't really know what else to say other than that this subject will reward you academically and personally if you put in the hours, and that if you enjoyed biology in highschool then there's nothing to regret about choosing BIOL10004! If you've never taken biology before or don't remember anything/much from highschool, expect this to be quite content-heavy, but not particularly challenging. Good luck!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vcestudent94 on July 03, 2013, 10:20:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1 

Workload:  2 x 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  Assignments not exceeding 2000 words (20%) and a 2-hour end-of-semester examination (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  No (Although might change in the future)

Past exams available:  Many past exams available on the library's website although only one exam's solution is given near exam time.

Textbook Recommendation: Handbook says otherwise, but it is a custom textbook made by the University that is a combination of multiple textbooks. (Don't need it, Lecture notes and Internet are sufficient)

Lecturer(s): Don't know as I never went to a lecture.

Year & Semester of completion:  2013, Semester 1
Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments: Well if your an Engineering/Science student looking for a mathsy breadth that eats up hardly any time then this is the one for you. The exam is structured so that roughly half of the marks are for calculation questions and half are theory - so thats 50% "in-the-bag" for competent maths students.

 The other 50% is quite accessible if you pretty much go through the lecture notes week by week, googling any definitions/concepts that you don't understand (the lecture notes are pretty brief-although they might've been expanded upon in the lectures). So if you're not comfortable doing independent study and research then it would probably be better to go to the lectures and tutes.

The tutorial questions and solutions are posted on the LMS so I was able miss every tutorial (I didn't want to look like a fool in front of all the commerce kids). This allowed me to pretty much do all of the tutorial sheets during exam period and check where I went wrong in calculation questions. They also provided comprehensive answers to common theory questions that come up in exams, so I suggest understanding *cough*memorising*cough* most of them.

The 2 assignments are due around mid April and mid May and they are available on the LMS so you have a while to complete them. They don't require much of the actual content to complete, just independent research and knowing how to reference properly-although beware: they will be more lenient for referencing in the first assignment than the second (I'm saying this because I referenced the same way for both assignments although only lost marks for the second one) so better take some time to learn it.
 
So over all a very good breadth subject (or non-breadth if your in commerce) would have given it a 5/5 if it was recorded. The content starts off a bit dry and confusing with "introductions" to things like Financial Institutions and Financial Markets but it gets more interesting when you reach things like Bonds, Foreign Exchange Markets and Shares.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mc1316 on July 04, 2013, 12:15:21 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and Organisms

Workload: 
- 3 one hour lectures per week,
- 5 two hour practicals
- 1 one hour tutorial or workshop per week (not compulsory)
- 5 prelabs, 5 postlabs and 5 ILTs, supposedly 36 hours worth (in reality much less)

Assessment:
- Mid-Semester Test (10%); 45 minute, multiple choice
- 5 Practical Task (25% total); each practical worth 5%, a mark out of 10 is given, 1 possible mark for getting 50% on a prepractical, 4 possible        marks for for 4 questions in a post-practical exam and a mark out of 5 given for work you do within the practical (you can figure exactly what gets you 5 marks from the practical workbook)
- Written Report Relating to one of the Practicals (10%); maximum 1000 words, detailed criteria is given
- Independent Learning Tasks ILTs (5%); 5 online tests on the LMS without time pressure worth 1% each, getting 50% on a test gets you that 1%, if you get less than 50% you get another try
- End of Semester Exam (50%); 3 hours, covers everything top to bottom although borad, exam consisted of 40 multiple choice questions, filling in the blank questions, and three 10 mark extended responses making up a total of 180 marks; almost no practical is assessed in the exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  One Exam Provided on LMS Before SWOTVAC, they attribute providing only one exam to content changing every year (I don't buy it).

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed text is 'R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009'. It really isn't necessary, there is enough supplementary information on the web. However a practical booklet has to be purchased from the co-op book shop.

Lecturer(s): Rick Wetherbee, Andrew Drinnan, Geoff Shaw, Stephen Frankenberg, Mark Elgar

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments:

Recommendations (this are just things that worked for me)
1) Download every single lecture onto you computer from lectopia if possible and watch each lecture more than once. If you don't feel like going to a lecture thats completely fine, happens to everyone, just make sure you watch the lectopia version.
2) Place little significane on the notes given by the lecturer as it is way to general, make you own notes mainly from watching repeats of the lecture. Dont use a computer (preferably not ipad either) to take notes, its bad for recall.
3) For some (or most) of the stuff you just have to sit down (or pace if you are like me) and repeat and repeat until its memorised. This is be done to some capacity near exam time.
4) If you dont understand a concept try kahnacademy.org first then the textbook, especially for anything to do with respiration and photosynthesis.
5) Tutorials/ workshops are a waste of time, they sometimes even star giving additional material that will never be examined. The questions done are from the practical/ tutorial booklet which you can just do at home. There is also a really bad staff to student ratio for this subject. Time is better spent doing your own notes and revising or sleeping.
6) Me and a LOT of other people tend to forget about prelabs, postlabs and ILTs, not just for biology, but for chemistry, physics etc aswell. So I recommend making a checklist that you fill in every week, so there is no way you miss them.

Lectures
First 8 lectures were done be Rick Wetherbee and covered basic cellular biology, specifically prokaryotic/ eukaryotic cells, mitosis/ meiosis, macromolecules (i.e. lipids etc.). Rick's lectures almost exclusive featured in the mid semester exams, which consisted of 25 multiple choice questions. So really knowing the 3 most important points from each lecture was enough to get anybody full marks. Almost everyone found this surprisingly easy, I think average was around 75%. Rick's lecture content and delivery are as good as its going to get in biology.

The next 9 lectures were done by Andrew Drinan and covered a bit of cellular biology, but mostly plant biology. This included, respiration, photosynthesis, plant nutrition, water and solute use/ xylem and phloem, plant hormones, plant reproduction, plant defence and plant growth and development. These series of lectures was the most content heavy and focused mostly on relatively arbitrary memorizations, in other words lack of conceptual flow. The content was also quite tedious. Attendance fell of dramatically over the course of his lectures (not because of Andrew but rather the content).

The next 7 lectures were done by Geoff Shaw and covered some basic animal and human physiology, including cardiovascular system, pulmonary system, homeostasis, nervous system, endocrine system and his specialty the reproductive system. Geoff tried to take a different approach to lecturing, he moved (ran) about the lecture theatre trying to get the audience involved - asking questions etc. Some people really liked him, but personally I felt it was a bit too distracting. His ability to explain concepts was lacking and some stuff he went over too fast. This section by far had the most interesting concept, but the delivery wasn't great.

The next 5 lectures were done by Stephen Frankenberg and was a continuation from Geoff's animal physiology lectures.The digestive system, nutrition, regulation of bodily fluids (including excretory system), thermal regulation and defences were covered by Steven. Steven exemplified the monotone standing in one place and reading from the slide technique of lecturing and frankly he was my favourite lecturer. The way he presented the material resonated with me and absorption was relatively easy. He presented the material in a logical manner and it is an established fact that if new material is introduced in a logical manner their is greater probability to recall.

The last 6 lectures were presented by Mark Elgar. He covered the topic of evolution in his first three lectures and animal behaviour in the next three. The content I though was very interesting, especially the platera of examples/ case studies he gave. His style of lecturing was pretty solid. However his voice was sort of annoying and he seems to be a angry man (best not to have conversations during his lectures). Mark's section was not extensively examined in the final examination, in fact I did not attend or watch his last two lectures (not recommending this).

Practical and Written Report
The problem with any practical for any subject is the people marking it. People will get slightly different marks depending on the marker. For the postprac test which is almost half the marks make sure you listen to the instructor when they are speaking as some answers are given from their talks. I missed some marks from not listening. For the report following the criteria to the letter (like its a piece of legislation and you are a lawyer) and you will get a damm near perfect mark or the report.

The Midsemester Test and Final Exam
The midsemester test is relatively easy and going to each lecture and being active for the duration of the lecture is enough to get a person close to full marks if not full marks. Even if you don't know one of the answers its pretty easy to guess. However, succes in the MST is by no stretch of imagination guaranteed success for the final exam. The final exam starts with 20 one mark multiple choice following by 20 two mark multiple choice. Then it goes through a series of about around 10 passages each on a different topic consisting of fill in the blank type question. The last section is somewhat of a extended response as mentioned previously. The entire exam does cover almost everything, so you really have to know everything to get yourself a good score. However the extended response section can only have so many topics - as the topic has to be major and from at least two different lectures. It will also likely test concept rather than memory (i.e. transpiration-cohesion theory or homeostasis or respiration over listing defences of plants or nutrion requirements for animals).

This subject is made great by the inherent nature of its content. Not matter how bad or unsuited for you the lecturer or system is there is a certain threshold which the subject can't go below simply due to the content. For this to apply though you have to love the subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ShiCarnt on July 04, 2013, 08:26:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENVS10006 Mapping Environments

Workload:  2x 1 hour lectures and 1x 3 hour practical class

Assessment:  5x Group Assignments (15%) and Online Quiz (25%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No exam

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Cliff Ogleby

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86

Comments: This is the greatest subject at the uni if you don't worry about wasting your money. There is basically no content in the subject, and there's no point in watching or reading lectures, let alone attending them for the sake of doing well in the subject. You can learn the content you need for the online quiz in a good hour or two on the day. It is worthwhile going if you have an interest, the lecturer is funny and charismatic; but you aren't missing anything otherwise.

The group assignments are not the pinnacle of complexity nor of difficulty. It involves writing a maybe 1000-2000 word report about some mapping activity, going into depth on topics such as the materials and equipment used in the prac, any acknowledgements and any problems your group encountered. Note that these fortnightly assessments are worth 15%, and that is one report per group. The practical tasks themselves are fairly fun in the sense that you can go and do stuff, whether doing some physical surveying or just making a map. These tasks usually take a good hour or so (less for some of the entirely electronic ones) to complete and you are given the six hours of prac classes to finish them. That means that the rest of the practical class is spent screwing around, with many people playing games on their laptops; pro-active groups can easily complete the report in that time. Well, that is if you turn up. Generally people will arrive between 5 minutes to 2 and a half hours late to the classes. There is an online group appraisal system where you can punish the group members for not pulling their weight, but it's not like there is much weight to pull.

As I mentioned before, there is an online quiz on the last teaching week. You put your name down for a time and go in and do it. It consists of 50 very short and easy questions; as long as you're familiar with the nomenclature and have a general idea of what's going on (you'll learn everything you need to know doing the pracs anyway), the quiz will not cause any strife. You get an hour but you realistically only need about ten to fifteen minutes to complete it. If you are so inclined, you don't need to do it (it's not a hurdle requirement).

All in all this subject works out very well. For those with a genuine interest in mapping and related fields, it is a fun and interesting subject where you get to play around with some equipment at your own pace, and for those less interested - you don't have to do anything. The staff are great, really approachable and friendly, and have a real interest in the field so you can talk to them for ages.

If you don't know what subject to do, do this.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sinner on July 04, 2013, 09:32:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20005: Techniques In Molecular Science 

Workload:  12 lectures, 8 pracs, 11 tutes. Each prac takes up to 3 hours each week except the last one, spanning up to 9 hours over 3 weeks.

Assessment:  Reports, "homework experimental records", assignment (50%), 40 min midsem (5%), practical exam (10%), 2 hour theory exam (35%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 3-4

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbooks, although you need to buy a lab manual online through the LMS and collect them before the pracs start.

Lecturer(s): Amber Willem Jones, Alana Mitchell, Mike Griffin

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75/H2A

Comments: I figured we needed a new review for this subject as according to my tutor (who's aware of some of the going ons at uni), the curriculum for this year has undergone some changes under Amber's lead. Anyway, this is a practical subject that must be completed if one wishes to major in Biochemistry or Pathology, and is rather well coordinated. Before you continue, I'll admit that I rarely go to the lectures or tutes, but don't judge me  ::)

Lectures

Just your standard 1 hour lectures per week in the Microbiology theater. Most of them concern the principles of the labwork to be done during that week (Or an assignment such as the pH Biosciences one, will come back to it later) and are mostly given by Amber. There are a few that were given by other lecturers who are more specialized in those areas, such as Alana Mitchell for enzyme kinetics and Mike Griffin for Proteomics. If you miss the lectures, there's no biggie as they are not hard to catch up to and comprehend. Contrary to Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, you do not need to know the full details of "examples" such as the GLUT proteins, but only the principles and techniques involved in the different processes such as DNA cloning, sequencing, or proteomics. There's a list labelling stuff you need to know at the end of most lectures as well, so that's quite handy.

Practicals

Weekly 3 hour pracs in the afternoon from Monday to Thursday. So first part: pre-prac. Before going to a prac, make sure you complete the experimental records and read the prac beforehand and finish the pre-lab questions for the prac you're attending as you attend. Also, don't be late! If you're 5 minutes late, you get marks taken off your participation score; if you're more than 15 minutes late, you won't be permitted to enter as they can't be bothered going over the stuff again. Also bring your experimental record/homework questions you completed for the last prac in as well. You'll also need to bring the lab manual, goggles, a lab coat, and wear closed shoes.

After you've handed in stuff at the beginning, everybody in your group (A bunch of 8-12 ppl) will have a pre-lab discussion before starting things. Try to participate in these, as you actually get marks off if you don't, as well as being incompetent with the procedure or equipment. (There's a rubric for participation on the LMS btw). The pracs aren't too hard to do but try not to mess things up, especially during the report pracs. You'll get a partner that you have to work with 3 hours every week, so get along. You'll also have a post-lab discussion before you leave, and once again, participate.

You'll need to write reports for some of the pracs; mine concern restriction mapping, enzyme kinetics, and protein purification. They count for a large percent of your grade, so do well in them! (One could count as 7% or even 12%) There'll be a LMS rubric to guide you as well as the lab manual, so it shouldn't be too hard to do well in them if you put in the time. And as always, they are submitted via Turnitin 5 pm one week after the prac. The grades should be released exactly one week after.

I initially feared the thought of 3 hour pracs every week, but it wasn't bad as I expected. Though DNA and gel electrophoresis were argurably the bane of the subject, the protein pracs were rather interesting and insightful. The demonstrators I got were also quite kind (Kim and Stella, in case any of you get lucky :D) and helpful especially during small talk for prac report stuff. Preparing myself for each session wasn't a hassle either.

Tutorials

1 hour tutes every week in the Medical building. Mostly add-on stuff to the lecture content such as practice questions, as well as stuff like analyzing scientific papers, although you don't really need the latter at this level. Amber herself said that you wouldn't need to know it now, but for people thinking of doing Advanced Techniques (Level 3). I only went to 2 of them and made it through. On one week there will be no tute but the midsem instead.

Other Assessments

The assignment is avaliable to you from the start but was to be completed by Week 7. It's a little tricky, but not hard after you read the information packet that came along with it.

The midsem was done sometime during Weeks 4-5, this mostly concerns the concepts of the earlier lectures as well as calculations involving stuff such as stoichiometry and the Beer-Lambert law. I went without much preparation on the numbers part and messed it up bad. 30% of the people failed it, but if you practice the early tutes' questions then you'll be fine

The prac exam isn't anything much. It's simply you having to carry out an experimental procedure that you've done before, but this time you analyze and give the results to the demonstrators for assessment. You'll be told the topic before, so you should familiarize yourself with the method once you do know. This semester's was on enzyme kinetics

The theory exam itself concerns mostly theoretical principles and a little bit of calculation such as on protein purity and fractional charge. You've got 2 hours to complete 4 separate sections (Roughly: Analyzing a paper, theoretical short answer questions, multiple choice, and diagrams + theory). There were a load of questions this semester, and I only finished seconds after the clock. Make sure you look at the "What you need to know/expected of you" parts of the lectures and study those well. Drawing diagrams might also be expected of you.

All in all a well-coordinated subject. I only have complaints about the fact that the midsem's content was one that was not really needed during the course of the subject as much as others. If you love labwork and macromolecules, this is the subject for you. I do recommend doing this concurrently with Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The content only lightly overlaps each other (lac operon, enzymes), but they complement each other quite well, and I find it much easier to comprehend stuff from one that's been covered upon in the other.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ferrsal on July 04, 2013, 10:15:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics

Workload: 2 1-hour lectures a week and 1 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  10% tutorial participation, 5% MST, 10% Assignment 1, 15% Assignment 2, 60% End of semester exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, there were 4 (2012-2009). Do them, they help!

Textbook Recommendation:  "Principles of Microeconomics" by Gans, King and Mankin is definitely necessary. It's also good to clear up on certain topics (such as the firm theory, which I found a little difficult)

"Microeconomics: Case studies and applications" by Jeff Borland.  Read this in the first week, but then never touched it again. It was actually a pretty interesting book but I don't think it was worth spending time and money on.

Lecturer(s): Gareth James

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (81)

Comments:
As someone who never touched any economics, this subject was actually very interesting and at most parts enjoyable. If you've done economics in year 12, I'm pretty sure there are parts that you will already be familiar with, but nevertheless, in my case I didn't feel disadvantaged in any way.

Gareth James was the lecturer for this subject, and I found him to be pretty good, however I never showed up to lectures after week 1 because I thought it was more productive to download the lecture at home and listen to it with 2x the speed, because he tends to speak pretty slowly. Nearing the exams and at the review lecture, he went over certain concepts (price discrimination, tariffs and import quotas) which were actually on the exam, so I would definitely attend/listen to the review lecture because he gives a good indication of what is to be expected.

Tutorials were a good way to brush up on concepts and do practice questions. It varies from tutor to tutor, but mine was very strict with the whole "10% participation and attendance thing", so make sure you actively participate in discussions and answer questions in order to easily gain that 10%. Your tutors also mark your assignments.

The assignments were probably the downfall of this subject. Assignment 1 was all about reading real-life articles related to economics and answering questions by applying what you have learnt. I found the articles to be vague and unclear, so I kind of bombed that assignment (I got ~60%). For assignment 1 I recommend discussing the questions with friends (just not copying obviously lol, thats what my tutor said...) The second assignment was more easier I found, and it is worth more. The important thing is to choose something individual, because you get marked on creativity.

The MST was worth 5% and was quite easy. There were practice tests provided which gave good preparation.

The exam was lengthy in my opinion, so don't take your time too much. However, it was quite fair, there were no surprises, everything there was covered in the lectures. Some people say this subject is an easy H1, but I don't agree 100%. There were easy parts in this subject (game theory was the most enjoyable imo) but there were also tricky parts that took me a while to wrap my head around them (firm theory). There is an online tutor that answers questions, and this was VERY helpful. I highly recommend using this as he answered questions very well, and sometimes gave slight hints for assignment questions (not too much obviously).

This is a good breadth subject, and I definitely recommend it, and if you really enjoy it, you can even go on to do macroeconomics.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on July 05, 2013, 03:37:25 am
Subject Code/Name: ANCW20019: Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic

Workload: 1x 1.5 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tute per week.

Assessment: Written essay (2500 words) worth 50% due somewhere mid semester, final exam (40%), and 10% from tutorial attendance.

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available: Not sure. We were given a list of the final exam questions though so there is no need for past exam papers.

Textbook Recommendation: The readings for the tutorials are all from "Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar" but the book itself isn't strictly needed. It can be a useful secondary source for the essay though.

Lecturer(s): Frederik Vervaet

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, semester 1.

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (82)

Comments: After the census date passed I pretty much thought I screwed up choosing this subject. Having never done a history subject before, it seemed to me that there was a hell of a lot of stuff to remember (dates/names/places etc). Everything went better than expected though. The lectures are not recorded so I went to every single one. In retrospect, there was not much point given the format of the exam. The tutorials are once a week and contribute to 10% of your final grade so you should make sure to attend. At the end of each tute you have to hand in an attendance sheet with whatever notes you wrote for that session. I just wrote random stuff he said to other people's questions/skimmed the book beforehand. These tutes involve a round the table discussion of something you found interesting from the current week's lecture or readings. I.e. if you skim the lecture notes or the readings beforehand you can easily find something to talk about without having really done either. This also means the book itself is not necessary although it is useful for the essay. The readings are from the book but the tutes are a Q&A by the student to the teacher so you don't need to know the answers to anything at all.

The written essay was new and exciting, worth 50%. On the plus side, it used to be like 3500 words. On the downside I was unused to the format. Before I forget, it's important to read the course syllabus. It lists the due dates of everything but also tells you how to write the essay and some tips on citation etc (Fred doesn't tell you to start writing your essay/explain it, it's expected that you've read the syllabus and thus already know the details of the essay). The essay involves choosing between a pair of like 10-12 people and then comparing them in a "Parallel Lives" (Plutarch) manner. You can compare their virtues (fides, virtus etc) or their upbringing, political strategies etc. Alternatively you can discuss a specific theme from the Ancient Rome book (in which case you'll have to buy the book) such as women in Rome, slavery, religion etc. Citation isn't too bad. Fred gave us like four sample essays from previous students who did well. Since I had no clue how to write a history essay I picked the ones that were similar to my topic and copied the format and also their citation style. One thing is to use at least 3 secondary sources. I only used one and lost marks for that. Also for the virtues don't only focus on similar types of virtues. I chose virtues mostly to do with military which lost me marks (no religion etc). If you need primary sources there are plenty of free translations on the web.

The exam is worth 40%. What's wonderful about the exam is that 10% is essentially guaranteed (although pretty sure I messed up lol). This 10% involves a blank map of the Mediterranean and a list of 10 cities/rivers/places that you have to locate and label. You can google the maps (ancient Rome) or just look through the lecture notes (which is what I suggest). This is a good buffer if you didn't do so well on the essay. The other 30% is an essay. Prior to the exam you will be given two lists of 10 questions. One set consists of period specific questions and the other set is broader, involving how something affected Rome in the long term. This is good for people who prefer to focus on one topic or like getting a general idea of things. Out of these 20 questions, one question from each set will be chosen for the exam. If you only focus on one set you can ignore the other 10 questions entirely. If you have a good memory you can cram without having gone to any of the lectures. I suggest you still attend some though because certain things in the lecture notes may seem vague. Reading the readings for the tutes is completely unnecessary unless you're genuinely interested in them. Far too detailed for the exam. Note that the essay cannot exceed 3 pages or it won't be read.

Frederick himself is an excellent lecturer. You can tell he is genuinely enthusiastic about his subject. He is also the sole lecturer/tutor so getting your essays back might take a while. The lack of lecture capture kinda sucked but one lecture a week isn't that hard to attend unless you had a late night out. Overall this is a pretty good breadth subject and provided you put in some effort getting a decent grade shouldn't be too hard.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: djsandals on July 05, 2013, 02:49:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10023 Music Language 1: The Diatonic World

Workload:  2 x 1 hour weekly lectures, 1 x 1 hour weekly tute.

Assessment:  10 weekly assignments totalling 70% (they begin at 5% a week and go up 1% every fortnight, ie first two are worth 5, next two are worth 6 etc.), one hour listening test at end of semester (10%) and a one hour exam at the end of semester (20%).

Lectopia Enabled:  I think so, but I never used it.

Past exams available:  No, but the exam is similar to assignments you are given.

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended text: Harmony and Voice Leading.  You can get by without buying this but it helps if you do, it pretty much covers everything you'll need to learn so can be helpful if you want to do some extra reading etc.

Lecturer(s): Elliot Gyger.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1.

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (74)

Comments: Basically covers the theory behind western music from the medieval to classical periods.  Includes study of counterpoint/4-part harmony/voice leading (if you've done any AMEB theory this should mostly be a breeze). 

Assignment tasks include an analysis of a piece (easier but less interesting) every other week, and a composition task every 2nd week (harder but more fun).  The first few will have you tearing your hair out but, the deeper you go into the subject the easier it gets.

The end of semester listening test involves you sitting in the lecture theatre and being played 10 works.  The first 9 are from a list of 30+ works given to you at the beginning of semester/available on the LMS.  You need to identify the period, composer, work and movement.  Given that some of these go for over 10 minutes and aren't necessarily played from the beginning it definitely pays to get started on this early.  The final work will be something you are not expected to know, and you have to guess the period and make some musical observations about the piece.

The end of semester exam is fairly straightforward: an analysis of a piece and you have to harmonise a chorale (about 6 bars) in 4-part harmony. 

My advice to those doing this subject is DO NOT overlook the listening test.  No one studies for it and ends up doing really badly because the lecturers and tutors don't make a big deal about it, but that 10% can be really important.   Do a bit of listening every week to stay on top of it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: djsandals on July 05, 2013, 03:14:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10025 Writing About Music: Australian Issues

Workload:  1 x 90 minute weekly seminar.

Assessment:  Five assignments totalling 90% (2 x 10%, 1 x 25%, 1 x 5%, 1 x 40%), attendance and participation 10% (I know, right?)

Lectopia Enabled:  Don't think so.

Past exams available:  No exam for this subject woooooo

Textbook Recommendation:  Reader available at bookshop at beginning of semester.

Lecturer(s): Sue Robinson and Shelly Hogan.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1.

Rating:  In terms of usefulness, 3/5.  In terms of enjoyment, 1/5.

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (78)

Comments: Considered by almost every music student to be the worst subject in existence, WAM certainly leaves a lot to be desired in terms of...how do I put this...not falling into a coma when in class.

But in all seriousness, the first few weeks teach you important things like how to footnote and do a biblography correctly, as well as how to use sources in the library.  I'd try to focus as much of your attention as possible on these first few weeks (a struggle, I understand) and then you can do what you want in the latter weeks.

The first assignment is writing a 100 word summary of a particular topic.  The writing of the summary is piss-easy, finding the sources can be painful.  Just make sure you pick a topic with a lot of reliable sources and use the ones they expect you to find.

The second assignment involves footnoting.  As I recall it was explained really badly and everyone did badly, so badly that they had to change the marking scheme on it.  Don't be afraid to ask your teacher for help if you're unsure of what to do.

The third assignment is similar to the first one, but longer.

The fourth assignment isn't even an assignment, just a prelim to the final assignment.  You just need to find sources and put them in a bibliography.  Just make sure you pick good sources and format the bibliography correctly.

The fifth assignment is a bit of a bitch, you have to write a 1200 word persuasive essay on an ambiguous topic, but thankfully they're relatively lenient on the marking (I crammed it the day it was due, 200 words below the word count and still got 80%).

This subject isn't really funtaims but it's not a lot of time and effort either, so just grit your teeth and bear it for a semester, it'll be over before you know it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: djsandals on July 05, 2013, 04:45:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20008 Music Technology 

Workload:  1 x 1 hour weekly seminar

Assessment:  25% Minor Assessment, 50% Major Assessment, end of semester exam 25%

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available:  No.

Textbook Recommendation:  Resources given are more than adequate and list more if needed.

Lecturer(s): David Collins.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1.

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (81)

Comments: If you have had more than a passing interest in synthesizers, recording, MIDI or Logic, then this is the subject for you.

The subject covers the history and modern applications of technology in music, such as recording techniques, synthesis and sound waves.

The classes are small, hands on and interesting.  The first assignment involves writing an essay on a piece of music describing the use of music technology in it, the second one involves a range of options for you to demonstrate what you have learned throughout the semester.  They range from using the logic sampler/synthesizer to make unique sounds to putting music to a bit of film.

The handouts given at each seminar are very detailed yet easy to understand, which makes revision for the exam a whole lot easier. 

And for synth fans, there will be a pleasant surprise greeting you at the first seminar :).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: pink0829 on July 06, 2013, 01:19:06 am
Subject Code/Name: CEDB20003: Fundamentals of Cell Biology https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2013/CEDB20003

Workload:  2 x 1hr lectures per week, 8 x 3hr cal modules according the handbook but we had 7 becuase of public holiday

Assessment:  3 tests during the semester which were quite short. The last two were completely multiple choice. Each were worth 10% and the final 2hr exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture. But the Harold Woodruff Theatre recording is horrible. We had about 2 or 3 lectures that didn't have any screen capture. Just turn up to the lectures, there are only two per week!

Past exams available:  Yes, about 2 (2009 and 2010 I think but I didn't do them). The exam structure is explained in the last lecture.

Textbook Recommendation:  B Alberts, A Johnson, J Lewis, M Raff, K Roberts & P Walter, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5th edition, Garland Science.- I like the book but you don't need it, the lectures are enough. Most of the images in the lectures are important in understanding concepts so if you don't print out the lectures slides you can always borrow the textbook and take a look at them.

Lecturer(s): Dr Ross Waller - Intro lecture, protein sorting and cytoskeleton structure
                              Dr Jenny Gunnersen - microscopes, cell membranes, cell movement and stuff on neurons
                              A/Prof. Gary Hime - Gene Expression (mainly regulation) and cell cycle regulation
                              A/Prof Robb de Iongh - Signalling pathways (the best part and also a very good lecturer)
                             
Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Sem 1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 82 (H1)

Comments: The subject is basically all about cells. The structure of cells (the easiest bit), gene expression and how it is regulated, protein transport pathways in the cell, cytoskeleton structure and function, how cells move, mitosis and cell cycle, and cell signalling pathways in cell proliferation and death are topics covered.
This subject was great! The lecturers were pretty good and the subject content was fantastic. This is one of the subjects I think that was easy to get a 100 in. I got 95% for the tests and was expecting to get 100% on the exam but I came in 10 mins into writing time and unfortunately had to go to the toilet twice during the 2 hr. I missed at least 33 marks worth of questions but I was pretty confident that everything I answered was correct so I wasn't really worried and therefore took my time a bit. But I'll tell why later.

So, subject content- To be honest, the content isn't that easy. But I enjoyed it. Which is why I think I did well in them. We started off with basic stuff covered in VCE and first year biology with a few new stuff here and there. But towards the end people found the content like cell signalling difficult to grasp. With those particular topics, you have to be able to look at the big picture before getting to the detail. There is quite a bit of detail covered in this subject which you are expected to know, but if you find it interesting it isn't going to be that hard. My advice is to start early with revision, but don't worry about that because you will be forced to revise and keep up to date thanks to the tests. Believe me, if it weren't for them my SWOT VAC would've been a nightmare. And don't be fooled in to thinking there is less content than other life sciences because of having two lectures per week. There are 8 three hour cals full of stuff that is assessed but more on that later.

Lectures- The lecturers are good and explain everything clearly. I found Jenny and sometimes Ross a bit boring. But they are not unbearable or anything. They all are always willing to answer any questions and are very nice and approachable. When revising lectures I would suggest grouping them in to topics and studying, so that you can see the big picture. I think this is why people actually did not get cell signalling pathways because it was broken up into 5 lectures and so even though Robb gives a little summary at the end of each pathway I knew a couple of people who struggled with seeing how they were connected and all that. I made charts to visualise the pathways, although there were great diagrams used in the lecture from the textbook. It actually helped with revising and made life a lot easier than a bunch of notes. Everything on the lecture is assessable, even the examples they use. Just check with the lecturer if you aren't sure whether you have to know something.

CALs- My favourite part of the week. Each CAL is 3 hrs long. No attendance is taken. You just turn up, log in and do the CAL in the lms. The CALs were very well put together. There was a lot of information to get through in the 3 hours. You have to read pages of information, sometimes watch a couple of videos and answer questions in the CAL and also in the worksheet made available before the CAL. Since the CAL is full of information the worksheets are basically questions provided by the lecturer to give you an idea of what you have to know from the CAL. Answer the questions and take notes from the CAL if you have to. You can always ask questions from the lecturers who attend the CALs. Since attendance isn't recorded many people stopped coming to the CALs. And you can also leave any time you wanted to so some people would turn up but stay for about an hour or two and leave. I don't think people realised this was the best place to ask questions from the lecturers. Its like a consultation time without having to book an appointment or emailing. And the lecturers being so nice would just sit and explain anything you needed to clarify. Its important you understand stuff in the CAL rather than memorise; and I stress this for the last 4 CALs. The reason this subject scored a 4 instead of 5 is because I think the CALs would've been much more interesting if the lecturers interacted more with the students instead of just walking around the class. Since Ross' CALs were sort of prac based (doing a couple of activities online), he did guide us and explain to us what we were doing in certain parts of the CAL. It was really helpful for the CATs (the test in the semester) so I would suggest you go to the CALs.

CATs/ tests- worth 30%, these are mainly based on the CALs. Only a couple of multiple choice questions of CAT 2 and 3 were from the lectures. CAT 1 had short answer as well as MCQ and did cover a fair bit of the lectures, so my suggestion is study both the lectures and CALs. They are very short tests and are done in the CAL time slot for that week. The lectures and CALs that will be assessed is given by the lecturer so make sure you study those particular ones. Like I said, CALs are mainly tested here, so going to the CALs would be a good idea. I managed to get 100% for 2 of my CATs and I attribute it to lecturers clarifying stuff in the CAL (esp. Ross). And also be prepared to know a bit of detail from the CAL. I'm really not sure how many CALs there will be next year (we had only 7 but I think there are 8 ) so I can't really give you an indication of what details you might have to know because the amount of detail you have to know varied for each CAL. Its best to ask the lecturer in the CAL. Since the CALs are spread out during the semester, it helps you keep up to date. I know they are not worth much but put some effort into the CATs because they are quite easy if you have studied, not many trick questions and helpful when revising for the exam because you've covered about 50-60% of the content already.

Speaking of the Exam- I had the worst exam experience so far in my undergraduate degree and I still managed to get a H1 without having to do any special exam. The reason for this was because of the exam structure. I have copied and pasted the following from the lms:
'This 2 hour exam will cover all material presented during semester in CALs and Lectures.  It consists of 3 parts (A, B, C).
Part A (30 min) comprises 20 multiple choice questions (1.5 mark each). All questions should be answered.
Part B (40 min) has 4 questions worth 10 marks each and will directly test material presented in lectures and CALs.  All 4 questions should be answered.
Part C (50 min) provides a choice of 2 questions from 3 options. Each question is worth 25 marks.  These questions will focus on how well you have understood key concepts and whether you can integrate information from different aspects of the subject.  The questions often have a problem-solving aspect to them, whereby you need to outline how a dynamic process or mechanism operates or how to investigate cellular functions and processes.'
So Part A had 5 questions from each lecturer and wasn't too hard or time consuming. In Part B each lecturer contributed one question and some questions were broken up into parts. I didn't have time to finish my answer for one of these questions. And I couldn't do a question in Part C. Which is where I screwed up. I want to kick myself for not starting with part C, because I might have had a chance in finishing the exam. Anyway the first two sections are straight-forward but with extended response, I would suggest breaking the question up into parts and answering them in that order For example one question would be: What requires...? Describe the process... Suggest 3.... and list its features. I would the answer the question by first underlining 'what', 'describe' 'suggest" and 'list' and in the answer space -->
what- (answer here)
describe- (answer here) etc.
Some questions were in parts, but there are other questions where you are expected prose- like answers even though our exam didn't have any. So make sure you give enough detail for 25 marks. Remember to answer the question and don't waste your time writing too much. Robb goes through how to answer the part C and some tips in the last lecture, so pay attention to that.
In summary: good lecturers, the subject content is not too hard and I enjoyed it a lot (but it depends on the person), make sure you are up to date, make the most of CALs, CATs are pretty easy to score on so studying for the exam is no big deal  8)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: scribble on July 06, 2013, 03:00:34 am
Subject Code/Name: Biology of Cells and Organisms 

Workload: 
3x1 hour lectures per week. 5 ILTs, 6 pracs (one introductory/not assessed)

Assessment:
midsemester test (10%) the test is made up of 25 multiple choice questions and only covered 14 lectures for us so was easy to score well in. You don't find out what you got wrong though which is fairly annoying.
prac work (25%). Each prac is marked out of 10, with 1 mark from the preprac test (multiple choice. you get the mark if you score over 50%), 5 marks being from in prac work, and 4 marks being from a post prac test (4 mc questions, 1 mark for every question answered correctly. there is a time limit). Pre and post prac tests tend to be easy marks. It’s fairly easy to leak some marks in pracs, but as long as you are clear with what you’re saying, (especially with graph labels) you should be fine.
ILTS (5%) The test is multiple choice, you get the mark if you pass. There's a little online activity/tute thing for each ILT that has all the relevant information for the test.
Written assignment (10%)  Very easy way to leak marks if you’re not careful, but if you are, it’s an easy way to get marks also. I lost two half marks out of 20, one for referencing (I said the book was published in Sydney instead or North Ryde), and one for a graph label. They expect you to me more clear with this than on actual pracs. I know a lot of people who lost a ton of marks for lack of clarity though. There's a 500 word limit but they don't mind an awful lot if you go over by a little, as long as everything you say is concise and relevant/you don’t go waffling on about things.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  There was a set of sample questions, but no past exams.

Textbook Recommendation:  “R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009” I used the textbook at the start of the semester (when I was a hardworking, conscientious jaffy), but you really don’t need it to do well in the subject. Many of the topics covered in the subject aren’t even in the textbook, but it’s good to read if you’re interested in learning things in more depth than lectures. You WILL need the book for the assignment, but you can find it in the biomed library.
There’s also a lab book from the co-op that you will need to buy. You’ll also need to buy microscope slides and a labcoat and shoes that cover the front and back of your foot if you haven’t any (that means no ballet flats for girls)

Lecturer(s): Rick Wetherbee, Andrew Drinnan, Geoff Shaw, Stephen Frankenberg, Mark Elgar.
To be honest I found the lecturers pretty dry to listen to. Rick spends all day talking about endosymbiosis and winning nobel prizes, but puts in a fair effort to make sure you know exactly what you need to for the exam. His slides are good, and have most of the content on them, you don’t need to take down too many notes, and can probably learn straight off them if you wished. A lot of his content is revision from VCE. He also has a funny accent. I can still hear him saying “teeming with life!!”
Andrew Drinnan talks about a lot about marijuana and alcohol to try and build rapport/fit in with the cool kids. He covers a LOT of content in his lectures. He also provides lecture summaries for every lecture (found on the LMS) which is nice because he covers a LOT of content in his lectures. I found I needed to take down a lot of notes for his lectures as he says a lot of stuff that aren’t on the slides which are mostly just pictures.
Geoff Shaw seems to be the most popular lecturer by far, but I was not a fan/didn’t really get his humour. I didn’t actually go to any of his lectures though, so maybe it just didn’t come through the lecture capture. He spends a lot of time trying to be funny/handing out chocolate frogs and not enough explaining biology. His lectures have quite a few of the more confusing topics, and I don’t think he did a great job explaining them. I felt like I needed to do external reading/wiking/animation watching etc to understand them. His lecture slides I didn’t find very good either and he doesn’t really explain a lot of what’s on them. He does provide revision worksheets for every lecture which was nice.
Steven Frankenburg sounded a little shy. His lecture slides are in depth and he spends most of the time in lectures just reading off them. You can prolly get away with just the slides, but I watched all his lectures at 1.8x speed, and then reread over the slides. He, like Geoff Shaw also provides revision worksheets.
Mark Elgar seemed to be quite unpopular. I see why, but I didn’t mind him personally. He gets very irate at people for talking and will stop the lecture to glare at people/make remarks about their rudeness, which is kind of awkward and a waste of time. He also talks painfully slowly; I think going to the actual lectures would have driven me insane. But the examples he talks about I found quite interesting, and I watched his lectures at 2.5x speed so the slowness wasn’t an issue. It also meant I could cover each of his lectures in less than half an hour. 8D

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, sem1

Rating:  3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: This was probably the least enjoyable subjects for me this year. The lectures I found really dry and studying (for me at least) involved memorising giant chunks of information during swotac/the week before the midsemester test AND THEN FORGETTING ALL OF IT THE NEXT DAY. 8’D Which felt like a complete waste of time to me.
Two of the pracs involve dissections (a heart and a mouse) which I didn’t do for ethical reasons. Dawn Gleeson, the subject coordinator is a sweetheart and was incredibly understanding, and had alternatives set up for me. Though the assessment for the alternatives seemed a bit unfair. For the heart one, I was given a video to watch of a heart dissection and a set of questions, some of which were on things that had not been covered at all (a baby can be born with a hole in its heart, what does this mean, where is the hole usually located and what effects does this have on the baby? wut. ಠ_ಠ). For the rat dissection, I was given pictures of a dissected rat (the same ones as in the lab book) and asked to do the same questions as the rest of the class, including drawing the digestive system. The pictures provided were all pretty bad and you couldn’t really see half of the organs, they were all kind of a big red blob on the screen. I pretty much drew out exactly what I saw, and received a terrible mark for it because the positioning/layout of the organs was bad, despite that being due to the bad pictures they provided. But I mean, fair enough. Imean I didn’t get a better mark because I wasn’t able to answer the questions well because I chose not to do the prac so okay. Oh, and also in pracs, you’re given seat numbers where you must sit, so even if you coordinate classes with friends, chances are you be sitting anywhere near each other.
The exam was pretty doable. Most of it is fill in the blank type questions, and they provide you with a giant list of words so you don’t really need to be familiar with the terminology. Usually seeing it written down is enough to trigger your memory. Our exam had an oddly large amount of content on reproduction though. Which seemed to have caught quite a lot of people off guard. XD I didn’t even learn the reproductive system cause the slides were all filled with pictures of cut up frogs and mice and made me sad. (clearly in the right course/doing the right subjects;;; ). It also had no question on endosymbiosis (!!!!!!) which I’m sure made many people lose bets.
Apart from that, I found the subject pretty easy to do decently in. I found myself behind in 16 lectures at one stage, which is pretty much half the course (I went to one or two of Andrew Drinnan’s lectures, and none of Geoff Shaw or Steven Frankenburg’s. I also missed the first of Mark’s). Had huge shock when I saw Steven for the first time in the revision lecture, I was expecting him to have no hair like on his slide cover pages!! XD) but catching up wasn’t too bad. It did involve a ton of cramming and watching lectures sped up during swotvac though. So even if you find yourself REALLY behind in the subject, don’t even think about giving up. NOT THAT I’M ENCOURAGING CRAMMING GUYS.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: scribble on July 06, 2013, 03:01:54 am
Subject Code/Name: Mast10008: Accelerated Mathematics 1

Workload:  4x 1hr lectures per week. 1 back to back tute and matlab session a week (1hr each)

Assessment:  3 online assignments (6%), 3 written assignment (9%), matlab test(5%), exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, a whole bunch of them. As well as a ton of “typical exam questions”

Textbook Recommendation:  “Elementary Linear Algebra, Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 10th edn, Wiley, 2010” I used it at first since learning from textbooks is what I’d always done in high school, it didn’t take me long to realise how inefficient it was. Definitely don’t think buying this is necessary. If you feel like you need to look something up, there’s a ton of copies in erc (most are older editions, but it doesn’t matter). There’s more questions in it as well, but chances are you won’t find yourself short on questions, Paul gives out a yellow book full of questions at the start of the semester. (This question booklet is also on the LMS in case you lose it. Don’t eagerly print it before the first lecture unless you want to waste a ton of paper and ink).

Lecturer(s): Paul Norbury.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, sem1.

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (79)

Comments: This was my favourite subject this semester, hands down. I never really liked math in high school because I just rote learned everything and never really understood what was going on, and only JUST had the spesh score to get into the subject. But this subject made me really enjoy math which took my by complete surprise. It’s not an easy subject. You will find that you’ll need to put time into it if you want to understand it. But for me at least, doing this subject was really rewarding as I felt like I was actually learning and understanding math for the first time.
The subject is mostly linear algebra, though you also touch on a couple of topics from calc2 and also get a little taste of mathematical proofs. Paul Norbury is a fantastic lecturer. He’s insanely smart and often just talks about things hardly anyone understands. You can get by (and obtain great scores) without understanding half of what he says, but if you re-watch lectures and make an effort to understand everything he talks about, you can actually learn so much and gain such an appreciation of what’s going on.
I also found lectures incredibly entertaining. Paul regularly does some pretty amazing shit in his lectures like working out the square root of ridiculous numbers in his head up to two decimal places in seconds. But more usefully, he likes to try and make you think about things you thought you knew in different ways, which as far as I’m concerned, is pretty cool. Thought you know how to count? Don’t be so sure. And if squaring a number means you multiply it by itself, and cubing it means you multiply it by itself three times, then what happens if you take a number to the power of root two? And even more oddly, what happens if you make the power a complex number? ._____. He also says some fairly abstract stuff that I found quite interesting. Like how you could find the angle between the weights of rocks in trucks if you wanted to and believed it existed.
It also feels like he spends half the lectures trolling us. He’ll say stuff like “the most important thing I want you to take away from this lecture is that 1+1=0” or draw smiley faces or stick figures everywhere to explain concepts so we walk away with a page of mindfucky math notes that look like they came out of a primary school students scrapbook. XD
Amusing lectures aside, the subject itself is pretty good. Although the math that Paul covers in lectures is pretty tough, the actual assessment is not too bad. The online assignments you get three shots at each, and they count your highest mark, so it’s not difficult to get full marks there. The written ones tend to be more challenging and harder to score so well in, and depending on your tutor, you can lose a lot of marks for poor setting out. But they do it so that you learn how to set out things in a way that makes sense, and usually if they take marks off, it is because you’ve said something wrong/unclearly, even if it’s really minor. (though I had a friend who lost a mark because his ∈ looked like an f, which seemed a bit harsh to me)
The matlab sessions are designed to give you a glimpse into the applications of linear algebra. They were pretty confusing though and I think the bulk of people in my session struggled following what was going on. Also because I had a Monday session, more often than not, what we did in matlabs hadn’t been covered in lectures yet, so that wasn’t helpful. But the actual test again, is doable. Paul puts a practise test on the LMS and the actual test is essentially the same thing with different values (This is to prevent people who find out the questions and take the test later in the week from being at a huge advantaged), though there are a couple of add-ons and the “programming” question will be different.
Of course, the bulk of the marks lie in the exam which is worth 80% which is pretty daunting, and quite annoying if you balls up the exam (as I did, woo for housemates fighting at 5am). But don’t be too worried, the exam is made very accessible, with the exception of a couple of marks to separate out the high end of the cohort. The majority of the questions are easier than those that you do in tutes as well. You’re also provided with a ton of exams and exam type questions to do, and if you’ve been going okay with your assignments and what not, you should happily find that you can do most of the questions. (Unless it’s the 2011 paper you’re doing, that paper had a whole ton of ridiculous questions that stumped everyone I spoke to). They also tend to have a fair few “free mark” type questions to prevent people from failing.
So if you’re thinking of taking the subject, but are a little put off because it  sounds hard/you don’t think you’re fantastic at math/you’re scared it’s impossible to do well (as I was), don’t be and just take the damn subject. It’s so much fun, and if you want to, you can take away a lot from it. I’m seriously so, so glad I picked this instead calc2 + linear algebra. And don’t worry if you’re lost in lectures, they’re recorded for a reason.
Also, first lecture ever, I stuck up my hand and asked what the fail rate was and Paul said it was lower than all of the other first year math subjects, so no need to worry, everything will be fine! :P
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: scribble on July 06, 2013, 03:04:01 am
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003 Chemistry 1 

Workload:  3x1hr lectures per week, 6 pracs, 3 ILTs

Assessment:  Midsemester test (5%), Prac work (20%), exam (75%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, a ton.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don’t buy the textbooks. If you don’t like your money, feel free to donate it to me instead. :) I tried looking at Zumdahl a couple of times for topics I found difficult, but it left me even more confused. =.=;;  They do have extra questions though if you’re eager to do more work. You *may* like to get a molecular modelling kit for organic chem if you struggle to visualise some of the molecules, but for $60, I don’t think it’s worth it. Just grab a bunch of pens and awkwardly try to hold them into a shape that vaguely represents what you want. :’D For pracs you will need to get the prac book (some demonstrators will also insist that you write reports in a duplicate notebook, most won’t). You’ll also need a labcoat, safety glasses and shoes that cover your entire foot if you haven’t any (preferably without heels, unless you’re me and don’t mind having the OH&S guys get mad at you every time). I bought the tute book as well which isn’t completely necessary, but it does have questions that you may like to do.

Lecturer(s): Mark Rizzacassa, Uta Willie, Gus Grey Weale, Brendan Abrahams

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: This was a fairly enjoyable subject. The pracs were pretty easy to score very highly in, and are pretty much completely unrelated to what you do in lectures. There tends to be quite a lot to cover in the three hour blocks, and I was almost always pressed for time, but if you want, you can write up half of it at home (my demonstrator actually recommended this) which will pretty much eradicate any time problems. You also get to do some pretty cool shit in pracs, including making super shiny crystals (which my demonstrator wouldn’t let me keep :C ), and playing with liquid nitrogen (!!). There was also a preprac test to do online before every prac, which you needed to score above a certain mark on to be allowed to even go to the prac. Which was annoying because chemcal sucks. I had to do one of these tests like three times before I passed. =_____=;;

As for lectures, organic chem was taught really brilliantly; Mark Rizzacassa is an amazing lecturer and explains everything ridiculously well. He was also engaging, and has a good balance of humour and chemistry in his lectures. I don’t feel like there was too much chemistry to learn in the organic chem part of this subject though, it was mostly just nomenclature. It is important for you to be able to visualise molecules though. If you can’t, build some models with a modelling kit. (I think there may be some in the chemistry building you can play with). Infrared spectroscopy and NMR he went over pretty quickly, but we do it in much more detail in VCE anyways so it shouldn’t be a problem. He also writes a fair bit in his lectures, so you do need to go to or watch his lectures.

Prof Abrahams lectured for a bunch of lectures at the end of the semester. He wasn’t nearly as engaging as rizzacassa, but was just as wonderful if not better at explaining things. He covered a whole heap of stuff, including acids and bases (which was almost the same as VCE) and structures of solids, which I personally found really difficult to visualise, even after looking at models. The questions they ask for that topic are pretty straight forward though, and if you know the idea of what’s going on, not being able to see the exact lattices in your head won’t kill you. He also perfectly explained periodic trends, how to draw lewis structures, a tiny bit on molecular orbital theory, and there were a couple of lectures on some other bit and pieces also. His slides are brilliant also, and you can just learn everything off them, but I watched all his lectures at 1.8x speed anyways because I think it’d be silly to miss his great teaching.
Uta and Gus on the other hand I felt handled their topics quite poorly. Even now I still have no clue whatsoever what was going on in thermodynamics/entropy. Uta spent all her lectures trying to be funny and doing no chemistry/doing very lazy chemistry/not explaining things properly/not even going over half of what was on her slides. “Oh you can just read this at home, now sit while I make some more jokes”. =.= Thankfully, a bulk of what she taught came straight out of VCE (pretty much everything except thermodynamics). Gus had the unfortunate task of trying to teach a bunch of first years entropy, a topic that I imagine you need much more than six lectures on to get a semi-decent grasp of. He tried to make it easier to understand by simplifying it, but I did not see how I was meant to learn chemistry from listening to him flipping coins and watching videos backwards… His notes too I found were pretty unhelpful. In the end, I ended up just memorising a couple of formulas for entropy (and for some of enthalpy also actually) that I didn’t know the origins of (Gus was pretty much like “I’m not gonna explain where this comes from, just trust me that it works”) which was slightly annoying and most definitely not a good way to “learn”, but at this level, I don’t think much more can be done. From asking around/begging people to explain to me what was going on, and having no one know, I’m pretty sure this is what everyone else did also.

The midsemester test was something like 12 multiple choice questions on organic chem. It was a little annoying to do because it was online (and timed), and with organic chem especially, it’s nice to be able to draw on the paper/put marks on the molecule so that I don’t lose count of things. If I had been prepared, I would probably have printed the test, done it on the printout, and then filled the answers in online. Regardless, it’s again is pretty easy to do quite well on, and of course, since you’re doing it online, you have access to all your notes/google/whatever.
Tutes I barely went to because I was way too behind during the semester to know what was happening in them, but of the ones I did attend, I didn’t find them that useful/thought they were a pretty big waste of time. Depending on your tutor, you either sit in tables and work on questions, and then the tutor tells you the answers for them all, or the tutor stands up the top and just does all the questions on a take and you copy the solutions. I do think the tute questions were worth doing though, and I did them all in the last few weeks/swotvac, which was a good thing for me because it meant I could check my answers with ones that they post on the LMS at the end of the semester. If you’re keeping up to date, and want to do the tute questions, you probably will have to go to the tutes, because otherwise you won’t have any way to know if you’ve answered them correctly or not, unless you can get answers of a friend who does go or something like that.

I think I might be odd in thinking this but, Chemcal was something that I actually found quite helpful as well. It has the most annoying soft keyboard in the world which will actually drive you insane, and rounds everything off too soon so marks your correct answers wrong half the time, but if you have the will to deal with it, I found it had some good questions. It also rewards you with really bad puns/terrible encouragement pictures if you get everything in a little section correct.  Also before every activity, it has little explanation which was good for summarising what was in lectures. Unfortunately. it doesn’t have very much on thermodynamics/entropy (the two topics that people seem to struggle with most OTL).

For those interested in cramming. I don’t recommend it, but definitely think that it’s possible to cram for this subject. Just make sure you do prepracs and submit the ILTs. I was a pretty slack student/had a lot going on with life this semester and stopped going to lectures/learning the content pretty much as soon as Uta started teaching (I went to one of her lectures) and did not start again until a little after Prof. Abrahams started teaching which I think was something like week 9. During swotvac, they appoint tutors to hang around the chem building, and you can ask them questions. I pretty much had one *try* explain to me all of entropy at once, though I didn’t really get what he was saying;;;; Prof. Abrahams also came along to a couple which was really nice, and he always had a ton of students asking him questions. Gus came to quite a few of them too because everyone hates entropy. Don’t leave it too late into swotvac though, cause a ton of students will be there with questions near the end of the week.

As for the exam, if you’ve done a couple of practise exams, you’ll realise that they’re all almost exactly the same. It’s not VCE anymore, they’re not there to trick you, or to painfully separate people. They just want to test to see if you know what they want you to know. So have a look at a couple of papers, see what you need to know, and make sure you know it all. Oh BUT, you don’t get a fucking periodic table. o_____o I cannot possibly imagine their reasoning behind not providing one. I figure knowing where things are should eventually come naturally, but forcing us all to memorise where elements are, and having students who understand concepts fine not be able to answer questions because they can’t remember the order of two elements in a question about size or something is just annoying. Also there’s no conversion chart, and you will need to know the conversion between things like nano and pico and milli and whatever. So learn that also. I was lucky enough to guess the right factor on the exam. XD;;
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: scribble on July 06, 2013, 03:08:40 am
Subject Code/Name: FINA10036 The Body: Facts and Fictions

Workload:  1x3hr block every week

Assessment:  1000 word essay (25%) folio (75%)

Lectopia Enabled:  no

Past exams available:  no exam

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Bill, Peter, Sharron

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments: If you’re looking for an easy breadth, look no further, this is the one.
I’ve always liked drawing people, and have been wanting to do life drawing for ages, but never had the chance to. So when I read about this subject in the handbook I knew I wanted to take it. You go to a three hour block every week which can be a variety of different things. We had two three hour lectures, both of which I understood nothing in. One was on “drawing in the expanded field” whatever that means, the other on “postmodernism” (no clue either). I’m quite sure less than 20% of the group came to the second lecture. So yeah, you can definitely miss these if you want.

Drawing wise, this subject seems to be geared towards creating “contemporary” art. I don’t know if it was just Bill who ran my group (the group is split into three smaller ones for workshops), but we were encouraged to do all kinds of wacky things when drawing such as drawing something that someone else touches (with their eyes closed) and describes to you, or drawing with a giant stick taped to our arm to you can’t bend your arm/would have less control over what you’re doing or picking a random item and drawing the model by tracing the item or drawing over other peoples work and questioning who owns the final piece etc. Pretty much crazy “profound” arty stuff with deeper inner meaning that I really did not get, but even so a lot of fun. XD We were also encouraged to try drawing on LSD/other hallucinogens on multiple occasions;;;; I did not and still managed to get a H1 though!!  :) ;) :D ;D :o ??? ::) :-* :'(

Workshops with a model generally had a little less direction, we’d all just stand with our easels and drew however we felt like and Bill would walk around and make comments, give feedback, tell you what you could fix, etc. He seemed a little opposed to more “traditional/classical” drawing techniques though, which was a bit annoying for people like me.
There were also a couple collage workshops, where we’d swap tutors and then two “group tutes” where we were required to bring ALL our work and stick it up on the walls and we’d all walk around in a group and comment on peoples work and then go to the other groups and look at what they did. If you chose to draw every pose as I did, be prepared to die carrying all this paper to Southbank. Even more so if you have a bunch of classes beforehand and bonus points if one of those classes is a prac. My rolled up pile of drawings was so big I ended up putting it in a coat hanger because I could not find an elastic band big enough to hold it in!

As far as workload goes, it can be as little or as much as you want it to be. Bill regularly says that everyone generally tends to do quite well, and if you look like you’re engaging with the subject, you’re likely to get above 80. Outside of what we draw in class, we’re required to produce a “visual journal” to turn in along with what we do in workshops, and it can be filled with pretty much anything: drawings, text, photos, seriously anything you wanted. As it’s been a busy year for me, I haven’t had the time to draw much outside of class, so I just brought in a couple of old sketchbooks;; I was actually highly tempted to turn in my doodle filled math book (hey, vectors and quadric surfaces can look artistic, right?), but thought that might have been pushing it. I know a lot of people in my group with no previous work to show made the entire thing in a couple of days. So pretty much, if you like to draw, you might put countless hours into a folio, but because you wanted to and not really for the subject, and if you don’t really like drawing, you can whip something up in a couple of hours and turn it in for assessment. And chances are, either way you’ll do well since either they can tell that you’ve put in effort or you’ve handed in a bunch of smears that are expressive and emotional and fit exactly what the markers like.
There’s also an essay. Writing it was painful. Thankfully they changed it from 1500 words to 1000, prolly so they wouldn’t need to mark so much;;; But still. Painful. There’s a reading list as well that you can read if you want. But all the books on it are pretty ridiculous. The one I borrowed had a part about how when drawing, the extending of the arm and hand away from the body corresponds to the gesture that a baby makes during its exploration process when it’s first separated from its mother… (really?REALLY?)  Needless to say, what I turned in was a load of crap. :) Oh and you get the topics at the start of the semester. Do yourself a favour and don’t leave it until between exams to start it as I did. Especially when you still haven’t learned part of the content for your actual non-breadth subjects. OTL

So pretty much, if you like to draw, definitely consider taking this, chances are you’ll enjoy it. And if you don’t but want something bludgy, go ahead and take it as well, pretty much everyone else in the subject is in the same boat. It’s art, no one cares in the slightest about your skill level. No matter what you produce, someone will come up with some kind of meaning to give to it, regardless of whether or not you intended for it to be there. So just run with it. It’s absolutely a subject that you can bullshit your entire way through, so much more so than I expected.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on July 06, 2013, 06:14:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: MULT10011  Introduction to Life, Earth and Universe

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three-hour pracs for nine weeks (sometimes the pracs finished early and you might finish after, say, 2 hours)

Assessment: Ongoing assessment of pracs (totalling 25%), two 20-minute tests during the semester (5% each), a poster (5%) and a 3-hour written examination (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, lots.

Textbook Recommendation:  No required texts,  'Life in the Universe' by Bennett & Shostak is recommended but as a Biomedicine student, you don't need it. Probably worth getting (there is a torrent for it) for an Arts student

Lecturer(s): Rachel Webster (Physics/Astronomy), Stephen Gallagher (Geology) and Geoff McFadden (Biology)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 90 H1

Comments: So, I figured I would give a bit of a contrasting opinion as a 2nd year Biomedicine student, hence this review. So firstly, for any science student doing this subject, it should be a breeze. But for Arts students with minimal science background (just to year 10), I can understand how difficult this subject could be and maybe its worth having a look at the past exams and assessing the difficulty from there. That said, I'm going to cater this review for mostly Science students.

 Like the other review said. The subject is split into 3 parts or 4 depending on how you look at it. I want to talk about this in detail, so here goes. You start off with 6 lectures of astronomy; how the universe began, synthesis of elements, the synthesis of stars, synthesis of a galaxy, synthesis of solar system and synthesis of planets. The lectures give a VERY BASIC idea of how they formed and do not be fooled into thinking they go into a great deal of detail. If you have come purely for these topics (as i did), I do not recommend the subject, you can easily download the textbook and probably find all the info to satisfy your burning curiosity in there.

Next Geology, probably my most hated area. 9 lectures in total, which are essentially a chronological story of earth and the important details that happened in each period (eg: oceans forming, atmosphere forming, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, dinosaurs etc etc). There are also a lecture or so on climate change. The reason why it is my most hated is because the lecturer, while brilliantly entertaining, has shocking lecture notes and I never feel as if I know what it is I'm supposed to know. That said he does release a summary of his lectures at the end of the semester which is way over the top in the level of detail that you need to know.

Next we get to Biology(about 9 lectures again), brilliantly taught by Geoff McFadden, who is an absolute champ. That said i didn't turn up to 80% of them since I already knew the content from biology. Any first year Biology student shouldn't even have to turn up to the lectures(as they are just prokaryotes, eukaryotes, organelles, energy, natural selection etc, all basic stuff) except the last 3 or 4. The last 3 or so are the really really interesting ones, which are on how life might have arisen from a bunch of organic molecules. That said, you could easily learn it on your own (just look up RNA world hypothesis).

Next we have another 6 lectures on Life elsewhere in the universe(on mars etc). While this was interesting, the basic story of these lectures were "we are really really far away from other planets and so it's really really hard to figure out if they have life..." Essentially you learn a bunch of techniques used to detect life/planets/stars elsewhere in the galaxy.

Briefly about the Pracs, the tutors will always tell you the answer and so you really should be getting 70+ on them if you just attend, ask questions and complete the questions. While i agree the physics pracs, which total about 1/3 of them, were stupid, I think this was more a fault of the horrid tutor I had than anything. The geology pracs were actually really helpful and interesting (you basically just looked at cool looking rocks  ;D

To all science students, it should be an easy H1. I did minimal work in comparison to my biomed subjects, in addition to being retarded at geology, and still got a 90.
Arts students, it will be a lot of work, that said, i think a basis of science is so important for everyone to have so i would actively encourage you to do this subject.
For any other info, refer to the other review.
Personally, For ME(not necessarily you) this was a waste of a subject and i would rather have done something where I didn't already know 1/3 of the content, like PHYC10008, which looks awesome. That said, I did learn a lot from the subject that I would never have known else wise.
I give it a 4 out of 5 because of the physics pracs and the geology lectures.
PM me for any questions. :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on July 07, 2013, 01:52:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: HPSC20021 Critical Reasoning

Workload:  1x 2 hour seminar and 2x 1 hour seminar - ** the seminars are exactly the same as tutes so don't think of it as being lectures.

Assessment:  Ignore the handbook. This is what it comprises of, unfortunately I don't know the exact percentages as they never told us. I'll go into detail about what these are later
Homework tasks - essentially one a week, comprises about 10% probably
MLM(Mastery Learning Milestones) - probably about another 10% (are also a hurdle)
Main assignment draft - 5% probably
Main assignment - 25% probably
Exams - 50%
Again all of these are rough guesses.

Lectopia Enabled:  No, no recording at all

Past exams available:  Not really, though you can easily find similar questions online by just looking up Logical reasoning questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook, they provide an online one which is part of the homework tasks.

Lecturer(s): Ashley Barnett and Neil Thomason

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 H1

Comments: First of all, I'd like to prelude that this has been my most enjoyable subject to date, and it's been relatively easy.
What even is critical reasoning? It is essentially, the ability to figure out if an argument is reasonable or not. The type of questions you'll be asked in the exam are basically the same as the LSAT LOGICAL reasoning questions.(not the analytical ones)

Personally I have found this subject to develop my reasoning to a much greater degree than I had before, and I  thought I was pretty good at logical reasoning before. Coming out of this subject, you become naturally attuned to picking out holes in peoples arguments, the flaws and the assumptions needed for their conclusion to be true. It was because of this new skill I have, that I rate this subject 5/5 (it was also quite easy and fun)

Okay so onto what you actually do in the subject...

The whole subject is centered around this argument mapping program(which is free), and you essentially learn how to map more and more complex arguments in this program in the first 6 weeks. This is pretty laborious and easy, and so the first 6 weeks are pretty cruisy. The idea with these 6 weeks is you learn to understand the structure of an arguments (well atleast that's what i got out of it) and also to form a foundation of  the stuff you do in the last 6 weeks. The last 6 weeks being the part where you start assessing other peoples arguments, making your own arguments.

Assessment:
The homework is essentially mapping arguments based on what you learnt in the seminar things and is easy to do, if you get it wrong, he emails and ask you to do it again and again until you get it right. So basically full marks for that
The MLMs are essentially tests based off the homework and you need to get 90%+ on them. However you have unlimited attempts, and no penalty for not getting above 90%. So another full marks for that.
The main assignment is the most time consuming thing and requires a fair bit of effort. The assignment is to map your own argument of your choice and to make it as persuasive as possible. A lot of people for example chose, people should be vegetarians and then had to map a big argument as to why that is true, including objections to some of their arguments and then subsequent rebuttals.

The exam:
Okay, so this was the weirdest part of the whole subject. The first 3 seminar/tute things of the whole subject were exams. One in each seminar. Then, in the exam period you do the same exams (same format atleast) so they can compare how you were before the subject and how good you are now. So yeah, you have 3 exams... then again, you can't prepare for the exams, it all depends on if you do the work in the semester.

Just briefly on the seminars, there are like 10 people in them, and the main tutor guy, Ashley Barnett, is awesome. He's absolutely hilarious and is brilliant at explaining things. The seminars are not in a lecture type format, its more like tutes, lots of discussion and questions.

So just to reiterate, there are no essays or anything, just a lot of mapping arguments. According to Ash, the people who did it in the summer semester didn't do so well so maybe its not worth doing over the summer...
PM me if you have any questions.
I think I've covered everything...
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mc1316 on July 07, 2013, 04:54:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10005 Physics 1: Fundamentals

Workload:
- 3 one hour lectures per week
- 8 three hour practicals scattered thorough out the semester; each practical has a pre-lab (approximate 20 minutes) associated with it
- 1 one hour tutorial per week (not compulsory)
- 1 assignment per week (minus the first two weeks) - will take approximately one hour.

Assessment:
- 8 Practicals (25%)
- 10 Online Weekly Assignments (10%)
- 1 Task for Written Submission (5%)
- End of Semester 3 Hour Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 5 exams provided. With solutions to all, but not full explanations.

Textbook Recommendation: 
- R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2010. (MUST)
- Practical Manual Available from the Co-Op (PDF Available on LMS, but I would recommend that you buy it)

Lecturer(s): Martin Sevior, Christopher Chantler

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: I know this will be the fourth review, but I just want to hammer in the point.
Recommendations (what worked for me)
1) BUY OR AQUIRE THE BOOK (very very very important)
2) Read every word in chapters 1 through 10 and chapters 14 through 19 chronologically as the semester progresses.
3) In every subchapter there are problems they work through - do every single one of them and make your you understand the idea.
4) At the end of each chapter there are plenty of questions (try to do at least 50% of those question) - if the asnwer for a question is not in the back, its on google.
5) Do all the tutorial questions (posted on LMS)
6) As final exam time gets near (4 to 5 weeks prior to SWOTVAC) start doing all the past exams.
7) A couple of formulas are not given in the formula sheet and some formula are given, but in forms that I didn't like (e.g. doppler effect and lens equation) - make a formula sheet of all formula that are not on the formula sheet
8) Don't go to tutorials (elaborated below), use the time productively
9) Lecture notes are useless, don't use them as your notes. Notes are not really necessary, but if you want some make them yourself.
10) Use khanacademy.org if the textbook doesn't not explain a particular concept well. Then try other websites.
Note that I got (equivalent to) a study score of 29 in high school physics, which is a very poor mark. So I think my strategy did work.

Lectures
The first half of the course is on particle physics and is given by Martin Sevoir. It covers kinematics, dynamics of one dimensional motion, two dimensional motion and rotational motion, orbits/ gravity, elasticity, momentum/ impulse and energy/ work. I went to the first 9 lectures. Chapters 1 through 10 of Knight's textbook. They started of easy and understandable, but progressively worse. Eventually I stopped going to the lectures altogether. It wasn't anything personal with Dr. Sevoir, but rather his style didn't resonate with me and as I understand lots of other people as well. However I suspect with most other people stopped going to the lectures they weren't doing much to compensate and that is where a lot of frustration for people started.

Unfornately Chris Chantler was much worse. He spoke to fast, didn't explain concept and had a strange interpretation of audience participation. I went to a couple of his lectures, tried to watch a few more, but it didn't work out. As I understand he is quite a good physicist, but I think his capabilities supersedes that of physics fundamental students. His lectures covered simple harmonic motion, wave mechanics, sound, light as a wave, light as a particle and optical instruments (application of properties of light).

Tutorials
The tutorials were less helpful than the lectures. We sat on a table and tried to solve some questions. After which the 'tutor' (a physics graduate student) would solve it on the board. My particular tutor seemed to solve the questions in the strangest ways, very unhelpful. The attendance went downhill pretty fast. All in all I went to about 5 tutorials.

Practicals
My Mark: 94%
Each practical is out of 14. 4 marks given for 4 online pre-lab questions. 10 marks given by the demonstrator. By a great stroke of luck after my first practical the demonstrator changed. This was a very helpful situation because the worst thing in the course is the practicals. Firstly there are way too many of them - 8. Bio has 5 and chem has 6, physics fundamentals has far too many. Secondly they are very hard, especially the last few. Everyone just stares at each other blankly when trying to answer the questions. I would recommend trying to attempt the questions before going to lab.

Weekly Assessments
My Mark: 89%
This was outsourced to a company called "Mastering Physics," who provide online physics tests for a lot of American universities. They have some good content so I would recommend looking them up. The tests were pretty fair in my opinion. A lot of people got greater than 100%. There are hints available on the question page. My problem was I forgot one of the tests and nearly forgot a couple more. They are due usually by 11:00 pm every Friday so make sure you do before. They can take an hour or so.

Task for Written Submission
My Mark: 78%
This consisted of 4 questions to be answered qualitatively. For us it was from Marin's section. I would say write the first thing that come to your head, don't stress to much. Don't write too many words (500 words for 4 questions should be fine). It will be some sort of application question.

Final Exam
My Mark: 86% (reverse calculated)
I thought the final exam was quite fair. It was out of 180 marks (1 mark per minute). Consisted of about 20 questions (9 or so marks each), 10 question from Martin's section and 10 questions from Chris' section. It covers almost everything top to bottom. The questions were not particularly hard. 3 hours is sufficient to complete it. There will definitely be a projectile motion questions and there definitely will be a dynamics questions, every single past paper had it. Those are pretty easy to practise for, knowing that. The pattern of the exams reamins the same, so I would say get used to the format used in the past papers. In fact there was a repeat for one for one fo the questions.

For GAMSAT Takers
This is pretty comprehensive and surprisingly coherent with the topics assessed in GAMSAT, except the chapters Electricity and Magnetism are not covered in this course. This is as good as it will get for a physics course for the GAMSAT (minus electricity and magnetism). They even throw in a bit of application, such as ears, eyes and ultrasound. Not a bad option if you have never done physics and require it for the GAMSAT.

Overall Comments
This subject can turn out to be a nightmare. There are something done quite poorly, like number and type of practicals and style of lecturing. However with this subject if you put in the hours you will receive the marks. If you cruise through the semester you will end up with at least 80% in the practical/ assignment part of the course. Getting 80% in the exam means losing a maximum of 30 marks, that three full questions. So H1 is completely possible if you follow my recommended steps. Lastly don't do this subject if Physics has no use to you, so if it is not a prerequisite or you don't need it for the GAMSAT, I would recommend staying away from it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on July 07, 2013, 05:36:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures and 1 x 2 hour workshop per week.

Assessment: 5% weekly quiz + workshop attendance (only get marks for quiz if you turn up to your workshop)
                      4 x 7.5% assignments (2 on statics/solid mechanics and 2 on dynamics)
                      2 x 7.5% mid-semester held in Week 6 and Week 12
                      50% Final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 6 available, however no solutions are provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  I didn't buy any books, although I heard that they are extremely good if you are rusty on solid mechanics or introductory physics. I reckon that the lecture notes provided are sufficient however.

Lecturer(s): Dr David Ackland and Professor Joe Klewicki

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 100 [H1]

Comments: Ok, Engineering Mechanics, where do I start? Considering this is a core subject for Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering, this is definitely a fundamental course which teaches you the basis of dynamics and solid mechanics. Given that the last class in Semester 2, 2012 had a fail rate of ~35-40% (from what I've heard), this isn't a class to screw around with. So, let's begin.

ENGR20004 is split into two six week topics. The first major topic is Statics and Introductory Solid Mechanics. The first two lectures cover all the Mechanics material from ESD2 again, things like moments/torques, method of joints and what not. This shouldn't be an issue for most students, however, some Environment students come into ENGR20004 after doing ENVS10003: Constructing Environments so I have no idea what they cover. It should be noted that pre-reqs for Environments students has changed to ENVS10009: Structural Environments post-2013 because many students from the BEnvs degree struggled with the material of ENGR20004 without a solid physics background. Again, just what I've heard, but I can understand that this subject would be heaps more difficult if I didn't do Physics 1.

Workshops are a mixture of assignment work, tutorial questions and experiments. When there is an assignment due, the first hour of the workshop is dedicated to tutorial style questions, and the last hour is dedicated to assignment work with your group. Make sure you choose your group wisely, as you are stuck with them the entire semester. Some of the assignments had practical components, such as using weights to experimentally measure shear force and bending moments in beams, and using an Instron Compression Machine to measure the yield strength and other qualities of 3 materials through compression failure (this was quite cool!). These are also done in the workshop's 2nd hour where applicable.

The Statics portion of the class covered topics such as:
Shear Force / Bending Moment diagrams
Stress and strain (shear, normal, bending) 
Poisson's ratio and superposition
Axial loading and thermal stress
Torsion, twisting, power transmission
Flexure, Combined Loadings
Elastic Curves and Deflections

I especially found that the first 4 weeks of Statics was pretty ok, and then the difficultly ramped up in the last 2 weeks. Nothing that is not overly manageable, but the content did take a swing to the "da fuq" side in my mind for a bit. Most of the material hasn't been seen before (except E = FL/Ad from Year 12 Physics) so you want to make sure you're solid with all of the material after each week. It is incredibly easy to fall behind in tutorial questions so make SURE you do them at home. There is no way you can complete all of the tutorial questions in 1 hour. The mid-semester for Statics was quite straight forward to be honest. My advice is to make sure you can do bending moment and shear force diagrams well, as they are built upon in towards the latter end of the Statics section.

The Dynamics portion of the class covered:
Motion in Rectangular, Polar and N-T coordinates
Constrained and Relative Motion
Particle Kinetics, Work and Energy
Linear Impulse and Momentum
Angular Impulse and Momentum
Impact and Coefficient of Restitution
Equations of Motion and Vibrational Response
Forced Vibration
Rigid Body Motion, Absolute Motion analysis, Relative velocity
Instantaneous centres, relative velocity equation, relative acceleration equation
General Planar Motion

If you had completed Physics 1 with a decent grade, most of this stuff (first 3-4 weeks) should have been seen before, at the very least. The topics are built upon and expanding from first year mechanics, with harder and more ambiguous questions being asked. The difficult topics in my mind were the last 2 weeks again: rigid body motion and general planar motion. Holy shit was this stuff hard on the tutorial questions. Make sure you do all of them, or at least attempt all of them. If I was going to be completely honest, I couldn't complete 75% of the last tutorial sheet because of it's difficulty.

My general advice for this class is to NOT FALL BEHIND. Make sure you do each of the tutorial questions and keep onto of the assignments (which aren't easy) every week. All in all, ENGR20004 was a very fun class, with interesting topics in my opinion. Now, I've just got to choose between Electrical and Mechanical Engineering as a Masters specialisation...
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on July 07, 2013, 06:37:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002 Biomolecules and Cells 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 hour tutorial fortnightly, 2 hour practical fortnightly, 1 hour workshop fortnightly

Assessment:  (copied from handbook) A 45 minute multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%); work in practical classes during the semester including assessment of practical skills and written work not exceeding 1000 words (30%); completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a written assignment not exceeding 500 words (5%); a 3hr examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (50%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, withscreen capture. Though the lectures probably are worth going to, even at 8am!

Past exams available:  No past exams. A sample exam was provided, though it wasn't particularly good.

Textbook Recommendation: Life 10th ed, Sadava et al. Personally, I didn't find it particularly useful. The lecture notes are generally sufficient, and realistically, google is a treasure trove of information. It's also recommended that you buy a biology dictionary. For twenty bucks, this is a good investment. I used it much more than the text.

Lecturer(s): Botany: Geoff McFadden. Zoology: David Gardner, Stephen Frankenberg, Matthew Digby, Laura Parry

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2013

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments:

Practicals

Most people I spoke to found the practical very useful as a way to revise and confirm the lecture content. I can't say that they were particularly fun or stimulating, though they were certainly worthwhile. Everything feels a little more relevant when you're actually doing it in a practical class. Some of the practicals in particular were really good. Personally, I liked the components of the practicals looking at tissue samples. In terms of assessment though, the practicals were a bit annoying. There was a lot of inconsistency between the tutors in how hard, or how "not so hard", they would mark work. What was also frustrating is that there wasn't really a clear definition of what they would like to see or where marks would come from. This was my experience with the assessment, though it should be said that some tutors were a lot more proactive about their discussion of the practical tasks. Mine, however, looked at the work, shook her head and gave a mark.
Make sure that you've prepared yourself for the practicals a few days early. Quite often the stuff is related to the last lecture (particularly if you do it on a Monday like I did), so it's definitely worthwhile preparing properly. Don't forget to do the preprac test, and don't be too cocky with it. You only have to get over 50% to get your marks, but if you're an idiot like I was with one of them—you may not quite make that! There's also a post-prac test that actually makes up the bulk of your marks, so don't forget to do that either. It's timed, though, four questions in ten minutes will give you plenty of opportunity to look up the answers in your prac or the text.
One particular bonus with the pracs is that you're given a seat number, and so you're forced—no matter how anti-social you may be—to get to know the people no your table, which can be a lot of fun!
Lastly, if you're not a big fan of blood and guts, you'll need to supply your own gloves for dissections, as the labs don't have them. The demonstrators seem to take delight in the look on everyone's faces when they say there are no gloves—and rightly so, it can be pretty bloody funny!

Tutorials and Workshops

If you're feeling nostalgic and want to revisit your primary school days, the tutorials and workshops provide a good opportunity to do so. It should be noted first off that not all the tutorials and workshops were the same. There was one particular tutor who apparently ran a ripper workshop, alas, it wasn't mine. Most classes find themselves spending the tutorials doing worksheets, whilst the tutor skims around the room asking people if they have any questions. It is a good opportunity to ask your tutor some questions, though this time is seldom used for that. The tutorials certainly felt like a waste of time. After the first workshop, attendance dropped off dramatically...and continued to do so. The workshops were much the same as the tutorials. They consisted of doing worksheets and playing card games. At the end, the tutor would go through the answers. For most this was a pointless exercise as they had given up on the worksheet half an hour before.

ILTs

You need to complete the ILTs for 5% of your mark. Thus, they're worthwhile. As an exercise they are also worthwhile. It's a good idea to have your notes ready and have a bit of an idea about the content of the ILT before you start it, so as to get the most out of it.

Lectures

The quality of the lectures really depended on the lecturer. These are really frustrating to get right (from the lecturer's perspective) as the best lectures are the ones with the least writing, but the best lecture notes for revision are the ones with the most writing.

Personally, I found Geoff McFadden's lectures the best. This was probably a mixture of the fact that his topics were by far the easiest (particularly for those who have done Biol before) and that he was truly a fantastic lecturer. For someone who is so well regarded in his field, it was incredible to see how passionate he was about teaching and how well he could do it. Geoff's lecturing style was very different to the rest as well. He used a lot of videos and a lot of diagrams, where the others tended towards a lot of writing on their slides.

David Gardner was another highlight. He was a bit all over the place sometimes, though he was certainly in his element when he wasn't just reading from his slides. When he allowed himself to talk by just having pictures up there, he was incredibly insightful and easy to follow. Right near the end of semester, when everything was getting a bit ugly, he gave a lecture on Animals in Biomedicine. Perfect timing for it. It wasn't particularly intense, but I think it went a way to remind everyone why they've chosen Biomedicine...so props to David for that.

Matthew Digby was probably the most excited about being there. He really tried to get to know people and seemed to delight in the opportunity to lecture. He wasn't the most well spoken lecturer and he got lost some of the time, but he made up for that with his enthusiasm. If he hadn't explained something well, he'd always make sure to revisit it in the next lecture. When people sent him e-mails to ask questions, he'd always make sure to address the things that kept popping up in the next lecture. I think everyone really appreciate the effort he was putting into teaching the course, and all in all he actually did a fantastic job of it.

Laura Parry took quite a number of the lectures, and wasn't particularly well received by most people. She started her first lecture by ranting about how she doesn't like people talking during her lectures, and well, that just about set the mood for the rest of her lectures. She also constantly reminded us that "I write your exam, so if I miss out on things because you're talking, bad luck". Another really annoying thing of hers was that she would show incomplete diagrams and incomplete text in her lecture slides, and encouraged us all to "fill in the gaps". Personally, I never printed off lecture slides as I think it's an utter waste of time, so that was particularly annoying when I went home to revise from them off my computer. Furthermore, nobody listened to her because they were spending all of their time frantically filling in the spaces in the notes. For someone who demanded everyone's attention, this was an odd way to achieve that. Laura did start each lecture with exam questions which was particularly handy though!

Last but not least was Stephen Frankenberg. He was extremely monotonous and boring, though he wasn't a particularly bad lecturer if you made the effort to follow what he was saying. Personally, I appreciated his honesty. He really clearly outlined what he expected us to know and told us when things were a bit over the top. He seemed to get that the room was full of stressheads, so that was helpful. He was also particularly funny in the revision lecture, so those who went enjoyed that I think!

Hints

Biology is one of those beautiful subjects wherein actually understanding the content leads to good marks. Unlike Chemistry, or maths, or physics and many of the other sciences, there really is no trick to doing the questions. There's no special method, no special formula. If you know your stuff, you'll get a good mark. How you do in this subject will be about how much you manage to remember and how well you can regurgitate that.

If you keep notes, keep up with the lectures and revisit your notes every so often, you should be absolutely fine. Don't fret about doing sample exams and sample questions, because it is unlikely that you'll get any surprises there. Being able to communicate the major ideas, and appreciate the science behind them.
When you're going through things, always look to connect the dots. This is essential in doing well in Biology. There are so many facts, so many terms and just so god damned much to remember in Biology, so if you can connect the dots, find the similarities, this will cut your work down a hell of a lot. Examples are also fantastic. Remembering the science in context is also particularly helpful. In a lot of cases, the examples given on the lectures will also pop up in the questions, so it is worthwhile noting them! In fact, some of the questions asked about details of the examples themselves—so there's a worthwhile hint!

Any questions, chuck me a message!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on July 07, 2013, 08:03:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP20005 Engineering Computation

Workload:  3 x one hour lecture and 1 x 2 hour workshop per week

Assessment:  10% Assignment 1, 20% Assignment 2, 10% mid-semester held in Week 6, 60% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (thank god).

Past exams available:  Only one available in Week 12. Solutions provided in SWOTVAC.

Textbook Recommendation:  Alistair wrote the book and runs the course. The book is absolutely vital to doing well in this course. Please buy it.

Lecturer(s): Alistair Moffat

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89 [H1]

Comments: Given my experiences with programming and computing, I came into this subject dreading the whole concept of it. Surprisingly enough, this turned out to be a fantastic subject that really does introduce you to the language of C and by the end of the course, you should be competent enough to tackle some harder engineering-esque questions that you may face as an Electrical, Mechanical or a Biomedical Engineering major.

This subject is run completely from the textbook. I don't believe that you can learn programming by listening to lectures, and as such, I only went to those ones in Week 12 for the Exam revision, and I watched the rest online while practising programming. This course starts you from the absolute basic of computer programming, assuming no knowledge of any language. However, most students here came from ENGR10003: Engineering Systems Design 2, and as such, should have some MATLAB skill. You learn the topics of selection, functions, arrays, structures and how to effectively analyze a problem and use abstraction to simplify the task.

The assignments in the class are time-consuming. Not that they take ages to code up, (Ass1 was ~320 lines, and Ass2 was ~600 lines of code for me), but the thought process behind what's going on does take a couple of hours, if not days to wrap your head around. Please don't leave this to the last minute, you will have a hard time cramming code. Also note that you cannot copy code from any person in the course. All submissions are cross-referenced against each other and he does catch people.

Make sure you practise programming every week. Coding is not something you can pick up without practise, and many of the students here have never properly programmed anything in their life. Practise makes perfect, and because you did buy the book, you should complete all of the chapter questions there because he only assigns a few for each workshop. On that note, workshops basically run like ENGR20004 - Engineering Mechanics. The first hour you are in the room next to the computer lab and get into groups of 3 to 4. You then discuss problems within the group and the head tutor asks a member of your group to explain some reasoning behind a fragment of code to the class. The second hour is you practising coding on a computer in the EDS6 labs. While these are not compulsory (to the best of my knowledge) you should turn up because practising programming with other people and letting others check over what you are doing with the best way of learning.

The exam this semester was so insanely hard. I was talking to mates out front who are all on 37-40/40 for the semester pre-exam and we all agreed that we got wrecked by it. Alistair posted a practise exam in Week 12 which was sooooo much easier and lulled most people into a false sense of security. He noted that the exam was difficult and that the raw marks were adjusted upwards to reflect that difficulty on the LMS page post-exam. So, that's good for all you Sem 2 COMP20005ers, because the exam will definitely be easier for you.

That being said, while I didn't go to many lectures and watched them online (timetable was so bad that I had to wait 3 hours each time for the only lecture stream of the class) I felt that I should have gone more often because Alistair was a fantastic lecture that was genuinely enthusiastic about programming. He's motto "PROGRAMMING IS FUN" was so ingrained into us that it actually made me realise that programming is quite fun and the thought process and methodology behind tackling a problem is part of the fun of solving it. Also, writing done "programming is fun" on your assignments gave you an extra 0.5 marks if you lost it on something stupid in the Stage 1 Marking. So make sure you do that.

All in all, this was a great class which I highly recommend to all engineering students. Mechanicals: you have to do it sometime before graduating from your M.Eng, why not in 2nd year where there aren't as many interesting classes? Electricals: You need to do this as a co-req for Signals and Systems, so take it in 2nd year. Softwares: It's a core requirement if you want to do M.Eng(Software). So no choice.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: claireb on July 08, 2013, 07:35:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: FREN10006/20001/30003 French 5 

Workload:  2 x 2 hr Tutorials per week

Assessment:  Two written tests - 15% each (the second test is replaced with a 500 word reflection task in English for those enrolled in 20001 or 30003), a debate in a small group- 20%, an exposé (oral presentation on a topic related to studies) in pairs - 20%, a final exam - 30%

Lectopia Enabled:  N/A as there are only tutorials

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  La guerre sans nom - Patrick Rotman et Bertrand Tavernier, Mai 68 raconté à ceux qui ne l'ont pas vécu - Patrick Rotman.

Lecturer(s): Various.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4/5

Comments: Overall, I really enjoyed this subject and it pushed me to improve and become more confident in my French. For me, it was rather time consuming during the semester as there was always homework to complete (including reading sections from the texts) and assessments coming up. I would not call French 5 an "easy" subject, if you're not a fluent speaker it may require a fair amount of work in order to keep up and to do well on the assessments. For these reasons, I would not recommend this subject to those looking for something "easy" or with a light workload. However, if you enjoy French, it's a really interesting and rewarding subject.

This year we studied the Algerian War in the first half of the semester. As a science student whose last experience with history was Classical Studies (Ancient Greece) in year 11, this was a challenge to get my head around as some of the circumstances of the war were (in my opinion) quite complicated. However, we were given extra resources on the lms we could look at to aid in our understanding. In the second half of the semester we studied the events of May 1968 in France including the protests by university students. I found this topic very engaging and preferred it to the Algerian War as I found it easier to understand and more relatable.

In terms of difficulty, the assessments ranged from average to challenging. I found some of the topics we were given to discuss quite complex and a big step up from those encountered in VCE and in French 3 and 4. I most enjoyed the exposé as it allowed me to get to know another class member and the research we did aided greatly in my understanding of the class work. All the work we did in class was great preparation for the assessments and there was plenty of opportunity to practise.

I hope this review helps anyone interested in doing French 5 and gives them a taste of what the subject is like :) I would definitely recommend it for anyone who has enjoyed learning French in the past and is eager to improve and learn about more complex topics.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stonecold on July 08, 2013, 07:45:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30011 Medical Microbiology: Bacteriology

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week

Assessment:  Online Weekly Quizzes (10%), MCQ Mid Semester Test (20%), MCQ/Written Exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.  Dick and Roy tend to start lecturing before the recording begins sometimes.

Past exams available:  None given.  Some lecturers gave some practice written questions at the end of their lecture series.
Most of the lectures also included some learning objectives so you roughly knew what you had to understand.

Textbook Recommendation:  The textbook for this subject (Bacterial Pathogenesis: a Molecular Approach) is pretty useless.  It only covers the first half of the course and even then, a lot of the lecture diagrams are often taken from elsewhere such as journals.  I think I used the textbook once because the lecturer explained an experiment poorly.  All you will need the textbook for is clarifying minor points.  The lectures are self contained and all of the assessment is taken from the lecture content only.  Either find an online copy or borrow it from the library.  It is certainly not worth buying, especially because microbiology is a rapidly moving field and I think a lot of the content in the book is already outdated.

Lecturer(s): Elizabeth Hartland, Roy Robins-Browne, Dick Strugnell, Odilia Wijburg, Tim Stinear & a few guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 H1

Comments: I will begin by saying that this was probably my favourite subject for the semester.  The subject was very well coordinated and for the most part, the lecture content was interesting.  Moreover, I felt that the subject did indeed live up to its name, with a lot of the content being related back to health and medicine.

As this is a lecture-based subject, it is relatively straight forward.  The weekly quizzes however are kind of annoying.   They are free marks though so I guess this is a good thing.  Sometimes though, the questions on these quizzes IMO were poorly written and had mistakes in them or they were very subjective, especially the true-false questions. (e.g. Salmonella Typhi has a virtually identical genome to Salmonella Typhimurium. True of false?).  Thankfully, this did not extend to the MCQs in the test or exam, which were a lot clearer.

In terms of lecturers in this subject, the stand-outs were Liz and Roy.
Liz is a very good lecturer.  She is clear and to the point, often finishing her lectures early.  She was also happy for people to go and see her to go over some practice questions she gave out, although I never took up the offer.

Roy was my total favourite but I know there are some who don't like him.  I think because I had him last year I knew what to expect.
He tells lots of stories and always keeps it interesting.  His notes are very brief though so you need to write down a lot of content.
His exam questions are relatively easy and just test the stuff which he talks about.

Dick was okay as a lecturer and explained things well most of the time, although he would always start early and sometimes wrote stuff on the board which was annoying.  Thankfully he writes good exam questions.  Odilia and Tim were my least favourite.  Odilia is very nice but was often too brief with her explanations.  Tim is basically just obsessed with genomics and writes really bad exam questions.

In terms of content, this subject starts off at a moderate-high level and this pace seems consistent throughout most of the semester.
There is a lot of content to remember in this subject and it is easy to confuse things so you need to take care both when learning things and also when answering the exam.  The whole subject is basically centered around learning from examples.  Everything is explained using examples, so you need to know them all.

Initially, you begin learning about bacterial structures and virulence determinants at a superficial level.
Then you hone in on specific bacteria and learn the precise molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis and how different bacteria persist (e.g. pili, adhesins, toxins, effectors etc.).  Here you cover the three main niches where bacteria can survive (extracellular, vacuole or lysosome) and learn more examples.  There is a fair bit of cell biology involved in this part of the course.  This lecture series ends with two rather boring lectures on the various secretion systems used by bacteria to export proteins either into host cells or onto their surface.

Following this, you move into more experimental genetics type content looking at things such as how bacterial genes are regulated (e.g. lac operon, sigma factors, slip-strand mis-repair, two-component systems etc.).  This then leads into learning various means of measuring gene expression, identifying virulence genes and touching on how genes are exchanged between bacteria.
In this part, you also learn about the host factors which influence infection and there is also a lecture on microbiota.

My absolute favourite part of the course then follows, which is antibiotics.  Here you learn the mechanism of action of certain groups of antibiotics and then the mechanisms of resistance which bacteria have evolved.  The major groups which we covered were beta-lactams and aminoglycosides, although some others were mentioned more briefly.  Again, you learn about how genetic exchange leads to resistance which is useful because it was explained ordinarily the first time.  You also cover some basic laboratory experiments used to determine antimicrobial susceptibility for different isolates.

There were also some more general lectures about vaccination, diagnostic microbiology and genomics.
The vaccination lecture is mostly about non-protein antigens and conjugate vaccines, which is pretty straight forward because it should have been taught at second year.  The genomics lectures are boring but okay if you have done genetics in the past, although Tim Stinear is obsessed with genomics and spends more time telling stories and going through case studies than he does actually explaining genomic principles.  I enjoyed the diagnostics lectures.  A lot of the content covered in these lectures will have already been taught in second year.  You go through microscopy, staining, antigen capture assays, PCR, microarrays, biochemical tests and serology.

Following this, the course moves into looking at specific genera of bacteria.
Each lecturer likes to put their own twist onto the content which they cover, but you invariably learn virulence determinants, pathogenesis and symptoms.  Then depending on the lecturer, you may cover different aspects of the organism such genomics, lab diagnosis, treatment etc.  The bacteria which were covered this year were Clostridia, Mycobacteria, E. coli, Rickettsiae, Coxiella, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococci and Salmonellae.  There are many more examples of bacteria such as Shigella, Vibrio cholerae and Corynebacterium diphtheriae which are covered earlier on in the course.

The final exam is pretty fair.  The MCQs are mostly weighted to the second half of the course because this was not covered in the MST, although there still are some MCQs from the first part of the course on the exam as well.  The MCQs make up one-third of the exam and the written component makes up two-thirds.  There were 5 (20 mark) questions in the written part of the exam, from which you choose 4 to write on.  Each question is broken down into part a and b, which are worth 10 marks each.  There then may or may not be further sub-parts depending on the question.  The important point to note is that part a and b can be completely unrelated in terms of content, therefore, as you have to answer an entire question, you have to study all of the lecture content because different content can be mixed together within the one question.

Doing well on the exam hinges on manging your time properly.  Use the reading time to answer as many MCQs as possible.  I'd recommend spending at least ~100 mins of exam time on the written questions, substantially more than the recommended 80 mins.  One thing which always seems to come up in the written questions is secretion systems, so make sure that you learn these well, including examples.  The 2013 exam had an entire 10 mark question on drawing a concept map about genomics.  It looked awful and this was part of the question which I skipped.  The genomics lecturer went on and on about concept maps so I guess it wasn't unexpected.  Unlike me, it might be worth practicing some.  There was also an annoying question about vaccines which didn't really make sense, so learn this content well so you will have something to write about should it arise again. :)

All in all, this is a fairly enjoyable subject if you like microbiology.  The important part of succeeding in this subject, aside from memorising all of the content, is to be able to integrate all of the content and relate it back to basic principles of disease.  For example, in a lecture towards the end, you may be taught that an effector is a Type III secreted protein.  Therefore, in a question about that bacterium on the exam, you would be expected to explain not only the effector, but also the secretion system by which the protein is exported.  You should then also be able to explain how it contributes to infection/persistence/damage by the pathogen.
The coordinator puts up the basic aims of what you should understand from the entire subject, so keep these in mind when answering exam questions because it is important to keep on topic! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sinner on July 08, 2013, 09:15:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: MULT10011 Introduction to Life, Earth and Universe

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three-hour pracs for 9/12 weeks

Assessment:  Ongoing assessment of 9 pracs (totalling 25%), two 20-minute tests during the semester (5% each), a poster (5%) and a 3-hour written examination (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen captures.

Past exams available:  Yes, 4 (2009-2012)

Textbook Recommendation:  No required texts; 'Life in the Universe' by Bennett & Shostak is avaliable in the library. 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' is also very helpful and also avaliable in the upper levels of the library.

Lecturer(s): Rachel Webster (Physics/Astronomy), Stephen Gallagher (Geology) and Geoff McFadden (Biology)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 3 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: A subject which was a last minute decision for me among last semester's subjects. From the viewpoint of a science student, I was struggling to find a Semester 1 Lv1 Science subject to do which would fill up the last slot in my study plan, and this showed up. Anyway, the consensus of this subject is to use different areas of knowledge in astronomy/physics, geology, and biology to touch on the topic of life in the universe, including us and others.

Astronomy

The astronomy lectures were split into 2 parts, 2 weeks during weeks 1-2, and 2 weeks during weeks 11-12. The first part outlines the basic topics of the origins of the universe and the solar system, which is mildly interesting for a start into the subject. The second part outlines humanity's attempts to find evidence of life outside the universe, which may be or may not be interesting for different people, as they don't go too deep into each issue. The lecturer, Rachel, is a decent lecturer who also puts a glossary at the end of the slides; words for you to look up to better understand the content.

You do 3 pracs about astronomy, most of which involves the use of computers and programs, though not too hard to work once you get the hang of things. You'll have to do some math (Usually some big division equation), but you can always ask the demonstrator if you need help. These were relatively dull, depending on your opinion towards maths and physics. You have to print out the worksheets first, complete the questions and hand them in by the end of class.

Geology

The geology lectures proceed after the first part of astronomy, spearheaded by Prof. Stephen Gallagher, who is surprisingly entertaining and made the lectures more bearable. Unfortunately however, he has a grudge against people who he call "Lectopians". Once before a lecture, he showed a bar graph showing that people who attend lectures get better results than Lectopians. This is reflected in his lecture notes, which consist mostly of pictures and few descriptions - the content you need to know being verbal. Sometimes he even goes out of way to write things on the board, be it diagrams or key words, so that it won't get on Lectopia. Lastly, he also gives out helpful extra notes during some lectures that Lectopians don't get. The content is fairly interesting, and includes Earth's development from its genesis to around 10,000 BC plus climate change. Either way, I cannot stress this enough: attend the lectures if you can! This is not a part you can pass from simply reading lecture notes, you have to lectopia all of the ones you missed, which is a waste of precious time.

The geology pracs are comparatively more interesting than the astronomy ones, being more hands on with meteorites and fossils loaned from the museum, although it might frustrate some. Here you complete a MCQ at the end of each class. It's open book based on your worksheet, so it should be relatively easy.

Biology

Following after geology, this is probably the easiest section in this subject. I'll confess that I never went to the lectures for this section, but the stuff is relatively manageable without lectopia and only the notes, although there are some things that pop up in the exam that were in lectopia, so attending lectures is once again a suggestion. Here you learn about bacteria, the essentials and origins of life on Earth, as well as basic stuff in molecular biology - nucleic acids, macromolecules, and photosynthesis + respiration. The first lectures are comparatively dull, although they progressively get better and more interesting. Quite easy for biology savvy kids to pick up, the required knowledge that overlaps with BIOL10004/5 is even of a lower level.

If you've done biology pracs before, expect little that is new, and they can be dull and confusing depending on how much experience you've had with bio pracs. At least the staff are relatively more cheerful in the larger sized prac, and it does help sometimes to pass the time. Similar to astronomy pracs, you print the sheets out, complete them, and hand them in.

Assessment

You get two mid sems, one of which happens around the mid sem and one considerably long after. They're both a mix of short answer questions and MCQs, the first one on astro + geo and the second one on bio. There's not a lot of questions, so don't screw them up.

You also have to do a A3 sized poster by the end of Week 12, which might be a hassle depending on your other subjects. A list of topics is provided on the LMS for you to choose from, which can be astro, geo, or bio. Thankfully, you can do this in pairs, and some subjects are ridiculously easy and require only an hour and a bit to complete, such as explaining the essential characteristics of life.

The exam is split into 3 parts that you have to do in separate booklets. Astro, geo, and bio sections all contribute 60 each to the 180 points total. The geo section is a long list of short answer questions that you choose some to write on, while the other 2 sections are a mix of compulsory MCQs and short answers (though mostly the latter). It's better to know a little bit of everything, particularly the "examples" type of information as they are often used in the short answer questions. The exam format hasn't changed in 4 years and it'll probably stay this way.

Overall, this subject had a good potential to be an interesting subject, but this collapsed with the 9 practicals (Seriously? And the lot of them are irrelevant to the main course, content could be added to lectures) that were required as well as the fact that knowledge between the different disciplines were not tied in too well. Nevertheless it remains a decent option for people who want a little bit of everything in science (and by this i exclude math), and one to consider if one simply needs a Lv1 science subject to fill in their study plan, but hates quantitative stuff (physics, chemistry, calculus), this is a subject to consider, as was my case previously.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: anazergal on July 09, 2013, 06:48:27 am
Subject Code/Name: LING20005 Phonetics

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures and a 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. No tutorials in the first and last weeks.

Assessment:

Transcription Assignment 1 (20%): Transcription of 21 Korean words (only marked on the number of correct IPA symbols used for consonants).

Transcription Assignment 2 (20%): Transcription of the consonant and vowel sounds as well as the lexical stress of 15 Gupapuyngu words. Transcription of the consonant and vowel sounds as well as the lexical tone of 10 Thai words.

Transcription Test (10%): Transcription of approximately 14 single symbols and 5 single nonsense words, as well as the intonation pattern of 3 Australian English sentences. No IPA charts allowed. Held during the last lecture.

Production Test (10%): Identification and production of 6 given symbols from the IPA chart, as well as the production of 3 nonsense words distributed approximately 10 mins before the test. No IPA charts allowed. Held during the last tutorial.

Final Exam (40%): Multiple choice and short-answer questions on phonetic theory and speech waveforms. 2 hours, with 15 minutes reading time.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, but without screen capture.

Past exams available: No, but some sample questions were available.

Textbook Recommendation: "A course in Phonetics" by Peter Ladefoged and Keith Johnson. Probably important, but I personally never read much of it. :-\

Lecturer(s): Mainly Hywel Stoakes, with Joshua Clothier for one guest lecture.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Frankly, this was the toughest subject I'd ever taken (though I admit I was a lazy arse this semester :-[). On top of the already hefty amount of theoretical knowledge, students are also expected to memorise and produce, both orally and in writing, the entire IPA chart. I found this a bit like learning a new language, and often felt tone deaf and tongue-tied. Tutorials are absolutely essential (a special mention to my tutor Rosey, who was extremely capable and pleasant!), as they mostly consist of going through all the symbols and sounds as well as practising a bit of transcription. Definitely do the homework exercises and listen to the sound clips beforehand, or you might feel lost in class. I didn't find the lecturer that great (I thought Hywel fumbled about a bit too much, and he often ran out of time which impacted the structure and flow of subsequent lectures :-\), but try not to miss too many live lectures as he plays a number of sound clips (which are captured on the audio recordings) and videos (which sadly are not). Expect to put in a lot of work. I didn't and blundered through the entire subject, only managing not to fail because an exam segment on spectrograms (which I completely didn't understand) wasn't marked due to a printing error. ;D (That, and I think they took pity on me during my disastrous production test which ended on the verge of tears.) This subject definitely offers a comprehensive theoretical and practical understanding of speech sounds, but PLEASE don't take it unless you have (or think you have) a passion for it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: anazergal on July 09, 2013, 09:01:24 am
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20016 Same-Sex Desire: From God to Genes
WARNING: I did this subject in 2012 so my opinions are a year outdated, but I figure that some information's gotta be better than none, right? :P Besides, I took a look at a friend's 2013 course materials and they look pretty much the same, down to the assignments.

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures from weeks 1-6, later reduced to a 1 x 1 hour lecture from weeks 7-12. A 1 x 1 hour tutorial from weeks 1-11. The first half of this course involves overviews of various subject disciplines (History, Theology, Genetics, Health, and Law), with the second half covering more detailed case studies.

In even more detail (simply because I can :P), the lecture topics / case studies are:
Week 2 & 7: History and theories of (homo)sexuality / Social movements and social changes
Week 3 & 8: Theology of homosexuality / Sexuality crisis in the Anglican Church
Weeks 4 & 9: Gay genes + Intersex people / Sex tests and sport
Weeks 5 & 10: Health and medical approaches + Same-sex led families / Citizenship and same-sex desire
Weeks 6 & 11: Same-sex desire and law / Anti-discrimination law

Assessment:

Assessment Task 1 (20%): Analysing the arguments and persuasive strategies of 3-4 opinion pieces on same-sex marriage (from a list of some 13 of them). 1000 words.

Online Quiz (20%): Multiple-choice quiz; answers could be found in the lectures. I can't remember if this was timed but it was very manageable.

Final Assessment (60%): This was a take-home exam consisting of two parts:
1. A 1000 word opinion piece on any topical issue except same-sex marriage; AND
2a. One 2000 word research essay on a proposed question different from that of the opinion piece; OR
2b. Two 1000 word essays chosen from a list of 12 reasonably open-ended and controversial questions drawn from a variety of lecture topics.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: N.A.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook, just a subject reader.

Lecturer(s): Graham Willett (History), Peter Sherlock (Theology), Andrew Sinclair (Genetics), Ruth McNair (Health), Anna Chapman (Law)

Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1 (But very similar, if not identical, to its 2013 counterpart.)

Rating: 5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I really enjoyed this rather unique subject, and found the interdisciplinary nature of its content engaging and relevant. Most of the lectures are interesting enough, if not in their deliveries then in their material. (I especially liked the theology component, though I found the health and law sections a little dry at times. :-\) While each discipline is covered by a different person, the lecturers try to relate their parts to each other's for a more holistic understanding. The tutorials are heavily steeped in dialogue, so it's pretty easy to pull something out of your arse if you haven't done the readings. I notice no one really quotes or refers heavily to an article anyway; discussions may start from guided questions but usually devolve into heated exchanges full of personal/acadamic opinions. Still, the readings aren't all terrible so do give them a go before class. Assignments are also manageable as there's always something to talk about. This course exposed me to many fresh perspectives and arguments to use for either faction, even if the ground sentiment was usually skewed towards pro-homosexuality (I suppose detractors wouldn't take the subject :P). All in all, I'd recommend trying this if you have an open-mind.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: marr on July 09, 2013, 09:16:38 am
Subject Code/Name: LING30007 Semantics 

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

Assessment: 
Assignment 1 (25%): Consists of two parts. The first part involves analysing the different meanings of 'like' (after you do this assignment you'll be pulling your hair out everytime you hear the word being used incorrectly - like totally!). The second part involves using event semantics to classify actions as either a state, activity, accomplishment or achievement.

Assignment 2 (25%): Using cognitive semantics draw a radial map of the different meanings of 'side' (I.e: "The 6 sides of a cube", "this is my side of the room", "I sided with her in the argument"). This assignment wasn't explained all that well by the tutor or the lecturer which brought my overall rating of this subject down.

Final essay/research project (50%): A 2,500 - 3,000 word essay or research project on an area within the course. There are a few suggested essay topics if you can't think of something to write about but I'd highly recommend coming up with something yourself in order to get a good mark.     

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  There is no exam component in this subject.

Textbook Recommendation: 
Understanding Semantics by S. Lobner - Not crucial but it does help out with the first few topics and with Assignment 1.
A subject reader that can be purchased in the library for $15 - You need to buy this. It contains all the lecture notes and tutorial exercises for the entire semester.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Brett Baker

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
It's a fairly tough subject to begin with but if you're smart you can get through it with minimal work. In a nutshell semantics is the study of the meaning of words independent from context (the literal meaning of something). There are many approaches to semantics that are covered in the course such as event semantics, truth-conditional, prototype semantics, cognitive semantics, componential analysis and a few other smaller topics. These topics are unrelated so it can get confusing when you expect things to link together.

Dr. Baker's lectures are rather relaxed and welcomes questions in the lecture if you don't understand anything. The class itself is fairly small as well (about 60-70 people) with only 3 tutorial classes. You don't have to go to the lectures as they are recorded but I would recommend going to the ones that contain information needed for the assignments. The tutorials are just discussions about the course material with your fellow classmates and there aren't any tutorials in the 1st or last week.

You really need to pick a topic for your final essay early and it can be from any part of the course that you want to focus on. Be warned though, it is very difficult to get a high H1 mark in this essay or any linguistic subject for that matter (unless you're Stonecold ;)). The tutor explicitly told us that to get a H1 for the final essay you need to write something innovative, creative and original (basically say something that no one else has ever said before). This means that unless you can come up with a completely different perspective on one of the given essay topics, it's highly recommended that you pick your own topic so that you can direct your own study. I actually found this part of the course the most enjoyable as it allowed me to write up my own mini thesis (you come up with your own research question, collect the data for it and then analyse it). The other 2 assignments aren't too hard and you can do fairly well in them (you can 100% even because they are problem based questions with objective answers).

Because there is no exam for this subject you don't need to memorise every single part of the course in depth (thank God!). Honestly you only need to concentrate on a few topics to do well - event semantics, cognitive semantics and the area of study that you are going to write about for your final essay. The rest of the topics aren't assessed so you could potentially skip those lectures if you have other subjects that require attention.

Overall I found this subject really rewarding. I admit that I struggled with it at first but like solving a tough maths problem that you've been working on for ages, it's satisfying when everything just 'clicks'. I realise that there might not be too many people interested in this subject as it's rather obscure (some people called it a 'hippie' subject but I didn't think it was anymore 'hippie' than your average arts subject!) and has no real-world application, but it does make you more conscious about your own language use (which is never a bad thing!) You don't need to have done a linguistic subject before, nor do you have to be a wordsmith but there is something that you need - you have to be (or at least want to learn how to be) consciously aware of word meanings. Language use requires implicit knowledge and this subject requires you to make that knowledge explicit. This subject isn't for everyone but if you are thinking about taking this subject try this as a test: think of the word 'rock'. How many meanings can you come up with? Are they related? If so, how? If you enjoy analysing these sorts of questions then you might enjoy this subject.

PM me if you have any specific questions ;)     
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hancock on July 09, 2013, 02:02:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1 

Workload:  2 x one hour lectures and a 1 tutorial per week

Assessment:  Assignments not exceeding 2000 words (20%) and a 2-hour end-of-semester examination (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  No, like all other FNCE subjects.

Past exams available:  There are about 20 on the library website.

Textbook Recommendation: I'd say buy the textbook because it's not that expensive anyway. It has some good review notes and what not.

Lecturer(s): Sterla and Carson (I don't know whether I spelt their name's right as they are both Europeans).

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  -1 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: Oh my god, FNCE10001. Don't get me wrong, I loved the lecturers and they did provide some interest into a subject that is drier than dust. I read the previous ATARNotes review (which said it was -3 out of 5) and I thought, it can't possibly be that bad and I was looking for a cruise-y breadth after taking Introductory Microeconomics. So I took the class and it was a really bad decision. While there is some mathematics in it, it is so basic that you don't really need to study that much, GIVEN THAT ALL THE FORMULAS ARE LAID OUT ON THE FORMULA SHEET ANYWAY. Most of this class was basically memorising facts about ADIs (authorised deposit taking institutions) and different characteristics of markets, such as the money market, bond market and the share market. I guess I was hoping for something more mathematically inclined, and I was a little let down with the 2 weeks of dedicated financial mathematics in the course.

The assignments were ok, but it is a joke to give "originality marks" in a finance assignment. 6 of the marks were given for content, 2 marks for presentation and 2 marks for originality. THERE IS NO ORIGINALITY ABOUT FINANCING A HOME PURCHASE. EVERYONE IN THE CLASS CHOSE TO DO A HOME LOAN THROUGH A BANK. It may sound like I'm bitching about lost marks (I am) but this concept of originality marks just seems stupid.

The exam is incredibly similar to past exams, even going to the point where there are questions from the 2004-06 exams on the paper. Do the past papers and you'll be set. Do FNCE10001 if you want a cruis-y breadth, but it's not interesting. You have been warned for a second time.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jeppikah on July 09, 2013, 05:47:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE20004 Introduction to Real Estate Analysis

Workload:  Weekly: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorials

Assessment:  2 assignments worth 15% each, 1 exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook is required. The lecturers will post relevant readings from various sources on LMS.

Lecturer(s): Rob Brown & Greg Schwann. Rob takes the first 6 weeks while Greg takes the last 6 weeks.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (82)

Comments: So the name of this subject is probably very appropriate: it is an introduction to real estate so really, when you finish this subject you won’t feel like you know very much about real estate at all, rather just a general overview.

The first half of the lectures taken by Rob include topics such as the types and characteristics of real estate, the interaction between demand and supply with construction activity, house pricing, demographics and mortgage finance.  Mortgage finance was my favourite because it’s similar to the mathematical component of Finance 1. Rob was quite good at getting through the material in a timely manner and I found him reasonable to listen to.

The second half of the lectures is taken by Greg and deal with commercial markets (industrial, office & retail), location theory on commercial property, leases and real estate development. Again, I enjoyed leases the most because it was predominantly mathematically based. I hated real estate development because it was very dull and just seemed really wishy-washy. Thankfully there were no  theory-based real estate development questions on my exam. Greg seemed to waffle on a lot which made me lose interest at times, and thus I also missed the relevant points (my fault, I know).

The lecturers post readings for each lecture which are basically where all the lecture content is summarised from anyway. (Or at least Rob did anyway. Greg didn't post them at all even though there were supposed to be some and decided not to release them at the end because he thought it was too late anyway lol.) I found reading them to be good revision but you're not missing out on much if you don't do them at all.

There are 2 assignments in this subject. The first assignment deals with looking at demographic factors of two different suburbs and drawing conclusion on real estate. My advice would be put in as much detail and garble in as possible. Also, do NOT forget to put in graphs, tables and anything else that might make you look like you spent a lot of time and effort into it. My comment on this assignment was that I wrote a very good analysis, however I scored poorly for being too short and not including graphs and tables. The second assignment is written predominantly by Greg. After a while, you realise that Greg makes a lot of assumptions about the students and a few of his questions were quite ambiguous while he seemed to think they were perfectly clear. So make sure you ask him about any questions you’re unsure of because he’s quite helpful and will pretty much lead you to the answer. Greg also thought everyone had taken accounting and most had taken business finance (I hadn’t taken either) and I felt his language doesn’t cater well for breadth students but it’s still quite manageable.

The tutorials always annoyed me because my tutor just answered the tutor questions exactly as how they were written on their answer sheet. There was no further discussion, explanation or engagement with the students. These “1 hour” tutorials rarely lasted longer than 30-40 minutes for this reason. While attendance is not taken and non-compulsory, I still think it’s worth it to go because you will pretty much go through all the answers to the tutorial questions and the tutorial questions are the best indication of questions that you might get on the exam. In fact, one or two exam questions were almost word for word identical to some tutorial questions. All answers to numerical tutorial questions will eventually be posted online but there won’t be any answers to theory questions.

The marks allocated in the exam were split roughly evenly between the two lecturers. Furthermore, each lecturer asked approximately half numerical and half theory-based questions. You will get a formula sheet in the exam so learn what they are for and what each pronumeral means. It annoyed me that in the exam, Greg asked a question that required the present value for a growing annuity formula which Greg neither explicitly taught nor put on the formula sheet. I had to do it the long way which was a pain to write out and put in the calculator, and I probably messed it up anyway, so I suppose it’ll be good to memorise if you can. Definitely learn how to do all the steps in doing SFFA, including knowing all the information and numbers you need. Unfortunately, the question given to us didn’t include a lot of the expected information (eg. LTV ratio, undervaluation by the bank) which was confusing to me. The exam invigilator told me to make up numbers for these and then write down all these assumptions. This annoyed me and I’m not sure how it was marked.

Overall, this subject covered pretty much what you would expect from the handbook. I didn’t feel like it was an easy H1 but at the same time, the workload is probably less than you would find in a science/biomed subject. The mathematical finance side is good but this only accounts for half of the subject so I would only suggest doing the subject if you have some interest in the topics outlined, otherwise you’ll be too lazy to study it and then it’ll be too much to cram for during SWOTVAC!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: acinod on July 10, 2013, 07:27:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20143 World Music Choir 3

Workload: 1 hr lecture + 2 hr rehearsal

Assessment: Participation (40%) + Listening Test (40%) + 2 Written Tests (20%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Audio only

Past exams available: N.A.

Textbook Recommendation: Lecturer wrote the textbook, a must buy for $10! It contains everything you need to know for all the tests as well as the lyrics and score to all the songs you will sing. You can get away without the textbook for the first half of the semester since he'll be handing out spare copies of the songs during rehearsals.

Lecturer(s): Joseph Jordania. THIS GUY IS AMAZING!!! Super friendly and amazingly talented at piano and guitar. He even has his own wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jordania

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1 2013

Rating:  5/5!!!

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (82)

Comments:
HEY HEY!!! Having graduated 2 years ago, I don't normally come back on ATARNotes often but I just feel so compelled to share this incredible hidden subject with everyone. Like many students, I was always puzzled on which breadths to choose. Should I choose something that will help me in the future, or something fun and interesting, or maybe something that I can bludge throughout the semester. I can safely tell you World Music Choir 3 fills all of the above criteria. It's also a Level 2 with no prerequisites!

Let me start with the one hour lectures. These are SO CHILL. You pretty much just go there and listen to music. The best times are when he plays on the piano and Joseph is indeed a brilliant pianist. I will continue to refer to the lecturer as Joseph because this subject would be completely different without him (something that I cannot say about any other subject). It's ok if you miss a few lectures; even if you miss all of them because they are all recorded. The only reason you will ever need to go to lectures is for the 3 assessments (listening test and 2 written tests). This is just awesome because that means 3 of the lectures of the semester and not really lectures but for tests instead!

Next are the 2 hour rehearsals. These are why I look forward to every Wednesday afternoon of the week. Initially, my first impressions of the rehearsals was that a lot of time gets wasted. This is perhaps the most bludgy subject I have ever done. The rehearsals are suppose to be 2 hours but I can tell you they will never reach 2 hours! Joseph always starts a few minutes late to allow everyone to get here 'on time' and then we call stand up. THIS IS THE WARMUP! Honestly, at first, I thought the warm-ups were a joke and I'm sure most will agree. When we stand up, Joseph shouts 'HEY HEY' and we all follow him. We sing a few scales to loosen up the vocal chords and then some octave jumps. Then Joseph tells everyone to close their eyes to do warm up our ears by doing a rhythm exercise. Basically he claps a rhythm and everyone claps it back. After around 10 rhythms, he does a tricky one where he claps once on an off beat which messes with everyone but eventually we all get it by the end of the semester. After the rhythm exercises, we all turn to the side and give the person next to us a neck massage. And that concludes the warmup. After that, Joseph marks the roll (which takes a couple of minutes since there's a lot of us) and then we begin to actually learn the songs. This was incredibly awkward for everyone in the first few weeks but by the end of the semester we LOVED IT!!! Me and my friends looked forward to every warmup session to the point where we were warming up outside of rehearsals!

The songs we sang was quite interesting. Since this subject is 'World Music Choir' we were singing a wide variety of songs from different cultures, which we perform at a concert at the end of the semester. Unfortunately this semester we couldn't sing Hallelujah but this is an example of the type of songs we could sing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70esQzSjpTk). We also sing very traditional songs ranging from the African 'Sombamba' to the Georgian 'Elesa'. This subject is very rewarding because it teaches you to be more open to other cultures. I absolutely loved Elesa it sounded so epic. When we sing, we sing in 4 part harmony so at the start of the semester, you will join either Soprano (highest), Alto, Tenor, or Bass (lowest). Being a bass, we got to sing the deepest part and if you're a guy you will probably be placed in bass. I totally forgot to mention how well this subject helps develop your singing ability. BASSISTS4LYF!

Finally I want to talk about the assessment:

Let me begin with the participation marks which are 40%. DO NOT COME INTO THIS SUBJECT AND BELIEVE YOU WILL GET 40% IF YOU ATTEND ALL REHEARSALS. Attending all rehearsals will give you 20-25%. To really get the most out of these marks, you actually have to participate! This includes singing the limited amount of solo parts in the songs performed. Something I did was stand in the front of every rehearsal. I sang loud and tried my best to make Joseph notice me. Perhaps the best chance to get participation marks is to sing a solo at the end of the semester. I bravely took the opportunity to sing one of the songs solo with the other solo Soprano, Alto and Tenor part and hopefully impressed Joseph. I'm not totally sure but I think for participation I ended up with 30% out of 40%.

The next assessment is the listening test towards the end of the semester. In the last lecture, you will have to do the listening test and it is pretty much the final exam. This is by far the hardest part of the subject and why you might not end up with an amazing mark. Apart from singing, the lectures are there to teach students about the different types of music in the world. You will study two types of music: traditional and pop/rock. The listening test is split into two parts. First, a traditional music is played and you have to talk about the features and musical elements it contains. Then, a pop/rock music is played and you will have to explain whether it is a pop song or rock song. You will do well in this if you read the textbook the night before and go through all the lectures and make summaries of everything he says. The songs played are always those that have already been played and analysed in lectures. I can't believed I crammed for this subject (since it's been so bludgy) but trust me it is worth it. I think I scored around 30% out of 40% for this assessment as well.

The last assessment is the two written tests. If you have any musical background, these would be ridiculously easy given that you don't make any careless mistakes. The first test is basically to form a triad from a note. For example, if you are given A, then you write ACE. You do this for 2 more notes and then you're done! I didn't realise we weren't allowed to start until he handed the paper to everyone but I finished in 5 seconds. We were given 15 minutes so time is definitely not an issue. The next written test is a tiny bit harder, it involves harmonising a couple of notes. For example if you were given A and E, you could write A minor and E major or F major (since the triad FAC has A in it) and A major (since the triand ACE has E in it). Once again this is pretty basic if you know music. Even if you don't know music, it's not that hard because you can learn in from the textbook and he spends a whole lecture teaching exactly how you do it. I scored 20% out of 20% for this section.

Overall, World Music Choir 3 is the best subject I have ever done and if you are looking for a breadth, I recommend you find a few friends and enrol in this fantastic subject. The final rehearsal on the big stage before the concert was actually both sad and beautiful. It was the last time we were singing together with Joseph conducting and to this day I still miss being a part of his choir. Attached is a photo of me, my friends and Joseph which we took during the last rehearsal. I love this subject so much!!!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Turtle on July 10, 2013, 08:54:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10009 Food for a Healthy Planet

Workload:  2 x 1 Hour Lectures, 1 x 1 Hour Tute (per week)

Assessment:  1 x Mid Semester Test (15%), 1 x 2000 Word Essay (25%), 3 x Forum Reports (5% each), 1 x Exam (45%)

Lectopia Enabled:   Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, one for each year

Textbook Recommendation:  1 x Reader (Needed for the readings)

Lecturer(s):  Sooooooo many different ones-I can't find all their names, but we had a different lecturer almost every week, and also had 3 guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion:  2013 Semester 1

Rating:  1.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:  H2B

Comments: I am doing this review to warn people, and hopefully help you to make an informed decision if you are considering this subject  :). This subject is the worst subject I have done at uni, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the content is not interesting. I did this subject because I thought I would be interested in the nutrition side of things. However, this part of "food" was barely covered. Instead, we talked about world food security in terms of economics, genetically modified crops, theories of famine, ect...

The forums (with guest lecturers) not completely boring, but they weren't that interesting either. They are fairly easy to score well in, but it is hard to stay within the world limit of 500 words.

I worked hard for this subject, and even got a 90% essay score, yet I somehow managed to bomb the mid semester test and end of year exam. They give absolutely no indication of how they want you to answer questions for either the MST, or exam. I studied hard, and rote learnt almost everything for the mid semester test, and exam, yet somehow, my answers weren't correct (even though I tried to learn/apply exactly what was in the notes). The only saving grace for this subject is that you get to take a cheat sheet into the exam, which helps a lot with the rote learning. But otherwise, I found this subject to be dull, uninteresting, and there was no indication given on how to answer questions to receive full marks. If you are looking for an easy, or interesting breath (like I was), they I do not recommend this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Turtle on July 10, 2013, 09:25:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure  

Workload: Per week--3 x 1 Hour Lectures, 6 x 2 Hour Practicals (spread over semester)

Assessment: ADSL Online Quizzes (10%), 2 x Mid Semester Tests (15% each), 1 x End of Sem Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No (not really a problem, I don't think they are that necessary)

Textbook Recommendation: 
-Eizenberg N. Briggs CA et al (2008)-General Anatomy: Principles and Applications-McGraw Hill (This book is particularly helpful in regard to the principles lectures in the first four weeks).

Lecturer(s): Dr Varsha Pilbrow, Associate Prof. Colin Anderson, Dr. Jenny Hayes, Dr. Jason Ivanusic, Dr. Peter Kitchener, Dr. Simon Murray,
Dr. Junhua Xiao (New lecturer. Alot of people told me how much they disliked her lectures. However, I loved her lectures because she outlined exactly what we needed to know, and they also only went for 40 minutes which was great!)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 (H1)

Comments: This subject is fantastic! The topics covered are extremely interesting. The lecturers do a fantastic job of explaining everything very clearly, and making sure that you know exactly what is expected of you. BEWARE, if you don't like rote learning, then this subject is not for you. Almost everything in this subject is memory based, and you cannot get away without memorizing a lot of information. But not to fear, if you find this subject as interesting as I did, then this will not be too much of a chore.

Mid Semester Tests: Many students hated these, but I thought they were great, in that they forced you to keep revising constantly. These tests were not that hard. If you took the time to revise each lecture thoroughly, then you would get the marks you deserved. There are no trick questions, and basically every question tests your recall of information.

ADSL quizzes: These were an easy 20%. You could repeat them until you get 100% in them. They were accompanied by ADSL worksheets. I did these for the first few weeks, and they took me about 3 hours each. This is why after the mid sem break, I stopped doing them, because they took up too much time. I don't think that they were that necessary, so don't stress too much about not doing the worksheets. However, if you do have the time to do them, they really really help your understanding of information covered in lectures.

End of semester exam: Consists of Multi Choice, Multi Selection Section, and a Short Answer Section. The Multi Choice covers the last 3 weeks of the semester, and if you take the time to revise carefully, and memorize all the information in the last few lectures, then you can breeze through the MCQ very quickly. The Multi Selection Section was the hardest in my opinion. It tests you on fine detail, and you need to label diagrams. However, once again, this is all in the lectures, and if you are careful to revise fine points, and practice labeling diagrams, then this section will not be that much trouble. In my opinion, this section rewards those who know their work most. The final section is a Short Answer Section. Everyone hated this section this year, because it contained a question on the borders of the Inguinal Canal. However, if you took the time to memories this, since it had a lecture slide all to itself, then this question wouldn't have given you any trouble. This section could be hard if you didn't do enough revision, because you can't really bluff your way through it.

Pracs: I found these very interesting, as you get to "prod and poke" cadavers. However, on the downside, they go for 2 hours, and you can't sit down, and therefore they hurt my legs :/ Overall, although they were interesting, they didn't really aid my learning, and just gave me sore feet. There is a 75% hurdle attendance requirement.

I highly recommend this subject. Although most people just do it because it is a prereq for post grad health science courses, I would have done it even if this wasn't the case. This subject helped me to decide to major in Human Structure and Function, because I enjoyed this subject that much! If anyone needs any help with this subject, or any more information about the subject, then just PM me :) I hope this review helps anyone interested in this subject!!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: LeviLamp on July 10, 2013, 11:45:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: GERM10004: German 1

Workload:  2 x 2 hour tutorials, and probably about the same amount of time per week revising the content if you don't want to do it all in a block before each assessment (which is perfectly doable).

Assessment:  Each component will be covered below :3

5 x Vocabulary Tests (2% each)

Don't be fooled by their low weighting; preparing well for these vocabulary tests will really help with the rest of the coursework/exam, and in addition, if you don't study well, these tests are really quite difficult (despite their simple layout).
Every now and then, you'll be told you have a vocab test during a tute in the upcoming week. These tests cover pretty much all vocab from one of the five vocabulary lists (and may ask questions pertaining to content learned from previously covered vocabulary lists). This includes all the obscure and long nouns, as well as GENDERS of said nouns, and conjugated forms of the given adjectives. Make sure you've learned all the grammar-based content from each week's tutorials as well, because these vocabulary tests focus just as much on that as they do on knowing the assigned vocab lists inside out. A tip to help push your mark into the low H1 range: use the Learn function on the provided Quizlet lists and LEARN THE GENDERS OF EACH NOUN OFF BY HEART (the department uses a picture of a lion to denote masculine nouns, a ballerina to denote feminine nouns, and a drop of water to denote neuter nouns). If you can recall the genders for the vocabulary tests, that's 3-5 marks in the bag as soon as your pen hits the page, thanks to the "der-die-das Genderquiz" section that appears on each test. Make sure you're able to conjugate verbs, use the nominative and accusative cases and modify adjective endings appropriately, recall noun genders, form grammatically correct sentences and (later on) separate certain verbs and alter sentences/words for the various imperative forms. Why am I placing so much importance on these tests? Because if you can score well on these, you should be well-equipped to score well on the other assessments! Don't be disheartened if you underperform on the vocab tests, though; my tutorial group's average for these was a high P, and none of the tute groups (purportedly) scored above an H3 average for these. Also, expect to be given a lot of generous half and quarter marks where you think you've made a mess of things!

3 x Homework Assignments (5% each)

These assignments are your gateway to a free 13-15%, if you're careful and meticulous with correction and put in a little bit of effort. They take an hour or two to complete, but aren't particularly hard if you know what you're doing. Like the vocabulary tests, these cover a veritable smorgasbord of topics and a large amount of content, but focus primarily on grammar and writing, as opposed to vocabulary and noun usage. There are a large number of questions at the beginning of each homework sheet that only require a single word to answer, so if you're careful with your responses you'll probably be able to score very well on these. Towards the end there will be a short writing task, and be aware that FLUENCY IS WEIGHTED FAR MORE THAN ACCURATE GRAMMAR. Be INTERESTING, try and stretch your imagination and think of ways to spice up what is probably the most boring and robotically presented German passage your tutors are ever going to have to read, throw in a noun you haven't been taught if your limited vocabulary is failing you. These writing passages were most people's downfall because they wrote a short, safe grammatically sound passage. Also, if you get an ambiguous prompt, write about a bunch of things relating to any nouns in the prompt and you should get a good mark (speaking from experience).
Overall, these homework tasks are pretty easy to do well on, and you don't have much to worry about (I got 99/100, 59/60 and 55.5/60 and I promise I made more than one mistake on all of them).

2 x Listening Tests (5% each)

Ridiculously easy if you can grasp what the people speaking on the recorded tape are saying. Listen to the textbook CD conversations for a night or two and these will be a breeze. Each one has one somewhat tricky question, so pay attention and think about what the speakers are saying. Everyone seemed to do pretty well on these, and it's legitimately easy to score the full 10% if you're on the ball.

1 x Mid-Semester Test (15%)

Definitely easier than the final exam, but not exactly a walk in the park, especially if you're underprepared or don't remember what you've been taught. It tests everything you've been taught in all the tutes beforehand, including what's on the culture sheets (they can ask you anything from those sheets, but it's about 3% of the MST, so if you're pressed for time, ignore them). Try and complete every exercise from the first three chapters, and do some solid vocabulary revision, and you should be able to pull an H1 on the midsem. Importantly, get your sentence structures down pat - the sentence building on the MST was fairly tricky in some cases, and was also worth quite a lot. The written piece is daunting but fairly easy to score well in if you exhibit competency with the manipulation of the language (as opposed to showing off perfect grammar). This was by far my worst attempt at a written piece and I still did well on it. The MST also gets marked quite generously, so if you've attempted all the questions with some degree of understanding it's not going to be hard to H1. I managed a 62/80 and my MST was seriously covered with mistakes. Don't expect a full mark off for every little error you make (if that was the case I'd probably have gotten about 50%).

Exam! (50%)

I have one thing to say about this exam: RUDE. On first glance it appears quite simple, and they're not exactly asking you to write much, but it's HARD. Probably the most difficult thing I had to do all semester (vocab tests were easy in comparison, I just didn't study well for them at all), and my friends' thoughts echoed mine. A girl I met outside the REB after the exam, who'd gotten something like a 95 for the semester's assessment, was 100% confident she'd failed to get an H1 on the exam. I felt pretty demoralised after the exam as well, despite having a pretty good crack at everything they threw at me and revising my vocabulary and grammar like there was no tomorrow. The paper was really WEIRD, and I don't even know why. Please study hard for this exam if you have the time!
The exam had a number of sections, and was marked out of 100 (I don't think the staff were very lenient with their marking, either).
Tasks included English->German translations to complete a passage, writing a letter (quite difficult, actually), recalling some food nouns (I'd wager the category of nouns they ask for changes every year), lots of conjugations, answering accusative/nominative-based fill-in-the-blanks questions, personal pronoun recollection, passage analysis (T/F questions), manipulation of separable verbs and the conversational past, rewriting English sentences in the forms of certain imperatives (wir, du, ihr, and Sie-imperatives) and answering a menagerie of culture-based questions in German (!!! READ OVER ALL YOUR CULTURE SHEETS, SRSLY). Good luck, this assessment is NOT easy, even if you've studied extensively.  :)

Lectopia Enabled:  No lectures! The tutorials have an 80% attendance requirement, too, so don't expect to be skipping classes like you might for a lecture.

Past exams available:  No sample exams, no exam-oriented revision exercises (save for some random sheets that had nothing to do with the exam), no nothing.

Textbook Recommendation:  Begegnungen. Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Integriertes Kurs- und Arbeitsbuch.
Sprachniveau A1+. Anne Busch and Szilvia Szita. Schubert-Verlag: Leipzig.

This book is basically an all-German workbook, but it strangely works /extremely/ well as a textbook, particularly if you've paid attention in class and look up words you don't know. Use it as much as you can, it'll help immensely. (It goes without saying that the book is also 100% compulsory.)

Lecturer(s): None, but my tutor was Leonetta Leopardi. Very kind woman, and very helpful, but she'll leave you behind in the tutes if you don't pay attention. Also quite generous with marking if she can see that you understand what the question is asking and have some kind of idea what you should be doing. Don't do it on purpose, but if you're late and miss an in-class assessment, she'll probably arrange for you to sit it after the tutorial so you don't miss out on precious marks.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester One.

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)

Comments: German 1 was a very fast-paced but quite comprehensive introduction to the German language. Don't take this subject if you want an easy and laid-back breadth or Arts subject, but DO take it if you're interested in the language of German and area of Europe in which it is spoken, or feel that German could significantly aid your job prospects in the future (apparently useful for people in careers such as business, engineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, music composition/history/performance, literature, classical studies, European history, physics, mathematics and other such things). This course progresses QUICKLY, so be sure to stay somewhat on top of things. I felt that my tutor explained everything well, albeit briefly, and in such a way that the textbook acted as a perfect complement to the taught material. Lots of worksheets, dialogue sheets and textbook exercises were set in class or as homework for practice with the language (though be aware that there is NO oral examination in German 1 despite the speaking practice) and if you actually put the effort in, the following tutorial would usually make sense. Feedback was given on each assessment, so improving and fixing mistakes you had previously made was very easy to do. The only real downside to this subject was the sheer volume of vocabulary that is assumed knowledge and is not taught in class (usually). USE QUIZLET IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND THINGS AND DO WELL, SERIOUSLY. There are about 1200 core words to learn, and a few hundred more if you include those only found on worksheets and throughout the textbook chapters 1-5. Don't neglect the long or obscure words on the vocabulary lists, because they WILL pop up without prior warning and when you least expect them to. Also pay attention to the culture component of the course; 11% of the exam this year was based on culture, as well as a small component of the mid-semester test. Overall, this subject was well coordinated and well taught, but was no walk in the park with its frequent assessments, fast-paced delivery and large vocabulary load. If you stay on top of things, the semester assessments will reward you with good marks, and any problems you have can be easily resolved with the aid of the tutor during tutor-independent work time (during class or via email outside of class). If you're looking for an introduction to the powerful language of Germany and Austria (Switzerland doesn't really count, as you will eventually discover), this subject is definitely for you, but if you're looking for an easy H1, go take something like MULT10011 instead. Viel Glück und auf wiedersehen!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on July 11, 2013, 01:38:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: JAPN10001 Japanese 1A

Workload:  1 x 1hr lecture, 2 x 1.5 hr seminar (tutorial)

Assessment: 50% final exam, 15% Cultural Discovery Project, 2X 10% oral exam, 3 x 5% vocab/dictation tests spread evenly throughout semester

Lectopia Enabled: Yes for the lecture, good esp since lecturer Jun Ohashi speaks very softly .... :/

Past exams available:  None, exam outline provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese (used for Japanese 2 as well)

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Mark: H1

Comments:

Going into this subject with absolutely no prior knowledge of Japanese, I felt I was disadvantaged because everyone around me seemed like they had done Japanese in some form or another (High school, primary school etc). The lectures in my opinion, are pretty boring but the good part of Japanese 1 were the 2 seminars held each which which helped me with my confidence and made me step out of my comfort zone in terms of speaking in front a class and interacting with other people in a new language.

Don't expect to be "fluent" in Japanese after this subject LOL.... I'm so far from it....

At the start of each week you have a lecture where the content for the week is introduced. In each of the seminars, you are placed in a class of around 15-20 people.
Seminar 1 focuses on oral/speaking abilities while Seminar 2 focuses on writing/grammar.

The 3X5% tests were fairly basic to be honest. They were marked out of 30 and most people got around 25/30... So aim high cause they probably scale down the marks.
The 1st oral assessment we got was a partner assessment where you work together to produce a dialogue and act it out. This was a little controversial for me as my partner decided not to work with me and did not do anything, leaving me to write the dialogue myself and go into the assessment with insufficient practice.
2nd oral assessment was individual and I felt I had a much better understanding/grasp of what was required.
However on both occasions, I felt the department marked quite harshly for those who put the effort in and too leniently for those who obviously did little/no practice. The highest for both the assessments was around 8.3/10, and the median was around 7.6/10.
Moving onto the Cultural Project, I thought it was a bit peculiar and trivial... 15% is substantial for the overall mark but it was based off the 2nd oral assessment.

The exam was actually much more difficult than I expected it to be as some of the stuff which was examined I felt was not covered sufficiently in the lectures/seminars.

Despite me bitching about the inconsistent marking scheme, I really enjoyed this subject as I learnt the basics/foundations of Japanese language and also aspects of Japanese culture/traditions/norms. Hard work must be put into Japanese outside of class to do well as the pace is extremely fast, and sometimes not enough time is given between assessments.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tonychet2 on July 12, 2013, 01:54:45 am
Subject Code/Name: Calculus 1 https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2012/MAST10005]MAST10005

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour prac

Assessment:  80% end of semester exam, 20% assignments

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, about six

Textbook Recommendation:  Hass, Weir, Thomas, University Calculus Early Transcendentals 2nd edition, packaged with a differential equations supplement from Hass, Weir, Thomas Calculus, Pearson, 2012.  DO NOT BUY IT. you also must purchase the lecture slides - they are sufficient

Lecturer(s): ? will edit later

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 sem 1

Rating:  3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 50 PASS

Comments:

OKAY. If you tried your best got less than 40 in methods (I got 37) and didn't take specialist in VCE, then prepare your....

Anyway, having a free slot on timetable available for breadth, I thought to myself; what do I think I'm good at?  They say do what you're good at and enjoy, so being the fool I was, I thought I enjoyed methods from VCE and did fairly decent so I decided I would take up Calculus 1. I mean it's the easiest standard maths subject available in university, it can't be that bad right? BIG MISTAKE

The lectures are SUPER DRY. They work off lecture slides every lecture by going over questions and concepts one at a time. After the first 2 weeks the attendance went from full house to about 30%. I stayed up until about week 5 and 6 until I realised it was more productive by watching the slides on the lectopia whilst rewinding and pausing, the rate you are forced to learn is very fast and it is easy to dig yourself into a hole.

The exam was definitely not easy, the correct answers required a lot of steps and came out very messy.

Maths at university is definitely no bludge and only for those that are genuinely interested in maths or engineering, I put the same amount of effort across all my subjects and I kept finding myself having to look back and go over concepts again and again, and the worst part is that the  topics are not related to each other.

The textbook is not required or referred to at all - it is useless as they provide you a free book with a list of weekly questions covering each topic

If you're looking to do this because you're not sure what to do as a breadth and want to learn extra maths, stay well away unless you're maths skills are somewhat leet.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tonychet2 on July 12, 2013, 02:16:00 am
Subject Code/Name: Introductory Microneconomics ECON10004 https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/view/2013/ECON10004

Workload:  2x1hour lectures, 1x1hour tutorial

Assessment:  60% final exam, 10% attendance, 25% assignments (10% and 15%) and 5% mid sem test

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes the last 3-4 are very relevant

Textbook Recommendation:  I can't find the name as the LMS is down, but buy the textbook

Lecturer(s): Gareth James

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Sem 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Coming out of VCE with no prior commerce knowledge, this has been my favourite subject. The topics were great, and very interesting as the connection between the theory and applications to real world examples were quite obvious. The lecturer Gareth James was very engaging and enjoyable to listen to as he cracked many jokes (talked about why it is economically beneficial to have more sex etc. lol).

The tutorials were setup in a classroom-style with a tutor going through theories on the board, all you have to do is sit and listen and then do a couple of questions to consolidate your knowledge. T

Overall a great subject for commerce students as it is mandatory and anyone else who may be interested in learning a bit of basic economic theory

The course  followed the textbook and the textbook is quite engaging to read also. Introductory microeconomics was the only textbook all semester that I found enjoyable to read, so much so that I actually read all of it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: LeviLamp on July 13, 2013, 05:09:37 am
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003: Chemistry 1

Workload:  3 x 1 hr lectures, 1 x 1 hr tutorial, 6 x 3 hr practicals spread throughout the semester, and quite a lot of hours of independent study ;) (DO THE ZUMDAHL QUESTIONS U GAIZ)

Tutorials

Sonja Horvat is great (and I mean great, what a wonderful woman), but some other tutors are purportedly not good at all. I still think rocking up to tutes is a good idea, especially if you've attempted the tute questions prior.

Assessment:  6 x 3 hr practicals (20%), 1 x online MST (5%), 1 x ~final exam~ (75%)

Pracs! (3.33% apiece)

The chemistry pracs are stressful, and if you're bad at managing time it's very possible that you're going to underperform. Preliminary preparation is an extremely good idea; complete as many of the prac questions/reports as possible BEFORE you enter the labs and make sure you've properly read all the ChemCAL prelabs thoroughly. Try not to get too stressed out during the pracs, though, or you may end up in a pickle that could cost you lots of marks, such as dropping a volumetric flask or incorrectly using the Buchner funnel three times in a row. Demonstrators mark the pracs very unevenly and also vary immensely in the way they brief the prac groups and assist students throughout the pracs. My demonstrator was Dayna, and, while she was willing to help, she was a little scary and marked the pracs quite harshly. My friend had an extremely nice demonstrator who marked pracs extraordinarily generously and she got near to full marks for all her pracs, even when they contained many mistakes. Be especially prepared for pracs 4 and 5; they're time-intensive and involve a LOT of work. Try to be as accurate on prac 4 as you possibly can be, because almost all your marks come from calculations, accurate graphs and data manipulation. For prac 1, also try and wrap your head around error calculations BEFORE you do the prac; this was by far the easiest prac, but the mark I received was my lowest of the semester (14/20) because I had no idea how to do the error calculations that were worth 4 marks (?). Also, DON'T BE CLUMSY. Seriously, if you knock things over or spill them, you could be in trouble, assessment-wise AND safety-wise. If you see a large yellow stain on the floor in one of the corners of the lab, that was me dropping my volumetric flask full of iodide stock solution (and thankfully catching it before it completely emptied, hit the floor and smashed). I'm not really sure what else to say about the pracs because everybody's experiences differed enormously, but be as prepared for them as possible and make sure to work efficiently and meticulously throughout. Also make absolutely sure to wear closed shoes and don't remove your goggles at any point during the pracs, lest your demonstrator gets mad. If you don't wear appropriate clothes, you'll be refused entry to the lab, so BRING YOUR GOGGLES AND LAB COAT AND DON'T WEAR SANDALS. For all that scare talk, the pracs shouldn't be too hard to get an H1 average in if you're on top of things. I had a pretty mean demonstrator, marks-wise, and despite two big screw-ups and constant ruination of the laboratory and my glassware I managed to pull an 83% final average. Most people should be able to average a 15-18/20 for the pracs with some input of effort, but every mark helps buffer your score for the final exam, so keep that in mind!

Mid-Semester Test! (5%)

This is a short (30 minute) online test that covers the organic chemistry component of the Chemistry 1 course, and it's a good excuse to revise and grapple with the concepts covered during the first 4 weeks of semester. Since it's taken at home, you have full access to your notes and textbooks, but it pays to have done prior revision if you want to grab those last couple of marks. Make sure you're confident with stereochemistry and NMR/IR/mass spectrometry before you start the test. I was really, really underprepared for the MST and still managed to score 10/12, so don't be too worried about it, especially since it's only worth 5%, but do put the effort into your revision, because you'll need to know the same things for the final exam, which is worth a terrifyingly large amount of marks.

Big, Scary Exam! (/75%/)

This exam is very fair, and the only key to doing well is to know everything that the lecturers expect you to know. It's all in their notes, really, minus spectrometry/spectroscopy (just spend a little while reading McMurry, doing the syllabus tests on ChemCAL, looking at some old Year 12 notes and/or finding some things to read online and you'll be fine), so if you've done all the set questions and tackled a few past exams, you'll be in good stead for a decent mark on the exam. Pace yourself and avoid nerves, because there are no tricks, only a few questions that require some lateral thinking, so there's nothing to concern yourself with. If you know your shit, you'll be fine. If you don't know your shit, you won't be fine. It's really that simple. DO learn all the little details the lecturers cover for organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry, but try and single out the big concepts/important equations for gas laws/thermodynamics, and do the set questions on these topics to help yourself figure out which things are actually important. I don't really have any more advice to give; provided you've put in a good chunk of time revising for this exam, you're probably not going to be pushed for time or psyched out by the difficult questions. I left knowing exactly where I'd made some of my errors and I was still fairly confident I had a lot of room for further mistakes before my grade dipped below an H1. Revise, revise, revise and start early (I dedicated 9 days to chemistry and a further 2 to both chemistry and biology) and this exam is seriously not going to be that bad. More importantly, try and pace yourself throughout the semester, or try to start catching up no later than Week 9/10.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Things Mark writes down are NOT on the Lectopia recordings, so please make the effort to attend all of his lectures. You can probably rely on Lectopia for Uta and Gus if you really want to.

Past exams available:  Yes, they date back to the early 2000s, but the department recommends not completing past exams published prior to 2004-ish due to changed content. Also, solutions are only provided for three/four of the exams. The previous year's exam will also be put up on the LMS in Wiki format for students to use as a study material.

Textbook Recommendation:  S S Zumdahl and D J DeCoste Chemical Principles 7th Ed, Cengage Learning, 2013. AND J McMurry, Organic Chemistry 8th Ed, Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning 2012. A laboratory manual and tutorial book are also available for purchase at the Co-op, and you'll need to buy some safety goggles and a lab coat, as well as a lab book if you like, from one of the shops around campus.

I strongly recommend purchasing both textbooks, particularly as a whole slew of them are available at (often drastically) discounted prices via Textbook Exchange. Even if you can't find a single potential seller (highly unlikely), DO buy these books from the Co-op Bookstore. Zumdahl in particular is extraordinarily useful, as the lecturers set questions pertinent to their course content from the book (aside from Mark, who provides a small number of questions in the tutorial book to complement the ChemCAL tutes/test and the tutorial questions). McMurry is probably a good thing to have around when you're stuck on stereochemistry or need to bone up on NMR/IR/mass spectroscopy, and it's used in later years as well (if you decide to continue chemistry), so it can't really hurt to buy it. There are no set questions for McMurry, and no solutions (unless you buy the overpriced solutions manual or manage to find a copy online), so it's best not to rely on it for problems unless you've really got some time to kill. It goes without saying that the lab manual is necessary; you need to pass 4/6 pracs to pass the subject, the pracs comprise a significant 20% of your final mark, and to pass the pracs you're going to need the manual and the ChemCAL slips inside. The tutorial book is also useful as it contains a number of practice questions, some notes and question sets/lists for all the content in the course, minus NMR/IR/mass spectrometry.


Lecturer(s): Mark Rizzacasa, Uta Wille, Angus "Gus" Gray-Weale, Brendan "Tweedledum" Abrahams (totally didn't make the last one up)

Mark

Mark is the lecturer for the entirety of organic chemistry, and despite his slow pace, he's very thorough and quite interesting to listen to. Make sure to pay careful attention to his final lecture if you've forcibly repressed all of your VCE Chemistry memories like I did, because there are no set questions or provided for IR or NMR spectroscopy or mass spectrometry, and you'll need to know how to solve problems related to these techniques on the exam. Finding extra resources/reading McMurry is a GOOD IDEA. Apart from this little issue with the course, Mark's lectures are all handled with aplomb and are easy to follow, so you should be good to go if you pay attention to his worked problems, verbal utterances and all the supplementary work provided by the chemistry department.

Uta

I honestly feel like Uta could have done a much better job of teaching gas laws and thermodynamics (the topics that she covers, albeit only part of thermodynamics), and she could have made it a lot simpler than she did. Listening to her ramble on with her wall of confusing notes up on the screen, I felt like I was never going to grasp thermodynamics. What she presents is overcomplicated and tangled up, but if you DO manage to understand all her content after some reading, you'll be in an EXTREMELY good position for the exam. Hint: like she always stresses, most important to consider: UNITS UNITS UNITS! If you're dragging yourself out of bed for the morning Chemistry stream, maybe sleep in and use Uta's notes + Lectopia to get through her part of the course. Zumdahl questions will be extremely helpful, if you have the textbook. (All that said, she IS a fairly amusing person in her own right, so don't expect to hate her or anything.)

Gus

Gus covers a bunch of thermodynamical concepts, focusing mainly on entropy. He tries his best to make it comprehensible to a bunch of clueless first-year chemistry students, but I have to say his "arrow of time" video didn't really help much. Do try and understand as much of his lectures as possible, even though he's forced to take the "just accept that it works for now because I said so" approach to teaching his content, and then revise/do questions from the textbook/tutorial book at home, and really make sure to read his notes. Scan them for key points; it's likely he'll throw a bunch of concept-based questions onto the exam, which are free marks if you remember what he's written down and impossible to reason through if you haven't read the lecture notes at all. Overall, a decent lecturer who sets pretty forgiving questions and does his best to step you through entropy, but ultimately fails because it's not really something you can just "get".

Brendan-senpai  ;)

Brendan Abrahams covers the final component of the Chemistry 1 course (a number of minor topics towards the end as well as a large amount of material relating to VSEPR, covalent bonding, ionic structure and acid-base chemistry), and he is the sweetest, most helpful lecturer, explaining everything with aplomb and in an extremely clear manner. It's easy to tell he has a qualification in education as well as science (he actually does) due to the way he approaches his content delivery; it's clear and concise, though some people felt quite patronised by the way he taught his topics. His lecture notes are also fantastically clear and, in combination with the textbook questions he sets, make learning what he covers not overly difficult. He also reminds me of Tweedledee/Tweedledum from Alice in Wonderland and that gives him extra brownie points, OK.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating: 5 out of 5!

Your Mark/Grade: 86 (a very unexpected H1)

Comments: Chemistry 1 is a content-dense introduction to a wide variety of chemical concepts that expands on certain parts of VCE Chemistry and introduces a number of new concepts that follow on logically from those you've already studied in the past. That said, if you, like me, forcibly screened all VCE content from your brain after your final exams, you're not really at much of a disadvantage if you put in the time and effort. Practicals are intense but not too horrible, tutorials can be great depending on your tutor, and there are lots of opportunities to use the learning centre throughout the semester if you have any questions for tutors or even lecturers regarding CHEM10003. This subject really is very well run and there are lots of resources at your disposal if you're motivated enough to utilise them. Topics covered include organic chemistry, thermodynamics and inorganic chemistry.

Organic Chemistry

You cover sigma- and pi-bonds, hybridisation, theory of organic molecules, bond lengths/angles, steric/torsional strain, Newman projections, cyclohexane alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, cyclic hydrocarbons, aromatics and conjugation/delocalisation, cyclohexane and the ring flip, axial and equatorial positions, functional groups, stereochemistry (chirality and cis-trans isomerism especially, as well as some things on meso-compounds and enantiomers), a little on geometric isomers and other minor things that should be fairly easy to pick up on, and then (very briefly, but by no means least importantly) NMR, IR and mass spectrometry, which are analytical techniques commonly used in organic chemistry for molecule identification and analysis. Mark covers all these concepts with great competence, but stereochemistry WILL confuse you at first. Go home and try to wrap your head around visualising molecules in three dimensions. It'll take a while, but once you get it, it sticks and questions/problems subsequently become quite easy to solve! Note that bond angles/lengths and IR absorption bands are NOT provided in the examination, so you do need to memorise those given.

Gas Laws and Thermodynamics

You cover gas laws and equations and the kinetic theory of matter, ideal gas behaviours, the Van der Waals equation, intermolecular forces, Hess' Law, enthalpy, work, heat, non-state and state functions, energy levels, standard enthalpies of formation, calorimetry and a bunch of other things I can't be bothered remembering. In any case, thermo is best understood by actually analysing the content and doing the questions. Learn the mean free path, average kinetic energy, heat, work, internal energy, enthalpy (delta H= deltaU + delta(PV), NOT PdeltaV, as it depends on the given conditions; this is IMPORTANT if you want to avoid mistakes), heat related to heat capacity and standard enthalpy equations, and don't worry about the rest. Do get really good at manipulating units and provided data, and make sure you're able to logically work through things by understanding what the equations are saying. Lots of questions rely on you being able to analyse the situation. Standard enthalpy conditions, unit conversions and hidden units are common trip-ups for this part of the course and can make it very easy to get a question wrong or completely fail to understand a question (the Mg question on the exam was a classic example, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't get it after all the practice I did).

More Thermodynamics inc. Equilibrium and Entropy

Probably the hardest part of the course. I'm not entirely sure WHAT we covered; it all sort of makes sense in my brain when I look at the content and my notes, but I don't really know how to categorise this stuff. Try to get past the whole "just accept it works b/c first year" mentality you're surrounded by and focus on understanding what you're actually presented with. It's not a whole lot, but it's quite important to have a vague understanding of the big ideas of Gus' lectures as well as the equations and calculations. Equilibrium questions are quite easy, but for everything else that isn't concept-based you'll want to be comfortable with unit conversions, equation manipulation and all that jazz. There are two equations you can only learn if you either pay REALLY close attention to the notes or actually do the Zumdahl questions. I /strongly/ recommend doing the Zumdahl questions!

Inorganic Chemistry

You cover a whole bunch of acid-base stuff (which can be quite tricky, though there are lots of methods for working efficiently through the problems that I'll leave you to hopefully discover), then a whole bunch of VSEPR, molecular orbital theory and hybridisation, and covalent bonding and polarity/dispersion forces, ionic and metallic structure (not difficult to comprehend at all, but many people find it to be at first glance), general chemistry and trends of the periodic table and its substituent elements and a whole bunch of minor, seemingly arbitrary concepts in between. My advice for this section of the course is to learn everything presented in the lecture slides, attend lectures and complete all set questions and ChemCAL exercises. Don't neglect the miscellany of facts in the final two lectures, because they're IMPORTANT! You should be fine for all this if you revise thoroughly.

Chemistry 1 is a fantastically run and very broad subject that is useful for an enormous range of pathways. While you'll find yourself "forgetting" a lot of the thermodynamics equations and specific details from the course after completing the subject, the knowledge you've gained is somewhere in the back of your head, and if you can bring it back out it's surprising how often little segments of the course can aid you in other areas of study (I found it helpful for BIOL10004 and even once in MAST10005, even though I was studying them concurrently). Strongly recommended for ALL life science majors and earth sciences, essential for chemistry-based majors, chemical engineering and some life science majors and probably also a good complement to physics and statistics majors, this course is not easy, but the knowledge base is extremely useful and is excellently taught, so if you have a free space in your timetable or know your major requires or is made easier by taking chemistry subjects, then CHEM10003 is a must.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on July 16, 2013, 04:55:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

Workload:  1x2hr lecture, 1x1hr tute.

Assessment: Online MCQ tests which are scaled by tute participation (10%), group assignment (20%), 3hr eoy exam (70%). Exam is a hurdle – min 50% pass.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, but sometimes the lecturer disables it to share exam tips, work through old problems, etc (not often).

Past exams available:  Yes, one (as it is a revised subject as of 2012 sem 2).

Textbook Recommendation:  E-book version of Accounting: Business Reporting for Decision Making, 4th Edition by Birt et al, 2012. Not strictly needed. More on this in comments.

Lecturer(s): Michael Davern (intro to acct), Matt Dyki (financial acct), Michelle Hogan (managerial acct).

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments:
Note: I haven’t taken VCE accounting before, so my opinion might be different from those who have done so.

From what I’ve heard, if you've taken VCE accounting prior, there are some similar aspects and some different aspects, the most different being lots and lots of writing. You focus not on the calculations and making the reports, but more on the theory and interpreting results and reports which I think was the overall purpose of the subject in the first place (re: subject objectives in the handbook). However, I didn’t feel this was the case as the exam contained some heavily calculation-based questions (in managerial acct) which was surprising considering we hardly touched on the calculation-side in tutes… Generally you'll find the sorts of questions in tutes on the exam, so going back through these before exams is a good idea.

I feel that it’s necessary to point out that this was the subject I was worrying over the entire semester. Part of the reason why is because I haven’t taken accounting before, but also because I felt I was constantly behind in the lectures, often having no idea what was happening, even though I devoted so much time to ARA. Maybe I don’t study effectively, but the “required” readings were stale and way too long - I would be discouraged to even start; thinking of the sheer amount of time it would take. I’m even inclined to say that they didn’t really help with my understanding of the subject because some of the explanations were way too advanced and written with a purpose that wasn’t to educate effectively. I stole my friend’s VCE accounting unit 1/2 book and found the explanations much more concise and appropriate (for me, anyway). This said, you’d probably be better off not buying the expensive book if you’ve done accounting before.

I did get a bit confused on whether or not ARA is heavily memory based - the IQ tests certainly suggested that lots should be memorised (especially formal definitions of terms), however this wasn’t emphasised in the tutorials, so I was inclined to just search for the answer in the textbook instead of truly trying to test myself on how much I knew. In retrospect; it really was a waste of time worrying over these tests, since they played only a minor role with the understanding of the subject itself. If you think you’re up to par, use them only to test your knowledge, otherwise, don’t spend too much time on them.

I did say that I often had trouble understanding the lectures, but that was more my issue than the lecturers. They were generally well set out, albeit boring, but I felt they were much better absorbed when attended in person compared to lectopia’d. We didn’t really have Michael Davern enough to let me comment on him, but Matt Dyki was good in that his strict attitude made you concentrate. Michelle Hogan did a relatively good job in making managerial accounting interesting, my only complaints being the lecture demonstration on how to calculate budgets, which would’ve been better in a tute, and her poor control of the class, ie. People started talking over her and she couldn’t stop them.

The last lecture was a revision lecture which went through each set of lecture objectives and pointed out the main points. I started panicking because there were some concepts I had totally forgotten about, so my idea of exam prep was to go through and type a paragraph for each lecture objective. Doing so showed that the important concepts came up more than once, and these were often tested upon in the exam. Hence, going through the lecture objectives and seeing if you understand each is a good idea for exam prep.

All in all, an average subject. It does well in that it teaches you about the subjectivity in accounting but fails in that too much is assumed knowledge. However, if you find yourself totally lost, try going to consultations, which Matt Dyki strongly suggests. Often you’ll find yourself a one-on-one tutoring session, where the tutor can really pinpoint your weaknesses. Matt Dyki also does these, and I’ve heard that he is really friendly and helpful. There’s also the online tutor, where questions are really prompted answered, so you can grab some help there too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on July 26, 2013, 01:30:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: ABPL20034 Urban History

Workload: 2 x 1 Hour Lectures, 1 x 1 Hour Tute (per week)

Assessment: 400 word assignment (10%), 1000 word blog post (20%), 2000 word essay (30%) (due final week), Final 2-hour exam (30%), Class attendance (5%) and participation (5%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, not given but on library website

Textbook Recommendation: None, just a subject reader

Lecturer(s): David Nichols

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Sem 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: If you're interested in cities (and you should be), this well-taught subject gives a pretty good overview of how they came to be and illustrates some of the schools of though surrounding their design.

Comments: This subject gives a somewhat brief yet wide-ranging overview of trends in urban design and planning. It focuses on how both technological advances and social issues influence the shape of a city. Among the topics looked at are ancient cities, medieval cities, cities of the industrial revolution, death and disease in cites, urban renewal, gentrification and surbanisation, the rise of town planning and the garden city movement, and globalisation.

David is quite a good lecturer. He's experienced in the field, it open to questions, but sometimes can get off on tangents and rarely gets through his entire slides within the hour. David himself says the lectures are not compulsory; the reading the essence of the subject, but I found it quite the opposite. Readings tend to be summerised and expanding upon within the lectures.

On a whole the content is quite interesting, but a limited understanding is really all that is required. The assessment is quite easy. The blog post is on one specific week of readings, the final essay gives you over 10 topics to choose from, and the exam includes 2 essays, one being "seen," where you are given the topics in advance, the other being unseen but again has a wide range of topics to choose from.

So, if you know about 2 weeks of material very well, and the rest just a little bit, you will most likely do just as well as if you knew the whole course very well.

Tutes are limited to discussing the week's readings. You can get away with skimming over them for the most part, but some are interesting a worth a read. As long as you try to bring something up at least once each tute, you'll likely get the 5% for participation, and there is another 5% for just turning up. The tutes can be a bit labourious, but they are worth turning up to for both the 5% and they do give you a better understanding of the material.

A tip for the final essay: Use the library. The markers are looking for your ability to research independently and tie themes of the subject together in relation to the subject via this process. The architecture library has a plethora of relevant books for whatever topic you choose. From speaking to others in the subject, it seemed those who had the longest reference lists generally got the best marks.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on July 26, 2013, 03:46:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006 Chemistry for Biomedicine

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial, 1 x 3 hour practical (practicals are not weekly, 6 per semester)

Assessment:  3 hour written exam 75%, Online Mid Semester Test 5%, Practical Work 20%, 3 x ILT (hurdle requirement)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture (the lecturers also tend to use the document camera for problems as well!)

Past exams available:  Four past exams. Three with brief solutions. Last year's we had to post our own solutions to an exam wiki

Textbook Recommendation:  Organic Chemistry (McMurray), Chemical Principals (Zumdahl). Unless you're suffering from insomnia, save your money.

Lecturer(s): Craig Hutton, Spencer Williams, Brendan Abrahams, Brendan McFadyen

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2013

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 65 H3

Comments: This subject ought to have a motto, You love Chemistry? Yeah we'll see about that. Particularly for your first semester at Uni, Chemistry for Biomedicine was tough. The concepts are fairly easy to tackle. The subject, at first, seems like the natural extension from your VCE of studies. Thus, you are lulled into a false sense of security that lasts until the MST. You are expected to know everything. This is a very important thing to remember with this subject. Every little detail can pop up on the exam, whether it is bond angles/lengths, or the number of iron atoms in a ferritin molecule (I'm not even sure if that makes sense?)...you are expected to know it.

Practicals: These are pretty frustrating at times. There's a particular practical (I think it was number five) that is nigh impossible to finish in time, so that causes a hell of a lot of problems. Some of them are quite good, some are quite bad. It's a bit of a mix! Unfortunately, how you enjoy practicals tends to be based upon your demonstrator. Some of the demonstrators are absolutely fantastic (like mine Kris), though others are completely unwilling to help or provide any guidance whatsoever. The practicals form a part of assessment and are a hurdle requirement, so don't miss them. Some of them do not relate at all to the lecture content, so it is really important to do the preparation. You won't be pulled up for bringing in some of your report already written, so make sure you get a bit of a head start on that. You don't want to spend your time in the prac writing your reports. Follow the instructions about report writing carefully, and also pay particular attention to the marking schemes at the back. Your demonstrators should give you some idea about how they'd like the report to be written, though it is fair to say this was probably the greatest source of frustration for everyone—Merinda was particularly painful for this! The pracs are easy marks with the right preparation. They also don't seem to depend on how well you understand the lecture content either (as my prac results seem to indicate!)

ILTs: They are a hurdle requirement, though it is really, really important that you do them. Zumdahl's textbook is the most useful for these, or the interwebs will have lots of stuff to teach you how to do the stuff on the ILTs. Frankly, they are a gigantic pain in the arse. They do, however, contain a stack of examinable content (presumably what the lecturers deemed necessary to know but couldn't fit in the lectures) so make sure you do them properly. There are some ripper notes that explain all the ILT content floating around students somewhere, so make sure to get onto those if you can. I'm guessing they were authored by god they're that good.

Lectures: There's not really a lot to say about the Chem lectures. All of the four lecturers were pretty capable of teaching. Comparing to other subjects, they were actually all pretty good. Brendan was a stand out. He really made an effort to explain concepts and to actually teach. It's quite sad actually that his area is probably the least involved—that is, it's just heaps of rote learning. Spencer was a pill, though some people did like him. I can't say that he was a particularly bad lecturer, he was just overly pompous at times and had the annoying habit of trying to make his language as syntactically complex as possible (he also loved the word intuitively, which I presume was his nice way of saying OH MY GOD THIS IS SO OBVIOUS...it wasn't). David was fun and seemed like a nice guy. He had a bit of a grandpa quality, but I think that endeared him to most people. Personally, I found his lectures the easiest, so I didn't have any troubles with him. Though, there is a hell of a lot of rote in his cycles stuff (yes you do have to remember all the stages and the properties of all the chemicals). He also proves to everyone that, no, indeed we had no idea how to draw a Lewis Structure. If you're like me, you'll probably never know. Craig's not bad. Though his first lecture was just cruel, and I think that left a sour taste in most people's mouths. He redeemed himself a bit with his German accent though (you'll see). Essentially, you need to know all of the lecture content, so do make sure to go—they are actually well attended.

Tutorials: Go to these. The tutors are fantastic, everything is well organised and you will learn something.

The Bottom Line: as I hope you've noticed by now, I really didn't do all that well at Chemistry. I can safely say that this subject has completely turned me off Chemistry. Having said that, I do not despise it for doing so. It is a very strong example of how certain areas of study can change from VCE to university. There is a very strong emphasis on really knowing the facts. There's no need for a reference when it's in your head seems to be the way with a lot of things. If you're like me (and there are a lot sadly), you'll feel on top of things, until you sit down for assessment. You can feel as though you've done well, answered all the questions correctly and be really proud of that, then have the shock of your life when you've nearly failed that assessment. This is very much the way with it. Personally, I was too lazy. I didn't have the commitment or the interest to do the amount of work that you need to do for success in this subject. Some people love this subject, the other half are left absolutely defeated by it. It's certainly passable, but you'll be glad you're rid of it by the end—unless you're that brilliant percentage who managed to kick arse! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on July 29, 2013, 01:42:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics 

Workload:  two 1hr lectures, one 1hr tute

Assessment:  MC quiz, two assignments worth 25% together, exam 60%, tute participation 10%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, screen capt included

Past exams available: Plentiful, past exams up to 2005ish

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Microeconomics, okay but I don't think you need this textbook, the lecture slides are probably better. Borland case studies book is a good read, but I never opened it for the semester.

Lecturer(s): Gareth James.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, S1

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

There are already many reviews posted for intro micro, so I'll just shed some light on some aspects that I feel were important during my semester.

Go to tutorials. The 10% is really a free 10% that everyone should get. You might not have to go to some lectures (there are some lectures that can be listened to at 2x the speed at home) but you should go to all the tutorials. If you've got a good grasp of how everything works in tutorials, it's really hard not to do well in the subject

Don't buy the book unless you feel like you need the extra grounding and background knowledge going into microeconomics from a non-commerce background. I just think Gareth's lecture notes provide a very concise and reliable reference point from day 1 of the course.

Make sure you pay attention in the first few weeks, because demand and supply graphs pave the foundation for understanding of the course. The concept of 'marginal benefits' and such is also crucial, the entire semester revolves around cost benefit analysis, and understanding of the demand and supply graphs.

As for pink/blue sheets provided after the tutorials. I strongly suggest that you go over ALL the questions on the pink sheet, because a grasp of the pink sheets alone is sufficient to get a low H1. Blue sheets are less essential, so I suggest you only do the questions that particularly stick out and boggle you, because the rest is pretty elementary with regards to difficulty.

Exam revision should predominately be revision of the pink sheets and not the lecture notes! I made the mistake of spending most of my time solidifying knowledge learnt from the lecture notes, but the lecture notes are more 'theory-based'. Once you nail the theory and understand all of the theory, practical work should make the bulk of your study, because the exam doesn't really demand rote memorization of 'what is market structure' etc.

Do the practice exams! There are a lot of similar and recycled question that pop up on every exam, this is probably because there is only so much they can ask for the course (eg. VC vs FC, price discrim etc).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on July 31, 2013, 10:20:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10005 Quantitative Methods 1

Workload:  2x1hr lecture, 1x1hr tute.

Assessment: 3xgroup assignment (3x10%=%30), 2hr eoy exam (70%). If you fail to get 50% pass on the exam, your overall mark will be no higher than 50.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes.

Past exams available:  Yes, around five.

Textbook Recommendation: Business Statistics Fifth Edition, by E. A. Selvanathan, S. Selvanathan and G. Keller (published by Cengage Learning Australia, 2011). Not needed, only used for one question in an assignment.

Lecturer(s): Mike Pottenger, Chris Skeels.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: QM is your standard statistics subject. Prior knowledge from methods and further will help, but isn’t necessary for achieving a high score, because a lot of it is new material.

Lectures will feature mostly Mike, but occasionally Chris. Mike is a relatively young lecturer, but is really interesting and fun to listen to. He stresses that he is not a statistician, and highlights the importance of knowing statistics simply because it can be applied everywhere. He is also the online tutor, and answers questions very very promptly. Chris, on the other hand, is your standard lecturer who will drill the more mathematical topics into you, which I must admit was quite boring, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people falling asleep in the theatre, however its good that he doesn’t base everything off the lecture slides and makes you read them yourself, since some things were self-explanatory.

Content-wise, I think this subject was very well structured. My friends at Monash asked me how I was going for linear regression at the start of the semester and I had no idea what they were talking about. We did that topic at the end of the semester, where it tied in well with what we had learnt throughout. Everything was interconnected, with the normal distribution being the centre. In theory, what you learn is just using the normal distribution and modifying it to fit it into different situations. Check out the subject page for more info – technically you aren’t asked to draw a normal distribution, but doing those mini sketches really helps when you’re trying to solve questions, and theory is important. In our exam, I reckon about 30-40% was theory and explaining why and how the various statistics worked.

Don’t expect to score too well on assignments. They’re made to challenge you. Another thing to note about these assignments is that they’re done in groups of up to 4 people FROM YOUR TUTORIAL. This means that effectively you can do them by yourself, but of course spreading the work out is beneficial, and I doubt you’d be able to complete them all by yourself, since the content is relatively advanced. Some of the questions were even harder than the ones on the exam, imo. 

As you might’ve noticed, there are no tutorial marks so you can practically wag them all, but wow can I just say, they help a lot (given that you have a good tutor). Listening to lectures is one thing, but actually sitting down and doing the pre-tute (blue sheet) questions and in-tute (pink) questions really solidifies the content. Even so, I know quite a few people, myself included, who got totally lost in this subject. Consults really help in this situation, and I wish I went to one earlier!

The only time I can say I fully understood the content was during SWOTVAC. My exam revision consisted of going through the pink and blue sheets, which had some really challenging questions, and doing all of the past exams, which had comprehensive solutions and really helped my understanding. In the end, there were some questions which popped up again and again, so I was confident I was ready for the exam. A tip: READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY and make sure you understand what its asking! I know I’m not the only one who got confused just by reading the question, and had to reread it more than thrice.

Throughout the semester, I thought I didn’t understand this subject at all, but it was more an issue of not seeing the links. As my tutor kept reiterating, QM always goes back to the main concepts. Don’t try to overcomplicate things. Don’t panic. You’ve definitely seen this question before, because in some ways, they all just slightly modified versions of a standard question. All in all, a subject that is easy and straightforward if you do a lot of self-study. Taking the time each week to do all the questions and actually ascertain that you understand the content will definitely get you a great score.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on August 01, 2013, 04:03:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10005 Quantitative Methods 1

Workload:  two 1 hr lectures, one 1hr optional tute

Assessment: three group assignments worth 30% in total, 70% semi-hurdle exam (you have to get above 50% on the exam to get above a P, hard to explain but not really a hurdle

Lectopia Enabled:  no screen cap, audio rec

Past exams available:  Plentiful, from the inception of the revised subject, and even past exams before the current study design were annotated to better reflect current subject content

Textbook Recommendation:  Bus. stats, 5th ed. Read it for the first week, but didn't use it at all later. I'd advise anyone to keep this text even if you didn't use it because you'll need it in qm2, if you're continuing next yr.

Lecturer(s): Chris Skeels and Mike Pottenger

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, S1

Rating: 5 out of 5

Comments:

Coming from a very very weak maths background (too much maplestory in my teen years) and a methods score that is quite embarassing, initially I was petrified of QM at the beginning of the semester. Having just scraped the pre-req entry, I thought I was doomed to fail QM, after all, I thought it was another semester of math which I was terrible at in high school. Hearing that QM has a 30% fail rate (not sure if this is actually accurate or not) just added fuel to the fire.

So I slept in for lectures, wagged tutes until swotvac and I realised, 'hey if I fail this i'm gonna waste another semester doing something I hate'. However, it was during swotvac, though the hours and hours of catching up on missed lecture recordings that I discovered what a gem this subject actually was.

QM is how a first-subject should be done. The lectures and lecture notes synthetise together in a fashion that is not only refreshing, but also engaging. Ultimately, it creates an excellent foundation for further study in economics and other commerce paths.

Lectures included interesting case studies such as the price elasticity of demand in the heroin market, which I found were quite effective in not only arousing interest for a lecture theatre, but ironing in a difficult concept such as a regression analysis that is difficult to comprehend at first.

Mike Pottenger offers a fresh approach to previously dry material that really gets you to think and most of all, appreciate what you're working with.

Skeels is less engaging and such, but nevertheless is respectably effective in delivery of crucial concepts. If you put in the time to not oogle and fiddle the chick next to you in a lecture, his lectures are clear and concise, and really hit hard to solidify a concept come exam time.

Creating confidence intervals and regression analysis may sound challenging and foreign at first, but are covered well throughout the pace of the semester. I found that there was just the right mix of difficulty and quantity of subject matter, QM wasn't a subject where you were thrown an infinite amount of simple plug-in formulas to repeat, it was a subject that demanded appreciation and devoted analysis.

I can't really make a comment on tutorials because I only ever probably went to 3, but what was great was that every single question that was written on both the pink and blue sheets had a very comprehensive, and well-thought through solution written to supplement your own study.

Assignments were generally okay (however I got 'carried' by my group on all three of them, thanks guys), and were exceptional in offering an 'extension' to previous concepts and such, come exam time.

The exam is fair, it is written so that most of the drop-kicks like me are allowed to pass, and hard enough for the brighter ones to compete for a H1.

I really owe my passing of this subject this semester to the dedicated support and resource network that Skeels and Pottenger have cemented. If you go have a read on subjectreviews.com, you'll see a review that says:

"Studying for this subject seems more like a privilege than a chore, the subject matter should be adapted into a cure for cancer it's so amazing. I think if everyone in the world were to take this subject, we would finally attain world peace."

QM is that good. I just wish I studied a bit more before swotvac..... :P
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on October 31, 2013, 10:29:43 am
Subject Code/Name: Engineering Systems Design 2 

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures and 1 x three hour workshop per week

Assessment:  Weekly online assessment (10%) in the form of quizzes and a Q&A forum called PeerWise, weekly team-based projects and assignments (30% in total: some in-class quizzes, 10 x 2% group assignments), and 1 3-hour end of semester examination (60%). Students must pass the end of semester examination to pass the subject

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, about 4, but the structure of the exam had changed recently.

Textbook Recommendation:  I purchased the customised ENGR10003 textbook compiled by the coordinator Gavin Buskes, but I didn't really use it much except to practise Mechanics problems.

Lecturer(s): 
Digital Systems: Gavin Buskes.
Programming: Rao Kotagiri
Mechanics: Andrew Ooi

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4-4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBC

Comments:
Even though there are a few reviews already for ESD2 I thought I'd add another.
ESD2 as you probably know by now is broken up into 3 parts, each with completely equal weighting in the assessment.  I'll break the review down into 3 parts, too.
It should be noted that I have never had any exposure to any of these three modules before (not even Physics, for Mechanics) - and I didn't take ESD1 either.

DIGITAL SYSTEMS:
Logic circuits, gates, boolean algebra, truth tables, Karnaugh maps, analog/digital conversion principles.  This stuff was surprisingly awesome and Gavin is a fantastic lecturer (IMO the best of the three by far).  Gavin is energetic, explains things clearly, and does problems on the projector screen for you instead of just putting up slides so you can see the thought processes behind it.  I found logic really interesting and I got really absorbed in the assignments trying to find the most efficient solutions.

PROGRAMMING:
In this module we learn how to use a programming platform called Matlab.  Never have I experienced a module so badly lectured, which is why so many students complain about this section and end up leaving the course not knowing a stitch about Matlab.  I had read reviews prior and had a feeling we were in for some terrible teaching so instead I threw myself at the assignments and the in-class Workshops so that I could get my head around programming.  It worked, the assignments were fun and challenging, and I ended up loving programming, it was just taught SO INDESCRIBABLY BADLY.  You can't teach programming, you just have to do it. We did an assignment where we created a Tic Tac Toe simulator, and some cryptography where we encrypted and decrypted messages using different techniques.

MECHANICS:
Moments, Couples, Forces, Joints, Trusses, Projectile Motion.....
This is probably the module that most people are OK with because they took physics in high school or in Semester 1, also it's geared towards Civil/Mechanical Engineering students which make up quite a large portion of the cohort, so they seemed a bit more interested.  Andrew Ooi is a pretty big wig in the Engineering faculty and he is your lecturer, and I totally appreciate that he tries to make lectures funny but geez he is irritating and can seriously waste some time trying to be funny by being self-depracating.  I also really didn't connect with his lecturing method at all, he spent way too much time doing funky animations with Powerpoint than concentrating on the best way to lay out material and present it so it is clear for students. 

I had pretty crummy experiences with groups in the group assignments.  My Digital Systems group was fine (at least one contributed, and the other contributed verbally although never actually did much) but I was alone for Programming (wrote every line of code myself) and we never heard from one person in my Mechanics group.  So I got a bit unlucky there, hopefully you'll have a better experience.  I just saw it as a way to practise the content more!

If you are a Chemical or Biomedical Engineering major, chances are you'll struggle to see the point of the content in ESD2, but it's still a good subject and largely enjoyable, and I really believe the content will be relevant in your discipline at some stage. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 05, 2013, 02:04:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10007: Physics for Biomedicine

Workload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour tutorial per week; 28 hours of practical work (8 x three hour laboratory sessions and up to 30 minutes of pre-laboratory activity) and 10 weekly assignments of 30 minutes each during the semester.

Assessment: Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. attendance and submission of work for at least 80% of workshop sessions together with a result for assessed work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but you'll miss on some of the demonstrations in the lectures if you don't go. Not that you're missing out on too much anyway.

Past exams available:  Yes, past exams stretch back to 2008.

Textbook Recommendation:  'College Physics' by Knight. The lecture slides have a list of questions you should do from each chapter. They're a must-have I guess; studying physics is all about doing more and more problems. You'll have to find the solutions on the LMS though, since the textbook only has solutions for odd-numbered problems. Later in the semester I downloaded 'Physics' by Giancoli, which had a lot more similar problems and also came with entire worked solutions for the whole book. Was much better than 'College Physics' in my opinion, but you'll have to only focus on the content that you've learnt in lectures.

Lecturer(s): Martin and Rob. This year, Martin taught for for the first half of the course, and Rob taught for the second half of the course. Keep in mind that in previous years it was the other way around when you do exams.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  2.8 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments: Physics is a tough subject for people to teach, and for people to study. The first 2-3 weeks weren't bad in my opinion, I thought I would actually like the subject. We were taught about kinematics, motion, forces, and energy. If you've done specialist maths before then it should be a piece of cake for you. If you only did VCE Maths Methods then you'll need to practise on adding up vectors and the like (and other trigonometric identities such as the double angle formula - which, funnily enough, wasn't even mentioned in the lectures and came up on a past exam!).

After this brief period of calmness, we moved onto Fluids in week 4. Everything started going downhill from this point. The lectures move very, very fast. You'll probably cover a chapter or two in two or three lectures. The department is trying to cram all of high school physics AND some first-year uni physics into your head, so they really have no other option. Yet they manage to leave out Optics, which you'll have to self-study for the GAMSAT, which will probably be the only reason you'll ever need Physics if you want to get into medicine.

You will be constantly bombarded with new material and you will continue to remain somewhat clueless even in week 12. The other topics you cover from this nightmare onwards will include thermal physics, waves, electricity, magnetism, quantum physics, and radioactivity.

You'll have weekly assignments on the LMS to do every week, which just consist of a bunch of questions to answer from a company called Mastering Physics. The assignments are usually harder than questions in the textbook and the past exams and usually test concepts which you may not have learnt. You can actually easily google for most of the answers, so you should get a high mark for the assignments if you make an effort.

You'll have a lot of practicals as well. 8 practicals in the semester, covering pretty much almost every topic that you've learnt. You'll have to write up a practical report in your lab logbook, and in it all you do is answer questions in the lab-book and paste in all of your graphs and results. During the practical you also need to complete "checkpoints", in which a demonstrator just asks you to interpret your result or answer a question.  The demonstrators range from lenient to harsh. Some demonstrators will freely give out 9s and 10s, and others will give out 6s and 7s. Your lab marks will however be scaled according to your exam mark though.

Tutorials are helpful, and generally consist of a masters student going through several problems on the board. However, we rarely got to actually go through all of the questions on the sheet.

Now, onto lectures. Some things were not explained very well; some things were explained too casually and too simplistic. For example, learning about the second law of thermodynamics, the lecture notes just said "entropy is unusable energy". And there's a lot more to it than that, really. The lecture notes aren't also that great to be honest. There are also demonstrations in every lecture which is pretty cool I guess, but it also sucks out a lot of time. Sometimes the lecturers would fall 2-3 lectures behind.

I had to resort to reading the textbook and looking up videos on Youtube in order to get my head around everything. Khan Academy and Brightstorm explain things in much better terms. Half of this subject is just plugging in numbers and battling with units, really. If you know the units, you can pretty much derive any formula to do whatever you want. Be conscious of working in SI units all the time though. 

The practise exams seem to follow a similar pattern of questions from 08-12. There will be a single question on every topic you covered, but at least the questions tend to be fairly similar year to year. The exam solutions for the earlier past exams suck though. They don't have any working out, which is a good and bad thing, and instead of giving you answers they'll be like "Justification required. Sketch required. Explanation required" on the solutions, so make sure you compare your answers with other people. From 2011 onwards the solutions get much better though, although there's an error or two in some of them.

The 2013 exam was a bit different compared to past exams, they actually switched the content of the questions around (although there was still one that was copy pasted from a past exam). Make sure you review all your lecture notes as well. However, the exam was still manageable given that you did enough questions from the textbook (they'll expose you to more new questions)

What makes this subject so tedious is the fast pace, the high numbers of pracs, the difficult weekly assignment questions and the lecture notes. The questions aren't too bad, if you know which formula to use.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on November 07, 2013, 10:24:28 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005 Genetics & The Evolution of Life 

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x 1hr tutorial and 1 x 2hr Practical every fortnight. 1 x 1hr workshop every other fortnight.  Approximately 24 hours of online learning.

Assessment: 

Multiple-choice MST (10%)

Usually about 20 questions, and covers the content in the first 11 lectures (4 weeks-ish).
This is notoriously quite difficult, so do study for it, and it will make your revision at the end of the semester SO MUCH EASIER.  The remaining course content is rote-heavy and it's a real relief to have a solid understanding of the first 4 weeks of content before you hit SWOTVAC.

Assignment (10%)
If you are precise about this assignment, it shouldn't be too hard.  It was kind of like "should it really be this easy, did I do something wrong?" but at the same time a lot of people messed it up pretty badly because what was expected of us wasn't very well explained.  We had to use an online program to generate the outcomes of a certain combination of genetic crosses and then write a genetic hypothesis and report about the results.  Then there was an in-class test that involved generating another genetic hypothesis based on some given data and answering some questions relating to the assignment.

Prac Work (25%),
Pre-prac tests are 1 mark, Pracs are 5 marks, Post-prac tests are 4 marks.  DON'T FORGET THE POST PRAC TESTS.  I've probably lost my chance at a H1 this semester because I forgot about 2 post-prac tests.  You get a password in the prac itself and you NEED IT.  It's not that hard to get full marks in the prac themselves.  In fact, if you don't forget to do post-prac tests, you should be able to really own this 25%.

Independent Learning Tasks (5%);
As long as you don't forget to do these, they are an easy 5%.  Just click through the information on the online tutorial, then do the questions at the end, get more than 80%.

 Exam (50%).
A LOT of content to learn here.  If you studied well for the MST you should have  alot of the Genetics stuff down pat already but there is a lot of rote learning in Botany and Zoology and the structure of the lectures is sometimes not super linear (Dawn especially has content jumping all over the place sometimes).  There are some concepts that each lecturer dwells on in particular, be prepared for these topics to be in your short essay questions.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.  Copland Theatre SUCKS to have lectures in (if you can get a seat, they are like instant nap time, or if you manage not to fall asleep, you'll have someone really annoying talking in your vicinity because the theatre is big and they think they can get away with it).  I stopped going half way through the semester and just watched the Echo recordings.

Past exams available:  There was one sample exam with lots of sample short essay questions.  Dawn also provides you with lots of additional Genetics problems and you have your Lab Workbook with lots of questions too. 

Textbook Recommendation:  R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed.  It's a great textbook so I bought it but I didn't use it heaps, the diagrams in it are excellent, but the lecturers scan the diagrams and put them in the notes anyway.

Lecturer(s): 

Dawn Gleeson (Genetics) - mostly really awesome, sometimes kind of skims over stuff or seems to think we already know it.  Jumps around between topics a lot on occasion which gets kind of confusing but overall her stuff is well-paced.  Her lecture slides are really really crap and hard to decypher so you really have to take your own notes and listen to her lectures.
Theresa Jones (Zoology) - pretty cool lady, most of her content is straight off the slides.  Interesting topics covered (main animal phyla and their characteristics, ecology, evolution, selection).
Rick Wetherbee (Botany) - I love Rick, he's enthusiastic and entertaining, clear and precise with what he expects from us.  His questions are quite specific and can be challenging but it's partly because his stuff isn't exactly difficult so he has to make you think a little bit more abstractly or detailed sometimes.

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Don't have it yet.

Comments: A lot of info already covered in the previous sections.  This subject is basically compulsory if you want to do anything relating to life sciences in your B-SCI so it doesn't matter too much what I thought of it.  Probably more useful to offer advice, for when you do have to take it:

-There is a buttload of content in this subject..... get on top of it and stay on top of it early.  Use the MST to get on top of the first 4 weeks of material and use the mid-semester break to catch up on the middle section of the semester.  Make sure you have watched every lecture at least once and taken notes by the time you get to SWOTVAC so you can get into the nitty gritty detail and have time for the concepts to settle.  Everything kind of links together eventually if you give it enough time to mingle together in your brain, but if you try to cram it, you'll just be memorising hundreds of facts that seemingly aren't that related.

-Make sure you do all the online things (pre- and post- prac tests, and ILTs).  They are essentially free marks and you can get like 15% of the subject just by remembering to sit at your computer for 20 minutes and do them.

-Pracs are a hurdle requirement and whilst they aren't as fun as BIOL10004, they're still fine.  There isn't a heap of content to learn from them except maybe the main Botany and the main Zoology one (pracs 4 & 5).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: werdna on November 08, 2013, 12:15:22 am
Subject Code/Name: EVSC20003 Forests in a Global Context

Workload: This is a week-long intensive subject with 1 day-long field trip, and 1 3hr lecture and 3 hr tutorial every day for 5 days in the September mid semester break. The lectures and tutorials sound very long and tedious, but the great thing is that you don't need to go to them. The only hurdle requirement is that you attend the field trip. Tutorials are only booked classrooms where you can go in and draft some responses - there's 3 or 4 tutors roving around to the 20+ tutorial rooms. So it's not exactly a fully taught and run tute. No point going to the lectures when you can go straight to the important stuff when listening online.

Assessment: Like I said, hurdle requirement is that you must attend the field trip to the forest/s. Assessment is 12 comprehension/analysis questions that are worth around 300-350 words each. I thought the questions were doable and quick to knock out. After every lecture, they will post up 2 assessment questions. The assessment is due approximately 1 week after the last lecture. There are no further participation marks, tests, exams etc.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. A lot of waffling in the lectures - just skip to the important stuff you need to know in order to write your answers.

Past exams available:  No past exams available or needed. What I will say, though, is that there was not enough guidance as to what they expected in our answers. Only 1 sample response was given out, so it's tricky to work out how to structure answers etc. You never really know what you get until results day.

Textbook Recommendation:  If doing this subject, I would strongly recommend that you buy the prescribed textbook (Forestry in a Global Context). Yes you'll only be using it for less than a week, but the book is very very very helpful in writing up your answers. The questions are based around sections of the textbook. (I'm selling my textbook if anyone is interested :D - PM me).

Year & Semester of completion: September, Semester 2 2013

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Marks have not been released yet.

Comments: I think this is a great subject to knock out and get done in a week. Perhaps too much waffling and not enough specific attention to what they expect in our assessment responses. Therefore, you're basically 'blindly' writing answers hoping that you're doing it right. The field trip was well organised and helpful. This subject is worth the same 12.5 points as most other units, but it doesn't count as overloading, so you could potentially do a full time load of 4 units in semester 2 next year, PLUS the forests unit - without needing to discuss overloading with the student centre. Overall a great breadth subject!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 08, 2013, 01:01:30 am
Subject Code/Name: UNIB30005 Living Longer: A global diagnosis

Workload: 1*2hr lecture/ week, 1*1hr tutorial/week

Assessment: 10*300 word blogs due over the course of the semester (20%), 500 word tutorial paper/ wiki (15%), tutorial/online participation (attending tutorials and commenting on the class wiki page) (15%), 50% Research project (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No exam!!

Textbook Recommendation:  James C Riley (2001) Rising Life Expectancy: a global history (Cambridge University Press). I used it as a reference for some of my blogs and it was constantly referenced during lectures. You could go without it but the book does help.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Wow, this was a fantastic breadth subject and was extremely laid-back. The subject is for anyone who is interested in observing the wide range of factors which determine life expectancy- sedentary lifestyles/ stress/ public health/ medicine/ pathogens... I'll make some individual comments about the running of the subject during the semester and the types of assessment.

300W blogs- I'll admit, they were a bit tedious during the semester and they would probably take about 40 minutes to write, but hey that's not bad for weekly homework! They are based on your understanding of the lecture material, your ability to ask questions/ engage in the weekly topic and provide your opinions. I scored the full 20% for them, as long as you show you are engaging in the material you will be fine. You did not need to attend the lectures to write these blogs, the slides can be used as a reference but it is always good to find other references to discuss (such as james riley's book)

Tutorial Paper: Based on finding an article of your choice. The article must relate to one of the weekly topics during the semester. I chose nutrition as it is an incredibly broad area and analysed an article about obesity. Basically requires you to interpret what the author is saying and their main points, your opinions on the article- whether you agree or disagree (e.g. can you find other references to support this?) etc. If you take the article seriously and make sure it relates to the subject's overall themes and relates to the weekly topic then there is no reason for you not to get a H1.

Research Project: Seriously, start this early in the semester! I'd say week 3/4 is a good time to start planning and finding references. The actual finding references part and writing key points about them is the hardest part because it is so time-consuming. It is due after swotvac but obviously with other exams it's wise to get the research paper done early. As opposed to my method of Writing pretty much the whole thing during swotvac (I did have all my references and points written down though), yeah that wasn't fun! You can choose from about 10 topics on what to write on and again these relate to the subject's weekly topics, for example I chose mental health and we had a lecture on it during the semester as well- this way you know some important areas about your chosen topic and what you might write about.

Lectures: You could pretty much go off the lecture notes if you wanted to. I didn't write any real lecture summaries for this subject, I suppose that's what the weekly blogs are for. The fact that there's no exam is really good in the sense that you can write about a certain weekly topic for the blog and then never have to look back on the same topic ever again for the subject. Probably good to attend the lecture that you think you will be writing your essay on. The lectures are 2 hours long and one a week so they can be a bit draining.

Tutorials: Mainly involved class-discussions, we never really did any real work. They were pretty interesting and was a nice break away from other intense subjects during the semester. You had to speak about your 500 word tutorial paper and just give a couple of points about what it was about, nothing scary though.


IN SUM: DO THIS SUBJECT! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 08, 2013, 03:32:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10003: Genes and Environment

Workload:   3 x one hour lectures per week, 18 hours of workshops (1 hour of theory workshop and 2 hours of practical workshop per fortnight), 6 hours of additional problem solving classes (1 hour per fortnight), 24 hours of pre-and post laboratory activities (2 hours per week), 24 hours of e-learning, online activities including independent learning tasks (2 hours per week).

Assessment: A 45 minute, multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%); work related to practical classes during the semester (35%), made up of a combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class, completion of up to 5 on-line pre-practical tests; written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words; up to 5 short multiple choice tests, and a written assignment based on the practical content not exceeding 1000 words; completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a 3hr examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (50%).

A pass in the practical work is necessary to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  One sample exam provided,

Textbook Recommendation:  Life by Sadava is still the prescribed textbook, carrying over from BIOL10002. I didn't use it as often as last semester though, since some of the stuff being taught wasn't in the book.

Lecturer(s): Professor Rob Day lectures on Parasites and Evolution, Dr. Ross Waller lectures on viruses and fungi, Professor Dawn Gleeson takes over for genetics from Lecture 15 onwards.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: This subject is a lot different from the first semester Biology core for Biomed students. The first third of the subject focuses on parasites, disease control, evolution, and fungi. This is probably the part of the subject that seemed the most rote-learning heavy. The rest of the subject focuses on genetics, and with that, be prepared to confront many problem solving questions. This part of the subject focuses more so on application rather than rote learning.

Many people didn't like the first third of the lectures. I'm not too sure whether it was because of the lecturers or the general lack of interest in their material. I think Rob and Ross weren't as bad as everybody made them out to be though. Their lecture notes were easy to decipher and understand. Dawn was magnificent though - she explained everything very clearly and concisely. Her lecture notes do get a bit excessive, at times they can clock up to 50 slides per lecture - but she manages to get through all of it nevertheless. She did fall behind by a few lectures, but still managed to get through everything (admittedly she went through the last lecture at full throttle).

You'll be alternating between workshops and tutes/pracs every fortnight. People generally don't go to workshops; all you do is go through parts of the problem-solving Question Sets in your tutorial workbook. I think in our very last workshop only something like 15-20 people showed up. In tutorials you'll also be going through the question sets, and you'll be told about the prac that you'll be doing right after the tute.

The practicals are marked a lot more leniently than in BIOL10002. In fact they're just easier in general; you'll almost always finish at least 20 mins before the end of the session. Most of your practicals will of course involve identification of parasites, observing phenotypic ratios, and manipulating DNA. You'll have to "diagnose" patients with particular parasites by looking at their medical history and examining their blood/faecal smears through a microscope. You'll also do many neat things with bacteria, such as transforming them with GFP. And you'll get to play with Drosophila as well!

Just like semester 1, there's a pre-prac test and post-prac test for every prac. I recommend going down to one of the uni libraries with a couple of friends after the prac if you want to full-mark each one. The in-class assessment is not too difficult either. Overall, the marking scheme is pretty light and getting straight 10s is perfectly possible.

The MST was quite bad for people who were in my prac session, we were given probably the most difficult MST (each group has different versions of the test) and many top kids in my session didn't do as well as some people in other sessions. The MST was very focused on Rob Day's material and what makes Rob's questions so annoying is that:

1) They're ambiguous
2) He gives you a lot of plausible answers, but you still have to choose the best choice (this will also pop up in the exam in painful forms as well)

The genetics eFly assignment this semester was also marked quite strictly. The take-home part of the assignment doesn't take too long. You'll have to use crosses to form a genetic hypothesis about a particular trait. People lost marks for little things such as not writing in the genotypes of the parents, so make sure you do that. You'll also do part of the assignment as a test in one of your tutes, but it's pretty easy nevertheless.

You'll have to do 5 ILTs throughout the semester. They'll hardly bother you, because three of the ILTs directly relate to Dawn's lectures.

Over the semester, Dawn puts up a lot of problem sets and practise questions. Do all of them. A lot of Dawn's material relates to problem solving so you ideally want to be exposed to as many questions as possible. The more you do, the faster you'll be able to process information, and you'll be able to tackle pretty sophisticated problems more easily. A combo that seems to fry people's minds is when you have two genes, one X-linked and one autosomal, and recessive epistasis occurring. If you haven't done enough questions to recognise patterns with each genetic hypothesis, then you're going to have a tough time in exams. 

The genetics part of the subject is more focused on understanding of concepts, rather than just memorising every details. Of course, it's good to memorise small things like 9A-;B- : 3 A-;bb, 3 aa;B- and 1aa;bb, as well as the ratios for each form of epistasis. But there's a heavy emphasis on understanding because Dawn will give you new and unfamiliar scenarios to apply everything, whether it'd be through paternity tests, RFLP markers, or concluding iso/heterodisomy.

The exam, I felt, was harder than its semester 1 counterpart. I felt that it was longer then usual. Section A had 40 MC, half of which are double weighted. Section B and C had five questions each. Section D has three "essays", with a topic from each lecturer. Rob's Section B and C questions were tedious as he would give many different combinations of "right answers", especially for evolution (you can either put choice 13...or choice 21 which is choice 11 + choice 13 + choice 14...etc). Ross' Section C questions were quite easy, and some of Dawn's Section B and C questions consisted of three-point test crosses, as well as calculations from HW equilibrium. Overall, the exam should not be too bad given that you do understand everything. The problem solving in the MCQ, as well as in Section B and C, will take longer to answer though, so be careful of that. I finished without enough checking time in my opinion.

BIOL10003 is harder than BIOL10002 in that it's very focused on problem solving and understanding. However, it's still an enjoyable subject and a particularly good introduction into Genetics (I don't really understand why everybody was so urgh about the first third of the course though).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: werdna on November 08, 2013, 07:58:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20001 Organisational Behaviour

Workload: 1x 2-hour lecture and 1x 1-hour tutorial every week. The first half of the unit covers 'micro' topics while the second half covers 'macro' topics. A lot of case studies, reading and theory for this subject.

Assessment: Participation and tutorial marks are worth 10%. It's an easy 8 or 9 out of 10 if you show up to your tutes, answer a few questions here and there, and complete the pre-tute work. The individual assignment is worth 10%. It's a 1000-word essay and due pretty early on in the semester (week 3 from memory). A targeted skill-building workshop is conducted for this first assignment - definitely very helpful. The group assignment is the biggie, it is a key part of OB and worth 30% of the overall mark. It can get more tedious than it needs to be, as a 'team contract' has to be created and presented to your tutor, and things can be tricky when some group members' work isn't up to scratch. Having said this, the group assignment is definitely the most well-coordinated and organised assignment - team evaluations are done throughout the semester and tutors/OLT are more than willing to assist. The group assignment is important for the final exam as well. Final exam is worth 50% and isn't a hurdle. 4 questions on the exam - 1 question is on a 'micro' topic and asks you to draw examples from your group assignment experience, the other 3 questions are on a 'macro' topic and a case study you've looked at during the semester.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture. The bad thing about this subject is that the online lecture system is just shocking. You have to download the lecture as an MP3 file and there's no screen capture. Crazy considering this is a compulsory 2nd year unit.

Past exams available: No past exams available. However, the good thing with OB is that closer to the end of sem, the lecturer will tell you what to study for. For example, for this semester, they have told us which topics may be examined. 6 topics definitely will not come up. They also provide a matrix where you can work out possible combinations of case study to macro question.

While they didn't provide actual past exams, they did provide 1 sample exam paper with a guide to writing answers for these sample questions.

Textbook Recommendation: The university-compiled textbook called Organisational Behaviour is definitely worth buying. It compiles various chapters from various textbooks into 1. I bought might secondhand for $50 on textbookexchange.com.au.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013.

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 90 (H1)

Comments: Overall, this is a great core unit. The lecturers and coordinators really care about making this a good subject. The link between lectures and tutorials is seamless, and they will outline exactly what will be on the exam very clearly. Tutorials are excellent and well-structured, provided that you have a good tutor. Make sure you have a strong group for the team assignment, otherwise there will be a lot of pressure on the exam. I have found that the marking of assignments can be quite strict, particularly with regards to APA referencing.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on November 11, 2013, 03:24:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC20009 Thermal and Classical Physics

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour problem-solving class per week; 6 x 3 hour practical classes per semester (every alternate week - one can schedule these to be in the same timeslot, but alternating with, those for PHYC20010)

Assessment: One written assignment per module (5% each); One 30 minute mid-semester test covering Thermal Physics (5%); Six laboratory reports (total 20%); One 3 hour examination (65%) - N.B. Passing the practical component (>50%) of the course is a hurdle requirement, as is attending, and submitting a report for, at least 5 out of 6 practicals.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, both lecturers (but particularly Andrew in Classical Physics) generally preferred to do their calculations on the whiteboard.

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2009 onwards. However for Thermal Physics, there are exams for 640-223 Quantum Mechanics and Thermal Physics from 1999 - 2008, and for Classical Physics there are exams for 640-234 Further Classical & Quantum Mechanics over the same period since these were the predecessors of the current course. N.B. Do not attempt the exams for the "Advanced" version of 640-223 unless you want a challenge - believe me, you won't!

Textbook Recommendation:  D V Schroeder, An Introduction to Thermal Physics, Addison-Wesley Longman - very useful, do buy it.

There are a handful of suggested references for Classical Physics, chief among these being Goldstein's wonderful classic 'Classical Mechanics', but frankly none are needed. Consider buying Goldstein's tome for graduate study...

Lecturer(s): Thermal Physics - A/Prof. Martin Sevior. Classical Physics - A/Prof. Andrew Melatos.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 79

Comments:
(General) The tutors are pretty good and are helpful - we had the same set of tutors for both modules. Like all subjects it is advisable to attend tutorials... The practicals are much more interesting than in first-year physics. Pray that you get amiable demonstrators, though, and also that the equipment works; otherwise your time in the lab will be hellish. Nevertheless you get to replicate famous experiments such as the measurement of the charge-mass ratio of the electron and the value of g.

(Thermal Physics) This module covers introductory classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. After recapping first-year thermodynamics, you learn about equipartition, heat, work, enthalpy and the first law. Then you go in the opposite direction, in a journey through the basics of statistical mechanics, culminating in the second law and (finally) definitions for entropy. You then bring the statistical picture and the thermodynamic picture together to get proper definitions for temperature, chemical potential etc. After using these to analyse the Carnot cycle, and heat engines in general (in greater detail than first-year), the module ends in a frenzied rush as the lecturer hurriedly discusses Gibbs and Helmholtz free energies, as well as phase transitions. Frankly, Thermal Physics is fairly easy if you buy the textbook, attend the lectures and self-study (if only a little). It takes up (by far the easier) half of the exam, and in 2012 it wasn't particularly testing. Finally, the lecturer was boring but effective, as were his notes.

(Classical Physics) This module is horrifyingly difficult. Abandon every notion you have of classical mechanics merely being applications of Newton's 2nd law of motion, because here overconfidence will certainly result in disaster. In fact the second law is somewhat of a rude word in this module as the module in fact serves as an extended introduction to Lagrangian mechanics, which is definitely much more sophisticated and elegant than the second law. After some comments on the principle of least action, the lecturer dives headlong into Lagrangian mechanics. Do not be intimidated by the maths, because memorising the Euler-Lagrange equation is enough. Then your notion of angular motion is shattered in his discussion of Euler angles and the moment of inertia tensor. This is about where most students' heads exploded... Finally, as per usual, the last section was rushed, which was a pity since it covered Hamiltonian mechanics which is perhaps even more important than the Lagrangian formulation. Don't worry though, the Hamiltonian formulation was not assessed. What can I say about the assignment? It was virtually impossible to do by yourself. The lecturer encourages you to collaborate, and in fact he doesn't really expect you to do spectacularly well because he is generous with marks. There is a point of enlightenment though that arrived for me in the last week of the semester, which did allow me to do fairly well in the exam. The (huge) saving grace of Classical Physics is that the lecturer, Andrew Melatos, is brilliant. His lecturing style is great, so much so that I do wish more lecturers were as concise and clear as he was. In addition his lecture notes were the best lecture notes I have encountered so far at university.

(Summary) Be prepared for trauma in Classical Physics, but after the lightbulb switches on this is a very, very good subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on November 11, 2013, 04:36:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra

Workload: 
Summer Semester:
6 x one hour lectures per week
2 x one hour practice classes per week
2 x one hour computer laboratory classes per week.

Semester 1 and 2:
3 x one hour lectures per week
1 x one hour practice class per week
1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week

Assessment: 
Assignments (10%)
If you're taking the subject in Sem 1 or 2, the assignments are worth 1% each (one per week for 10 weeks). 
They are sometimes quite tricky and abstract but overall not too bad and you can often use your lecture notes pretty directly to help you find the solutions.

MATLAB Test (10%)
This is a pretty easy 10% even if you are new to programming.  There's no programming involved, you just have to learn how to utilise a few MATLAB commands, which basically automate the stuff you've been doing by hand in class.  The MATLAB test is held in the last week of semester in your usual lab class time.

Exam (80%)
Like most maths subjects, there is the big scary 3 hour exam that basically dictates your final grade.  Thankfully, most of the questions on the exam are:
a) almost exactly in the same vein as the past exams for the past 4 years.
b) significantly easier than most of the assignment questions and the workbook questions.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.  By the end of the semester (I think by strong demand), all three streams were put online.  One of the lecturers used the blackboard though so the Echo recording was useless.

Past exams available:  Yes, about 6, but only two with answers.  There was a sample exam for the MATLAB test but had no answers nor the associated MATLAB files - but the actual test was exactly the same as the sample test but with the numbers changed.

Textbook Recommendation:  I found a digital version of the Anton textbook but didn't use it at all really.  The lecture notes that you buy or print yourself are more than enough.

Lecturer(s): 
Dr Scott Connell (coordinator): Scott is by far the best lecturer of these three, but I get the impression that the lecturers swap around a lot for MAST10007.  Anyway Scott was by far the best lecturer, had a very clear way of explaining things and often used diagrams not just crazy mathematical lingo to help in understanding.

Dr Arun Ram:  Arun is a nice guy but man he is just not on the same level as first year students.  Most people ended up swapping out of his stream because he was pretty terrible at getting us to understand stuff.  He was fun to be in a room with, he was happy and energetic, but just explained stuff as if we were third year students, not first year, and most people were completely lost the whole time.

Jose Ayala Hoffmann: This guy started lecturing half way through the semester and I never went to any of his lectures so I can't comment.

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Don't know yet.

Comments: This subject is overall pretty cool.  I'm not a maths geek, I just have to suck the maths up because I want to do Engineering, but once I got the concepts, Linear Algebra is pretty interesting.  I like that it's 'Abstract Maths', and that you aren't just punching in numbers into equations, you have to think about maths in a really conceptual way.  Figuring out how everything you learn connects with each other is no mean feat - because it is all very much connected and integrated, but unless you have a really good understanding, it doesn't feel that way.  Honestly I really disliked this subject most of the semester because it was really really hard (for me anyway) and I thought I might not even pass even with a lot of work, but they kind of put the fear of God into you through the semester, and then give you quite a gentle exam (compared to what they COULD give).  Provided you understand the broad concepts you can do reasonably well, and if you REALLY get it you can quite easily nail a 90%.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on November 11, 2013, 05:04:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2  P

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

Assessment: 
Assignments (20%) - 4 assignments worth 5% each.  They were sometimes quite lengthy, particularly the final two, but they were nothing that couldn't be solved if you'd kept up with lectures and used your lecture notes to help solve them. 

Exam (80%) - Yeah, it's quite an epic exam, especially if you aren't naturally maths inclined.  I had to do some hardcore prep to feel confident going in.  eg. I had done the entire workbook they give you by the time SWOTVAC started, PLUS all of the Tutorial sheets a second time.  Then for SWOTVAC I did a practise exam each day for 7 days, checking my answers using Wolfram Alpha, and then going to the textbook and doing additional problems similar to the ones I wasn't so good at.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, one of the three streams.

Past exams available:  Yes, quite a few, maybe 6, dating back to 2008.  No answers.

Textbook Recommendation:  There's a recommended textbook but I didn't use it for learning, only for a few 'additional problems' (I found an online copy, wouldn't buy it).

Lecturer(s):  Mark Fackrell (coordinator), Antoinette Tordesillas, Steven Carnie.  I had Antoinette and I really liked her, she was no-BS and explained stuff clearly.

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Don't know yet.

Comments:
Here's the thing.  If you're not a 'maths person', Calculus 2 can be both difficult and dull.  But it's a prerequisite for lots of stuff (Engineering… as well as physics/maths majors of course) so you gotta do it.  I shit you not, half (or more) of my tute group were taking the subject for the second time.  I am not terrible at maths but I don't have a lot of natural skill either, and I had to work HARD to do well in this subject.  The exam isn't gentle, so do prepare. 

The past exams give you quite a good indication of what might be on your exam, but because there is a lot of content, they have a lot of stuff they can draw on to test you on.

A pretty big note: in 2013, they introduced a section on Sequences and Series.   We only had practise exams from 2012 or earlier so NONE of this content was on the practise exams.  DON'T FORGET TO PRACTISE IT.  There is a major question in the evan dedicated to Sequences and Series so you need to know it well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on November 11, 2013, 05:50:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC20010 Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour problem-solving class per week; 6 x 3 hour practical classes per semester (every alternate week - one can schedule these to be in the same timeslot, but alternating with, those for PHYC20009)

Assessment: One written assignment per module (5% each); One 30 minute mid-semester test covering Quantum Mechanics (5%); Six laboratory reports (total 20%); One 3 hour examination (65%) - N.B. Passing the practical component (>50%) of the course is a hurdle requirement, as is attending, and submitting a report for, at least 5 out of 6 practicals.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, Jeff (Quantum) generally preferred to do his calculations on the whiteboard.

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2009 onwards. However for Thermal Physics, there are exams for 640-223 Quantum Mechanics and Thermal Physics from 1999 - 2008, and for Special Relativity there are exams for 640-245 Electromagnetism & Relativity over the same period since these were the predecessors of the current course. N.B. Do not attempt the exams for the "Advanced" version of 640-223 or 640-245 unless you want a challenge - believe me, you won't!

Textbook Recommendation: Serway, Moses and Moyer, Modern Physics 3rd Ed. Brooks/Cole-Thomson Learning, 2005 - this book is absolutely wonderful, definitely buy it. Just be aware that it is not 'rigorous' enough to be used in later years (e.g. no bra-ket/Dirac notation).

For Special Relativity, I'd recommend "Wheeler and Taylor, Spacetime Physics" which is easily found online. However, what is required for this module is not so much a reference textbook but a divine intervention or such like, especially if you get Ned Taylor like we did...

Lecturer(s): Quantum Mechanics - A/Prof. Jeffrey McCallum. Special Relativity - Dr. Edward Taylor.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 5 Out of 5 - note however that while the Quantum Mechanics module, in almost every respect, is simply brilliant, the way in which the Special Relativity module was taught was shockingly awful. Only the fact that the material is interesting saves it from utter condemnation...

Your Mark/Grade: 84

Comments:
(General) The tutors are pretty good and are helpful. For Quantum Mechanics we often had Jeff at the tutorials to help us in addition to the regular tutor. Like all subjects it is advisable to attend tutorials... Practicals work the same way as PHYC20009, explained above. However they are more interesting; they include measuring the speed of light, Young's double-slit experiment, and the photoelectric effect.

(Quantum Mechanics) There is a reason why quite a lot of non-physics majors sign up to take this subject - Quantum Mechanics, which takes up about 3/4 of the course. It is worth the (mathematical) effort; it is probably the most intellectually stimulating physics subject at the second-year level. After recapping black-body radiation and the Bohr model, we were introduced to Fourier transforms and Walter White's (sorry, couldn't resist!) Uncertainty Principle. Then we were finally introduced to quantum mechanics itself, with the Born interpretation and operators (including the Hamiltonian), and then the Schrödinger equation. I kid you not when I say this module mainly revolves around manipulating and solving the Schrödinger equation - you'd better be good at solving second-order ODEs with constant coefficients. After being introduced to commutators and exploring solutions to the Schrödinger equation for tricky potentials such as the harmonic oscillator, we were hurriedly exposed to 3D quantum mechanics. Don't worry if you don't understand much of this last section - it really doesn't make much sense until you take MAST20030 or some other PDE course. Anyway there's usually just one easy question on it in the exam. The lecturer Jeff McCallum is quite good, and very helpful - if you don't understand some aspect of the material you are in luck because generally he comes to the tutorials too. The assignment was very managable, and so was the quantum mechanics section of the exam (2/3 of the exam).

(Special Relativity) SR takes up the last 3 weeks of the course, and it should have been brilliant. I cannot lie, though. It wasn't. It was horrible. The material itself wasn't extremely challenging, at least in hindsight. The problem was that instead of the head of the astrophysics research group, Rachel Webster, teaching this module as she had in previous years, we instead were taught by a Research Fellow by the name of Edward Taylor. While Ned was certainly enthusiastic, by virtue of being a first-time lecturer he was rather incompetent in teaching the material, to the extent that it became rather incomprehensible to most of us. It also did seem that he wasn't managing the time allotted to SR particularly well. The last lecture was ostensibly spent introducing us to General Relativity, but perhaps a better description would be "confusing the hell out of us all". In comparison to QM, the assignment for SR was ridiculous in every sense of the word. Not only was it very difficult, but the first half involved the following scenario - "Imagine that it is a cloudless night, with no moon, and that you are a bat." A relativistic bat, to be more precise... The SR section of the exam (which was about a third of the whole) was also unbelievably hard, with questions that should have been worth 5 marks worth only one, and so on. I couldn't even finish half of the SR section of the exam because it was so different to those of previous years, rendering most of my revision worthless.

(Summary) If you are lucky enough to get a decent lecturer for Special Relativity, this may be the best subject you take in second-year. Otherwise...
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on November 11, 2013, 07:06:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20009 Vector Calculus

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Four written assignments (totalling 20%); One 3 hour examination (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, there were plenty.

Textbook Recommendation: None. The 'partial' lecture notes are available at the Co-op Bookshop. In Semester 1, 2013 (but not Semester 2) they were also available on the LMS. Note, however, that these were in fact full (and not partial) lecture notes, with the 'completed' worked examples in white - just use Adobe Acrobat etc. to render this black. Alternatively, ask to join the 2013 Semester 1 Facebook group for the subject where the preformatted full lecture notes have been posted.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Mark Fackrell. He looks a little like a long-haired William H. Macy, but he's a decent lecturer.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 82

Comments: This subject is actually quite boring. It is extremely important if you want to study physics like myself, or engineering, or if you want to study applied maths of any sort. But if you like pure maths I suspect you will hate this subject. It's also very easy - in many respects it's the VCE Methods of undergraduate mathematics.

Topics covered:

The issue is that 6. is vitally important in physics applications such as General Relativity but is (as usual) rushed at the end. 1. and 2. are very easy, as is 3. The only challenging aspects of the course, in my opinion, are surface (and flux) integrals along with the various integral theorems. Note, however, that in physics and engineering that these are probably the most important sections of the course.

I do recommend getting a hold of the completed notes as early as you can and working through them by yourself, which leaves you with enough time to revise. The assignments are quite easy, and the exam was tougher but manageable overall. Frankly, if you are not overconfident ahead of the exam as I was, this is your best chance in second-year mathematics, physics or perhaps engineering to improve your GPA with a mark of >90%.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 11, 2013, 08:21:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10011: Experimental Design and Data Analysis 

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

Assessment:  One written assignment of up to 10 pages due in the second half of semester (5%), eight to twelve homework quizzes (a combination of written and oneline) due at regular intervals during semester (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held during semester (5%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).

The 3-hour exam is marked out of 100 even though there are 120 marks. So there is a 20-mark buffer if you want to get the full 80% from the exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with lecture capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, all previous years can be found in the exam library. Your EDDA textbook is littered with past exam questions too. Answers for 2011 and 2012 exams were uploaded onto the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation:  You must buy the EDDA textbook. It has all the questions in it with solutions, and stats is all about trying out more questions. Most of the lecture notes are actually copied straight out of the textbook as well.

Lecturer(s): Davide Ferrari. This guy is a top bloke. Like, he's just nice as and is always there if you need help.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating:  3.75 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (98)

Comments: Stats is the subject which many people complain as dry, boring. It can be at times, but the subject is also not very difficult if you pay attention and everything. Half of this subject is literally just finding the right formula to use and plugging in numbers. The questions are quite formulaic too, so it's unlikely that you're going to be tripped up for most questions.

Davide lectures for the Semester 2 block and he is just a very good bloke. Although the tutorial questions he uploaded were on the rather easy side, he made our exam a bit more difficult than what Ray would normally write. Which was a bit unexpected, but oh well.

You'll have weekly quizzes every week which are taken off the multiple choice of past exam questions (apparently). You'll have 3 attempts for each quiz and they'll take your highest mark for each one. With the help of friends you should be able to full-mark all of the quizzes. They cover the things that you've learnt throughout the week, so they're pretty good for consolidating a week's worth of knowledge.

Tutorials and computer labs are optional, but I went to both all the time anyway. The computer lab pretty much gets you playing with Minitab, which you'll have to use for your assignment a lot. I guess they also do consolidate the material a little as well, so they do help with your understanding. Tutorials are very useful. I recommend registering for Sharon Gunn's tutes because she explains the concepts in a little bit more depth and makes everything very clear. The tutorials just consist of working through a bunch of questions, and it's recommended that you do the questions beforehand and then ask around during the class.

The assignment was a bit hard for us, initially. But if you collaborate and read up on the EDDA notes you won't find most of it tremendously difficult. Ours just consisted of 6 questions, and only one of them required Minitab. However, with the computer lab test, you do want to make sure that you've gone through all the computer lab questions because if you don't know how to read off the Minitab outputs, then you are kinda screwed. It's an open-book test so you can bring in your lecture notes and EDDA textbook. If you've revised everything then the computer lab test shouldn't be too bad as well.

Coming closer to exam time, you want to make sure you know the summary sheet at the end of the EDDA textbook like the back of your hand. The summary sheet is very helpful and pretty much has all the formulas and notes that you need. You also need to get a lot of practise with reading statistical tables and graphs, because you will be using them a lot.

The first quarter of this subject isn't quite interesting, it's just experimental design and lots of probability distributions. But when you get to estimation, hypothesis-testing, comparative inference and regression, you need to definitely know which formulas to use and when to use them. That's all you really need to know; if you can do that then you will not have too much trouble with this section. Generally a lot of people will struggle with this part of the subject (since it's the most maths-related) but all I felt that I was doing was plugging in numbers into the right formulae. If you were good at probability and distributions in VCE Methods, you might not struggle so much with estimation and all.

The exam for 2013 was more difficult in comparison to 2011-2012. We weren't expecting Davide to chuck us a hard exam or anything so I guess we should've prepared for the worse. It might be a goooooood idea to vaguely remember some formulas. In our exam, there was a question which told you to use a rank test but the summary sheet provided in the exam didn't have the rank test formula (whereas it did have it in the textbook).

All in all, this subject, although people complain about it as boring, is not tremendously difficult. Considering you have a 20-mark buffer in the exam, you should be able to H1 if you've put in the work. That means going through the tutorial questions, doing all the problem/revision sets, and doing all the past exams. You'll see that memory work isn't really that much because 90% of what you need to know is provided on the summary sheet. It's easy to complain about this subject's difficulty if you think it's uninteresting and dull, but if you do enough questions and ask for help, then chances are... you'll see that this subject isn't actually as hard as you'll make it out to be. Most of it is just plugging in numbers.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: abcdqdxD on November 15, 2013, 02:06:15 am
Subject Code/Name: Introductory Financial Accounting ACCT10002 
Assessment: Assignment 1 (10%), Assignment 2 (Group assignment - 15%), Tutorial attendance (5%), Exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available: No, however pre-exam questions are available

Textbook Recommendation:
ACCT 10002 Introductory Financial Accounting, 2013, Cusack, McGraw Hill Publishers. Textbook not necessary.

Lecturer(s): Greg Cusack

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, S2

Rating:  1/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet released

Comments:

IFA is somewhat an extension of VCE Accounting and is mainly focused on the practical aspects of recording financial data and preparing accounting reports. The assignments were theory based and its content was extremely dry. The first assignment dealt with laws and regulations, it almost felt like I was in law school. The second assignment was somewhat more interesting, assessing our knowledge of accounting policies - depreciation in particular. The exam however, was particularly challenging and I expect it to be scaled up for this reason.

In my opinion, this subject has been awful to say the least. Cusack fails to get to the point; he often extends one hour's worth of material into 2 hours with his useless anecdotes. My tutor (name I won't disclose for obvious reasons) often went overtime and was especially annoying with his frequent 20 second pauses in between powerpoint slides.

In terms of the difficulty, it's not too bad and is slightly more difficult than VCE Accounting. Despite Cusack's useless time wasting with his anecdotes, most of the VCE content is covered in the space of about 6 weeks. There is also a large amount of tutorial work which can easily eat up 1-2 hours a week (if you choose to attempt them).

Overall, I found IFA less enjoyable than ARA but would 100% recommend taking this subject if you're considering an Accounting major.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 17, 2013, 10:00:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20013: Body, Mind and Medicine: A Dissecction 

Workload:  2x 1 Hour Lectures each week and 1x 1 hour tutorial for 10 weeks.

Assessment:  Tutorial assessments and participation comprising a collaborative tutorial exercise and micro-blogging tasks equivalent to 2000 words (or equivalent) (50%) assessed over the course of the semester, and a review essay of 2000 words (50%) due during the examination period.

Hurdle Requirement: Students are required to attend a minimum of 75% of classes in order to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per working day. After 5 working days late assessment will not be marked. In-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No practise exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook is The History of Medicine, but you never use it. Rather, many of the required readings are uploaded onto the LMS.

Lecturer(s): There were three lecturers for the subject.

Dr. James Bradley is the coordinator of the subject and also the main lecturer. He lectures for the bulk of the semester. I quite like listening to his accented English, and he's very nice and approachable. He's a medical historian so he does have a very firm grasp of what he's talking about.

Professor Joel Eigen is a lecturer from the US, and mainly lectures on the relationship between law and medicine. Particularly, he explores how insanity as a legal defense came to be used. He presented for the first 4 lectures.

Associate Professor Mark Salzberg comes in late in the semester to present the "Psychiatry" block of lectures. He particularly focuses on the history of psychiatry. The readings he uploaded onto the LMS weren't too useful though, in my opinion.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2.

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (77)

Comments: This breadth subject is full of science and biomedicine students, probably because "Medicine" is in the subject title already. That said, this subject dwells into the history of medicine. I found it very interesting - you not only learn how medicine was developed, but you are also exposed to a lot of alternative views of medicine. Some readings from the subject make you question whether we are better off with modern medicine or whether we are worse with it. Particularly, you'll be hammered on about how biomedicine has become very reductionist throughout the course of the subject.

The lectures were presented in the following blocks:

Mind and Body in the Courtroom: Psychiatry and the Law - explores the relationship with body and mind, responsibility and culpability

Making Medicine - the making of modern medicine and surgery, and how it has transformed our lives

Women's Business - women's health and illness, with a focus on childbirth

Bodies, Minds, and Madness - explores bodies, minds and psychiatry

Biomedicine and its Critics - critical views of biomedicine in contemporary society, and the persistence of complementary/alternative medicine


Tutes are pretty chill, you pretty much just discuss what the lectures were talking about. Later in the semester, tutes were used for you to work on your collaborative assignment with members of the group.

Each week, you'll have to write a blog entry of 150 words. All you have to do is pretty much discuss what the lectures were talking about, and provide a bit of your own opinion (back it up with extra readings of course). It's not a walk in the park to get H1 on every blog entry though. I guess you should just try look at the overriding themes of the subject (lol reductionism) and try tie that with whatever you were discussing during the week. The difficult part of this is to be concise and insightful at the same time (although in my experience you could get away with writing 170-190 words)

During the lectures, James presents series of "medical scandals". For your collaborative assignment, you'll be randomly assigned to construct a wiki for one of the scandals. You'll have to write a historical context, a timeline, a literature review, and an editorial. My group did the Cartwright Inquiry, which was very interesting. This is worth a fair chunk of your grade (20%), so make sure you plan and get it done early.

There is no examination for this subject, but there is a final critical essay that is worth 50% of your final mark. It involves writing a critical review of something that you can relate to the themes of the subject. For example, you can do a piece of literature, or you can do television shows like Scrubs, Greys Anatomy, blah blah blah. In all honesty I don't advise doing TV shows because it's difficult to completely relate it to the themes of BMM and provide an insightful analysis at the same time. I'd feel that most people would also get side-tracked by summarising the TV show, rather than critically analysing it.

 I would recommend doing a piece of literature, because you can also find other readings to help you. I wrote my critical essay on Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich, which was a very interesting and insightful critique of how the medical profession can harm society, rather than benefiting it. You'll find loads of internet resources to help you fluff through the obscure language of the book (it's very convoluted). You could also try write on other articles such as The Disappearance of the Sick Man from Medical Cosmology, by Jewson. James has mentioned this article many times since it emphasises the reductionism of biomedicine.

All in all, a great subject for those who have any sort of interest in the history of the medical field. You're not expected to regurgitate information in this subject, but you should try to analyse everything with respect to the overarching themes of the lectures.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Lado on November 18, 2013, 04:17:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: INTS10001 International Politics

Workload:  2 x one hour lectures and 1 x one hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  An essay of 1000 words (25%) due mid-semester, an essay of 2000 words (50%) due at the end of semester, and a take-home exam of 1000 words (25%) due during the examination period.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes - take-home exam questions from the previous year were made available.

Textbook Recommendation:  John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owen (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). I just borrowed this from the library - several of the chapters are prescribed for required reading and I found it quite a useful reference, particularly for the first essay. There are also a few required readings each week (PDF files are provided on the LMS), though most people, including myself, didn't always complete these.

Lecturer(s): Avery Poole, along with several guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I really, really enjoyed this subject. I find international relations a fascinating subject area in general, and felt that this course adequately provided a solid understanding of the field, addressing theories of global politics, the relationships between states both today and historically, and contemporary issues in international relations. I'll briefly run through what each section of the course entails:

Part B: Theories of World Politics
After a basic introduction to historical context (Part A, non-assessed), the first part of the subject explores the various theories underpinning international relations - realism, liberalism, normative approaches and constructivism. Many students found this probably the least interesting and most dry component of the subject, but it was nevertheless necessary in order to understand and approach subsequent topics.

Part C: Sovereignty, Security and Power
This is the largest topic area in the course, and deals with the major issues that regularly dominate world politics - sovereignty and the state, the Cold War and its shadow, the UN, security, terrorism and globalisation, and nuclear weapons, as well as a focus on key state actors and their role in international relations - the rising powers of China and India, America and the notion of its decline, the normative and declining power of the EU, and Indonesia and Southeast Asia. I found this the most interesting part of the course, and certainly the most integral to understanding the workings of global politics.

Part D: Contemporary Issues in International Politics
The final part of the subject examines more recently evolving issues in international relations, such as gender and sexual violence in conflict, trade liberalisation and the WTO, the global ecological crisis and politics of climate change, humanitarian intervention and refugees, asylum seekers and migration. This component of the course was also very interesting, and having the topics delivered by various guest lecturers who specialise in these topics made it all the more enjoyable and engaging.

Lectures and tutorials
The incorporation of many guest lecturers was fantastic, and provided some welcome variety. As for tutorials: like all Arts subjects, I believe, a 75% tutorial attendance rate is a compulsory hurdle requirement, so you'll need to go to most of them. I found the discussions in tutorials incredibly interesting and rewarding - due to the nature of the subject, the class often discussed recent developments and news in world politics along with the weekly topics, which helped to broaden my knowledge of the field as a whole. The particular tutor I had was excellent and facilitated some great discussions, and was an amusing character in general. In addition, I would often utilise some of the ideas generated in tutorials in my essays, so they're worth going to!

Assessment
The assessment for this subject is quite fair. The first essay is only 25% and 1000 words in length (nice and easy, though I personally find it incredibly difficult to develop a distinct argument in so little words) and deals with Part B of the course. The second essay is worth 50% and 2000 words in length, and deals with Part C. The final assessment is a take-home exam which, like the first essay, is only 25% and 1000 words in length, and deals with Part D. You'll have about 4 days to complete the exam, which I found was more than enough time. Each essay involves responding to one prompt from a list, which addresses one particular topic and its corresponding lecture/readings. In terms of approaching the assessment, I'd recommend having a solid understanding of the theories covered early in the course, along with the key differences between them, and incorporate them into every essay - this can help to give your argument the 'originality' necessary for a H1. Extensive reading and research is required for each essay (particularly the second), which is made infinitely easier by the comprehensive list provided in the subject guide available on LMS. As for referencing, I believe I used around 6-8 references for the first essay and take-home exam, and probably about 20 for the major essay.

Overall, I found this subject really enjoyable - the content was interesting, the tutorials were actually worth going to, and the assessment was fair. With such a variety of topics available I think most people found it quite intellectually stimulating, whether coming into the subject with no knowledge of international affairs whatsoever or already having a fairly good understanding of it. I'd recommend it to both Arts students and as a breadth subject, as the assessment and contact hours aren't too taxing and the content is certainly relevant and interesting.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sinner on November 19, 2013, 01:18:32 am
Subject Code/Name: PATH20001: Exploring Human Disease - Science 

Workload:  29 lectures (on avg 3 per week, not including review ones) and 10 hours of (1 per week) tutorial/ computer aided learning sessions.

Assessment:  Ongoing tutorial/Computer Aided Learning (CAL) tests (10%), Two 50 min written examinations around weeks 5 and 10 (30%), A 2 hour written examination during the Exam period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. One with only the non-MCQ sections.

Textbook Recommendation:  Kumar V. et al., Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease, latest edition, Saunders Elsevier.
Useful for clarify confusing stuff in the lectures because the lectures just take off this book (For the most part, esp. Vicki's ones), though whether you wanna get it is up to you.

Lecturer(s): Vicki Lawson, Vera Ignjatovic, Fred Hollande, one more guy whose name I can't recall/the Genetics guy.

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80

Comments: This subject was done rather well. The lectures were decent (except perhaps the Genetics ones, probs why I couldn't remember the guy's name) for the most part, and the CALs did well to support the understanding of the lecture contents, as well as adding in some more interesting knowledge.

Lectures

As I said before, most of the lectures were decent, although most of Vicki's lectures were taken out from the textbook, although that means you can read the textbook if you didn't understand what she said. Stuff with cell to cell reactions and signals were probably the most confusing of the lot, but the content is manageable. The content is largely split into many parts: Basic cell injury, inflammation, infection and the responses, hypersensitivities/autoimmunities, blood clotting and thrombo+embolism, genetic disorders & technology, cancer & neoplasms, cardiac disorders.

The content of the blood clotting and thrombo+embolism sections were slightly confusing, although they too were manageable, although some details like morphology need to be remembered in particular, as with most other pathology lectures. The cancer lectures were surprisingly (relatively) easy and simple; i expected more from such a concept.

The genetics lectures, however, were rather dull in comparison, I felt like I could understand more from doing the CALs, although the lectures should still be attended there are some parts not on the slides (mentioned verbally) that could come up in the exam. The cardiac disorders section was also rather challenging due to the confusing names of some things and the detail that had to be remembered. You may want to put some extra effort into it.

CALs

The CALs were pretty useful in clearing up some confusing stuff in the lectures, such as time sequences and definitions, which may not be too clear in the lectures. You do them for one week (most require the software on Uni computers, some don't) and you got a week to do an online 5 pt quiz. This should be a simple 8-10%.

Exam(s)

The two 50 min quizzes were laughably easy, it is pretty to score H1s on these little fellas even if you just reviewed your stuff one or two times. This is especially useful for boosting your scores, as each quiz is worth 15%. Each quiz has a set of lectures and CALs from which the questions originate from. Some of the questions might be based on trivia, so be careful.

The exam is tougher, but nothing impossible. The MCQ section (A) is visibly more challenging, but nothing harder than your average exam MCQ. Questions here are based on all of the content of the subject. Section B consists of several fill in the blanks and short answer questions. Try not to slip here and catch up on all the trivia and knowledge of the several processes learned in this subject. Section C is an essay section, having you write an essay format answer into a booklet (which should extend around 2 pages or more). You can select one question to answer on out of 5 (based on the different sections of this subject's content). It's possible for you to study hard on a particular process (e.g. inflammation, healing, clotting) to answer it with the most detail while neglecting (though not entirely) other stuff that is relatively mind-numbing (e.g. genetics) and get the job done. Just be careful as it's worth 30% of the whole paper, meaning 18% of your whole grade!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sinner on November 19, 2013, 11:54:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: ZOOL20006: Comparative Animal Physiology

Workload:  30 x one hour lectures during the semester; 4 x three hour practical classes and 2 x three hour workshops during the semester

Assessment:  2 written task sheets associated with practical work, up to a total of approximately 10 pages due at dates distributed across the first 7 weeks of the semester (15% = 2.5 + 5 + 7.5); a scientific report of up to the equivalent of 2000 words due in week 10 of the semester (20%); a 2½-hour written examination during the examination period (65%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, a fair few, although the formats aren't exactly the same as a lot has changed.

Textbook Recommendation:  Hill, Wyse & Anderson, Animal Physiology, 3rd Ed, Sinauer Associates Inc. 2012, Moyes and Schulte, Principles of Animal Physiology, 2nd Ed. Pearson Press 2007. These two are quite useful for citations (especially with citing the different articles the figures/graphs in the book), but you can also do without them, just need more skills in citations.

Lecturer(s): Laura Jean Parry, Tim Jessop, Andrew & Angelina, Mark & Kath, Kearney & Frankenberg (can't remember the full names of the rest)

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  3.75 - 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 79

Comments: A decent subject, and the other possible alternative to Research-based Physiology as a requirement for the Physiology major. The effort put into it is also quite visible, with numerous opportunities for your feedback to the staff. Though it has a quota of 300 students during my study, the quota has now been reduced to 240 students, but I'm sure it's nothing LeviLamp can't handle, I got in with a H2B average.

Lectures

Throughout the subject you'll be given numerous lectures that may also complement knowledge in the pracs, but are also an important component of the exam. Aside from the content you're expected to know, there are also prac report lectures that give you a heads up on what you're expected to do for any reports you have. There are also research focus lectures that, while they may not be a key part of the exam (although they could be included in short answer sections), you should keep them in mind.

The contents of the lectures aren't overly hard and I've heard some people say that some stuff is pretty similar (if not identical) to that of Human Physiology; I'll have to find that out for next semester. You might need a book to clarify your understanding on sequence-based processes. Stuff other than that isn't overly hard, easy enough to breeze through with effort.

Pracs

Throughout the semester you're expected to attend to a total of 5 (maybe 6 w/ the new one) 3 hour pracs usually once every two weeks. These labs (except one, a CAL) take place in the Zoology lab and you are expected to own your own lab coat. You'll be doing stuff like injecting toads with vasotocin, placing mice in a chamber to measure their metabolic rate (less fun than it sounds), cut open fish, etc. Some of the pracs are quite dull, especially when you're stuck for 3 hours, but bearable.

After each prac until week 7, you are expected to write reports/answer task sheets worth a total of 15% (split 2.5 + 5 + 7.5 for the first 3 pracs). The initial reports are rather simplified, but you should get your report writing skills right so you don't slip up on points, it's easy to; I lost 4% from this section. All of these is a warm up for a later report due after the break which is worth 20%! If you want a H1, do not screw this one up in particular. Read the avaliable guides well and learn the appropriate use of figures & graphs, explaining and displaying results, discussion, conclusion, and incorporating material from other literature. Those are the general guides to a good report. Try to hand them in on time. A paper less than 24 hours late won't earn deductions, but won't get any useful feedback.

Exam

The exam might be tough but not entirely overwhelming. 3 sections: A, B, and C. As you may have guessed, these are MCQs, short answers, and long answers respectively. The MCQs are doable and isn't anything you can't handle. There is a bit of section B questions based on the pracs, so you'll need to go over them. Parts of sections B & C however, give you the option to choose your questions from a list, so you could work that to your advantage. Just be prepared to splurge everything you have on your chosen questions as they could be of a high value. Knowledge of the research focus lectures (if the questions concern them) are also useful here, as are examples from the lectures. You may want to go for a high value question with a load of content instead of one where there is little, so you could be prepared to regurgitate everything you know and hope you got a wide range of them on paper.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on November 20, 2013, 02:51:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20009 - Personality and Social Psychology 


Workload: 1x 2-hour lecture per week; and 1x 2-hour tutorial/lab class every fortnight.

Assessment: 1 Lab report of 2000 words (40%) and 1 2 hour multiple-choice examination (60%). Hurdle requirement includes attending at least 5 out of 6 Lab Classes AND participation in a class debate close to the end of the semester.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No past exams; however there are about 4-5 Questions posted for each lecture and they resemble the kind of MCQs you get in the exam so they're good practice :) Answers are also provided for these Qs.

Textbook Recommendation: No prescribed textbooks, however most Personality/Social Psychology textbooks would cover the topics in this subject if you do find textbook learning helpful :) For the Personality component of this subject, Nick Haslam's 'Introduction to Personality and Intelligence' is especially helpful I think! :)

Lecturers: Simon Laham, Garry Robins, Jennifer Boldero, and Luke Smilie

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013.


Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 83 (H1)

Comments:
About the Assessment:
To do well in the lab report, it's important to gather good references to build up your intro and make sure you set out your results as per APA format (no spss tables) and also make sure you do all the statistical analysis properly (you're given good instructions in this area so dw :) ). Also, my tutor was saying that the main area in which marks are lost in the lab report is in 1) Not building up your intro in such a way that it links well to the hypotheses and Make sure you do mention previous work that has been done in the area of moral dilemmas and responses to impersonal/personal scenarios as it counts for a lot in your intro. and 2) Merely identifying improvements that could be made to the study or limitations, rather than explaining HOW those limitations could have hindered the results (this is just explaining what the limitations entailed for the study). Also, correct APA referencing is important, especially for how you display your results and in-text references. I found the lab report to be interesting - our one was about Moral responses to personal/impersonal moral dilemmas and we had to choose our own hypotheses from a list and based on the results we had to construct the lab report based on that. I found the Discussion Board on the LMS to be extremely helpful for the lab report and the staff were really helpful in answering Qs and I appreciated that! The Exam was 90 MCQs which most people will finish before the 2 hours. Most of the Qs were straightforward but some of the Qs were a bit badly worded and didn't make much sense haha but that was only a few! Most of them linked really well to the lectures and lab content is also assessed in the exams as well :) Speaking of Labs, a hurdle requirement is that you must attend at least 5 out of 6 lab classes (you can afford to miss one without having to bring any lab transfer or medical certificate). And iirc it was one lab transfer per student for the whole semester. Also, I'm not sure if this was a new component of the hurdle requirement but this year we also had to participate in an end-of-semester class debate (we formed affirmative/negative teams at the start of the semester) and that was a hurdle requirement but didn't contribute any marks to our grade (basically you put time aside out of class to research and prepare speeches and in the end you don't get any marks for it LOL :P). I didn't mind the debate requirement as such, but thought it was an extra unnecessary assessment which was inconveniently placed close to exams and all the other assessment due dates haha.

About the actual subject content:
Overall, if you like the idea of learning about psychology in a way that tells you a little bit about human nature and who you are, you might really like this subject! :) I did this subject as a compulsory core unit but even if it wasn't compulsory, I would've still taken it because it covers a lot of interesting topics. E.g. you learn about human nature and a lot of different social phenomenon (what do people see as immoral and moral? What influences our moral responses? How normal people can do evil things on the basis of following orders, how we conform to others behaviours and responses, How our behaviours are strongly governed by social influence (obedience/conformity/compliance), how mimicry increases liking, how and why we form relationships with each other and the different types of relationships, Attitude formation, The Self, and different ways of understanding Personality and traits). In terms of stats (which unfortunately, you can never run away from in psych), you learn about correlation and regression. If you're thinking of taking this as a breadth (and haven't done psych before), I wouldn't say it's an "easy" breadth to take but if you like the topics covered, I'd say you could do really well! :) You do go through HEAPS of studies in this subject and are required to remember all the names! Which can be a bit difficult but definitely do-able! However don't worry too much as the lectures in themselves are quite easy to understand and quite straightforward. The MOST IMPORTANT THING to do before starting this subject is to make sure you brush up on assumed research methods knowledge (know things like what a population, sample, IV, DV, different experimental sampling and allocation methods, different types of limitations and confounding variables and definitely understand the P-value of statistical significance!) :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on November 20, 2013, 03:40:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC30014 - The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Workload: 2 hour lecture per week; 2 hour Lab Class every fortnight. Hurdle Requirement is to attend at least 5 out of 6 Lab Classes throughout the semester.

Assessment: 2500 word Essay (40%) and a 2 hour exam (60%) consisting of 12 extended answer Qs (each answer expected to be about 2-2.5 pages long) - but out of 12 Qs you have to choose and answer a total of 6 (3 Qs from Henry Jackson's lectures and 3 Qs from Amie Frewen/Isabel Krug's lectures).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No past exams; however, 2 sample Questions were released along with a sample answer for each.

Textbook Recommendation: To be honest, any recently published Abnormal Psychology textbook will do (and this is what Henry Jackson also mentioned in the first lecture). However, the prescribed textbook for this subject is specifically Elizabeth Reiger's E. Rieger Abnormal Psychology: Leading Researcher Perspectives.(Second Edition) :) We didn't use it much so it's not essential to buy :)

Lecturer(s): Henry Jackson, Amie Frewen, Isabel Krug (Guest lectured for the Eating Disorders topic)


Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 88 (H1)

Comments: This was my favourite uni psych subject to date! :D Basically, this subject is all about Abnormal Psychology! So you learn about a specific mental disorder every week (e.g. throughout the 12 weeks, we first covered the importance of DSM and Clinical techniques for studying Mental Disorders, and then we covered how to formulate case studies for patients with mental disorders. After that, we basically went straight into focusing on the actual mental disorders themselves. You only learn about the main key features and symptoms and controversies surrounding the disorders (the interesting stuff!) and we never had to learn anything about treatments (thank God!). So we learnt about Anxiety Disorders (stress,panic disorder, PTSD, social anxiety), Mood Disorders (Major Depressive Disorder & Bipolar), Substance Use Disorders, Somatoform & Dissociative Disorders, Eating Disorders, Sexual Disorders and Paraphilias, Psychosis (Schizophrenia), and Personality Disorders as well as major issues surrounding mental disorders (e.g. stigma, low awareness/treatment in Indigenous populations etc). Because you CHOOSE what Qs you want to answer in the exam, it is possible to only study 3 topics from HJ's lectures and 3 from AF's lectures - HOWEVER, I think it's better to try and study them all as often you could get a Q that you don't know how to answer and it's good to have knowledge to fall back on another Q :) Also, you're not required to particularly memorise DSM symptom criteria so dw about that! :P

The Essay was basically focused on whether incorporating a dimensional approach to the categorical DSM would be an adequate framework for diagnosing Eating Disorders. Unfortunately the Eating Disorders lecture by Isabel Krug was held weeks after our essay was due so basically we had to independently research on eating disorders ourselves for the essay (which wasn't a big deal but having a lecture would've helped more). The essay wasn't extremely difficult but researching and getting good sources took up the most time. Also, having mostly used APA referencing with lab reports, I had to again revise how to use APA in essays haha. The Essay was online submission and we did get assistance in terms of writing introductions and body paragraphs in our Lab Class. That said, the Lab classes were really great! I actually enjoyed the lab classes for this subject more so than any other of my psych subjects. Basically we went through the lab slides, did group discussions of case studies and watched videos of patients who had the particular mental disorders we were studying. My tutor was Elon and he was really helpful and engaging and made the lab classes interesting and enjoyable! :)

The Exam (for me) was wedged in between my Cognitive and Pers&Social Psych exams so naturally I was cramming for this subject to some extent haha. I found the exam okay! But finishing early is not really possible in this exam I think (unless you're a super speedy writer) and I thankfully got in my last word at the last second haha. For exam answers, there's no compulsion to memorise studies or statistical figures for prevalence of the mental disorders, but it is possible that they may get you marks (and enhance an already detailed answer). But obviously spurting out stats in itself doesn't take the place of an actual answer so they kind of emphasised that beforehand. Dot points or normal structured answers were both accepted. The answers had to be concise and no wasting time with fancy intros or repeating the Q. I found the Qs mostly did pertain to the lecture content and the answering booklet was enough to fit in all your answers :)

Overall, if you like the idea of learning about mental disorders and what factors cause/exacerbate/reduce/maintain them, this subject is for you! :) It's not a hard subject as such, but it is (like any psych subject) very content-based and the written extended Q exam means that it is important to get a good understanding of the aetiology of each disorder that's covered. The content in itself though is really interesting and nothing too abstract is covered so if you like the topics covered, I think you can definitely do well!  :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on November 20, 2013, 04:17:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: SPAN10002 Spanish 2 

Workload:  2 x 1.5 hour tutorial per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 
    2 written assignments (600 words each) during semester [30%](15% each)
    Oral presentation (equivalent to 400 words) during semester [10%]
    Online work (equivalent to 400 words) during semester [10%]
    1 Oral exam (equivalent to 800 words) in week 11 [20%]
    2-hour final written exam (equivalent to 1200 words)during exam period [30%]

Past exams available:  No, though the exam is in the same format as the Tarea. Practice exams would be a waste of time.

Textbook Recommendation:  Exploraciones (Blitt/Casas). This is the same book as Spanish 1 and must be purchased new.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, semester 2

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 88

Comments: By the time you're at Spanish 2, you're well and truly used to learning languages and should be well on your way with the Spanish language. The advantage that French, Italian and Latin learners, and indeed anybody who has studied a language before, quickly dissipates during Spanish 2. So too does the false sense of security that you're lulled into by Spanish 1. This is absolutely a subject that requires constant revision, even for the very best of students.

Overall, this is still a fun and engaging subject like it's semester 1 counterpart. Particularly for people studying science or biomedicine, it is a good break from those subjects and is particularly good in your first year because it provides somewhat of a step between high school and university. Like I've alluded to, this subject becomes a lot more challenging. You leave the present tense and very quickly start to hammer through the various past tenses and some of the grammatical oddities of Spanish. Given that most of the tutors are native speakers, or at the very least are not native English speakers, this can be a little onerous as they often struggle to explain grammatical concepts in ways digestible by English students. For the discerning student, this can actually be a good thing because it encourages you to learn the grammar by yourself, which is probably the best way to do it in all honesty.

The introduction of the preterite along with the imperfect past tense can become difficult. The preterite in particular is difficult to conjugate and the pair of them together can become very confusing. This is further complicated by the very rushed introduction of the present perfect towards the end of the semester. In English, we would use one verb type for all three—that is the past tense—but in Spanish there are certain rules, which are often difficult to digest, that determine which verb tense is used. Often these rules change from country to country. For example, the present perfect is used far more often in Spain than it is in Latin American countries.

Spanish becomes a lot more serious, but the tutors are still really sweet and the tutorials are still fun. It seems a little shallow, but Spanish provides a perfect opportunity to make friends and build some amazing relationships with people. The classes are always very close and everyone tends to get along very well. This is a great departure from certain subjects wherein barely anybody talks to anybody. The environment in Spanish classes makes the rigours of this subject much more easy to deal with, as there's a great sense of camaraderie in each class. For me personally, this aspect of Spanish was invaluable and made it a very enjoyable class to attend, which is something we do really need at Uni!!

Unlike last semester, the presentation is given in Spanish and not in English. This makes it a lot more difficult, but it is certainly very exciting to see everyone get out the front and do a fantastic job. At first, I was worried about the presentation being in Spanish, but even for the weakest students, it provided a great opportunity to speak some great Spanish. It made me value just how much we had learned, when even weaker students who had no enthusiasm for the subject whatsoever were forming large passages of fluent Spanish ad hoc, after only 16 or so weeks studying the subject! The presentation also provides a good opportunity to get over some of your inhibitions and get to know people in the class. The supportiveness of the classes and tutors also makes it a hell of a lot easier—this is a very good audience to speak to, believe me! (my class kindly laughed at all my tacky, pathetic jokes in Spanish!).

I would definitely recommend this subject. There is a myriad of extra resources for students, it is extremely well set out (for example they publish a course guide that says exactly what each class will do in each lesson, which chapters and which exercises). There is a very clear sense of what one needs to know and needs to do and there is never any ambiguity about concepts or what constitutes a good mark. A good mark comes simply from knowing whatever has been taught. This is the only subject I've taken thus far wherein no one has said "what do we need to know?", which really is something to commend I believe! The tutors are all lovely and will enthusiastically help you outside of class. They're also very contactable via e-mail. Whilst Spanish 2 was certainly a lot harder and more frustrating, it is definitely worth it. The class is fast paced and you constantly feel as though there's something to be achieved, even though the classes still remain fun and give time to get to know everyone!

¡Tomad esta clase!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on November 20, 2013, 05:00:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10016 Mathematics for Biomedicine 

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures per week and 1x1hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  Weekly assignments 20%, Oral presentation 5%, 3 hour exam at end of semester 75%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (though we had microphone troubles all semester)

Past exams available:  None, there was one sample exam without answers. Though we had a Facebook group and made our own answers document.

Textbook Recommendation:  None, the lecture slides are brilliant though.

Lecturer(s): Dr Anthony Morphett

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 82 H1

Comments: I have always had a terrible relationship with mathematics, and have only had very fleeting moments when I have enjoyed it. This subject, however, completely convinced me that mathematics can be fun and enjoyable to study.

The other review for this subject speaks of it being exceedingly difficult and the lectures too quick to follow. The maths and stats department heard a lot of these complaints from the students who studied it last semester, and all credit to the Maths and Stats faculty, listened to their advice. The experiences of this subject relayed to me by people who took this subject last semester were not all consistent with my experiences of this subject.

First of all, I want to start by saying that Anthony Morphett is a sensational lecturer. Lecturing in mathematics is one of the most challenging things to do at a university. Mathematics is very much an area that requires a high level of interaction between the teachers and their students. It requires trial and error and actually getting down to doing things. Thus, as all maths lecturers bemoan, lectures for maths is a poor way to teach it. I tend to agree, though Anthony Morphett is the exception to that rule. He always explained concepts really well and in a way that was digestible for maths morons like me.

There are three main areas that make the focus of this subject. I'll give a quick run down of the three areas.

Population genetics: we start off with the base model of population genetics (Hardy-Weinberg). This essentially describes how allele frequencies will behave over time if any intervening influence, including random effects, are removed from the equation. We then build on this model, including parameters that allow us to observe the influence of mutation (this leads us to a new model called the Fisher-Haldane-Wright model). Also looking at the inheritance of X-linked traits and male and female gene pools. In order to observe these things, we learn the basic of difference equations. Which a models for change over discrete time. They're pretty simple to work with and there's nothing too difficult about them at all! The techniques involved such as cobwebbing and using the linear stability criterion don't involve difficult maths whatsoever and are very easily worked with. After we've dealt with these things, we need to start looking at what occurs in small populations. This is truly fascinating and shows the major influence that population size can have on allele frequencies. These models (the Wright-Fisher Model and the Moran Model) allow us to demonstrate how particular traits can disappear from a population simply by chance and indeed how new mutations become fixed in populations without the effect of selection. These require different mathematical techniques, in particular, Markov chains and using the Monte-Carlo simulation to track these over time. It probably all sounds a bit onerous, but it is really quite easy and a lot of fun. It shows the true force of genetics and how it all occurs on a large scale.

Biochemistry: After six weeks of genetics, this is generally a welcome change for most students (though not me—I quite liked genetics!). The mathematical models used are a bit different as we no longer look at discrete time, but rather, continuous time. This introduces us to differential equations, which are quite similar to difference equations. The basics of both are actually quite similar, and this makes the concepts quite easy to grasp. We start off with something called mass action kinetics and use difference equations to model the way that reactions proceed over time. This leads us into some weird and wonderful tricks for working with difference equations and a hell of a lot of graphing. This can become quite tricky, but at the end isn't too bad. We then finish off by looking at Michaelis-Menten kinetics, which is a little bit different. This is very much a section that confuses people and you spend the first two weeks or so not really appreciating what is going on. Once everything has been taught though, things click very quickly. It wasn't as interesting as genetics for me, though my marks did climb up for this section a bit. The maths itself was more enjoyable and there was a little of work with computers for this section.

Infectious disease: This particular section is a godsend. This is three weeks of using maths that we've already learned in the biochemistry section. Again, we look at how epidemics are formed over continuous time. Thus, all of the techniques involving difference equations are equally applicable and there is a lot of revision of those techniques. This is very much applied maths, with the only difficulties coming from understanding the various parameters and their effect on disease and under what conditions an epidemic will arise or under what conditions the disease will become endemic. There are a number of different models, which essentially give rise to different difference equations, including the SI, SIR and SIS models. When thought about logically, they are very easy to understand and everything just becomes a matter of interpreting the mathematics of the model. Personally, I stopped paying attention during these three weeks and was lucky that I chose them, because it wasn't particularly detrimental at all.

Overall, this was a great subject. I'm not a maths person at all and yet I found this subject fantastic, I also found that during the semester I was doing quite well. The sticky point was probably the exam. It was a lot harder than the previous semester's and will see a great number of people fall well below their expectations, I think I will be included in that. It was also a lot harder than the practice exam that we were given, which was a bit disappointing. There are a lot of resources available to students, including tutorials (which are worth going to) and weekly exercise sheets with answers. The exercise sheets are quite challenging, though being able to complete them will set you up very nicely for the exam. The exam is intended to be written to be easier than the exercise sheets.

There is an oral presentation component of the assessment. This is essentially free marks, so it's good for that. Most students found it to be a waste of time, though I don't agree with them. Perhaps I'm biased—I love public speaking—but I thought that it actually did function quite well as a way to help us discuss and better appreciate the mathematics that we were using. This was an imperative for everyone studying the course. The key to doing well was to be able to appreciate what the maths meant, with a whole section of the course devoted to just that. The maths in the course isn't particularly intense (and believe me when I say that's something coming from me) and was made a hell of a lot easier by actually understanding the maths. A bit of logic and a basic understanding of the maths would easily lead to a reasonable answer. This is definitely a subject wherein it is more important to understand the importance of the maths and what it represents rather than being able to use the skills themselves. In other words, you could sort of bullshit through the maths a little bit by just using your head, something that suited me very well.

Biomedicine throws out some terrible core subjects. This is certainly not one of them if you get Anthony Morphett as your lecturer.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on November 21, 2013, 01:39:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure and Function 
Workload:  (6 x 1 hr lectures per week, 4 x 2 hr anatomy practicals throughout semester, 1 x 3 hr physiology practical throughout semester

Assessment:   2 x intra-semester tests (10% each), Physiology Practical Report (10%), Anatomy end of semester exam (35%), Physiology/Pharmacology end of semester exam (35%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, on unimelb past exam website

Textbook Recommendation:
Eizenberg, N., C. Briggs, C. Adams & G. Ahern. General Anatomy: Principles and Applications. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Silverthorn, D.U. Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach. San Francisco: Pearson, 2007

For anatomy, don't bother getting a textbook. Nearly everything you need you can find somewhere online. Physiology, I would probably recommend getting the textbook, pre-reading is prescribed and basically assessed as well.

Lecturer(s):
Lots of people. This year it changed with the cardiovascular ones. I'll go into detail later.

Year & Semester of completion:
2013 - Sem 2

Rating: Overall: 3/5
Pharmacology - .6/1
Anatomy - 2/2
Physiology - .4/2

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Okay, so I thought I'd give a bit of a contrasting opinion from someone who is going to major in either HSF or Physiology.

Firstly, anatomy.
I can not fault the coordination and lecturing of the anatomy course. Just perfect. Great lecturers, amazing pracs and assessment was always fair. Hence the 2/2.

Pharmacology next.
I was a student of Pharmacology, How drugs work this semester so keep that in mind.
So you have 3 lectures for this, Alastair Stewart, Michael Lew and Graham Mckay. Alastair is deplorably bad however Michael and Graham are fantastic. I would recommend asking the kids who do the pharm subject as an elective for their first couple of lectures as it taught much much better and the content that is assessed is much closer to what the pharm kids learn than what Alastair teaches. Seriously, he really sucks. I felt the assessment was not fair, as while I found that section on the exam easy, it was not really taught by Alastair. Also, yes you do need to learn all the drugs they talk about. Especially Michael Lew and Graham. Just as a side note, while the pharm subject is essentially the same for the first 2-3 weeks is differs completely after that and it becomes much more enjoyable, so don't be deterred from doing a pharm major from what the pharm component is like in HSF.

Physiology.
I'm most likely going to major in physiology so I'll try be as objective as possible.
Even with my love of physiology, this was horribly taught. The are 6 main topics - Neuro, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, reproductive and digestion.
Firstly, I would like to just say physiology is not like other biology subjects, you actually have to understand the content. It's not just memory work.
Alright now into the topics.
Neuro: Taught by David Williams who is the coordinator of the subject. I personally found him a very good lecturer but others found him really average for some reason. Either way the neuro topic, IMO was taught well and assessed fairly.
Cardio: Here's where shit hits the fans. We had a different lecturer for each lecture(about 4 overall) and as such there was no continuity and in addition, the lecturers were doctors who clearly hadn't lectured before. So the content was very poorly taught.
Respiratory: Same deal as cardio except the lecturers were decent this time.
Renal: Very well taught, lecturer is great.
Repro: Very well taught, wasn't assessed at all in either the exams or the MSTs for some reason.
Digestion: Average lecturer. DO THE PREREADING FOR HIM ESPECIALLY, HE WILL EXAMINE IT. Said lecturer is Joel Bornstein
So apparently the year before people complained about David Williams lecturing for the cardio and respiratory section because it wasn't his field of study. Which I think is ridiculous to make such a complaint. In response David recruited all these lecturers who absolutely sucked.  Hopefully he should be back lecturing it next year though. In terms of assessment I strongly recommend getting hold of the physiology lectures and watching all the cardio and respiratory ones (the ones on high altitude and excercise especially) as it was assessed on the exam even though we had a total of one lecture slide on high altitude. This is a result of having to cut lectures out to make way for the pharm component of HSF. Assessment for physiology is also quite weird. The whole exam except 2 15 mark questions is them giving you a scenario and they then say "what is the effect on... ventilation rate, PO2, PCO2, pH etc" and you can choose from increase, decrease, no change or not enough information. There is no place for giving an explanation or anything which I find severely limiting in determining a students competency. Also, nearly always you can think of something that was assumed in the question making you think the answer is not enough information when in reality the lecturer hasn't thought of that assumption meaning the answer is something else. Make sense? Didn't think so, but don't worry you'll see when you start the subject and do the practice questions David posts up.
The physiology prac is also very stupid as you had to write a prac report on stuff you hadn't been taught yet in the lecture.
pm me for any questions :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on November 21, 2013, 02:38:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001: Pharmacology, How Drugs Work

Workload:  3 lectures a week, 2x3 hour pracs throughout semester, (3-4)x1 hour tutes, 3x1 hour workshops
Assessment: 
A couple of CALs and prac questions(don't worry it's not a prac report, it is just just answering a few questions (20%).
Mid-semester assessment (20%).
A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes.

Textbook Recommendation:  I have no idea if there is a textbook, but you definitely do not need it.

Lecturer(s):
Lots and lots and lots.

Year & Semester of completion:
2013 - Sem 2

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:
I really enjoyed this subject. The quality of the lecturers were fantastic(except alastair stewart), even if some were a little boring. Oh, and before I start, yes you do need to learn all the drugs they mention *gasp* I know right! How could they make you do such a thing in a subject on Drugs. Overall there are about 100 to learn. For some drugs you just need to learn that it binds to this receptor, others you need to learn how the drug causes the response. In terms of side effects for drugs, some lecturers will teach them but not assess them, others will teach them and assess them. Just learn the main side effects rather than all of them and you'll be okay, if they do get assessed it'll just be MCQ questions.
So, content, here we go.
First 3-4 weeks is the principles of drugs, and this is the how drugs work, how they are excreted out of the body and how drugs are discovered. Pretty boring stuff IMO.
After that is where I really started to enjoy it. You basically learn the drugs used to treat various things and how they do whatever they are supposed to do. The topics are drugs for: asthma, hypertension, immune system, pain, depression, obesity, contraception, recreation, sport, bacteria, fungi, brain and then a couple of random ones on drug toxicity and environmental contaminants.
Tutes are optional and basically like mini interactive lectures. The workshop they will say is assessable but in reality it'll be 1 multi choice question on one of the drugs. The pracs are compulsory but there are only 2 of them. The first prac is incredibly boring but the second is okay. Assessment for the pracs is post practical assessment.
Overally the assessment I found was much easier in comparison to my biomed subjects especially the MST. The exam was more difficult than the MST otherwise 30% probably would of gotten H1s. The exam I thought was still very fair.
Also in terms of studying, I recommend using one of the many flashcard websites out there and make your set of flashcards. It makes learning much more efficient.
As I said the lecturers are great even though there are many. Because each lecture is basically another topic you don't feel the need for continuity of lectures, so it's not a problem that there are many different lecturers. Overall great subject, made me consider doing a pharmacology major.
PM me for any questions :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Leronziia on November 22, 2013, 11:58:04 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10007 Physics for Biomedicine 

Workload: Three lectures a week, 8 practicals throughout the semester each lasting 3 hours, weekly tutorials (problem solving sessions) that last an hour.


Assessment: 25% allocated to the 8 practicals throughout the semester.
15% for weekly MasteringPhysics assignments that are computer based.
60% end of semester examination.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yes, with solutions provided from 2008-2012.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook was College physics: A strategic approach. I don't buy textbooks purely because I can spend the money better elsewhere, but having the eBook/PDF was certainly beneficial when concepts were very rushed during the lectures, which was often the case.

Lecturer(s): Martin Sevior took the first six weeks and Rob Scholten took the remaining six.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2.

Rating: 3.5/5.

Your mark/grade: H1

Comments:

Okay, I haven't seen a review for this subject so here goes.

This subject was very, very demanding, particularly since all the students involved had no prior physics experience (barring cheekiness). Started off fairly slow and easy but once a few weeks had elapsed the pace really picks up. You end up covering an insane amount of content; kinematics, forces, energy, fluids, thermal physics, waves, electricity, magnetism, atomic physics and radiation, all in the space of 12 weeks.

The first half of the course was taken by Martin Sevior, who is no doubt a very nice fella. I just felt that we weren't being 'taught' as much as were being 'told' with Martin. It was simply a matter of reading the slides. Thankfully Rob Scholten took a slightly more dynamic approach. He was more interactive with the students and more enjoyable to try and learn from.

The practicals were decent, albeit there were too many. Eight is really overkill, especially when biology consists of five and first semester chemistry has only six. Nonetheless, it what a pretty easy way of securing at least 20 of the 25 marks available towards your final score. They also swapped demonstrators after 4 practicals to ensure there wasn't any bias or inconsistency between the groups in terms of marking.

Nonetheless, I have nothing nice to say about the MasteringPhysics weekly assignments that are computer based. I absolutely dread having to do any sort of mathematical calculations on the computer, and the fact that you have to type your answers correctly using all the right symbols was extremely time consuming and frustrating. One wrong symbol such as incorrectly using a capital letter would results in lost marks. Again, not huge in terms of your final grade, but quite annoying.

The weekly tutorials/problem solving sessions were fairly helpful when I turned up. I'd recommend you attend the sessions and see whether you find them beneficial or not prior to completely ditching them. Attendance is taken though, not sure whether that meant anything...

The exam was quite difficult, the standard was higher than the previous year and probably the few years before that also. Many obscure questions and Rob loves his rubidium and will always find a way to include some of his research into his questions. There was an analogue of a previous year question on the exam, so make sure you go through every past paper provided on the LMS and complete them.

Unfortunately, due to the amalgamation of two semesters worth of physics into one, which apparently was a decision driven by students a few years ago, the subject is quite dense. I don't really blame the lecturers for the fast pace, they are doing their best to complete the content in a semester and prepare students optimally for the GAMSAT. Since this is a compulsory subject (for students with no physics background), you simply have to deal with it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on November 23, 2013, 12:51:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENEN20002 Earth Processes for Engineering

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

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

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Andrew Western, Sam Yuen

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overall this is well organised and well lectured subject. The subject matter is reasonable interesting (for a civil engineer), but the subject is let down but the terribleness of Adrian Yong and the extremely boring and mismanaged workshops.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on November 23, 2013, 01:15:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: SCRN20014 Film Genres and Auteurs

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Bound book of readings (massive)

Lecturer(s): Mark Nicholls, Kate Stevenson

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For those thinking of taking the subject next year (i.e. 2014), I believe Mark is taking a year off, so I'm unsure how this will affect the subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 24, 2013, 10:15:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20002: Genes and Genomes

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

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


Assessment:

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

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

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

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

Lecturer(s): Meryl Davis, John Golz

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

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

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 13collenmax13 on November 27, 2013, 02:43:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: DASC20010 Applied Animal Physiology

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

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

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

Lecturer: Peter Cakebread

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

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

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

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

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

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

I found the content thoroughly interesting and this subject was a well presented introduction to physiology. This subject to me felt like a hidden gem, not many people come across this subject for one reason or the other, perhaps as it is offered Domestic Animal Sciences. The workload was not excessive nor lacking was at a perfect level. The difficulty was also neither excessive or lacking. For the final exam you just have to understand and memorize all the mechanisms and you should be well set. If you are going to do a physiology major or similar major this subject is highly recommended.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spalvains on November 27, 2013, 09:45:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: DASC20010 Applied Animal Physiology

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

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

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

Lecturer: Dr Peter Cakebread

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 1 / 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

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

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

Other
The pracs themselves were a mixed bag. A few were interesting - we ran a glucose tolerance test on sheep, and measured PCV of horses (diagnosing one of them as dehydrated). The others were kinda boring. The lectures themselves were jam packed with flow charts that had way too much information on them to be interesting or helpful. I definitely recommend using the textbook to try and get through the information.
I felt that the only thing I have learned in this subject was how to rote-learn badly taught information. Perhaps if you come from a physiology background it may be better, but to someone who was learning it all for the first time, it was not a good introduction to the subject, and Comparative Animal Physiology handles it a lot better. As someone who wants to go into post-grad vet science, the constant linking of information to disease in domestic animals was good, but not enough to save this subject.
Although it is 'Applied' physiology, it is not taught that way, only tested that way. We learnt each system separately in lectures, but then were supposed to link them all together in the exam. Although we were warned of this ahead of time, I found that this was a bad way of preparing us for the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: |J| on November 27, 2013, 11:52:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20061 Music Language 2: Chromaticism & Beyond

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

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

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

Lecturer(s): Dr Kevin March

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 [H1]

Comments:

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

My opinion:
If you want to do well in this subject, focus on your weekly assignments. Always double-check your assignments. In the composition part, make sure that you don’t make any parallel 5th and parallel 8th as you will get penalised heavily if you make any. Be clear, indicate any inversions if the chord is in inversion, and do not forget the previous lectures because some of them will show up frequently in the assignments and the exam. Also, do your weekly listening because memorising 40 pieces is not something you can cram for one day. (However, if you are fine in losing about 2% of your mark, you can ignore this, because the listening test format in my semester is similar to the assignment. The difference is that there might be a question like “what is the title?” or “who is the composer?”.) Finally, to prepare for the final exam, re-reading your assignment might be a good idea because the format is similar to the assignments. My final exam consists of two parts: formal analysis and harmonic analysis. The harmonic analysis in the exam is quite complex and you need to quickly realise what harmonic function and modulations are used in the excerpt (My final exam harmonic analysis is the first 2 minutes of “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius. Download the score and perform harmonic analysis if you want a rough idea of how the exam would be). Overall, it was an interesting subject which you can apply to “add some colour” to your music through the use of chromatic chord.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Ballerina on November 28, 2013, 10:58:30 am

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

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No. Sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation: 

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

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

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

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80

Comments:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Ballerina on November 28, 2013, 02:47:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2  

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

Estimated time commitment: 108 hours per semester.

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


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

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

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

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

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

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

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013.

Rating:  2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: LeviLamp on November 28, 2013, 03:55:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10001: Biology of Australian Flora and Fauna 

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

Assessment:

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

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

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

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

1 x MST (15%)

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

1 x Large, Intimidating Exam! (60%)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Bayly: Lectures 1-6

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

Ian Woodrow: Lectures 7-11

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

Kath Handasyde: Lectures 12-22

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

Jenny Martin: Lectures 23-24, 29-33

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

Jan Carey: Lectures 25-28

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

Terry Walshe: Lectures 34-36

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

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester Two

Rating:  4.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 (H1)  :D

Comments:

Biology of Australian Flora & Fauna was, overall, a fantastic introduction to the fields of botany, zoology and ecology (with quite a few nods to the importance of geography, meteorology and geology) with relation to Australia, which is (as you will discover) a very large place with an intriguing history and biota. Most of the relevant comments have already been made above, but if you are looking for a science elective that exposes you to new things or if you think you may be interested in zoology and botany, this subject will hopefully convince you that you're interested in these fields. For me, it consolidated my choice to study zoology and made me actually find plants interesting, and it's not really that hard to pull an 80 with some effort, so taking this subject could be quite eye-opening and beneficial to your average as well. From this subject, you take away a suite of knowledge that should provide a stable foundation for understanding Australian biology, but more than that it helps to give a general feel for relevant fields and provides you with a better understanding of how various macroscopic and microscopic scientific professions can come together to analyse a habitat, ecosystem or ecological issue. What this subject covers are things glossed over rapidly or not even considered by the core biology subjects, so if you're into life science I strongly recommend it. Just make sure to land in Emma Lewis's tutorial session.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nubs on November 28, 2013, 06:27:36 pm
 Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001: Pharmacology, How Drugs Work

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes.

Textbook Recommendation:  You don’t really need a textbook

Lecturer(s):

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

Year & Semester of completion:

Semester 2, 2013

Rating:  4.8/5

Your Mark/Grade: 93

Comments:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Tutorials

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


Workshops

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


SDLs

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


Practicals

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

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


MST

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

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

Hope this helps!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on November 28, 2013, 08:29:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20020 Chemistry: Structure and Properties

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 4 available.

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

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

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommendation: If you are doing a Chemistry major, I believe you have to do this subject, however since I am a Chemical Engineering (Systems) Major, I took this as a science elective. While the lecturers were good and the assessment was quite fair, I've given the subject an average rating because:
- The lecturer's often don't make it clear on how the course is practically useful/make it clear at the very end of their sections.
- I felt that some of the sections were basically memory tests (Evan's and Stephen's parts) which limited more creative questions.
- To be frank, some of the course content just totally disinterested me by preference (eg. some parts in Evan's quantum chemistry sections).
Seeing that you may be locked into doing this subject if you are a Chemistry major, you will probably enjoy this subject if you like the more theoretical aspects of chemistry and physical chemistry.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on November 28, 2013, 09:10:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEN20007 Chemical Process Analysis 1 

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

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

Past exams available:  Yes. There are 5 available.

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

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

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1.

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommendation: If you are a Chemical Systems major, you will be doing this subject and it is a great introduction to some of the fundamental concepts in Chemical Engineering. If you are considering this for a science elective, then I would say you would enjoy this subject if you like doing applied math problems/questions. In retrospect, a lot of the questions (involving material balances) are just like doing a puzzle, so I suppose if you like doing those then you will like the subject! I will warn those considering chemical engineering that you will NOT be doing a lot of chemistry. You will however be using concepts like using moles quite a bit for material balances.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on November 28, 2013, 10:07:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEN20009 Transport Processes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lecturer(s): Dr Dalton Harvie.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013/S2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

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

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

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

Recommendation: I have given this subject such a high rating since if you put in the work to understand what Dalton is talking about, the types of problems you can work through by yourself are very interesting like analysing the mass transfer of oxygen through contact lenses and the cornea. Even though this is by far the most difficult subject I have come across so far, it is very satisfying and intellectually stimulating once you understand it. For Chemical Systems majors, you will have to do this subject as a prerequisite, but for others, I believe this can be taken as a breadth(?)/science elective. If you are considering doing this subject, be prepared for a significant workload and I would suggest you have a good background in mathematics (integration mainly).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on November 28, 2013, 10:53:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEN20008 Chemical Process Analysis 2 

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

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

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

Lecturer(s): Dr. Chris Honig.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013/S2

Rating: 4.8 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on November 28, 2013, 11:53:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20011 Environmental Chemistry 

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available:  Yes, 10+ available.

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

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

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 1.

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

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

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

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

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

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: |J| on November 29, 2013, 01:30:43 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20004 Probability

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial and 1 hour laboratory class per week

Assessment:  4 x 5% assignments, 80% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, from 1999 to 2012 (except 2003) with the answers

Textbook Recommendation:  Fundamentals of Probability with Stochastic Processes by Ghahramani, but I did not use any

Lecturer(s): Prof Peter Taylor

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 99 [H1]

Comments:

As its name, this subject introduces the basic concepts of probability. If you are undertaking Actuarial Studies, you have to do this subject instead of MAST20006 Probability for Statistics. If you are not an actuarial students, you should note that the prerequisite of MAST30020 Probability and Statistical Inference is either to pass this subject or to get a H2B or above in Probability for Statistics (Probability for Statistics is non-allowed subject of Probability)

Lectures:
This subject is not divided in chapters or modules, but I like to divide this subject into some parts:
1. Defining Probability: probability axioms, conditional probability, independence, law of total probability, Bayes’ formula, discrete & continuous random variables (RVs), expectation, variance and higher moments of a RV.
2. Special Probability Distributions: Discrete distribution (Bernoulli, Binomial, Geometric, Negative Binomial, Hypergeometric, Poisson, discrete uniform distribution) and Continuous Distribution (continuous uniform, Exponential, Gamma, Normal distribution).
3. Transformations of Random Variables
4. Bivariate Random Variables: distribution function of bivariate RVs, joint and marginal pmf & pdf, conditional pmf & pdf, bivariate normal distribution, independence of RVs, transformation of bivariate RVs (including convolution theorem), expectation of function of two RVs, Covariance & Correlation, Conditional expected value, Conditional variance and approximations for the mean & variance of functions.
5. Generating Functions and Applications: probability generating function (pgf) and moment generating function (mgf), Chebyshev’s inequality, limiting distributions, law of large numbers, central limit theorem and branching process.
6. Stochastic Processes: Discrete-Time Markov Chain (DTMC)


My Opinion:
This is the first maths subject which made me completely lost in each lecture. The first few weeks were pretty easy, but it got much more difficult starting from Negative Binomial Distribution. As a result, I went to tutorials knowing nothing and ended up sitting down, looking at the whiteboard, which means I learned nothing from each tutorial. The assignments were also pretty hard (except assignment 1) and it took me all night to finish each assignment. It wasn’t until SWOTVAC when I finally understood what was going on and could use my “common sense” in this subject.

This subject relies on Taylor series, which is covered in Real Analysis and Engineering Mathematics. However, both subjects are not the prerequisites thus making those people who haven’t done Real Analysis or Engineering Mathematics a bit confused. Also, to prove some formulae, we often need to change the (in)finite sum to a closed form (eg. change of summation index, binomial theorem, Taylor expansion of exponential etc.), which is one of the major problems for many people. Also, when you start learning bivariate random variable, there will be some vector calculus involved, which is (again) not the prerequisite of the subject. I frequently found my friends having trouble not about the probability concept, but about the vector calculus concept. In my opinion, the vector calculus problem is even harder in this subject because we often deal with piecewise function.

The tutorial was 2 hours, where the last 1 hour was used as a laboratory class. I think the laboratory class was useless since they already gave you the program, and the explanation was not clear at all. Frequently the program was too complex for students who had just learned MATLAB (I have done ESD2, but I still have no idea of how the program works), thus my friends and I did not pay too much attention in almost all computer laboratory classes (although I believe that simulation using computer is very important). There was no computer test, but there was one question on the exam which was based on the concept used in the computer laboratory class.

My advise of how to do well in this subject is to clearly understand your basic probability concept. Make sure you know the difference between pmf, pdf and distribution function. Use analogy to understand your special distribution functions (eg. exponential distribution is the continuous case of geometric). After you understand what is going on in this subject, do your tutorial sheets and past exams with your cheat sheet. (You are allowed to bring a double-sided A4 paper, must be handwritten)

Overall, this is a good and challenging subject, but the computer laboratory content (especially the explanation of the computer lab sheet) should be improved.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Badoa on November 29, 2013, 02:59:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP10002 Foundations of Algorithms

Workload:  3x 1 hour lectures, 1x 2 hour tute

Assessment:  Two major assignments, each worth 15% of the overall mark, and one mid-semester test worth 10%. The assignments are individual programming projects taking ~30 hours of work each to get full marks.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No. One sample exam provided at the end of the semester, with answers provided in swotvac.

Textbook Recommendation:  Programming, Problem Solving, and Abstraction with C written by the lecturer, HIGHLY recommended.

Lecturer(s):  Alistair Moffat

Year & Semester of completion:  2013 semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: The content was so rich and in-depth, and explained so thoroughly and in detail that it was always interesting. Learning the C language for the first half-or-so of the semester with its direct application to algorithms was at the perfect pace for covering fundamentals, with later weeks of the semester being nearly entirely focused on the study of algorithms. Alistair is an excellent lecturer, and his explanations really stick, especially those written in the book. That was one of the best parts of this course, if you needed to follow up on something in the lecture, just read that topic in the book. Or pre-read and then solidify it in the lecture. The concepts proved to be difficult to master, especially when applying them in the midsem test or exam, but definitely do-able.

The projects during the semester were a lot of fun with extremely well designed specifications. The first was to modify a pre-written integer calculator program. This involved changing the data type from a basic integer to a more complex data structure you design yourself to circumvent the limitations of an integer data type. The second was to develop from scratch a program that takes electoral candidate and vote data as input, and perform the preferential voting process to elect a winner.

Much of the applied theory is about algorithm performance and comparison, being time, space, and a lot of working with big-O notation. The most popular data structures are covered in detail, and examined is also binary representation of data in memory.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: buzzwith on November 29, 2013, 03:26:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20009 - Research-based Physiology 

Workload:  1 x 2-3hr Workshop/Practical & 1 x 1hr Lecture

Assessment:  Written reports of up to 1000 words each due during the semester (20%);
Class participation during the semester (5%);
Effective PRS participation and contributions (5%);
A research-project and written report of up to 2000 words due during semester (30%);
Ongoing assessment of e-Learning activities(10%);
A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2009

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn’t buy a textbook, didn’t needed it (however same textbook as human phys)

Lecturer(s): Deanne Skelly

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Sem 2

Rating:  3.75/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is a Pre-requisite for the Physiology Major and a quota subject aswell. I recommend it be to taken after doing Human phys as it makes everything easier in terms of understanding the content (although many people take it concurrently). All lectures have to be attended as they count to your final grade (PRS). Same with the pracs and workshops (attendance is marked). Some of the pracs were enjoyable and fun whereas some of them are kind of simple and tedious (the no. of people in the group compared to the number of tasks to complete weren't taken into account for some pracs, sometimes you were left standing around because there was not much to do). Workshops are more laid-back and much simpler therefore them being 2 hours only. Getting a H1 in this subject is purely determinant among the work completed throughout the course of the semester. So if you’re already comfortably doing well then you don’t even have to do well in the exam to get a H1. However, the reason I gave it a 3.75/5 is because of the research essay and how time-consuming the subject was throughout. If you’re good at writing them then you’ll do fine. Even though there are drafts to be submitted (I highly recommend submitting all the drafts and getting the feedback as your demonstrator will be marking your final paper). I struggled with them and my overall before the exam was really low. Additionally don't only rely on the feedback for the essay as some information can be misleading, in that case ask the lecturer (Deanne was very helpful!) I had to ace the exam in order to get a H1. The exam is very similar to past papers. The questions repeat and will become obvious once you begin past papers.

Although the content of this subject was relatively simple and easy, it was very time consuming in the second half the semester (compared to my other subjects). There’s a lot of little assessments throughout the semester like pre-pracs, prac reports, draft submission ect which I didn’t like as I’m not used to those type of subjects. I guess the good thing was most of the work was done during the semester and which left exam time free so you had time to study for your other subjects. Overall a decent subject which could be relaxing for most people.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: djsandals on November 29, 2013, 03:52:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20161 Alexander Technique for Musicians

Workload:  1 x One hour weekly tute, 1 x One hour weekly lecture

Assessment:  2 x Online tests worth 20% each, Weekly Journal entries worth 40% total, 20% attendance and participation

Lectopia Enabled:  Nope, lectures can be very hands on and attendance is marked.

Past exams available:  No exam #woo

Textbook Recommendation:  I believe some books are recommended at the beginning of the course but aren't essential.

Lecturer(s): Robert Schubert

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: I came into this subject having heard of people talking about Alexander Technique but not really knowing what it was.  Apparently it works better the less pre-conceived notions you have coming into it, so excuse me if I'm a bit vague in the description...

The subject begins with a study of F.M. Alexander; who he was and why/how he developed his technique.  Then you go into his discoveries of the common ways that people misuse their bodies, and learn about methods and philosophies of how to improve your use, done during class discussions and exercises.  You will each get a turn (or more) to perform in front of the class, where Robert will work one-on-one with you to help with misuses in your playing that may affect your performance.

In terms of assessment, the tests are super-easy providing you have access to the readings.  The journal is a big part of this assessment and it pays to go into as much detail as you can.  Entries are to consist of summaries of lectures, tutes and readings, and what you understand the meaning of their content to be, as well as your own reflection of practices and experience regarding the technique.  It is recommended that you write anything as soon as you can, as many people leave the whole journal to the last week (the total length of the journal can be 6000-12000+ words).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on November 29, 2013, 04:12:36 pm
EDIT: sorry made 2 of the same subject ><

Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2 [dunno how to use the link things :( ]

Workload:  Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour practical class/tutorial

Assessment: As taken from the Handbook --> "Four or five written assignments due at regular intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 50 pages (20%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%)."

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes only for the 11am stream. 

Past exams available: Yes from 2009-2013 every semester.
Answers included however brief answers and sometimes rather useless. E.g.
Q) Prove the chain rule for _______
A) Use the chain rule     
:SSSSSS

Textbook Recommendation: Hass, Weir, Thomas, University Calculus Early Transcendentals 2nd edition, packaged with a differential equations supplement from Hass, Weir, Thomas Calculus, Pearson, 2012.

Lecturer(s): Mark Fackrell (coordinator), Antoinette Tordesillas, Steven Carnie.

Year & Semester of completion: S2, 2013

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade:

Comments:
I thoroughly enjoyed this subject in terms of the content as I found it challenging but also interesting at the same time. I took this subject because I did decently well in maths in HS and did not want to take another grueling semester of physics.
DON'T buy the recommended textbook. I spent $80 for a 2nd hand copy and never used it as the stuff in the book was for higher level mathematics such as Engineering Mathematics/Vector Calculus. In the 1st lecture you are giving a green thin problem solving book, this is pretty much your Bible of what you should be able to do.
The topics we learnt:
Limits + Sequences (sequences was the new part of the course which many people including myself struggled with for most of the semester)
Hyperbolic functions
Complex exponential
1st and 2nd Order O.D.Es
Calculus with 3 variables and 3D sketching etc.

Personally I enjoyed EVERYTHING we learnt. In lectures, the lecturer works through the lecture book (buy from Co-op ~$13) by doing problems. You pretty much learn everything by examples. Some people loved this, but I was bored to death by this proposition so I skipped out on lectures.
The 4 assignments were really hard for me and often took me AGES/days to complete.
If you feel you struggle with maths, DO NOT take this subject. BUT if you need to take it as a pre-req and you struggle with maths, go to ALL your tutorials as they will scale your mark up to a 50/100 for a P if you go. Someone I know got 50 for Calc 2 cause he went to all his tutes but failed Linear cause he skipped all his tutes.
Tutorials were hit and miss, I personally didn't find them useful so I never went to them. Most my other peers found them useful and good as revision. I guess it's up to what groups and how your tutor is.
The reason why this subject gets 4/5 instead of 5/5 is the fact your final mark is largely derived from your performance in the exam (80%). I worked through as many papers but the night before I was pretty stressed since my essay paper was due the same day on 4th nov. The fact that all my subjects finished within the first exam week was just screwed.
The exam this year for me was extremely hard and once reason I didn't score as well as I would've liked is due to leaving these exams too late. The last question on the exam paper was a proof of the chain rule and because I didn't know how to do it, BAM instant -10 off the exam :(

I would highly recommended starting practice papers the end of the Mid Semester break and ask questions to the tutors/lecturers and hopefully they can answer them.
I went once to ask Mark a question and I walked out more confused than initially which turned me off from going again.

All in all, I enjoyed the content immensely. The resources provided (Problem solving book) is pretty much where you'll have to work from. Get those done well and you should be fine.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on November 29, 2013, 04:59:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  2 x 10% Assignments; 2 x 5% MCQ online tests; 1 x 60% Exam; 10% Participation

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  3 were provided with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  There was one - didn't use it

Lecturer(s): Graham Richards

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this subject. I really enjoyed micro last semester so I came into this semester with pretty high expectations and they weren't quite met. If you get Graham Richards as a lecturer, he does take some getting used to. You may find the lecture slides to be a bit long winded and at times I personally found some explanations to be a bit too convoluted, so to combat this I recommend writing notes on each lecture just to see how the concepts interact and how he's tried to build up his explanation. I also found that the explanations of the concepts at the beginning of tutorials really helped in the understanding of what is conveyed in lectures. The concepts may seem a bit disjointed, but I found that while writing up summary notes for all the lectures during swotvac helps you to realise how they all link together.

Now onto assessments: we were given a set of practice questions for our first multichoice test and they do give an accurate indication of the difficulty to expect on the actual test. I didn't do too well on the 2nd online test, but if you know your concepts well enough, getting full marks is very achievable. With the assignments, you want to make sure you're extremely thorough with your explanations, you pretty much have to state exactly how you reached your conclusions and which concepts you've drawn from. Anything that you may consider to be relevant you should put in. It's very possible to get near full marks if not full marks on these assignments.

The exam was very similar to the past exams, Graham has a very distinct style in his exam writing. Make sure you are pedantic in your understanding of why the concepts are structured the way they are (eg. what/who supplies in the forex market and why is it sloped in that way) and you need to be extremely verbose in your explanations, much like Graham is in his lectures.

Overall I found intro macro to be really interesting and tutes were great - I had a fantastic tutor; however the lectures did leave something to be desired and because of this there were times I wasn't quite happy with the subject
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on November 29, 2013, 05:16:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law

Workload:  1 x 2 hour lecture

Assessment: 3 x 15% Skills Tasks; 1 x 55% Exam (ALL MCQS)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  You definitely must have the textbook. It's going to be your bible through this subject, and you'll need it to access the etutes (or you can be cheap, like me, and buy it second hand and do the etutes for free in the law library and download the program during swotvac - you have 10 days to use it before you have to put in the code that comes with a new textbook)

Lecturer(s): Tanya Josev

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: There's already been another review on this so I'll try keep repetition to a minimum. I highly recommend this subject - probably my favourite subject this year. Tanya is a fantastic lecturer and is really engaging and really brings to life what could be incredibly dull and boring concepts. When revising I recommend having both the textbook and lecture slides in front of you and notice how they've structured the topics and then writing up your own notes. For memorising the case studies (which isn't too difficult since you only need to be able to recognise and recall the rough facts), just make really terrible mnemonics, the sillier the better - trust me it works.

They've changed the way they do the assessments starting in 2014 (from what I've gathered from the handbook) with fewer skills tasks and even more weighting on the final exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on November 29, 2013, 07:50:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW30002 Taxation Law 1

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

Assessment: 30% Pair Assignment, 70% 2-hour Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Audio File (MP3) only

Past exams available:  Yes, you can find one on the University Library website. But the tutorials and lecture examples are past exam questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Taxation Law + Fundamental Tax Legislation 2013 Thomson Reuters - you must have both textbooks all throughout the semester. Tax law, like any other law, changes from time to time. So next year's would be the 2014 version.

Lecturer(s): Sunita Jogarajan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2013

Rating: 4.75 Out of 5

Comments: This is a breadth subject usually taken by Accounting students who wish to gain accreditation, but there are also a lot of non-Accounting, non-Commerce students who are taking this subject. I recommend this subject because it's a very useful subject regardless of course. Sunita handles the subject very well, and the tutors are all great, too. You'll really learn a lot (there are quite a number of topics to learn) but you need to work really hard. The readings are usually long especially for Fringe Benefits and Capital Gains, but if you master the textbook, you'll definitely receive a good mark.

That said, if you're going to take this subject, at least try to attend ALL lectures and tutorials because in this subject it's hard to be tangled up in topics that are almost always interconnected. Also, tutorial problems are a very good way to know how to write answers to tax problems for the assignment and the exam.

The mid-semester assignment is done in pairs and is due Week 7. It's basically a 2000-word tax advice to a hypothetical tax problem. It's kind of hard to get full marks because your answer must be very, very comprehensive and detailed to the core; however, because of the word limit, you and your partner need to determine which aspects are important. I think that's where the students are assessed. The average grade here was H2A.

The final exam is 2-hour OPEN BOOK exam, with 30 minutes reading time for the 2 exam questions. The exam questions are quite long and complex, but if you religiously answer all the tutorial/past exam questions over and over again, you will find that the questions are quite manageable. This is a time-attack exam - write as many things as you can - that's why the textbooks will probably be less handy than you think. The thing is to make a really good summary of your notes. With a good set of notes, you'll be able to avoid wasting time by referring to the book every now and then. Also by exam time you would have memorised all statutes and cases by heart.

All in all, I highly recommend this breadth subject basically because the knowledge you'll gain is very useful. It's not an easy H1, though.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on November 29, 2013, 07:58:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: GEOM20015 Surveying and Mapping

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 3 hour practical

Assessment:  Major Practical Assignment (3 separate components) - 70%, 2 hour exam - 30%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 4. No solutions provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Cliff Ogleby

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A well taught subject with heaps of practical fieldwork, but the subject can take over your life if you get stuck with a below par group.

Comments:
This is a subject that – although I did well in it – was pretty gruelling and stressful, mainly due to the excess of practical group work.

The assignments and fieldwork themselves are generally pretty fun and reasonably easy to follow, especially if you have already done Mapping Environments, which is not a prerequisite but should be. They feature something sorely lacking in my uni experience so far: hands on fieldwork. This makes it a nice change from most other subjects, but the three hour practicals can drag on a bit.

Cliff is an excellent lecturer and all lectures are recorded. Lecture attendance is severely low (about 10 people turn up out of 120) but the lectures are quite important to listen to and understand to avoid being hindrance to your group.

The best part of this subject is the tutors. Kenny, the head tutor for both this subject and Mapping Envs, is probably the best tutor I have had so far throughout my course. He's a nice, helpful dude that explains content well and attempts to ensure that all groups are up to speed. He is also very reasonable and willing to give extensions if need be. The other tutors are also helpful.

The total contact hours in the handbook estimates about 120 hours for the subject all up. Given the practical work is worth 70%, this equates to about 85 hours of group work, and that's probably realistic. So, if like me, you are the only one in a group of three that knows what you are doing, you pretty much end up with 100 hours of work to do over the course of the semester for the project, which is obviously far from ideal.

The project itself is to make a fairly complicated digital terrain model of the university oval. You'll first do horizontal levelling, then use $10000+ total station to do a horizontal traverse and detail field survey, then manipulate this data with AutoCAD Civil 3D. If this sounds pretty complicated, it's because it is. If you have average to crappy group members like I did, these assignments can be pretty stress inducing and life consuming.

Probably the worst part of the subject is the lack of instruction AutoCAD. The program is not available on any of the computers on campus and you need a decently spec'ed Windows laptop to run it properly. The extent of teaching the software is basically limited to "here's some YouTube tutorials, now make me a complicated model." Pretty poor but I'm sure this will improve, as this was the first year of them using AutoCAD instead of LisCAD.

The exam was pretty straightforward. Going on my marks for the project, I must have pretty much aced the exam to end up a final mark of 90 (my best for any subject, ever).

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this subject due to the high volume of practical work (and the subsequent dependence on group members), but it would be a breeze if you had a good group as most of the content is pretty easy and very familiar for any who have done Mapping.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: djsandals on November 29, 2013, 08:04:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20002 Impressionism to Postmodernism in Music

Workload:  1 x One hour weekly tute, 1 x One hour weekly lecture.

Assessment:  3 x 500 word assignments worth 10% each, due throughout the semester, 1 x 2000 word essay worth 50% due in latter part of semester, one hour listening test during exam period worth 20%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Don't think so but lecture slides available on LMS.

Past exams available:  No.

Textbook Recommendation:  Reader available at co-op.

Lecturer(s): Sue Robinson and Linda Kouvaras

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (72)

Comments: First up, if you are not in the slightest bit interested in experimental/avant-garde 20th century music, stay away from this subject.  If you can tolerate it but aren't really into it, perhaps select a different history subject.

This unit covers art music of the 20th century.  Composers studied include Debussy, Satie, Stravinsky, Webern, Shoenberg, Berg, de Falla, Boulez, Stockhausen, Messaien, Bartok, Cage, Riley, Reich, Adams, Berio and many other various post-modern composers/musicians.  Most of the content relates to each composer's musical philosophies and their contexts as well as techniques they used.

The assessment consists of 3 assignments due every 3 or 4 weeks.  Each week in the reader there is an assignment question and you must choose one relating to the past few weeks.  They aren't too difficult providing you relatively scrupiously look through the relevant reading and you know Chicago style fairly well.  The listening test consists of being played 4 out of 12 works from various composers you have studied.   You have 15 minutes for each work to write down as much as you know about it, roughly about a page's worth.

I enjoyed this subject and found it relatively easy but as I said earlier you need to have a certain taste for the avant-garde.

:)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on November 29, 2013, 10:55:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: SOLS10001 Law in Society

Workload:  2x 1-hour lecture, 1x 1-hour tutorial
NOTE: Hurdle requirement minimum 75% tutorial attendance

Assessment:  10% Group Report (+500 word report summary), 40% Mid-term Essay, 50% Take-home Essay Exam
NOTE: I believe for Semester 2 2014 they will change it to 50% Mid-term Essay, 40% Take-home Essay Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  SOLS10001 Reading Compilation at the Coop. It's good to buy one because it contains all the readings throughout the semester, although the PDF versions are uploaded on the LMS.

Lecturer(s): Dave McDonald

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2013

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I had no idea at all about this breadth subject but I gave it a try (the schedule fits well on my timetable). I find it very interesting because the subject matter is quite confronting - topics include terrorism and torture, female genital mutilation, payback, child sexualisation, same sex marriage, etc. Nevertheless, it challenges the mind to question your point of view on the role that law plays in society.

There are about 3-4 cases per topic, which Dave summarises pretty well. The group report is easy peasy - providing a 10-minute summary on the cases of the assigned topic including the group's insight. Tutorials are very interactive and if you really like to speak your mind - this is a good subject for you.

The midterm essay (2000 words) requires extensive research about a certain topic (you choose that topic from a given list). The final take-home essay (1500 words) is done during the exam period and is just like the midterm essay except you don't have to do much research. These essays assess on how well you identify the main issue, and how you construct and explain your arguments.

Although some may feel that the subject matter goes against their principles (some people feel that way) this subject does not aim to change one's beliefs. Rather, the aim is to enhance critical thinking and instil open-mindedness. I recommend this subject for everyone.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on November 30, 2013, 06:27:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20003 Engineering Materials

Workload:  1x 2 hours lecture, 1 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tute

Assessment: MAST style assignment - 15%, 1 Group Report - 15%, 50 minute MST - 10%, 2 hour exam - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, several with solutions provided

Textbook Recommendation:  There are several prescribed, but none are necessary

Lecturer(s): Elisa Lumantarna and several other guest lecturers

Several.

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2013

Rating:  3.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: Well-lectured and interesting subject with relatively easy content that is somewhat let down by the dryness of it's tutes.

Comments:
This is a subject that covers a fairly basic range of engineering materials in fairly minimal detail. Overall, it has generally been considered an easy H1 by past students, but most (including me) seemed to find this year's exam a bit harder than years past. That said, I got a H1.

Elisa is the unofficial subject coordinator for Eng Mat. She gives the majority of the lectures and outlines the assignment and tutorial schedule. She is a very good lecturer and excellent at answering questions and visualising her explanations with diagrams. She is also extremely quick (to the point of creepiness) to answer emails.

The lecture material is generally interesting and will be familiar to anyone who has completed Constructing Environments. There are separate sections on steel, timber, concrete and masonry and essentially an extended aside on Materials Chemistry run by George Franks as well as an Eng Mechanics refresher on elementary stress and strain. All of these lectures are pretty good and explained well, but the sequence in which they are presented jumbles up the content. i.e. because of the imbalanced lecture lengths (a 2 hour and a 1 hour), you will have a lecture of a completely different subject in between two lectures on the same subject. e.g:
This disjointed method of presenting content somewhat inhibits a coherent and intuitive understanding.

However, the worst part of this subject is by far the tutorials. I don't know if it was only my tutor, but he would literally talk for an hour and do any calculations on the board with little attempt to engage with the students. Eventually I decided I could spend that hour far more productively and stopped showing up. Usually I'm not the sort of student that skips tutes, but this one was so useless and attendance wasn't even marked. None of the content is complicated enough to cause any issues by skipping these, and extensive solutions to all tute questions are provided anyway.

Assessment
MST focusses on the literally the first two weeks of lectures on elementary stress and strain and Mohr's circles. This should be an easy H1 for anyone who had been paying attention, especially those that had come across this already in Eng Mech.

The first assignment was essentially a maths style assignment about materials chemistry. George goes over examples of each of the questions his series of lectures so it is another easy H1.

The second assignment is a 10 page optional group report (i.e. you can do it individually or in a three man (yes man; this is engineering) group of your choosing) that involves observations, structural sketches and calculations of loads acting on a building on campus. This takes a bit of time but is actually and pretty interesting and enjoyable project.

The exam is pretty easy as well, though a few random questions came up that I wasn't quite prepared for and it seemed they made a conscious effort to make it more difficult than years past (where most would reportedly leave with 30-60 mins to go).

Another complaint of this subject is the lack of urgency in timely marking and giving feedback. MST and assignment results consistently took ages to be returned.

Overall, this is a somewhat interesting subject that is well lectured and well resourced, and it should be an easy one for any engineering major.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on December 01, 2013, 11:37:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: MKTG10001 Principles of Marketing

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

Assessment:  10% Individual Assignment; 30% Group Assignment; 60% Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Can't Remember

Past exams available:  Nothing

Textbook Recommendation:  Bought it didn't use it, it's pretty useless. Most people didn't need it

Lecturer(s): Bryan Lukas

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I am fairly apathetic towards this subject. The content isn't too challenging and if you stay on top of things it should be a breeze: useful if you want to do a quick and fairly easy breadth; even better news if you're doing it because you have to for your major. However, don't underestimate this subject because it's quite easy to miss the point entirely if you don't follow the lectures.

The first assignment was a 1000 word essay analysing a recent marketing concept (that we've studied) of a company of our choosing. You're walked through this process, they even gave us a workshop detailing exactly everything they're expecting us to write it; essentially handing us the expected structure of the essay. Easy marks if you're paying attention.

The second assignment was horrid for me. We had to recreate a Marketing Plan for Bank of Melbourne. Because this is a group assignment, change your tute to a time with friends you, even if it's a bit more inconvenient it'll be worth it considering the alternative is potentially getting put into a group where there could be people that are lazy and unmotivated.

The exam was out of 60 and had 15 short answer questions. This is pretty much regurgitating lecture content verbatim, so make sure you cram hard and memorise the content thoroughly. Bryan Lukas likes to speak to his slides a lot so often the bare lecture slides won't be sufficient in your revision (ie. consult the notes you've been taking on what he's saying during the lecture)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on December 01, 2013, 11:54:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10005 Quantitative Methods 1 

Workload:  1 x 1 hour tutorial; 2 x 1 hour lectures

Assessment:  3 x 10% Assignments; 70% Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, we got about 6 with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Forgot the name: see the other reviews. It's quite handy, I would recommend having it

Lecturer(s): Christopher Skeels & Mike Pottenger

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject can be hard to grasp conceptually, but once things starting to click, the subject becomes fairly straightforward. Make sure you engage in tutorial discussion (the "pink" sheet questions are deliberately written to promote discussion) as it is a really valuable opportunity to reinforce or clarify your understanding, often slight nuances are important to realise. Even if you're generally shy and keep to yourself, you want to be willing to engage in discussion and don't be afraid of being wrong, rest assured a lot of people in the tute also have no idea of what's going on either.

When it comes to the assignments they say you can work in groups of up to 4 people (must be in the same tute). Because I had a particularly bad experience with group assignments last semester in another subject I was really hesitant in joining a group so I did all 3 assignments myself and it's quite a lot of work. However, it forces you to really know your stuff as you don't have the option of simply letting other group members do questions you don't understand. Getting near full marks if not full marks is very achievable, even if you're doing the assignments by yourself. If you do join a group, make sure you do the entire assignment yourself, or at least make a decent attempt at completing it, as it means that you can check answers to see if everyone in the group got the same result - it also ensures you're on track and keeping on top of the content in the course.

You have plenty of past exams to practice with and they will be a good indication of what your exam will be like. However, I don't think consequential marks are given (particularly in hypothesis testing - if you get the hypothesis wrong then you don't get any marks because "you're not testing what the question's asking you to test") so make sure in those multi-step questions that you don't make mistakes early on.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vcestudent94 on December 02, 2013, 04:05:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20026 Real Analysis

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture per week and 2 x 1 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  6 Assignments (20%) and a 3 hour end of year exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. 3 given during exam period, initially with no solutions until a few days before exams (I think due to requests from students).

Textbook Recommendation:  There is no prescribed textbook for this subject but I think there is a reading list in the lecture notes if you're enthusiastic.

Lecturer(s): Deborah King - A good Lecturer, explains things clearly with lots of examples.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 96 (H1)

Comments:
I know there's already like three reviews for this subject so I'll try to keep it brief. The lecturer seems to change every semester and so does the emphasis of the course. If I was to sum up the course in one word it would be: epsilon. We even had to write an essay (yes you heard it right) on epsilon for the last assignment. Basically most of the main concepts are defined using epsilon proofs. You begin with Logic and Proof where you learn how to write all the basic proofs- Proofs by Induction/Contradiction/Contrapositive, Predicate logic proofs, Axiomatic proofs etc. This is arguably the most important part of the course and a solid foundation will make life easier in the topics that follow.

Then you move on to sequences where you learn to prove the convergence of sequences using Epsilon-M(or N) proofs. This part is pretty mechanical however proving limit laws are not. At first, all the different kind of proofs appear daunting but then after some practice, you start to realise that all you need to know are the definitions. Just basically:
-Figure out what you want to prove (the 'claim')
- Write down everything that is given (the 'premises')
Then use all the various definitions and theorems to get from A to B.

After sequences you learn to prove limits of continuous functions. Here, epsilon-M proofs are replaced by epsilon-delta proofs. These are slightly more complicated than sequences but mastering both is essential since they come up on exams every year. Midway into the course is IMO the more easy part of the subject. Again, definition is key here. What does it mean for a function to be Continuous? Differentiable? Integrable? You need to know how to answer these because they are your starting point for proofs and also theory questions come up in the exam too.

The last topic is series. This is the most mechanical part of the course. Basically the only advise I can give here is: practice. Do lots of series questions on the problem sheet and tutorial sheet. You will need to be careful before using the various convergence tests (comparison test, ratio test integral test, etc.) by first seeing if the series meets all of the conditions. Usually this will be "positive and decreasing". The last few lectures are on Taylor Series and Fourier series which have some important applications in areas like engineering and physics.
All in all a very well organised subject and my favourite to date.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vcestudent94 on December 02, 2013, 04:53:41 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture per week and 1 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  2 Group Assignments (10% each), A 45 min mid-semester test (10%) and 2 hour Exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No but a specimen exam was given with solutions in the exam period. Also worked solutions to the midsem and assignments was also given which I though was pretty good.

Textbook Recommendation:  An Introduction to Actuarial Studies by Atkinson and Dickson. I didn't buy nor use the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Xueyuan Wu

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating: 3.5-4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 84 (H1)

Comments:
So after doing well in Finance 1 in first semester, I was looking for a similar subject but a little more maths inclined. This subject met that description but it is NOTHING like Finance 1. You can't just simply plug in numbers into a formula, you need to understand the formula and know how to derive it from scratch. You will get many different problems to do with annuities, bonds, housing loans, etc. and it is usually easier (I found) to do things by first principles rather than just memorising a template formula and tweaking it to each scenario. A good background in series will help.
You do mortality and life probabilities which is pretty bland in some parts like dealing with mortality tables and populations, and theres a hint of calculus when you find the force of mortality (nothing major, only finding the derivative of basic functions).

Then you do contingencies, which is basically a mixture of financial maths and life probability. Instead of dealing with payments that are certain, what is the present value of payments that are conditional on if a life survives/dies? This is the basis of life insurance. You learn how to calculate the premium for a certain insured sum. This is probably the hardest part of the subject.
Lastly there's a bunch of theory that you need to know about various insurance policies and the roles of actuaries in life and general insurance. This part was beyond horrible. As someone that doesn't intend to become an actuary, I found myself bored and uninterested-but you do need to know them.
I had a good experience with group assignments but the mid semester I found was too long for 45 minutes with NO reading time. The end of year exam was fair however.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on December 02, 2013, 07:04:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: SOLS10001 Law In Society

Workload:  2x1hr lecture, 1x1hr tute.

Assessment: 1xmid sem research assignment (40%), 1xgroup presentation (10%) [more on this in comments], take home eoy exam (50%). Minimum hurdle of 75% tutorial attendance.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes.

Past exams available:  None.

Textbook Recommendation: Reading pack of all required readings for the subject, which are also available in online pdf version. Probably best to buy the book which costs ~$15 so you can annotate/highlight and save the trouble of printing the readings yourself.

Lecturer(s): Dave McDonald.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2.

Rating: 2/5

Comments: Artsy law. I’m not trying to offend anyone, but I refer to this subject as ‘artsy’ simply because it is so heavily based on subjectivity. It has no direct relation to statutes and their application to specific cases, rather, it analyses the system and explores how it both addresses harm and can be a form of harm.

Lectures/Lecturer: The content you go through in the lectures is generally an overview of the topic you focus on for the week. This is usually linked with a major theme and both are explored concurrently. Dave will go through some situations that link with the theme, and this material is usually expanded upon in tutes. This said, you could probably pass this subject without going to lectures.

Content: The topics covered were interesting, especially controversial contemporary issues such as asylum seekers. It also went through things such as how and why new law is formed (which could then be linked to all of the other topics). It was interesting to realise that some of the topics I thought were very one-sided (such as torture) were not, and in this sense this subject expands on your views and challenges you to see issues from more than one angle. Some of the topics were closely interlinked, and there was a strong emphasis on these links and then how these actually extended throughout the whole course.

Assessments:  1. Group presentation (10%): This is referred to as ‘a written exercise of 500 words due early in the semester’ in the handbook, but the actual assessment is more on the presentation, and isn’t necessarily going to be ‘early in the sem’. Basically people in the tute pick a topic that they’re interested in, and in the corresponding tute after the topic is covered in lectures, two/three people group up and give a presentation. It isn’t hard to get a good mark, as long as you discuss the topic in depth and attempt to engage the audience. 
2. Mid-sem Research Essay (40%): The major piece of assessment. 2000 word essay on a prompt you could pick from a list. You can liken this to a context piece from VCE English. There is no correct contention; rather, you have to critically analyse the topic and explore it in detail through your arguments. We were encouraged to research other sources for ideas, but my tutor said he wouldn’t deduct marks for not using external resources. Referencing is very strictly marked.
3. Exam (50%): Very similar to the research essay in all aspects, except you’re given the prompts at the start of the exam period and have a one week deadline. It was fine to use sources outside of the readings, but I would suggest against it, since time is of the essence. Referencing is again really important. 

Tutes/Readings: Tutorials were good in that they explored ideas more broadly, and there was some new content that wasn’t discussed in lectures. You could reinforce your understanding by participating in the discussions, and the tutor often challenged some of the typical views people had. Some readings were also very interesting, although these weren’t really discussed in tutorials. Hence, although we were told to do the readings before going to tutes, you could probably get off by not doing them. Regardless, if you are someone like me who is stubborn and reads every last prescribed reading, then they are the part of the course that will take up the most time.

Overall: At first, I thought this would be a good breadth to take because I enjoy discussions and controversial ideas, and this indeed was the case, however, the actual assessment of the subject dimmed my enjoyment.
Not only is there no real way to study for this subject, your scores depend strongly on how strict a marker your tutor is, and the marking rubric is bad. Because the content is so subjective and there are only two major assessments, a clear marking scheme is really important, but is missing.
At this stage, I don’t really see the significance of this subject and how the exploration of law and these issues can help, since there are no answers to anything. Basically, what you ‘learn’ is that everything is subjective, and you need to be open-minded. Also not so sure about how useful this ‘knowledge’ would be for the practice of law itself. Or maybe I’m just harsh and arts isn’t for me.
If you are competent in writing deep essays and can reference well, I guess this subject would be good because it has a quite low work-load. You can do well with average effort, but a H1 will require higher exponential effort, imo.
If anyone wants the subject guide or has any further questions, feel free to drop a PM.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: anazergal on December 06, 2013, 01:17:50 am
Subject Code/Name: LING20006 Syntax

Workload: Contact Hours: 2 x 1 hour lectures and a 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. Tutorials ran from week 2-12. There were also optional reading groups held amongst the students.

Assessment:

Assignment 1 (25%): This was about analysing a given foreign data set with no translations. Part 1 involved identifying/explaining word classes, sentence structures, and grammatical morphemes, before predicting a new grammatical sentence. Part 2 introduced more sentences, and made us revise our initial analysis and identify/explain possible ambiguities. I personally found this assignment difficult and muddled my way through it. Despite the first two tutorials covering something similar, I had no previous experience with identifying morphemes and the like, and couldn't keep up. Don't be afraid to bombard your tutor with questions though! Mine (Kate Horrack) was a lifesaver. :D

Assignment 2 (25%): This was a four-part assignment about X-bar syntax and the complement/adjunct distinction. We had to distinguish between ambiguous sentences, draw tree diagrams, argue for complements/adjuncts, identify problems/solutions of X-bar theory, and detail any new rules. Phrase structure rules were provided.

Take-home Exam (50%): The exam format differs from year to year, with some involving one question with many structured parts, and others testing a variety of topics. Ours was a bit of both, and touched on complex sentences, grammatical functions, and relative clauses. I was told that this was the last year for Syntax take-home exams, however.

Note: Students could collaborate on the assignments as long as they submitted their own versions, but NOT the final exam.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No.

Textbook Recommendation: The textbook was Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction by Kroeger (2005). It held some readings and was used during a few tutorials, but I don't know how essential it ultimately was as I never bought it. :-\ A subject reader was also available from the co-op, but it was never referred to beyond the first two tutorials, materials of which were provided on the LMS anyway. I wouldn't recommend buying this.

Lecturer(s): Peter Hurst

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: I went in with the preconception that Syntax was dull and difficult, but unexpectedly found myself liking it. Both Peter and Kate were enthusiastic, engaging, friendly, and helpful, which I think made the subject less dry and intimidating. Make no mistake though: Syntax is a difficult subject with a heavy workload. I found some areas unbearably technical and struggled a lot, although this was partly compounded by having not taken The Secret Life of Language as well as my own laziness in not keeping up with the readings and tutorial exercises. You don't have to be a native speaker of English to take this subject, but it will be easier if you are. Be prepared for lots of confusion and second-guessing, but remain diligent and you will be rewarded. :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: anazergal on December 06, 2013, 02:51:53 am
Subject Code/Name: LING20003 Second Language Learning and Teaching

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures and a 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. No tutorials in the first and last weeks.

Assessment:

Assignment 1 (20%; 800 words): Collecting a sample of language produced by a beginner/low intermediate second language learner, analysing it for main errors, then explaining them in terms of the topics covered in the subject.

Assignment 2 (40%; 1600 words): Interviewing a classmate about his/her experience of learning a second language, then analysing/explaining possible reasons for his/her perceived success/lack of success by reference to the individual variables covered in this course.

Assignment 3/Take-home Exam (40%; 1600 words): Students could either analyse course materials or observe language classrooms.
Option A: Selecting two course books designed for use in second language classrooms and analysing their approach to the teaching of a specific language skill.
Option B: Observing one language class and discussing the lesson by reference to the language learning theories and teaching-specific language skills covered in the subject.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: N.A.

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed textbook was Second Language Theories by Mitchell & Myles (2004), but its content was similar enough to the lectures that you could get by with borrowing it once from the library for the first assignment, and simply reading the relevant LMS readings for the other two. I didn't buy this, and didn't seem to need it.

Lecturer(s): Neomy Storch

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: The subject is exactly what its name suggests. The first 8 weeks covered second language learning based on theories (eg. behaviourism, interlanguage, universal grammar...) and individual factors (ie. age, motivation, aptitude, strategies), and the next 4 weeks covered second language teaching based on approaches (eg. grammar, audiolingualism, tasks...) and skills (eg. listening, reading, speaking, writing). The tutorials involved sharing learning experiences/opinions or completing worksheet exercises in small groups, and did manage to foster some healthy discussion, even debate. The subject is not ~boring~, but also not supremely memorable. It's neither difficult, nor a guaranteed H1. Gosh, I don't really know what to say beyond the obvious!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gkushagra on December 12, 2013, 11:43:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20002 Genes and Genomes 

Workload:  3 lectures & 1 problem class per week

Assessment:  10% Mid semester test; 15% for 2 online assignments weighted equally; 75% 2hr exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture but not very reliable

Past exams available:  The 2006, 2008 and 2010 exams were available (No answers for 2008, 2010)

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Meryl Davis and John Golz

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Definitely one of the easiest science subjects I have done. 3 of the lectures are devoted as revision lectures and the last 2 are not assessed in any way. Other lectures are incredibly boring and in the case of Meryl, extremely slow. John Golz goes through some of the more laboratory aspects of genetics which I found to be difficult and convoluted but he set extremely easy exam questions so nothing to worry about. Meryl's lectures are to do more with DNA repair, replication, transcription, translation, etc. very dry but easy to study for. The lecture slides are among the poorest I not worth much. The first assignment basically involved "reading" an article and answering some questions online within a week. Ctrl+F worked just fine for me. The second set by John was a little harder and requires using the genetics lab for a computer program but can be knocked out within 2-3 hours looking over some lecture notes. The exam is quite a joke. 30% of the questions were recycled and a further 10% were mind numbingly easy. The rest are easily doable with some effort in studying the notes. The best bit is there are only 50 to answer in 2hrs so most people were finished within 45 minutes. I would definitely recommend you do the subject if you are looking for an easy H1 but if you are looking for something interesting/ engaging, this isn't it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gkushagra on December 13, 2013, 12:07:25 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20008 Human Physiology

Workload:  3x1 hr lectures a week

Assessment:  5% PRS; 15% CALs; 2 Mid-semester tests  15% each; 50% 2hr exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, lots but they format has now changed.

Textbook Recommendation:  Physiology by Silverthorn is recommended. Not necessary as lecture notes are great.

Lecturer(s): Charles Sevigny, Arianne Dantas and Gabriella Farries

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: One of the most enjoyable subjects I have done so far. For PRS 5%, you simply need to attend at least 50% of lecturers and answer some multiple choice questions with provided clickers. This helped me commit to going to lectures. The lectures are also great as the slides are excellent and Charles, who lectures 80% of the time is fantastic. Arianne had 2 lectures and Gabby did 2 weeks on kidneys. The lecture notes are also extremely thorough and easy to follow. From week 6 once kidneys are covered, the difficulty definitely ramps up as Charles tries to put the various systems covered together. A bit of memorisation is required but nothing substantial. There are 10 CAL tasks, 1 each week alternating between blogs and "concept checks." The concept checks are based on that week of lectures and can be done progressively over the week and are relatively easy. The blogs involve some question you must discuss with a bunch of people in a group online. I found them to be very annoying and time consuming. The tutors are also not generous with marks but just do the best to make a few constructive suggestions. The first midsem is on neuro and muscles and most people sail through it. The second is much more challenging. Both had their fair share of very tricky questions demanding application of the concepts. The exam has changed this semester to a complete multiple choice format (130 in total) so I found past exams quite useless. Be prepared for many diagrams and very small details to be assessed here. I would definitely suggest managing time well as most people ran out. Again, not easy but interesting and doable nonetheless.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on December 14, 2013, 03:33:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC20011 Electromagnetism and Optics

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour problem-solving class per week; 6 x 3 hour practical classes per semester (every alternate week - these can either be in even-numbered weeks starting in Week 2, or in odd-numbered weeks starting in Week 3 and ending in SWOT Vac)

Assessment:  One assignment covering Optics, and two assignments covering Electromagnetism (5% each); Six laboratory reports (total 20%); One 3 hour examination (65%) - N.B. Passing the practical component (>50%) of the course is a hurdle requirement, as is attending, and submitting a report for, at least 5 out of 6 practicals.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, Rob (Optics) sometimes decided to do his calculations on the whiteboard.

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2009 onwards. However for Electromagnetism, there are exams for 640-245 Electromagnetism and Relativity from 1999 - 2008, and for Optics there are exams for 640-237 Astrophysics and Optics II over the same period since these were the predecessors of the current course. N.B. Do not attempt the exams for the "Advanced" version of 640-245 unless you want a challenge - believe me, you won't!

Textbook Recommendation:  R H Good, Classical Electromagnetism, Saunders - definitely get this one, as Chantler's lecture notes for Electromagnetism are hand-written and arguably not very well organised.
E Hecht, Optics 4th edn, Addison-Wesley - don't bother with this book. Rob's notes for Optics are decent but you probably will need a reference, for which Rob himself recommended. They are available for free here - Chapters 3, 11 and 12 are the relevant sections.

Lecturer(s): Optics - A/Prof. Robert Scholten. Electromagnetism - Prof. Chris Chantler

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 (I would've given it 5 if not for Chantler's awful notes and Rob's time-wasting through messing up integrals and Fourier transforms on the whiteboard)

Your Mark/Grade: 76

Comments: (General) The tutors are pretty good and are helpful - we had different tutors for each module but there was only one tutor who took all the tutorials. Like all subjects it is advisable to attend tutorials... The practicals are much more interesting than in first-year physics. Pray that you get amiable demonstrators, though, and also that the equipment works; otherwise your time in the lab will be hellish (e.g. the Fourier transform prac and the holograms prac). Nevertheless you get to replicate famous and interesting experiments such as holography, Hall effect, interferometry etc..

(Optics) This module covers Fourier optics, which really is just an exercise in integrals. Indeed most of this module (which is about 4 weeks long) is a maths course, in which we were taught Fourier series and Fourier transforms, with an introduction to the Dirac delta function and convolutions. It really isn't particularly challenging. With these mathematical concepts covered, the applications to Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffaction theory are explored, such as single- and double-slits, as well as circular apertures and regular arrays of finite slits. Finally, there was an introduction to the fascinating realm of spatial filtering. One criticism I do have is that some of this was presented as a plug-in-and-calculate sort of exercise; for example, it was never clearly explained to us precisely WHY the double-slit pattern is a convolution of two infinitesimal slits and a finite slit pattern, but is merely attributed to the array theorem (which is presented without proof or background) - only after studying MAST20030 did I realise that this is due to Green function theory... The assignment for Optics was quite routine, and the exam section on Optics (1/3 of the exam) was quite simple provided that you hadn't forgotten the material that was presented at the start of the semester. As mentioned earlier, Rob had a habit of displaying a sense of incompetence in regards to mathematics, but he was still an effective lecturer.

(Electromagnetism) The lecturer, Chris Chantler, announced at the start of the 8 week module on electromagnetism that this would be the first time that we would be exposed to mathematics in physics. A slight exaggeration, yes, but the intent was clear - this was certainly the most mathematically intensive physics course that I have studied so far. You will need to have mastered the material covered in MAST20009 Vector Calculus PRIOR to starting this subject, otherwise you are doomed - the first lecture involved a tricky triple integral (yes, technically Vector Calculus is a corequisite but those studying it alongside this subject tended to find life tough until the required material had been covered in Vector Calculus). In a very loose sense the material that was covered in Electromagnetism was similar to that in first-year physics, but newer, more difficult (but more sophisticated and elegant) approaches were introduced, such as Maxwell's equations in differential form, the method of images, and the use of the Laplace and Poisson equations. Furthermore, a more complete treatment of electromagnetism in non-conducting media was given, with discussion of dielectrics, paramagnets, diamagnets and ferromagnets as well as Maxwell's equations in such media. Finally, electrodynamics was briefly introduced with a brief discussion of electromagnetic wave theory (to be covered in greater detail in 3rd year). The assignments were rather difficult but certainly manageable, as was the exam - plenty of free marks are on offer merely by memorising/deriving the various forms of Maxwell's equations. Chris Chantler does like to try and be funny, but sometimes it was difficult to glean much understanding from his explanations, while his notes were not exactly of a high standard - it is very wise to purchase the textbook...

(Summary) A very interesting subject, but certainly could have been taught to a higher standard.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on December 14, 2013, 04:06:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20022 Group Theory and Linear Algebra

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  Three written assignments (totalling 20%); One 3 hour examination (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No. See the Textbook Recommendation for details.

Past exams available:  Yes, there were exams from 1999 onwards. In fact the exams from 1997 - 1999 (with answers) were provided in the course notes as well.

Textbook Recommendation:  None. The course notes were available for purchase from the Co-op Bookshop as well as in PDF form on the LMS. While the lectures weren't recorded, everything the lecturer wrote on the blackboard was scanned and posted on the LMS immediately afterwards, so with these two resources it really wasn't necessary to attend lectures. Indeed I only attended 6 out of 36...

Lecturer(s): A/Prof Craig Hodgson. My main issue with the lecturer was that his monotonous voice made for a very soporific atmosphere which discouraged me from attending most of the lectures. Watch out for the ponytail...

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 85

Comments: This subject is the first pure maths subject that most students study after the shock of either Accelerated Mathematics 2 or Real Analysis, but most students tended to find that the level of mathematical rigour was considerably lower than in those subjects. As the title suggests, the subject covers advanced linear algebra as well as an introduction to abstract algebra (in this case, fields and then groups). Both Linear Algebra and Group Theory are very important in physics as well as in pure mathematics, and are quite fascinating fields of study.

Topics covered:

Yes, this sounds like a lot of terminology which doesn't exactly sound very exciting, but after a while connections appear between the disparate topics studied and the subject becomes all the better for it. Do be careful, though, as the subject is initially quite easy and slowly increases in difficulty until the later topics in Group Theory are difficult to grasp. The final week, covering Euclidean geometry, is pretty boring and completely useless wrt the exam, but the rest of the course is certainly assessed. The assignments also increased in difficulty as the semester progressed, but were largely manageable (plus we got to make a cube in the 3rd assignment!). The tutorials were of course very useful and certainly my tutor was excellent. My main criticism, though, is of course the pacing of the subject - too much material was left until late in the semester, and at the half way point of the course we hadn't even started Group Theory. This was one of the few weak points of a great subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on December 14, 2013, 04:34:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20030 Differential Equations

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  Three written assignments (10% each); One 3 hour examination (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, the lecturer does ALL the examples on the board so it is ESSENTIAL to attend lectures and copy them down (or get a friend to do it for you).

Past exams available:  None, since this subject was introduced in 2013. However, the lecturer gave us some sample exam questions which were somewhat representative of the actual exam, and the tutors informed us that much of the course is based on an earlier course 620-232 Mathematical Methods (for which exams were available from the library website).

Textbook Recommendation: None - Printed course notes were available from the Co-op Bookshop.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89

Comments: The theory covered in this subject is absolutely fantastic, but there were many teething problems associated with it since it was new for 2013. Chiefly, the subject was considered by many to be too crammed, with the assignments and exam to be too difficult - I strongly suspect that normalisation of the scores was heavily employed in order to achieve the required quota of students passing the subject.

Topics covered:

Perhaps only topics 1, 3, 4 and 5 could be considered to be somewhat easy, and that too only after many examples were covered. It would be fair to say that the rest of the course constituted some of the toughest material covered by most of us students up to this point in our mathematical studies. This was not helped by the somewhat old-fashioned attitudes of the lecturer towards the teaching of the subject. While I would still recommend taking this subject over Engineering Mathematics (for Engineering students only), I would suggest that applied maths and physics students who take this subject should be wary - this is not for the faint-hearted.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on December 25, 2013, 12:53:25 pm
Back with a few more commerce subject reviews to wrap up 2013. Removed my marks for this semester's reviews so lecturers don't go snooping around, instead, they should be using that time to improve the courses that they teach.

Subject Code/Name: Introductory Financial Accounting ACCT10002

Textbook Recommendation:  ACCT 10002 Introductory Financial Accounting, 2013, Cusack, McGraw Hill Publishers.
Good for the struggling and new, but I only probably used around two pages of the entire book. Essentially is 3 textbooks glued together and isn't well organised.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013, S2

Rating:  2.5/5

Comments:

Pretty pissed off since I just finished a lengthy review for IFA which gets wiped while I was posting. Anyway, here's a lazy recollection of a few ideas I had in my review.

IFA is taxing for the fresh accounting student. Even if you're someone coming off VCE accounting with the mentality of 'oh dw this will be ez', there is still quite a fair bit of ground that is covered. It is remarkably easy to taper off during the first few weeks of the semester and end up wishing you studied with a bit more finesse for the exam (I know I did!).

IFA lectures and tutorials are good, but not great. Cusack's desire to trend away from traditional double-entry accounting is commendable, and I found the 'newer' parts of the course to be the most engaging (carbon accounting and integrated reporting). However, the lecture illustrations are not tailored to the course well enough, very often will you be greeted with a financial statement with $ figures that are both difficult to evaluate and use in calculations, because they are really.. all over the place. Why do so many people fail IFA or achieve subpar results? The course fails to effectively align 'what is being taught' to 'what actually NEEDS to learnt'. The drought of focused, quality questions only amplifies this problem.

The fundamental flaw of IFA, and what causes students to tumble and fail is the poorly written pre-exam questions/tutorial questions. It is very evident that some of these questions have just been recycled from outdated course designs, and the degree of ambiguity is unforgivable. Practical questions are the essential step in consolidation of skills and concepts. IFA hasn't failed in the quantity department (armed with the LMS, it's an accountant's wet dream with questions), but its lack of attention to detail and 'good question writing' trickles down into poor student performance. I found myself flocking towards the solutions because I just did not know what was going on (due to an important detail missing, or something ambiguous like weird date hopping).

The exam is difficult not so much with regards to question difficulty (although it is a bit on the difficult, although fair side), instead it is the amount of the course that is crammed into the 3 hours that is the major worry. Tie this in with no practice exams, and subpar pre-exam questions that provide very little guidance in regards to expectations for the exam, spells a recipe for disaster. The lack of opportunity for students to have a concentrated 'crack' or 'burst' in swotvac only causes more and more students to come out of the exam with tears and a sore ass.

The aim of IFA should be to create good foundation skills and act as a stepping stone from those who have just finished ARA. However, poor course design and a questionable exam is IFA's downfall, which is really a shame in comparison to its strong resource network.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on December 25, 2013, 02:37:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10003 Accounting Processes and Analysis

Assessment: Two assignments: Individual (5%), Group (15%), Tute participation (10%), Hurdle exam (70%)

Past exams available:  Sample exam, and also, one question is pre-released!!! (think it's worth about 15% of the exam so study up)

Textbook Recommendation:  Accounting Information Systems: Understanding Business Processes. Considine

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 S2

Rating:  3.5/5

Comments:

APA is as dry as eating a kilo of weetbix without milk. The entire semester revolves around getting comfortable with this 'toolkit' of skills, and being able to evaluate and understand process documentations, with regards to the Reliability umbrella and its three information goal counterparts: Validity, Accuracy and Completeness.

Lectures were... hard to sit through, however, I enjoyed the lectures on information risk and corporate governance which unfortunately only lasted for like a week or two. International fraud scandals (eg. yakuza and Olympus) were quite a read for assignment 1, but not explored through thoroughly after the respective lecture, which was disappointing. After a few weeks, it will become inherent to you that control plans and such are the absolute backbone for the subject, and that if you ace them, (know how to read them, analyse them etc) you'll be set. Everything else is rather secondary, and less important.

Tutorials are better, and the 10% participation mark should be a free 10%, granted that you're keen enough to prepare even a little bit of bs for each tutorial. Tutorials are where the real learning starts.

With regards to readings, I don't know anyone that sat through reading the textbook, but if you're really keen for that H1, it's there for you to rote-learn some of the areas that aren't fleshed out very specifically during tutorials and lectures. I didn't use it for the entire semester, rather read random wikipedia clippings (which actually proved quite useful).

Assignments are well written, in its attempt to trigger a sincere appreciation for the subject, but don't expect a good result if you crammed the night before. Marking is quite harsh, and you're penalised for having a foreign interpretation to what's universally accepted, which is a bit sad.

APA's exam is a well balanced mix of just the right amount of theory and practical, questions are designed to boggle rote-learners, and reward conceptional learners.

There's really not much to APA. Theory questions are rather subjective, so if you have a educated crack at the question, grounded with sensible evidence, you'll score well. Practical is covered to an exceptional level in tutes, but don't expect to be able to cram the entire course in swotvac, even if you rocked up to tutes, because what you 'thought' you learnt in tutes will seem foreign.

How to do well in this subject:

1. Rock up to tutorials and prepare a little for them.
2. Attend lectures at your discretion.
3. Make sure you know what's going on, and don't fall too far behind (learning new stuff gets harder as everything starts to progressively become assumed knowledge)
4. Know your controls (lecturer goes on about not rote learning, but a degree of rote learning is required, as they're looking for 'their perfect answer', so there isn't much leeway to go off on your accord)

That's pretty much all there is to it. APA isn't a bad subject, but it is very, very ordinary. It just doesn't tickle you into feeling like you're learning something that'll have a rewarding impact on your life.

APA vs 1kg of dry weetbix?

I'd probably pick the weetbix.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on December 26, 2013, 12:45:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Macroeconomics, Bernanke, Olekalns. I didn't buy this textbook throughout the semester, but from what I've heard, it's supposed to complement the lengthy lecture slides well.

Lecturer(s): Graham Richards

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 S2

Rating:  3.5/5

Comments:

Macroeconomics is a bit of a mixed bag. For those equipped with VCE economics, there are many familiar economic issues such as exchange rates, inflation and unemployment which are tackled from scratch in intro macro. However, gone are the days of lengthy paragraphs where you're allowed to demonstrate appreciation for theory. Instead, you're greeted with graph after graph, which I guess acts as the best prelude and introduction to university economics: the application of economic models.

There is a fair bit of ground that is covered in the 12 weeks, more so than your intro micro counterparts from semester 1. I'd say the material is 'harder' to learn, there is a bit more 'devotion' required in scoring well. Graham is a knowledgeable lecturer, but has a bit of a temper, which became known to me in a lecture recording where he starts raging at the front row for not shutting up lol. He's a tad on the racist side as well, often dropping a witty comment about the prevalence of international students in the theatre, or playing some chinese pop before lectures.

Graham's lecture slides are long, and I mean, 50 slides for 50 minutes long. Redundant slides that could've been omitted were strikingly prevalent. So don't completely read into every single one of his slides as gospel, there is A LOT that isn't covered during the exam (weeks!) which is used up as build-up for a major topic (eg. sector model). The entire 24 lectures are plenty enough to warrant their own textbook, so you'll be fine if you pass on the textbook, but don't forget to SKIM THE SLIDES, or else you're just wasting your time.

Tutorials were okay, but following the trend of intro micro, pink sheets still reign supreme over blue sheets by quite the margin, in terms of their usefulness for exam revision.

A tip for the lazy, get your shit together before the mid-point of the semester. The concepts start to progressively pile up on each other, and implied knowledge from previous weeks and lectures will be your downfall if you slack off. I learnt this the hard way, and my mark suffered quite a bit because of this. Even if you just have a skim through the lecture slides and have half an eye open during tutes, it's a lot better than having a naked slate into swotvac. Macro is probably the hardest subject to catch up on if you're flying solo, but also one of the easiest, given you put even the slightest bit of weekly work into it.

The exam is very, very recycled, and make sure you get a hold of them asap, and study the solutions religiously. Questions are marked quite harshly, every single step is scrutinised, so if you have the answering technique that mimics the solutions, you'll be set for high marks.

Macro doesn't quite live up to its expectations, set by its micro brother in semester 1 and effectively turned me off for pursuing an economics major.  But that's not really the subject's fault, it really isn't too bad if you have your way with graphs and the practical side of things.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Ballerina on December 26, 2013, 06:04:51 pm

Subject Code/Name: Chemistry 2 

Workload: Contact Hours: Summer semester: 5 x one hour lectures per week, 6 x three-hour practical activities per week, 2 x one-hour tutorial/workshop sessions per week, 6 hours of computer aided learning during semester, 8 hours of independent learning tasks during semester. Semester 2: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 6 x 3 hours of practical activities during semester, 1 x one-hour tutorial/workshop sessions per week, 6 hours of computer aided learning during semester, 8 hours of independent learning tasks during semester.

Assessment:  A 30-minute on-line mid-semester test (5%); ongoing assessment of practical work (20%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%). Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes + screen capture, with the exception of Quantum Mechanics.

Past exams available:  Yes, many + sample exam. 

Textbook Recommendation: 

·   S S Zumdahl and D J DeCoste Chemical Principles 7th Ed, Cengage Learning 2013.
·   J McMurry, Organic Chemistry 8th Ed, Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

I believe they're increasing in price and if you're strong in chemistry and can share with someone, do it. I personally needed to refer to the textbooks often, though. Both were invaluable in explaining concepts through simple and  organized communication.

However, the molecular model kit is completely useless.

Lecturer(s): Richard O'Hair, Carl Schiesser, Trevor Smith, Michelle Something, Paul O'Donnell?

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2013.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: I'll tell you over my dead body (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧*:・゚✧

Comments:
   ·  Despite my ongoing, bloodthirsty battle with chemistry as a science, Chemistry 2 is the most well-taught subject I've encountered at UoM.

   ·  The practicals are run smoothly and quite interesting, although  to beat a dead horse, it is unreasonable to obtain a high yield when synthesizing products.

   ·  Dedicate a disproportionate time to the practicals as they are a rare chance to add to your mark outside the exam; filter your product thrice, and for organic reactions write most of your lab report before the session begins.

  ·  With the exception of one, the lecturers are fantastic at delivering this abstract and complex subject.

  ·  It's imperative to begin revising the content well before the exam; the longer the period of time you repeat the information, the greater it consolidates.  Richard and Carl are the first lecturers, and you should be revising their content through Trevor, Michelle and Paul's lectures.

  ·  Trevor arrives third, and teaches quantum mechanics over a fortnight. There is a consensus that he teaches an intangible subject in  an intangible manner. His style won't be kind to you if you haven't done VCE or tertiary level physics. He states that he only wants you to understand the basic idea of his topics. Based off the exam questions, you should instead learn them all off by heart. Utilize the textbook and tutors, and don't feel alone in your plight.

  ·  Michelle is a welcome relief and a skilled captivator. It is often stated kinetics is the easiest portion of subject. I found it the second most difficult; it seemed straight-forward until we began manipulating equations and applying them to practical examples which require theoretical knowledge. Bzzzzzzzzzttt. Textbook.

  ·  Paul's section is my absolute favourite and personally the easiest, although he did exceed himself in the difficulty of the exam questions this year; don't let him fall wayside. Much of the qualitative information such as that pertaining to batteries and global crises is not examinable. He only enjoys exhibiting the bigger picture and connecting the dots between equations and the force of the universe. Fun guy.

  ·  My main revision tool was chemCAL. It cannot be overrated; chemCAL is a rare opportunity to play an active part in manipulating a very internal, mental subject. It's interactive and largely up-to-date, with only a smattering of errors and repetition.

  ·  I'd strongly recommend Chemistry 2 to those who would like to be involved in science long-term. It isn't fair to state that chemistry classes have always dragged my overall score down; rather, it has been my ineptitude during them. However, I allowed my inability during Chemistry 2 to molest my GPA in lieu of taking a second biology class because it's invaluable. Chemistry is who we are and I understand brand new aspects of both other classes and reality itself due to this class. It can't be avoided due to the subject's fail rate, and is an imperative foundation in pursuing a scientific career.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Inside Out on February 11, 2014, 07:55:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10003 Engineering Systems Design 2

Workload: I'm doing it in the summer semester right now but in a usual semester it would be 3 one-hour lectures and 1 three-hour workshop per wk

Assessment: group assignments, in class tests after every topic, online pre workshop quizzes due the night before the workshop, certain projects during workshops (practice questions which you do together at the start aren't accessed but they pop up on exams) and peer wise (this interactive thing where you have to make up 2 questions and answer 30. sounds dumb, but it's actually quite useful since the lecturers put up some of these questions on the exam for multiple choice)

Lectopia Enabled: yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: 2- from 2010 and 2011. NO SOLUTIONS.  you either have to find out through asking friends, tutors/lecturers or through an online discussion thread

Textbook Recommendation: don't buy any of the textbooks. the lecture notes are sufficient.

Lecturer(s): gavin buskes (digital systems), adrian something (programming) & eric poon(mechanics)

Year & Semester of completion: summer 2014- exam is next week

Rating: 4.8 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 85 H1

Comments: This is by far one of the best level 1 subjects. The assignments are EXTREMELY CHALLENGING, even the smartest of the smartest will find them difficult, which is why you do them in groups. You will be using the computer for most of this subject (even mechanics) so be prepared. Also, do the workshop questions BEFORE the actual workshop because the tutors tend to go through them really fast and don't give you a chance to actually attempt the questions in class. The workshops are 3 hours but most of the time you can leave one hour early because the projects usually don't take that long..  use this time to ask the tutors questions (better than asking the lecturers imo because there usually isn't a long line).

Digital systems:
The best component of this subject (also my favorite). The lecturer was such a good explainer and posted up lecture notes and working out on the lms so you could just relax and listen during the lectures without worrying about having to note anything down. This requires the most "maths" out of the other two. The first 2 assignments were pretty decent.. the last one was really hard. But if you have a smart person in your group, it's all good. You get to chose your group members for this part, but for programming and mechanics they are chosen for you.  This topic has no PHYSICS at all.. coming into this i thought we were going to have to learn about boring resistors and diodes like but nope.. you learn about binary numbers, bolean algebra, logic gates...very mathematical and fun.. but its not like boring calculus/spesh.. i can't really explain it but you will see:)

Programming:
There really is no point attending the lectures for these, even if the lecturer is good (ours wasn't) because you simply can not be taught programming no matter how hard you try to listen. My suggestion is  download matlab beforehand. Doing the workshop and assignment questions will be sufficient enough for you to ace this component. (note that the exam questions are never actually this tough, so don;t get scared if you can't answer most of them). The first assignment was hard, the last two were alright  (BEWARE THAT THESE ASSIGNMENTS ARE EXTREMELY LONGGGGGGG). This topic is one of those where you just have to have the brains to work the problems out... you can't really "learn" how to do these types of algotihmic questions. i now have complete respect for those in computer science/software engineering... just wow... how do you guys do this?! in my opinion they are smarter than doctors.

Mechanics:
This lecturer was alright, but his lecture notes had millions of silly errors which confuses A LOT OF PEOPLE. You will have to use a lot of matlab for this part since this takes place after programming unlike digital systems where you use no matlab. So beware ... MATLAB MATLAB MATLAB...although you do get to draw on diagrams as well :). The assignments were consistently even in terms of difficulty (unlike the other two which had easy assignment and hard assignment.. these ones were all above average hard).  If you liked structures and materials in yr11/12.. you will like this (spring constants, trusses, static equilibrium etc). The last week is based on eular's method which= calculus.

Another warning is that you don't get solutions for the assignments you do and when they are marked the tutors are extremely vague and don't bother to put any comments (just these weird dashes) so you won't know where you went wrong. After you get your assignments back, i suggest you approach the tutors IMMEDIATELY. Having no solutions for a lot of things really pissed me off because sometimes i really can't be bothered asking. This subject gives you a really good insight on engineering.. well electrical, software, mechanical and civil engineering...i didn't see anything related to chemical. If you find this subject enjoyable, then engineering is for you.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on February 13, 2014, 08:00:41 pm
Subject Code/Name: SPAN20020 Intensive Intermediate Spanish 

This review will also apply to the content of Spanish 3 and Spanish 4

Workload:  8 x 2 hour tutorials per week

Assessment: 25% Mid Term exam (grammar exercises, vocab exercises, small composition at the end)
                     25% Final exam (grammar exercises, vocab exercises, small composition at the end)
                     2 x 15% written exercises (informal letter)
                     2 x 10% más ejercicios (exercises you have to complete each night, as well as do an autocorrección)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Nada

Textbook Recommendation:  Aula 3 Internacional (2006), a monolingual dictionary may also be helpful as well as a grammar book though Google is sufficient for both as well.

Tutors: Eli Bryer
            Eva González García
            Alicia Martínez Marco
            Sivlia Yang (doesn't teach Spanish 3 nor Spanish 4)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, summer

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 94 (H1)

Comments: It's all in the title really: intensive. This subject is nothing short of it.

This is a really, really difficult subject. 16 hours of Spanish a week and an absolute shit tonne of homework will leave you stressed, tired and half-dead by the end of the course. Each day you cover a week's work (normal year terms) of content and are expected to do about 4 pages of grammar exercises in addition to, of course, revising the content and doing assignments in between. This is a really large workload and will test even the most diligent of students. So big piece of advice, of course, is that you do need to go to every class and do need to keep on top of the homework. Try to keep your commitments down as much as possible, particularly during the week.

BUT (and it is a big but), the difficulty of this subject is balanced with good organisation, fantastic tutors and a real sense of achievement after each day.

At the start of semester, you're given a really clear syllabus of the course. What you do does not deviate from that syllabus at all. This is particularly helpful, of course, if you miss a day. What has been covered in class we'll certainly be there. This means that everything sets itself up really nice. You always know what's coming, you always know what to revise. In addition to that, the tutors always post any extra worksheets we've done, along with answers, on the LMS and always post supplementary material about stuff we've learned as well. Perhaps the only thing to fault them on with organisation is that there was no assessment rubric, or really any indication, for the written tasks during the semester. This was a bit of a pain in the arse, as it meant that the first was a lot of guess work. With that said, the marking was very clear and the tutors happily entered into discussions about any marking or any issues we were having with assessment or the content.

The tutors were absolutely brilliant for this subject. They have a very different approach to teaching and very distinct personalities as well, which makes it very interesting. Furthermore, they also come from different parts of the Spanish speaking world, so it's nice to experience a bit of that at home (particularly if you've never had the opportunity to travel like me!). We, in particular, had Eva a lot because Alicia was away for the first few weeks. She's from the Basque country, so she's a wealth of information about Spanish culture. She's also posts un montón of content on the LMS and would have to be the most scarily organised teacher I've had. Eli learned Spanish in Perú, but is a fellow Aussie. She's a brilliant teacher as well and has an incredible knowledge of Latin American culture and the Spanish language. I was constantly surprised by just how much she knew; so that was kind of a nice boost to see someone who started off in a similar place to us speaking Spanish so well. If you've done beginners Spanish, you'll have had Silvia before. She tends to leave the buzzer behind in Intensive, so that's a bit of a change. She is just as she always is, an absolute hoot. Always willing to help and brings so many sheets and resources in that I suspect that she's probably half the reason the Amazón is disappearing! Alicia we only had a few times, but she too was a hoot. She's Valencian, so again a very different accent and culture, and teaches is a very different manner to the others. She was always good for a laugh and was a brilliant teacher, particularly for your speaking. If you wanted to learn to speak Spanish, hers was the class to be in. At the end of the day, it ended up being a group of tutors who complimented each other perfectly with cultural knowledge, accent and style of teaching. Really couldn't have asked for a better group.

Intensive courses are hard, but they are quite a good way to give yourself a bit of space in the uni year. If you're prepared to really put your head down for five weeks, you will be able to get a whole year of underloading. As far as I'm concerned, that's definitely worth it. Moreover, I feel like the Spanish course would have been really slow during the year. Sure, that sounds fantastic (well for me it certainly does!), but at least with this course you're left with an enormous sense of achievement. When you're taking massive leaps in your writing, grammar and speaking each week, you often feel really proud of how you're doing. The classes are also, supposedly, composed of high achieving students. Personally, I don't really think this is the case. What you will get are students that are a hell of a lot more committed than usual, save for a couple who aren't and who will inevitably fail.

Before I wrap up, marks wise this may damage you. I think for the majority of the class it made quite a dent in the marks they'd normally get. Personally, the opposite happened—though I would caution that this is definitely not the norm (perhaps because I'm a little bit weird, hey?). What it will do for your marks during the year probably makes it worth it, as well as the fact that if you're doing a DipLang (I'm not), you can finish with the rest of your Bachelor cohort :)

Pues, yo creo que eso es todo. Si tenéis preguntas, mandadme un correo electrónico. Por poco me olvido decir que los profes siempre hablan en español, bueno casi todo el tiempo. Cuando hagan este curso, os divertiréis mucho. ¡Os recomiendo que tomen esta clase! :)

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Charlatan on February 28, 2014, 12:12:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM20001 Introductory Econometrics

Workload: 2 x 1-hour lecture per week, 1 x 1-hour tutorial.

Assessment:  2 Short Answer-based assignments worth 10% each, Tutorial participation worth 5%, Mid-semester Test worth 0% or 10%, final exam worth 65% or 75%. Result is calculated using MST 10% and Exam 65%, then MST 0% and Exam 75%, and the higher mark is awarded. Assignments are largely just questions that test students' ability to apply knowledge (similar to QM1 assignments). They are reasonably simple if you've been paying attention.  The exam is of appreciably greater difficulty.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, three (if I recall correctly)

Textbook Recommendation:  Text is not required. All examinable content is covered in lectures, though Principles of Economoetrics 4th ed., Hill, Griffiths & Lim is suggested.

Lecturer(s): Jenny Lye

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 SM2

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75 H2A

Comments: Overall the subject is enjoyable insofar as it feels that what you are learning is useful. Initially much content is "repeated" from QM1 (basic probability, hypothesis testing and regression) albeit in greater detail. Those derivations that you "don't have to worry about, and just accept" in QM 1 are derivations that you need to commit to memory in this subject. The subject is almost entirely regression-based, but greater depth is achieved than the simple linear and multiple regression seen in QM1. Some time is devoted also to time-series analysis, and a few weeks are based upon troubleshooting a breakdown in the assumptions upon which simply regression analysis is based.

The content can become very dry, particularly in lectures, but if you enjoyed QM1 you will find Intro Ecom tolerable at least, and perhaps even interesting. The tutorials follow the standard format of pre-prep, going briefly through the pre-prep and then completing in-tute questions. The Mid-semester test and Assignments are quite simple, whereas the Exam is somewhat more demanding, placing greater emphasis on derivations and actual understanding of the underlying mathematics as opposed to simple application of methodology. Don't let it screw you over like it did me :P

It's worth noting that you will have to purchase/pirate and become reasonably familiar with the Eviews software. It isn't that difficult to use and fulfils a similar role to the Statistics Excel add-on does in QM1, but initially represents a small learning curve, and is required to complete assessments. Often eviews regression output is provided as part of assignment and exam questions with bits missing, so knowing what's where and how all the figures are inter-related is very helpful.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mahler004 on March 03, 2014, 07:59:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20019 Practical Chemistry

Workload: Six lectures (two per week) for the first three weeks of semester, along with two tutorials in Week 4. Two 3.5 hour pracs per week from Week 2, with one day off towards the end of semester.

Assessment: 

Lectopia Enabled:  Spas did not record his lectures, the other lecturers do record their lectures.

Past exams available:  No sample exam for the online test (just study the notes.)

Textbook Recommendation: No recommended textbooks, although the standard second year chemistry textbooks may be useful. The lab manual is a requirement to do the pracs. You also need PPE (a lab coat and glasses, gloves are provided.)

Lecturer(s):
Prof. Spas Kolev (3 lectures on chromatography and flame Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, also error analysis.)
Associate Professor Spencer Williams (2 lectures on organic structure determination + 2 tutorials.)
Colette Boskovic (One lecture on magnetochemistry)

Year & Semester of completion: 2013 Semester 2.

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Some brief comments on the experiments preformed and the lectures:

Lectures: Were good, if a little dry. Useful background knowledge for the reports. The online test is reasonably straightforward, although it's worth doing a bit of study for it, as that 10% can count come results time. It's obviously 'open book,' as it's an online test.

Experiments: There were four different groups of experiments done (organic, inorganic, analytical and physical.) Most experiments lasted a single period, although two experiments done towards the end of semester took multiple periods. Each experiment required completion of a risk assessment (a summary of any risks involved in the experiment, basically just read the MSDS, not marked but you had to do it,) pre-labs (marked, usually counted for two marks towards your final score,) and a report (the final eight marks, due a week after the experiment.) It generally took as long to do the report as to do the experiment - so you're looking at seven hours (sometimes more,) of report-writing per week, as well as seven hours of prac classes. Thus, the workload for the subject was very high. You also had to work consistently, as there wasn't an exam to save you if you stuffed up a few reports.

There was also a great deal of time pressure during the experiments themselves, especially the organic and inorganic experiments. There was usually no time to breathe, or even go to the toilet. This was especially the case where you had to share equipment (IR spectrometers, rotavaps, magnetic balances, etc.) Obviously, read over the experiment a few times before you go on, on top of the pre-lab questions and risk analysis. Also look up any data which may be useful during the lab (i.e. melting points.)

Fourtunatly, the reports (with a few exceptions,) were reasonably straightforward and generally marked reasonably. Unfortunately, the marking was only done by your demonstrator (so a little unfair.) Submissions were also not done electronically, I often did worry about the security of my report, especially when 'submitting' it was just dropping it into a box! Finally, some comments on the experiments themselves:

Organic: Four experiments in the first four weeks of semester, with a single three-period experiment in the last four weeks. Usually involved synthesising something, so yield was worth a few marks. Other marks came from a correct mechanism and following the basic report structure correctly (=very easy.) The experiments themselves were enjoyable, but very rushed (you won't be leaving early.) Similar to first year chem organic experiments, so if you're good at them, you'll be fine here. A bit more advanced in techniques and data analysis, however.

Analytical: Three experiments. Experiments themselves very straightforward, usually finish an hour or so early. Involve using analytical instrumentation (HPLC, GC, fAAS,) to answer a simple question (how much calcium in seawater, etc.) Reports are straightforward and not too time consuming. Probably the easiest part of the subject.

Inorganic: Similar to organic - you're making something, then analysing it (using IR or magneto chemistry.) Requires that you remember your first year chemistry. Synthesis not as hard as organic, but the reports are much harder and significantly more time consuming. Expect to spend at least three hours on each report. Pracs are similar to the synthesis of a Co complex done in Chemistry 2.

One of the extended reports is an inorganic report (you do two, the organic one, and either the physical one or the inorganic one.)

Physical: Four quite different experiments - measuring equilibrium of a gas phase reaction, a caliorometry prac, a kinetics prac and a computational chemistry prac (a 'dry lab,' done in the computer lab.) Experiments are reasonably easy, the reports are not, requiring involved calculations (which they usually tell you how to do.) Just be sure that you're meticulous in the prac with your data collection - after all, a good analysis won't fix crappy data. That said, your result is actually worth very little (only one mark, if I remember correctly.) Similar to the first year physical chemistry pracs, although the data analysis is usually a bit more involved and the techniques used in the pracs are a bit more difficult.

One of the extended reports is a physical report.

Overall, the subject is reasonably well run, the pracs are interesting and usually fun (just make sure you're well prepared!) although the workload is very high. It's also a rare chance to gain a fair amount of laboratory experience in second year. Unfortunately, if you want to major in chemistry, you can't avoid this subject, or it's third year sibling.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on March 14, 2014, 06:13:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10023 Music Language 1: the Diatonic World

Workload:  1 x 3hr workshop per week

Assessment:  Weekly Assignments (70%), End of Semester Exam (Written 20% + Listening 10% = 30%)
 
Lectopia Enabled: No

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn't buy it, don't need it

Lecturer(s): Andrew Perkins

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Summer Semester

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Keep in mind that I did this as part of my breadth and it was done in the Summer Semester. The Summer Semester lecturer and Semester 1 lecturer aren't the same. So some of my comments may be specific only to the subject taken over the Summer.

If you have a good solid foundation in music theory, then this subject should be a breeze; However, if you're used to the notation used for harmony in AMEB music theory, you're going to have to get used to Figured Bass notation - but this isn't too hard and you can often reason out what chord it's representing. The contact hours are quite low and because of the weekly assessments, there isn't that sudden need to cram for the end of semester exam, so stress levels are generally also quite low.

The weekly assessments start out at a weighting of 8% and gradually increase to 12% alternating between composition and analysis. Get out your coloured pencils for the analysis tasks because you're going to have to use them to circle motifs and identify links in the piece. You're given a sample of what an analysis looks like so use that as a template of how you're going to go about the analysis. For composition, I recommend not being too creative. If you try making your compositions too complicated, there's a greater chance of making mistakes (ie. parallel 5ths, incorrectly doubled 3rds etc.) and they're penalised quite heavily.

For the end of semester assessment, it's split into 2 parts, the written and the listening.

Don't underestimate the listening exam, it's worth 10% and of each piece they ask you to name the work and movement (if applicable), the composer, the period (late baroque, early baroque, medieval etc.) and what type of piece (quartet, symphony, motet, aria etc.). The last piece is one that isn't on the listening list and you're supposed to make an educated guess on the period, instrumentation and any other notes on melody, structure, or other note worthy aspects of the excerpt. I recommend just doing a little bit of listening each week. You're only assigned 3 or 4 pieces per week, so it shouldn't take you too long. Although I know how much of an annoyance this can be, but how you approach your listening of the assigned works is very important. I recommend, whilst listening, to make a note of the instrumentation, language of the lyrics (if applicable) and other distinguishing features. For example, there was one piece that only had harpsichord and a string instrument playing together, so it was easy to identify when it came up on the exam.

The written component is split into two, and much like the assignments, it's an analysis of a piece (10%) and harmonisation (10%). The harmonisation isn't too difficult, it's a 4-part harmony. Just look over your assignment and try to identify the kinds of errors you've made. The analysis shouldn't be too much of a challenge either. I recommend first identifying the key and check for modulations (accidentals make this obvious), particularly to the 6 related keys. Try to see if the modulations occur in sequence. Identifying modulations should be able to give you a rough idea of structure. Once you've done this, and if you have the time, try to look for motifs and at the melodic line.

Overall, this is a very manageable subject. However, learn from my mistake and don't let the listening get the better of you; because of commitments and general laziness, I'd only done about half of the listening before the week of the exam and ended up cramming the other half of the listening the day before. Even though I most likely got 8 or 9 out of 10, these really aren't the kinds of marks you want to be losing.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Ballerina on March 27, 2014, 12:50:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: FINA20026 Painting Techniques 

Workload:

Contact Hours: Intensive Mode: 6hrs per day for 6 days (36hrs)

Total Time Commitment: 120 hours (including 36 hours contact and 84 hours non-contact)

Assessment:

 1. A comprehensive folio that will include completed work made for set exercises/projects, and related materials (80%)

2. A comprehensively illustrated and notated visual diary, reflecting on material trials and notes on various techniques (20%).

Both the completed folio and workbook will be required to be presented two weeks after the final supervised studio practice session. Students are notified of the exact date/process in the first class.

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  No

Lecturer(s): You are assigned to one of several 'streams', and a different tutor teaches each stream. That person is virtually your only staff contact; mine was David Ralph.

Year & Semester of completion: February, 2014

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 86

Comments: ♦ This class is not taught during the semester, but rather over the summer and winter breaks. More people are allowed to enroll than register. After enrolling, you must be 1 of <100 students to register on the registration date. The spots are highly competitive, and if you don't refresh the registration page within the first few minutes of registration release, you most likely will not be able to register, and will be asked to unenroll.

♦ The 6 hrs daily for 6 days are taught in studios at the Southbank campus. Small, intimate, friendly.

♦ There is a general subject outline that tutors follow, but each stream is taught slightly differently according to the tutor's preference. My tutor, David Ralph, was an absolutely charming gentleman <3

♦ Project One - National Gallery of Victoria visit to observe different historical painting styles. Personally found it fascinating, and I returned on the weekend to take more photos for quick brownie points.

♦Project Two - Painting a flat, linear tonal piece in acrylics. Boring, but paint fast because acrylics dry as you paint, and you will be assessed on the texture of your piece. Don't mix paint brushes; keep a few for light colours, a few for dark colours.

♦Project Three - Stretching, sizing and priming a canvas with gesso etc. Easy. Don't forget to document every step for these projects with notes and photos, however seemingly minor, so you can add them with annotations to your visual diary later.

♦Project Four - Working alla prima with oils. In the week you have to finish your portfolio, try to finish all your oil paintings first. Oil paintings take a ridiculously long time to dry, even in winter. When I collected my paintings, I noticed many students' work had been damaged. Their paintings were stacked upon other paintings, and the paint had stuck them together. It took a few hours to mend my own work when the class had ended.

♦Project Five - Colour as it applies to the creation of illusions. BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN done.

♦Project Six - Oil paint on canvas. Definitely everyone's favourite, and the last project of the intensive week. You pick your own subject to paint, and the hours fly by. If you're particularly enthusiastic you can choose to do multiple oil paintings of your preferred subjects, and have the tutor grade what s/he deems to be the best. I chose to do this while waiting for the paint layers of every other painting to dry. Remember to document EVERYTHING. Bring a camera to every class.

♦Despite being an intensive class, the workload is not at all demanding and students from a variety of degrees will be able to succeed. There were only a few bewildered science brethren who seemed to struggle with the very practical, hands-on approach.

♦ Don't leave everything until the day before assessment. Painting itself is straight-forward, but excruciatingly slow. Carpal tunnel syndrome levels of slow.

♦The teaching style is paint-by-numbers; you're walked through painting using the Renaissance and Baroque methods layer-by-layer. The main disadvantage is patience. My entire class took ~15 hours to paint a very simple, monochromatic graphic on a panel of cardboard the size of my hand. If you don't enjoy repetitive, practical-based commitments, you may not flourish. Otherwise, assuming you have the motivation, Painting Techniques is a given H1.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on April 10, 2014, 10:34:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures and 1 x 2 hour workshop per week.

Assessment: 5% weekly quiz + workshop attendance (only get marks for quiz if you turn up to your workshop)
                      4 x 7.5% assignments (2 on statics/solid mechanics and 2 on dynamics)
                      2 x 7.5% mid-semester held in Week 6 and Week 12
                      50% Final exam (also a hurdle requirement)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 6 available, however no solutions are provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is both a statics and a dynamics textbook. I'd recommend skipping the statics and probably buying the dynamics

Lecturer(s): David Ackland, Joe Klewicki and Cheng Chin

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2013

Rating: 1.5 Out of 5

TL;DR: If physics isn't your strong point, this overly-complicated and (for the most part) poorly taught subject will be the bane of your existence for a good 3 months.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: So I was looking through the subject reviews randomly and thought I'd done one for this subject but apparently not, because the link took me to Hancock's review where he had a very different impression of it to me. As a took this subject a year ago now, some of the details might be a little hazy, but I don't think I've forgotten enough to make this review invalid.

The subject matter is pretty obvious by the name of the subject. You're looking at static mechanics in weeks 1-6 (culminating in a MST on statics in week 6), then moving over to dynamic mechanics in weeks 7-12 (with another MST in week 12). I found statics to be easier, and I think this is the prevailing view among the other students I knew.

The lecturers are a bit of a mixed bag. There was two streams: Ackland took one stream for both statics and dynamics, and Klewicki (statics) and Cheng (dynamics) split the other one. The lecturers all had far different ways of presenting material: Ackland would probably go the most traditional route, presenting slides and writing examples using the document camera, but was not very good at explaining concepts; Klewicki would do the majority of his examples on the whiteboard (made it a nightmare for lecture recordings) but I found was the best at explaining things; Cheng would use a tablet to just annotate the slides he presented, and although he was a bit hard to understand, I found him better at explaining the dynamics section than Ackland.

Anyway, I think the main reason I disliked (maybe even hated) this subject was that I basically had zero background in physics. I hadn't done physics in VCE and – as I'm majoring in Civil Eng via the Environments Degree – I hadn't done basically anything physics related in first year. Therefore, it's pretty tough to come into a subject where the majority of the cohort has done VCE Physics Units 1-4 and Physics 1 & 2 in first year and feel like your up to scratch. Additionally, only MATLAB stuff I knew was the very basic stuff you learn in Linear Algebra. I see the Environments course has now added the "Structural Environments" subject that seems to fix some of these issues.

One thing I'd stress for this subject is to pay attention for every minute of the lecture. I found that if I wasn't paying attention for just one slide it was pretty hard to recover. On a related note, don't fall behind. There is masses of work to be done and you pretty much have an eternal assignment (i.e. when one assignment ends, you immediately get another).

And to be honest, I was pretty useless with the group assignments. I'm generally one to take charge of a group and sort of set the standards, but I became pretty passive in this group as I had no idea what I was doing. That said, the assignments were pretty long, complicated and difficult, even for the people that did have a decent grasp on things.

The only reason I passed this subject was because I did I ridiculous amount of cramming in the last week before the exam. I basically did everything I should have been doing all semester: I watched every lecture (and paid attention), went over basically all tute questions, developed a much more effective problem solving approach, and re-did the MSTs (with much better results). But the marking is super, super easy (likely as a result of this subject's high failure rate). In every assessment I got a better mark than I expected or deserved. I came out of the exam thinking I could have failed and ended up with a H1.

So that was more of a boring autobiographical piece than a review, but overall Engineering Mechanics is the most difficult and stress inducing subject I have encountered at university so far, partly because I was poorly prepared for it, partly because the Environments degree was broken (hopefully fixed with the introduction of Structural Environments), partly because it was poorly taught (by Ackland at least), and partly because it was an undoubtably tricky subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: LeviLamp on April 12, 2014, 05:33:42 am
Subject Code/Name: BOTA20004 Flora of Victoria 

Workload: 13 x 75-minute long lectures (Neville Walsh's is not assessed), 2 x full day excursions (content assessed), 6 x 3-hr practical classes

Assessment:  1 x 10% in-excursion assignment, 1 x 25% 1500 word research essay + herbarium specimen, 1 x 65% final examination

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, and screen capture is included!

Past exams available:  No, but a small number of practice questions were provided. Just study everything and you should be fine.

Textbook Recommendation:  None required - you purchase a subject manual prior to starting the subject. If you have any of Leon Costermans's books, they'll come in handy. You also need a dissection kit for practical classes.

Lecturer(s): Mike Bayly, Pauline Ladiges, David Meagher, Neville Walsh, Tracy Regan, John Morgan

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, February (summer semester)

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 (H1)

Comments:

Flora of Victoria, like most life science subjects, is essentially a big bunch of facts and themes you need to remember and regurgitate on the exam. However, the subject was/is probably the most well-run and well-contrasted class I have taken to date in my university degree (current subjects included). The practicals complement and add to lectures, and provide new knowledge with practical settings enabling you to commit it to memory more efficiently, and the two full-day excursions were surprisingly fun and very informative. The staff are all utterly friendly, helpful and gorgeous with not a single exception, and are willing to provide feedback, seek help from more knowledgeable staff and converse with students like equals. I used to think botany was a horrible, horrible science, but this subject proves that, even if you dislike it (and the staff are aware many people take it for 'easy' summer credit), botany is useful, ubiquitous and sometimes even fun (crazy, I know, as it might seem impossible to think of it as fun after BIOL10004's botany section).

The lectures ranged from highly interesting to somewhat boring as far as revising them went - much of the more interesting content was presented in practicals and on excursions, though I found the lectures were overall quite intriguing if you attended in person. Most of the 13 lectures were presented by Mike Bayly, who is an utterly stellar lecturer, but guest lecturers were interspersed throughout the subject's short duration; Pauline Ladiges (yes, she wrote the first year biology text) lectures on the mallee bioregion of NW Victoria, John Morgan from La Trobe gives a lecture on the surprising biology and conservation of Victorian grasslands, David Meagher lectures on bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts), Tracy Regan talks about the principles of conservation biology (by far the least interesting lecture) and Neville Walsh (the Senior Conservation Botanist at our Royal Botanic Gardens!) gives a non-assessed lecture on the role of the Gardens in botanical conservation and research; his lecture is one in which you should just sit back and listen to his stories.

Lectures covered (broadly) the biogeography and biogeographic regions of Victoria and Australia, conservation threats to Victorian plants, climatic history, environmental conditions affecting plant growth, vegetation types/plant habitat structure (and underlying environmental conditions affecting this), some soil classification (Mike agrees this is not a riveting part of his lecture), Victorian wet forests (cool temperate rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest), bryophyte biology and environmental importance, the semi-arid mallee ecosystem including vegetation types, mallee eucalypt regeneration and human impacts, Victorian grassland makeup, conservation and some surprising facts about how grassland biodiversity works (this is actually really cool), plant adaptations to fire, plant adaptations to (usually low) soil nutrient levels, plant adaptations to harsh environments, plant adaptations to biotic interactions, Victorian flora's genetic diversity (a whole lecture q_q), the Royal Botanic Gardens conservation efforts and finally principles of conservation biology (quite dull). Lecturers were overall passionate and explained everything well with reference to their slides, though do note you need to listen to lectures to get all the assessable lecture content into your head; slides are by no means comprehensive for these lecturers. Tracy's lecture and Mike's genetic diversity lecture were fairly boring, but otherwise the lectures were all good!

Practicals are three hours long and typically involve identifying plant families, genera etc. etc. Do note that the overarching content from these is assessable; don't learn the specific names of random plants you I.D., but do learn things like the characteristics of a Poaceae floret, types of fruit, varieties of capitulum in a daisy etc.. The pracs were generally well-run and quite enjoyable, but after a long day of lectures they can be very draining. There is no in-prac assessment; everything is assessed on the final exam. The final practical details some information about herbarium specimen preparation for the 25% assignment.

The two day-long excursions involved visiting vegetation communities around the Melbourne region. The first excursion was to Anglesea; we went to Distillery Creek and the Point Addis headland. Demonstrators (including Mike; try and get into his group as his knowledge is incredibly good) will take small groups of people around the walking tracks and talk about the vegetation and plant groups of the areas. Take notes, particularly for the first excursion, as the excursions are assessed on the exam! Make sure to especially be aware of the general themes as compared to specific little details, though these are useful to know and a question about which species (with scientific names given) lived in which area from the first excursion came up on the exam. There was also a short answer question about the ironbark trees from Distillery Creek. The first assignment is handed out and completed on the day of the excursion, but you get plenty of time to answer the quite simple questions. I botched my written answer up and still got 85%, so it should be fine! The second excursion was to Mt. Macedon (near Sunbury) and to a remnant mallee woodland in Melton. There was a lot less assessable content for these, as we looked at transects and estimated % cover of various plant species and types - this isn't something that can really be assessed on an exam. There was a single MCQ on both excursion sites for this second excursion on the exam, but nothing asking specifically about the areas and their plants. Still, it can't hurt to revise!

The exam was very fair and assessed about as large a variety of themes as could be expected in a two-hour exam (I reckon a three-hour exam for this subject would be far more preferable). There were a variety of MCQ and fill-in-the-blank questions to cover more specific details and nitty-gritty anatomy of reproductive structures etc., and another ~50% of marks were dedicated to broader themes in the short answer and essay sections. You will need to write two essays on two broad topics - you get a choice between two prompts for each essay, which is great news for those of you who don't take things like population-wide genetic studies to heart (like me) but actually remember everything about how mistletoes transport seeds and how buzz-pollinated flowers reproduce! If you know and understand all the subject content, this exam should be very fair. Just make sure to be relevant with your essays and revise practical and excursion content thoroughly as well.

The 25% assignment (a monograph on a species of Victorian plant) was the bane of this subject - a 1500 word research essay and accompanying herbarium specimen. DO NOT BORROW BOOKS FROM THE BIOMEDICAL LIBRARY - be courteous and either photograph pages then study them at home, or use them within the library. There were 80 undergraduate students doing the same assignment, and some books used by all had only one or two copies. Note that postgraduates (~40-50 in our cohort) did a different, more rigorous research essay assignment.
For the herbarium specimen, all instructions are given in the lab manual and online in the form of the herbarium how-to document from the UoM herbarium (Google it!). Make sure to cut your plant early and change newspapers when pressing it, make sure to give your OWN detailed observations on the label and follow all herbarium mounting practices properly. Also try and aim for an aesthetically pleasing end product! I have a sample specimen that received full marks which I can photograph if anyone wants a guide as to what to do. Mounting multiple parts of the same plant is also okay - refer to the herbarium how-to guide if you have any questions, or email Kathy Vohs, Mike Bayly, Gill etc. failing that.  As far as the research aspect goes, the staff are looking for well-researched assignments, and most of the species you'll be studying do not have much information available in the mainstream domain, so be prepared to book-hunt and journal-hunt quite a bit (though some species have next to no journal information, you can indicate this in one of the sections in the assignment). Tips to a good essay, according to a demonstrator I asked, are answering all the questions listed as dot points in the manual thoroughly (including the illustration point), showing extensive and wide research, clarity of English expression (!!!) and going a little further than is expected in finding and presenting your information. Pictures are not required, but I took and attached photos as an appendix to show some of the features. Also note that the description of the plant should be largely based on your OWN observations, and should not come from a textbook. Make it clear that it's you who is describing the plant. The assignment might be a bit of a time sink, but you have a while to do it (from the end of the subject until Week One's Friday), so getting a good mark should be no problem!

Overall, despite occasional moments of boredom during pre-exam cramming sessions, this subject was wonderfully organised, diverse in terms of teaching approaches taken (pracs, excursions and lectures), full of incredibly kind staff and fairly assessed. The research assignment being due on the Friday of week one meant I became behind early and have stayed behind all semester, but it's totally worth it - this subject is great, even if you hate botany, and not extremely hard to get high credit for either (unless you're like simpak and want a score well above 90, which is rare due to the style of assessment and exam having many written open-ended questions). If you're interested in biology, Australian plants/geography/history/geology or just getting some credit over summer, I can highly, highly recommend this subject. It was so well-run that two of my botany-hating third year friends are now taking a botany class each this year; I think this proves that BOTA20004 is pretty fantastic. Good luck!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Account Deleted on May 31, 2014, 08:02:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: FLTV10010: Making Movies 1

Workload:  12 x 2hr Lectures @ Southbank Campus (VCA)

Assessment:  Weekly multiple choice test (4 questions) - 20%

Visual Sequence (Storyboard) Week 6 (50%)

Director’s Statement (1000 words) Week 12 (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Audio recording only

Past exams available:  No exam in this subject, examples of assessment tasks available via LMS

Textbook Recommendation:  Absolutely nothing

Lecturer(s): Jonathan auf der Heide + Guest lecturers for 3 weeks

Year & Semester of completion: Semester One, 2014

Rating: 1.5 Out of 5

Comments:

Lectures

12 lectures about a variety of topics that cover the basics of film (acting, genre, story, sound, etc.) The main lecturer, Jonathan auf der Heide, is a pretty funny guy but he doesn’t shut up about the one feature film he made. There’s a hurdle requirement of 75% so make sure you sign your name off the sheet during the lecture. By the halfway point of each lecture don’t be surprised to find that half of the other students have already left…

The lecture will basically be an hour of film clips interspersed by some discussion by the lecturer. Pretty mundane stuff but some of the clips make you want to go home and legally obtain the full movie. The content has almost no application to the assessment tasks.

Assessments

The major assessment task is a 10 image ‘visual sequence’ (storyboard) that has to have a twist ending. You can access past examples on the LMS.
Jonathan will let you know that he isn’t too worried with plagiarism, basically if you can take a famous sequence from a movie but change the medium (to lego, drawing, painting, etc.) you’re basically guaranteed a decent mark.

The final task is a 1000 word director’s statement based around a short film. This is as simple as writing 150 words under each heading and having the ability to string it all together, reference a few films, and once again you should be fine.

The ongoing assessment is a weekly multiple choice test worth 20% of your overall mark. This is an absolute joke of an assessment as there are only 4 questions each week and if you didn’t listen during the lecture, you can just Google the answers. (Except the one question I got wrong and unsuccessfully appealed :(). You should get 4/4 every week if you are able to use Google at all.

Final Thoughts

To put it simply you will definitely get 90+% for the multiple choice tests, and at least 65 for the other two assignments. Right there is an H2B (72%), put a tiny bit of effort into the sequence and you should get higher.

Having said that, I wish I had done Intro Microeconomics/Macroeconomics or Finance 1.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on June 06, 2014, 01:30:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP20005 - Engineering Computation

Workload:  3 x 1hr Lectures per week, 1 x 2hr practical per week

Assessment:  10% Assignment 1, 20% Assignment 2, 10% MST in about week 6, 60% Exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture.

Past exams available:  About 20 sample exam questions provided, as well as a whole lot of exercises in the textbook for practise.

Textbook Recommendation:  "Programming, Problem Solving and Abstraction in C" by Alistair Moffatt.  And yes, it's essential to the course.  The course is built around this textbook. 

Lecturer(s): Alistair Moffatt.

Year & Semester of completion:  Semester 1, 2014.

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Will let you know after exam.

Comments:

This subject is overall awesome and if you can possibly take it in Semester 1, when Alistair teaches it, you really should.  He is enthusiastic about programming and a very committed subject coordinator.  He replies to every email and the students love him (their dedication is shown in the fan website http://algorithmsarelife.com).  Expectations are clear and the content is well paced.

You start off right at the basics of C programming, but definitely the MATLAB stuff you do in ESD2 is helpful.  You shouldn't have any problems with the first 2-3 weeks if you've done ESD2.  How to manipulate numbers, functions, arrays, pointers, structures, strings are all covered in the first 10 weeks.  Each chapter covers a new concept and is accompanied by about 10 exercises for you to do.  If you do them all (Chapters 1 - 9 + 13) then you will be in a very good place for your final exam.  Some of the more difficult concepts are covered in his final two weeks and they involve more abstract thinking, a greater focus on recursive programming methods, and different problem solving techniques.  Some people are much better at this kind of stuff, some aren't.  For me, it takes me forever to generate an algorithm, but once once I have it, I can punch out the code like lightning.  But for a friend, he knew what the code needed to do, but it took him forever to write it. 

Currently I'm procrastinating studying for this subject by writing this review.  Which leads me to my one and only issue with this subject - even though the exam is 'only' 60%, it really should be more like 40% and we should have had another 20% assignment.  Testing programming skills via handwritten code is not conducive to real life situations - that said, mostly they are testing your ability to use logic, abstraction, and generate algorithms. 

This subject is difficult to 'study' for.  The only real way is to start coding, right from Week 1.  You HAVE to keep up with the exercises week-by week, because cramming code is nigh on impossible.  By the end, and after both assignments, you should be fairly comfortable with the general syntax of C so that you don't have to concern yourself with that sort of stuff in the exam.  Alistair is known for generating a difficult final exam to try and separate the 90%-ers from the 95%-ers, but that said he is very clear on what he expects from you.  I'll update this post with a comment on the final exam after I sit it next week (8am, first day of exam block!).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on June 06, 2014, 01:53:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10007 Fundamentals of Chemistry

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures per week, 1 x 3hr prac per week, 1 x 1hr tute per week.

Assessment:  6 Practicals (20% total), 3 online MSTs (5% each), Exam (65%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with capture.

Past exams available:  A few, maybe 4.

Textbook Recommendation:  I purchased the recommended Blackman textbook "Chemistry 2nd edition" but ended up just using the library copies for questions and pre-readings.

Lecturer(s):  Mick Moylan, Penny Commons, Jonathan White, Sonia Horvat.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014.

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Will post after results released.

Comments:

This subject is a really great introduction to Chemistry.  As with a lot of introductory science subjects at UoM, they could do more to spark enthusiasm and energy into the content.  What we are learning in this subject is actually amazing and awe-inspiring, but you have to look hard for it because it's taught in such a dry way for the most part. 

(Some of the next para copied from the handbook:)
Mick started off for about 10 lectures introducing us to the structure of atoms, periodic table, naming compounds, bonding etc. 
Penny is a great lecturer and she talks about solubility and the solution state; ions and hydration; the behaviour of gases; the mole concept; concentrations; stoichiometry; acids, bases, neutralisation reactions and salt formation, redox reactions and reaction potentials.
Sonia lectures on acid/base strength and the pH scale; energy and chemical systems; rates of reaction and reaction order; catalysis and enzymes; chemical equilibrium; the equilibrium constant, Ka, Kb, stability constants and solubility products.
Jonathan takes us for organic chemistry (organic molecules: structure, nomenclature and functional groups; and biologically significant macromolecules).  It's a pity that Jonathan had to lay so much groundwork in the nomenclature and that kind of drier stuff because organic chemistry is super interesting and I think it will be great in future Chem subjects.

All lecturers were pretty good (I liked Jonathan the best) and if you do a bit of pre-reading to make sure you have an idea of what's coming the lectures are useful and well paced.  I had done some pre-study in the holidays leading up to the semester because I am aiming for a 90%+ overall grade so that I can skip to Chemistry 2 without having to take Chemistry 1.  I highly recommend this if you are aiming to do the same. 

I would highly recommend doing the assigned textbook questions after EVERY lecture starting right from Week 1.  It really takes the load off what you need to do in SWOTVAC and makes it much less overwhelming.  I stopped doing every question at about week 8 (when organic chemistry started) mostly because the exam timetable was released and our exam is on the last day... so I switched focus to more pressing subjects! 

Although some of the pracs weren't that inspiring in themselves (I LOVED two of them though) I had a brilliant and wonderful demonstrator.  Some of the demonstrators I encountered in passing though seemed pretty average so I think I got lucky there, hopefully you will too!  Pre-writing your pracs really takes a load off when you're under time pressures during the pracs, so make sure you pre-write what you can.  You also have to do an online pre-Prac test and hand in a code to show you passed.

The tutes were OK but they were badly synced, if you had a tute early in the week it would cover material that hadn't been lectured on yet, which was annoying for some people.  A good argument to do the pre-reading though, even if it's just a quick read through. 

None of the concepts in this course are particularly difficult, although a lot of people struggled with electrolysis.  Really they are just laying the groundwork and giving you tools with which to tackle more complex chemistry problems further down the track.  It is part rote-learn and part problem solving, but the equations are pretty straight forward, you just need to learn how to use them. 

The exam was very very fair.  Questions are very similar from past exams so if you do all the past exams you'll know what to expect.  It is 50% (90 marks) multiple choice and 50% (90 marks) short answer.  Really, it was one of the fairest exams I've ever sat.  There should be no surprises with this subject.  Learn the material, and you'll ace it.

NB.  If you perform well in the exam for this subject, you will get an offer to go straight to Chemistry 2.  You don't have to accept the offer but it means you avoid Summer Semester.  Performing well means > 85%.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hobbitle on June 06, 2014, 02:20:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20029 - Engineering Mathematics

Workload:  3 x 1hr Lectures per week, 1 x 1hr tutorial per week.

Assessment:  15% MST, 3 x 5% Assignments, 70% Exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Not during semester, but lecture recordings are released during SWOTVAC.

Past exams available:  Yes, a whole bunch (about 12) available from the online library resource and the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is one, but you don't need it.  Everything you need is in the lecture slides that you buy from the Co-Op.

Lecturer(s): Marcus Brazil or Christine Manglesdorf

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Will post after results released

Comments:

Hancock has already given a great review of this subject so I won't say too much.  I actually really enjoyed this subject.  I felt like I could really see the usefulness of the application of what we were learning, and whilst I do agree that a lot of it was just punching numbers into formulas and integrating, I still liked the fact that I could really see how what we were doing was applicable in the future as an Engineer.  I also was grateful for  a bit of a break from the more abstract/conceptual subjects like Linear Algebra in first year.  It was fun to just do maths and be able to understand it and understand why.

It should be noted that my lecturer Marcus was pretty average, and I heard Christine was much better.  Marcus basically just read what was on the slides, which you can essentially learn yourself (like Hancock did).  Although seeing him work through the answers to the exercises I found helpful.  They would really benefit from taking one lecture per chapter to kind of explain why we are doing what we are doing and how it is applicable in the 'real world'.  For example, when doing PDEs, most people just rote learn the process and don't actually understand at all what they are doing. Even 5 minutes to explain La Places equation would have been great - but perhaps this is assumed knowledge, I don't know.

Maybe I also enjoyed it a lot more because Engineering Mathematics marks the end of core maths subjects for my major, and now I get to actually integrate it into Level 3 subjects... hopefully.  Anyway, I quite liked this subject, and even though my tutor was kind of strange, she was also pretty nice and helpful and liked explaining things to us.  The tutorials are actually great and helpful (I had a particularly good little group as well).

The exam was VERY fair and predictable - almost too much so, but hey I'm not complaining!  Do 4 or 5 of the past exams and you'll know exactly what to expect from your final exam.  They didn't throw any curveballs or try to trick you.  It was very satisfying :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on June 06, 2014, 04:43:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20149 - Music Psychology

Workload: 1X2hr lecture per week

Assessment: Weekly participation in web-based quiz (40%= 10X4%); 2000 word written assignment, due at the end of semester (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A, 2 past sample essays were given to us.

Textbook Recommendation: There is one, but you don't really need it. If you want you can borrow it from the library or look it up online

Lecturer(s): Every lecture had a different speaker (don't remember the names)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments:

I chose this subject at the end of week 2 just before the last enrollments (I dropped MIIM20001) because I wanted a "relaxing" and "bludge" subject. Since lectures were at 9am and living 2 hours away, I probably attended about 3 lectures the whole semester. Some of them were very interesting while some were mind-numbingly boring. I remember in week 5, 6 or something we learnt about auditory damage from listening to music too loud for prolonged periods of time. The speaker, Jeremy Marozeau brought his machine which could measure how loud you listen to your music to! :) That was probably my favorite lecture all semester.

Every week there are 4 MCQ questions which make up the weekly quiz which contribute to your final overall mark. Each question is 1% and since there are 4 questions every week for 10 weeks, it makes up 40% of your overall mark. This is easy to attain some much required marks but make sure you do them well since mistakes may be detrimental to your overall score. Theoretically if you got 30/40 for the quizzes, to get a H1, you would need a 50/60 for the essay component. Whereas if you got 40/40 (not easy), you would only need a 40/60 (66.67%) in comparison. So yeh, I guess it does make quite an impact.

The reason why I gave this subject 4/5 was largely due to not much info about the final assessment. The final 60% essay to be honest, is a pain and I do not speak for only myself but for others when I say that the staff in this subject did not really give much detail as to what was expected of the assignment. The thing they provide is 2 sample essays which scored well but yeh maybe I'm just noob hahahaha :( I'm not sure how hard they mark the final essays and how hard it is to get a H1. But from my experience so far, I don't think it's as easy as everyone makes it out to be ? :/

Overall, I found this subject to be quite relaxing thorughout the semester at times very interesting.

Edit: put in grade mark + if anyone has any questions feel free to PM me.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on June 06, 2014, 11:47:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: SPAN30014 - Spanish 5

Workload:  2x1.5 hour tutorials each week

Assessment: Más ejercicios 10% (weekly exercises), pruebas 35% (in-class tests), presentación oral 15% (oral presentation), ensayo final 15% (final essay) and final exam 25%

Lectopia Enabled:  N/A

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Aula 4 (you need it)

Lecturer(s): Tutors are: Sandrine Michel, Sam Rutter and Pablo González del Rivero

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 90 (H1)

Comments: Most language students will gladly tell you that every language subject turns to shit by third year. They're not wrong.

Ok, perhaps that's a little hyperbolic, but in comparison to previous Spanish subjects this one is a bit of a bummer. First of all, it's too slow. You honestly feel like you're going through at snail's pace, which sounds glorious, but after two years of Spanish there's something exciting about ploughing through quickly. You miss out on that sense of development and achievement because of how slow this subject is. In reality, there really is quite a bit to learn, but the tutors tend to linger on relatively simple concepts. Presumably this is because these concepts have been difficult for previous students and they've over-corrected.

The subject focuses on texts called testimonios. After 12 weeks of class, I'm not convinced that anybody is sure what testimonios actually are... Very basically, I think they're just first person texts. This was introduced as the overall theme of the subject—indeed it is the title of it if you believe the sílabo—and there was much talk of testimonios, but it never really added to anything. We would read a text or watch a film each week and have a really contrived and fruitless discussion about the themes of the text. It was silly and a waste of time. The way the texts we read related to assessment is indicative of its silliness. All questions either centred around regurgitating mindless details such as the author's name and the date it was written or regurgitating information that the teachers had mentioned in class, for example, how to interpret certain elements of the text. Needless to say, the teachers were at pains to make sure that we had already discussed those elements ad nauseum in class, so it wasn't an interpretation, but rote learning of boring details once again.

There are good bits, though, don't fear! The tutors are all fantastic. Personally, I had Sandrine and Sam; both of whom would walk to hell and back for any one of their students. You always left the classroom knowing that the tutors actually cared about how you did and were genuine when they offered their help. They're also exceptionally prepared for their classes, despite this being far less well co-ordinated than previous Spanish subjects (which isn't difficult Spanish 1-4 are exceptionally organised). Spanish classes tend to be more cohesive than most, which makes for a really supportive environment to learn in. Each of the tutors also seems to have a good idea of the students' abilities, which is more than you can say for almost any university subject.

I've come to expect a lot from Spanish at UniMelb. Spanish 1-4 are brilliant subjects. They're well co-ordinated, the assessment is fair, the tutors are all brilliant, the classes are fun, your classmates are all fantastic and you're left with a real sense of achievement. Regrettably, Spanish 5 doesn't live up to those expectations. I am sure that in the general scheme of things, it probably is a good subject; but in comparison to the other Spanish subjects, it is quite poor. It's poorly co-ordinated (exams not even through the SES system, the co-ordinator appears to have just chosen a time and date to shove an exam in a lecture theatre meaning that many students will have to bolt from UniMelb to REB to get to their next exam 40 minutes later), the assessment is hopelessly unfair and nobody seems willing to change it, testimonios are a stupid distraction and a desperate attempt to give the class cultural context and the course itself is set out to be slow and mind-numbingly boring.

This class wasn't a nightmare. I didn't hate it. So I do hope that my criticisms don't necessarily dissuade you from taking it. All I hope is that you go into this class knowing not to expect as much as you had from Spanish 1-4.

¡Que os disfrutéis! Si tenéis preguntas o queréis ayuda, mandadme un mensaje.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ReganM on June 07, 2014, 01:51:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOL30007 - Marine Ecosystems: Ecology & Management

Workload:  28 lectures; 4 tutorials; 12 hours of group multimedia presentations

Assessment: Mini-symposium (presentation and participation, 15%) at the end of semester; critiques of tutorial readings (up to 2000 words) due throughout semester (25%); mid-term written examination of 1 hour (20%); written examination of 2 hours during the final examination period (40%)

"Mini Symposium" - You have to do an oral presentation, 8-10 minutes per a group member in a group of 5 people, about topic like "Aquaculture" or supertrawlers.
Critiques of Tute readings - You get given some studies and you have answer some questions about them. I think it was 800-1000 word limit, about a page per tute. You could get assessed on up to 3 tutes, but only 2 would count.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, only audio.

Past exams available: n/a. A relatively new subject (think it only started last year, in 2013). But they do supply sample exam questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook, mostly just the tute readings and such. Would definitely recommend reading the readings they link at the end of each lecture or ones they mention, as the content in each lecture is often based around studies that have been done.

Lecturer(s): Mainly Tim Dempster, Steve Swearer, Mick Keough and Rob Day.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Sem 1

Rating:  3/5

Comments:
Lectures:
Vary in quality and content. Sometimes we would have like 3-6 lectures on a topic like "Disturbance", which wasn't very interesting, and we'd only have one lecture (by Tim Jessop) on Megafauna (turtles and such). As someone who is more into animals than anything else, I thought the lectures would have more on ecology and management of marine animals. It was more about well, everything in the marine ecosystem. Including lectures on ocean acidification and rising temperatures, and the effects it would have. Not super engaging for me, but still interesting in a way.

I would say it's better to attend these than skip them because sometimes the lecture slide content is hard to follow, especially Mick Keough's lecture slides which have little content (mostly pictures). I had problems with understanding the concepts in his lectures but I found the two reviews he posts on the LMS (Sousa 2001 and Minchinton 2007) really helpful to read, as his lectures take content from them.

Tutes:
Easiest way to get marks. You are given a series of readings to study, and there is also a question sheet. You basically answer the question sheet. Each tute had a question along the lines of "Design an experiment.." , which was sometimes difficult to come up with. If you take this subject I highly advise going to the tutorial classes that relate to each tute, as the lecturer will pretty much give you the answers to everything (so take notes!).

Midsem:
Just a short answer test on lectures that had been done. Straightforward, you just need to make sure you understand what each lecture was about.

Oral presentations:
The worst part of the subject. We were in groups of 5-6, presenting on a very broad topic. It was worth 15% (and no idea how they marked us). My group spent over a month meeting at least once a week with multiple Facebook, Drive etc chats to make sure we covered everything and nothing overlapped. We also had to include "research project" type plan thing which was supposed to be our answer to problems brought up in our presentations (eg. supertrawlers catch turtles, dolphins and other megafauna as bycatch, how can this be reduced?). I feel for the amount of work that was put in (everyone had to present for 8-10 minutes) it wasn't worth the time we spent (especially since the tutes were worth 12.5% each).

Time commitment:
So when you do your timetabling, it looks like you have a 3hr workshop twice a week every week. In actuality that timeslot is just for the oral presentations so you'll only have to go to classes in that timeslot maybe 3 times at the end of the semester.

Exam:
They will give you practice exam questions, and I guess the format is kind of similar. There were 4 or 5 x 5 mark questions and 4 x 20 mark exam questions. You had to do all of them.
The questions weren't too difficult in my opinion, especially if you've done revision (went through lectures, did some background reading etc). I just didn't think I wrote enough content to cover 20 marks for each of the 20 mark questions. I'm not sure how much detail they want you to go into because they don't supply sample answers so I just wrote as much as I could.. and I hope that was enough.

Overall I'm not sure if I regret taking this subject. Aside from the laborious oral presentation, it was kind of a relaxing subject. Not quite a bludge but it wasn't super difficult either.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on June 07, 2014, 11:44:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR30002 Fluid Mechanics

Workload:  3x50 minute lectures and 1x50 minute tutorial per week + 1 single 2 hour Prac at some point from ~ weeks 4-7

Assessment:  Prac Report (10%), Fluids Assignment (10%), 3 hour Exam (80% and a hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with video

Past exams available: Yes, but no solutions provided

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Stan Grant

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Sem 1

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A really well taught but difficult subject that requires constant work throughout the semester to do well.

Comments:

Most prospective Fluid Mech students will have done Eng Mechanics in second year, so I'll work a bit of a comparison into this review. See my review for that here (and, for an entirely different perspective see Hancock's here)

After struggling mightily with Engineering Mechanics (although I ended up with a good mark), I came into Fluid Mech expecting to have a bad time. However – perhaps because the content is easier or maybe because it is explained better – I have found Fluid Mech easier than I expected.

Stan, an Alaskan native who splits the year between UoM and UCI, is a fantastic lecturer. He does something that some lecturers in this field often fail to do: looks at the subject material from a student's perspective. This subject can be tricky and confusing, but Stan seems to understand this and is good at explaining key concepts in detail and emphasising those of most importance. He also has a (somewhat strange but) good sense of humour, which injects some energy into the subject. He's also a genuinely nice guy and gave cupcakes (yes cupcakes) to everyone in the last lecture.

Fluid Mech is a well constructed subject. While the material is taught at a fairly high pace, it was not too much effort to stay up to date with lectures and tutorials, and the assignments were good at guiding study.

The tutes are good but not entirely necessary if you already have a good grasp on the material. The tutor basically goes through 3-5 questions that relate to the past week's material, and worked solutions are provided at the end of the week. Attendance isn't marked, so I only turned up when (a) I woke up early and/or (b) I didn't understand part of the previous week's material.

As all the assessment is completed individually. This is something I appreciate in subjects that are pretty difficult. With Eng Mech, you had to balance the tricky material with group logistics. You'd waste time trying to organise the work when that effort could be better used to understand the content. Also, with the harder subjects, you'll have some students that breeze through it, and others that lag behind a bit. Makes group work difficult as generally 1 or 2 of the group members end up doing most of the work.

The subject could probably be improved with a mid-semester test. 80% is too much for a final exam; it leads to an inherent need to cram and puts pressure on students who struggle. Also, I don't believe in exams as a hurdle requirement when a subject that has no group work; with group work, sometimes poorer students can be carried by their group, necessitating a final exam that they are required to pass. But when all assignments are done individually, a pass doesn't need to be redefined; 50% for the entire subject should be enough.

Overall, this is a very well taught and well constructed subject, especially when compared to the mess that was Eng Mechanics. It is probably one of the better non-breadth, non-elective subjects I have done throughout my Civil Systems major (in terms of material, teaching, workload etc.).

It's worth noting that Stan only lectures in Semester 1, whilst Semester 2 is run by the subject coordinator, Malcolm Davidson, who authored the subject notes which act as the basis for Stan's slides. So, while each semester essentially covers the same content, Stan's notes seem a bit more accessible to the confused masses. i.e. Malcolm's notes seem to lean further towards the common approach (in Eng at least) of just presenting you with a formula in which you plug in the numbers, whereas Stan aims to provide a more intuitive understanding. If any Sem 2 student is struggling to understand the content, send me a PM and I can provide you with Stan's recordings which may be more helpful.

As for advice: keep up with the workload. As I said, it's nothing too difficult, but the content really does build on itself throughout the entire semester, so make sure you understand last week's material if you want to understand this week's.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spalvains on June 09, 2014, 12:52:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: CEDB30002 Concepts in Cell and Developmental Biology 

Workload:  3x 1hr lectures each week

Assessment:  3x MCQ midsems throughout semester (10% each); 1200 word review of a given paper (10%), exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  We were given last years' exam and midsemester tests as revision.

Textbook Recommendation:  Two are suggested, but the lecture notes are enough.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof. Robb de Iongh, Dr. Mary Familari, Dr. John Golz, A/Prof. Gary Hime, Dr. Kim Johnson, Dr. Michael Murray, A/Prof. Ed Newbigin, Dr. Linda Parsons

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1 2014

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

This subject can be taken in a few majors (Biotechnology, Genetics, Immunology, and my major, Cell and Developmental Biology), and is taught by people from the Departments of Botany, Genetics, Zoology and Anatomy and Neuroscience, so you know off the bat that it's going to be a broad subject. And that it is - we cover three main areas:
So you can see that we learn about a lot of different things. The subject handles this well by having different lecturers for each area, and I have nothing but good things to say about every lecturer. They really know their stuff. There's an emphasis on experimental techniques, which to be honest I wasn't a fan of as I don't want to work in a research lab, but some people loved it.

Each midsem test covers an area each, and is made up of 25 multiple choice questions. We get last years' test (and answers) to practice on, and they're pretty straightforward questions. I liked how this was set out, so we had to make sure we knew the ins and outs of each area before progressing to the next one.

Each lecturer picked a recent paper about an area of their curriculum, and we picked from them in week 2 to write a 1200 word review on, which had to cover topics like how did the paper make the conclusions it did, what the paper brings to the field and potential further investigations. A draft was due around week 7, which was then critiqued by the lecturer and sent back to us for review until final submissions around the end of the semester. This was the first paper review I've had to write, and I found it quite easy to do - the instructions are clear, and I loved that we had them reviewed before final submission (the draft wasn't compulsory or worth any marks, it was simply for feedback).

The only real negative that I have about this subject is that the three guest lecturers we have throughout semester (on neural stem cells, prions, and xenotransplantation, respectively) can be really vague in terms of what they will assess. However, I've found that they tend to recycle their MCQ in the midsem tests, so with revision they're not a problem.

I took this subject alongside BCMB30003 Molecular Aspects of Cell Biology, and the two really complimented each other well, and covered some similar aspects. I would recommend the combo to people who can take it. And, for any keen bean first years who are reading this review, if you're thinking of taking this subject make sure you do  CEDB20003 Fundamentals of Cell Biology, it's a brilliantly taught subject and definitely prepared me well for this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 10, 2014, 06:51:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine 

Workload: 6 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour practicals/CAL per fortnight and 9 x 1 hour tutorials.

Note that most of the time, your tutorials are simply another lecture (giving you a whooping 6-7 lectures per week). Other times they will be a workshop and they may teach some non-examinable extension. Attendance to CALs is not mandatory (with the exception of the Microbiology practical, where you will have 2 pracs of 1.5 hours each).

Only the Microbiology part of the course has practicals dedicated to it. All other topics are covered in CALs.

Assessment: 5 x continuous assessment exercises during semester - 10% (2% each) - these are CALs/pracs
2 x intra-semester tests during semester - 20% (10% each)
2 x 2 hour examinations during the exam period - 70% (35% each)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  All of the 2010 is uploaded, most of the 2011 exams are uploaded apart from the MCQs. The exams have changed from those times though - now, Paper A is completely MCQ/fill in the blanks, and Paper B is all short answer. For MST1, the 2011-2012 copies were uploaded on the LMS, and for MST2, the 2011-2013 copies were uploaded on the LMS. You won't get any solutions or marking schemes.

Textbook Recommendation:  A whole lot of textbooks that you don't really need unless you are really struggling. I only ever briefly opened the textbooks twice over the whole subject. Molecular Biology of the Cell is the textbook which covers a lot of the course, and a lot of the diagrams on the lecture slides are ripped out of it. Kumar's Pathology may be helpful considering that Pathology is probably the hardest part of the course to get your head around. You can find all of the textbooks you need online as pdfs.

The lecture slides are more than enough to do well in this subject.

Lecturer(s): A lot. They were all brilliant - clear, funny, interactive.
16 lectures of Biochemistry (Terry Mulheren) - your first lecturer. Terry tends to speak pretty fast, so it's a good idea to go through his lectures again just to make sure you don't miss out on any details.
12 lectures of Genetics (Brendan Monahan, Trent Perry and Marnie Blewitt) - Brendan lectures for most of this bulk. Trent takes 2 lectures on developmental genetics and reverse genetics, Marnie takes 2 lectures for Epigenetics.
12 lectures of Cell Biology (Robb de Iongh and Gary Hime) - Robb lectures for most of this part, Gary takes 4 lectures on tissues + cell junctions. Gary tends to read off slides, but his slides can be pretty detailed anyway.
15 lectures of Microbiology/Immunology (Roy Robins Browne, Lorena Brown, Odillia Wijburg) - Roy lectures for Bacteriology, Lorena for Virology, and Odillia for Immunology. This is THE BEST part of the subject. Roy tells a lot of stories and make sure you write down EVERYTHING HE SAYS, because he will assess it even if it's not on the slides.
11 lectures of Pathology - (Vicki Lawson, Chris Hopkins, Tom Karagiannis) - Vicki lectures for most of this block. I found her notes a bit hard to follow, so make sure you listen during her lectures. Chris gives a lecture on Chronic Inflammation and Tom (who is probably the MOST relaxed lecturer, ever) gives 2 lectures on Neoplasia.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (94)

Comments: This subject is an awesome experience, but make no mistake, it is a stressful challenge. It is full-on, with 6-7 lectures a week. If you fall behind then you're going to have a tough time fighting back. Many students aren't used to taking a double subject, so don't make the mistake of treating it like your other subjects - you need to devote double the time do this. I don't care if you've got MSTs for Principles of Genetics or GHS, DO NOT PUT THIS SUBJECT OFF EVER. Make sure you finish summarising all of the week's lectures by the end of the week, and I guarantee you'll be fine. All of the lectures sort of follows from the last, so if you can keep up to date with things it just makes it so much easier.

One of the major reasons on why I liked this subject was its cohesiveness and integration. All of the topics link together very nicely. Cancer is obviously a major theme in the course, and it's something that's addressed in most of the topics. For example, in Biochemistry you will learn how cancer cells have an increased rate of glycolysis and therefore upregulate GLUT transporters to get more glucose. In genetics you will learn about how genetic mutations can increase the likelihood of cancer, through translocations of proto-oncogenes/tumour suppressor genes. In Cell Biology you will learn signalling pathways that stimulate/prevent proliferation of tumour cells, as well as their epithelial/mesenchymal transition. In Immunology, you will learn cancer cells can be recognised as altered self-cells by the immune system. In Pathology, you will learn about how cancers can metastasise and spread throughout the body. This is what I'm talking about by "integration" and cohesiveness. This isn't just limited to things such as cancer, but also on stuff such as MHC interactions/presentations.

Anyway, expect to learn A LOT of detail in this subject, and read over your notes from time-to-time. Cover the big ideas first, and then once you're confident with those, hone in on the small details that will hopefully make you stand out from other students.

Lectures/Workshops
Lectures are great, but make sure you re-listen to them. There's always some detail that you're likely to miss out. Since attendance isn't compulsory you can afford to just not go to them and you won't really be missing out on anything - I found that I studied better at home anyway. Later in the semester I switched from annotating the lecture slides by hand to just typing on the pdf, which I found a lot more efficient. When you type out your notes, make sure you include lots of diagrams and visuals because Paper B of the exam will require you to draw some.

Workshops are pretty much just an extra-lecture slot, where the lecturer may:
1. Go through some of the stuff in the CAL
2. Address questions they've been emailed
3. Go over lectures they haven't had time to finished
4. Cover some extended knowledge

The only workshop which I think was somewhat important was the Cell Biology one, where Rob went through some general things about cancer. Given that cancer is a pretty overarching theme of the course, make sure you at least have a look at it. Don't bother learning ALL the details that Rob specifically tells you not to.

Make it a policy of writing down everything a lecturer says unless they specifically tell you not to worry about it. ANYTHING the lecturer says can be examinable.

Mid-Semester Tests
These are not hard if you've done the work. 99.99999999% of MCB is just memorisation/recall. These are all MCQ. Either you know the answer to the question, or you don't and just have to guess. There are 2 MSTs, held in Week 6 and 11 respectively. MST1 covers Biochemistry + Genetics, MST2 covers Cell Biology + Micro/Immuno. Each of them is 30 questions long with 30-40 mins writing time. The MSTs were a bit specific, but as long as you know the details, you shouldn't lose many marks here.

Definitely do the past MSTs, because some of the questions can be pretty similar. If you're sick of reading through your notes and want to get the most out of your studying, write your own detailed solutions to the MSTs and make your own questions. Try to make those questions as specific as possible, make them hard, and try to write questions that would hypothetically require you to think through it before you can answer.

Around 1-2 weeks after the MST, you'll have a feedback lecture where the lecturer will just go a few questions from the test. They will also give you some statistics on how the cohort went. For some reason the 2014 cohort did quite well compared to previous years.

Pracs/CALs
These account for 10% of your mark and it is a pretty easy 10% to get. You get one CAL/prac per topic. Make sure you actually do the CALs even if you're not going to attend them - with the exception of Pathology, you can do all of the CALs at home. After the last group has done the topic's CAL/PRAC, a test based on the CAL will pop up on the LMS (except for Cell Biology, where the test was literally just the 1st year revision quiz we had to do BEFORE the CAL and allowed multiple attempts since you needed to get 10/10 to access CAL itself). These tests aren't hard and you shouldn't have too much trouble with them. Generally, these CALs will cover non-examinable things and it's not really necessary to go revise them. Cell Biology had some things which were relevant to cell proliferation and the Pathology CAL was pretty much just a summary of everything we had learnt, with a bit more detail to it.

The Microbiology part of the course has 2 practicals dedicated to it. These are pretty fun, they're presented like a hospital case study and you will have to find the microbe responsible for a particular infection at a hypothetical ward. Don't worry too much about this as there is no in-practical assessment - it's only assessed on the LMS test as with the other CALs. Just sit back and enjoy.

Exam A
I actually felt a bit time-pressured in this exam. There are 80 MCQs, with 40 marks of fill in the blanks (10 questions, 4 marks each). You approximately have 1 mark per minute.

The exam was pretty specific, more so than the MSTs. But luckily for us there were no troll questions (someone told me that in previous years, one of the questions was which chain of the MHC molecule was closest to the membrane - now that's a troll). ALL questions were addressed in the lectures (either it was on the slide or it was said) so make sure you go through your lecture notes thoroughly and don't leave anything out. Anyway, as above, if you know your stuff you have nothing to worry about because again most of this section is just pure recall, with some occasional/rare application.

The fill in the blanks actually takes quite a bit of time, more than you might expect. Each question will have 8 parts to it, and each correct part earns you 0.5 marks. When you have 10 of these, it's going to slow you down a lot. You also have lots of options to check through, and then you also have to make sure that everything makes grammatical sense as well.

I know some people weren't able to finish this exam, so make sure absolute sure to leave questions you're unsure with for last. I was somewhat rushing and only finished with 15 mins, which wasn't enough to check through the entire paper. Make sure you check that you've inputted everything correctly because yes, it is actually pretty easy to fuck up your answer sheet.

Exam B
This paper takes place a week after the MCQ exam. It's entirely full of short-answer questions. This year, the format of the exam changed and rather than having many heavily weighted questions, we got a lot more which were only worth 0.5-6 marks. There was one 12 mark question and one 9 mark question in there too. So it sort of resembles the short-answer section of a VCE exam, with more questions which are less heavily weighted.

It's crucial that you time yourself on this exam. You should be aiming to write at a speed of 1 mark per minute, so time pressure is definitely there and you won't finish if you waste too much time thinking or having mental blanks. Take this exam as an opportunity to show off everything you know and include as much detail as possible if you have the time.

Learn to draw diagrams too. Many questions may explicitly require you to draw diagrams when appropriate. Diagrams can take up a lot of time so if you don't want to repeat yourself, draw the diagram first and then annotate it. They don't have to be Picasso, just draw a general gist of what's happening (i.e use simple shapes and shit, don't bother trying to draw the actual structure of things like desmosomes like they do in the textbook because you might not finish).

The past exam papers were much more difficult than the actual exam probably because of the different format. In the new format they actually tell you what specific detail to write so you're not left wonderinf what to include and not to include most of the time.

The final lecture in this subject tells you which of the topics will be "integrated", which does let to somewhat predict what they'll be. For example, if Genetics/Cell Biology/Pathology is integrated, you can expect that the topic is going to be about cancer. There was no Microbiology listed as part of the integration topics and none of it was on the exam too. With that being said, study everything as you can use your knowledge from other areas of the course and perhaps use it as an example if you can (admittedly I didn't really do this).

I studied for this exam pretty much just by looking over my notes occasionally and writing as many detailed answers I could for any processes that were likely to occur over and over and over. Memorising your responses could increase your speed and at least you'll know all the details.

Final remarks

I loved this subject because it gave you so much broad exposure to a number of different topics. There's a lot to know, but you'll often have epiphany moments like "OH NOW I UNDERSTAND HOW MHC-II IS PRODUCED AND SECRETED TO THE PLASMA MEMBRANE IN THE RIGHT ORIENTATION". It clicks, and nothing feels hugely discontinuous from the other.

What's important is that there is a LOT of content to know but the concepts are not hard to understand. So as long as you manage your time well, this subject is not as bad as it seems. I also think the faculty is tweaking the subject and making assessment slightly easier to reduce the fail rates of previous years.

Pathology is probably the hardest part of the course since there is a LOT of content packed into a short number of lectures. Read over it quite a bit since it's going to take a bit of time to get your head around it.

Tips for doing well in this subject:
1. Summarise every lecture immediately with lecture diagrams, and note down EVERYTHING the lecture says unless they specifically say that its not necessary.
2. Find some people and have some quiz-offs. This is actually immensely helpful for improving your memory/recall. When I looked over every topic for the first time it was easy to feel overwhelmed. Asking and answering questions is a nice change from just passively reading. Refer to your notes if you don't know the answer. I reckon this was the fastest and most efficient way of studying - combined with passive reading, after a day or two I would be able to recall 2 topics without much trouble.
3. Make your own questions and make them as detailed and tricky as possible. Try to make them emulate the MSTs in style, but make them harder in difficulty. Change one small detail in an option to make it wrong. Try to make the obvious answers incorrect. And if you can, try integrate your questions so they draw on knowledge from different topics.
4. Write solutions to all practise tests that you do, explaining why each answer is right and wrong.
5. When practising for your SAQs, it might be useful to write out the entire process again and again to memorise it.
6. Jot down the gaps in your knowledge on a small notepad. Make it function as a logbook of all your forgotten details. I put these on my phone and would look over it days before the exams. This is so you don't forget them again.

The course has changed quite a bit since 2013 - a lot of Genetics has been cut and replaced with some 1-2 filler lectures (such as the ENCODE project and genetic therapy, which are unlikely to be examined). The other parts of the subject seem to remain the same. I'm going to quote stonecold's review and just add in stuff that's changed.

Quote
Biochemistry
  • Know the amino acids, single letter codes, three letter codes, resonance structures, properties and how to draw peptides and how the amino acids interact with one another.
  • Understand the chemical interactions involved and basic thermodynamics and be able to explain them.
  • Know the Ramachandran plot, as well as all of the properties of b-sheets and a-helices, including how to draw a rough schematic.
  • Know every step, including enzymes and cofactors, of glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, glycogenolysis, glycogenesis, TCA cycle, electron transport chain as well as a few other reactions which you are given.  You need to be able to recognize and name all of the molecules, but not draw them.
  • Have a solid understanding of enzyme kinetics.
  • Know all of the signalling pathways relating to glucogon, insulin, adrenaline etc.
  • Know all of the diseases discussed in this part of the course.

Genetics
  • Know the key structures of chromosomes and how they are replicated.
  • Learn all the steps in transcription and translation, contrasting prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
  • Know the relevance of epigenetic marks and how they affect gene expression.
  • Make sure you understand tumour supressor genes and how you can identify them.
  • Make sure you know about the types of mutations which can lead to cancer (oncogenic/tumour suppressor), and how some of these can be treated. There is a big emphasis on Myc translocation and BCR-ABL fusion.
  • The lac operon as well as other types of positively and negatively acting transcriptional systems are important to understandand at a conceptual level.
  • Know about developmental pathways - make sure you understand the maternal effect and understand how the anterior-posterior axis is determined. Also learn about how Hox genes affect development.
  • Understand the concepts of complementation testing, forward genetics and reverse genetics (such as the GAL4:UAS system).
  • At least know about Sanger Sequencing and general ideas of modern-genetic technology. You don't need to know ALL techniques, but know what the ENCODE project wants to do, as well as the features of Next-Gen sequencing.
  • Suppressor mutations always come up in a big question in the final exam.
  • Be able to interpret gels, as they are bound to come up somewhere

Cell Biology
  • Understand the concept of topology.
  • Know the various mechanisms and processes by which proteins are trafficked around the cell, including the steps and diagrams.
  • Know all the properties and features of the cytoskeleton (actin filaments, intermediate filaments and microtubules).
  • Know all the details of epithelial tissue including  cell junctions and the electron micrographs which are given in the slides.
  • Understand all of the features of connective tissue, includuing fibrous proteins, adhesive proteins and proteoglycans.
  • Know all of the signalling pathways which you get taught in detail, including how to draw them.  The important ones seem to be MAPK, Wnt/b-catenin and TGFb signalling.  Explain how these pathways cause cancer.
  • Explain the characteristics of epithelial to mesenchymal cell transition, which is the transformation of benign growths to malginant tumours.

Micro/Immunology
  • Know all of the features of bacteria, and how they contribute to virulence, including the experiemental evidence for this, especially toxins, fimbriae and capsids.
  • Know examples and charactersitics of lots of different bacteria with different features.   Roy's favourite's are Clostridium sp. and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Make sure you note down ALL of the bacteria he says
  • Know how bacteria are classified both in the lab and also how species/subspecies are determined.
  • Know how different drugs work against bacteria and the mechnisms of the ones which you are taught.
  • Know the viral life cycle, including examples for different types of viruses (ss/dsDNA and ss/dsRNA) and how they replicate.
  • Know some antiviral drugs and how they work.
  • Know the details of polio virus, poliomyelitis and how the Salk and Sabin vaccines vary in prevention of contracting Polio.
  • Understand how the innate immune system operates, and the key effectors, especially the complement system.
  • Understand the mechanisms and effector cells of humoral and cell mediated immunity.
  • Be able to describe how antibodies and T-cell receptors are generated.
  • Know the structure of antibodies, T-cell receptors and MHC molecules to the level of detail given in the slides.
  • Be able to explain the mechanisms by which pathogens evade the immune system and provide examples of such pathogens.

Pathology
  • Know the different types of necrosis.
  • Know the different types of cell adaptations.
  • Know the difference between necrosis and apoptosis and the causes/pathways for each.
  • Know the cause, process, regulation, characteristics and types of acute inflammation.
  • Know all of the different types of hypersensitivities and the examples given for each.
  • Understand the basis for an excessive immune response and immune deficiencies, as well as examples (e.g. allergy, AIDS).
  • Understand the process of transplant rejection.
  • Understand the different cells types and their capacity to regenerate.
  • Know the process of wound healing by regeneration and by repair using connective tissue, as well as the repair process for cutaneous wounds and the complications which may arise.
  • Understand the mechanism and characteristics of chronic inflammation, as well as the causes and macroscopic appearance.
  • Understand the transformation, causes and epidemiology of cancer.  Be able to appreciate and explain the genetic and cellular changes which occur in cancer cells. 
  • Describe the properties of cancer cells, and how these can be exploited to identify cancer masses. 
  • Be familiar with the signalling pathways that may cause cancer.
  • Understand how cancers are graded and described.
  • Understand the selective pressures that influence metastasis in cancer.
  • Understand the linear progression and parallel progession models of cancer.
[/list][/list]
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Inside Out on June 11, 2014, 12:18:26 am
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics

Workload:  3 lectures and 1 2 hour workshop a week

Assessment:  weekly online quizzes which are essentially the first 3-4 questions of the tute sheet, 2 topic tests (for statics and dynamics), 4 practical assignments and exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture unless you are in aukland's stream (he writes on the whiteboard so you can't see shit in the recordings, but he said it's definitely change next year)

Past exams available:  yes. in that data base. haven't done any lol so not sure how many but they don't have any solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  the hibbler textbook for statics is really good (get that and the solutions to the textbook online.. tute sheet solutions are given at the end of the week... but if you can't wait that long u might as well have a sneak peak at your personal copy ;)..torrent ;) )). The dynamics book is okay. Get it if you are not good at dynamics.

Lecturer(s): stream 1: David Ackland (for both dynamics and statics: Excellent explainer for statics, i thought he'd be good at dynamics too, but he taught it in a very confusing and messy way. For the ladies, he is good to look at ;) ), stream 2: Joe Klewicki (statics: don't even bother going to this stream lol) and Chin (dynamics, VERY GOOD. i give him 5 stars ).

Year & Semester of completion: semester 1 2013

Rating: 2.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75

Comments:
Statics:
Coming into this subject absolutely hating the equilibrium part of VCE physics, i was surprised when i actually enjoyed statics. It was taught in a good pace. Akland made things easy to understand but whenever i didn'tt get anything i referred to the excellent textbook. All you really need to do is sit down in lectures, listen and do take down notes if you are bad at reading handwriting (his is reallllyyyy messy). The online quizzes are due just after you learn the concepts, which is good- makes sure you don't fall behind. Please do all the tute questions. But i must warn you they are ridiculously hard. Part A is doable. Part B- not being very intellectual in the physics side of things, i approached the lecturers about these questions and they did not know how to do them. So if you get stuck on these ridiculous type of questions (same goes for dynamics) and get high on challenges, go tot he tutor consultations as the tutor actually attempts all the questions beforehand and will know how to do them. So yes do that and you will ace this subject. The midsem was surprisingly easy after the difficult practice test we were given.

Dynamics:
I'm not sure what to write for this part as i fell very behind and have not attempted any tute questions for this. But everyone's been complaining so this is definitely worse than the statics part. prepare yourself. I don't want to make excuses for my laziness, but part of the reason i fell so behind was because of the lecturer and i only realized the other lecturer was better halfway but by that time it was too late. And also, for the dynamics part, the workshops go over stuff of that same week. So say you have a workshop on monday, you won't know anything for that week's topic, so how are you suppose to process the questions in class? So yes, put your workshops on a friday or that workshop will basically be a waste of 2 hours of your day. The first half of the workshop is usually spent on summarizing things (which is a waste of time imo because lecturers explained stuff better than them). The other half is spent going over 3-4 questions (out of 15-20) in the tute sheets. If it is "assignment week", you will spend the last half doing the practical component of the assignment instead. They do not allocate enough time to do all of this. Eng mech's workshops are very rushed, compared to the excellent workshops i experienced for esd2.

Assignments:
I did not like the assignments for this subject at all. They were very practical and if you are not a practical sort of person you will be the clueless one in your group who will be marked down (after you group members give you a mark out of 10 for your contributions). But don't worry even if you make ZERO contribution the most marks you'll lose for that is like 2. A lot of questions required matlab and GRAPHS GRAPHS GRAPHS. yuck. But don't fret, after the last assignment you can put all that annoying stuff behind you and focus on the exam by going over tute questions, and practice&actual midsem/topic tests.

All in all, i found this subject fun but difficult. It is very poorly structured. This is probably the worst eng/maths related subject i have encountered so far. Half of the questions on the tute sheets (part B) will not appear on the exam (the lecturer said this), so what is the point of expecting us to do them?!  Some just made you go wtf how is anyone suppose to do this?!  (again, i will mention the fact that even the lecturers didn't know how to do them) What a waste of time. I'd rather have questions that will better prepare me for the exam. But if you have good endurance and motivation, and don't fall behind,this subject will be fun.

Oh one thing i shall mention, there are PASS sessions you can sign up for, which are EXTREMELY helpful. These questions are the type that are relevant and will turn up on the exam. It is also fun discussing them with you fellow pass pears.. it gets you into a really cool eng team mode. You are given 3 questions to complete in an hour on these really cool see through glass whiteboards and if you are stuck, the pass leader will help you out.
SO SIGN UP FOR PASS :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Inside Out on June 11, 2014, 01:00:44 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus2

Workload:  3 lectures and 1 one hour tute a week.

Assessment:  4 assignments which were well spaced out

Lectopia Enabled:  NO. But from my experience, Semester 1 isn't recorded and Semester 2 is recorded .

Past exams available:  There are a lot available. With solutions. I can;t be bothered counting how much lol.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't bother getting the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Lecturers for this subject vary per semester. This is my 3rd attempt at this subject  so in conclusion, christine manglesdorf is by far the best lecturer. second place goes to Antoinette TORDESILLAS. The others are crap. Actually scott Cornell is good, but no where near the other 2 i mentioned.

Year & Semester of completion: semester 1, 2013

Rating: 4.5  Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 81 [H1]

Comments: This subject is very enjoyable. Reminds me of methods. This is funner though. These are the topics: differentiation and integration, first and second order differential equations and applications of them (populations, springs and circuits), complex numbers (integrating and differentiating them, this part has the most rules you have to remember which aren't on the formula sheet) , hyperbolic functions (trig related),sequences and series (differention) and functions of two variables (so stuff in 3 dimensions z=f(x,y)) The tute questions were nicely worded and i liked how you do them in groups on a whiteboard. Very helpful. The solutions to them are nicely set out and essential for knowing how to do good working out. However, i would say the exercise booklet questions takes priority over this as it is harder. Just make sure you get what you a re doing in class, you don't have to actually go home and do all the tute questions. Exercise booklet is sufficient imo.


The assignments were challenging. Don't do it over the weekend before it's due because some questions require a fare amount of thinking. They aren't really like the questions in the exercise booklet you are given.. they're like a harder version of those questions lol. SO like you can do none of the questions in the exercise booklet, but if you start the assignment on the day it's handed out and think and think and think and then work it out,, you can still get 100% if that makes sense. It's more about thinking outside of the box. However, definitely do all of the questions in the exercise booklet as this will help you not fall behind, understand all concepts and prepare yourself for the exam. And definitely do as many practice exams as you can.  They are usually in the same style.. although every year they add those hard questions that make people fail.
please note that i did not fail because the subject was ridiculously hard, but because i stopped attending lectures after week one lol. The lectures not being recorded is a main reason why people fail i reckon because people really can't be bothered attending.  The lecture booklet is basically filled with questions and to get the answers and learn the content you need to attend the lectures and copy them down. So not attending lectures= no way of  learning content which=FAIL.
I dont get why they make those who haven't done spesh do calculus 1. Spesh is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy harder than calc2.
Good luck fellow calculus people :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: emdiz on June 12, 2014, 04:32:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: CEDB20003 Fundamentals of Cell Biology

Workload: 24 x 1hr lectures, 7 x 3hr CAL (Computer-Assisted Learning) modules

Assessment:  3 tests throughout the semester, each worth 10%. The first one included short answer and the last two were all MCQ. Final exam worth 70% with sections A, B and C - MCQ, short answer and extended response respectively. For the extended response you get choose to answer two questions out of four options.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, although the audio quality of lecture recordings from the Harold Woodruff Theatre in the Microbiology building were VERY average

Past exams available:  Yes, they give you two past exams (2009 and 2010) but they only give you sections B and C (no multiple choice). They also give you an extensive list of revision questions from each lecturer

Textbook Recommendation:  B Alberts, A Johnson, J Lewis, M Raff, K Roberts & P Walter, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5th edition, Garland Science. I did not buy and not use the textbook. I felt that the lectures gave enough information

Lecturer(s): Dr Jenny Gunnerson (co-ordinator) - intro lectures, visualising cells, cell movement, neurons
A/Prof Gary Hime - gene expression, regulation of the cell cycle
A/Prof Ross Waller (although he left the university during the semester which is a real loss!) - protein sorting, cytoskeleton
A/Prof Robb de Iongh - Cell signalling

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Comments: As the name suggests, this subject is all about cells (topics listed above with lecturers). Personally, I did not enjoy it because I did not find the content interesting (and this only put me off studying for it) but saying that, I thought the subject was well organised and very fair when it came to assessment.

I would not say this is a particularly difficult subject however some of the subject content was not that easy and could be quite time consuming to learn and understand. The reason I didn't like this subject is because it was not intuitive to me unlike subjects like physiology and anatomy where you have experience of the lecture content. I found the last five lectures on cell signalling to be the most difficult by far but if you spend time on it, you will be fine. Much of the content involves knowing the names and functions of MANY different proteins which is something that I had some difficulty with.

To be honest, because I did not really enjoy the subject, I found the lectures quite boring but saying that I have no complaints about the lecturers. They all explained their content clearly. Ross Waller was by far my favourite lecturer just because you could really tell how passionate he was about his area of study and this really came through when he was lecturing and him leaving the university is a real loss.

The CAL classes are optional but if you go to the class, the lecturers and tutoring staff are also there to help you with any content you are struggling with (and therefore it is well worth going). They do not usually take the whole 3 hours to complete (usually about 1.5-2 hours). Do not be fooled, the CALs are definitely assessable and made up a large proportion of the tests throughout the semester (unfortunately, this was to my surprise) but the content is not too hard to get your head around and is well explained in the module.

I found the questions in the assessments to be very fair. They did not try to trick you with the questions and if you knew your stuff, you would be fine. Many of the short answer and extended response questions in the exam asked for a diagram so it would be well worth your time learning and understanding the diagrams used in the lectures.

Overall, like I said, this subject was well organised and fair but just not for me. If you enjoy learning about cellular processes, you will probably enjoy the subject and I would recommend it for you. If you are more like me and enjoy subjects where you can experience and apply your knowledge, I would consider looking at other options.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on June 12, 2014, 07:13:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE10001 Genetics in the Media 

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures even though the handbook says there's workshops involved. There was one lab session in week 8 or so; helpful but not compulsory.

Assessment: 1 online test worth 10% (10 MC questions); 1 Short Answer Response to the film GATTACA (1 hour, 2 questions) worth 10%; 1 Brochure about an assigned rare genetic condition, worth 10%; one written piece comparing coverage of a genetic story in the media, approx 500-600 words, worth 10%; oral presentation on the same topic^ approx 5 minutes, worth 10%; a 2-hour written examination during the examination period (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, though occasionally guest speakers wouldn't have slides.

Past exams available:  No, a couple of practice questions, but no full exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Dawn Gleeson, Phil Batterham, various guest lecturers about once a week

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This is a brilliant subject for anyone who likes an amalgamation of science and arts. It's available as a breadth for any department, though taking some Bio subjects precludes you from taking this subject.

First of all it's a very small cohort (~30 people tops), and since it's all lectures there were a lot of people who wouldn't rock up all semester apart from assessment, partly because most lectures were at 9am. For anyone who's done VCE Biology, you'll probably be a bit bored with the science elements, as they spend about 4 weeks covering meiosis, patterns of inheritance, genetic testing etc. I dropped science after year 10 but even I knew most of it. In a way, this was helpful later in the course though, when your task was to explain a complex genetic disorder in terms the general public could understand.

From then on it becomes really interdisciplinary, looking at legal disputes, psychological/emotional repercussions, media studies, ethical duty, and even the history of genetics. Dawn and Phil were lovely and very approachable; the guest lecturers were almost always brilliant and engaging. Sometimes we'd have people dealing more with the science angle (other members of the genetic dept. people from the Royal Melbourne research team, etc.) there were others heavily involved in media science reporting (researchers from channel 10 and radio) and others that straddled both areas (genetic counselors, liasons, people in charge of genetic press releases.) Unfortunately it was quite easy to get distracted and just be listening to all their interesting stories when in fact, any content brought up by the guest lecturers was examinable, so it was worth listening to recordings sometimes and ensuring you understood the details.

The workload is incredibly light, and most pieces of assessment don't require more than a couple of hours work. The multi-choice questions are a breeze, the GATTACA assignment was quite straightforward, and we had a lot of freedom with the brochure. The oral presentation seemed to spook everyone a bit, but it was pretty chill and informal. Lectures alone cover all the exam content, so there's very little you have to do aside from take notes.

Overall, does what it says on the tin. If you like media studies and find genetics interesting, you'll love this class. I can understand why pure arts or pure science people might be put off, but it's a pretty relaxing and fun subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on June 13, 2014, 07:26:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30020 Probability and Statistical Inference

Workload: 3x 1 hour lectures, 1x 1 hour workshop.

Assessment: 10x weekly assignments (total 20%), three hour exam (worth 80%).

Lectopia Enabled: No, although lecture slides for the whole course in PDF form are made available at the start of semester.

Past exams available: Yes, with solutions for some of them.

Textbook Recommendation: The recommended textbook can be downloaded from the University website. I wouldn't bother purchasing a paper copy, the lecturer's slides are usually clearer and cover more than the textbook(!)

Lecturer(s): Prof. Kostya Borovkov

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This is the toughest and most "pure" of the third year statistics subjects. The first half of the course is abstract and rigorous, building up probability theory from the basics of set theory and defining expectation of random variables using a new type of integral (the Lebesgue integral from measure theory). The second half of the course uses these formal definitions to prove a number of important results in statistics, as well as introducing new tools like characteristic functions that make certain calculations and proofs a lot easier.

Prof. Borovkov is an excellent lecturer and if you don't attend the lectures and workshops, you'll miss out on a lot of the benefit of the course. The PDF slides cover the technical details of the material but the lectures provide the intuition and mental pictures that will help you solve the homework problems. A typical lecture may only go through 6 slides as every point is explained in detail with proofs, examples or pictures drawn on the blackboard.

To do well in the weekly assignments will take a lot of time and effort, well out of proportion to the marks they're worth - but it will help you when it comes to the exam.

Highly recommended for pure mathematicians wanting to get a bit of stats in their diet, statisticians with a theoretical bent, or anyone intending to pursue a Masters degree in probability and statistics.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on June 13, 2014, 08:55:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30008 Risk Analysis

Workload:  2x50 minute lectures + 1x50 minute tutorial per week

Assessment:  Quantitative Risk Group Assignment 15%, Qualitative Risk Group Assignment 15%, Tutorial Attendance 10%, Exam 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  None. NONE!

Lecturer(s): Lihai Zhang and a bevy of guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1 2014

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A ridiculously easy level 3 subject (if you put some work in) that is quite well taught but a little dull and repetitive.

Comments:
This subject is very, very easy for a level 3. It's called risk analysis, but it could really be called "applications of common sense". It is designed to be just a general risk course, but as it is a core subject of the civil engineering majors it tends to have a greater focus on engineering risks rather than economic risks.

The subject is divided into three sections:
1. First three weeks is on qualitative risk analysis. You basically go over the definition of a risk, a hazard, identification and management strategies, and monitoring procedures. The lecturer for this section, Peter Bishop, is pretty good, but the material tends to get recycled through the 5 or so lectures, so this can be pretty dull and mundane. I'm sure you could get by without turning up by just scanning the lecture notes.

2. The next 5 weeks are on quantitative risk analysis. Lihai takes these and is very good despite it being a little difficult to understand what he is saying. These lectures basically consist of the applications (not derivations) of probability/statistical mathematics with concepts including distributions, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, correlation, and monte carlo simulations. All concepts are illustrated with a tonne of examples, and there is nothing too complicated. You basically only need to know how to apply the formulas that are given rather than have a full understanding what the formula actually means.

3. The third section steps back into the qualitative side, with guest lecturers from engineering and financial firms giving a rundown on how risk is managed in their business. This is purely about drilling in the content from the first three weeks, and is also pretty unnecessary in regards to the assessment, but somewhat interesting nonetheless.

Both the assignments are group assignments, and groups of four are formed within the tutorial groups in week 1. You are given about 6 weeks to work on each assignment, but they are relatively easy and only take a few hours of solid work per group member to polish off. They aren't too difficult or onerous, but they are good at getting you to engage with the lecture content.

Probably the worst thing about the subject is the tutorials. They are basically just a review lecture, because the tutor talks the entire time about the previous week's content and goes through some questions. This would be useful if the content was somewhat challenging, but most of the material is either self-explanatory or explained well in the lectures making the tutes somewhat superfluous. Attendance is marked and counts for 10% of the assessment, so that (and meeting up with group members) was the only reason I turned up to most of them.

Overall, this is definitely not a subject to be scared of. Compared to most engineering subjects, it has a fairly limited scope and quite a slow pace. However, it is well taught and I'd even recommend it as a breadth if you wanted something that wasn't going to require much effort and were somewhat interested in the content, but presumably there is something more fun or valuable.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on June 13, 2014, 10:37:50 pm
Subject code/name: COMP10001 Foundations of Computing

Workload: Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 2 hour workshop
For the 3rd lecture in each week, it will either be:

Assessment:
3 coding projects3 x 10%
Online IVLE worksheets10%
45 minute mid-semester test (written)10%
2 hour exam (written)50%
To pass the subject, you need 50% in the combined exam and test grade and 50% in the combined projects and worksheets grade.

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: 2, with solutions, and a sample exam. Sample mid-semester test as well.

Textbook recommendation: None.

Lecturer(s):
Tim BaldwinMost main lectures
Some advanced lectures
Andrew TurpinMain lectures if Tim's absent
Some advanced lectures
Head tutor, I thinkRevision lectures
Various people from industryGuest lectures

Year and semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your mark/grade:

Comments: I wouldn't say I expected a lot from this subject, given my experience with computer subjects in high school, but this was comparatively better delivered.

If you have some background in programming, you're allowed to sit a programming competency test and enrol in COMP10002 Foundations of Algorithms instead if you pass.

Otherwise, this subject teaches the basics of how to tell a computer to do things. You don't need any experience, and you don't need a good computer. You learn Python, which is a language used to communicate with the computer to make it do things.

Tim is an enthusiastic lecturer, with some quirky interests. He encourages students to engage in the subject through his "Hack of the Week" competition thing, which involves people posting interesting computer-related content on the online forum (not necessarily strictly related to subject content, but clearly he understands the subject would not exactly be the most interesting subject to choose).

Unfortunately Tim runs out of time a lot, and sometimes rushes through lecture content.

The first 2 lectures each week are the ones where the bulk of the subject is taught. The 3rd lecture each week is either a revision/advanced split (everyone chooses one) or a guest lecture (for everyone).

You don't really have to go to the 3rd lecture at all, although supposedly the concepts (not the raw code) presented in the guest lecture are examinable. You should go to the 3rd lecture if it is a guest lecture.

For workshops, you will spend 1 hour doing written tutorial worksheet problems. The other hour will be spent in the labs. It depends on who your tutor is, but you may end up just working on the online worksheets or projects in the lab, with the tutor being available for assistance. I am aware some other tutors actually taught things or clarified concepts in the workshops.

For projects, you will be required to write code that instructs the computer to do certain tasks. Sometimes the tasks are quite straightforward, although they can also be quite fidgety (and ambiguous). It may not be advisable to do this subject if you're not used to being stuck on one thing for long periods of time.

You are also expected to comment your code (write stuff explaining what you are telling the computer to do) to an appropriate level of detail, which is probably frustrating, but good practice.

Project tasks are definitely very interesting. I don't believe the handbook description is very accurate (at all), but the 3 projects in my semester were:
First 2 probably change around a lot from semester to semester, but I believe Tim has conducted the card-playing project for a while. He even implements a playground where you can play against other students' submissions.

Supposedly all deadlines for project submission in this subject always get extended, which was indeed the case for all 3 projects in my semester.

The mid-semester test is a 45 minute written test. For me, it took place during the 2nd lecture time slot of Week 7 at an exam hall on campus. Tim prepares a "cheat sheet" which summarises all the Python concepts that can be tested on the mid-semester test (you can't bring the cheat sheet in with you), and the test content is fairly accessible if you familiarise yourself with the content on the cheat sheet and some of the tutorial worksheet questions.

Tutorial worksheets are also the way to revise for the exam.

There is a section on the exam for which you aren't prepared very well for... the section on "concepts" and "applications". While all other questions on timed assessments involve writing or interpreting some sort of code, these sections on the exams are more short written answers. The content revolves on the more theoretical topics which come up during semester - basically all the topics which are taught in the latter half of semester, after all the basics of Python have been taught. In particular, you will not be prepared very well for the topics which were exclusive to guest lectures, as they are literally not mentioned once during normal lectures. While the questions asked in this section are fairly light, you will have trouble responding to them because there is so little material to practise with.

The topics which appear in this section include

The topics in guest lectures ARE examinable here, and it feels slightly difficult to predict what about those topics may be asked. I assume guest lecture topics change every semester, adding to the degree of unpredictabilty. You will need to pay careful attention and review guest lectures to ensure you are safe for this section of the exam.

I can't comment accurately on the workload for this subject, as I have some background in programming (not in Python, but still), but I believe it's pretty important to make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in lectures, particularly early in the semester when the basics of Python are being taught, because they literally end up appearing everywhere.

If you have some background in programming (Python or not), you will probably understand all of the concepts in lectures already (maybe apart from the syntax in Python). All assessments (projects, tests, worksheets, maybe even exam) should be pretty manageable, although you may learn to hate physically writing code on paper, because, really, who does that?

If you enjoy solving problems (ha...ha...ha...), don't mind wasting copious amounts of brainpower on your journey for the solution, and take particular joy in finding efficient, succinct, elegant ways to solve problems, this is probably not such a bad choice for a subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on June 13, 2014, 10:54:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: SCRN20011 Hollywood and Entertainment

Workload:  1x 1.5 hour lecture, 1x up to 3 hour screening, 1x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  1500 word essay due mid-semester (40%), 2500 word essay due first day of exams (50%), tutorial participation (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  N/A (no exam)

Textbook Recommendation:  Just a book of readings. They're all posted online, but for ~$15 the book is worth it.

Lecturer(s): Dan Golding

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1 2014

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: If you're a fan of film and you don't mind essay writing, do yourself a favour and enrol in this subject.

Comments:

This subject is basically my dream breadth. It is primarily about the history of Hollywood and its major trends since the 1950s to today. Additionally, it is fantastically taught and very well organised.

Usually I don't give a very detailed review of the course material as it is generally covered by the handbook, but the handbook for H&E is fairly barren so I'll give a week-by-week rundown:

Week 1
Topic: 1950s and 1960s and the Transition to New Hollywood Cinema
Film: A Hard Day's Night (1964)

This week basically defines the paradigm of Classical Hollywood and shows how it began to change with the breakdown of the production code in the '60s and influences from the French New Wave.

Week 2
Topic: Hollywood Revisions and Revisiting the Western I – Left Cycles and Outlaw Heroes
Film: Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

This week introduces the left cycle and analyses the changing portrayal of violence in film through the late '60s. It also relates this to the history of the Western, particularly The Searchers, which is basically required viewing for the subject despite not being screened.

Week 3
Topic: Hollywood Revisions and Revisiting the Western II – Right Cycles, Outsider Heroes and Hollywood Modernist Techniques
Film: Dirty Harry (1971)

This week involves watching one of my favourite films and talking about the rise of the right cycle hero, characterised by the Harry Callahan style cop. It also looks at the reformation of classical generic conventions and stylistic techniques through the '60s and '70s.

Week 4
Topic: The Film School Generation I: Allusionism and the East Coast Approach
Film: Taxi Driver (1976)

This week moves beyond the left/right cycles and begins to look at their hybridisation and what this meant in terms of genre. It also looks at the influence of film school generation directors, this week focusing on the experimental and allusionistic style of the east coast directors such as Martin Scorsese and Brian de Palma. Also, despite its somewhat distributing content, Taxi Driver is one of the most beautifully shot films I have ever seen.

Week 5
Topic: The Film School Generation II: High Concept, the New Cinema of Attractions and the West Coast Approach
Film: Star Wars (1977)

This week looks at the formulation of the high-concept blockbuster framework in the mid 70s through George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. It also relates this to the spectacle driven early cinema of George Melies among others. And Star Wars. Enough said.

Week 6
Topic: High Concept in the 2000s: Paratexts and Cinephilia – from films, to videogames, to amazon, to youtube
Film: Jurassic Park (1993)

Using Jurassic Park as a case study, this week looks at the proliferation of the high concept blockbuster and spectacle cinema, and the new norm of paratextual and transmedia materials in a conglomerated media.

The subject now takes a turn into unit two, which concentrates on more contemporary films.

Week 7
Topic: Semi-Independent Cinema I: African American Cinema, Spike Lee and the (Semi) Independent Model in the 1980s.
Film: Do the Right Thing (1989)

Focusing on Do the Right Thing, this lecture analyses the growth of the semi-independent film in the late-'80s and early '90s (with other notable films being sex, lies and videotape and Pulp Fiction). It also looks at the history of african american cinema, including the blaxploitation films of the early to mid '70s.

Week 8
Topic: Semi-Independent Cinema II: Indiewood, Miramax, and New Queer Cinema
Film: Brokeback Mountain (2006)

With a guest lecturer, this week looks into how independent film has been altered by conglomeration, and looks at Brokeback Mountain both in this context and in the context of "queer" cinema of the past.

Week 9
Topic: Open Storytelling Practices I: Intertextuality, Global Aesthetics and the Dispersal of Meaning
Film: Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (2003/4)

Dan is back lecturing and goes over the intertextuality and allusion used by Tarantino, and analyses whether this is actually adds meaning to the film or is simply aesthetic. This calls back to weeks 2-4, where allusion was also used but in a different context.

Week 10
Topic: Open Storytelling Practices II: Television, Serial form and Transmedia Storytelling
Film: Episode of both Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones

This week is guest lectured by the subject's coordinator Angela Ndalianis and focuses on the serial form that has come to dominate the narrative and stylistic techniques of the TV industry. It also goes back into the transmedia story-telling that was discussed in week 6.

Week 11
Topic: Narrative Time & Aesthetics I: Modularity, the Puzzle Film and Technologies of Memory
Film: Looper (2012)

This week goes into experimental narrative style and analyses the infection of visual culture into filmmaking aesthetics and vice-versa.

Week 12
Topic: Narrative Time & Aesthetics II: Videogames and Media convergences – The Speeding up of the Cinematic
Film: Inception (2010)

This week talks about the relationship between and convergence of video games and film in both a narrative and stylistic sense. It also includes a brief review of the subject.

So there you go. That is a more detailed description of the subject than the handbook provides itself. As you see, this is a pretty awesome list of movies, themes and trends to study for someone interested in film.
__________________________________________________________________

Dan Golding – a PhD candidate within the School of Culture and Communications – is a fantastic lecturer and runs the majority of tutes. His lecture material is interesting, well delivered, and well designed. There are also two other tutors, both of which seem equally adept and passionate about the field (through my experience and discussions with other students). He is also quick to answer emails and queries.

My only source of complaint is an inevitability when you're doing an arts subject: reading. Each week there is between 30-70 A4 pages to be read in preparation for each tutorial. At least a solid skimming is required to be active in the tutes and to prepare you for the essays.

The tutorials on a whole are excellent. They largely focus on the readings and extend some key points of the lecturers. You are invited to discuss your point of view of all of the issues raised, which helps you better define your opinion. There is no formal tutorial presentation or anything like that, but attendance and participation are marked.

I found the essays quite easy to write. There are 8 topics to choose from for the first essay and 14 to choose from for the final one. Alternatively, you can formulate a topic of your own with permission of your tutor. This range of choice gives you the ability to write on something that has specific, personal interest to you, and I always find it's easy to write about what you know. A tip for anyone who does the subject: use the State Library. They have an awesome collection of books on film in the arts section (directly to the right as you walk in) and a good research essay needs a range of legitimate sources.

Obviously there is the question of how valuable a subject like this actually is to someone like me, who is an engineering major. I took this subject because I love movies and enjoyed the other SCRN breadth I did, Film Genres and Auteurs. So, sure, this subject is largely a hedonistic venture, but it also gives some practical skills that I can use within my own discipline*: doing these subjects has markedly improved my writing ability, something which I apply everyday, and also teaches you a critical way to interpret academic articles.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this subject to anyone who is interested in films and media.

*I think whoever implemented the breadth idea just did a fist pump

EDIT (2015): Dan has moved onto Swinburne so will obviously be no longer lecturing for this subject. I'd expect Angela Ndalianis might take over the subject once again, but I'm not sure about that.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on June 14, 2014, 12:00:49 am
Subject code/name: MAST20009 Vector Calculus

Workload: Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour practical

Assessment:
4 assignments20%
3 hour exam80%

Lectopia enabled: No.

Past exams available: 5, with answers, but not solutions.

Textbook recommendation: None. Lecture slides contained all course content.

Lecturer(s): Professor Paul Pearce

Year and semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your mark/grade:

Comments: I believe Paul actually changed the way this subject was delivered by quite a bit, such as offering all lecture slides as a PDF online, and providing answers to past exams (?). Anyway, this subject supposedly hasn't changed in 30 years or so, so points made in earlier reviews are still relevant.

You're eligible to do this subject in Semester 1 of first year if you did UMEP Mathematics, which is what I did, so I'll try to make this different from the other reviews by focussing on that perspective.

Yes, this subject is very formulaic. No, I wouldn't exactly say it's as formulaic as Mathematical Methods, but it gets close. Solving problems in this subject will require little ingenuity if you attend practicals, perhaps do some of the problem sheets, and become familiar with the criteria for the 5 or 6 important theorems. You probably don't even need to attend lectures to see examples being done. Doing well in this subject requires much less creativity than for UMEP.

You deal with a lot of multivariable functions and vector fields in this subject. Expect to write the partial derivative notation and integral notation as much as you breathe.

Coming from UMEP, the first topic of the course should be relatively accessible (maybe even just revision), but all subsequent topics are entirely new (not counting how to calculate double/triple integrals).

You can do this subject without doing the bridging notes they provide for coming into Vector Calculus from UMEP, because, really, the only thing that the notes teach you is how to differentiate/integrate hyberbolic functions, and some of the identities with hyperbolic functions. I do not recall hyperbolic functions in any of the lecture slides, but they did end up coming up on the exam, so I suppose SWOTVAC would be a nice deadline to set for looking at the bridging notes.

Integration by parts is also something in the bridging notes which may be unfamiliar, but that never came up in any of the lectures or assessments.

The more interesting applications of the subject content (really just surface integrals) are mostly physics concepts, so you may find it hard to appreciate them if you haven't done physics in VCE. Physics concepts aren't examinable; only the mathematical manipulations are.

Paul spent a lot of slides going through proofs of theorems. Unfortunately that opposes the nature of the subject's assessment, and the wishes of most students doing this subject, which is a shame. A lot of the students seem to be engineering students needing this as a prerequisite or something.

Assignments are meant to be harder than questions on tutorials, problem sheets and exams, and will probably require the most thinking out of all assessments.

Also, solutions to most problems on problem sheets are online, along with answers to those without solutions. I suspect Paul was also responsible for this?

This subject is perhaps less difficult than UMEP in content, but may seem more difficult because of pace. If you are looking to appreciate the beauty of mathematics, this probably isn't such a good subject to do that. If you looking for a semi-interesting subject where you can perform well, if you performed decently in UMEP, this is not a bad choice. Also you may or may not get to laugh at Accelerated Mathematics 1 (the UMEP equivalent) students having to suffer MATLAB, if you know any of them. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on June 15, 2014, 02:20:42 am
Subject code/name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

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

Assessment:
1 assignment5% + 15%
Weekly online tests8%
Financial accounting questions1%
Management accounting questions1%
3 hour exam70%
To pass the subject, you need 50% in the exam as well as 50 overall.

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: 1, with solutions.

Textbook recommendation: Depends. Accounting: Business Reporting For Decision Making, 4th Edition if you do decide to get one. More on this later.

Lecturer(s):
Professor Michael DavernIntroduction (2 lectures)
Matt DykiFinancial accounting (4 lectures)
Michelle HogganManagement accounting (4 lectures)
The other 2 lectures were an investment game lecture, and an exam revision lecture.

Year and semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5/5

Your mark/grade:

Comments: I had absolutely 0 knowledge about accounting when I started this, and only took this subject because it was compulsory for my major. If you asked me what accounting was, I probably would have thought of something along the lines of bookkeeping.

This subject teaches you about the information that people use to make decisions in business - how the information comes about, and what kinds of questions you should have about that information. In some ways, I compare this to high school English, especially when you begin to get taught how everyone manipulates language and stuff to get a certain reaction. Well this is kind of similar, only more how everyone manipulates information to elicit a certain interpretation - something along those lines.

This subject can feel quite abstract, as a result.

The subject is divided into 2 major topics:

Management accounting was a breath of fresh air. It certainly felt less dense than financial accounting, and slightly more accessible.

Out of all the people I know who did this subject with me, not one proclaimed endless love or passion for this subject, aka "ARA" (ey-argh-ey). For most people, this subject would be boring. I found this subject quite boring too, but I personally find it fascinating when you're able to reverse engineer a final product and discover what the creator was thinking when they made it. In that sense, I probably would have absolutely hated ARA were it not for the lecture(r)s. (Yes, those are parentheses around the "r".)

(With that in mind, I wouldn't exactly say my opinion on this subject is the most common opinion.)

Your weekly activity in ARA is supposed to go something like this (in chronological order).
And concurrently:

There is no weekly test for the very first week of semester, but there is a tutorial.

If you are looking for any old breath to do, I would NOT suggest ARA. It would probably be a waste of your effort if you put enough in (it requires a decent amount of effort, but would only be a breadth), and a waste of your time if you don't.

If you do BCom and are looking for a commerce elective, this is probably not a bad idea, as you'll likely encounter some kind of financial statement in your career.

Lectures
The lectures were not absolutely fantastic, but if you attempt to engage in this subject a little, particularly during the financial accounting topics, which is where most/more of the manipulation stuff takes place, the lecturers do ask some thought-provoking questions (even if I have absolutely 0 idea of what an answer could be). Otherwise, lecture content is generally quite boring (not the fault of lecturers, most likely just the subject content), and to make it worse, you are there for 2 hours straight.

I think this subject could have benefited greatly from having 2 x 1 hour lectures instead, due to subject content being relatively dry. I suspect the 2 hour lecture is due to UMEP Accounting students, who have to come to campus for lectures, which is reasonable, I suppose.

Lecture content is highly examinable. Most of it is based on the subject learning objectives, which is what the exam is also based on. Michelle certainly emphasised this point (a lot) for management accounting, and this was probably largely true for financial accounting.

I would suggest going to lectures; seeing the lecturers apply the knowledge to questions (past exam questions and others) sometimes helped me understand why we were learning this stuff at all. Also many of them were past exams questions, so seeing the question-setter do them in real time is obviously good.

For financial accounting, partial lecture slides for a lecture were available online as a PDF before the first lecture for that week, with full lecture slides available after the last lecture for that week. (There were 3 time slots to choose from for lectures in my semester.) I'm fairly sure full lecture slides for a lecture were available for management accounting before the first lecture for that week.

Due to the PDF files being powerpoint presentations converted to PDF (I think), sometimes the pop-ups that lecturers would make appear while on a slide during the lecture would cover the text content of the slide in the PDF, which is slightly annoying, but you can still highlight the text behind it, copy it, and paste it somewhere else to read.

There were 2 lectures in particular that Matt mentioned repeatedly early on in semester (when he was encouraging students to physically attend lectures and what-not): the financial statement analysis lecture (week 6) and the investment game "lecture" (week 9). I don't particularly feel the investment game was that worthwhile... but the financial statement analysis lecture is definitely worth your physical attendance, since the actual useful things that Matt does are not recorded on the screen capture, and also because it's highly useful for the assignment. More on that later.

Lecturers
  • Professor Michael Davern
    • Don't have a very clear memory of his lectures any more, but he had a strange vigour about him. He certainly made it look like the subject was really interesting in the first 2 lectures... but you can't hold it from the students for long. I liked him.
  • Matt Dyki
    • Matt feels like a strange guy, but you get used to it after a while (even his lack of auxiliary verbs and his lack of regard for punctuation and grammar). Matt certainly gets the important points across well - I will forever remember that total assets is the "biggest number on the balance sheet - most useless number on the balance sheet", along with things like the subject is assessing you on your ability to apply concepts and not remember definitions and so on.

      Sometimes it feels like Matt flicks through lecture slides like the wind, but he won't rush through anything important, so it's all good.

      (I am aware Matt could be reading this here...)
  • Michelle Hoggan
    • Michelle knows we think this subject is boring. Her lectures are probably more interesting than Matt's - she sometimes uses clips from sitcoms to illustrate her point. Most people probably found her better because of the content in management accounting though. Her lectures are certainly very structured, and it feels like she connects with students better (not that that's really a requirement for lecturers or anything, but still nice).

Tutorials
Your tutorial will involve a summary of the lecture of the previous week (could be the 2nd last lecture if your tutorial comes after your lecture every week), and doing related questions in groups.

The summary of the lecture is in the form of a powerpoint. Again the slides are available online at the end of the week, at least for financial accounting. I couldn't find them for management accounting...

It's probably a good idea to actually put an effort in tutorials; ARA questions are generally not formulaic at all, and listening and contributing to discussion for tutorial questions is nice to confirm you have an idea (even if vague) of what's going on. Generally the questions are quite accessible if you have attended the lecture and/or done the pre-reading. None of them require ridiculously complicated application of concepts, but obviously if you don't know the concepts, you can't do the questions.

Suggested responses to tutorial questions were generally included in the tutorial slides (I think). Suggested responses for management accounting tutorials are available in a separate PDF online.

There is one subtopic which is covered entirely and only in tutorials (in the one after the investment game) - business sustainability. There's VERY little about this on the exam, but still a good idea to pay extra attention to this one.

Assignment
You have only 1 assignment for this subject. It's a group assignment, done in groups of either 3 or 4 people. It's split into 2 parts, each worth 5% and 15% of your overall grade.

While the assignment was quite interesting, it was by no means easy. You write a business report for an investor recommending one of 2 companies to invest in. You base your arguments in the business report through analysis of the financial statements of both companies (balance sheet and income statement), and some other information that is provided to you.

Part A is worth 5%. You have around 4 weeks to do it. Deadline is the Monday of week 8 (very first day back after mid-semester break).

Part A involves calculating some ratios based on figures in the financial statements for both companies. Generally straightforward, but sometimes you have to decide which figures to use or not use for a certain ratio. Part A is pretty annoying because you have to show working for your calculations... and you calculate a LOT of things.

Correct answers for Part A are released 1 hour after the deadline.

Part B involves the analysis of the ratios in Part A, and the writing of a business report. You analyse the provided answers for Part A, not your own answers. You are given 1 week to do this... which is kind of unfair (was extended to 2 weeks in my semester), but I suppose you are technically able to start Part B before the Part A deadline. The quality and depth of your analysis has a big impact on your assignment grade, but analysis is not easy at all, because you are looking for reasons why maybe 2 or 3 out of the 19541048 numbers are closely connected or stand out.

There is a business report lecture held in Week 8 for Part B outside the normal lecture times. I didn't go, and supposedly it wasn't highly useful.

Matt gives a live demonstration of the kind of analysis needed in Part B in the financial statement analysis lecture. I strongly suggest attending that lecture, since while audio is recorded and available online, the things which Matt writes and points to in person (which is projected onto the screen in the lecture) are not. Also you will not have had a very good idea of the analysis through just textbook readings. I mean, the lecture itself was quite interesting anyway! It's like Matt was doing detective work and snooping around to see why the companies had reported things the way they did, or what was happening behind the scenes that led to rising/falling trends in ratios etc.

It certainly felt very rewarding when I made a discovery like Matt did in the lecture, but that's probably just me.

There's also a "Part C", which is just peer evaluation to allow Matt to somewhat adjust each individual's assignment grade according to their effort. You can't get an assignment grade above the group grade - only below.

Exam
I think my exam was set at a fair standard - generally at or below tutorial question difficulty, but of course there were tricky questions to differentiate between the good and top students, or whatever reason it is that exam writers have these days.

Financial statement analysis is not on the exam, as Matt doesn't think he can examine it to any reasonable detail in exam time constraints.

I feel like if you paid attention in tutorials and lectures and the questions there, the exam should not have been overly stressful to prepare for. Unfortunately I only realised this after sitting the exam. It's pretty reasonable to stress, especially for financial accounting, because there's just so much! (Management accounting, not so much.) You are in good company though, because everyone else will also be stressing about ARA.

Going through each of the subject learning objectives that are at the start of each lecture's slides should help. I don't think the textbook is particularly helpful in revision, but the lecturers are probably aware of this.

Obviously past exam(s), revision questions which lecturers post up etc.

Other assessments
  • Online tests (8%)
    • You get 2 attempts at an online test each week. The online test for a certain week covers content in the pre-reading for the lecture in the previous week.

      I agree with past reviews that the online tests are not particularly helpful. The online tests are mostly reading comprehension questions on the textbook pre-reading (sometimes literally "Can you find this sentence in the textbook" questions). Matt says they're supposed to see if you have prepared for the tutorial, but it is not so hard to do well in them if you have the digital version, even if you haven't read the sections at all.

      The online test grade can change (up or down) depending on tutorial participation.
  • Feedback questions (1% + 1%)
    • There are 2 of these: 1 for each of financial accounting and management accounting. You are given past exam questions in the tutorials of weeks 4 and 9, and you submit them in your next tutorial.

      These are definitely useful. You won't get too many chances to have your answers to exam-style questions personally and properly assessed. The 1% grade for each one is literally "Did you even try" - they don't take into account how good your answer is, only whether it looked like you gave a genuine attempt.

The textbook
One of the reasons I absolutely HATED this subject at times was because of the textbook reading. So obviously no one expects textbook reading to be highly engaging or interesting or anything, but to sometimes have around 50 pages of reading is not very encouraging.

I believe it is possible to do well in this subject without ever touching the textbook (assuming a decent level of concentration in tutorials and lectures), as most important points are reiterated in lectures anyway.

Reading the textbook may be a good idea if you want to participate in tutorials, because I don't think many people do the readings, and it shouldn't be difficult to participate in tutorials if you do.

The online tests are integrated with the digital version i.e. each question is targeted at one certain subsection of a chapter, and you can access that section directly through a link from the online test on desktop after you have completed it. The digital version can be accessed through the free "Bookshelf" app on iOS and Android, or through the web interface on desktop. You can access Matt's annotations on the textbook if you purchase the digital version, but unfortunately the annotation system stopped working on the web interface early on in the semester. Otherwise, as Matt/Michael says, the physical book has a better layout.

Giblin Eunson library usually has 4 or 5 copies of the textbook.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Account Deleted on June 16, 2014, 04:57:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL10002: Literature and Performance

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures a week
                  1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: 

Close Textual Analysis   800 Words    Week 4(ish)      20%
Research Essay           1200 Words    Week 8(ish)      30%
Research Essay           2000 Words       Week 15      50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Audio for each lecture + Slides

Past exams available:  No exam in this subject. Unfortunately no past essays to look at either

Textbook Recommendation:  Subject reader + A LOT of books (which you can just read online for free because they’re all 100+ years old)

Lecturer(s): David Mcinnis: Weeks 1 - 3
Not David: Weeks 4 - 12

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester One

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Comments: Remember how in year 12 Lit you would spend weeks and weeks studying a single text? Well here it’s one text a week then you forget about it.

Week 1, 2, and 3

The first three weeks with David are great, he is very engaging and my favourite lecturer I’ve had so far (in my 1 semester of experience :P). It might just be because I enjoy Shakespeare but he really knows what he’s talking about and brings a new perspective on classic texts.

Week 1 is just introductory, Week 2 is Romeo and Juliet, and Week 3 is Othello (my favourite).

5/5

Week 4, 5, and 6

The bane of most people’s existence… Romantic Poets. Luckily there is a lot to discuss in your research essay and a couple of really good poems out of the hundreds you could potentially choose from. The lectures in this 3 week period were not interesting and really just seemed like an opportunity for the lecturer to express her disdain for men. The content about the French Revolution was pretty interesting and it gave us a lot to write about in the essay.

Over these 3 weeks all the poems come from the Norton Anthology, but you probably will have studied them in high school anyway.

1/5

Week 8, 9, and 10

We moved on from poetry to look at novels. Again the lectures were little more than a platform for the lecturers strong agenda. Some of the historical background was really good if you are interested in how literature evolved in the past ~300 years.

The texts were Pride and Prejudice (Austen), Great Expectations (Dickens), and Jane Eyre (Brontë).

.5/5

Week 11 and 12

Finally back to my absolute favourite, realist drama. There were 2 lecturers for this 2 week period and they were both fantastic. We finally got to the “and Performance” part of the subject, watching clips from productions of the plays and looking at how the performance evolved over time.

Texts were A Doll’s House (Ibsen) and The Cherry Orchard  (Chekhov)

4/5

The rest

The assessments were just standard essays, nothing too special. Assessment 1 was difficult simply because it had such a low word count (800).

My tutor was great and very helpful when it came to helping us with the essays. The tutorials however…… I was the only guy in the tute of ~14 people which wasn’t too great. The way the tutorials were run didn’t give much opportunity to build a rapport with the rest of the tute so there were many long silences between everyone for the entire semester.

It was tough doing 1 text a week and I didn’t end up reading the novels just because I knew from the get go what texts I was going to write about for the essays.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mahler004 on June 17, 2014, 03:20:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM30016 Reactivity and Mechanism

Workload: 3 one hour lectures a week for twelve weeks and a one hour tutorial each week.

Assessment:  The same as second year - three feedback tests (one for each module,) collectively worth 20%, and a big, scary, 80% final exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep. Some lecturers don't use the microphone though.

Past exams available:  Last four years available, no solutions (so like second year.)

Textbook Recommendation: Same prescribed textbooks as second year - McMurray, Atkins, and Shriver&Atkins. Not essential, although may be a useful reference. The notes and tutorial problems are generally enough.

Lecturer(s):

Six lecturers:

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not released yet (exam was yesterday,) expecting to go quite well.

Comments:

This subject builds on second year chem, and is of approximately the same difficulty (maybe a little easier even.) On the whole, I enjoyed the subject, even though I did have some problems with the coordination and the assessment. Sometimes, the coordination of the subject was wanting (especially regarding the feedback tests,) and it would be nice to have some written assessment prior to the final exam (either in a mid-semester test or assignment.) As far as I know, this has been brought up in the SSLC meetings a few times, but they've never relented. Oh well.

Anyway, onto the subject itself. Only two of these lectures are new (Hutton and Wedd,) both are great. Most people doing this subject would have encountered the lecturers before in second year.

The first four weeks cover physical chemistry. Evan's section is fair, and he generally sets reasonable exam questions. The first week is a relatively easy introduction into the subject, covering some assorted topics in solid state chemistry, focusing on the properties of conductors. The second week covers statistical thermodynamics, which is a little harder, but interesting, and again, not too difficult. Alessandro's section is next, and is possibly the most difficult section in the course. He is polarising as a lecturer, and his section is difficult to understand if you don't have a background in physics (which I don't,) and next to impossible to understand if you don't have any maths beyond high school (which quite a few chem majors don't surprisingly.) He covers intermolecular forces for four lectures, then two lecturers on kinetics, including a bit on diffusion controlled reactions and photochemistry. His section of the exam can be tough, especially if you aren't mathematically prepared.

The next four weeks are organic chemistry. Spencer's a great lecturer, and he covers a variety of topics in organic chemistry, most with little connection to each other. There's a bit on aldol/enamine chemistry (building on the chemistry taught in R&S,) a bit of organometallic chemistry, and a bit on oxidation and epoxidation of alkenes. There's a lot of content here, but it's more a question of remembering it all. Craig covers pericyclic reactions and radical reactions - two new topics. Pericyclic reactions can be a bit difficult to get your head around, but there's a lot of practise material out there. Radical reactions aren't hard at all (possibly the easiest part of the course.)

The last four weeks cover inorganic chemistry. Colette covers a variety of topics in metal chemistry, including reactions of metal complexes (building on that taught in R&S,) some organometallic chemistry and catalytic cycles (building on the chemistry taught in S&P,) and a bit on metathesis (which is quite interesting.) Her section assumes that you've remembered a lot of the metal chemistry that you've been taught along the way, and she has the tendency to set difficult exam questions. Finally, Anthony Wedd covers a variety of topics in bioinorganic chemistry. There's a bit of memorisation in his section, but it's not too difficult, especially if you've done some biochemistry. Don't underestimate it though, as he can set tricky exam questions. Wedd is an engaging lecturer.

Assessment - the same as second year. It's important to get your head around the topics in the semester, and it's important to do well in the feedback tests (to provide a bit of a leeway in the exam.) The exam is big (80%) and difficult (this year's exam was apparently particularly difficult.)

Recommendation - Did you enjoy second year chemistry? If the answer is yes, you'll enjoy this subject. Some of the topics are a step up (especially the intermolecular forces.)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on June 17, 2014, 10:04:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20001 Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine

Workload:  6-8 lectures per week, 1-2 tutorials per week, 1 CAL (3hr) per fortnight


Assessment:  MST1 10% MST2 10% CAL/Pracs 10% (2% each) Exam 1 35% Exam 2 35%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 2010 and 2011 both without answers.

Textbook Recommendation:  Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts). Utterly useless.

Lecturer(s): Terry Mulhern: 1-16 (Biochemistry: amino acids, protein structure, enzyme kinetics, metabolism, lipids/membranes, nucleic acids)
                    Brendon Monahan:  17-23, 28 (Genetics: basics, gene regulation, transcription/translation, ENCODE project, cancer and cell cycle)
                    Trent Perry: 24-25 (Genetics: developmental genetics, environmental interactions)
                    Marnie Blewitt: 26-27 (Genetics: epigenetics)
                    Robb de Iognh: 29-34, 38-41 (Cell Biology: protein sorting, cell signalling)
                    Gary Hime: 35-37 (Cell Biology: cytoskeleton, extracellular matrix)
                    Roy Robins-Browne: 42-47 (Microbiology: bacteria, antibiotics)
                    Lorena Browne: 48-50 (Microbiology: viruses)
                    Odilia Wijburg: 51-56 (Immunology: innate immune system, B-cell response, T-cell response)
                    Vicki Lawson: 57-63 (Pathology: acute inflammation, cell death, immune mediated injury, wound healing)
                    Chris Hopkins: 64 (Pathology: chronic inflammation)
                    Tom Karagiannis: 66-67 (Pathology: neoplasia)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89 (H1)

Comments:

Before I get started on the review element, it's probably worthwhile explaining how MCB is structured. There are five topics in MCB. These cover Biochem, Genetics, Cell Biology, Micro/Immuno and Pathology. Strictly speaking, these topics should match up (content wise) with the science equivalents that are replaced by MCB. So out of double credit points you cover what science would do in five subjects. Naturally, much of the content is sacrificed but I'll return to that later.
You progress through these topics at a pretty quick pace, spending 2-3 weeks on each. The idea is that the topics should be integrated, and in many ways they actually are. This particularly applies to assessment, with questions drawing content from a number of topics at a time.
Every couple of weeks you have to sit a CAL as well, then do a test after it. These tests are essentially free marks and the CALs are designed to complement your learning. Cell Biol and Biochem are probably the only CALs that do. The details of these CALs are relatively unimportant. Micro/Immuno replaces its CAL with a prac instead, wherein you use a number of lab tests to identify a bacterium. It's kind of fun because of medical context but again, not particularly useful.

Now to the review...

MCB has a reputation for being a really, really tough subject. All of the second years told us last year that we simply couldn't complain about any of our first year subjects and that we'd be in for the surprise of our lives when we got to MCB. Sadly, they were absolutely correct. MCB is by far the most challenging subject I have taken thus far at Uni. With 6-8 lectures a week, and each of them jammed full of content, MCB puts a huge strain on even the best of students.

It's not the concepts so much that are difficult. In actual fact, they're really quite simply and more often than not are really interesting. The sheer amount of content you have to contend with, however, is enormous. Though this subject is essentially worth two (on paper), it really is worth about four first year subjects...that being a standard unit of measurement and all. The level of detail you're expected to know is staggering. The tiniest throw-away line by the lecturer more often than not will be examined. This is not a "broad concepts" or "basic ideas" subject. If it is said, even the smallest of details, you must know it. The assessment tends to focus on that as well. There are some broad scope questions, but more often than not the assessment for this subject will test you on your ability to regurgitate minute details.

With that said, the coordinator and the student centre do go to great lengths to make you understand at the start of this subject that this is the hard subject. It brings out the best in everyone (student wise). The first few weeks and everybody's knuckling down. Everyone knows that they've been set a really difficult challenge and everyone knows that when they started the subject shit just got real. This can make MCB quite an enjoyable subject. The content is interesting. It's content that most biomed students like (being biology mainly) and a crazy challenge has been set. For a group of neurotic biomeds, all of whom have worked their arses off for that 99+ ATAR, this is just like being back in VCE.

To get a little bit more specific, however, the lectures are usually of a high standard. Each of the lecturers is good and easy to follow, with perhaps a few minor exceptions. Terry was extremely engaging and clearly passionate about his content. He had a habit of waffling and forgetting to explain things from time, but all credit to him, I'm a hopeless chem student and managed to get through Biochem so he must be pretty bloody good! Brendon was my personal favourite (though most of my friends disagree with me). He wasn't the most engaging lecturer, but he explained things very, very clearly and his lectures were by far the best set out. He also, unlike many lecturers, focused on the big points. What he really heavily focused on was what he tested the most. This was a godsend. Trent was a bit nervous and was all over the shop, which was a shame because developmental genetics is really quite tricky. Marnie spoke at one billion miles an hour though if you rewatched her lecture at half speed I'm told she was very easy to understand. She also structured her lectures really well and was really clear about what she wanted from you. Robb was pretty good. He had a habit of skipping over some of the difficult things a bit sometimes, but otherwise he was pretty easy to follow through some pretty complex content at times. Gary was also not too bad. Gary's content really needed no explaining. It was rote so there's not much you can really say about him. Roy was entertaining though he didn't explain anything, instead spending far too much time on his stories. I loved him at the time, but in Heinz sight he was probably the weakest of the lecturers. That was compounded by mixed messages he tended to send, e.g. "you don't need to remember the details of this bacterium" then giving us countless exam questions about the details of bacteria. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when none of his questions showed up on the written exam. Lorena was gorgeous. She explained things really well and was just the sweetest woman in the world. When she came back for a review lecture, she came up and said good morning to everyone, which prompted the whole lecture theatre to go "AWWWW" in unison. Poor thing went as red as a tomato! Odilia was a bit difficult to understand. She was a bit hit and miss really. Some of her lectures were brilliant, others were hopelessly difficult. Vicki was much like Odilia. Chris was very interesting and engaging but should have been a bit more familiar with Vicki's lectures so as to make the comparison between acute and chronic inflammation. Tom was brilliant. He really expected nothing from us and was hands down the funniest lecturer I've ever had in my life. Quote of the semester was definitely "and then they started singing the dumb arses".

The CALs are really a waste of time. They'd be better spending their money to give students an opportunity to go and ask tutors some questions. There really is nowhere students can go to ask questions because of the lack of funding the subject gets, so CALs may actually be a good way to do that. They had minor benefits, but the time spent on CALs and the benefit you got from them really didn't match up enough as far as I'm concerned. All the CALs were was pictures of experiments that we should've been doing ourselves. I can only imagine that CAL really does stand for "Can't Afford Labs".

No point talking about the workshops. They're lectures. All except for Vicki's workshop (which was given by one of her students; absolute champ!). Hers actually did a good job of integrating the information presented in her lectures and was nice revision. The rest were just used to go over some questions or finish lectures.

Assessment wise the CAL tests are easy marks. The MSTs are tough. I, in particular, found MST2 (immuno/micro/cell bio) particularly difficult. I had about a 15% drop between the two, so yeah, real difference. The shift in the averages wasn't actually as profound as my shift, so I think that probably says more about my strengths and weaknesses than anything else. The MSTs require you to know everything pretty much. Know every tiny detail presented in the lecture and you'll be sweet. The first exam is all MCQ and is essentially the same as the MSTs. The difficulty is the same. You really do need to know everything and stay on top of everything. That's where the marks go, particularly if you're aiming for that high H1. The second exam is long answer questions. The format got changed this year so they were more like short answer questions. It was a welcome change, but my god that was a difficult exam. Again, you needed to know the minute details of really complicated processes to get full marks on the questions. If you forgot a few slides worth of content, there were 6 marks gone. You really need to push and get all the details down to get all of the marks as well, a tough ask with the short amount of time you have. Most people I know didn't finish. Regrettably, I was among them (although only like half a sentence damn it!). The assessment's tough and punishing. I know the content of this subject pretty well and have worked my arse off more than for any subject and I'm still not confident I'll pull an H1 for this subject. All credit to the coordinator though, the questions were beautifully integrated at all levels. You get a real sense that the lecturers are actually communicating with one another and have actually put the effort in to integrate their topics.

It must be said that this subject is well coordinated. In fact, it's probably the best coordinated subject I've studied. This is an incredibly difficult, huge subject, but it runs extremely smoothly. The lecturers actually talk to one another and have sat down together to make sure that their content is actually relevant to one another. They constantly reference each other's lectures and each other's content. Robb (the coordinator) also goes to great lengths to ensure that the assessment is fair. If a question is the slightest bit ambiguous, it's struck off. As one of the student reps for this subject, I got a great sense of how much Robb was doing to make sure that this subject ran smoothly. Incredibly, it actually did. A lot of that fell to him.

At the end of the day, MCB is a nice challenge and the content is interesting. It is actually quite an enjoyable subject sometimes, if somewhat daunting. A lot of people drop their load so they can take this subject; you could hardly blame them. Indeed, it's probably a sensible decision. The real gripe I had with this subject—even though I enjoyed it—is what its aims are. This subject does not encourage you to think. There's no time for that. There's no time to engage with the material and really not much of an opportunity to do so. MCB is far, far too focused on content and the minute details. I know that most will retort "if you can't handle it, don't do biomed" but to me that seems a really defeatist and narrow minded perspective. We study biomed to become good doctors or good scientists. MCB contributes to neither; though it is certain to make you a brilliant encyclopaedia.

EDIT (2016): in hindsight, my criticisms of MCB's focus on minutiae were probably somewhat unfair. MCB is typically the first experience Biomed students have of needing to remember a hell of a lot of detail, which overwhelms a lot of people—me included. With the benefit of having now finished Biomed, I appreciate MCB a lot more. Throughout the rest of my degree and even now MCB did serve as the basis for a lot of what I learned. I was really thankful to have been introduced to so many fields in MCB and to be able to take that to other areas. So if you are feeling overwhelmed and don't like the detail, I hope you can at least appreciate that you've just completed/are about to study one of the most useful subjects of your degree!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on June 18, 2014, 12:39:17 am
Subject Code/Name: CEDB20003 Fundamentals of Cell Biology

Workload: two x 1 hour lecture per week, 8 x 3 hour computer-aided learning (CAL) modules.

Assessment:
    -Three 40 minute multiple choice tests (10% each) in early, mid and late semester;
    -2 hour final examination (70%) in end of semester exam period.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes. Audio quality was very poor and I regret not going to a single lecture all semester since each lecture would take me ~2-3 hours to fully finish.

Past exams available: 2 past exam papers from 2009 and 2010 are given however they do not have section A (MCQ part). No answers provided however the last revision lecture has sample answers to a handful of the questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  B Alberts, A Johnson, J Lewis, M Raff, K Roberts & P Walter, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5th edition, Garland Science. Apparently this book is the Holy Bible for Molecular/Cell Biologists and I was unfortunate enough of not being able to utilise this book.

Lecturer(s):
Dr Jenny Gunnersen (Lectures 1-2, 7, 14-16) - Introduction, membrane transport, visualising cells, neuronal development and signalling.
A/Prof Gary Hime (Lectures 3-6, 17-18) - Transcriptional + translational observation and control.
A/Prof Ross Waller (Lectures 8-13) - Protein sorting (gated, transmembrane, vesicular) +  cytoskeletal structure and function, cytoskeletal motors + Mitosis/Cytokinesis
A/Prof Robb de Iongh (Lectures 19-23) - Cell signalling pathways (RTKs , RS/TK, Wnt/B-catenin, GPLRs)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade:

Comments:
I found this subjet to be hit or miss at times. Lecturers were all very enthusiastic about what they were teaching and were always willing to help. I found the content from A/Prof Robb de Iongh's lectures the most intellectually stimulating and most interesting as we got to learn how a cell activates the signalling pathways to survive or die etc.

At times, I felt this subject was a pain in the ass due to the fact that there were 3 intrasemester tests which made life just that tad harder since I had 2 MSTs each for anatomy and biochemistry making the total intrasemester test count to be 7 (compared to last year where I had 2 intrasemester tests in total and you can probably see why this semester was my most stressful yet).
I found the content from the cytoskeleton and neuronal development to be pretty darn boring, like learning how the lamellipodia moves forward via actinmysoinII contractions just is not my cup of soup.

As pink0289 said, don't be fooled by the two 1 hour lectures per week. The extra content you would otherwise miss out on is covered in the CALs. You are designated into a computer lab where most weeks you go in and fill in the worksheets of info. Make sure you understand alll the content from the CALs since the CATs and exam are also based heavily on the content covered here. You can do the CALs at home at your will but the disadvantage you have here is that you forego the option of having the lecturers direct attention/help if you choose to stay at home. Out of the 7 or 8 CALs I turned up to 2 of them (LOL lazy me) and I kinda wish I went to them. The times when I turned up, at least 1/2 of the CAL students did not turn out so yeh.

I think this subject very interesting, in particular Robb's lectures and Gary's lectures as well. The reason why it gets a 4/5 is mainly for two reasons:
1) Some of the boring content (cytoskeleton - actin, microtubules etc + neuronal development) - I know that there's always boring content in every subject but yeh.
2) The results for CATs to be released was rather ridiculous. For the first CAT, it took ~3-4 weeks for results to come out as compared to biochem which had their results released for both MSTs within 1 week.

From the 2 reviews already on here, I gather that the reviewers did not find the lectures very difficult but I perosnally found some of the content quite hard to grasp. This for me was not a walk in a part and some of the content requires immaculate detail and knowing the general principles won't get you very far. After this subject, I'm contemplating switching from anatomy/phys major to a cell bio major but I'm still in the process of deciding.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 18, 2014, 07:06:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002: Biomolecules and Cells

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 hour per week of tutorials or workshops, 2 hours of practical work per fortnight and 3 hours per week of e-learning including independent learning tasks, pre and post laboratory activities.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:
A 45 minute, multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%), a combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class, completion of up to 5 on-line pre-practical tests, written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words and up to 5 short multiple choice tests (25%), an assignment based on the practical content and not exceeding 1000 words (10%), completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%), a 3 hour examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (50%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. an 80% attendance at the practical classes together with a result for the assessed practical work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: One extended sample exam (it has more questions than the real exam) given out at the end of the semester, with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: D Sadava, D M Hillis, H G Heller, M R Berenbaum, Life. 10th Ed. Sinaver/Freeman, 2013

You will be asked to do pre-reading before lecturers, so this textbook is required. You should be able to find this textbook quite easily; if not, page references are also provided for previous editions. I found the textbook quite useful and interesting, although most of the time it goes into a lot more detail than what you need to know.

You'll also have to buy a practical and tutorial/workshop workbook, containing the practical tasks and the tutorial/workshop worksheets, as well as some additional worksheets to supplement the independent learning tasks.

Lecturer(s):
Prof Geoff McFadden (Botany): Lectures 1-9 - Cell Biology
Dr Mary Familari (Zoology): Lectures 10, 13-20 - Tissues and Homeostasis, Cell Signalling, Endocrine System, Nervous System, Immune System, Stem Cells
Prof David Gardner (Zoology): Lectures 11-12, 30-34: Digestive System, Reproduction and Development
Assoc Prof Laura Parry (Zoology): Lectures 21-23 - Cardiovascular System
Dr Stephen Frankenberg (Zoology): Lectures 24-29 - Respiratory System, Urinary System, Animal Taxa

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Overall, this subject was very enjoyable to take and I had a great time studying it. There's not too many things that really need changing in my opinion and hopefully it will re-affirm your decision to choose Biomedicine.

First of all, the lectures. Unfortunately they've decided to run them at 8am which is quite an early start, especially for those that don't live close to the university. But I'm pretty sure this is the only negative here. I found all of the lecturers outstanding and the content fascinating, so even at that hour I felt that I was able to really engage and learn. Of course, there are some lecturers that are better than others, but compared to some of the lecturers I had for other subjects even the worst ones in this subject were still well above average. Personally, my performance and enjoyment in a subject often depends on the quality of the teaching staff so it was great to have passionate and effective experts in the field.

My first three weeks were with Prof Geoff McFadden, who covered the basics of cell biology. Although he tends to avoid specific biological terminology, he was great at explaining things and introducing new concepts, especially for the students with no prior Biology experience. Make sure you write down anything important that you hear because he doesn't tend to load up his slides with a lot of information. We then had Dr Mary Familari for the majority of the next four weeks who covered tissues and homeostasis, cell signalling, stem cells and the endocrine, nervous and immune systems. She was my favourite lecturer because she has a great sense of humour and a really warm personality (maybe at times she would need to explain a concept again because she wasn't clear the first time, but I still liked her anyway). She actually summarises her own lectures (although don't just copy these - you won't learn) and provides you with study questions, which is great for those that are still transitioning from high school-type learning. We also had Prof David Gardner in this time who taught us about the digestive system and during the last couple of weeks he came back to talk about reproduction and development. He goes through a lot of content (and a lot of specifics) in his lectures so it can take a while to properly learn it all, but his passion for his work only added to how fascinating I found his content. I found this last topic my favourite and as a result I'm quite open to a major in Cell and Developmental Biology. My only advice is not to rush learning his content for the sake of keeping up to date because it's very easy to not grasp all this information properly. After the mid-semester break we had Assoc Prof Laura Parry, who covered the cardiovascular system. She's probably the most professional out of all the lecturers and she does request silence, but this is understandable and in no way did this bring down the enjoyment of learning her content. She had a few "fill in the blank" diagrams which helped to keep engaged during the lectures and also provided a few past exam questions to get us thinking about the exam, which was nice. Her slides tend to have more content on them too, which means you'll need to do less work yourself sourcing information. Dr Stephen Frankenberg covered animal taxa and the respiratory and urinary systems. He tended to read off his slides a bit but in my opinion he was still a good lecturer. Animal taxa in particular can be a bit awkward to learn and you'll probably have to commit to learning some of this by rote. If you're not sure what's necessary and what isn't, make sure you ask because he will clarify this for you.

The content covers all the basics that you'll need to know for further studies in Biology and leads on very nicely from VCE. That being said, VCE Biology students, don't become complacent. It might seem at first that you know it all but if at the end you only rely on prior VCE knowledge I doubt you'll pass the exam. For those new to Biology, the department is aware of this and provide some additional resources to help you out. The pace can be quite quick and some don't really know how to handle all the content and studying the subject at first, but eventually you will find your way. The most important thing is to ask if you're not sure. At university, no one is going to come around and check if you're OK, but everyone is more than willing to help you out if you go out and seek it. According to some lecturers, at the very top end the non-VCE Biology students actually out-perform the VCE Biology students!

You'll have five practicals to complete over the course of the semester, making up 25% of your grade. Practicals at university are very different from school and to be honest this was the area of university I struggled most to adapt to. They do run an introductory practical on using the compound and dissecting microscopes but as someone who had never had access to them before I felt I needed more time to play around with them in order to jump into the earlier practicals with confidence. A lot of the time you'll be working on your own and you can get assessed on how well you actually performed the practical, so you'll need to get used to this quickly. The Biology practicals in particular can be quite pressured for time too, so make sure you adequately prepare for each one, like they recommend (doing the pre-practical test alone is not enough), especially if you need to submit something for assessment at the end of it. That being said, towards the end we had some practicals where the demonstrators would come around, ask us some questions and assess us like that, which I much preferred since the time element wasn't as much of an issue. Often you'll need to multi-task but you need to do your best in completing the practicals properly, even if some parts aren't assessed during the practical, because everything is fair game in the post-practical test. The online pre- and post-practical tests shouldn't be too difficult if you try your best and are organised, so don't slack off. The real positive about the practicals in this subject are that they link with lecture content really well, so sometimes they can actually help you understand some of the concepts if you're a hands-on learner.

Prior to each two hour practical you will have a one hour tutorial and in the weeks where there is no practical you will have just a one hour workshop. The general consensus is that the workshops need to be seriously revised. They try to run it like a tutorial, but there's too many people (~100) in the session (provided everyone attends) and it just feels like you get asked to fill in some worksheets and leave. It's also hard to sometimes see the demonstrator and/or the screens, which only makes the learning less effective. That being said, it's a really good way to meet some new faces and if you complete the worksheets properly on your own you'll see that they can actually be quite beneficial. The tutorials are essentially run in the same way, but they're much better since you're broken up into much smaller groups (~15-20) and it's easier to follow something up with a tutor if you have any questions or queries. Your tutor for the most part will also mark your in-practical assessment and it is true that there can be variations in marks depending on the tutor. My tutor seemed to be more lenient, which was lucky for me, but I know some others had quite harsh markers. Unfortunately there's not a lot you can do in this instance. My only advice is to be diligent in checking your practical results because they've gotten my results wrong (against my favour) a couple of times and you want to make sure you get the marks that you have earned!

Over the course of the semester you'll also do one assignment, one mid-semester test and five independent learning tasks, worth 10%, 10% and 5% respectively. The first half of the assignment aims to familiarise you with the expectations of referencing and plagiarism at university, which becomes rather important, but it shouldn't be an issue completing. Some people couldn't see the point of it but it's essentially free marks, so I'm not going to complain. :P You'll also be asked to write a short "essay" (it's really just a page explaining some topic) in 10 minutes during one of your tutorials as part of the second half of the assignment. The question will relate to content covered in lectures and is a great way to get some feedback and see how well you are at conveying your responses (which is very important in Biology). The mid-semester test also relates to covered lecture content and contains 25 multiple choice questions to be completed in 45 minutes. Make sure you do a bit of study for this because it's a good way to get on top of the first third or so of the course before moving onwards. To help you along, you will be provided with some multiple choice questions to practice with. It's not terribly challenging but again it's a good way to see where you're sitting, what you've understood and what the expectations are. The independent learning tasks are designed to cover content outside that covered in lectures, but don't forget that it is still examinable. I still recommend taking notes and completing the worksheets in the practical workbook while you are working through each task. The tests following each task shouldn't pose too many difficulties.

The final three hour exam is worth 50% and consists of 100 marks of standard multiple choice questions (some are worth one mark and some are worth two marks), 50 marks of "fill in the blank" type questions where you need to select the right word or phrase from a list and 30 marks dedicated towards three "essay" questions. The multiple choice questions are probably the easiest part of the exam but that being said it's not terribly easy if you cannot recall the required information since most of the time there is no way to "work out" or "deduce" the answer. The "fill in the blank" part of the exam can be a bit confusing to fill out, so make sure you read their guide on how to fill out the forms. In addition, remember that your suggestions need to make grammatical sense and they emphasise that some options may be used more than once or not at all. The essay questions are probably the most difficult part of the exam because they tend to ask you to explain a particular concept or process in greater detail and you will need to be able to describe it accurately and specifically. The sample exam provided has extra essay questions for practice and you will also have completed some more of these questions as practice in your tutorials. You can find some additional questions in the workbook but you can also have a go at making some of your own questions up and having a go at trying to explore those. It is suggested that you stick to the recommended "one minute per mark" but I went 20 minutes over for the essay section and still finished the exam early as I made the time up on the multiple choice. It's very easy to lose marks for poor explanation in the essays so I wanted to make sure that these were all water-tight before I moved on and it worked for me. You'll probably find that others are in a similar boat as well. As those who have done VCE Biology will understand, the good thing about the format of the exam is that 150 out of the 180 marks are determined by questions that don't actually require you to write a response, which means that they're much more interested in what you know than how well you can convey your understanding to the assessor through language.

I think this is all I can come up with for now. The course is very thorough and detailed, but at no point did I feel overwhelmed or that it was all too much. As I said, taking this subject was a very positive experience and has confirmed that Biomedicine was the right choice for me. If you'd like any extra information or have any questions, please feel free to ask! Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: teexo on June 18, 2014, 07:34:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001: Accounting Reports and Analysis 

Workload:  1 x 2hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial a week

Assessment:  Group assignment (20%), tutorial participation and weekly online tests (10%), 3hr exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: One with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Accounting: business reporting for decision making 4th edition, the ebook is recommended since its way cheaper especially if you buy online from the publisher which is what I did

Lecturer(s): Matt Dyki, Michelle Hoggan, Michael Davern

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I actually surprisingly liked this subject. I did accounting in VCE though and it is very different to this subject, the only advantage you really have is that you’re already familiar with what is classified as an asset or expense, etc. This subject focuses a lot on theory and decision making rather than calculations, you’ll find your hand might be quite sore after the 3hr exam.
 
So why did I like this subject? I think it was the combination of lecturers and that I was really lucky to have a great tutor who knew the subject well and was also really nice. Also the content itself was interesting and I found it quite easy to understand.
I’ll quickly comment on the lecturers: Matt – a lot of people didn’t like him and found his accent annoying but I personally thought he was a really great lecturer and as a result I found myself enjoying financial accounting more than management accounting, Michelle – a lot of people liked her but I found her quite boring to listen to for 2 hrs straight although sometimes her lectures finished a bit early which was nice, Michael – he was funny but he hardly took any lectures so I’m not even sure what it was I learnt from him except people are selfish pigs?
 
The assignment. There’s something about group assignments that just makes me feel a bit sick inside and this one did not change that. But maybe I’m a bit biased because I was stuck doing most of the work for mine, the assignment itself was okay although I found myself feeling confused a lot, I guess that’s why they made it a group assignment though. The online tests were a bit pointless because you can do it twice and the questions are exactly the same and you could just look for the answers in the textbook. While I’m mentioning the textbook, you don’t have to buy it it’s just useful to look at if something in the lecture confused me, but that’s also what tutorials and consults are for..
 
Um, don't do it as breadth. It’s a great subject but if it has absolutely nothing to do with your career choice, then you’re probably better off doing a subject that won’t take up so much time and effort like ARA does. Don’t assume it’s maths, it’s not. I mean, if you really loved accounting and business mgt in VCE and were really good at it, then you probably should’ve done commerce haha jks but in that case I guess you could go for it..
Otherwise if you’re a commerce student then I totally recommend it, you’ll definitely learn a few useful things for the future :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: litaluta on June 18, 2014, 10:49:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20001 Principles of Microbiology & Immunology

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures per week and 2 x 1.5 hr prac in week 11 and 12

Assessment:   mid-semester test, from first 15 lectures (20%)
                                 Online quizzes, x 12 (10%)
                                 Computer based assessment of practical in weeks 11 and 12 (2%)
                                 Final exam (68%)
                                 
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescott's Microbiology is recommended, but lecture notes are enough 

Lecturer(s):    Karena Waller                microbiology
                                 Sacha Pidot                   genetic
                                 Jason Mackenzie            viruses
                                 Andrew Brooks              immunology
                                 Catherine Kennedy        bacteria
                                 
Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 1

Rating:  2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

I took this subject because I was sure I want to major in microbiology. But now I am sure I won't do that!

There are 3 lectures each week which each has minimum of 35 slides. usually teachers are just reading from their slides, so you don't really need to write lots of extra stuff on your notes. Maybe that was one of the main problems with this subject, there was no emotion involved with their style of teaching, it was as if they were also bored and did not liked what they were doing!

For the first half of semester topics were,The Hosts, Bacterial Cells, Bacterial Metabolism,Parasites and Fungi and genetics. It is one of those subjects that in the lecture room you thing stuff they are teaching is easy, but even if it is easy its a lot, so best way to avoid failing this subject is to study each lecture on its own week.

For second half of semester topics were immunology,bacteria and viruses. Honestly if you did not enjoyed first half you will hate second half! here there is actually a bit of understanding involved specially in immunology.

There are 12 quizzes, each give you 2 hours to complete them which is more than enough, and each lecture will have 3 MCQ question. It not an easy 10% because you can do the test only once and they are actually not that easy!

There will be 2 practicals in week 11 and 12 which were highlight of the subject, there were emotion involved and actually you will learn something. Then after you done your pracs there will be a quiz about ur experiment, which is not hard, just write everything you do in pracs in your notes.

The mid semester exam, is 40 MCQ, honestly if you study really hard which you should you can get good mark. What I understand is that in their lecture notes they put many examples and details that attracts you to memorise them in very fine detail, but first try to understand the topic. you can get good mark here...but study really really hard because it is not easy. (I got 27, and I studied hard)

The final exam...HARDEST EXAM EVER! I don't know they themselves where once students or not, but they really asked questions that someone like me who had 2 exams in one day could not even remember the topic of questions! First part is 40 MCQ and it is only from second half of semester, so really study hard for it as it has 20% of your mark. Part B is fill the gap, and it was manageable, when you have words in front of you, you can at least come up with something! Part C, was 6 questions which u had to choose 5 and answer them. This part was really hard, I mean if your r studying for exam and there is a moment that you say "there is no way they ask such a question", think again! because they do! Part C and B have total of 48%, so again I really suggest to study the second half of lectures carefully.

This subject was not what I thought it will be, and maybe that is the reason why I hated it so much. When there is only lectures in one subjects, lecturers should really try to engage students, even if topics where not dry, the stile of teaching was! and this is my openionnnnnnnnnn! :D  Many people here liked it but for me it was not a great experience. It is so much information and the exams are so hard. even in the first announcement they said this is not an easy subject! So do it if you want to major in microbiology, but if you just looking for something to fill your course, then avoid it as it will kill your GPA!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: litaluta on June 18, 2014, 11:12:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10003 An Ecological History of Humanity 

Workload:  2 x 1 hr lectures per week and 1 hr tutorial starting from week 2

Assessment:  class blog of 500 words (15%)
                                 10 weekly personal blogs (20%)
                                 a research essay of 2000 words (50%)
                                  tutorial participation (15%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Sample essays for class blog

Textbook Recommendation:  There is one book that they said we should buy, I did not and I guess you dont have to!

Lecturer(s): From different departments

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 1

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

This is my second breadth subject that I have done, and I am so glad that I choose it! Honesty I did not go to any lectures, because I got the main topic from conversations in tutorials! But lecturers are from different departments I heard!

In tutorials you will talk about the topic of the last week's lectures, really try to involve in their conversation for that 15% participation mark! In my class everyone where local,so I was a bit shy to start speaking in front of them but still I got 12% with no talking at all!

Now for the assessments, you will have 10 weekly blogs which are not time consuming at all. best way is to avoid summarising lectures and instead write 150 words about what did you felt or understand about the topic of that week. I would just look at images on slides and then write about what ever I felt and I got full mark for this part.

The class blog is 500 word and you should choose your question. each week of tutorial has couple of questions, so for example if you choose a question that is in week 9, you should submit your report by the end of week 8 and just talk a bit about your topic in tutorial. My suggestion is to choose one of the questions in early weeks so you don't have to do any research in between your other subjects mid sem test!

The final essay was due to 19th of june, and you again had to choose your topic. it is 50% of your mark, so really write a good essay for it so hopefully you can get H1

I highly comment this subject. the staff were so kind and answer your emails very fast and nicely. It was a super chill subject, you can do nothing for most of the time and get a good mark,so really save it for the semester that other subjects are hard and time consuming! The topics that were mentioned in tutorials were also interesting, so it is not a boring subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on June 18, 2014, 11:54:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90026 Computational Differential Equations

Workload: 3 hours per week, combined lecture/computer labs.

Assessment: 4x minor homeworks (worth 5% each), 3x major assignments (worth 20% each) and an oral presentation (worth 20%).

Lectopia Enabled: No.

Textbook Recommendation: There are three textbooks listed as 'references' in the course outline. The most useful of these is "Finite Difference Methods for Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations" by R. Leveque (2007), and is downloadable from the University library web site.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof Steven Carnie.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is an introduction to computational methods for solving differential equations that have no exact mathematical solution - which is most of them. The lectures are held in a computer lab but mostly cover the theory side of the course, with a few short demonstrations using Matlab. The assignments are mostly very practical, giving you specific problems to solve that will require you to code up the methods described in class and examine their performance (accuracy and speed).

I found it to be a really enjoyable subject. There is no exam, but the major assignments are very long (mine were approximately 30 pages each, most of which was plots and printouts of Matlab code). The oral presentation is something you'll either love or hate: you get to explain a current research topic in the area to your classmates. It's suggested that to do well you should also explain real-world examples of where your topic is used and why you'd want to use it instead of the methods taught in the class.

There is no formal prerequisite, but if you don't have any programming experience, you're going to struggle. The numerical part of the unit MAST30028 Numerical and Symbolic Mathematics is assumed knowledge, so if you haven't done that before (I hadn't) you'll have a bit of catching up to do in the first few weeks of semester. In terms of required mathematical background, you'll find yourself using your linear algebra skills far more than any methods you would have seen before for solving DEs.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on June 19, 2014, 12:04:39 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST30025 Linear Statistical Models

Workload: 3 lectures and 1 computer lab per week.

Assessment: 3x assignments (worth 20% in total) and 1x exam (worth 80%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes.

Past exams available:  Yes, since 2009, with solutions for most.

Textbook Recommendation: Don't bother with the recommended texts. Everything you need to know is covered in the lecturer's slides.

Lecturer(s): Dr Guoqi Qian.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is a core unit for the statistics major, but is also taken by people from other disciplines who have a less strong mathematics background. It is a fairly thorough look at the theory behind linear models, proving all of the major results from first principles: deriving the least squares estimator, showing that it is the best possible unbiased estimator, and then moving on to confidence intervals and hypothesis testing. In other words, looking at how and why statistical computer packages work behind the scenes.

The proofs involve a lot of linear algebra and are mostly quite tedious - pages and pages of algebraic manipulation, and applying just about every little fact you would have forgotten from first year (well, mostly the Spectral Theorem). The style of the lectures is incredibly dry, with little to motivate the theory being developed, so it's easy to find yourself daydreaming or falling asleep. There's a final week and a half covering the design of experiments, which could easily have done with twice as many lectures, at the expense of some of the more theoretical stuff.

The assignments are all very easy, involving very little in the way of proofs and a whole heap of rote application of formulas. The exams have been getting increasingly theory-based over the years, with this year's being about 50% linear algebra proofs, and 50% rote calculation and interpretation of data.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cnguyen599 on June 19, 2014, 01:00:38 am
Subject Code/Name: COMP20005 Engineering Computation

Workload:  3x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 2 hour workshop per week (optional)

Assessment: 2x Assignments (%10 and %20), 1x Mid Semester Test (%10), Exam (%60)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  1 sample exam with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  "Programming, Problem Solving, and Abstraction with C" - Alistair Moffat
An essential book for the course. Must buy!

Lecturer(s): Alistair Moffat

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 of 5

Comments:
Well this was a cool subject! To the survivors of ESD2 who experienced the abomination of the MATLAB module, this will be a significant improvement.

For this subject you learn the core of C programming and by the end of the course, you should be capable of making your own programs! Don’t worry, they won’t immediately toss you into the deep end. You start off first by learning the language, and then move onto things like loops, functions, pointers, arrays and structures. Each of these essentially builds on the previous and you should think of them as additional tools in your tool kit that will make your life easier. The faster you learn to apply them the more time you will save sitting in front of that computer. So don’t neglect them.

The course follows the text book quite closely, where pretty much everything that you are expected to know is in the book. These have questions at the end of each chapter to build up your programming muscles. Do try to do as many exercises as possible, as this will be the best way you can familiarise yourself with coding. I aimed to do all of the questions of the chapter by the end of the week, and trust me, it takes time and commitment. I remember staring at the screen at 2am ready to beat the bits out of my computer debugging my code.

So, what did I learn from my mistakes? KISS: Keep it simple stupid. And stupid I was indeed. The more complicated your code is, the harder it will be to follow and track down the source of your mistake. Therefore the more time you waste. You should code in blocks. Test to see if that section works independent of the program, and then apply it to the larger program rather than coding slabs. There was mention of this in the course, but much later then I would have liked (Chapter 5 pg78).  Finally, your old codes can always be improved. By learning new techniques, you can redo these old programs so they can be more efficient and also continue to buff your programming muscles.

By week 10 onwards, you will be taught content that are not in the book. These include things like binary conversion to hexadecimal, floating point representation, various mathematical techniques that can be made into programs, etc. The mathematical techniques were pretty annoying and it was told that we had to understand how they worked and write out the equations associated with them. This was where the rote learning came in. However, my exam did not feature any questions on these techniques but they did appear on previous years and the sample questions. So I managed to dodge a bullet on that one. 

A small amount of Linear Algebra was required to understand the code for Gaussian Elimination; basically solving a system of simultaneous equation. From ESD2 you were required to apply the Euler Forward difference method for designing programs capable of physical simulations, e.g. the max height a rocket flies.
As you may have heard from previous reviews, the lecturer, Alistair, is indeed a fantastic person. He was enthusiastic in his approach to teaching which made the lectures so much more bearable. Also he answers his emails FAST. So if you got a question, don’t hesitate to bombard him with it.

Each week you have a 2 hour tutorial. The first half involves the tutor going through basically a recap of the previous week and a few questions from the book. The other half is your chance to ask your tutor questions about anything you are having trouble with. Even if you managed to create a functional program, there is always room for improvement. Looking back at some of my old codes, I cringe at how sloppily they were put together. I suppose that is the effect of sitting at your desk for prolonged periods of time.
There are 4 assessments for Eng Comp: Assignment 1 and 2, mid semester test and the 2 hour Exam.

You have 2 assignments in the semester. The first (10%) tests your use of loops and if statements, arrays and functions. The second (20%) is given after the MST, and requires that you use structures and more functions and arrays. You get around 2-3 weeks to finish them and my advice is that you should get them done as soon as possible. While they may seem daunting at first, they are broken into steps for you, and pretty much tells you what is required. You just have to come up with a method by breaking the large problem into smaller ones. Remember, you can always ask the tutors in your workshop for help, and the sooner you resolve a problem the better and they might be able to pick up things you have not anticipated.

There is also a tedious submission process involved which you obviously need to get used to; once again ask your tutor if you have trouble. At the end of each assignment Alistair shows the submission times. My goodness, there are some that occur just a second before the deadline. So submit regularly and early. Also TEST them. There was one submission that had just rows of dots. No code whatsoever. Everyone thought it was just some prankster, but no. It turned out the person didn’t test their program before submitting and are now regretting it. 

Now the mid semester test. It was 30 minutes long and had around 5 questions based on what you have learnt at that point. This test however requires you to hand write your code, so start practising early. I recommend that before directly writing up your code on the computer scribble it on a blank sheet of paper. Note your mistakes and remember them. You will also be given a sample test to practise.

Finally the big bad exam. This was tough. And to be honest, I probably did pretty shitty. I would describe what you are given as a puzzle. You’ve done similar kinds of puzzles before, you have the tools to solve them, but you still need time to think about what you are going to do which is quite difficult with a time limit. Furthermore there is not just a single way to solve it. These questions are not like those where you immediately recognise the question and pop up with a method and solution with a snap of a finger. Therefore, I believe that there is an importance in learning how to plan your code without relying on your computer to tell you what is wrong.  You will be given a single sample paper with solutions and a few more sample questions (possibly without). Also, all the questions set in the workshop will also have solutions to them and there are some that are similar to the exam questions.

Engineering computation can be a stressful and irritating subject but is ultimately rewarding. You will experience the satisfaction of creating your own working programs and seeing that it in front of you. It’s not like one of those subjects where you constantly question why am I doing this? With Eng Comp you can see the outcome of what you have learnt firsthand. At the end of this subject you will come to appreciate programmers and computers, making you think twice before slapping your dumb computer for being too slow. Even if I did poorly, I can truly say I learnt something.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on June 19, 2014, 04:15:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90053 Experimental Mathematics

Workload: 1x 1-hour lecture, 1x 2-hour computer lab.

Assessment: 2x assignments (worth 30% in total) and a take-home exam (worth 70%).

Lectopia Enabled: No.

Past exams available: No.

Textbook Recommendation: "A=B" by Petkovsek, Zilf and Zeilberger (1997). This is available as a PDF from the authors' website. Having a paper copy to refer to is nice, though.

Lecturer(s): Dr Andrea Bedini.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This is a difficult subject to review. To be blunt, I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I did learn quite a bit from it. Experimental maths is a fascinating area that most people never get exposed to, and this unit could potentially be excellent after a bit of a facelift.

The basic idea behind experimental mathematics is that exploring mathematical ideas with a computer can help you get insights that you wouldn't have been able to guess. After you make some mathematical conjecture based on the specific cases you've looked at using a computer, computational methods can also assist you in prove the general case. This general approach has been used to obtain a number of mathematical results in the last few decades that would have been essentially impossible without computational methods.

Unfortunately, the course doesn't really live up to the promise. For the first half of the subject, you spend each week looking at a different computational technique. Some of them are quite cool, e.g. chaos and bifurcation theory; the PSLQ algorithm for "number guessing"; Groebner basis. But the small amount of time devoted to them meant that you had almost but not quite understood how these methods worked before you moved on to the next topic, and certainly didn't have any opportunity to see where the applications of them might be.

The second half of the course I enjoyed a lot more. It was hypergeometric series, which are a very general form of infinite sum - if you've done any maths, you've probably encountered specific examples of hypergeometric series without knowing the name. There's no general formula for the sum of a hypergeometric series, but there are a number of computer algorithms for deriving a closed form for a particular series. This half of the course followed the textbook "A=B" almost verbatim. You will need that book.

While the unit outline mentioned computer-assisted methods of proof, there wasn't really anything in the course about it.

Dr Bedini's lectures were ... not the greatest. He spoke very quickly (while looking at the whiteboard, not at the class) and wrote a lot of stuff up on the whiteboard in borderline-illegible handwriting. To be fair, I think this was his first time teaching a postgraduate subject. But I eventually stopped turning up to the lectures, because I found that I didn't really understand the lectures unless I'd already read the relevant part of the textbook, and if I'd read the textbook, I didn't need the lectures. The lab sessions were devoted to implementing the methods from the week's lecture in Mathematica, and solving problems using them. In the lab sessions he was very willing to help out with anything that you didn't understand.

The assignments were an attempt to get us to actually discover some result we'd never seen before using experimental mathematics techniques, and then formally prove it. I think the second assignment, in particular, lived up to this ideal. The major assessment in this unit was a take-home exam. It was handed out at the start of the examination period (i.e. after SWOT Vac), and we had a week to work on it. It was 50% programming, 50% conventional mathematics. It took me a solid weekend's work to get it done, and I learned quite a bit while doing it. (I'd suggest that making sure you'd done all of the lab exercises beforehand would dramatically reduce the time you'd spent on it, because 90% of the programming question came from stuff I really should have already finished.)

One final problem with this unit was that, to really understand the methods presented in this subject, you need both a decent working knowledge of pure maths (specifically: ring theory) as well as programming skills. This was okay for me, since my undergraduate degree was in Pure Mathematics and I've spent years working as a programmer. But I suspect that quite a few people in the class were just left feeling perpetually lost.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cnguyen599 on June 19, 2014, 04:18:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20065 Knowledge, Learning and Culture

Workload: 1x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 2 hour seminar per week

Assessment: 2x 2000 words essays (50% each)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbooks, you are given readings along the course on the LMS.
Although from the level 1 subject before this (EDUC10050), I did find the book "Perspectives on Learning" by D.C. Phillips & Jonas F. Soltis quite useful for the last essay.

Lecturer(s): Amanda Burritt

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating:  4/5

Comments:

Knowledge Learning and Culture
If you thought you knew everything about what Melbourne uni has, think again. Basically, this subject is like one gigantic museum tour that takes you to different cultural collections on campus. The weekly 2 hour seminars will involve you going to places like:

. Old and rare books collections in the uni archives
. Ian Potter Museum
. Rare Map Collection
. Medical History Museum
. Dental Museum   

One of the key principles taught in the seminars was see think and wonder. You are given an object; a random object that you have never seen before, be it a portrait, dental equipment, maps, etc. You are then asked to examine the details of the object without any subjectivity. Following this you begin to form your own explanations about why certain things are the way they are. And finally you form questions about what you want to know about it. Each seminar usually has an expert, or the curator of the museum you can direct your questions to. By being given a chance to practise this each week, you’ll come to the realisation of the difficulty separating your biases from objective analysis. But hey you got to start somewhere. Note that nothing is assessed in these seminars, and what you get accomplished during these sessions is up to you and your curiosity.

There are 2, 2000 words reflective essays as part of the assessment in this subject. The first involves a discussion about two of the objects from any of the cultural collections. You use the see think wonder approach in answering the question, and also incorporate things like the knowledge required for interpretation and discuss the culture surrounding that object. I wrote mine on medical records of Australian P.O.W’s written on the back of Japanese cigarette packets and an old 1880 monaural stethoscope. Some of the objects are listed with their image on the digital archives online, but I found that there were others which I could not find. The P.O.W record for example could not be shown in detail due to privacy reasons. But luckily I took the initiative and during the seminars and just scribbled a whole bunch of my observations and interpretations down into my notes, which I encourage other people to do.

There are objects that have plenty of information associated with few, so choose carefully (you do have to cite sources). I found that objects in the medical museum tend to have some good resources following them. Each week you are given some readings to prepare you for the seminar. Did I read everything? No. For some readings I realised that I would not use as they were not related to the cultural collection I selected. But hey, I could have missed some ideas that I could have used for my essay. Just letting you know that it isn’t the end of the world if you haven’t read everything.     

To be honest, you don’t need to go to all of the seminars in order to start the first essay (although you do need to go to all of them since there is an 80% attendance requirement, i.e. 2 classes missed and you’re out), and the earlier you start them, the less stress you will have. For the first assessment I realised that since you could select any objects to study from any cultural collections, by doing those you encountered in the earlier weeks will obviously mean that you can get them done faster.

The second requires you to talk about the various factors that influence your interpretation and how direct engagement with objects improves learning. This is more like a recap on what you have experienced. Those who did Psychology or Understanding Knowing Learning (the level 1 subject prior to this) will find their knowledge of the various learning theories useful for this essay. But if you haven’t studied any of these, don’t worry; they go through learning theories in one of the lectures. The last essay is more general compared to the first, so you can start brain storming after a few lectures and seminars.

This subject gave me an opportunity to explore the campus and see some really fascinating historical objects. You learn to appreciate the story behind the objects. Furthermore, it wasn’t a stressful subject, so those who don’t want to add to much weight to their studies, I recommend this one.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 19, 2014, 05:29:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006: Chemistry for Biomedicine

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three hour lab/workshop per week, 1 x one hour tutorial/workshop session per week, 6 hours of computer-aided learning during the semester, 8 hours of independent learning tasks during semester.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours.

Assessment: Three equally weighted 30 minute on-line tests conducted during the semester (6%), ongoing assessment of practical work throughout the semester (20%), a three hour written examination in the examination period (74%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, although none of them are relevant to the new course structure.

Textbook Recommendation: A. Blackman, S. Bottle, S. Schmid, M. Mocerino and U. Wille, Chemistry 2nd edition, Wiley, 2012

You will be asked to do pre-reading prior to every lecture and will be assigned practice questions following lectures, so it is required. Unfortunately this textbook is extremely difficult to find so you may have to resort to purchasing it (see if you can get it second hand). It goes into a lot more detail than what you need to know, but I found it really useful given the circumstances, so I recommend it. Some tutors thought the old textbooks were better than this one, but as I did not use them I cannot comment on this myself.

You will also need to purchase the tutorial workbook and the practical handbook (this is shared between CHEM10006: Chemistry for Biomedicine, and CHEM10003 & CHEM10004: Chemistry 1 & Chemistry 2 - the equivalent subjects available in the Bachelor of Science).

Lecturer(s):
Dr Angus Gray-Weale: Lectures 1-9 - Thermodynamics, Equilibrium, Kinetics
Assoc Prof David McFadyen: Lectures 10-15 - Inorganic (main group) chemistry
Dr David Jones: Lectures 16-21 - Inorganic (transition metal) chemistry
Assoc Prof Craig Hutton: Lectures 22-29 - Foundations of organic chemistry
Prof Richard O'Hair: Lectures 30-35 - Reactions of organic species and biomacromolecules

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Before the exam I was dead set on giving this subject a 2/5, but given the exam I've decided to bump it up to a 3/5. You can probably tell that my experience with this subject wasn't overly positive and a lot of thought needs to be put into this subject to improve it.

The subject has changed a lot from previous years, with new topics arranged in a different order and new lecturers to teach them. I can't say for sure the reason for this, but some students have indicated that it may be due to poor performance in the chemistry component of the second year core subject BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine. Anyway, it seems like they may have tampered with a previously good recipe.

Let me start off by saying that first year university does require you to step up from Year 12. Most of the time people are aware of this and the university does the best that it can to make the transition easier and in the end most cope just fine. However, I was told by older cousins who completed the Bachelor of Science that the step up required for Chemistry is much bigger than it is for other subjects, and now having done it myself, I have to say that this is true. The only thing is that Chemistry for Biomedicine is even more tough because the university is trying to shove a lot of stuff that should be covered over the course of a year into just one semester and this year they decided to introduce more topics into the course. The compromise is that each topic is dealt with in slightly less detail but sometimes this isn't necessarily the best thing, especially for holistic learners who need to see the bigger picture. I guess the take home message is to accept the circumstances and be prepared for the challenge that lies ahead.

Anyway, onwards with the review. I think I should probably get my thoughts regarding the lecturers out of the way first. With the exception of a couple of the more experienced ones, I think the reduced time frame they had to cover their content didn't bring out the best in them. In particular many of them forgot that we hadn't yet covered organic chemistry so sometimes they would draw upon a relevant organic chemistry concept and assumed that we understood what was going on. I hope next year they move organic chemistry back to the start of the course because it seemed to make a lot more sense having it there. I'm going to keep my negative comments about specific lecturers to myself, but take this as a warning that you will need to be prepared to encounter this if you end up with the same staff.

So as I said, the course has undergone a lot of changes from previous years and this is felt right from the very first lecture. In the past CHEM10006 students have started with organic chemistry but we started off with Dr Angus Gray-Weale, who covered thermodynamics, equilibrium and kinetics. These are new topics introduced into the course supposedly as students in BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine have struggled with these a lot in the past couple of years, so the intention was to get the foundations set earlier. I really don't think starting off fresh first years with these sorts of topics was a particularly good idea. Most of us understood incredibly little over the first three weeks and the textbook was pretty much the only thing that saved us from completely losing all sense of direction. Dr Gray-Weale's lecturing style is a bit different as he prefers not to upload the notes prior to lectures, rather that we sit back and think about what he's telling us. His slides don't tend to contain a lot of information and instead he uses examples and scenarios to explain the underlying concepts. Just try to follow on if you can, seek help if necessary and use the textbook if you feel you need to. You are not provided with a formula sheet in the exam so you will need to know your formulae but there aren't too many and as you use them over time you will learn them. Once you start to see the types of questions you can be asked the topic makes a lot more sense and oddly enough I actually think it was one of the easier topics we dealt with in the end.

We then moved on to inorganic (main group) chemistry with Assoc Prof David McFadyen, who has taught this topic to first year Biomedicine students for the past couple of years. This stuff isn't new to the course and the only changes made were omissions or simplifications - most of us could easily tell that in comparison to the first three weeks this unit was a well-oiled machine. People generally grasped the content really well and had no pressing issues; some people get a bit confused as to how much you need to learn about the bio-geo-chemical cycles of the main group elements but you're not expected to memorise anything here. If you're having trouble navigating it all have a look at the past exam questions (particularly the multiple choice questions) which will give you an indication of the expectations.

We then covered inorganic (transition metal) chemistry with Dr David Jones. This topic wasn't necessarily new to the course, but the lecturer was, so inadvertently he brought along a lot of changes with it anyway. A lot of content gets covered in an extremely small space of time but again you're just going to have to deal with this. What threw most of us was that we were expected to memorise several (rather complicated) biochemical structures and reaction mechanisms, so here's another heads-up. Take the time to draw them out several times and commit them all to memory because they are examinable (and we were asked to draw two such structures on our exam).

After the mid-semester break we covered the foundations of organic chemistry with Assoc Prof Craig Hutton, who has also taken this unit with Biomedicine students before. As I've stated above, this would've made for a much better introduction to the subject as most of us found it very manageable. This is one of those instances where you have to "unlearn" things you learnt in VCE, but at the end of it all everything makes so much more sense. His slides are generally very light on content so you will need to write down a lot of what he says. In the last couple of weeks Prof Richard O'Hair took over to talk to us about organic reaction pathways and about carbohydrates and peptide chemistry. I actually found this stuff the most difficult in the end because the specific reaction mechanisms are no longer covered in the course (this is both a blessing and a curse because while you won't be expected to memorise these for the exam they can help with your understanding) and I found it difficult to remember how various functional groups and species react. The textbook for this area in particular was fantastic (it has the reaction mechanisms in it) so make sure you take a look and read it all properly (it's quite long but well worth it).

To supplement your learning, the department provides quite a few resources to practice with. You're encouraged to use ChemCAL over the course of the semester to aid learning new concepts. Sometimes it wasn't very helpful and occasionally there would be an error in the tutorial but other times they explained concepts really well and had activities that enhanced your understanding. In addition, there are three mid-semester tests completed through the LMS, totalling 6% of your grade. They only take half an hour and they're not worth much so don't stress too much about your performance. They're designed so that you can get some feedback, but the irony was that you couldn't actually access your results (you could only see the grade). If you wanted to know what you got right or wrong you had to wait for the test period to be over and for the test to be re-opened in feedback mode and you had to complete it again to get corrections (and that's if the questions were all the same as last time - often they were not). You also have three independent learning tasks to complete over the course of the semester, covering fairly basic material (much of it was covered in VCE). They don't contribute to your grade but they are hurdle requirements and their content does appear on the exam, so don't just be one of those people that opens the test up and closes it straight away to clear the hurdle.

The weekly tutorials were extremely helpful and ultimately they were the reason many got by in the subject. The tutorial workbook has great questions and many of the tutors are very knowledgeable and helpful. Unfortunately my tutor stopped coming to tutorials after a couple of weeks and we would just have substitute tutors every week. Some of them weren't great but others were amazing, in particular Penny Commons. I know that you can't find out who the tutor is when timetabling, but if you know someone who has her as their tutor, see if you can move into her class because it will absolutely be worth it. I'm just sorry I only had her for 2-3 tutorials.

The only other assessment during the semester are the six practicals, totalling 20% of your grade. All of the practicals are selected from the first year Science course, so some of them are completely irrelevant to the content covered in lectures but others do link in quite well (although they might not tee up perfectly with when you learn about them). For some reason the introductory practical is not selected as one of the six practicals for Biomedicine students, which is a bit annoying, so you'll just have to find your feet over time. That being said, I much preferred the Chemistry practicals to the Biology practicals. You are asked to prepare for them by completing a pre-lab on ChemCAL, but I'm going to tell you that this is nowhere near enough if you want to finish the practicals on time. You need to read the practical several times so that you know exactly what is expected of you, using the additional resources and links as you see fit. Additionally, you need to write up as much of your practical report from home. Regardless of the practical, you should be able to write the aim, method and get the results data prepared (i.e. setting up tables and graphs). In some cases, you can even answer some of the discussion questions without having even completed the practical. The point is that you want to leave the bare minimum to do in regards to writing your report during the practical because completing the practical itself is enough of a time pressure. If you do this, you should only have to enter your results and write your conclusion and you may in fact finish some practicals early (I managed to do this twice). Like in Biology, you will get assessed on how well you actually performed the practical, so good preparation is essential for good marks. For example, our first experiment was a paracetamol synthesis, in which we were marked on our percentage yield and the appearance and purity of the final product. Most people don't do very well at first, but you will get much better really quickly.

The final three hour exam was worth 74%, which is quite a lot and given how we'd all found the subject over the course of the semester the majority of us were freaking out. The format has also changed from previous years - multiple choice questions used to make up two thirds of the exam (in both time and marks) but now it is only allocated 50% of the time and marks, so there is a greater weighting on the short answer questions. There was a bit of confusion regarding the amino acids - in previous years they were provided for you in the exam but one lecturer told us we needed to memorise them. Then we found out the exam did have the amino acids provided, but the lecturer defended himself by suggesting we would run out of time if we didn't know them. In the end, there were no amino acid questions on the exam. If this happens to you as well, the strategy I went with was to use the reading time to locate the question regarding amino acids and using that time to flick back to the amino acids appendix and become familiar with them then (my study time in SWOTVAC was precious and I wasn't going to waste time learning things that weren't necessary). Thankfully, it was as if the staff heard our cries of concern and went much easier on us than expected - they could have asked much more difficult questions which still would have been fair game. Some lecturers re-used previous questions while others avoided the more difficult aspects of their course altogether. In the end, most people were relatively content with how it all went.

This is all I can think of for now. I'm pretty confident the subject experience survey results will overall be very negative but hopefully they will sit down, rethink the course structure and improve it for next year. If you have any specific questions or queries, please feel free to ask me. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cnguyen599 on June 19, 2014, 06:24:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra 

Workload: 3x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week, 1x 1 hour workshop per week

Assessment: Weekly assignments (10% in total), End of Semester Test (10%), Exam (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Both 10am and 3pm streams were recorded.

Past exams available:  3 past exams with solutions. Quite a few can be found in the library.

Textbook Recommendation:  "Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version" - H. Anton and C. Rorres 10th edition.
Don't need to buy it. Just rely on lecture notes and exercise book questions and you should be fine. Although there are a few examples in the books that go through proof questions which is worth a borrow.

Lecturer(s): Craig Hodgson, Nathan Clisby

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 3/5

Comments:
Let me start off by saying that I am no Mathspert. In fact, after this maths subject, I wish to never add two numbers together again and marry my calculator.

Moving on… Linear Algebra! Most likely you are coming into this subject with fresh wounds from Calculus 2. The things taught in this subject are quite different from Calculus, introducing new concepts for you to wrap your head around. I have heard the term “abstract” being thrown around a lot. Linear Algebra requires you at times to visualise things in 3 dimenstions. It will take time to get your head around these ideas. From my own experience, trying to understand these ideas at first may be frustrating, but once it clicks, everything should seem pretty straight forward. But the one thing that never clicked for me were proofs (luckily they weren't prominent in the weekly assessments). I found it funny that at the back of the work book, the only solution to these questions was a short sentence saying “proof required”. Not shit! JUST TELL ME THE ANSWER!!! Do try to attempt them as best you can and go over them with the tutors. Some of these questions were work examples in the text book. Does this mean you have to buy it? No. Just borrow it and look at the relevant section. Proofs will be on the exam.

It will take work to keep up to date, and without constant work your next lecture or tutorial session may sound like complete gibberish (just a word of warning, the lectures can be pretty dull). I encourage that anyone who plans to take this subject to do all the questions set by the lecturer as soon as possible (typically around 6-10 questions are given each lecture). Preferably finish them on the same day they are given. You don’t want to be that student who is on question 10, 6 weeks into semester. I'm not going to lie, for me, some of these were tough. It took quite some time for me to "get" what to do therefore consultation hours will be a valuable resource when you find yourself dwelling on something too long. Be smart, unlike myself, and save time by going to them (make sure you show them what you have done so far to make the most of those times, don’t just go in and say, “I’m stuck”). There were hours throughout the week, and for my semester there were 3 different tutors who were be happy to guide me through my work. Just make sure you plan out what you will ask. 

The weekly tutorial is just like that in Calculus. You are given a question sheet and work in a group of 2-3 to solve problems on a white board while the tutor goes around checking if you did it right. By now, you should know that tutorials are important and helpful, so go to them! You are also handed worked solution for the questions, and these can be used as an indicator to show if you are doing your questions in the right way. This is also your chance to make friends and a study groups.

Each week you will have an assignment of around 3 questions testing you on what you have learnt the week before. If you have done the work book questions, these assignment questions shouldn’t be harder than those. Unlike Calculus, only one out of the three questions is marked to encourage you to check your own work. They do post up a set of worked solutions, so look at them. I guess I was overconfident and believed that everything I did was right. Little did I know, 1 day before the exam, all my answers to linear transformations were wrong! Check them, reflect on them and ask your tutor if you need further clarification. Redoing them is also good practise I believe they are a good reflection of the level of difficulty you will be faced with in the exam. Also, it should be obvious, but you can check your answers with a calculator for certain questions…

Following tutorials is a 1 hour computer lab. I didn’t particularly enjoy these, but I do see how they can be beneficial. They are there to help you visualise and understand the concepts. For those who are more visually inclined, it can indeed be a very useful. Essentially in each session you go through questions from the lab book which can include things like matrix manipulation in the computer, forming 3-D graphs, etc. The instructions a pretty straight forward and they shouldn’t be all too difficult. Don’t panic if you don’t get through all of them, the most important thing is going through your tutorial and workbook questions. 

The end of semester test in week 12! This I found was well placed since by studying for this you are also prepping for the exam. Except! It requires the use of MATLAB; a computer program that is basically a beefed up graphics calculator. But don't let that deter you. The programming component is not all too complicated for a new user, and should be a refresher for you ESD2 survivors (if you remembered anything from that messily taught module). I believe that the extent of the programming you needed were in the first 2-3 weeks of the computer labs, involving the making of matrices, adding, multiplying, reducing, graphing etc. I was given a sample test (with no solutions) which gives you a pretty clear idea of their expectations in terms of programming. They will list the topics that may be on the test which you can study for by doing your workbook and tutorial questions.

Finally the exam. Since you have been diligently blazing through the workbook question each week and managed to finish all 200 something questions, the exam shouldn’t be all too terrible. It seems as though they forced you to carry a 100 kilo rock throughout semester and for the exam they reduce it to 70. I was surprised at how simple some of the questions were. I was given answers to 3 past exams, but if you ask any of the guys who did Linear Algebra in the summer you can get a few more. I think I had 5 in total which is a good amount. Along with your assignments, tutorial sheets, and work book, you have plenty to get ready.

One important piece of advice. I will put this in caps so you can remember better. POLISH YOUR ROW REDUCTION SKILLS AND MAKE SURE YOU CAN DO IT QUICKLY AND ACCURATELY IN TIMED CONDITIONS. I found that I was constantly making mistakes with my row reductions as simple as it was, and this was probably due to the fact that I was relying too much on my graphics calculator throughout semester. Approach them in a systematic and organised way. Keep track of all those negative signs, and make sure every calculation is correct before moving onto the next otherwise it is a snow ball effect of mistakes. And I wished someone told me this early on, but you should avoid fractions if possible by multiplying rows to get the same whole numbers as the leading entries. It might not make sense now, but hopefully it will later and will save you time.

There are some very useful resources online that can help you to understand the concepts of Linear Algerba. Youtube has quite a few, including:
. Khan Academy
. PatrickJMT
. MathDoctorBob
Not to mention, a lecturer for Linear Algebra put up videos on how to solve certain problems in the exercise book based on what was requested on the discussion board.

So did I enjoy this subject? Eh, not so much. I was required to do it, so I had to push through. But if you are taking this subject, just know that there are numerous resources out there that can help you with your study, and you can do well if you put an effort into understanding the concepts.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on June 19, 2014, 08:42:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30005 Muscle and Exercise Physiology 

Workload:  3 lectures a week

Assessment:  2 x 15% Multichoice/fill in the blanks from options tests, 1 x 10% 500 word assignment.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  No idea.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't need any textbook, there isn't one anyway. If anything you will be referring to science papers.

Lecturer(s):

Mixture of a fair few lectures but 20 or so of the lectures are taken by Mark Hargreaves and Gordon Lynch.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 - Semester 1

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Okay so I didn't enjoy this subject nearly as much as I thought I would. I'll get to that, but first the pros of the subject.
Firstly, the subject is very well assessed. There is rarely a dodgy question or assessment of something that wasn't taught or presented, study the material and there really isn't any reason not to do well. Secondly, Gordon Lynch is amazing, unfortunately he didn't take as many lectures as he usually would in the subject but the ones you have him for are incredibly well taught. He also teaches what I consider the more interesting aspects of this subject which is anabolic agents, muscle injury, degeneration, regeneration and muscle plasticity. All of these lectures were incredibly interesting even though I thought they were somewhat simplified. What I mean is that the lectures may teach what adaptive changes a muscle may make to certain stimuli but doesn't really elaborate on how this happens. Eg: we learnt that in response to endurance exercise, muscle will get smaller, make more mitochondria, make blood vessels etc but NONE of this is really explained how, there were hints at explanation but certainly nothing explicit. I have no idea if this is because we don't know or if its because its just not part of lecture series but either way, it's something I wish they had.

Moving on to my 2nd problem with this subject. Mark Hargreaves. Mark unfortunately has one of the worst lecturing styles I have seen, he uses fewer slides than most and fills them with graphs (I am not kidding, every single slide will be graphs except 1 or 2). This would be fine if he actually explained the graphs. Half the time he forgets to tell you what is on the axis and so you are left wondering what is actually increasing with what. His lecture content could actually be reasonably interesting. He just presents it very poorly and his lectures lack a theme I guess. I come out of his lectures asking myself what did I actually learn with a thousand physiological responses to memorise whereas other lectures I come out with an overall conclusion and only 100 or so things to learn. Anyway that's just my 2 cents, other people find hargreaves okay. For me he was unbearable and ruined the subject.

Also, just remember that the first 15 lectures are essentially on what happens to various physiological measures when you increase intensity or duration or bother. By physiological measures I mean, oxygen, calcium, glycogen, fat, protein and then the factors that cause them to do whatever they do. I guess for me, I didn't really expect this aspect of the subject to be so detailed and I did find a lot of it quite boring

Like I said though, assessment is fair and IMO easier than my other subjects (well atleast my biomed one)
Subject could be a 4 with better lecturing, but as it is, I would not do it if I could go back in time.
PM me for any questions
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: GreyMechine on June 19, 2014, 09:07:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: ZOOL30006: Animal Behaviour 

Workload:   
30 lectures during the semester; and 1 x one hour multimedia presentation per week

"Multimedia Presentation" - a video (David Attenborough Style). I never went to a single one of these tutes, attendance wasn't taken. Occasionally an actual tute (for instance covering the written assignment or the exam) was held in this timeslot, which I would go to.


Assessment: 


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  One sample exam provided (with answers). Tutorials leading up to the end of semester going through exam style questions (with answers).

Textbook Recommendation:  What's a textbook??

Lecturer(s): Raoul Mulder, Tim Jessop (maybe 1 lecture), Mark Elgar, Devi Stuart-Fox, Theresa Jones
Hope I didn't forget someone :')

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  3.5 of 5

Wasn't a difficult subject.. would say that this subject would benefit from more indepth topics.


Comments:

Animal behavior is a subject you can take as part of a number of majors. I took it so I could take Experimental Animal Behavior (ZOOL30006 was a pre-req for this), which is a prerequisite for the Zoology major. Hopefully I'll write a review about that if I remember.

Overall.. if you enjoy zoology and have paid attention in all of the animal related subjects you have taken, you might realise that a lot of the stuff they teach in this subject you have been taught before. Many of the lecturers in this subject have also been present in first and second year zoology related lectures and I felt like there was a lot of repetition. I didn't feel particularly challenged in this subject.

LECTURES
Either way, I went to maybe 50% of the lectures, and only in the first half of the semester. The content wasn't hard to understand, and I felt like listening to them on Lectopia was adequate. Some of Mark Elgar's lectures had complicated concepts but I think the recordings are still adequate. I rarely found myself annotating my lecture slides, perhaps only when they went through examples.

What reinforced me to NOT go to lectures was the fact that lecture notes were uploaded AFTER the lecture. I don't understand why lecturers do this! So I would skip the lecture and just listen to it once I had the notes in front of me...

LECTURERS
They are all researchers, and seem quite knowledgeable in their respective fields. The main lecturer was Raoul Mulder, who I thought was great. Very easy to understand and he explains concepts quite well. Doesn't always respond to emails ASAP but he will get to you within 48 hours. I assume he gets a lot of emails!

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
I liked getting feedback on my draft, it was nice seeing what other people thought of my work. Some of my friends got half finished drafts to review and that wasn't fun for them. It was hit and miss with the reviews that you did (whether or not the draft you had to review was finished) and hit and miss with the reviews you received (whether the feedback was actually helpful). None the less, it was still cool going through this process.


EXAM

We are given a sample exam with answers (woo hoo!) which I found really helpful. Would 10/10 recommend you do the practice exam.

Found exam to be not too difficult, given that we could choose what question to answer. I would recommend you understand the broad topics taught (eg. Altruism - Why does it occur?) and be able to apply it to studies. Refer to the practice questions. it was a good length, 2 hrs for 4 questions wasn't shabby.

Despite the negatives I seem to have constantly outlined, this subject was well taught and coordinated. The PRAZE News and Views assignment was really great to do, and it was a great change from the old "Write an Essay" type assignments. I think the exam format was also great as it encourages you to apply your knowledge and to use your comprehension and analysis skills, as opposed to just spewing out stuff you've memorised.

Anyone who wants to learn more about Animal Behaviour may enjoy this course.. assuming they haven't learnt done about it in other subjects!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on June 19, 2014, 09:20:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience 

Workload:  3 lectures a week

Assessment: Midsemester test worth 30%. Exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with capture.

Past exams available:  Yes but ones not relevant to us since the exam format changed this year.

Textbook Recommendation:  I don't know. Don't need any though.

Lecturer(s): 80% taken by Peter Kitchener. Rest is various lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 - Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not sure yet.

Comments:

So this subject I thought was very good, though others really didn't enjoy it. So bear that in mind.

Content wise: The first 20 lectures covers all the various 'nervous systems.' 3 lectures on neural development and repair. 5-10 lectures on senses. 5ish lectures on movement, one on pain, language and homeostasis. A couple of lectures on memory and then the subject takes a shift to the more complex neural topics: Emotion, cognition, neural disorders, consciousness, reward, fear... you get the idea.

I went into this subject expecting to absolutely love the consciousness and more complex lectures. I mean who isn't honestly interested by what the hell consciousness is! However, these were definitely IMO the worst component of the subject. This is probably because we know so so so little about anything that all we can really say is 'yeah we think this area is involved and it probably interacts with this other area.' For me, that wasn't enough to get excited about those topics. The first 20 lectures however, were brilliant. We know a lot about it all, how the info is encoded, decoded etc etc especially vision. This means that the lectures typically are quite detailed and explain a lot about how those systems work. A lecture typically starts with a stimulus if there is one and how it turns into an electrical signal. Then looking over the anatomical pathways of the neuron, what things happen at each place and then couple of extra things.  There is a bit of anatomy, but certainly not a great deal, and the majority is mostly just so you have a reference point to talk about an important function.

Assessment on the midsem was ridiculously stupid. The questions they asked were barely taught and poorly worded. Assessment on the exam was much better though.

Unfortunately there is also the infamous Joel Bornstein that covers the memory lectures. He has a total of like 12 slides in a lecture and then rambles on random tangents half the time then ends up going 5-10 minutes over (seriously, one time he went to 5 past and the other lecturer had to kick him out. The most unfortunate thing about having Joel Bornstein is that he covers one of the most interesting topics which is memory. It really is such a shame, because I think those lectures could of been so much better....

I personally find peter kitchener a very good lecturer, however many found him quite poor which was surprising.
I don't there is much out that stands out to me about this subject. Overall, just a good introductory subject to neuro which is certainly easier than the level 3 subjects I've done so far
PM me for any questions
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 19, 2014, 09:27:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30005 Muscle and Exercise Physiology (see above review for link)

Workload:  3 lectures a week

Assessment:  2 x 15% Multichoice/fill in the blanks from options tests, 1 x 10% 500 word assignment.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, but not in the type of format that was assessed this year. (past exams were based more on written responses, this year was fill in the blanks/ mcq type format- like the MSTS). However, much of the content in the past exams was relevant to this year's one.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook prescribed, lecturers encourage you to look up the journal article references (e.g. the ones that accompany different graphs in lecture slides).

Lecturer(s):
Too many.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 - Semester 1

Rating:  2.5-3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (what?!)

Comments:
Much like bubbles21, this subject wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

Lecturers:
Mark Hardgraphs, that is all.
I never really understood his lecture style, with pages and pages of graphs followed by 2 or so slides containing real written text (the slides with text weren't even that good because it would just be in formats like "factors regulating glycogenolysis"- followed by 12 or so factors that were hard to recall.

There weren't any lecturers that I thought were particularly amazing.

Assessment:

10% 500 W assignment (My mark: 65%) I did not enjoy this assignment at all and found it very confusing. The fact that it had a 500W word limit (to answer 5 questions about exercise metabolism/ heat/ cardiovascular responses) meant that your answers had to be clear and concise, as such you had to sacrifice many of the points you would normally have included if the assignment had no word limit. I thought the assignment was a bit unfair in this sense.

15% MST1 (My mark: 75%) This test (MCQ format, fill in the blanks) is about the exercise metabolism side of stuff (see handbook for detail). I didn't have any issues with the test, I think if I had changed the way I approached studying for this MST, my mark would have been better.

15% MST2 (My mark: 97%) This test (MCQ format, fill in the blanks) was more based on ROTE learning, I was not expecting the mark that I had received and thought I did poorly. That's the thing with this subject, you never know how you have performed in your assessments.

Exam (60%): I sat this today, and it honestly felt like my worst nightmare. I don't agree with what bubbles21 mentioned, regarding: "there is rarely a dodgy question or assessment of something that wasn't taught or presented" and "Gordon Lynch is amazing, the lectures you have him for are incredibly well taught". There were many concepts on the test that I felt like he didn't mention at all or were in WAY too much detail than he ever mentioned, and even if I had studied to my capacity I have my doubts about where I would still be able to answer those questions. Lynch's lecture approach is to describe concepts in a very simple manner, but he sets very difficult questions. My advice for approaching this exam is don't neglect the past exams (found on the library unimelb website): There were many repeat questions, particularly MCQ ones and the table questions seen in the past exams- even if there's a question in the past exam that didn't seem to be covered much in the current version of the subject (e.g. muscle dystrophy) I would advise you to still look over it. This subject is heavily reliant on rote-based learning, so much that we were tested on STATISTICS in the exam (e.g remembering percentages for different data)- I don't agree with these types of questions because you can almost instantaneously forget the exact percentage under stressful exam conditions. I had to guess many questions in the exam and nearly ran out of time- I am not at at all confident in my exam performance, and i'll be lucky to get a H2B for the subject.

I think many people go into this subject thinking it will be incredibly relaxed (maybe the title of the subject seems as though much of the content is intuitive? but it isn't). I wouldn't do this subject again if I could go back to first semester subject selections, and it has made me reconsider my physiology major (esp. in relation to frontiers in physiology, which goes over and expands on much of the content covered in this subject).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 19, 2014, 10:18:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20001: Principles of Genetics 

Workload: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour problem class per week.

Assessment:  Three online tests/assignments of equal value during semester (30% in total); a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Heaps, dating back to 1998. 2009-2013 were uploaded on the LMS, you can find the rest on the UniMelb library past exam page

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Genetic Analysis by Griffith et al. I never even looked through this book.

Lecturer(s):
Weeks 1-3 - Ronald Lee, who lectures on Mendelian Inheritance
Week 4 - Chris Cobbett who lectures on Non-Mendelian Inheritance
Weeks 5-8 - Adrian Andrianopoulos, who lectures on Bacteriophage Genetics
Weeks 9-12 - Phil Batterham, who lectures on Population Genetics
Stephen Hardy takes the problem solving classes.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (99)

Comments: This subject isn't very difficult, it's a nice break from the hectic rote-learning of MCB. It's probably a subject you can cram very easily. Most of the subject revolves around only a few concepts, you don't need to know the fine details. You just need to know "how" to do things. Mendelian Inheritance, which is the first block of the subject, is probably the hardest part. It's easy to convince yourself that you'll be fine because you remember how to do Three-Factor crosses from 1st year genetics, but Ronald likes to write some pretty difficult questions that you DEFINITELY should go through. I was pretty confused for the first two or three weeks. That being said, they are very good practise. Once everything clicks they become simple enough to do because you're always following the same technique. I remember it took me maybe a week to understand translocation/inversion heterozygotes but there was only 2-3 things to really understand about them. So practise up on this block using past exam questions and you'll be sweet. My only criticism about Ronald's lectures is that he talks pretty quietly and it's a bit difficult to listen to what he's saying.

Non-Mendelian Inheritance (i.e maternal inheritance) and bacteriophage genetics are easier to understand but you have more concepts to remember. Alex tends to talk about a lot of things but won't address all of them in his MST or his exam questions. Population Genetics you can breeze through just by looking at lecture slides, although Phil does describe many interesting examples in his lectures (which sometimes admittedly took up half the lecture). That being said, I didn't pay attention to most of his lectures because of this. You also get a formula sheet for the exam, which may look like gibberish but aren't bad because all he'll ask you to do is literally just plug in numbers.

The Problem Solving  Classes are presented by Steven Hardy, who is a wonderful teacher. Make sure you go to these and take down notes because they aren't recorded and the questions can be pretty hard, especially for Ronald's block. Essentially, these classes function as an unrecorded lecture where you just go through problems together in a lecture theatre.

There aren't any practicals in this subject, but you get three MSTs. One for each blocks topic. Revise for these by doing past exam questions, because that's one of the most effective ways in learning for this subject. These MSTs are done as timed tests on the LMS and are open book. They will assess similar skills to what's on the past exam papers. I think you have an hour to do it and there's only like 5-30 questions in each one of them, so it's plenty of time. The tests are open for one week as well, but make sure you do at the university (preferably NOT on UniWireless) because if you lose connection you get locked out of the test and you'll have to email the lecturer. Ronald's and Alex's MSTs were of similar difficulty and weren't too hard. Phil's MST was very short and very easy as well.

You also have some optional online tutorial quizzes as well. These are pretty useful and I highly recommend doing them to reinforce the lecture material. Some of the Problem Solving Classes went through questions taken from these online quizzes too. My only gripe with these quizzes was that you didn't get explanations for why your answer was wrong/right.

Past exam questions are very similar and recycled over the years, so the same sort of questions always pop up. Phil's part of the exam is probably the most similar and the vast majority of his exam questions have been identical over the years. Like, literally exactly the same question and options. Ronald, Chris and Alex's stuff are a little bit different but they still follow the same style. You could easily just cram for this subject just by doing the practise exams. That being said, you should still look over the lecture slides/lecture notes because there's a small portion of the exam which is to do with rote as well (although there is a big emphasis on concepts). The exam is only 53 MCQ questions long and you have 2 hours to do it so there's plenty of time, but each question is weighted multiple marks so make sure you get rid of those careless mistakes.

Overall, a great, relaxing subject that's not very difficult. The coordination in this subject was very good and organised. If you have harder subjects like Anatomy, Physiology, Biochem or MCB etc, you can afford to leave this subject at low priority and still manage well with it. Initially you may find some things quite hard but in the end they're pretty damn simple. Rote-learning isn't the focus, it's all just about understanding the concepts.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: fortweney on June 20, 2014, 01:01:41 am
Subject Code/Name:  Muscle and Exercise Psysiology PHYS30005 

Workload:  3 lecture per weekly basis

Assessment:  2 mid semester test. Assignment and exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen recording and voice recording

Past exams available:  no.

Textbook Recommendation:  no too expensive.

Lecturer(s): Many different lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 - 2014

Rating:  4.5 to 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not released yet

Comments:

Hello my friends. Overall, i very much enjoy this subject. I think subject usually very well taught. lecture material straight forward from previous subjects. I find majorityly very interesting. I think lecturer (name i tihnk is marc) present information fluidly, sometime too much but can understand when i read slide later. He summarise information with dot point well. Sometimes i need to lookup to find more but very rare. I find gordon sometimes speak too quickly and hard to understand. I think he teach well but just not very good method for me. I forget other lecturer name but some lecturer english very bad and i struggle to understand. But slide often clear up for me. I think testing for subject very accurate, sometimes tricky for me so i not do as well. I think usually good to get overall ok mark for assessment. I only get 91.4% average so i disappointing in myself but i think could have done much better for me. I think exam very good because all multi question choice so can still guess even when not know. Some question i unsure. I disappoint in exam preparation because of misprint and question missing in reading time. I hope i do well but i think i spend too much time reading question, only have around 10 min to check my answer. I hope marker is fair, so overall is good.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: REBORN on June 20, 2014, 12:36:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT20006, Principles of Human Structure

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week; 4x2h pracs which were run Weeks 4, 8, 9 & 12

Assessment:  ADSL Online Quizzes (10%), 2 x Mid Semester Tests (15% each), 1 x End of Sem Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No. Doesn't really matter but HSF exams from Biomedicine are similar.

Textbook Recommendation:  -Eizenberg N. Briggs CA et al (2008)-General Anatomy: Principles and Applications-McGraw Hill. I bought this book and it helps for the first 4 weeks which are your "principle" lectures. I also bought Gray's Anatomy but never used it so that was a waste. What I should have bought instead was an Atlas but even that you can pdf.

Lecturer(s): Dr Varsha Pilbrow, Associate Prof. Colin Anderson, Dr. Jason Ivanusic, Dr. Peter Kitchener, Dr. Simon Murray, Dr. Junhua Xiao

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 93 (H1)

Comments:

Lecture 1: Introduction. Know your terminology. What's a coronal plane? Supine? Pronate? Rotation?
Lecture 2: Human Form & Function. General introduction - just appreciate the lecture. Principles such as the germ layers are covered in more detail in embryology lectures.
Lectures 3-5: Nervous System. This is probably the most hardest part of the course, or second to embryology. To start Anatomy with this was quite daunting and gave me a false perception of how hard Anatomy is. Anatomy gets easier as the semester goes on. Make sure you listen to everything Peter says because his slides are inadequate to get you through. Very interesting content though.
Lectures 6,7,9 - Embryology. I personally found this very difficult as there's a lot of visualisation of folding to explain the embryo development to how we are now. I also think the lecturer screwed up the order of teaching things where we covered processes in later lectures, that actually occurred earlier in life. Probably doesn't make sense to you right now but study somite formation first, and then paraxial mesoderm.
Lecture 8 - Skin. Easy, very basic.
Lecture 10 - Skeletal system. Lots of new terminology here but nothing difficult to wrap your head around. The book aids well!
Lecture 11 - Articular system. Very detailed, important to know. Lots of 'principles' come out here.
Lecture 12 -  Muscles. Easy and interesting.
Lecture 13 - Vascular system. I thought it was easy but make sure you don't ignore the lymphatic system.
Lecture 14 - Vertebral column & back. Excellent. This is 'real' anatomy in my opinion. Simon is a legend but he talks a lot on his slides so make sure you take down what he says. However, his slides have a lot more detail on them than Peter's does so that's good.

Lecture 15 - this is the MST. Examines Lectures 1-13. I got 25/30 where the average was ~21/30. I was pretty disappointed and on reflection, it was't that hard. What will hurt you in this MST is the nervous system. A lot of questions and very difficult. That being said, nothing is off the course so if you study well you should be fine. This MST was an awakening for me and I changed my study habits for the subject, reflected in my MST2 mark.

Lecture 16-20, 21(Easter break), 22: Upper & Lower Limb. Very very interesting. I cannot commend Simon enough - I thought he was a very good lecturer, only surpassed by Junhao Xiao (later). The nerves are the hardest part and it's important that you spend time studying them. Also, yes, you do need to know your dermatomes and myotomes. Simon stresses the myotome rap for upper limb and doesn't really care about lower limb.
Lecture 23: Principles of Viscera. An important yet easy lecture. Jason is a funny guy and his lecture slides are reasonable - not too much content, not too less.
Lecture 24: Upper respiratory tract. Jason does a good job of cramming in a lot of content here. This is much more expanded in 3rd year. He shows a video and keeps it entertaining.

Junhao takes over from here until the last 2 lectures. I think she was the best lecturer. Firstly she had the best slides, extremely clear in what you needed to know accompanied by some great visuals. Secondly, she explicitly states what she needs you to know. Thirdly, her lectures are 40 minutes! Finally, her questions are so easy, it's just enjoyable. I don't really have much more else to say for Lectures 25 onwards because I thought it was very well taught

Lecture 29 is MST 2 covering from Lecture 14-28. I got 29/30 where the average was 24/30. Once again, no content is tested that is not on the lectures. I thought it was too easy to be honest, reflected by the high average. Nothing to worry about in this MST. Study and you will be rewarded.

Lecture 34-35: Back to Jason for female and male reproductive systems. Shows a vasectomy video which got people cringing. Entertaining lecturer with clear slides.
Lecture 36 - Exam Format discussed

So what's the exam like?
-Section A is 20 MCQ on the content NOT covered by MSTs
-Section B is 4x15 mark fill-in-the-blank- questions
-Section C is 4x15 mark 'extended' questions. This is where you write answers to one major question "C1" which has sub parts such as labelling diagrams and defining terms

I'm not sure how to say this but I thought it wasn't too difficult. This is from a previous review from Turtle and I'll just add to it:
Quote
The Multi Choice covers the last 3 weeks of the semester, and if you take the time to revise carefully, and memorize all the information in the last few lectures, then you can breeze through the MCQ very quickly. The Multi Selection Section was the hardest in my opinion. It tests you on fine detail, and you need to label diagrams. However, once again, this is all in the lectures, and if you are careful to revise fine points, and practice labeling diagrams, then this section will not be that much trouble. In my opinion, this section rewards those who know their work most. The final section is a Short Answer Section. Everyone hated this section this year, because it contained a question on the borders of the Inguinal Canal. However, if you took the time to memories this, since it had a lecture slide all to itself, then this question wouldn't have given you any trouble. This section could be hard if you didn't do enough revision, because you can't really bluff your way through it.

Section A. When Turtle says 'breeze' (and I did read her review before taking this subject) she literally means 'breeze'. You can finish this section during reading time.
Section B. It does test fine detail so to speak like knowing your types of deep fascia, but it's all stuff that's on the lecture slides. Nothing is extended from the set readings or ADSLs.
Section C. We also had a question on the Inguinal Canal...not sure if it's the exact same one. Once again, if you studied it, free marks. If not, you can't BS anatomy.

Overall...everything examined had been thoroughly explained by lecturers. 

To wrap up,

ADSLs. There are 8 of these 1.25% each. You get unlimited attempts to answer 10 MCQ's online. Free 10%! They do have a worksheet that is for your self-learning. I would do these just because the diagrams may came up and give you good practice for Section C of the exam. Be warned: they are time consuming! Chip away at it.

Practicals. Really interesting and the value really depends on how good your demonstrator is. I had excellent demonstrators and am very grateful for it. It's an oppotunirty to put theoretical lecture content into practice by identifying body parts in reality.

TL;DR. Amazing subject. Well co-ordinated. Well taught. Relatively easy assessment where work is directly proportional to marks.

Feel free to PM me with any specific questions but before you ask why I could take this subject as a Biomedicine student...I'm going on exchange. :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Account Deleted on June 20, 2014, 01:40:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENVS10010: Owned Environments

Workload:  1 x 2 hour lectures a week
                  1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: 

Northcote Investigation Wiki   ~1000 Words    Week 4      10%
VCAT Tribunal                  ~1500 Words    Week 8      15%
Property Valuation           ~2000 Words       Week 15      20%

Lectopia Enabled:  Audio for each lecture + Slides

Past exams available:  1 past exam (2013), I assume today’s exam will be released too

Textbook Recommendation:  Just 1-3 extra readings to do each week, largely unrelated to assessments but important for the exam

Lecturer(s): Kimberly Winson-Geideman: Head Lecturer

Guest Lecturers

Ole Fryd

Phil Nolan

Brian Davidson

Joe Barrins

others…

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester One

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Comments: The subject should be called Principles of Property Law/Introduction to Property Law but I guess all the Envs subjects need to be called XYZ Environments. Definitely been the best and most interesting subject I’ve done so far and I would definitely recommend it to everyone else.

Week 1

Week 1 is a basic introduction to property rights and the theory that will underpin the rest of the course. Kimberly will talk about 3 systems throughout the semester, Legal - Social - Economic. Know them because they all connect with each other as you’d expect.

Week 2

Phil Nolan, a charismatic and very interesting lawyer, gives the week 2 lecture about land titles and all the major cases related to property and ownership. As someone who enjoyed Year 12 Politics & Law, this week was probably my favourite and the cases and all the different types of ownership interests were very interesting. Who owns land? How have property rights evolved over time? etc.

I’d argue this is also the most important lecture as the content will keep appearing through the rest of the course, and really forms the core of what the subject is about.

Week 3

Pretty basic lecture about different perspectives of property and ownership (capitalism, communism, traditional societies). Also learning about the explicit and implicit ‘bundle of rights’ that come with owning property.

Week 4

Ole Fryd, another guest lecturer this week to talk about the importance of urban planning. An interesting one that looks at planning in theory and in practice, and the framework that Victoria uses for policy and planning

Week 5

Looking at systems in other countries (UK, USA, NZ, China). Nothing too spectacular but you get some insight as to how terrible the US system is :P

Week 6

This lecture is properly split into two. The first is given by a PhD candidate and she talks about informal settlements and how they have developed over time. Not as dull as it sounds and the stuff about Favelas in Rio de Janeiro was quite good.

Joe Barrins (my tutor) gives the second part of the lecture which is all about the different types of value. Subjective/Objective, Extrinsic/Intrinsic, etc. This was probably one of the best lectures of the semester and Joe is a very engaging lecturer and fantastic tutor.

Week 7

Can’t remember who gave this lecture about Land Economy and Value, but it was a pretty good one. The content gives some background and history into how Melbourne has developed, as well as discussing the five major models of land economy. The theory was very interesting and it’s a shame there was only 1 lecture on this.

Week 8

Land Value. I didn’t actually go to this lecture but the material is extremely important as the 3rd assignment is about giving a property a market valuation. The tutorial that goes with this lecture was also very good, we got to put the theory into practice and find out how to properly valuate property.

Week 9

Brian Davidson gives this lecture, and he is the head lecturer for the 2nd Semester subject, Governing Environments. The subject matter (value of water and markets) was pretty dry but he made it great. If you’re doing Reshaping Environments in Semester 1 alongside this, then you’ll hear some contradicting things about how valuable water is. As expected though, Davidson offers a practical approach whereas Reshaping uses scare tactics to make you think there isn’t a drop of water left…

The lecture also looked at some basic economic principles like supply, demand, equilibrium, price determination, etc. which was just a basic refresher of 2AB.

Week 10

Another set of two fantastic lectures, the first given by Joe again, and the second by a PhD candidate. They both concern Intellectual Property and all the theory that comes with the topic. Joe looks at a few case studies that were (about my umpteenth time saying it) very interesting. Monsanto v Percy Schmeier, Henrietta Lacks, and Metallica v Napster. Again he delivers the lecture in an engaging and exciting manner that makes a potentially boring topic into one of the best.

The second part of the lecture given by Solmaz(?) was about the privacy of data and how technology is evolving rapidly, all that jazz. More detail in the tutorial but it was a good one.

Week 11

My least favourite lecture by a mile… This was something to do with land information systems and geomatics, and to be completely honest I still don’t understand what it was about.

Week 12

Review.

Assessments

The first assessment is in pairs going to Northcote and doing a short, 1000 word investigation on the development of the suburb. Not too bad but it’s done on a wiki which is an awful format to do an investigation, especially when everyone else in the subject can see your work…

Second is a VCAT mock trial style role-play. Won’t go into too much detail but this is just easy marks, the only difficult part is the reflective writing component.

Last assignment is in groups of 4 doing a market valuation of a chosen property in Northcote. Again, won’t go into it too much but it was a pretty good assessment if you had a good group.

Exam today wasn’t too bad, a few too many questions on Week 11 stuff and not enough about Torrens Title :(

Final Thoughts


In summing up, it's the Constitution, it's Mabo, it's justice, it's law, it's the vibe, and, uh ... No, that's it. It's the vibe.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: danza312 on June 20, 2014, 04:01:41 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20006: Biological Psychology 

Workload:  Two 1 hour lectures per week, one 2 hour tutorial per fortnight.

Assessment:

20%: First half of a laboratory report (Introduction, Aim, Method, Referencing) (1000 words).
20%: Second half of lab report (Title, Abstract, Results, Discussion, Conclusion), as well as improvements to first half (2000 words in total).
60%: Two hour exam, 120 MCQ's.                               

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams, but there were ~60 MC sample questions available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Carlson, NR. Physiology of Behaviour. 10th Edition.Pearson International. - I personally didn't use it much, the lectures/tutes were all you need.

Lecturer(s):

Jacqueline Anderson: Weeks 1-4, gives an introduction in memory and anatomy of the brain, as well as brain injury.
Stephen Loughnan: Week 5, basic statistics, types of t-tests.
Piers Howe: Weeks 6-8, neuroimaging, EEG, fMRI and TMS.
John Trinder: Weeks 9-12, 'the rest,' such as sleep, emotion, neurons, drug action on neurotransmitters, schizophrenia and depression.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I went into this subject thinking it was going to be interesting to look into a field that you don't really do in regular biology apart from some lectures on how neurons work (I'd never done psychology before). While it certainly had those interesting moments, they were balanced out with a healthy amount of tedium too. There's certainly a lot to remember, but given that there are only 24 lectures it is much more manageable than other science subjects with 36 (or more like MCB), and much easier to put on the backburner without worrying too much about getting left behind. As for cramming during swotvac, its definitely possible, but the lack of practice material means that you'll have to have notes or something to look over to make sure you know everything.
The first few weeks were buried in terminology, due to the term 'memory' being broken down into various subsections and all the segments of the brain devoted to them. It didn't help that i found the lecturing style of our lecturer to be dull, with a heavy amount of brain anatomy that barely arose in the practice material/exam. An issue that arises here and in the later lectures on neuroimaging is that there are models, theories and studies which you are expected to recall just by the names of the people who conducted them, which can be difficult especially if the same people have done two studies in different years.
The two lectures on statistics were taught very enthusiastically by the lecturer, and you can't help appreciating his efforts to turn statistics into something actually interesting. The content basically boils down to being able to read SPSS (stats program) outputs, p value significance and the types of t-testing. I'd done statistics last year so was able to skim through it, but I think that even for people with no experience in statistics, these lectures would've still been fine and not too difficult.
The lectures on neuroimaging by Piers Howe were given really well, and Piers is a fun lecturer to have. He always made sure that everyone understood and explained points multiple times to make sure, with time to answer questions from the audience(a few students disagreed with this approach and tried to shoot down the person asking the question since they were 'wasting time,' still finished that lecture 5 minutes early anyway). I liked the approach of one lecture to explain the mechanisms of the imaging technique followed by one lecture to showcase studies using the technique, as it helped consolidate the mechanisms you were taught earlier (the above gripe does apply though, its difficult to remember all the details of the study based off the name of the writer).
The last few weeks were far less interesting, and felt like a amalgam of all the other 'stuff' that needed to be taught. It didn't help that the lecturer was pretty monotone and the theater was stuffy, the perfect combination for drowsiness. Apart from some interesting points on emotions, the content was pretty uninteresting, and a large diagram of different drugs and their mechanisms on neurotransmitter function to remember didn't help.

As for the tutorials, I had a nice tutor (Abbie Grace) who made them feel inviting and informal. Most of it was learning content that was complementary to the lecture material and never hard to understand. An exception is the fourth lab on MEG, another neuroimaging technique which probably couldn't fit into the lectures, as it was assessed just as much as the other techniques in the exam. Other than that you need to remember the case studies used in the tutorials (in the form of movies) and the illnesses they suffered.

The lab report assessments on the other hand were more difficult than expected. Our first and third tutorial was mostly devoted to this assessment by teaching us what to include in each section (make sure you listen in these tutorials as the slides are very barebones). However the APA 6th format used in the assessments was never taught and had to be learnt independently and followed exactly (italicise the t in t-test!!). I also feel that the marking scheme used is a bit vague and a little tough (70-80% for a section was 'good' or 'like a really good kind of good' according to our tutor). You definitely had to get everything right to get the higher marks, so don't be discouraged if you get a lower mark than you're used to in these assessments, especially since your inexperienced first effort is weighted just as much as your refined second attempt.

The exam was overall not too bad, and could be finished very quickly. Most of the questions were simply asking if you knew a certain point (except for the first ~40 on the first lecture block as they were written a bit strangely). John Trinder (last lecture block) and Piers (neuroimaging) used questions from the sample questions, which were basically free marks (the former included half of his 20 practice questions in his 30 question block). For neuroimaging, make sure you know the specific spatial and temporal resolutions of each technique (including MEG) as these comparisons showed up heavily in the exam. The statistics questions (10 of them) were fine as long as you understood p-values and types of t-test.

Overall, this subject had its highs and lows. Its not an easy subject by any means (mainly because of the assignments) but the content and the exam is manageable and only having 2 lectures a week makes it feel markedly less stressful. Just make sure you learn everything that shows up in those fewer lectures, because with 120 MCQ's to write, they like to put in things that were mentioned in passing. There are a few moments sprinkled in where you see something and go 'wow, that's really cool!,' and I feel that those with an interest in psychology will take more out of it than I did. Otherwise, its still a decent subject, and I don't regret choosing it.

EDIT: In September for some reason, we were given an email with the grade distributions for the subject. 25% H1's, with roughly 18% for the rest of the grades.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 20, 2014, 05:15:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10016: Mathematics for Biomedicine

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour practice class per week
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment: Ten written assignments due at weekly intervals throughout the semester amounting to a total of up to 50 pages of written work (25%); an oral presentation due during the semester (5%); and a 3-hour written examination conducted during the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: One sample exam is provided at the end of the semester. Suggested solutions are not given.

Textbook Recommendation: There is no textbook for this subject.

Lecturer(s): Assoc Prof Steven Carnie

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Honestly, I just can't put my finger on this subject and I have no idea how I'm going to get a useful review out of this. Throughout the semester I really couldn't explain how Mathematics for Biomedicine works to my friends and even now I'm struggling to describe it, despite having sat the exam for it and all. It's just a very unique and unusual subject indeed. When I really think about it, there isn't much wrong with this subject but for some reason I don't think I got the most out of it and I can't seem to justify giving this subject a higher rating.

Anyway, I'll try my best to push on with this review. So, Mathematics for Biomedicine hasn't changed a lot from semester 2 last year - the only thing they've decided to try for the first time this year was ask that all VCE Biology students enrol in this subject in semester 1 and for the students with no prior knowledge in Biology to enrol in semester 2. To be honest, I think the only reason they did this was to roughly split the cohort in half and assign the MAST subjects like that, rather than have people randomly enrol (which could potentially lead to a skew). The assumed biological knowledge is minimal and rather simplistic, so I don't think it would have posed too many issues for new Biology students.

In the first lecture you'll be told that this subject is all about the techniques you come across - it's not about memorising or anything like that. It's difficult to get your head around, but that's what the focus of the subject is. Appreciate (and understand) each technique and you will do fine in this subject. On the other hand, if you try to deal with this subject like a VCE Maths subject and try to find common question types (and not focus on the techniques) or the like, it won't work (and that was probably my mistake). For example, making a bound reference, despite being a huge help for me in VCE, failed to work here (you're not allowed to take any notes or a CAS into the exam anyway but I'm explaining this in terms of a study technique). A lot of people say that Maths and a lecture format just don't seem to work very well and after this semester I probably have to agree with this. It's not the ideal scenario but it's the only option and all Maths students are basically in the same boat, so you'll just have to try your best and get used to it.

This will also be emphasised to you once you start the subject but it's important to realise that Mathematics for Biomedicine does not follow down the path of Specialist Mathematics. I'm pretty sure there's only two things that tie in a bit with Specialist Maths, otherwise the subject is really an extension of the Mathematical Methods (CAS) course (albeit in a completely different and new direction). When they looked at the results from semester 2 last year, they found that Specialist Maths students and non Specialist Maths students had the same average, so having Specialist Maths under your belt will confer no significant advantage. To give you an idea of how well the students perform in this subject, the average for semester 2 2013 was 74% overall.

Assoc Prof Steven Carnie designed this course and takes every single lecture over the course of the semester (in semester 2 Dr Anthony Morphett takes the subject). He's definitely not a bad lecturer but for some reason I just couldn't seem to focus very well in this subject. Maybe it was the fact that it would the third lecture in a row, after Biology and Chemistry. The university seems to take quite a bit of pride in the fact that this subject is pretty much unlike any other you'll ever find, which is why there is no textbook for this subject. After the rather significant issues that plagued this subject in its first semester, the department has remained really diligent in asking us for feedback and making sure that the course is not too difficult. The main survey conducted half way through the semester showed that most people found the subject difficult but the lecturer said that this is where the subject should be sitting and that if the university is not challenging us then they are not doing their job. In my opinion, this is fair enough, and the results were consistent with all the other first year Mathematics subjects on offer (apparently last year the major indicator that there was an issue was the fact that MAST10016 was deemed "too difficult" by most students and this was not consistent with the other subjects). Most people had no issue with the pace of the lectures.

The first topic you'll deal with is population genetics, which has a lot to do with and leads on nicely from the probability unit in VCE Mathematical Methods (CAS). As a result, many people weren't keen on it but given that probability was actually my favourite I didn't really mind learning this. I guess I also wanted to explore some of the mathematical concepts only briefly mentioned in the VCE Biology Unit 4 course a little bit more too and I was excited that Maths and Biology could in fact blend together. In the end, it didn't really live up to my expectations, but it wasn't too bad. At first a lot of the stuff is just basic probability techniques from Methods but as you move along you start to pick up some new techniques as well. You will cover the basic modes of inheritance (essentially Punnett squares - without the use of Punnett squares), but also larger population models and how various autosomal and sex-linked allele frequencies evolve over time, and in response to factors such as selection, or random chance in the case of small populations. Then for the next four or so weeks you'll cover systems biology, which deals with reaction mechanisms and enzyme pathways. There is a bigger emphasis on this topic this year in response to students in the past struggling with enzyme kinetics in the second year core subject BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine. The last couple of weeks deal with infectious disease modelling, which I thought at first would make up the majority of the subject and I was looking forward to learn. Again, it didn't live up to my expectations but it wasn't too bad either. You'll take a look at various models for describing the spread of a disease in a population and the final consequences that can arise depending on various factors including vaccination. Systems biology and infectious disease modelling both use the same sorts of techniques and most people seem to prefer them because the approach is a bit more methodical than population genetics. As a result, most people at the end of the semester feel the least confident on population genetics, so do your best to set a good foundation for yourself in this area.

Each week you'll receive an assignment (there are ten assignments in total) to complete. The assignments are worth 25% of your grade overall (some of the assignments are worth 2% while others are worth 3%). The assignments are generally manageable, although sometimes they threw a hard one at us only because the results amongst the cohort were generally exceptionally high. The good thing is that in order to complete them satisfactorily they force you to go back over the lectures and stay there until you understand the theory, which is great for your understanding. You will be expected to complete them by hand and you will need to not only show all workings out, but explain or justify them and interpret your answers. Most people lose marks in their first few assignments for not doing this enough but eventually everyone figures out what the expectations are. Use the lecture notes as a guide, but if in doubt I suggest writing and explaining too much than too little. Most of my explanations were probably ridiculously long but then again I never really lost marks for bad explanations either. My tutor was pretty big on thorough explanations anyway so it was a good habit to get into. In some of the assignments, you'll be asked to use some programmed Excel spreadsheets (attention Macbook users: the assignments cannot be completed through the Numbers application) or other Java applets, accessible through the LMS, and print out your results. Pay attention during lectures because the lecturer will explain how to use them (it can get pretty confusing otherwise - trust me, I had to learn the hard way :P ). Try to avoid leaving the assignments to the last minute in case you realise you need help or technology fails you. Make sure you submit them with all the required details on time and in the correct assignment box. People lose marks over little things like forgetting their details on print outs and there was an incident this semester where one student got zero for an assignment because she submitted it into the wrong box. You don't want to lose marks that way.

The other main assessment over the course of the semester is to deliver an oral presentation during your tutorial, which is worth 5% of your grade. Some people don't understand the point of this assessment but since I don't mind delivering presentations it wasn't an issue for me. The topics are either biological in nature (i.e. they have nothing to do with Maths whatsoever) or they can ask you to explain a concept or discuss a real-life example and link it back to the concepts covered in the subject. The easier topics are at the start of the semester so get in early (for example I got in with the very first topic which was to select an autosomal disorder and discuss its effects and prevalence - easy stuff). It's not like an English oral presentation where you get rigorously marked on your presentation skills (e.g. voice, eye contact etc.) - as long as you meet the given criteria, give an acceptable presentation (so don't deliver your speech too poorly) and you don't do anything stupid, you will get full marks. Most people in my tutorial got full marks, except for some individuals who did something really silly. For example, one person thought it would be a good idea to write up their whole speech on the whiteboard. Another had to talk about the Fibonacci sequence, expect they didn't know it and they wrote it up on the board wrong - not to mention that they looked completely lost throughout their whole presentation anyway. You're allowed to write on the whiteboard or print out visuals if you want, but you can't use any powerpoint or keynote presentations only because there's probably no computer or projector in the tutorial room. Try your best to address all aspects of the criteria and I assure you that you will be fine.

The tutorials themselves are quite helpful in getting feedback so I suggest going to them. Just like most other MAST subjects, you will be given a tutorial sheet with some questions and you'll get together in small groups and work them out on the whiteboards. This is your main opportunity to ask your tutor any questions or for them to check that you're setting up your answers correctly. Although, as two presentations are given every tutorial, you probably won't finish all the questions, which is a little bit annoying. My tutor was Dr Anthony Morphett and in my opinion he was brilliant. I know you can't find out which tutors are taking which classes during timetabling, but if someone you know ends up in one of his classes, see if you can move into it as well. I lost one tutorial because of Good Friday so I sat in on another tutorial with another tutor who was nowhere near as good.

For practice, you will also be provided with an exercise sheet at the end of every week. Unfortunately, this means that you won't be able to really consolidate the information you learnt on Monday until the weekend - something I struggled with a lot - and you'll have to go back and re-learn some of the content again before having a go at the questions. For those of you taking this subject in semester 2, my advice is to find someone who did the subject in semester 1 and ask them to save their exercise sheets for you, so that you can work through the questions straight after the lecture and consolidate your knowledge properly. The questions are designed to be challenging; some of them will also ask you to use technology while others will ask you to derive a concept which was deemed too difficult to cover during lecture time. Even though the things that use technology obviously won't be feasible in the exam, don't skip over them as they tend to highlight an important aspect of a concept, which may help you understand or could even be useful in an assessment. The exam is designed to have more accessible questions than those on the exercise sheets so don't stress out if you can't do them all. However, they're still worth doing since they can help you understand some topics better, or they will force you like the assignments to go back over the lecture notes again. If you can do most of the exercise sheet questions by the end of the semester, you should be feeling confident for your exam.

A lot of the time you spend your lectures going through theory or working through a lengthy derivation and unfortunately hardly any time is dedicated to going through example questions. To be honest, I think this is why I found it so difficult to concentrate and engage with the lectures - it's incredibly easy to lose sight of it all. A lot of the techniques feel cumbersome and a little bit as if they're not real Mathematics. While you should do your best to understand them, you're not expected to perform any derivations (other than verifying a solution, which isn't too difficult) on the exam; generally speaking, the summary notes provided on the tutorial sheets are sufficient enough to get by. As a result, you're often left wondering what on earth an exam question would look like (well, at least until you receive your sample exam at the end of the semester anyway). The assignment questions are more interested in dealing with small intricacies in the course in great depth, the tutorial questions are kept on the simple side and the exercise sheets are quite difficult, and none of them are like the questions on the exam (you'll understand as soon as you see the types of questions you get asked on each sheet). I hope that this will be addressed in future semesters - either going through more examples (and how to go about setting out your answers) during lectures, providing sample questions at the end of lectures, or maybe even a mid-semester test just to get exposed to some exam questions and see how much you really understand.

The final three hour exam is worth 70% of your overall grade and in my case was fairly similar in difficulty to the sample exam provided. Most people found it pretty fair, with no major issues. You're only allowed a scientific calculator on the approved list of calculators (provided for you at the start of the semester) into the exam - if you want to use another one you will need to get specific approval for it.

This subject isn't a bad one - the staff are competent and very organised, there are plenty of additional resources to support your learning and the assessment is pretty fair - but at the same time it can also be challenging to figure out where you're going over the course of the semester. In the end, it won't be too bad but I hope that something might be done to address this in the future. That's all I can think of for now but if you have any further questions please feel free to ask. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on June 20, 2014, 06:14:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10017 - Guitar Cultures and Practice 

Workload: 1 x 1 hour lecture per week. 1 x 2 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  1 x 500 word essay (15%), 1 x 1000 word essay (25%), Practical guitar test (30%), Listening test (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, WITHOUT screen capture

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  You get given all that you need (except a guitar duhh)

Lecturer(s): Ken, Adam and some other guy

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 - semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 88

Comments:

So I shall try do this in quite detail since it's the first review of the subject. And firstly, you definitely can do this subject if you haven't played guitar at all and still do well.

Content:
Lectures each week are pointless and you do not need to attend them as their content is never actually assessed (will get to that later). If you do go, basically, he talks about a different genre each week. He goes through the history, the major influences, some notable pieces. Rarely is there any actual detail on musical theory components of the individual styles unless there is something really unique or prominent in that style (eg: rasgueado in flamenco, slides and bends in blues).  The guitar styles are, blues, flamenco, country, choro, british folk, american folk and some others that I can't remember. The lectures are recorded but only the audio. This was the first year that it was recorded and I don't know if it will continue. Within the lectures they also present what is called the prescribed listening and talk a bit about it (more of this later) however in the lecture capture, these parts have to be cut out for copyright issues.
As I said, history and why this style emerged is the predominating content of the lecture. Boringgggggggggggg  :P
Additionally there are the tutes. Essentially you play guitar for 2 hours. You get a booklet at the start of the semester with many pieces, some scales which are specific for each genre. Each tute then is focused around playing those pieces in the tute. The pieces are very simple pieces so don't be deterred if you don't play guitar.
That is a quick run down of content but for more detail just email the coordinator.

Assessment:
Each week, through the LMS you can access the prescribed reading (lol prescribed). The use of this is ONLY for essays and is NOT assessed in anything else besides the essays. For the essays, you are given a choice of around 10ish topics(1 for each genre). An example of these is something like, "describe the influence ____ guitarist had on _____ genres" or "Compare and contrast the two techniques of guitarists ____ and ____". Pretty much ALL that you need to write the essay is in the prescribed reading, however, to get a high grade mark you also need to reference other sources. These sources are generally given to you by your tutor (Grove and Oxford are the two online ones you want if you can't be bothered going to the actual library). While the essays don't take you long to write, the sourcing of the info definitely takes a while to do. HOT tip for extra marks on the essay is to follow all the instructions on here. Especially the general presentation stuff and sorting your bibliography alphabetically. Stuff like that, while not necessary is the difference between an 80 something and a 90 something.  Additionally, you can not source the lectures. Hence why I say lectures are predominantly useless. The only thing that is relatively helpful is the prescribed listening stuff but even that is fine without lectures (I didn't go to 90% of lectures).

What is the prescribed listening you ask? Each week, you get given 4 pieces to listen to (making 40 or so in total) and a bunch of info about the song. The listening test assesses you on these pieces. In the listening test you all sit in the lecture theatre and they play the first one minute of 20 out of the 40  songs in a random order. You get the minute it is playing and an additonal minute of silence to write down the era (to the decade), the genre(choro, flamenco, etc) and 3 things about the song ( it uses open G tuning, this song set the standard for this genre, this song uses ____ to do ____). It sounds a lot harder than it is, because often you can just be like 'oh i heard some slides and pull offs, i'll just write that down and bam there's a mark. You can cram for it in a couple of days, but it is very painful and not advised. Seriously, I speak from experience, don't do what I did.... Best way to prep for it is to download the songs (using a schneaky chrome app) and then put them on shuffle and just keep testing yourself by writing down the answers you would have to put in the test. Additionally, I recommend learning week by week and just progressively adding the next week to your playlist shuffle.

The last form of assessment is ofcourse the practical exam. This is where I want to say don't be deterred if you don't play guitar. The array of songs they give you to play range from very basic to slightly more complicated but still reasonably basic. If you have never played guitar at all, you WILL have to work to do well but judging from others in my tute class, they picked it up pretty quickly. I have been playing the guitar for 3ish years very casually and I could essentially play most pieces when I first saw the piece. You don't need to know musical notation at all, it's all done through guitar tablature. A basic knowledge of the difference between the different symbols in terms of how many beats they represent would be helpful, though they teach you that anyway. An experienced player doing the subject is not marked down because he/she chose an easy subject(so they say) and nor are they marked up for doing a more difficult song. That said, where's the fun in doing something that's not actually a challenge! ;D
In the guitar practical, you have to perform 3 scales, 1 warmup piece and 3 songs. I have heard from other people that did the subject both semesters that they think the guitar practical isn't harshly assessed at all. My guess is something similar, I think as long as you played the song through to the end without going 'oh shit let me do that bit again,' and as long as your rhythm is right I don't think they really mind if you make a couple of mistakes as long as you just keep playing through them.

I think that is about it.

Overall, great subject, a nice lvl 1 GPA booster for those who play guitar or a nice opportunity for those that have maybe learned a couple of chords but have never really gotten around to learning. For those people(the learned a couple of chords but nothing fancy at all people) I strongly recommend the subject if you have an interest in it, it will really develop your skills as a guitarist if you take it seriously. For those who have a year or so experience, I can't say I enjoyed the subject enough that it was worth the grand and GPA boost. I could have achieved what I did this semester simply with the book and self practice, and the essay assessment and listening test was boring to study for. Though tutes were still great fun (Except for the first one).

PM me for any questions
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on June 20, 2014, 10:07:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW20001: Corporate Law

Workload:  1x 2-hr lecture, 1x 1-hr tutorial

Assessment:  25% Assignment, 75% Exams

Lectopia Enabled: Yes (only Audio)

Past exams available:  Yes, past exams included in the reading guide; Tute questions also past exam questions!

Textbook Recommendation:  Commercial Applications of Company Law - need to buy

Lecturer(s): Helen Anderson

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 85 (H1)

Comments:

All lecture notes are uploaded before the start of the semester; print them out and bind them like a book! Really convenient

Overall, this subject has been handled really, really well. Helen is, by far, one of the most organised subject coordinators in Melbourne Uni (at least in my opinion). Plus, she really really teaches well. The tutors for the subject are very well coordinated. So far, this has been one of my best subject experiences.

In terms of lectures, as said, one 2 hour lectures per week. Some lectures are more dense than the others, but all in all, Helen pretty much provides all necessary information we need to learn about the topic. She even gives glimpses of the Corporations Act 2001 on austlii every now and then. She's quite annoyed by little chatter so expect some "quiet there lady at the middle" statements from time to time. Content-wise, kinda dry...especially when it comes to directors' duties, share capital maintenance, and corporate contratcs. But it is to be expected given that it is a business law subject.

Compared to Tax Law (which I have done before doing Corp Law), I found Corp Law much harder to get around with because there are huge chunks of topics that are always bunched together, and when it comes to legal questions, it's much trickier to answer Corp Law questions than Tax Law ones. But I digress. All in all, despite the dryness of the content, the lectures are not boring. Helen gives discussions on interesting case laws and provides situational examples to complicated topics that are really helpful in learning the content, so make sure to do the pre-lecture reading (makes life much easier) and attend all lectures (listening to audio recordings just won't do). Note that there are only 10 weeks of actual content; Week 8 lecture serves as a mid-semester revision lecture (a.k.a. wake-up call for those still 'asleep', and Week 12 lecture serves as the revision lecture.

In tutorials, you talk about approaches on how to deal with legal cases. Some people who do Corp Law have no experience whatsoever in writing for legal cases (because PBL doesn't teach students to do that....) so there's gonna be an introduction to IRAC and legal writing which definitely helps. There are also helpful information about "Legal Writing for Non-Law Students" in the reading guide. The good thing about tutorials is that tutors aim to try to make things easier to understand (as I said, Corp Law questions are quite tricky) by drawing diagrams of corporate relationships, who's a director and who's the outsider, etc. Attend all tutorials and answer pre-tute work so (1) you don't get lost and you at least know what the tutor's talking about, and (2) you get a feel of the type of legal questions are gonna be asked in the assignment and the exam.

In prior years I believe the assignment was optional and only weighed 15% (that means if you opt to NOT to the assignment, the exam becomes 100% of your final grade). Now, they made sure everyone does the assignment and increased the weighting to 25% of the final grade. The assignment is relatively easy. The scope is from the first four weeks of lecture, and maximum word count is strictly 1,200. In our case there were three questions, and it not only tests you of the substance, but also of the form of your answer. It shouldn't strictly follow IRAC (I don't usually follow the IRAC) but it should at least neatly present the issue, identify applicable statutory and case laws, apply it to the case facts, and present a conclusion. Some people find it difficult to obtain good marks for this assignment because they fail to identify the issue correctly.

The exam is open book. It's a 2-hour exam with 30 minutes reading time (previously 3 hours) with just three questions (2 medium-sized cases and 1 long case). Pretty easy and very doable if you've exerted lots of effort in revising. Tips:
1) Make good summaries. Summaries that you can actually refer to in times of panic.
2) Make notes that are easy to understand. Even though it's an open book exam, it is very difficult to rely on the textbook for notes especially in a time-attack situation (you can probably refer to the legislation section at the back part of the book if it's not in your summary, but the content? difficult). Again, the need for a well-written summary is critical.
3) Answer ALL past exam questions. Re-do ALL tutorial questions. Have a look back at the assignment question and solution. Start revising in Week 11. Go to Helen's consultation the day before the exam (very critical and helpful indeed!). These suggestions will definitely help you 'master' the art of writing for legal cases and help you, in a way, to remember your notes, legislations, and cases that you'll need in answering the question (so you can save precious time by not referring to your notes every now and then).

As you can see, this subject is not that bad. It's just really effort-intensive. This subject is required for Accounting students for CA/CPA Accreditation  :P Also, this is a good 'preview' of studying law if you want to do JD.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on June 20, 2014, 10:44:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: GEOM30009 Imaging the Environment 

Workload:  1x2 hour hour lecture (actually went for about 1:15 on avg.) and 1x2 hour practical computer lab class

Assessment:  4 assignments worth 10% each, 3 hour exam worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 3 under the format

Textbook Recommendation:  Nein

Lecturer(s): Joe Leach

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2014

Rating:  2.75 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: Great coursework, poor delivery of content.

Comments:
This has the makings of a really interesting and valuable subject for geomatics, engineering and breadth students interested in the huge field of remote sensing. However, this semester it was poorly organised and executed by the staff.

As mentioned, it focuses on remote sensing, and you will broadly look at topics including image interpretation, planetary remote sensing, geological and environmental imaging, image display and rectification, and techniques of satellite and aerial imaging. None of this is particularly complicated as this subject does not even approach the math that underlies most of these concepts, just introduces the concepts itself. Not a lot of new material is really introduced if you have already done GEOM subjects in first and second year, so its a very, very incremental subject and doesn't require too much effort to understand the content.

The lectures themselves are a bit dull. As mentioned, a lot of the content rehashes or slightly expands on what other GEOM subjects have already covered, so its really about consolidation rather than any real challenge. Joe speaks extremely slowly, and I found you can basically speed a lecture recording up by about 1.7x without missing a beat. The slides themselves aren't particularly well constructed; they are basically just a series of scanned images with very little text. In some cases, the lecture material is quite dated and in need of a complete revamp. Joe also never seems to respond to emails, and it wasn't until week 7 (and presumably 10s or 100s of emails) that the link to the current year's lecture recordings was provided.

But that said, the strength of this subject is the hand-on practicals and assignments. Unlike many other geomatics subjects, Imaging doesn't have fieldwork pracs, rather it has computer lab pracs. All of the assignments are heavily completed within the pracs, and Joe, the lecturer, turns up to introduce all the assignments.

The assignments involve read-world applications of the things you learn in the lectures. The first is probably the easiest assignment you will ever do at Uni, as it basically involves describing what you see in a set of images. That's it. The difficulty picks up a bit with the second assignment, where you have to do a crater count using satellite imagery of Mars to discern its age. Then you move onto image processing, as with assignment 3 you use band selection and image stretching to display the Port Phillip bay area in a range of spectral configurations. You then delve into the imagery and discern how features change under different configurations. Assignment 4 involves doing more complicated band ratios and algorithms for essentially the same task (i.e. identifying land use patterns). Below is an example of the sort of results that this yields.

Images
Full-IR Composite of Port Phillip Bay
(http://i.imgur.com/LC9mQ61.png)

NDVI Vegetation Index of New York, Philadelphia and Surrounds
(http://i.imgur.com/9LG1rmj.png)

None of these assignments are at all complicated or particularly difficult if you know how to use a computer. However, the results themselves must be accompanied by fairly detailed and lengthy editions of your bog-standard scientific reports, with aim, method, results, discussion and the like. Anyone who has done Mapping Environments will be well versed in this, but as all these are individual assignments rather than group assignments it can end up being a lot of work. Additionally, you are asked to address a lot of topics and "think laterally" (I hate that term) in these discussions and there is no stringent word limit. In one assignment, I ended up with over 4000 words.

So from here stems my major complaint of the subject: assignments should be worth a greater percentage of the final mark. They are a lot of work, they truly reflect your understanding of the content, and they are by far the defining feature of the subject. I'd have them worth 15% each at the very least, and maybe even 20%, with a 2 hour exam being introduced to cover the remaining % of assessment.

And while I'd hope it's atypical of the subject normally, the lone tutor, Victoria (who many that have done other GEOM subjects would likely be familiar with), had major IT issues which hugely delayed the release of marks and feedback. I got my first assignment back 6 weeks after submission, second assignment back 7 weeks after submission, third assignment back 5 weeks after submission, and am still waiting on the last assignment (this is on the day after the exam). IT issues are rarely an acceptable excuse to get an extension for an assignment, so it should be the same for marking them.

This also illustrates that this subject is understaffed, and this is detrimental to its quality. The budget is very tight in the geomatics and engineering departments, but this subject needs more than a single tutor for a cohort of roughly 150 students. Each of these students submits 4 assignments of roughly 1500-2500 words each, leaving a single tutor to mark 600 assignments over the semester, which is frankly insane.

However, this review is probably redundant already, as Joe is retiring at the end of the semester and the subject is due for an overhaul/reworking. As I said, with the right tweaks this could be a really good subject. The assignments are enjoyable and valuable, the content is minimal in its exclusively but adds a certain amount of depth to its students knowledge of the field and, as with all geomatics subjects, the pracs and tutorials are very well run (I'd say this department probably has the best tutors I've come – much, much better than general engineering subjects anyway).

All in all I gave it a very indecisive 2.75/5, but with some minor improvements it could easily be a 4/5.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on June 20, 2014, 10:47:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20001 Principles of Genetics

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial each week

Assessment: Three MSTs each worth 10%, 2 hour exam during the exam period 70%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, a stack of them from previous years. More than you'd ever need, but no answers of course.

Textbook Recommendation:  Introductio to Genetic Analysis (Griffiths). Not need in the slightest.

Lecturer(s):

Ronald Lee (2-9) on Mendelian Inheritance
Chris Cobbett (10-12) on Non-Mendelian Inheritance
Alex Andrianopolous (13-22) on Bacterial, Viral and Special Eukaryotic (fungal) Genetics
Phil Batterham (22-35) on Population Genetics

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80 (H1)

Comments: If you're looking for an easy selective, this truly is it. It's easy to the point that I suspect some people do badly because they took it for granted and did no work (I suspect that's what will happen to me—was written before I got my mark). The concepts are not difficult and the questions are very straight forward. You're also not expected to know tiny little details. Everything is a principle, everything has a purpose. This fact is actually great because it makes the subject feel like it is testing your thinking and testing your ability to science, rather than just seeing how much useless information you can spit up.

Mendelian Inheritance
The first part of the course deals with Mendelian inheritance. As indicated above, this is taught by Ronald Lee. Undoubtedly, this is the most difficult part of the course. For what reason, I'm not entirely sure. It is true that the content you learn in this part of the course does present its challenges, but what truly does make this section difficult is the lecturing. One of my friends remarked to me that they walked into the lectures feeling like they knew a concept and walked out of the lecture feeling like they'd unlearned it. Ronald is enthusiastic and spends a lot of time answering students e-mails, which are both commendable attributes, but at the same time he is completely incapable of explaining anything he teaches. I have never seen a cohort so disappointed and frustrated with the quality of teaching.

With that out of mind, Mendelian inheritance essentially expands on what we've already learned in Biol the previous year. The majority of this part of the course deals with the three point cross. In first year biol, the three point cross is presented in a simple form, where the genes are autosomal, are definitely linked and not under any form of epistatic influence. Mendelian inheritance presents some of those factors and how they can be dealt with when trying to map genes.

The MST that dealt with this section and non-Mendelian inheritance was particularly challenging, though with that said most students did quite well. My biggest gripe with it was that there was a multiple choice question worth five marks. So even if you knew 95% of the process, you still stood to lose 100% of the marks and quite a chunk of your score for that MST. From memory, those 5 marks translated to about 1-2% of your overall score, which is a reasonable chunk for one question.

If Drosophila and linkage mapping get you going, you'll enjoy this part of the course.

Non-Mendelian Inheritance
This is a very minor part of the course and only appears in a couple of questions on the exam. It is also the easiest part of the course. It takes a basic look at how mitochondria and chloroplasts genetics works and what the inheritance patterns look like for these organelles. Maternal effect inheritance is also explained, which is actually pretty interesting. There are some gene products that are inserted into an organism during early development by the mother. This means that the phenotype of that organism isn't dependent upon its own genome, but rather, that of its mother.

Bacterial, Viral and Special Eukaryotic Genetics
This is Alex Andrianopolous' part of the course. It's a pity he comes in after Ronald and Chris, because he's great. Sadly, a lot of students have given up on lectures for this subject by that point and Alex probably doesn't pull the crowds and attention that he really deserves. He explains things really well and navigates what are really quite some difficult topics really well.

This section of the course also involves a lot of mapping. Essentially, you're setting out to map bacterial chromosomes in this section. It's hard to explain quickly, but it's a fairly interesting part of the course. You can use bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) to work out the location of genes on bacterial chromosomes in much the same way you'd map a Drosophila. What I've just described is using transduction. There's also quite a bit about bacteriophage genetics, and you do need to remember certain facts about bacteriophage themselves. So you'll need to know the difference between a T4 bacteriophage and a λ bacteriophage. More specifically, you'll need to know how much DNA they can package in their head and how they do their replication and packaging. You also need to know some details about their capacity for lysogeny. This is a bit of memory work, but again, it actually does reply quite well to the principles. There's also a little bit of talk about fungal genetics, but I was so far past caring about this subject by that point I really can't add anything about it.

The MST for this section of Principles is relatively simple, though it must be said that it does provide a couple of challenges. By following the lectures carefully, you really can't go wrong. There are only so many ways you can skin a cat!

Population Genetics
Phil Batterham takes this part of the course. He's quite well renowned as a "science communicator" and has a role in the Uni working on that sort of thing (Provost's Fellow for Student Experience). I was honestly surprised when I found that out, because personally I found him to be fairly bland and found his explanations quite difficult to follow. Population genetics is not a difficult part of the course. It essentially deals with predicting changes of allele frequencies in a gene pool over time. This part of genetics I find absolutely fascinating, personally. The major issue with population genetics in Principles was that they teach it "without maths". Phil never derives any of the formulae or tries to explain the maths behind them. Without providing any proof for the formulae, it can be very difficult to appreciate how they work and what their importance is. It's kind of like being given 25 pieces to a 100 piece puzzle. Sure, you'll get some information out of it, but you'll never get the picture you're looking for. This was exceptionally frustrating particularly after taking Maths for Biomed with Anthony Morphett, in which we focused on population genetics for quite some time. It was a much more satisfying approach—perhaps they should consider giving Morph a call!

The MST for this was beautiful. It was the last piece of assessment I did all semester (other than an exam) and I left it until after my last class. Best. Decision. Ever. It took no more than five of the 60 minutes allocated and was the easiest test I'd done. I spent the whole hour (no shit) checking it because I thought it was too easy. These weren't only my feelings either, I should point out. Everyone found it unbelievably simple.

Bottom line: a good easy subject for a selective. The assessment is bullshit. It shouldn't be an MCQ only subject and this makes it unbelievably unfair. When a lucky guess can be worth 2% of your mark, you know there's something major wrong with the assessment. Lecturing is pretty poor, save for Alex, but this subject will never stress you with the workload so it's probably worth it. Also a prereq for a major in Genetics, if you swing that way.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on June 21, 2014, 12:43:50 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC30016 - Social and Emotional Development

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures and 1 lab class/tutorial on alternate weeks (for us, it was weeks 2,3,5,8 & 11)

Assessment: One lab report of 2000 words (worth 40%),  2 hour exam (of 100 MCQs) during the exam period (worth 60%). Lab class attendance is hurdle and you can miss only 1 lab class throughout the semester without a medical certificate/documentation

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: No, but we were given practice Qs

Prescribed Textbook: Social & Personality Development (David R Shaffer, 6th Edition) (unlike other psych subjects, we used this textbook quite a bit. The subject content is basically derived from the chapters of the textbook and I thought the book was really good at elaborating on concepts/studies and written in a way that was easy to understand LOL).

Lecturer(s): Dr. Heidi Gazelle (takes all the lectures except for those covered by Professor Nick Allen - he takes the lectures on evolution/behavioural genetics, emotions, temperament and attachment theory).
Having done Developmental Psychology (PSYC20008) in 2nd year will be beneficial (as a lot of concepts are repeated/elaborated upon) but it's not essential (definitely NOT a pre-req).

Lecture topics covered (across 24 lectures):
History and Themes of Child Development, Research Methods and Designs, Peer Acceptance, Theories of Child Development (Freud, Behavioural Genetics, Evolution, Erickson, Behaviourism, Social Learning), Emotions and Temperament, Self-Concept, Attachment Theory & Influences on Attachment, Self Development, Social Cognition, Achievement Motivation & Influences on Achievement, Sex Differences in Development, Androgeny and Sexuality, Theories of Aggression & its Influences, Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour, Moral Development, Family & familial variations, Schooling, Friends, and Media Integration in Child Development. All topics are focused mainly on infant and child development into adolescence :)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments: This was my last psych-elective subject and I really enjoyed it! It's not a very "science-y" psych subject and so the content is straightforward that you can think about in the context of real life child behaviour and development. Basically, if you think the development of emotional and social capabilities in children is interesting, then this subject is for you! I've mentioned the topics covered in lectures above, and it seems like a lot (which in psych subjects is normal LOL) but actually it's 2x 1-hour lectures per week so that's why the content is expanded out into 24 lectures :) This subject is a bit content-heavy (though the content itself is not too difficult and is actually super interesting if you're into this field of psych).

The assessment for this subject is a lab report and MCQ-based exam. The exam is 100 MCQs in 2 hours (but you should be able to finish well before that :) ). The lab report involved us getting acquainted with the PIOS (Peer Interaction Observation System) and using results from SPSS to form our own research Q and rationale about one of the peer observational codes (and a corresponding peer response). So each student would've most likely had a different research Q. I chose to do mine on child aggression and  passive/active exclusion by peers. For the lab report, try to make your intro and discussion sections elaborate and avoid putting it unnecessary 'general' information about child development (you only have 2000 words and no 10% leeway). Also in your discussion, try justifying or explaining your results in terms of typical child development concepts for that age group (e.g. our study had mainly 3 year olds iirc and so you could make links to absence of Theory of Mind or poor emotional self regulation etc depending on what your results were and whether they were significant or not).

The exam was basically assessing our knowledge of content from lectures and textbook readings. It was all MCQs (unlike 2nd year Dev Psych where we had MCQs and short answer essay style Qs). If you had a fairly good understanding of all the lectures (and revised/crammed to some extent in swotvac like me haha) you would manage fine in the exam :D Although a lot of studies were covered in this subject, don't worry about memorising each and every name and matching it to the correct study, because there weren't any Qs like that in the exam :) I thought the exam was fair; it did have some Qs which I found a bit difficult and some 'applying knowledge' to a scenario Qs but other than that I thought the Qs were a good representation of lecture content :)

So if you're interested in learning about how different influences (e.g. attachment, emotional regulation, temperament, sex, family, parenting styles, media, aggression etc) shape the normal (or sometimes abnormal) emotional, social and personality development of children (starting from infancy) then you might really enjoy this subject :D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jeppikah on June 21, 2014, 02:51:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: PATH30001 Mechanisms of Human Disease

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture per week

Assessment:  2 x 1 hour multiple choice tests in semester (45 questions) worth 20% each. 1 x 3 hour exam worth 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No. Although I highly recommend searching up “Pathology” in the past exams site. Look for subject codes 531-3xx. Some questions are still relevant for the syllabus.

Textbook Recommendation:  Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease(Kumar V. et al.). It is stated that this textbook is compulsory in the first lecture and that wider reading is expected. Honestly, I would recommend having access to the book because I found it really helpful to clarify some of the ambiguous lecture slides. Many of the lectures are just summarised versions of the textbook so it is perhaps faster to go through the book than to Google.

Lecturer(s): A whole bunch. Here they are if you’re really interested.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating:  2.5 of 5

Comments:

I really felt like there wasn’t well-coordinated. There are quite a few lecturers in their subject and they all kind of go about doing their own thing. This really became evident in the midsemester tests because a set of questions that were supposed to be on the first test came up on the second test instead (of course, these questions did not end up counting to the final mark). Although, I may also be biased because I also completed Molecules to Malady at the same time, which was brilliantly coordinated by Helen Cain and really well-structured in my opinion. I also never received replies regarding some questions I emailed to the coordinator.

Be prepared for a lot of ROTE learning. This is not a subject where you can look at a complex diagram or table and say “Oh, they wouldn’t expect us to remember that”. From the words of the coordinator himself, the multiple choice questions are testing us on little details. Probably the only thing that didn’t really come up was the specific percentage numbers related to epidemiology although it still may be required to identify certain trends (eg. is a disease more prevalent in males or females?).

Vicki Lawson was my favourite lecturer, just because I feel like her slides and her presentation is the most concise and you wouldn’t really feel like you need additional material asides from what is provided in her lecture notes. The questions she asks are usually quite fair as long as you have studied her lecture notes.

The final exam was 3 hours, consisting of 34 MCQs, 12 short answer questions and 2 essay-style questions. The MCQs are examined over all topics, unlike some other subjects which only examine MCQs based off lectures not already tested on midsemester tests. The short answer questions were worth 3 marks each and included questions like “List 3 things”, “Describe”, “Compare 3 points” and fill in the blanks. I didn’t enjoy the fill in the blanks because there was no word bank and sometimes it’s difficult to really understand what they are looking for specifically.

There were 2 essay questions to answer. With each essay, there were 4 choices available. We were given the general topics of the choices (not the actual question obviously). Our first essay topic was: injury, inflammation, healing and immunopathology. Our second essay topic was: central nervous system, renal injury, genetics and cancer. I recommend just coming up with your own essay question related to these topics and practising on that. For instance, “pneumonia vs ARDS”, “Crohn’s vs UC”, “Discuss the mediators and process of inflammation”, etc.

Oh. I really dislike lecturers that upload lecture slides where there is one powerpoint slide in portrait mode per page. Ugh. Prepare yourself for that. (Just a rant)

Overall, I didn’t really enjoy this subject, just because I felt overwhelmed at times with the amount of information and the vagueness of the lecture slides. If it wasn’t for the crossover between my other subjects (Principles of Immunology and Molecules to Malady), I felt like I would have really struggled. I definitely wouldn't pick this subject if you want something easy with a low workload. Having said that, I’m sure this subject is completely soft compared to what you have to learn in Medicine so maybe it might be a way to get a small taste of learning about a bunch of different diseases.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 22, 2014, 06:28:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: ITAL10001: Italian 3 (also ITAL20007: Italian 3)

The two subject codes relate to whether you're taking the subject as a first year or a second year (or more accurately as a level 1 or a level 2 subject - this may be important for breadth reasons).

Workload:
Contact Hours: 4 hours. 1 x 2-hour seminar and 1 x 1-hour seminar per week. 1 x 1-hour tutorial per week.
- The two hour seminar is your language class, with a focus on reading and writing about a particular topic or theme. The one hour seminar is your grammar class, focussing solely on learning and consolidating grammar points. The tutorial is your conversation class, obviously focussing on developing your speaking and listening skills.
Total Time Commitment: 8 hours per week, including 4 hours of class time. Total 96 hours.

Assessment:

Under university protocol the assessment needs to be unique for each subject code, even if the subjects themselves are essentially the same. You will notice that the only difference in assessment is that second year students also need to fill out an online reflective diary over the course of the semester.

ITAL10001This subject has the following hurdle requirements: Regular participation in tutorials is required with a minimum of 75% attendance. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day and in-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked.

ITAL20007This subject has the following hurdle requirements: Regular participation in tutorials is required with a minimum of 75% attendance. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day and in-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked.

Lectopia Enabled: No, as there are no lectures in the subject. Grammar slides will be made available on the LMS after each grammar class.

Past exams available: No.

Textbook Recommendation:
You will also need to purchase a subject reader which will be used throughout the semester.

The textbook is absolutely essential as you will be working through it over the course of the semester. The student activities manual is not necessary, but you have to buy the textbook and the workbook together so you'll end up buying that too. The student activities manual is not used in class but can be used as revision. Given the lack of revision material for this subject, I'd recommend using this book over the course of the semester anyway.

Obviously you don't necessarily have to have the Collins bilingual dictionary - any will suffice. I use the Garzanti bilingual dictionary, recommended by my teachers at high school since the Italians tend to do a better job at translating English than we do translating Italian :P. It's a really expensive dictionary but since I've used it a lot over an extended period of time, I've got my use out of it. While it's an amazing dictionary, it's probably not worth it if you're studying Italian only in the short term. You're not allowed to use a dictionary in the mid-semester test or the exam, only the take-home assignments. The use of an online translator is strictly prohibited and may result in the cancellation of your enrolment at the university.

Lecturer(s):

As I said, there are no lectures in this subject but the following staff members take one language group* each:
* Note: The two seminar classes are streamed together. When preparing a timetable, make sure you look at the repeats - if the repeat number is the same, the classes are linked. Conversation classes are not linked.

Conversation class teacher:
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Since there are no Italian reviews on this forum, I'm going to do my best to be as detailed and comprehensive as possible, not only about this subject but also from what I have gathered from Italian 1-4 as a whole. It seems that they read a lot like T. Rav's Spanish 1-4 reviews (which is a good thing). I'll see if I can get Edward21 to write about his experiences in Italian 5 and what Italian 5-10 is like (although from what I've heard it was also like T. Rav's experience with Spanish 5 - not a good thing :P ).

Anyway, this was definitely my favourite subject this semester. I absolutely loved taking it and I recommend beginner/intermediate Italian to everyone. The staff are outstanding, the assessment structure is light and accessible and it is very user-friendly as a breadth subject. If you're looking for a subject that's both incredibly useful and easy to get an H1 in (and there aren't too many that fit both of these categories), then Italian 1-4 is for you.

So Italian 3 is obviously a bit of an awkward entry point for a first year student but it had to be my entry point since I studied Italian up until the end of Year 11 at school. Italian 1 is designed for students with no prior experience studying Italian (or they studied it until the end of Year 9 at the latest), while Italian 5 is the main entry point for students who have completed Italian in Year 12. Hence, I fitted exactly in the middle and Italian 3 was where I belonged. Most of the cohort as a result consists of second year students (yes, just because there's two subject codes doesn't mean they're run independently) but I really didn't mind. They were all pretty nice and welcoming to me so in the end it didn't phase me at all. Italian 3 is a bit of a mixed bag actually when it comes to the student build-up: there's second year students who did Italian 1 and Italian 2 in first year, there's first year students like myself who have some prior experience learning Italian but do not have sufficient knowledge to cope with Italian 5 (for example one girl had never studied the language at school before but went on exchange to Italy for two years), there's Arts students who intend to major or minor in the subject, there's students from basically every other degree taking the subject as breadth, there's students taking the subject as part of the Diploma of Languages and there's even a few mature-aged entry students!

As a result, you have people of all sorts of abilities and with varying strengths and weaknesses in the subject. The staff are aware of this and so the course structure often involves people bouncing things off each other and learning in a holistic manner like that. One of my only negatives with this subject is when someone who's particularly strong in Italian takes over a little bit too much and hogs discussion, somewhat discouraging less confident members of the class from contributing. Although, the staff do try their best to make sure that everyone gets a turn and that no one is left out. A placement test has been devised for determining language entry points but it isn't foolproof and I think there may have been a couple of members of my class who should have enrolled in either higher or lower levels (mainly higher levels though). This is another small negative I have, only because those individuals are not only clearly playing the system but ruin the experience for the rest of us a little bit. Ultimately this isn't the fault of the staff but rather due to selfish students. To anyone reading this contemplating enrolling in Italian 3 knowing they belong in a higher level (because they know they won't be able to get away with Italian 1), if the consequence of having your enrolment cancelled isn't enough, I challenge you to be honest and do what's right, not just for yourself but for everyone else. However, I do want to emphasise that this wasn't a major issue, so don't let this deter you from taking the subject. 

Anyway, onwards with the review. To give you an idea of what you cover in Italian 3 and whether it is the right level for you, here is a list of the major grammar points we learnt:
This is roughly the grammar points that you normally cover in Year 10 and Year 11 Italian (Italian 1-2 at university covers Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 Italian). In addition to this list you will be expected to learn smaller grammar points in your own time using the Da Capo textbook. You will find that you've probably come into contact with most of these smaller points before, hence why they are not given any direct attention in class or in the assessments (that being said all grammar points will play their part in the assessment tasks anyway). Personally, I had come into contact with most of these before but having had a whole year without studying Italian, I felt as if I was learning some of these for the first time. It's amazing just how more intricately you will explore even some of the more simple grammar points at university. It helped me a lot in improving my language. Provided that nothing there is unfamiliar or that you know absolutely everything on that list, then Italian 3 is the right entry point for you.

I must admit that it took me quite a while to get used to this subject and initially I was afraid that I had made the wrong choice. Many of the second year students looked the same as well. One major change from previous Italian study is that conversation in English is kept to a minimum - whether it is the teacher explaining a concept or giving out an instruction or a student needing to ask a question about a topic (or even just a general request like going to the toilet), the language used is Italian. This sounds logical but it threw me at first because speaking and listening are my worst skills. Fortunately I gained a lot from being thrown in the "deep" end and I'm thankful for it, as are most of the other members of my class. Give this subject until the census date and I'm sure that you will probably have changed your mind about it, for the better.

In a sense, perhaps one of the reasons why I enjoyed this subject so much was that it wasn't that different from a normal high school class, with the exception of all the bullshit that normally plagues LOTE classes. In your two hour language classes, you will primary use your subject reader to complete various activities and learn more about life in Italy. You may read excerpts from texts and even watch a film - it will all be in Italian but if you don't understand anything at any point do not hesitate to ask and the teacher will be more than happy to explain it to you in English (this goes for everything actually). This is important because these texts come up in the assessments, so you need to understand them. Even if you feel uncomfortable, don't be afraid to speak up - it's not worth suffering later in what should be a fairly straightforward assessment. In the one hour grammar class, the teacher mainly provides a short slideshow on a grammar point and asks you to complete some activities from Da Capo either in class or for homework. I personally liked the textbook because it explained the grammar in black and white and is devoid of all the crap that high school LOTE textbooks are usually full of but perhaps it wasn't as user-friendly for the more creatively-minded students. It's an American textbook so sometimes it will say something confusing like "in Italy they write the date differently" (it's the same format as here, but in the US they have a different system) which can sometimes throw you at first, but overall I thought it was pretty effective.

My highlight of every week was the conversation class. The philosophy of the Italian staff is that speaking and listening assessments are counter-intuitive to the development of those skills, as they put you under pressure and make you nervous. Instead, they want to nurture those skills in a more relaxed environment without assessment. As speaking and listening skills were the two very things I needed to work on the most, I found this system did wonders for me. Not to mention that they were always just genuinely incredibly fun classes. You will be given some sort of stimulus (perhaps an activity, a song, a small clip etc.) and you basically just spend the hour talking to the people on your table in Italian. I don't think it gets more relaxing than that at university. :P Unfortunately, the negative I have here is that sometimes we just weren't given enough time to talk to each other. Sometimes technology would fail us (not the fault of the department) but sometimes they would try to shove in too many activities in that hour and by the time we got through the stimulus material we would only have 10-15 minutes discussion time. I hope they try to pack in less activities in the future, or perhaps consider extending the duration of the conversation class to 90 minutes.  The only assessment relating to this class is attendance - you need to attend at least 75% of the classes and actively participate in them to get awarded 10% to your grade. You don't even need to be perfect in your participation to get the 10% - as long as you have a go, it's OK. I know some people don't like being marked on participation but if you're studying a language (and are serious about it), particularly at beginner or intermediate level, you need to get as much practice in as possible. This is essentially free marks awarded to you for developing your own skills. Definitely nothing to scoff at.

In my opinion the other assessments for this subject were all very fair, not over-demanding and easy to score well in. There are three take-home assignments to be completed over the course of the semester, totalling 30% of your grade. They will relate to the topics and grammar points you have been covering in your language and grammar classes and are never more than about 300 words in length. They would take me a couple of hours to do only because I wanted to do them as accurately as possible - in the mid-semester test and exam I was expected to write responses of similar length in about half an hour, which I still found quite manageable, so you could theoretically pump them out in a lot less time with no issues. In addition you will also sit a 90 minute mid-semester test worth 20% of your grade the week before the mid-semester break, covering all the language topics and grammar points covered thus far. Initially I was really nervous about this test (most of the mid-semester tests I had to sit for other subjects were worth very little in comparison) but in the end most of us found it to be quite accessible. Most of us also completely overestimated the time constraint on it - I finished it half way and most members of the class left quite early that day. You won't be permitted a dictionary but the language is purposefully kept on the simple side so you should not have any issues in that regard. The mid-semester test has a vocabulary section (15 marks where you write 50-60 words about a provided image), a comprehension section (20 marks where you answer in Italian - you never answer anything in English in this subject - some questions relating to a given passage), a grammar section (35 marks) and an essay section (30 marks where you write a 150-200 word passage in response to one of several possible topics). You will be provided with a mock mid-semester test to help you along, which is very similar in structure to the actual mid-semester test. Just remember to take your time - you'll have plenty of it - and you'll manage just fine. The vast majority of the class (even the weaker students who are relying on translators to get by) manage to get a H1 for all the assessments, which is quite a shock when you see all the corrections that have been made. Perhaps they're very lenient markers. It explains why Italian has been so popular as a breadth subject with so many people in the past, even if people are not really that good at it. :P

The two hour exam is worth 40% of your overall mark and is exactly the same format as the mid-semester test. Despite the extra half hour, it isn't any longer than the mid-semester test, and does not assess anything that the mid-semester test already covered. This made things a breeze when it came to revision since I only had to go over five weeks of content. In addition, I knew that I could go super slow and still finish it on time. Some people walked out in as little as 30 minutes - I finished about half an hour early this time and made sure I checked over everything for the remaining time as usual. Again, there's no dictionary allowed but you shouldn't have any trouble with the vocabulary.

My teacher for the semester was Elisabetta Ferrari, who was nothing short of amazing. I've heard great things about all the other Italian staff as well, although it seems the general consensus that Elisabetta is the best teacher and the most reasonable marker. She was born in Italy and Italian is her first language so ultimately I felt we were getting the real deal in terms of language use while we were in her classes. In fact, she was so popular that she has decided to take on all Italian 4 classes next semester! I absolutely cannot wait. Agnese Bresin took all conversation classes and was also outstanding. Again, she is born in Italy and helped us to develop really genuine language skills, albeit in a really fun and engaging way. She's returning to Italy next semester so a new conversation class teacher will be taking over.

So if you cannot already tell, I absolutely loved this subject and I'm so keen for everyone else to experience it. Never before have I felt so passionate studying Italian and I can't wait to get back into it next semester. That's all I can think of for now, but I really hope I've given you an insight into this great subject. If you have any questions regarding Italian at all, please do not hesitate to ask me. In bocca al lupo! (Good luck! :P )
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on June 23, 2014, 03:46:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30002: Enterprise Performance Management

Workload: For a given week, 1x 1.5-hr Lecture and 1x 1.5-hr Workshop.

Assessment:  70% hurdle exam, 12% Group Assignment, 10% Mid-semester test, 8% Workshop Participation

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1 set of sample exam case studies and 1 past exam will be given. Past exams available on the archives are those back in 2001/2, some questions are still worth trying, some are useless.

Textbook Recommendation:  No recommended textbook. Optional textbooks include Management and Cost Accounting (5e) (Bhimani et al.) used in Cost Management or Management Accounting (2e) (Eldenburg, et al.). No need to buy if you don't have them, you can just borrow from the library.

Lecturer(s): Albie Brooks

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86 (H1)

Comments:

EPM revolves around management accounting, management control systems, and performance management. The only prerequisite of EPM is ACCT20001: Cost Management. NO, you won't be revisiting the *ughhh* computations and calculations we did in Cost, but we will see some cost concepts every now and then, like flexible budgets, activity-based costing, variance analysis, relevant cost decisions, etc. Overall, this subject was handled well by Albie, who is very experienced in teaching management accounting subjects. As you can see in the workload, lectures and workshops are equally as important in a student's learning process of the course.

In this subject, workshops are devoted mostly to case studies. Case studies are about 5-10 pages long, and shouldn't be too hard to read. It is best to have a knowledge of what the case is all about, and perhaps some notes here and there, before actually going to the workshops. Albie and the other tutors do not give out answers to the workshop case studies (they only give minor workshop follow-up notes) perhaps in the hopes that students come to workshops. I can say that these case studies in workshops are very critical for your success in the mid-semester test and the final exam, so attend all workshops and participate in group discussions. Note that what you learn in the workshop is basically what the members of the class contribute to discussions - Albie does not put in extra information beyond what the class talked about; it's like a collaborative learning experience instead of a teacher-student learning experience. But it shouldn't stop you from having fun, because EPM workshops are just very interactive - a good way to make friends :)

Lectures are just 1.5 hours instead of the usual 2. Lectures in EPM are sometimes just like large-scale workshops - very interactive as well, there will be some sort of case studies/lecture illustrations which are just like the case studies discussed in workshops. IMO, Albie is a good lecturer and I learned a lot from him (because I listen!). Attend all lectures and religiously take notes, and I assure you will never have to constantly replay the lecture recordings in SWOTVAC - the annotated notes are enough.

Weeks 1 and 2 are mainly concerned about the organisation, structure, strategy, and the different management control system tools that are used to influence the behaviour and attitudes of employees to achieve strategic goals. This portion of the EPM is just like the twin sister of OB (MGMT20001) - very similar concepts, one just comes from the management perspective, and the other, the accounting perspective. Week 3 would encompass financial performance measures, like ROI, Residual Income, and the Economic Value Added (EVA) measure, and a discussion of how they are dysfunctional in organisations. Week 4 would discuss Transfer Pricing, Transfer Pricing Policies, and the issue of goal congruence and inter-divisional conflicts. Week 5 is all about the Balanced Scorecard (arguably the most fun topic of all!) while Week 6 is on structuring rewards and incentives systems (looking at using cash/equity bonuses etc to dis-incentivise employee mishbehaviour...hehe). Week 7 would be on external market analysis, Week 8 on budgeting, Week 9 on strategic capital investment decisions, and Week 10 on risk management. Overall, very interesting set of topics and they're actually quite fun and easy to study. But no, it's not easy.

The midsem test on Week 6 is on topics 1 to 3 and it involves a mid-length case study (the case study is given beforehand to be studied, but the questions are obviously kept secret). It's quite easy to get good marks ONLY if you really devote yourself into the case study, try to study the combinations of questions that might be asked about the case, and make notes! This way, you'll actually spend precious time actually answering the questions and NOT re-reading the case.

The group assignment is a full-length case study that your group has to deal with. The assignment is relatively simple (ours was 3 questions, max 1,500 words, from topics 5 and 6, including one research question). If your group is able to scrutinise and dissect the different elements of the case study and answer the questions concisely but comprehensively, your group will have no problem getting a good mark. There's also a bonus question which is definitely fun to do (be creative!!!), not to mention a grade-saver.

The final exam involves 4 to 5 questions, which, of course, are all short- to mid-length case studies. The exam is a hurdle, so passing the subject means passing the exam first. Again, the exam is very doable ONLY if you really devote yourself into studying past exam questions and the sample case studies. Practice, practice, practice is the key. The exam is not designed to surprise people, so consistently doing workshop cases and lecture illustrations, knowing the subject content by heart, constantly doing practice exams, etc. will definitely help ensure a pass at the very least.

This accounting subject is unique in that it is less involved with computations and financial transactions (I only used the calculator in the exam to find out how many minutes I should spend on a question LOL) but more on case studies and situational applications. Have fun in doing EPM, because I did! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on June 23, 2014, 06:54:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1

Workload:  2 lectures (1 hour each) and 1 tutorial (1 hour) per week.

Assessment:  Exam (80%) and 2 case study assignments (10% each)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  There are a very large number of past papers to go through, however be aware that the semester 1 and 2 exams are written in a very different style to one another. So although the content is generally similar, the style of some papers may not be applicable to you.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed text is Financial Institutions and Markets (B Hunt and C Terry), (6th edn), Thomson, Australia, 2011. However, you should not purchase this book as I found it was only good as a reference in my assignments. The lecture notes and tutes are more than enough to do extremely well in the class.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Sturla Fjesme and Dr. Carsten Murawski (Semester 1).

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating:  1/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet received.

Comments:
In terms of my overall impressions of the course, if you are looking for a relatively easy breadth subject then you can probably get away with this one. I would say that if you go to the tutorials and actually do the problems you will most certainly be primed for a H1. However, I've given the course a low score since the content can be extremely dry (ie. learning definitions and lists related to markets or institutions are very common).

Lectures: Overall, the lecturers were great. Sturla and Carsten explain the content very clearly with additional examples, however if you really don't want to go to the lectures you would likely be totally fine since the notes essentially explain themselves.

Content of the course: Over the first few weeks, you will be covering the basic definitions and concepts of financial markets and institutions. Financial mathematics (which is covered in basically 1 lecture) actually constitutes around 50% of the final exam as the concepts will be reused again in several areas down the track so be aware of that, however the maths is extremely simple. Following this, you will cover the major market types (money, bond, share, foreign exchange). In terms of how interesting the course is, this is an introductory course that really deals with the basics of finance so it can get very dry.

Assessment: Be aware that the subject is basically a HUGE MEMORY TEST, ESPECIALLY FOR THE EXAM. You will need to learn many definitions  and lists pertaining to a market/institution/security etc., and because this is an introductory class, past exam questions will pop up time and time again, so you may feel like you are simply regurgitating facts. It should also be noted that the exam is a hurdle requirement.

As for the assignments, these were probably the only saving grace for this subject in terms of keeping my interest as they tended to be more open ended than the tutorial questions. Just be aware that you should be referencing correctly in the assignments to avoid losing marks.

Recommendation: In terms of recommendations, I would suggest this subject only if you are looking for a relatively easy breadth subject to ease the pressure in later years. Of course, if you are a Commerce undergrad you will be taking this subject most likely. As for tips for doing well in the class, try to at least keep up with the tutorial questions and the lecture notes. I wouldn't say going to the tutes is absolutely necessary unless you have a great tutor and you could well not even go to a lecture and do great as long as you read through the notes.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on June 23, 2014, 07:56:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEN30001 Reactor Engineering 

Workload:  3 lectures per week (two 1 hour lectures, one 2 hour lecture), 1 tutorial per week (1 hour), 2 practical classes per semester (3 hours each).

Assessment:  Final exam (70%, hurdle requirement), 2 practical reports (7.5% each) and a midsemester test (15%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  There are several past exam papers available and Greg Qiao (the main lecturer) even provides worked solutions to all given past papers on the LMS which is extremely nice.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook for the course is: O. Levenspiel, Chemical Reaction Engineering, 3rd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York,1999. However, you will be able to do just fine without it as the lecture notes cover everything you need to know just fine.

Lecturer(s): Greg Qiao, Judy Lee.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet received.

Comments:
As a Chemical Systems major, this is the first of the 4 core subjects that I undertook (along with Heat and Mass Transport Processes this semester). In terms of the subject material, the course goes into entirely new territory compared to what you may have seen in CPA 1, CPA 2 and Transport Processes, however it does draw on the fundamental concepts learnt in CPA 1 and CPA 2 like material balances, energy balances etc. to derive new equations.

Content: Over the first few weeks, you will revisit chemical kinetics (from Chemistry 2, which is absolutely crucial in all following topics essentially), learn about the design equations for ideal batch, mixed flow reactors (MFR's) and plug flow reactors (PFR's) and how to optimise a reactor system for a given final conversion. Depending on how far you get in the course, the midsemester test will certainly cover these concepts. Following this, you will learn about the recycle PFR (design equation, optimum recycle ratio for a given reaction and final conversion), temperature effects on reactor performance (eg. adiabatic operation, optimum temperature progression for a reactor), and finally non-ideal flow systems which brings in a small amount of statistics. The final exam will primarily cover the topics not on the midsemester test, however as the first modules are fundamental to the subject, you should be confident in these topics even for the exam.

Lecturers: Although it is clear that Greg and Judy know this content extremely well, unfortunately they were often difficult to understand and didn't explain some concepts very well. Additionally, Greg can sometimes go on tangents about his research that whilst interesting, can be quite random. However, I would say that they both are fully aware that this is one of the hardest subjects you will have likely taken before and therefore they provide many practice problems in the lecture notes to go through in class which is great (similar to other math subjects you will have done). Furthermore, Greg does bring in guest lecturers from industry (Qenos and Uhde Shedden chemical engineers showed up this semester) to speak about how the content relates to their work which provided some context to the course. It should be noted that the content in the guest speaker lectures are examinable, so pay attention!

Assessment: The practicals were generally very simple to do in class (essentially starting a pump for some sort of chemical, running logging data and then waiting for steady state to be achieved), however the reports are where the difficulty really ramps up from past subjects. The marking for these reports is extremely strict (even down to significant figures and numbering of pages), so you MUST follow the report structure and expectations to a tee. The lecturers and demonstrators really want you to feel like you are writing a professional scientific paper that someone could pick up and still be able to know what is going on, so things like captioning figures, listing tables and providing nomenclature tables is expected. For this reason, the average mark for the first practical report in the class was very low (~62%) as most people didn't know how strict the marking was going to be beforehand. This is one of the few negatives I have about the subject as the class didn't initially know of these expectations, so be very aware of this if you are taking this subject.

As for the midsemester test, this is generally fair and is indicative of the tutorial questions/past midsem tests you will be working through.  Note that the last question on the midsemester tests (and exams for that matter) do tend to be very difficult to separate the H1's from H2A's. Past midsemester papers were provided with worked solutions which was very generous of the lecturers.

Finally, the final exam is a hurdle requirement (70% of final mark) and can be real test, especially for the last question which is typically very difficult. There are generally 6 questions on the paper, the first and second often being questions straight from the tutorials just with slight modifications. To do well on the exam you really need to know the content inside and out, being able to go both "forwards" and "backwards" in typical problems. That is why I would absolutely suggest you DO NOT FALL BEHIND ON TUTORIALS. For this subject, the tutorials are actually very useful as the tutors go through the solutions in the tute and explain the method/strategy for tackling the questions. There were 2 tutors taking the class during Semester 1 and both were very good. Additionally, I would suggest that you do go to lectures (don't rely on Lectopia) as the lecturers often write up important notes on the board which are not recorded and the lecturers often had difficulty with using Lectopia correctly (eg. recording the wrong board, no audio etc.).

Recommendation: As this is a core subject for the Chemical Systems major, I'm not entirely sure if anyone would be taking it otherwise however I would say that although the lecturers are less effective compared to other Chem. Eng. lecturers like Shallcross, Dalton and Sandra, the content is very interesting and the types of problems you can do after understanding it can go even beyond what you would typically think of as a "reactor" (eg. if a pollutant spill in a river has occurred, being able to figure out when the concentration of the pollutant will decrease to a safe level).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Groudon on June 23, 2014, 08:42:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEN30005 Heat and Mass Transport Processes 

Workload:  3 lectures per week (two 1 hour lectures, one 2 hour lecture), 1 tutorial per week (1 hour), 2 practical classes per semester (3 hours per class), 1 computer simulation (HYSYS) class per semester (2 hours).

Assessment:  Exam (70%, primarily covering mass transfer), 2 practical "reports" (2.5% each, these are more like answering tutorial questions based on your results rather than an actual report with an abstract, intro. etc.), 2 assignments (5% each. This semester the assignments were designing a cooling tower for a given location and designing a distillation column to meet given specifications using HYSYS), midsemester test (15%, primarily covering heat transfer).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  There are past exams going back several years, however pre-2010 papers do cover material not found in the current course. Sandra did provide numerical solutions to past papers going all the way back to 2002, and she often explained how to get the solution in the discussion board promptly which was great.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Sandra Kentish.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet received.

Comments:
Content: This is one of the core subjects for the Chemical Systems major and is probably the most engaging and applicable to industry subject I have taken thus far. The content covered builds directly onto what was learnt in Transport Processes and is focused primarily on applying the concepts of heat transfer (forced convection, natural convection, diffusion) and mass transfer (Fick's first law and now second law for steady and unsteady mass transfer) to unit operations and more complex problems. For heat transfer, these included things like shell and tube heat exchangers (single and multiple pass), plate heat exchangers, phase changes in heat exchangers, natural convection around surfaces with isothermal boundary conditions and constant heat flux conditions etc. For mass transfer, this included flash distillation, differential distillation, multistage distillation, gas absorption/stripping, humidification (cooling towers) and membrane systems. As you can see, there is a huge amount of content covered which is why YOU MUST KEEP UP WITH TUTORIALS IF YOU HOPE TO PASS. I will say it here that Sandra (the lecturer) is notorious for writing exams and tests that tend to be difficult not because the questions asked are very obscure, but because she very often finds new ways to ask questions using the course's concepts. So, I would say that doing well in the course relies on you understanding the concepts inside and out as well as keeping up with the work which doesn't stop piling up even up to the very last day of class.

Lecturers: Sandra is absolutely up there as one of the best lecturers I've had so far in my degree. She reminds me a lot of David Shallcross in her style of teaching, and she puts a real emphasis on why the content is actually useful with constant references to industry applications which was great. Additionally, her lecture notes are very comprehensive (which is why there is no prescribed textbook; her notes are essentially the textbook) so you can rely fully on them. Additionally, Sandra is very active in the discussion board where you can ask questions about anything in the course which is extremely helpful (especially as assignment and exam deadlines draw near).

Assessment: In terms of the practical classes, these are extremely easy to do in class (often involving measurements of heights or simply using logging data), and the "reports" required are really just using your data to do what are essentially tutorial questions. For this reason, the practical classes are worth only 2.5% each for your final mark, and are more for guiding your study.

The assignments given are worth 5% each. For my assignments, the first involved designing a distillation column for a given specification in HYSYS (each student is given a different feed, distillate and bottoms condition to use as well as operating pressure so nobody can really copy anyone else). A short report of only 2 pages was allowed where you essentially discussed the fluid package choice, the process you went through to design the distillation column and some downstream operations you used to store your product. The second assignment involved designing a cooling tower for a given location (again, each student is given a different location). This assignment required you to use numerical integration which could be done by using Excel or MATLAB. In terms of how well these assignments were managed, how marks were distributed were uploaded by Sandra on the LMS in sample answers so this made it easy to know where you went right/wrong.

The midsemester test is 1.5 hours long and covers essentially all of the heat transfer content that will have been covered up until that point. If you have kept up with tutorials over this time you should be well prepared for the test, and Sandra does provide you with the previous year's midsemester test to practice. Note also that Sandra does give a "Heat Transfer Pre-Semester Test" on the LMS which is worth no marks, however questions from this test have shown up on midsemester tests before (eg. the first pre-semester test question was the first question on my midsem). The midsem was generally fair with no trick questions.

The final exam is worth 70% of the mark and requires you get 40% on it to pass. This paper can be very tough at times and will require you to really think about how to solve the problems, however if you go through the myriad of past papers you should be relatively well prepared for it. Again, there are no trick questions on the papers, however Sandra does have a problem with typos in exams which can be very annoying.

Recommendation: Again, this is a Chemical Systems major core subject so you will have to take this subject if you wish to proceed in this direction. However, if you wanted to take this subject, I would say it is a really great course to take for solving more complex problems related to heat and mass transfer that whilst tough, is very rewarding.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 24, 2014, 07:42:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20007: Genetics, Health and Society 

Workload: 12 weeks of two 1-hour lectures per week (24hrs) plus one 1-hour small group discussion or workshop per week (12hrs).

Note that you only have tutes in Week 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Assessment:  (1) Three online multiple choice quizzes; first quiz worth 5%, second and third worth 10% each.
Quizzes evenly spread throughout the semester (25%)
(2) A wiki and class presentation (small group work) of 10-15 minutes duration on an allocated topic, presented toward the end of the semester (15%); and
(3) Final written examination (2 hrs), during the examination period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. I hardly went to any lectures.

Past exams available:  None available. You do get one practise exam scenario which you can email to your tutor for feedback.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook required

Lecturer(s): Lots, from many different departments.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (92)

Comments: This subject is very interesting and is pretty good. I didn't really pay attention to it much until SWOTVAC though. When you actually review it you can see how series of lectures flow from the previous one - everything can be linked together and, true to the subject's name, there was a true integration between genetics and its applications to society in real life.

You have a LOT of lecturers in this subject lecturing for many themes. These include:
Quote
(1) Setting the scene: A hypothetical introducing the subject, and an overview of the milestones in human genetics.

(2) Nature and nurture. What is the human genome, what does it contribute to who we are and how?

(3) Reading the future. What can genes tell us about ourselves and our potential children, and what do we really want to know? Clinical and non-clinical uses of genetic testing. What are the ethical and psychosocial considerations of genetic testing?

(4) Genetics and race. How does genetics interface with the concept of race?

(5) Visible and invisible differences. Exploring the psychological ramifications for people with genetic disorders that cause differences in physical appearance.

(6) Genetics and art. Exploring the influence and inspiration of genomics on various media.

(7) Genetics and the law. Legal implications of genomics will be addressed including: genetics in solving crimes and paternity; ownership of DNA including patenting of genes; sharing of genetic information within families, issues of confidentiality and privacy, genetic testing of children; genetic discrimination in insurance and employment.

(8) Genes and kinships. What connects families? How do we understand donor-assisted conception, paternity “fraud,” and complex “blended” families?

(9) Ethics of reproductive choice. Ethical considerations of reproductive choices set against the background of the history of eugenics and the current emphasis on free and informed choice, including termination of pregnancy following genetic testing.

So yeah, as you can see there's lots of stuff to talk about. I found genetics and law to be the most technical and difficult to get my head around.

The tutorials start in Week 5 and there's not many of them. Your last two sessions will just be wiki presentations by other groups. You pretty much just get a sheet with questions on it concerning the last week's material and you'll discuss it in class. Very relaxed, but a lot of the time we finished pretty early and spent the rest of the time talking about irrelevant stuff.

You have three intra-semester tests to do over the LMS. The first test, which is more focused on basic genetics,  is exceptionally easy if you've done Biology. The second test begins to cover genetic tests, visible differences and ethics. It isn't too bad either. The third test, which covers almost everything else, is pretty hard. There's quite a big number of ambiguous and vague questions so have fun with that and pray you're interpreting the question correctly.

The wiki assignment isn't too bad if you're put in a good group. We got to pick our groups, but I'm not sure if other tutors will let students do this. You pick a specific movie or book and you're given questions to answer. You have to present your answers orally and through the wiki. There's an emphasis on creativity (5 marks out of like...15-20? can't remember), some people made a Hitler Rage video (and cupcakes), some people had a talk-show role-play, some people had a courtroom role-play. It's really up to you. Our group did Brave New World and in all honesty I didn't think that it related to genetics as much as the other books/movies. There was also like The Island, My Sister's Keeper, etc, which were much more relevant. The questions given to us also emphasised on dystopia and other stuff in the book, not just genetic engineering. So I didn't think what we presented was really relevant to the subject. That being said we still did really well.

The exam is definitely not an easy, relaxed one. Study everything. There's 20 MCQs for the first section. These aren't too bad but there were some vague and ambiguous questions that made you think. The last question was also very troll-like and tested us for a really minute detail and so many people had to guess that question. The second section involves an integration question (which was pretty much just genetical ethics, laws, etc). This is 30 marks. It has a scenario about for example a couple having a genetic test, and it's broken down into short-answer questions worth 3-6 marks each. This felt like probably the easiest part of the paper. The last section makes you write from 5 long-answer questions out of a pool of 9. These can be hard. Each question was worth 12 marks (not broken down either!), but sometimes they specifically asked you to talk about something that was only on one or two lecture slides, for example. Because of its specificity you might feel really boxed in on what to write. My advice is to just splurge everything on the paper that you might think will be remotely relevant. There was really no choice but to waffle. You have to be good at thinking on your feet and thinking creatively in this exam - you have to list many reasons and factors involving something. There were no ethical scenarios in this section, funnily enough. It was pretty much like "here, write 12 marks about...this topic".

Nevertheless, this is a really good subject that's not to bad assessment wise. If you've studied Biology and have an interest in genetics, do this subject.

(May add more later)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Account Deleted on June 24, 2014, 10:31:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENVS10002: Reshaping Environments

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

Assessment: 

Sustainability Essay            1500 Words    Week 6      20%
Group Project                     “1900” Words    Week 9      25%
Sustainability Project           1300 Words       Week 15      25%
Reflective Journal                X Words       Weekly      20%
Tutorial Participation                  Weekly      10%
Bonus Marks                 Various Weeks      +3 marks

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, slides usually uploaded the day before

Past exams available:  No exam in this subject. Past assignment responses available on the LMS

Textbook Recommendation:  Bender, Helena (ed.) (2012) Reshaping environments: an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability in a complex world, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne + Subject reader

Lecturer(s): Helena Bender + various guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester One

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Comments: This is going to just be a short review because there isn’t a great deal to write about this subject.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN RESHAPING ENVIRONMENTS: Understand the difference between “Sustainability” and “Sustainable Development”. Get that down and you’re flying.

Reshaping Environments is a good first year uni subject as it ‘introduces’ you to critical thinking, data analysis, APA ( :( ) referencing, and quantitative/qualitative research methods. The weekly readings (aside from 2 or 3) were straightforward and interesting so doing the assignments wasn’t a huge task when it came to referencing.

My biggest problem with the subject, and the reason I stopped going after 4 weeks, is that the lectures were an absolute nightmare. 2 hours of a guest lecturer shoving their political agenda down your throat just wasn’t enjoyable or helpful towards our learning. Telling us that Royal Parade will be almost completely treeless in 2020 just seemed so incredibly ridiculous, especially when it isn’t being backed up by any research.

The tutorials weren’t too bad and each week two people would have to give a presentation about that week’s readings. Friendly debate is encouraged regardless of where you stand on an issue, and the topics definitely lend themselves to a personal opinion that you can discuss. The best reading was about the psychological effect that natural environments can have on us (written by the head lecturer of Urban Environments if I’m not mistaken).



Assessments


Reflective Journal

This is a simple ~500-1000 word entry on the LMS wiki each week. Just recap how the lecture, reading, and tutorial all synthesis to create a big orgy of environmental goodness.

You get marked 3 times throughout the semester, first is worth 25% second 25% third 50%. The best way I found to do it is by posing a question to begin with, then answering it by reflecting on the week.

Assignment One

The handbook says theres one assessment worth 70%. This is sort of true, but in reality it’s made up of 3 semi-related assessments.

The first is a 1500 word essay basically about how we can move towards sustainability from a theoretical perspective. Use references from the textbook and the subject reader, along with being able to create your own definition of sustainability in order to do well in this essay.

Assignment Two

Group project. It was basically looking at how our actions, in comparison with the rest of Australia and also China, impact the environment.

This was the first time this assessment was set, and as a result of this it was an organisational disaster. There was a severe miscommunication between the lecturer/subject coordinator, tutors, and the subject reader/LMS. The biggest problem was that there was just no direction of what to do, when to do it, etc. I understand that we’re in uni now and we can’t have our hands held, but even the tutors agreed this was a badly organised joke.

For the sake of all future Envs students, I hope they do fix this assessment.

Assignment Three

OH MY FUCKING GOD

This could’ve been an amazing assessment… if the word limit wasn’t so tiny! In 1300 words you basically have to come up with an intervention (economic/political/social/technological/etc.) that helps a community work towards - you guessed it - sustainability.


Other

There is a 10% tutorial participation mark but as I mentioned earlier, participating is easy and pretty fun too. I think there might be a 9/12 tute hurdle as well but don’t quote me on that.

There are 3 opportunities for bonus marks (worth 1 each)

1. Present a draft ‘tweet’ that demonstrates you can use the APA 6th referencing system
2. Visit the Ian Potter Gallery during their exhibition on Australian development (I’m guessing this will change next semester)
3. Show a draft of the group project in week 7

The assessments are marked extremely hard and getting a high mark for the 2nd and 3rd assessments will be difficult unless you pander to the agenda of the marker...

All in all this could have been a great subject if a few kinks got sorted out. Hopefully they’ll address these issues (this year was apparently a big improvement from 2013) and then it will be a decent subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on June 25, 2014, 01:54:14 pm
Subject Code/Name:  UNIB20007: Genetics, Health and Society

Workload: 12 weeks of two 1-hour lectures per week (24hrs) plus one 1-hour small group discussion or workshop per week (12hrs).

Note that you only have tutes in Week 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Assessment:
 (1) Three online multiple choice quizzes; first quiz worth 5%, second and third worth 10% each.
Quizzes evenly spread throughout the semester (25% total)

(2) A wiki and class presentation (small group work) of 10-15 minutes duration on an allocated topic, presented toward the end of the semester (15%); and

(3) Final written examination (2 hrs), during the examination period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  None available. As Shenz0r mentioned, you do get one practise exam scenario which you can email to your tutor for feedback. In addition, the tutors stress that the tutorial questions are similar to the written questions in the exam (perhaps more in structure than being the same content of the exam questions)

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook required

Lecturer(s): Lots, from many different departments.

Year & Semester of completion
: Semester 1, 2014

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I enjoyed this subject, and I think it was exactly what a breadth should be- Something that has a lighter workload than the subjects you take for your major but it is certainly not a bludge, so it keeps you interested during the semester. I'll just make some comments on different aspects of the subjects but all the technical stuff about the subject e.g. what is covered in lectures etc. can be seen in Shenz0r's review.

Lecturers:
I thought all the lecturers were pretty good and I think you can get an idea of what kind of things are considered assessable for the end of semester exam. I commend the staff for actually introducing concepts outside what could be examinable- For example, there are many lectures on "visible difference" and it wasn't all about the theory for that topic because we had some guest speakers come in to talk first hand about their experience with having a visible difference. The topics from the lectures were pretty interconnected with each other and many key points would be repeated such that there was less demand in having to learn 22 lectures of assessable content.

Tutorials:
Pretty relaxed, we just go through extended type questions each week and discuss possible answers. The tutor would guide us in the right direction for answering these questions. Tutorials often finished early so that was a bonus.

Quizzes:
First is simple, you just need to look at the lecture notes and that should be enough to answer the questions.
Second quiz questions are slightly more demanding (e.g. we had many ethics questions on this one) but reasonable
Third quiz was definitely the hardest one, often you would second guess yourself (probably because of the questions like law or discrepant paternity that were tested) but a H1 for it should be attainable.

Assignment:
Our group assignment was on The Island and the movie was bearable which was good.
We had just had set questions to answer and we split up the four so each of the four group members could focus on one, but we also helped others researching their questions if we found some interesting studies to mention etc. I was lucky to be in a group where everyone pulled their weight. If you are enrolling in this subject with a friend and think you can work well together for the assignment then sign up for the same tutorial if you can because most likely you will be able to choose your group. We had to write written responses to our questions in the form of a Wiki (so it could include things like pictures) and a speech version that was presented in an allocated tutorial.

Exam:
To date I think this exam has been one of the most demanding for a breadth subject. The multiple choice are simple (except for one particular one that Shenz0r mentioned which tested your ability to know pointless facts other than the principles). I encourage you to answer all the multiple choice in the reading time, otherwise time may not be on your side when answering short answer questions. The short answer questions we had consisted of an integrated question (so there was like 6 or so questions in that one big question which tested different lecture topics like ethics, law etc). Then we had a choice of choosing 5 out of 9 questions for the other short answer question set. This section was a bit hectic for me because each question was worth 12 marks and I felt there was so much I could write about for each question but then I had to remember the time constraints. Just write down as many points for each question as you can and if you think you've covered a question to the best of your ability then don't dwell on it, just move on to the next short/long answer question. Decide which of the 9 questions you will be answering in reading time if you have the chance.

Overall I thought this subject was well coordinated, the assessment was reasonable and I was kept interested in it during the semester.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on June 26, 2014, 10:24:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: MULT10016 Reason (Arts Foundation Subject)

Workload: 2x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week, and 6 x 1 hour workshops in weeks 3-8

Assessment: A "Bibliographic Exercise" due in Week 5 (600 words, 15%), an essay due in Week 9 (2000 words, 45%) and a take-home exam during the Examination Period (1500 words 40%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available: The take-home exam format changed for our year, so we didn't get a sample prompt but maybe offer some from now on.

Textbook Recommendation:  None. Subject reader is online but it's not necessary. Read whatever is relevant to your chosen essay topic and you'll be fine.

Lecturer(s): James Bradley, Greg Restall, Kristian Camilleri, Deirdre Coleman

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
First off: some notes on Arts Foundation subjects. No one I know likes them. You'll have a choice between Aboriginality, (which is basically Sociology) Identity (which is basically Media) Language (which is a mix of Sociology and Linguistics) Power (which is basically politics, by which I mean Marxism) Representation (which is also basically Media) and Reason.
If any of these interest you then I suppose you might enjoy yourself but for the most part they're all pretty much interchangeable.
Supposedly these subjects give you the core skillset you need to approach your arts degree. In reality, most of the assessment is overly convoluted and too specific to each discipline to give you any general, transferable ability. That said, each subject has a large cohort, so it's a good way to meet people if nothing else. Personally, I find philosophy quite interesting, and this subject might as well be Philo101. It's coordinated by the philo department, and though there are some interdisciplinary elements it all comes back to the philosophy of reason, or rather, what each philosopher thought reason was. This was quite frustrating for some people: you're never actually given a working definition of 'reason.' Dictionary definitions, yes, and there were a few different theories throughout the ages that we learnt, but still... every essay had to begin with a disclaimer about how reason was a "mutable and manifold concept" etc.
The course starts with Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and other Greeks, then pretty much skips forward to the Enlightenment era. Most of the course centres around this time period. There are a few lectures on Romanticism and then onto the modern day. It's very much centre-heavy in that everything post-Enlightenment isn't really given much weight except as a contrast to/consequence of the Enlightenment. Background knowledge is not needed as every lecturer will go into A LOT of detail about what each movement and philosopher meant.

Lecturers:
James Bradley and Kristian Camilleri were both pretty good. Greg Restall was by far the best. Deirdre Coleman is actually from the Lit department and came in the post-Enlightenment weeks to talk about Romanticism. She... just reads poetry off her slides. This was by far the most tedious part of the course, and that's coming from an English nerd. Those lectures had little to do with the rest of the subject and were literally word-for-word slide readings. After the 3rd or 4th session most people realised this and stopped attending.
Generally, you could probably get by without attending lectures, but most of them were interesting to sit through. You'll get a feel for them within a couple of weeks and know whether or not you need to attend.

Tutorials:
I was lucky enough to get Steve as my tutor and he is brilliant. Even during weeks of dry content he'd make everything interesting even though we'd often run out of time to cover the "important" things. I guess this might be frustrating if you genuinely don't understand some of the concepts, but if you speak up you'll get an answer. I guess in that regard the subject is teaching you useful skills :)
Aside from that, most of the tutes were just geared towards the assessment which I'll talk about later. I heard good things about the other tutors, and most people found these way more helpful than the lectures.

Workshops:
THESE ARE A WASTE OF TIME. I cannot emphasise this enough. The workshops are by far the most boring part of this entire subject, and this seemed to be the case for all the other Foundation subjects too. This is where the real skills (essay writing, citations, note taking) are meant to be taught. In reality... well I'll let these quotes from my workshop leader speak for themselves:
"So who can tell me what a paragraph is?"
"What is a sentence?" *waves hands in an artsy manner*
"Remember your capital letters everyone!"
I cannot recall a single thing I learned. Mercifully these only run from weeks 3-8, but you have to attend at least 5/6. I'm trying really hard to think of any possible benefits but I've got nothing. This is a major downside to the subject but ultimately inescapable for arts students.

Assessment:
Luckily this was all cleared up in tutes because the information provided on the LMS was useless jargon.
The first piece was referred to as the 'CACL' (pronounced 'cackle') which stood for comment, argument, comment/critique, link. We were assigned a journal article and had to select a key quote/comment, use that to branch out into a wider discussion of the author's overall argument, then critique that argument, and finally link this to another journal article of our choosing. This was the most unnecessarily complicated piece of assessment I've ever had to do. First of all, the article we were given had no author and very few publication details which made it borderline impossible to reference. Secondly, the article had nothing to do with the course (it was some random rant about why scientists make mistakes.) Thirdly, this piece had to be under 600 words and the article itself was close to 2000. The argument couldn't really be summed up succinctly and certainly couldn't be explored in depth. Again, for a subject that's meant to provide you with a skillset, this was more difficult than any of my other work. This piece is also due in week 5 ie. after everyone has already had one or maybe even two rounds of assessment. PLUS every other subject will have different citation styles, so it's not like this task actually helped much.
The second piece was worth the most overall and centred on the Enlightenment. The prompt: (unchanged for the past couple of years I believe) 'Was the Enlightenment really the Age of Reason?' You're then able to pick two philosophers or philosophical works in order to answer this question. The lecturers provide more information for this one and it's actually relevant to the course so I won't say too much. This essay was quite manageable and the ability to select your subject matter and focus made it surprisingly enjoyable.
The take-home exam is just as broad, except you only have 2 days to complete it. So long as you have a general understanding of each philosopher you'll be fine with this. We were told we'd have to do a heap of revision because two days didn't give you any time to research, but I found it to be pretty relaxed. You have heaps of time to go back to the relevant readings and take notes, and the 1500 word limit ends up approaching pretty fast when all you're doing is summing up/regurgitating information.


I know a lot of these comments might seem negative, and there are definitely elements of the course that need improvement, but this was still a pretty enjoyable subject. It did offer quite a bit in terms of philosophical theories and it opened up some interesting avenues in other disciplines. If you have even a remote interest in philosophy you'll have fun. Based on what I've heard, I'd recommend this over any other Foundation Subject; unless you're looking to get into Sociology, Media or Politics, Reason is your best bet for a good time and a pretty easy mark.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: WhoBannedMe on June 27, 2014, 09:18:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20029 Engineering Mathematics

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  3 x 5% assignment, 15% mid-semester test, 70% final exam

Lectopia Enabled: NO

Past exams available:  Yes, lots.

Textbook Recommendation:  No, buy lecture notes book from co-op.

Lecturer(s): Assoc Prof Marcus Brazil

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 summer

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 94 [H1]

Comments: Did this subject during the summer to do vector cal in Sem 1 and be able to gain credit for both as there is overlap in the courses (particularly the multiple integration). The other two reviews already cover the important parts so I will just add a tad bit.

The Mid semester test (one practise MST provided) and exam is predictable from previous years, so just make sure you do heaps.

Covered topics:
- Vector Calculus           **
- Ordinary Differential Equations  ***
- Laplace Transforms     *
- Sequences and Series
- Fourier Transforms      *
- Second Order Partial Differential Equations

If you want to ensure you get a H1 why not do a bit of pre-study?

* Laplace Transforms & Fourier Transforms:

    (14mins): Where the Laplace Transform comes from (Arthur Mattuck, MIT)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvbdoSeGAgI
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOboV2jgVo

    (~6hrs): L.15-L.22 covers both transforms
   
    Also watch L.27, paying particular attention to the way you draw the plot given the solution (don't worry
    about how to get the solution just plotting). It was on both my MST and Exam, nailing the plot is easy marks.

** Vector Calculus:

    If you want to do some minor pre-study for this just youtube some double integration in the plane. or...
   
     Double integration: L.16-~L.18, Triple integration: L.25-27(onward if you want)
   
    Really just seeing a few videos to get the major ideas should suffice. These links are just if you want to
    overkill.

*** Ordinary Differential Equations:

        I think I remember this being good but idk. This section of the course isn't hard and you probably should just
        learn it in lecture.

Start working with the exam formula sheet from day 1 (it really does have everything). I did this subject over summer in addition to ESD2. Did well in both so this subject should be fine.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jediwizardspy on June 28, 2014, 05:04:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30021 Complex Analysis

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week; 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  Three written assignments totalling 20%; One 3 hour examination (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, from at least 2010 - this course has probably been running in a similar form since Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, but the lecturer decided to set a very different exam to those of the immediate past exams, so do them at your peril

Textbook Recommendation: None - the course notes were available as a single downloadable PDF on the LMS.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Peter Forrester

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 81 [H1]

Comments: I really enjoyed this subject! I did Accelerated Mathematics 2 rather than Real Analysis, so I did have 6 months to a year longer than most students to get to grips with the notion of mathematical rigour, but quite frankly rigour wasn't really required in Complex Analysis (unless Penny Wightwick was your tutor). Especially with Peter Forrester, who is a mathematical physicist, being the lecturer, the course had a strong applied mathematics-y flavour to it in comparison to previous years, which would certainly be refreshing for those still licking their wounds from the highly formal manner in which Real Analysis was taught.

After reviewing complex number arithmetic, we dove headlong into complex function theory, defining the usual concepts of limits, continuity and differentiability (with very little focus on Messrs Epsilon and Delta), thereby introducing the key concept of analyticity. After some topology (which was explained in a pretty hand-wave-y way!) we explored the various exponential functions and how singularities occur in complex functions. Then onto sequences and series, which was pretty standard stuff if you remembered how real series worked, with some interesting asides along the way. However, the truly interesting theory didn't materialise until the following topic - integration. The theory of contour integration - through Cauchy's theorem, Cauchy's integral formula (in Complex Analysis, we differentiate stuff by integrating them!) and residues - represented some of the most eye-opening concepts that I have learned in mathematics so far. Along with the associated theory of Laurent series and meromorphic functions, these provided vital links to other fields of mathematics such as vector calculus, partial differential equations and algebra (we found an 'easy' proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra). Finally, there was a brief jaunt into the world of conformal mapping, while the final week's topic of special functions (Gamma, Beta and Riemann Zeta) was omitted to allow for revision.

The main drawback of this subject, though, was the delivery of the lectures. In the very first lecture, Peter told us that he hadn't taught this subject for around 20 years, and it really did show. With all respect to Peter, it often seemed like he was clueless about how to finish off a proof and even as if he was winging it through a lecture. In addition, quite a few topics were skipped over, and the teaching of later topics was a dog's breakfast. A frequent complaint (though not mine) of the assignments was that while they weren't overly difficult, the connection to the subject's theory was rather tenuous. The exam wasn't too bad either, but some complained that it was too long, and because the course was being taught by a lecturer who hadn't coordinated this course since before most of us were born, it was also significantly different from those from previous years. To be fair, though, he did give adequate warning about this, and even omitted the Week 12 material in order to give us problem sheets roughly indicative of the exam. He was also extremely helpful in fielding our enquiries, somewhat more so than most of my previous maths lecturers, hence my docking of only half a mark  ;)

In short, the subject was highly interesting, but the experience perhaps left much to be desired.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sinner on June 28, 2014, 11:07:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30007 Human Locomotor Systems

Workload:  Three 1 hour lectures (Total 34 including intro + review, 6 of them clinical oriented) and one 3 hour practical per week

Assessment:  2 Mid-Semesters (30 MCQ) = 10% each, Two hour theory exam (Section A: MCQ, Section B: MCQ style fill in the blanks, Section C: Short Answer, Section D: Long Answer) = 40%, Two hour "practical" exam (100 MCQ) = 40%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:   No. 

Textbook Recommendation:  Drake et al Gray's Anatomy for Students, Moore KL et al: Clinically Oriented Anatomy
I definitely recommend Moore's, which is very useful for knowing locations, positioning and such.

Lecturer(s): Varsha Pilbrow, Chris Briggs, Jenny Hayes, Peter Kitchener, Various guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 78

Comments: I seem to have something of a love-hate relationship with this subject, to say the least, with several highs and lows that correspond to both my attitude and the nature of the subject itself. The subject itself can be split into 4 main parts as follows: The spine, upper limb, lower limb, and evolution + locomotion. The limb lectures make up the bulk of the subject and are probably the most interesting parts of the subject. Many lecturers were involved in the subject in different parts, such as Chris Briggs on the spine and back lectures, Jenny Hayes on limb nerves and vessels, and Varsha on most complexes of the limbs and evolution. Content in lectures range form skimmable (some guest lectures) to almost overwhelming (e.g. Knee complex). The content of the limb lectures remain fairly interesting and relate to principles as established in ANAT20006, while some of the guest lectures and those of locomotion were comparatively less stimulating. They could still be assessed, however.

The prac workshops are more or less like those of the 2nd year ones, with one being done before advancement into a new region with the cadavers, but they are now 3 hours long, which could be weary for some people. The prac dissections however, are the highlight of the subject, the main reason why people have chosen it and the reason for the quota, I daresay. For 6 of the 12 weeks, you get to partner up with someone else in your group and dissect a region of your choice that belongs to the topic (The anterior compartment/posterior compartment/joints of the Upper/lower limb). The conditions aren't what one would call unsanitary, although some cadavers may present difficulties in dissection with large amounts of fascia and fat. At the end of the prac, the demonstrator would place pins on several dissected regions and quiz you on your knowledge, which is useful for your understanding for the prac exam, second only to the anatomedia images themselves.

The midsems were not exceedingly hard and not hard to do well in if you study your stuff well. I recommend you to go over your stuff (mostly upper limb 1st midsem, lower limb 2nd sem) twice before the midsem itself, and you'll be fine.

The theoretical exam was the same as that of ANAT20006 for the most part in terms of structure. The MCQ content however, was largely concentrated on post-MST2 stuff, which is reasonable, although you may be slightly confounded on what to study. Try to cover everything with a bit more edge for the post MST2 stuff I guess, and you should do fine.

The practical exam however, consisted entirely of 100 MCQs, from 20 images with 5 questions being asked on each. IIRC, answers go from A to E here. The questions can range from "identify this structure" to "what is this structure innvervated by" or "select the correct response". Try to familiarize yourself with anatomedia's images and look through detailed anatomy atlases (like Moore's as I recommended) to get an understanding of the positioning and of structures, as well as your notes to remember their functions, innervations, etc. Time is valuable here, so try not to dwell too much on some questions.

Overall I'd say that the subject is rather well organized into its 4 sections, although some lectures are rather mind-numbing (no offense o'course) with different importances, but definitely try it if you are interested in anatomy and/or medicine, as I've heard that much of the content comes up in 1st year MD.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: GreyMechine on June 30, 2014, 11:10:32 am
Subject Code/Name: ZOOL30007: Experimental Animal Behaviour 

"In this subject you will conduct group-based, hands-on, original research into animal behaviour. Over the semester you will be immersed in the entire process of scientific research - from hypothesis development and experimental design, through to data collection and statistical analysis. You will report your findings in spoken and written formats, and critically review the work of other students. Study animals range from insects and spiders, to fish, birds and mammals – in the lab, zoo or wild. You will emerge with an authentic experience of scientific research – complete with its challenges, frustrations and the thrill of scientific discovery." < - From Handbook

Workload:   
Contact Hours: 3 tutorials (6 hours total) and 60 hours of practical work during the semester.
Total Time Commitment:
Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

You see that sexy amount of practical work? Yeah!!! This is the subject to do if you want some practical experience in your zoology undergrad degree.

WARNING: Super heavy group work in this subject. You will be in a group for the entirety of the semester. No changing.

Assessment: 


Lectopia Enabled:  No lectures! Some tutes, but they basically go over topics like "How to use R to analyse your results". There are prac times for this subject but that's when the tutes are. You won't have many pracs/tutes throughout the semester.

Past exams available:  NO EXAAAM. Your assessment is outlined above, the main assessment is from the report.

Lecturer(s): Raoul Mulder, Theresa Jones

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  5/5

Great subject!

Comments:

Ok, I really enjoyed this subject. This subject is one where you are given a list of projects that are currently available to do, and you try you very hardest to get into the project you want (by crazily refreshing the page when the selection opens). Obviously there are pros and cons of this subject, so I'll list them.

PROS:
+ Great practical experience, you get to learn how research is done in the Zoology field.
+ Assessment is spread out throughout the semester.
+ No final exam!
+ Subject is well coordinated.


CONS:
- Lots of group work - how well this semester goes for you could depend on your group and/or even your supervisor!
- A LOT of contact hours. People would go out twice a week for a whole day to do this for their project. This is not for someone with a packed schedule!
- Not many "mammal" related projects. A majority focused on insects. This will change year to year though!


PROJECTS
So there were enough projects to go around. Each project had 3-5 members. The projects were all behavioural based (so mostly observing the reactions of an animal to certain conditions).

I thought there were some projects that were more exciting than others, and I was lucky enough to get into the project that was my #1 choice.

Each project has a Masters student as the "leader". Most likely your own project will be part of the Master's students research. They were all really nice!

GROUPS
I know everyone hates groupwork, and trust me, I'm one of those people! I found some of my group members to be quite testing, but honestly everyone did their work and I feel like our project went really well.

Since everyone wants a good review, there will rarely be people who slack off, and even if they do, you have the pleasure of giving them a crap assessment (which is anonymous).


Was this subject worth it? For sure! There are a number of practical zoology subjects at uni, and I think this might be the only one thats run over a whole semester (Not sure if Experimental Reproductive Physiology counts). You might want to do a project that's one the summer ones because it's shorter, but it's your choice really.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on June 30, 2014, 08:18:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB30002 - Global Health, Security and Sustainability

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. Tutorial attendance is hurdle (attend at least 9 out of 12 tutes).

Assessment: Opinion Editorial of 1000 words (30%), Research Essay of 3000 words (60%), tutorial participation & summary presentation of a week's readings (totals to 10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A (no exam)

Textbook Recommendation:  There is no prescribed textbook for this subject but the PDFs of the readings are published on LMS

Lecturer(s): There are many different lecturers for this subject - each dealing with a different field of study/discipline. Because this is a interdisciplinary breadth subject, the scope of the course is actually quite broad and so there are quite a few lecturers to cater for that :) For those interested, I've just mentioned the specific lecturers below and the content pertaining to their lectures so you get a better idea of what content is actually covered :)

-> Dr. Jim Black (Intro to subject, current global health status, biomedical approaches to health and health technologies)
-> Prof. Trevor Burnard (History of global health)
-> Prof. Richard Tanter (Politics surrounding global health)
-> A/Prof. Simon Batterbury (Environmental and Geographical impacts on global health)
-> Sarah Hewat (Anthropological and Cultural impacts on global health)
-> Dr. Peter Annear (Economics of global health)
-> A/Prof. Tilman Ruff (Immunisation and the impact of nuclear war on global health)
-> Dr. Matt Reeves (Case Study lecture: Community Development in Jamkhed, India)
-> Dr. Chris Morgan (The impact of International aid organisations, United Nations, & NGOs in global health)
-> David Legge (Trade and global health)
-> Dr. Alison Morgan (Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations)
-> Anna Hood (International Law and Human Rights)
-> Kathryn James (Inclusive Development Practice)
-> Prof. Rob Moodie (Business and global health eg. MBS, Avahan and HIV/AIDS & Global Health)
-> A/Prof.Grant Blashki (Global health in a warming world)
-> A/Prof. Jane Freemantle (Indigenous issues)
-> Prof. Anne Kelso (Influenza and Global health)
-> Sir Gustav Nossal (Keynote lecture)
-> Prof. Mike Toole (Conflict and global health)
-> Prof. Graham Brown (Wrapping up the subject: Staff panel debate and discussion)


Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (92)

Comments: This was my last breadth subject and I took it because I find Global Health interesting :) Basically, this subject is a University Breadth Subject so it adopts the whole interdisciplinary approach (combining perspectives from many disciplines of study). You are also expected to show your understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of content within your two assignments :)

You will be introduced to a few case studies at the beginning of the semester (e.g. a child dying from diarrhoea in Mozambique, a woman dying from maternal complications in Afghanistan, a man suffering from diabetes and tuberculosis in India, and some others which I can't remember haha). Basically, throughout the semester you must identify the "chains of causation" contributing to various diseases and health conditions throughout the world. The case studies are especially important to analyse/understand because they form the basis for your 3000 word research essay due at the end of the semester. In terms of tutorials for this subject, you basically need to attend at least 9 out of 12 tutorials as hurdle requirement. Also, each student in the tutorial will be assessed on their summary of one of the week's readings (you only do this once but can be chosen at any time throughout the weeks so it kind of becomes imperative to at least skim over the readings each week haha). I thought the readings were interesting for the most part, but also extremely long and there were a lot of readings for some of the lectures. I wasn't too fond of particular topics covered (e.g. trade) so I thought the readings for those weeks were a bit dry (but that's just my own bias for the content :P). You basically have to summarise and also you can mention whether you agree/disagree with the views/perspectives of the writers. It's an easy 10%, so just aim to at least skim over the readings each week and you'll be fine! :)

Assignment 1 was an Opinion Editorial of 1000 words and it was worth 40% of the total grade. Basically, it involved writing an opinion piece (like the ones you see in the Herald Sun or the Age or The Drum website) about a particular global health issue that had been covered in the lectures. You also had to weave in perspectives from at least 3 other disciplines which sounds difficult but actually it's not so bad if you can make the links relating to chains of causation :) E.g. I chose to do mine on food insecurity and I linked that to gender inequality, access to healthcare and politics. You just have to choose a bigger issue and think about "what smaller factors/causes exacerbate this bigger global health issue?" and write an opinion piece about it. In terms of the actual Op-Ed piece, try to not be too formal with it. It's not an essay (and it does NOT require references) so you can be as witty or opinionated as possible whilst incorporating the relevant global health discussion. I incorporated humour in mine as well as aside comments and personal life experiences - that said, I decided to write my Op-Ed in the perspective of a 30-something year old woman hahaha :P

Assignment 2 was a research essay of 3000 words and worth 60% of the total grade for this subject. This assignment was a lot more "full-on" compared to the Op-Ed piece and involved researching the chains of causation as well as specific interventions/strategies we could implement or expand upon to reduce mortality and morbidity from any of the conditions/diseases that were outlined in the case studies at the beginning of the subject :) I chose to do mine on the child in Mozambique who dies from Diarrhoea (and apparently this is the most commonly chosen case study for the essay). I thought there were numerous things I could discuss and I actually somewhat liked writing the essay haha I think it's because although the assignment criteria says it's a 'research essay' it felt more like a research report; so in that sense, it felt a bit more structured. You can have sub-headings and use them to separate the different interventions/strategies you discuss. Make sure you try to have backing references for as much of your discussion as possible. Don't just spurt out references but try to weave them into your discussion and show them as "proof" for what explanations/interventions you're putting forth :) When explaining the chains of causation, ensure you do so in detail and don't just briefly identify or state them; using linking words such as "thus, subsequently, consequently, therefore, as a result of, etc" will help to better show that you're making links between the causes (that x leads to or is caused by y). Also, focus on sustainable interventions/solutions (e.g. building a high technology and very expensive water filtration system in Mozambique is not going to be sustainable as the local people will not be able to afford it in the long term once aid is withdrawn). Also, try to focus on education as a sustainable tool to reducing morbidity and mortality from disease (addressing women + promoting education = always sustainable!). Other than that, just try to break down and simplify complexities as much as possible - you want to be able to show your report to an average person on the street and they should be able to understand what you're trying to get across. Once again, this essay does require the use of interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g. focus on how the health conditions/diseases within your chosen case study link up to disciplinary views such as gender equality, healthcare, politics/government, trade, health policy, infrastructure, etc - basically combining some (not all) of the topics that have been covered in lectures into your own discussion in your essay).

Overall, I thought this subject was well-taught and had a very holistic approach :) The tutorials were well conducted and engaging in terms of activities/discussion. I wouldn't say that it was an "easy" breadth subject but if you have a background in global health, or if you're interested in global health issues, (or if you enjoyed HHD unit 4 in VCE which reflects some of the content covered here), then you will enjoy this subject for sure and you'll definitely manage well with the readings and assignments! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Limista on July 01, 2014, 10:07:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC10057 - Wellbeing, Motivation and Performance

Workload:  1 x 2 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. Attendance at all classes (tutorials/ lectures) is obligatory. Failure to attend 80% of classes will normally result in failure in the subject.

Assessment: 1500-word analysis of the student’s experience applying this knowledge to every day life. Due mid-semester, 35%
2500-word assignment on wellbeing theories and ways this knowledge can be used to educate communities and society. Due end of semester, 65%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A (no exam)

Textbook Recommendation:  There is no prescribed textbook for this subject. PDFs of the weekly readings are published on LMS

Lecturer(s): There were 3 lecturers for this subject:
* Prof Lea Waters
* Gavin Slemp
* Paige (not sure about the last name)
There were a lot of guest lecturers that took the second half of the 2hr lecture.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments:
This subject is a psychology-type breadth subject. Specifically, it is a field of 'positive psychology'.

There were weekly readings that were assigned to us. Usually, they were in the form of a journal article, and we had to read two per week. We were not assessed on the readings in any way, so a lot of the time, it was fine if you didn't bother with them. That said, the readings were pretty interesting, as they looked at how positive psychology interventions are overlooked today, when they can actually promote success and happiness. By doing the readings, you also become more familiar with the 'big names' in positive psychology that could be useful for your assignment. For instance, you might want to quote a researcher from the journal article as part of the prescribed reading, which might provide you with 'bonus' marks, since it shows the tutors that you've actually been doing the readings. But some of the readings are rather long and boring to read, especially when it comes to research methods, so maybe set a goal of doing one per week?

The tutors mark your assignments. There are two tutors: Gavin and Paige (who are also the lecturers I've mentioned above). Feel free to ask them questions on the assignment, so that you know exactly how you'll be marked. A scoring sheet is provided on the LMS, but in my opinion, it was very generic. I know that for my mid-term assignment, I would ask my tutor questions such as - is an introduction or conclusion needed? Are in-text citations part of the word count?

The mid-term and final assignments had the same set-up. This means that 2-3 broad questions were asked, and articles were given (in APA format) for each question that must be used to answer the questions. This means that you should know how to find the articles, which is explained on the LMS. Also, go beyond the articles provided for you in the assignment, and look for more sources. The more research you look like you've done, the better your grade.

However, the final assignment was a little different, in that one of the questions required you to use the results for the diary entries. I'll explain the concept of the 'diary entries'... what happens is, during the second half of semester 1 (after you've completed the midterm assignment), you are required to write in an online diary everyday for 2 weeks. This online diary is emailed to you from Gavin, and has a set of questions you need to complete. Make sure to do it everyday, since they keep a record of who's completing it everyday or not. It takes about 10min of your day, and is really worthwhile. Make sure to be honest when you answer the questions (example of question - 'write the first thing that went wrong today'), since that is what will really help you with your final assignment.

For the final assignment, we were also originally supposed to use the results for our 'post-test survey', but due to technical problems (the system malfunctioned, and they couldn't get the results out to everyone doing the subject), we were excused from using this to answer one of the questions.

The referencing for assignments is APA, which is honestly VERY tedious. Keep aside 2 hours or so to complete the final page at the end with all your references, just to make sure you don't misplace a comma, or that you've got the right bits in italics. Also, try to use journal articles as your references, as I found the tutors were quite stingy when it came to referencing websites and blogs.

Now that I've written about the assessment side of things, I'd like to write about the subject in general! In all honesty, it was a very enjoyable subject, and the lectures on Wednesday were the perfect end to my day. I think it's because they helped to keep me optimistic, and give me hope. For instance, Lea was an engaging lecturer who'd crack jokes, and look at how positive psychology can make our lives better as students, in terms of grades, jobs, social skills and those kinds of things. Something really important I've learned from this subject is to always smile, even when you don't feel like it, because it works wonders in terms of how people approach you, and how you complete tasks. This subject also reiterated the importance of setting realistic goals, being persistent & resilient, and focusing on your strengths instead of your weaknesses. The guest lecturers were also a delight to listen to. We had a lecturer that was a football player, and another woman who worked as a psychologist.

There's also a campaign that occurs during the second half of semester. You don't have to participate, but it's good fun. Basically, a bunch of us signed up to give free hugs, take photos etc. near the ERC to make the community more aware of positive psychology.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on July 03, 2014, 04:27:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE30001 Evolutionary Genetics and Genomics

Workload:  3 one hour lectures a week

Assessment: A written class test during semester (20%); three assignments of not more than 500 words each due during the semester (30% in total); a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, quite a few.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Charles Robin, Ronald Lee, Phil Batterham, Ary Hoffman, Alexandre Fournier-Level, Philippa Griffin

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I thought the lecturers were all quite good. Charles knows his stuff and is into it but that can be a bit of a problem. The guy's smart as hell so he sometimes goes through a problem and you're left wondering wtf just happened. Watching the lectures again or googling helps though. Ronald tends to go off on little tangents/stories which is a pro in that they're interesting but a con if you're the type that just wants to get through the relevant material and leave.

The MST I thought was difficult but fair. It's all short answers and Charles gives you a list of practice questions to do (at least one or two of them actually ended up on the MST) which are good. There was barely any actual formula type questions but I think at least one will pop up so know how to use the formulas. Primarily know how to perform the sample questions that pop up throughout the lectures. Those are the types of questions that will pop up on the MST. You will get a formula sheet so you don't need to actually memorize any. You will mainly want to just make sure your lecture notes are detailed on the theory (what did example X demonstrate?) as that will what the MST is gonna be focused on.

The assignments were pretty interesting. They're designed to help you be able to analyze articles and also tie in your knowledge of genetics together. I think the first one was to find an article on eQTLs and then state some key points in the article and what they meant. Ronald's one involved using your knowledge of inbreeding etc to work out a plan to save a species (you choose one from a bunch he offers) from extinction.

I can't remember the exam exactly but it was fairly similar to the MST. If you know your theory then it should be pretty good. Again I don't remember a lot of formula type questions, just mainly theory.

The subject could definitely benefit from tutorials and more practice questions. We suggested this so hopefully they implement them for future students. The subject is also geared towards population genetics so if that's not your thing then you might not like it. I feel the subject was kind of confusing for a decent portion of the semester but then towards the end everything tied in or clicked for me and all of a sudden boom clarity everywhere. I found this subject more difficult than the other genetics subject (Orgs). Exam questions are recycled so definitely do the old ones. I don't think this subject is an easy H1 but if you put the effort in I think you'll fare well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on July 03, 2014, 04:47:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE30002 Genes: Organisation and Function

Workload:  3 one hour lectures per week

Assessment: One multiple-choice class test held mid-semester (10%); two online assignments/problem-solving tasks due during the semester (15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 for 2011. The past exams are not on the past exam website thing but will be provided on the LMS. The subject is based on  652-302 Molecular Genetics so despite only having 1 practice exam from 2011, they list a whole bunch from  652-302 Molecular Genetics which you can do.

Textbook Recommendation:  None although they recommend doing some prereading if you haven't done the second year genetics subjects (lecture slides provided on the LMS).

Lecturer(s): Chris Cobbett, Meryl Davis, Alex Andrianopoulos, John Golz, Michael Hynes

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I thought this subject was the easier one out of the two genetics subjects. It is mostly ROTE memory so if you understand the content and can memorize it then you will do good. Some of the content crosses over with MCB from biomed 2nd year and also BCMB20003 (mainly the cyclin stuff and transcription etc) so if you've done either then you will be on familiar ground.

The MST I enjoyed. I found it straightforward. I believe it was predominantly multiple choice true/false. A lot of people complained that the MST was too focused on nuances with subtle wordings and double negatives rather than a true demonstration of your knowledge (which short answers would be better for). I think if you know your stuff you should do good on it but I can see how reading comprehension would come into play.

The assignments are both interesting. You get a science article and a list of questions. You have to read the article and answer the questions. There's a deadline and you can do the questions anytime before the deadline and submit it whenever you want (no time limit). Working in a group makes this easier. They're designed to teach you how to reach scientific articles etc. The articles aren't just random pieces though. They are relevant to the lecture material so if you know the lecture material then the articles will make more sense.

The exam I think was pretty good too. Basically standard multiple choice, short answers, etc. If you know your stuff then you should do well. There isn't really any trickery. Questions for both the exam and MST are recycled so definitely do them.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spalvains on July 03, 2014, 10:44:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30003 Molecular Aspects of Cell Biology

Workload:  3x 1hr lectures and 1x 1hr tutorial each week.

Assessment:  Written assessment (15%), 2x MSTs (7.5% each), and an exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (for lectures and tutes).

Past exams available: There were two copies of the MSTs from the last two years (so 4 total), and exams from the last 2 years (however, some of the lecturers had only joined in 2013, so only papers from then will give a true feel of the examination).

Textbook Recommendation: Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell is the prescribed textbook. I recommend it if you're majoring in the area as it's the main textbook that Unimelb uses for cell biology and really does a good job, but if this subject is an elective then don't bother buying it. The lectures slides are sufficient.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof Marie Bogoyevitch, Prof Paul Gleeson, Prof Jose Villadangos, Prof Ian van Driel, A/Prof Heung-Chin Cheng, Dr Diana Stojanovski

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2014

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: This subject is mainly taken by Cell and Dev Bio or Biochem majors, although you do get a few other people from other life science majors. Each lecturer takes roughly one topic, as follows:


Each lecturer has around 3-4 lectures each, and most have an associated tutorial on the Friday in/after their topic. However, if you've done the maths, you can see that we end up with less lectures (around 26) than the advertised 36 (12 x 3lectures/week). This is due to a few factors.

The first few lectures are on nuclear import/export, which isn't assessed in the exam but instead is the topic of the written assignment. There's also a few lectures in week 5 that go over the general concepts, etc, once the papers have been given. I found it odd that the first lectures were dedicated to the topic when we didn't even have the papers yet. I also felt that the amount of lecture time dedicated to the assignment was really unnecessary. It wasn't difficult at all, and having that much time dedicated (I think it was 4 lectures total?) was overkill.

To explain, the written assignment was to answer two questions that accompanied a paper. The first would be a general question on nuclear import/export that the paper had dealt with (e.g. explain how the NLS is recognised, or discuss how proteins move from the cytoplasm to the nucleus), and the second would be to explain the results of a particular figure within the paper (e.g. a GST pull-down assay, or IP assay). The first had to be done with references to literature, and since it's just a general overview of a topic it wasn't hard. The second question would be split up into several questions that needed to be answered (hint: these make good subheadings). Hell, I didn't even read the paper past the figure, which was on the third page. It is extremely straightforward.

(But really, I shouldn't complain because less lectures dedicated to examinable content = less memorisation to do, I guess?)

Most of the lecturers know their stuff and are really great. I had a real issue with Heung-Chin Cheng's lectures - they were really dry and full of messy diagrams. Once I managed to listen to it all and understand the content (which took a lot longer than it should have), what he is teaching isn't really that difficult, it's just that it's not presented in the best way. I strongly suggest that you do further reading to really understand the topic. Sitting in the lecture once won't be enough to get it into your head.

The MSTs covered two topics each (Cheng's and Stojanovski's weren't covered by MSTs). Each topic in the MST had 5 MCQs and one written question (for 10 marks). So, in one MST there were 10 MCQs and two written, for 30 marks total. I guess it may be because I've been used to MSTs that were a few pages long, but I disliked that it was so short, and that so much was riding on the long-answer questions (and some of them were a bit dubious).

For the exam, each lecturer had one 30-mark section. They were all short or long answer (although Marie, the coordinator, has stated that at some point they will probably introduce MCQs). Each section had one question that had to be done (15 marks), and then a choice out of two other questions, also 15 marks.

But really, for all the flaws I'm saying, it really was a great subject (hence the 4/5 score). The topics were interesting, and for the most part they were delivered really well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on July 04, 2014, 11:59:42 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002: Biomedicine: Molecules to Malady

Workload: Three 1-hour lectures per week plus two 1-hour tutorials per semester. Note the tutorials weren't really used and when they were used were used similarly to the second year biomed tutes (basically an extra lecture slot).

Assessment:  2x 45min intra-semester tests (20% each) at around weeks 6 and 10 (2 maladies per test); 3 hr written examination in the final examination period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No but they give you sample SAQ and multi choice questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Helen Cain, Fred Hollande, Dick Strugnell, Louise Adams, and pretty sure some more.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I found the subject really enjoyable. The 6 maladies are all interesting and there are overlaps so the modules tie together. Not much to say since all biomeds have to do this. You might find some modules easier than others depending on your major. I did BCMB last year and found that helped with stuff like Wnt signalling for the bone stuff. The second year MCB subject also helped for this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: anniejoy on July 04, 2014, 12:06:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: FOOD20003 Food Chemistry, Biology and Nutrition

Workload: 1 x 1hr lecture, 1 x 2hr lecture, 1 x 1hr tutorial

Assessment:  4 x online quizzes (each 5%), 1000 word research essay (20%), 3hr final exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No.  A handful of sample questions were provided to illustrate exam format and question style.

Textbook Recommendation:  Understanding Nutrition: Australia & New Zealand edition by Eleanor Whitney
This book was a prescribed textbook when I started this subject, although it has since been taken off the handbook. Not required but helpful for quiz revision (more details in comments below).

Lecturer(s): Dr Ken Ng, Dr Anneline Padayachee

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This was overall quite an enjoyable and practically applicable subject, and to be honest, the easiest I've ever done at this uni. It's hard to believe it's a level 2 subject, and I'd describe it as year 11 biology (difficulty, not content) with a bit of (simple!) first year chemistry.

The lectures cover the following content (roughly - I tried to remember the best I can, but the order of/amount of time dedicated to each topic might be slightly off or change from year to year):
(KN = Ken Ng, AP =  Anneline Padayachee)

*Digestive Physiology (1hr) KN
Carbohydrates (5hr) KN
Lipids (6hr) AP
Proteins (4hr) AP
How to Research (1hr) - guest lecture by Lindy Cochrane in preparation for the 20% essay assignment
*Polyphenols (1hr) AP
*Supplements (1hr) AP
*Water (1hr) AP
*Digestive Health (1hr) AP
Water-soluble Viatmins (3hr) KN
Fat-soluble Vitamins (2hr) KN
Major Minerals (1hr) KN
Trace Minerals (3hr) KN
Student-led questions/exam format (1hr) KN (2hr) AP

Carbohydrates, lipids and proteins cover structure/properties, digestion/absorption, metabolism and relevant health implications (e.g. diabetes, obesity, protein-energy malnutrition). With regards to metabolism, there is no memorisation of complex biochemical pathways or molecules. We just needed to remember some key steps (mainly glucose, pyruvate and acetyl coA) and which nutrients fed into which pathway. Vitamins and minerals cover each specific vitamin/mineral and their roles, recommended intake, deficiency (and toxicity, if applicable) symptoms. Interspersed between these core topics are a number of special topics (marked with asterisks *) which are mainly for interest, and are assessed in the final exam but not in the quizzes.

The quizzes assess carbs, lipids, proteins and vitamins/minerals, respectively (each quiz is 40 MCQs in 60min) . They are straightforward factual recall, except for a couple of calculation questions in the protein quiz based on dietary intake and calories (if I remember correctly). All the content are taken almost directly out of the textbook. Some details tested are not explicitly covered in the lectures (although there aren't too many). So I'd recommend at least borrowing a copy to read over while revising for quizzes (if you don't, you'll still do fine, don't worry).

The tutorials are not compulsory but are good revision and I'd recommend going to them. Our tutor informed us that on average, 70-80% of exam questions were directly taken or adapted from the tutorial questions (although I'm sure this is true most years, it wasn't the case in our year - see below). Powerpoint slides from tutorials are posted on the LMS, but sometimes they tend to be 'skeletons' of the answers which are explained more fully in the actual tutorials. My tutor was lovely and approachable and always welcomed questions. Plus, the 20% essay assignment is marked entirely by the tutors, and they tell us exactly what they expect from us.

The assignment was a 1000 word research essay on the topic of edible insects (write a proposal arguing that insects should be deliberately added to bread sold in Australia - not for real, of course). Lindy Cochrane and the tutors were quite helpful. This wasn't a particularly difficult assignment overall, but probably the hardest part of this subject, and do be prepared to spend a good amount of time researching if you want to do well.

The exam this year was 36 multiple choice questions, which is very unusual for this subject. I've been told it's usually a mix of short and long answer questions, so our year was probably easier than usual (hence we didn't get any tutorial-style questions). Our exam, whilst more difficult than the quizzes, was really not too bad as long as you absorbed the lecture contents. There were a few tricky questions, but that is to be expect. Many people finished within an hour.

I gave this subject a 4 instead of 5, because at times it felt like the lecturers were not as well organised as they could have been (e.g. numerous typos on lecture slides and exam) but they were clearly passionate about nutrition, so it was overall enjoyable. I'd recommend this subject to anyone who is interested in nutrition and its health application. If you are entering this subject wanting to do some hardcore biochemistry, this subject is probably not for you (I've heard BCMB20003 is quite good, though.)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on July 04, 2014, 05:55:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20001: Organisational Behaviour

Workload:  1 x 2hr Lecture; 1 x 1hr Tutorial

Assessment:  10% Individual Assignment; 30% Group Assignment; 10% Tutorial Participation; 50% 2hr Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture

Past exams available: No.  There a sample exam

Textbook Recommendation: Didn’t buy it, didn’t need it

Lecturer(s): Graham Sewell and Zelinna Pablo

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 1.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This subject is not great. It’s not horrible, but it’s not amazing either.

The lectures drag on. Even sitting in the front, I found myself drifting in and out of focus during lectures.

Content:

The first 6 weeks are micro topics, topics that talk about OB on a smaller scale. The last 6 weeks are on macro topics, ones that talk about OB on a larger scale. Simple enough, really. You don’t really need to know that much about the distinction between the two. Each lecture covers one topic and you’re introduced to various theories that come under that topic.


Assessments:

Tutorials are pretty pointless, if it weren’t for the participation marks, I would’ve been seriously questioning whether or not to show up. Make sure you’re engaging with the discussions in tutorials and answering questions, because I’m quite sure the tutors mark participation pretty harshly; so establish a good rapport with them. Shouldn’t be too hard since a lot of people spend the tutorial disengaged and bored. For the macro portion, you spend the time applying the theory you learnt to a case you’re given. Pay attention to these cases, because these are the cases they choose from to put on the exam

The 10% assignment was fairly straightforward. They do a workshop where they explain basic research skills, but they do break down the question a little bit, so I wouldn’t call it a complete waste of time. Just make sure you define your concepts and explain anything within the definition clearly.

The 30% group assignment was a colossal stress-inducing ordeal. You were given a case and a theory; and you had to analyse, using the theory, why the case experienced the failures they did and then provide a set of recommendations based on your analysis. Get it started early, and at the beginning have one person who is on top of things to properly read and understand what the task is asking of the group - most people won’t, considering the amount of reading you have to do that’s directly relevant to the assignment. So have said person, probably the assigned leader, get a thorough understanding of the topic and the case you’re applying the theory to and set out a structure for the assignment. Then get them to explain to the rest of the group what the actual assignment is and then start delegating tasks. The sheer amount of horror stories of all-nighters and MIA/incompetent team members I heard about were really high, so get the organising all done early to avoid this kind of drama.


Exam:

The exam consists of 4 questions. One on a micro OB topic and 3 on a macro OB topic. The micro OB topic question gives you a topic from the micro OB topics you’ve learnt about and apply it to your experience when working on the group assignment. The 3 questions on macro OB all come under a single topic that you cover in one of the weeks and they give a case that you’ve covered in a tutorial (they provide the case in the exam so don’t stress about memorising it, but be familiar with it at the very least because you don’t want to be spending your reading time freaking about the case). Note that the combinations of cases and macro topics that have been already covered during tutorials are not examinable.

There are no surprises on the exam. They provide you with all the possible combinations of cases and topics that could be covered in the macro portion and all the possible topics that could be cover in the micro portion. They even remove one case and one topic from the macro portion, and one micro topic during the last week.

I wouldn’t advise writing up every single possible response, rather have a solid understanding of each concept and each case and if you have time write up rough plans in the lead up to the exam. Within the exam, it really is a race against the clock, once writing time starts, you’re going to be writing the entire time. Make sure your responses don’t talk about the theory and then use an example to show how the theory relates to the case, rather you want to be providing certain instances that occurred and then analyse that event with the theory that you’re asked to use. It’s helpful, and advisable, to first define key concepts when writing a response, so that way when you reach your analysis you’re not bogged down by having to define the concepts you talk about and you can keep the up the momentum in your analysis.


Opinion:

I really didn’t enjoy this subject very much, however, if you’re a commerce student there really isn’t much of a point in this review considering it’s a compulsory subject. However, if you’re considering doing this for breadth, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on July 04, 2014, 05:55:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20003: Quantitative Methods 2

Workload:  2 x 1hr Lectures; 1 x 1hr Tutorial

Assessment:  5% Mid-Semester online test; 15% of Assignments (There are 3 and they take the best 2); 10% Tutorial Participation; 70% 2hr Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No.  There was a sample exam with solutions, though

Textbook Recommendation:  Retained from QM1, but I didn’t end up using it.

Lecturer(s): Joe Hirschberg

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject isn’t bad. It’s a lot less mathsy than its level 1 counterpart for sure. It focusses a lot more on the application of tests (such as whether or not the difference between two means is significant, whether or not to use median or mean in these tests, what kind of regression to use, application ARIMA). It also relies on using E-views.

Online Test (MCQ):
This wasn’t really done very well, I think the questions for this test in particular are recycled and it really does test you on your understanding of the theory. Since it’s a multiple choice test, some of the questions do require you to have a very detailed understanding of the theory, which I don’t think really reflects the aim of the course, however it only accounts for 5%.

Assignments:
There were 3 assignments that were all marked out of 5. They took the best 2 of these and then they scaled them so that they contributed a maximum of 15% of our mark. So if you got full marks on the first 2 assignments, then you could skip the last one. We were encouraged to work with others, but you couldn’t hand in the same assignment. Essentially just make sure you have the same E-views output as everyone else.

Participation:
I think so long as you do your pre-tute homework and you show up to all the tutes you should get full marks. So these really are given to you, you really don’t want to be losing these.

Exam:
You’re gonna be writing the entire time, a mark of the exam was equal to a mark toward your final grade. 25 marks were allocated for definitions (stating your understanding of/defining concepts ie. What is the ACF), 25 marks were allocated for answering questions about what test should be used given a certain situation (ie. Binomial Regression, ARIMA, Parametric Test of the Mean…). Then there are 2x 10 mark questions where you are given E-views output and you have to answer questions about interpreting the data and drawing conclusions.

Opinion:
This subject is quite reasonable, although I did have a bit of a feeling that I wasn’t sure what I needed to know, and I wasn’t sure if what I knew was sufficient.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on July 04, 2014, 06:25:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20002 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Workload: 3X1 hour lectures + 1 hour tutorials placed every fortnight I think?

Assessment:  2X10% MSTs, 10% CALs/quizzes, 70% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes. Tutorials are also recorded.
 
Past exams available: Yes, however some material is not relevant. There are papers from 2009-2012.

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended is Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry . I never needed to use it. Lecture notes were sufficient.

Lecturer(s):
Paul Gooley lectures 1-6 on amino acids and protein structure (primary, secondary, tertiary).
Alana Mitchell lectures 7-10 on quaternary structure, kinetics (MM kinetics, allosteric regulation etc)
Irene Stanley lectures 11-23 on molecular biology (DNA RNA structure, DNA replication, RNA synthesis, Protein synthesis, Lac Operon etc)
Paul Gleeson lectures 24-27 on lipids, membrane proteins and carbohydrates.
Terry Mulhern lectures 28-33 on metabolism (Glycolysis, Fates of Pyruvate, TCA cycle, Electron transport chain, Glycogenolysis, Glycogenesis, Cori Cycle and more)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014.

Rating:  4.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:

Comments:
I thought this subject was great to be honest. I hated it throughout the semester and I endlessly complained about how difficult and crap this subject was but in hindsight, I was just a little sook. This subject is all about memorising. You don't really need to understand any proper concepts but just memorise slabs of info, text, diagrams etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed the content presented by Paul Gooley, Paul Gleeson and Terry Mulhern. All lecturers explained their content very clearly but some parts were just horrifically mind numbingly boring (like most of molecular biology - don't kill me guys! It's just my opinion LOL). Protein structure was very interesting for me. Even though everyone hated it, I really enjoyed memorising the metabolic pathways and all the amino acids and compounds etc. My favorite lecturer was Paul Gleeson as I found the content he presented was soooooooooooooooooooooooooo goood and engaging. Maybe it was cause he does look like Chuck Norris LOOOOOOOOL

I highly commend the lecturers organisation as emails with questions to them were responded to very quickly. I cannot thank Irene for clearing up many questions I bombarded her with throughout the semester.
On another note of organisation and efficiency, we had ~650 students in BCMB in semester 1 and for both mid semester tests, the results were out in less than 1/2 a week which is rather amazing. This is in contrast to cell biology who had 1/5 the amount of students and took ~2-4 weeks for results of intra-semester tests to be released. Maybe the marking system prioritises marking on the number of students? I dunno.

Even though there are quite a few reviews for BCMB here on AN, I felt I needed to write one since the assessment has changed from past years. Previously the CALs were weighted as 20% with 1 MST (10%) but this year they changed it to 2X10% MSTs which made it I dare say more difficult for the cohort this year. The CALs were free marks, but the MSTs you had to know your shit really well.

The exam is pretty hard and is different to past exam papers. For example, for the kinetics section, all the questions in our exam were written responses whereas the past exam papers were all in the form of multiple choice questions. As to no suprise, many students struggled with Alana's questions.

All in all, even though some bits were so crap/dull/boring, the subject is immaculately organised and efficient and some parts of the subject are just so fascinating.

PM me if you have any questions.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: e^1 on July 04, 2014, 09:14:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10011 Poetics of the Body 1

Workload: A 2 hour lecture and 1 hour seminar/tutorial per week at Southbank campus.

Assessment:  30% group presentation, 30% journal, 40% on a weekend seminar/project

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  There are no exams for this subject

Textbook Recommendation: A reader for this subject, which was cheap (at least for this semester). You may be able to view it for free from the LMS.

Lecturer(s): David Shea, and speakers from various fields

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  3.75/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments:
Seminar and lecture:
This subject is basically discussing the various viewpoints of the human body (physical, scientifically, metaphorically etc) without the many details. It was quite a nice break from the other science subjects, and it doesn't take much of your time. Overall I felt it was an easy subject which did not bore.

David Shea is a composer, and is quite friendly and talkative. Unfortunately for me, I am the somewhat opposite of that so hahaha. At least for me, he made the content (which was already interesting) more enjoyable with that attitude. As the primary speaker for the seminar, he'll broadly talk about psychoanalysis, music, religions etc... and how it relates to the human body. There is a lot of 'holisticness' that he talks about quite a bit, believing that different but separate departments will achieve more by working together.

As for the 2 hour lecture, you will get various speakers coming from different fields. For me, I had one talk about neuroplasticity, Daoism, epigenetics, even video games. Listening to various recent discoveries was a nice refresher from the bland content of Linear Algebra. I am not sure about this, but the speakers you get may vary next semester so I won't really write about it in detail.

Assessments:
As part of the assessment, you will need to write a weekly journal about a lecture & seminar you went to (no Lectopia, but it wouldn't work for this subject imo). For me, I wrote on the experiences I had that week and tried to find revelations that connected with science (computer/math in particular). As the handbook mentions, it does not have to be an essay, and you could do it in a scrapbook or even map your thoughts on tissue papers (David Shea might mention it again)! There is no strict format you have to adhere to, just as long as it reflects on your experiences for that subject. On another note, it would seem prudent that you do them every week... It can be messy remembering everything and writing it on the last few days (like I did).

The group presentation component will start on the later weeks of the semester... you simply collaborate and present at least (I think) a 15-20 minute presentation on a topic which is relevant to the subject (prosthetics, human senses, about a weekend project etc...). You get a week to work on it, including the 3-hour contact hours you get per week. If you wanted to you could group up with others and do it earlier, but for us someone had this great idea and that made things easier. I should add that it does not have to be a Powerpoint presentation, and you could make it as creative as you like.

Lastly, you can choose one or more projects that you partake on a weekend. You may decide to go to more than one weekend project, but you only need to go on one. This is the practical component of this assessment. After that you will need to write an essay (the theoretical component) about your weekend experience. This will probably vary next semester, but I chose to go on a drawing weekend seminar, starting from drawing straight lines to models with charcoal. There were also other interesting ones, including a meditation session and the pointless weekend 'wandering' of the city (by David).


All in all although I felt this subject was not difficult (could say it was more relaxing), it brought some pretty interesting concepts and research.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: slacker on July 06, 2014, 10:25:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10005 Physics 1: Fundamentals

Workload:  3 lectures per week, 1 tutorial per week, 8 x 3hour long practicals, 10 x Weekly online assignments

Assessment:  Weekly Assignments worth 15%, Practicals worth 25% and Exam worth 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, quite a lot of them however, no full solutions, especially for the ones before 2011.

Textbook Recommendation:  R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach- Essential!

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  1.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Content - Apparently it is similar to the VCE year 12 physics course and probably similar to the IB physics course too. Topics included Mechanics, Waves and sound, and Optics.
Assignments - Easy with the help of google
Practicals - Easy if you read the textbook before hand and ask the demonstrator for help as much as possible.
Exam - Difficult. About the difficulty of those weekly problems from the tutorials.
My Experience
I chose this subject without much thought. I chose physics for my IB course but dropped it within the first 6 weeks because I just couldn't understand physics and found it extremely boring but I somehow decided to do physics fundementals in hopes to gain some basics. As expected, my thoughts on the subject still hasn't changed, I stopped going to lectures after the first 3 lectures and never went back to the tutorials after the first one. All the physics I learnt for the whole semester was from the practicals (I had to read about them in the textbook before hand). The so-called assignments are sets of online questions from this site called 'mastering-physics' which you can pretty much just google to find the answers. So basically, I wasted the whole semester not learning anything although I gained nearly full marks for my internal assessments. (And so when exams came, I was so screwed it wasn't funny  >:()

About 19 days before my physics exam, I finally stopped procrastinating and started by counting the number of freaking topics from the textbooks we had supposedly studied and OH MY! there were so many that I panicked and cried (I know, its my own fault, no ones to blame for my laziness...) There were about 16 relevant chapters from the textbook that I had to cover in the 18 days I had left. Everyday I would read the whole chapter and do most of the end of chapter questions (about 80 per day...crazy, I know) until the last few days where I starting giving up and only did the 'suggested-problems' listed on the LMS. Despite the study, on the last day when I did past papers I still couldn't do like nearly half of the questions.

On D-DAY I went into the exhibition theatre barely prepared having only just learnt the content in like 2 weeks and a bit. The exam had the same format as it did in all the previous years with most of the topics covered. There were about 20% explanation questions which were similar to the ones in past papers but only 'explanation required' was shown in all of the past papers :(. But I guess I managed to pick up most of my marks here because I used my pro-bullshitting skills for these. You just have to find an equation from the list of formulas provided and use it to explain the effect or whatever. I attempted most of the questions (about 80%) even if an answer couldn't be found and left the exam an hour early.

In the end, I received an H1 for my grade but this is definitely a fluke. This subject is not for those who like to slack off like me. If you do slack off, you will have a terrible life in the month leading up to the physics exam (I had a few mental breakdowns while studying for physics and my other subjects - Bio, Chem and Jap5). My tip for those who decide to challenge this subject is to practice application questions and conceptual questions regularly, use the textbook instead of wasting time listening to the lecturers - you can find answers to them by googling the name of the textbook, and finally start studying early ;D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bonappler on July 07, 2014, 07:56:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: CWRI10001 Creative Writing: Ideas and Practice 
Workload:  One weekly lecture (1 hour) and one weekly workshop (2 hours)

Assessment:  Three assessments throughout the semester totalling 4000 words including three major assignments. Firstly 30 to 40 lines of poetry equivalent to 1000 words. A piece of non-fiction equal to 1500 words and a piece of creative fiction equating 1500 words. These assessments are worth 30% each and 10% is attendance. Note: You cannot miss more than two workshops or you fail the subject!

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No exam

Textbook Recommendation:  Seriously, I have no idea whether there was a textbook and frankly there is no way in hell that I would of needed it. There is a subject reader though which you MUST buy.

Lecturer(s): Dr Grant Caldwell, also a plethora of guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 77% H2A

Comments: I'll be honest, the main reason I wanted to do this subject was for the girls. Seriously, it's pretty pathetic looking back but I really wanted to meet some of these so-called 'Arts' girls. Let's just say Arts girls are not the most normal human beings you will come across but I digress (and I'm sorry if that offended anyone ;p). I remember the first workshop I attended, it was a sunny day and there were some nice people in the room. That was until they started talking.

Being a more mathematically minded person I was instantly put off by how open the discussion was. In all honesty the workshops were just a long conversation about random things, from coffee to recreational drugs (seriously), they were quite an eye-opening venture. My tutor was what some would call, 'adorkable,' I kind of imagined all the woman tutors to be like this and she was great fun to talk to and really intelligent. Not in the sense that she could ace an exam but her wisdom knew no bounds. In terms of the subject, yes, it is seriously laid back and on top of that there is no exam! I would not say the three assessments are a breeze. Our tutor told us that we should have a draft that was double the word limit and then cut it back so it would just be under (drafts have to be handed in as well).

I'll be honest and say that I only went to three or four lectures and when I did go I would be on Reddit most of the time. Some of the lectures I went to though seemed to be quite interesting and the lecturers would try to be funny and get really obnoxious laughs from the hipster students (of which there are enough to fill a country in this subject).

There is also a reader and you are allocated long passages to read weekly. I didn't really do it and got through the workshop by keeping quiet (usually the tutor begins the workshop asking about how the lecture was and/or if anyone had any comments on that weeks reading).

All in all, I enjoyed the subject and if you are looking for something different go for it! I may be a bit lenient giving it a 4/5 but I think it was nice to have a break from my intense Maths and Science subjects and go and have my mind blown by conversations about life, the universe and everything.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chair on July 09, 2014, 02:04:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20002: Intermediate Microeconomics

Workload:  2 x 1hr Lectures; 1 x 1hr Tutorial

Assessment:  1 x 10% Online Test; 2 x 10% Assignments; 10% Tutorial Participation; 60% 2 hr Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  One was provided with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  There is one, didn’t need it

Lecturer(s): Reshad Ahsan

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Lectures: The lecture slides are structured quite well and logically, however, the lectures are presented in such a way that you really don’t need to attend - simply streaming them online is sufficient. The content is interesting enough, you start off learning about consumer theory (indifference curves, budget constraints etc.) and then onto producer theory. For some weird reason there is a quick divergence to General Equilibrium. Then Monopolies, and Oligopolies are covered, which includes some aspects of game theory.

Tutorials: I think how these are presented depend on the tutor, so I won’t say too much about that. Much like intro micro, intro macro and QM 1, there are pink and blue sheets.

Online Test: Worth 10%. Not sure how I felt about this test. Standard multiple choice test, no practice test was given, but we were told which weeks of content would be directly relevant.

Assignments: Your pretty standard 10% assignment, you apply the models you learnt in lectures to situations. The only annoying thing about these were that for some reason Reshad refused to disclose how many marks each question was worth, he didn’t even say what the assignment is out of so it made determining the amount of detail required for each part of the question extremely difficult. Especially the questions that asked us to discuss the intuition of a model, or to explain why a certain situation was the way it was. These are optional group assignments (similar to the group assignments of QM 1), where you could work in groups of up to 5 (or maybe 4, can’t quite remember). I preferred to work alone, because it forced me to learn the theory myself and prevents me from relying on other people to do a difficult question.

Tutorial Participation: 5% is based of attendance and 5% is based of actual contributions made in class.

Exam: 10 Multiple Choice Questions and 4 Short Answer Questions that require you to use the models in class to answer questions - Similar to the tute questions.

Opinion: It’s a good subject, I highly recommend it. It’s compulsory for an economics major, but if you’re doing it as an elective or breadth, I think it’s a great subject to do.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on July 09, 2014, 08:35:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: Principles of Human Structure - ANAT20006 

Workload: 3X 1 hour lectures, 4X 2 hour practicals + ADSLs (self-directed)

Assessment: 10% ADSL quizzes (8X1.25%), 2X15% MSTs, 60% final semester exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  None, no sample example provided. (last lecture goes through the format of the exam though)
 
Textbook Recommendation:  Eizenberg N, Briggs C et al: General Anatomy: Principles & Applications, McGraw-Hill 2007, Drake RL et al: Gray’s Anatomy for Students, Elsevier, 2010. To be honest, textbook isn't necessary. I never used them. I was constantly googling questions and diagrams for extra clarification if need be though.

Lecturer(s):  Dr. Pilbrow, Dr. Kitchener, A/Prof Anderson, Dr. Murray, Dr. Xiao, Dr. Ivanusic,  (from first to last lecturer)
 This is quoted from REBORN but I have taken out some stuff and paraphased what will be covered.
Lecture 1: Introduction. Know your terminology. What's a coronal plane? Supine? Pronate? Rotation?
Lecture 2: Human Form & Function. General introduction - just appreciate the lecture. Principles such as the germ layers are covered in more detail in embryology lectures.
Lectures 3-5: Nervous System.
Lectures 6,7,9 - Embryology.
Lecture 8 - Skin.
Lecture 10 - Skeletal system.
Lecture 11 - Articular system.
Lecture 12 -  Muscles.
Lecture 13 - Vascular system.
Lecture 14 - Vertebral column & back.
Lecture 15 - this is the MST. Examines Lectures 1-13..... the average was ~21/30.
Lecture 16-22: Upper & Lower Limb.
Lecture 23: Principles of Viscera. An important yet easy lecture. Jason is a funny guy and his lecture slides are reasonable - not too much content, not too less.
Lecture 24: Upper respiratory tract. Jason does a good job of cramming in a lot of content here. This is much more expanded in 3rd year. He shows a video and keeps it entertaining.
From lecture 25 Junhao takes over from here until the last 2 lectures.
Lecture 29 is MST 2 covering from Lecture 14-28.
Lecture 31,32: Back to Jason for female and male reproductive systems.
Lecture 33 - Exam Format discussed

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2014

Rating:  3.8 Out of 5

Comments:
Since I'm bloody bored on holidays and got nothing to do, I might as well be somewhat productive and write this review.
I had a love and hate relationship with anatomy this semester. I initially wanted to do a double major in anatomy with physiology but coming out of this subject I'm not so sure. I found the coordination of the anatomy department to be rather immaculate. Lectures were well presented and lecturers were adept with delivering the content to students. I didn't physically attend any of the anatomy lectures but I listened to a majority of them and still did decently in the
I personally enjoyed the parts where we learnt about the nervous system (Dr. Kitchener) and Dr. Xiao's lectures except the bloody inguinal canal and all that >_>

I'll keep this review rather lean since REBORN did a crazy in depth review but the reason why I didn't enjoy this subject as much because as others like El2012 have said there are little/no preparation materials for the final exam. Thus, many students including I were rather lost on what was important and what was unimportant.

The MSTs weren't too difficult (MCQ not that hard) and the avg for MST 1, 2 was 21/30 and 24/30 respectively with many more students scoring 100% in the 2nd MST. There are no trick questions from the lecturers which was a good aspect of the subject. In saying so, I felt the exam content which was assessed was rather stupid to be honest. Out of the 4X15 mark written answer questions (120 mark exam comprising of 60 marks mcq, 60 marks written answer), I recall 3 of the 4 questions being from the last 1/3 of the course. Before I even start on how this would have given those who crammed the last part of the couse the few days before or whatever an advantage, I felt this exam was assessed what students accumulated in the short term rather than consistent work throughout the semester. I say this because there was NO QUESTIONS on the nervous system , NO questions on the brachial plexus [EDIT: actually 1 mcq on it but 1/120? O_O] or lumbosacral plexus. Sorry to offend anyone who worked really hard for ANAT20006 but that's my impression of the exam we had.

ADSL worksheets are pretty lengthy so don't make the same mistake I made and actually do them! I just did the quizzes like 10X until I got 100% cause I'm friggen lazy. Make sure for the exam that you really know your ADSL diagrams and lecture diagrams as any of these can pop up. ADSL questions can be quite good practice I guess but you can neglect some of the really obscure questions in the worksheets as it is very unlikely it will be asked.

Practicals were cool, you get to see prosections and all but the smell is pretty bad. I felt sick not from the dead bodies but from the smell of the formalderhyde and ethanol etc. I found that some practicals were good but some were rather poor. You're allocated to a group and have 20 minutes each at 5 stations. In this time, the demonstrator (can be really good which makes the prac so much more worthwhile or can be total crap) goes over the stuff you should know and ask questions and this is a time where you can get your questions answered. Most of the demonstrators are med students but I felt sometimes they went into too much depth and the group was left feeling very puzzled.

But yeh, I felt this subject was quite well coordinated but I don't think it was my cup of tea.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: anazergal on July 10, 2014, 10:00:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING30012 Language and Identity

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. No tutorials in the first and last week of semester.

Assessment:

Assignment 1 (50%): We first had to interview someone, preferably with a different a linguistic and cultural background. Then, focusing on language and language use, we had to identify two or more discourses that impacted on this person’s subjectivity, and how it parallels or contrasts with our own experiences. 2000 words, due mid-semester.

Assignment 2 (50%): We had to analyse a short spoken text involving public interaction among two or more participants using Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversational Analysis, as well as evaluate them as methodologies for examining identities in discourse. 2000 words, due end-semester.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: NA.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook. Readings were provided on the LMS as pdf documents.

Lecturer(s): Tim McNamara

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject focuses on how individuals are constructed and represented as subjects of discourse, using the perspectives of thinkers like Foucault, Marx, Butler, Hegel, Fanon, Derrida, etc. With an emphasis on language, it covers topics like gender (particularly masculinity), sexuality (particularly homosexuality), the Orient (particularly anti-Semitism), everyday sexism, language socialisation, as well as some methods of analysing identities (eg. Critical Discourse Analysis, Conversational Analysis...). As trite as it sounds, it changed how I viewed myself (both in terms of what I am and what I am not) and offered me a wider perspective on historical events like the Holocaust, social issues like homophobia and racism, and even politics (Abbott's interviews were academically scrutinised and his responses found lacking, I'm sorry to say). As a subject on identity, it naturally got very personal (in a good way!) with Tim supplementing the lecture content with examples from his own life, and with the tutorial discussions often featuring our own opinions and experiences (which was great, coming from an extremely culturally diverse class). There was a lot of freedom given with the assignments too, so you could really take it in a direction you were interested in and write it to the best of your understanding.

tl;dr: content was great, staff were great, classmates were great, 10/10 would recommend.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spalvains on July 10, 2014, 10:32:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10211 / MUSI20188 / MUSI30237 - Music Theatre: Singing Rock Musicals

Workload:  1x 3 hour class each week, made up of a 1 hour lecture and 2 hour rehearsal time.

Assessment:  It depends on the level you take the subject at.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, audio only, and only the lecture portion of the class is recorded.

Past exams available:  There is no exam for this class, only a performance (yay!)

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook. You get to borrow a book containing the music for each song that must be returned after the final performance.

Lecturer(s): Trevor Jones

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2014

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: If you're looking for an easy breadth, you're reading the right review. Seriously, during the first class the lecturer, Trevor, literally said the words "this is the easiest class you will ever take", and he's right.

Throughout the semester we learned the words to a few songs from different 'popular' rock musicals. They were:
We also have a lecture each week that relates to an area of rock musicals - for example, Disney broadway shows, or the jukebox musical. The weekly online quiz relates to the lecture (but honestly, Wikipedia is your friend here). The lecture is usually in the second hour of the class, so we don't end up with a huge chunk of rehearsal time.

No prior knowledge of musicals or music reading is needed, although being able to read music did come in handy. Also, and I know this can be really important to some people, but you never have to sing solo ever if you don't want to. We do end up adding a bit of choreography, but it's usually standing in place, it's just that where you stand may change between songs (except for the Grease song, expect to do some hand-jive for that one).

The three levels of this subject are all in the same class, they only differ in what assessments they take. I took this subject at level 2, so I can only comment on the level 1 and 2 assessments. They really were easy. The learning log was a first-person recount of how my ability to perform 2 of the songs increased over the semester (vocal techniques, choreography, etc). The song analysis was just a referenced paper about one of the songs and its historical context, context within the musical, lyric meaning etc. I knocked both these out in an afternoon (and trust me, they were terrible) and scored close to a H1, so a decent effort would get you a H1 for sure.

Honestly, Trevor is such a great teacher, he catered the lectures to everyone who didn't know anything, but went deep enough into the background of the musicals in the lecture each week that everyone went away having learnt something. More people should take this class! Unfortunately it is in Southbank, but it's an easy tram ride away. Also, there's no exam (!!!), instead a performance is in week 12 where you can invite friends/family (or no one, like me, since I couldn't trust my boyfriend not to record me doing the hand-jive to use as blackmail later). The assessment tasks were due around then too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: watto_22 on July 10, 2014, 11:42:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: FREN10006/20001/30003 - French 5 

Workload:  2 x 2 hr Tutorials per week

Assessment:  Two written tests in class (travail écrit sur table) - 15% each (the second test is replaced by a 500 word reflection task in French for those enrolled in 20001 or 30003); a debate (débat) in a small group - 20%; an oral presentation (exposé) in pairs - 20%; final exam (examen finale) - 30%

Lectopia Enabled:  N/A as there are only tutorials

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation: Mai 68 raconté à ceux qui ne l'ont pas vécu - Patrick Rotman. A good monolingual (yep, French only) dictionary for during semester, plus a bilingual one for the final exam.

Lecturer(s) (ie tutors): Various

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Your mark: 81 (H1)

Rating:  4/5 (some faulty heaters and long tutes)

Comments: After liking French at high school, I was excited to see what French was like at uni. I really enjoyed French 5 too.
My favourite part of this subject was the class atmosphere. Some were doing French as their major, others as part of a Diploma, others as breadth. The mix of first- to third-years also changed things up for the better. For me, this was a big change from more quiet tutes and I really enjoyed it.

It is important to mention that the whole subject was taught in French (I heard my tutor say about 3 sentences in English for the whole semester!) Certainly this was a big step up from Year 12, but it was a welcome challenge. After all, how better to improve your conversation skills.

The two sections of the course - the Algerian War & the events of May 1968 - were really like doing a history subject, just in another language. Hence the homework was often to read a chapter from a novel, which was certainly difficult and time-consuming. There were also a heap of resources on the LMS giving further details of those times, which we were encouraged to get through but I wonder if how many people actually did. These were all really useful though when it came to assessments, with the debate and exposé and half of the exam purely testing what you had been studying.

The other assessments - the written tests and the other half of the exam - weren't so easy to study for, which for me meant a whole lot less stress. The main skill was the resumé, or summarising a text, which should be comfortable enough after a few practice ones.

Certainly you could spend a huge amount of time on this subject: learning all the new vocabulary and phrases from your tutes, doing all the prereading, writing practice resumés and essays. Additionally, the periodical assessments meant that you always had something to be doing for French, but equally this meant that the final exam (only worth 30%) is a whole lot less daunting.
So as claireb wrote in her review (Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings), French 5 is certainly not a good choice if you're after an easy breadth. However if you've enjoyed studying French in the past then I would absolutely advise picking up French 5.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 86 on July 11, 2014, 08:16:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30008 Risk Analysis

Workload: 2x50 minute lectures + 1x50 minute tutorial per week

Assessment: Qualitative Risk Group Assignment 15%, Quantitative Risk Group Assignment 15%, Tutorial Attendance 10%, 2 hour Exam 60%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: No

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s): Lihai Zhang (Subject coordinator) and guest lecturers from several engineering firms (5 from memory)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Sem 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: Probably the easiest engineering/science/maths subject you can find at level 3 (and also has no prerequisites or required background knowledge). Even first year maths is harder than this subject. Having said that, industry-related content is genuinely interesting and valuable for getting a foot in the door for industry work potential. Pretty much everything is summed up quite well in this previous review, but I will add:

- The actual course content ends in week 7 or 8 (I don't remember); that's where the guest lecturers come in to deliver their talks. It may be tempting to skip these lectures but I highly recommend going, and talking to the guest lecturer(s) after. I cannot stress the latter enough. If you're pursuing engineering and are looking for some possible work experience placements, this subject is a goldmine for that. Lihai Zhang brings in key people from project managers to even managing directors of engineering firms to give these talks, you can imagine what a waste of an opportunity it would be not to talk to these guys and try and form some valuable industry relationships/connections.

- Tutorials are extremely helpful if you don't turn up to lectures. They cover everything for that week. As the previous reviewer said, it's like a review lecture of the week's content. Tutorials also account for a free 10%, so why not?

- Study up on the technical bits of the qualitative (wordy) parts of the course. They are guaranteed to turn up on the exam and you will be required to explain procedures and so on in considerable detail.

- Tutorial sheets and examples from the lecture notes are more than enough to prepare for the exam
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 86 on July 11, 2014, 09:03:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: FLTV10010 Making Movies 1

Workload:  1x 2 hour lecture at Southbank Campus

Assessment:  Visual sequence of 10 images due in week 6 (50%), 1000 word director's statement due week 12 (30%), weekly quiz (4 questions, 20%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Audio only

Past exams available:  No exam in this subject

Textbook Recommendation:  Fuckall

Lecturer(s): Jonathan auf der Heide and guest lecturers weeks 8-11

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Sem 1

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

If you want a H1 with little to no effort, you've come to the right place. You turn up, listen to Jonathan go on about how he's awkward with his friends and family because he borrowed money from them to make his film but he didn't turn enough of a profit to pay them back (he does this quite often and won't shut up about it), then watch snippets of films and listen to Jonathan talk about them and how it relates to his own film.

I'm not sure what goes on in the second hour of the lectures because I never stayed that long. There is an 80% minimum requirement of attendance to lectures despite you not needing to actually listen to the lecture to do the quiz (more on that in a bit), so I recommend you turn up for the first 10 lectures then skip the last two as it's a pain in the arse travelling to the Southbank Campus and back just for the one lecture. I also recommend you sit at the very front row so you get the attendance sheet first so you can sign it off and be on your way. The people who sit at the back tend to have to stay back after the lecture to sign their name off apparently.

As for the content itself, it's fascinating at best. I wouldn't say it's boring at all but to be honest I could have read up all about it on Wikipedia myself. The movies Johnathan takes samples from are actually pretty good so the lecture serves as a good place for you to find movies to watch.

The weekly quiz is ridiculously easy. I didn't turn up for more than an hour of each lecture and never listened to the recordings and didn't drop any marks allocated for it. You can easily Google/Wikipedia the answers, it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes for each quiz. It's a free 20%.

The assessment tasks are the most difficult part of the subject relative to everything else, but in itself is not hard either. The visual sequence will take the most amount of time coming up with the idea, not so much doing the work itself. The director's statement is a simple matter of meeting the specified criteria by writing a paragraph about each element they ask you to elaborate on. For both assessment tasks there are samples from previous semesters on the LMS for which you can directly use as a template to score highly. Beware they do include one sample director's statement that's absolutely horrible and a complete joke (I assume it scored poorly) - don't use that for ideas/inspiration unless you want an idea of how not to complete the task.

In conclusion, I only did this subject because it was easy, required minimum contact hours, counted as a breadth subject and I needed a H1 to boost my WAM (weighted average mean). There's no point in doing this subject if you're the kind who actually wants something useful out of your breadth subjects.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 90+FTW on July 18, 2014, 09:47:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: CLAS10006 Latin 1

Workload: A 1-hour lecture and three hours of tutorials per week for 12 weeks. Total Time Commitment: 96 hours over the semester including class time

Assessment:
1. In class vocabulary and morphology tests every single week
2. Exercises due every second week.
3. Two hour exam (no cheat sheet)

Prescribed Textbook: 
- Classical Latin: An Introductory Course (JC McKeown) Hacket Publishing Company, Inc.
- Classical Latin: An Introductory Course,Workbook (JC McKeown) Hacket Publishing Company, Inc.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Sonya Wurster (AMAZING LECTURER)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 98 (H1)

Comments:
I’m going to be honest. Latin is an INCREDIBLY demanding subject. If you want to do well, be prepared to put in the hard yards. More importantly, remind yourself that “there’s a reason Latin is one of hardest languages to learn.” Do not delude yourself into thinking it’s easy, once you’re grounded in this mentality; it’s likely that you’ll crash - I know many that did. Please, make it easy for yourself and study. With that said, Latin is also an incredible language to learn :D

Admittedly, I picked up Latin for legal reasons. However, I quickly found myself falling in love with its beauty. I became OBBSESSED with Latin (I still am) and worked diligently throughout the semester, night and day. There is TON of memorization involved but you also need to be able to logically think.  What do I mean by this? Latin is a mathematical, inflected language; its structure is very flexible.  In English we rely on our sentence structure to derive meaning. In Latin…not so much.
For example, you could write the sentence “The boys give roses to the girls” in Latin as:

“pueri rosas puellis dant” (tradional structure)
or
“puellis dant pueri rosas”
or
“dant pueri puellis rosas.”

...and they all mean the same thing. This structure can vary even more and go on for 12 lines. Punctuation becomes a luxury. You have to be able to piece it all together by relying mainly on the cases and verbs.  Translating a sentence is similar to solving a puzzle under pressure. It is an exercise in logical thinking. But this good!!! Those who study Latin score significantly higher than others in many academic areas.

READ: http://www.bolchazy.com/Assets/Bolchazy/extras/LatinAdvantageandSATscores.pdf

Don’t be deterred by its difficulty. The benefits far outweigh the cons (if you consider “difficulty” a con). I recommend it to anyone and everyone. I will definitely be continuing with Latin for as long as humanly possible.

Besides, Latin is an awesome thing to brag about XD


I should probably add that the author of the textbook is obsessed with pigs. My personal favourites:

"Oh, how I love my pig!"
"My pig has a beautiful face."
"I will marry my pig." (advocating bestiality)
"Can the pig read a book?" (Latin. Asking the difficult questions)
"My pig is more handsome than your horse."
"The pig has been loved."
"The pig throws itself into the river" (suicidal pigs)
"The pig does not love me anymore."




Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Ballerina on July 19, 2014, 09:09:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: DASC20012: Comparative Nutrition and Digestion  ☁ ☂ 

Workload:  2 lectures a week, a 2 hour non-compulsory tutorial every fortnight starting after a month or so after subject commencement.

❥I only attended one tutorial the entire semester. They take place at a computer lab and are aimed at helping you with the assignments, which are completed in Excel and Word. I found the assignments clearly explained during lectures, ergo didn't really require the tutorials.

Assessment:  Two-hour written final examination (50%). Computer simulation and written assessment of 2000 words equivalent (50%) (with 3 stage assessment strategy, submission at week 4 (10%), week 7 (15%) and week 12 (25%)).

❥Many past examination papers are available at the library and on the LMS. They recycle most of the questions. So if you enter the exam after answering the past examination papers, you will have most of the exam completed. The exam is comprised of short answer questions and long answer questions, no multiple choice questions. However, you can choose your own long answer questions; 5 out of 9 potential questions maybe, which makes it much easier.

❥The assignments were primarily nutritional information, metabolism, weight gain/loss etc calculations on Excel, and essay-style answers to questions about the content in the lectures and assignments. Assuming your answers are thorough, they should not present a problem.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  So many. No practice exams, but the past exams available in the same current format and most of the same assessable content in current use go back several years.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook is prescribed.

❥ Introduction to Human Nutrition by Wiley is casually recommended if you want to flesh out some concepts, but it is not assessable and I never referred to it. You can find a copy online through Google.

Lecturer(s): Kristy DiGiacomo.

❥This was her first year teaching this class; in previous years it was Frank Something. I took a gamble as I wasn't sure what to expect with new coordination. She turned out to be fantastic. Her style is very practical and straight-forward. The lecture material she publishes is comprehensive, which means you aren't left racing to make notes to fill in gaps during the lecture, and you don't need to refer to other sources much to understand them. She also is very clear about what content is examinable and what is unnecessary to revise and only included for the sake of clarification. For example, she is clear about in-depth lectures regarding microbiology and biophysics/biochemistry being far less important than feeding techniques, understanding the differences in physiology between animals, and knowledge of optimal and suboptimal nutrition.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014.

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 99

Comments:

❥Although the subject is a Bachelor of Science credit, it is formally a Bachelor of Agriculture subject (DASC) and the majority of students were enrolled in a Bachelor of Agriculture. While some of the content clearly overlapped with other Bachelor of Agriculture subjects and practicals, I hadn't taken a B.Ag subject before and still didn't appear to be missing much background knowledge. Coming from a Bachelor of Science did not seem to be a disadvantage.

❥My perspective is biased because I am smitten with nutrition, but I found this class fantastic. All other level 2 nutrition subjects are more focused on food chemistry, so I chose this class hoping it would be focused on applied nutrition. It is. It is very practical and prefers to deal with facts over theory, applications in the real world, and takes a very generalized look at digestion, physiology, anatomy, microbiology, chemistry, energetics, feeding techniques, malnutrition, vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids...

❥The material is also varied because it is 'comparative' nutrition and digestion. Half of the semester examines the digestion, nutritional requirements and idiosyncrasies of different animals, including domestic pets, farm animals, and humans. Kristy tried to cater to the BSc students who were interested in human nutrition by supplying a handful of lectures focused on human nutrition, but it is a B.Ag subject. Therefore, expect topics such as the advantages of feeding legumes over hay, how to increase weight gain for meat production, how to increase animal reproduction through nutrition for faster meat production, and husbandry (cultivating animals and crops for profit) to arise frequently! The lecturer's personal research also focuses on lactation among dairy cows. So ruminants, the microbiology of cow stomachs, and lactation processes are also a large part of the course. I found it interesting, but it's not for everyone. For those who would find agricultural processes and animal studies uninteresting, and would prefer to concentrate exclusively on humans, look toward the subjects offered in the Food Science major under the BSc instead.

❥That said, this subject was a welcome break from my other science credits. Science credits can deal with very abstract concepts, where it's difficult to relate the knowledge you are learning with tangible results and any relevance with day-to-day life. I'm not sure how much meaning can be extracted from what I learn of the lateral ventricles contained with the interventricular foramen in other subjects. However, this subject outlines exceedingly more straight-forward ideas that you can easily connect to the world and yourself. I have definitely thought more about what I'm eating and what happens to/in my body when I make food choices, and have a greater understanding of where food comes from and how it came to be when I'm grocery shopping. I also have improved what and how I feed pets. In other words, I use the information from this subject. I can't do anything with information on lipid bilayers of oligodendrocyte cell membranes from other subjects, other than increase my GPA.

❥Another way it diverges from my other science subjects is its small class size. I'm not sure if it is the same for all B.Ag subjects, but the lecture theatre was a quarter or less the area space of lecture theatres for other subjects, and generally half-filled. The small class size was intimate, cosy, and less distracting. It also enabled students to obtain far more time with the lecturer, who is always open to questions, assignment help, and exam revision assistance. The environment is also less...competitive? than many of my other subjects. Some of my subjects are strict in marking and contain students who appear to be under a lot of pressure. The lecturer for this subject does not stress about minor errors, is easy-going about deadlines and the atmosphere is relaxed.

❥This subject does not have any laboratory work, is not a prerequisite for any B.Sc subjects as far as I know, and only has some content overlap with B.Sc subjects such as Human Physiology and Principles of Human Structure. It will not be helpful if you are applying for UROP or already have a study plan overflowing with compulsory prerequisites for third year. I would recommend it for those who are seeking a fairly laid-back and interesting subject, or are searching for supplementary support regarding their knowledge of nutrition and animals.

❥The best part is that none of the 3 people who turn up for lectures mind if you eat chocolate and drink full fat caramel mochas while the lecturer discusses the obesity epidemic in Western society. And when you eat gummy bears for breakfast, you can use the assignments to calculate the fact you just had 120% of your recommended fat intake in one meal.

(personal information removed, 3/2/17)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on July 21, 2014, 06:02:42 pm
Good to see some more commerce subject reviews being posted up. This semester I’ve slacked off VERY hard, so my reviews might not be useful for the particular hard-working kids out there.

Subject Code/Name: MGMT20001 Organisational Behaviour 

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

OB is tricky. Not because of the subject matter, or effort required to order to come out scoring flying colours, but in order to fully ‘juke’ and ‘conquer’ the marking scheme. I’ve heard of many bright students (we’re talking straight H1 averages here) fall sub-70 or stuck in the 70-80 zone in their attempts to tackle this subject.

Firstly, the content is very interesting. It takes on a slightly psychological perspective, as you work through a cross-cut of interesting topics such as Culture, Power, Behaviours and such in the respective Macro and Micro proportion of the course. All the weeks are rather enjoyable, and lectures (although a large chunk is pointless) actually provoke some thinking as the theories trickle into your mind. Although I didn’t do any readings (and I strongly recommend against), I’d imagine they would be worthwhile if you were planning on continuing onto further Management studies – they probably create the backbone of context that underpin higher-level studies.

The lecturers: Graham and Selina are good, effective and concise lecturers. They do go off-topic at times, but for good reason. Tutorials are run by competent tutors, but they can be a tad biased especially with regards to the 10% participation mark. Despite most of the tutors preaching that ‘quality contribution > quantity’, if you raise your hand a solid twice a lesson to pipe in, you should be set for a 9+, regardless of how stupid or pointless your contribution is.

The downfall of OB is assessment. It’s common knowledge that management subjects are difficult subjects to mark, and strict criteria pretty much limits any ‘off-pack’ or ‘indie’ interpretations. So you have to take what you receive as gospel, and be very very selective with the way you control and write your answers in both assignments and the exam.

The first assignment is straightforward, but it does help to source a copy of the textbook to aid your writing. A lot of emphasis is put on correct referencing, so make sure this isn’t compromised when you’re writing. 10%, but I’d say 90% of students hover around the 65-75 mark grade for it.

The team assignment is a bit of a nightmare. You’ve probably heard of countless horror stories of students completely disappearing overseas, or just slacking off hard during crunch time. It really isn’t too bad, but do be wary that you stick strictly to the criteria and don’t deviate from the questions posed at hand, which is the key factor in dropping marks. Do try find a competent bunch of kids to work with, but make sure you don’t get a bunch of kids that are either crazy obsessed with success, or tooooo lazy.

Don’t try go off on your own tangent and make profound discoveries into OB; you’ll only be setting yourself up for disaster. ‘Stick to the status quo’ (aka. Criteria and question sheet), and you’ll be set for another 70+. It’s very difficult to score a H1 or above for this assignment, so just focus on having a moderately strong assignment (don’t ‘over-dedicate’ time to this assignment, you’ll fall flat on your face like my group), as once again, everything is going to hover around the 65-75 mark.

Onto the exam. I personally disliked the exam format A LOT. There is a big luck factor that comes with studying for the OB exam. You pretty much only get a cross-section of 2 weeks that are examined in detail for the exam. Even though the lecturers stressed on the importance of holistic learning, and putting everything together, having an exam that really only touches on two weeks is poor. Therefore, cramming for this subject actually works wonders. You don’t really need to study till the final weeks of the semester.

Although it’s only supposed to be around 55% percent of your score, excelling in this exam is the ONLY way to get H1. Perfect, concise, and straightforward answers will put you on sail to the H1. Don’t deviate and spiral off into your little world of OB.
For non-commerce students, OB should be an enjoyable breadth to take even if you possess little to no commerce background. I suggest commerce students to take on OB when they are in need of a rather cruisey 3rd/4th subject in second year.

OB is good fun, but don’t let marking be the bitch it can turn out to be. Treat OB well, and it will treat you right.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on July 21, 2014, 06:41:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW 20001 Corporate Law 

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Corporate Law is an excellent subject. I agree with pretty much all that is said in ‘jtvg’s’ review.

Firstly, don’t believe the hype over how it’s supposed to be the hardest level-2 subject. The resource network is literally setting yourself up for success. There is no bullshit readings or fluff that needs to be read. Corporate Law demands you to appreciate what’s being taught. Thankfully, most of the content is rather interesting but some bits are still dry. This is probably to be expected of any law subject.  Also, this is aided by the fact that the Exam is open book. You need to know your theory inside out, but this doesn't mean you memorise case after case (as the case for PBL) or brute-force your way through the subject through pages on pages of notes. Instead, you need to actually understand (!) what's being taught.

So why is it so good after all? Assessment is entirely on point. This is how a subject should be done. The assignment successfully ticks its two main objectives: to practice legal writing for the exam, and also foster an indepth understanding of the Act and knowledge/cases that make up the very backbone of Corporate Law. I believe in previous years, this was an optional assignment, but since it’s compulsory, it’s great in both allowing you to kick yourself into actually studying and also understanding the ideal way to write for tutorials and exams.

The 75/25 split between the exam and assignment is fair. The exam is difficult to score well in, but there are plenty of practice questions, exams, that tutors and Helen walk you through (but note: not spoonfeed you with suggested answers). Helen drops a fair amount of excellent tips and has a pretty long trail of hints scattered for what to expect for the actual exam.

Helen is a no-fuss lecturer that is very, very good at what she does. As for most commerce lectures. Go at your own discretion. The recordings are a great substitute to the real thing, and it was pretty funny listening to Helen rage at noisy students while I was studying during SWOTVAC lol. So I don’t think it’d hurt to ‘not go’, but do make sure you catch up on them in your spare time. There is considerable ground that is covered, but the ‘wake-up’ lectures in weeks 8 and I think 5 are very good reminders to get your shit together.

For the select few that choose to cram the entire course in SWOTVAC and are in need of the fools guide to excel in this subject:
•   Listen to the lectures and take notes.
•   Readings: I’m a bit divided on this since I stopped reading the textbook after Week 1, but if you have time, do read these. I did read some of the cases during SWOTVAC, which I highly recommend. And don’t be stupid, get the newest edition.
•   Don’t be like me: Go to your tutes! As sad as this sounds, I suggest you pretend there’s a tutorial prep mark or something so that it FORCES you into going. Since it isn’t marked, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of sleeping in.

Sometimes I wish that I failed Corp Law so that I could retake it. Why? Because it was far too late when I realised that I had missed out on a truly exceptional subject by not attending any lectures or tutorials. Oops.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on July 21, 2014, 08:39:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: CLAS10022 Intensive Ancient Greek 1 

Workload:  2 x 2 hour seminar four days a week

Assessment:  Daily tests 10%, daily homework 30%, 2 x 1 hour test 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Ancient Greek: A literary approach

Lecturer(s): Leanne McNamara

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Winter

Rating:  2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: I haven't rated this subject well because I didn't enjoy it. My rating isn't a reflection on the way the subject was conducted or coordinated. In reality, this was a really well organised subject and especially so given the fact that it's an intensive. Leanne was lovely; she was always available for help and on many occasions tried to bribe us with chocolate (not complaining! :)).

Personally, I love learning languages. I find them fascinating and really love the feeling of being able to communicate in another language. Ancient Greek robs you of that feeling in many ways. This is not really a course in learning a language. It really is a test of how much you can remember. The work is unashamedly just memory work. You quite literally just have to remember tables of conjugations and declensions each day. This, I loved when learning other languages, because grammar was in many ways a key to new things, a key to a higher amount of communication. It didn't feel like that at all with Ancient Greek.

Each day, you go to class. Leanne explains some concepts normally to do with syntax. These are actually ok. I quite enjoyed that element because the grammar is kind of nifty. Then she'll move on to whatever endings we had to learn and would quite literally just read through a table of noun endings. That would be your work for the night, remembering that table. Understandably, some people are really motivated and find the energy to keep doing this. That was the case with me for the early part of the course, but it gets to a point when it starts to feel like you've lost purpose. All you use your knowledge for is to translate sentences, all of which are relatively boring. Eg: οἱ θεοι φερουσι τα δορα τοις παιδιοις "the gods bring gifts to the people". The book also has a nasty habit of putting in grammar and phrases into the translations that you haven't encountered before. So that means that you actually rely on your teacher to do the translation for you at times. You never really use what you've learned to make anything of your own though. Once in a blue moon you are asked to translate something into Greek, but it never really feels like you own the language.

All in all, this was a well coordinated course. I'm glad of the experience because now I feel like I better understand why people are so turned off learning classical languages. Classical languages are wonderful and truly are very interesting. Classicists just seem to have an arrogant hang up about the way it should be taught. Indeed, the book actually brags about how much rote there is to learn. This kind of stubborn persistence with arcane learning methods that have been proven 1000 times over makes the experience of learning a classical language too daunting and has largely resulted in a lack of enthusiasm for learning them. There really ought to be no difference, or at least only minimal differences, between how one learns a classical language and a modern language. I did not enjoy learning Ancient Greek for these reasons. I really don't mind learning grammar and I've always found it very easy to learn (sorry arrogant). This felt like it had no point though. There was no interaction, no creativity, just reading sentence after sentence.

So I'll leave you with a passage of the crap that appeared on our homework:

τοῦ δὲ νῦν ἐν τῷ νῦν οὐκ ἔστι μνήμη, καθάπερ εἴρηται καὶ πρότερον, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὲν παρόντος αἴσθησις, τοῦ δὲ μέλλοντος ἐλπίς, τοῦ δὲ γενομένου μνήμη. διὸ μετὰ χρόνου πᾶσα μνήμη. ὥσθ' ὅσα χρόνου αἰσθάνεται, ταῦτα μόνα τῶν ζῴων μνημονεύει, καὶ τούτῳ ᾧ αἰσθάνεται

Quote
As already observed, there is no such thing as memory of the present while present, for the present is object only of perception, and the future, of expectation, but the object of memory is the past. All memory, therefore, implies a time elapsed; consequently only those animals which perceive time remember, and the organ whereby they perceive time is also that whereby they remember.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on July 22, 2014, 12:06:06 am
Subject Code/Name: ECON20003: Quantitative Methods 2

Workload:   2x 1-hr Lectures; 1x 1-hr Tutorial

Assessment:  5% Mid-Semester Test (Online); 15% Assignments (2 best of 3); 10% Tutorial Participation; 70% 2-hr Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  There is a mock final exam with solutions. Also, tutorial questions are past exam questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Business Statistics (QM1 book - not relevant)

Lecturer(s): Joe Hirschberg

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2014

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
The content of QM2 spans a good range of topics, from parametric and non-parametric tests to linear regressions, logit models, forecasting, and ARIMA. This subject gives you a very good overview of different statistical techniques and emphasises when to use it and how to use it (at least on E-Views). This subject focuses less on calculations and more on analysis and interpretation of results - and I actually like it that way. Some people dislike the fact that sometimes 'there is no one right answer' despite it being a quantitative subject, but being an accounting & finance major has probably increased my comfortability with vagueness.

What I really really dislike about this subject is that I felt like I was in a computer class during tutorials. I was just being taught to click some buttons, type in some numbers, produce some charts, etc. The most 'analysis' we do during tutorials were just 'interpretation' of the results. In the end, we don't get to sit in front of the computer during exams like we did in all tutorials. This contributed to the students' feeling of unpreparedness. Also, unfortunately, QM2 lectures fail to give us adequate knowledge to prepare us for our assessments. There's always the feeling that you don't know enough, or worse, that you don't know anything at all. During SWOTVAC and consults, you can pretty much feel/see/hear that everyone's pretty tense and confused and bursting with questions that should've been answered had Joe (and other tutors) been clear in teaching the content. I cannot remember how many emails I've sent to my tutor, or how many questions I've submitted on the Online Tutor, during my revision. Probably the reason I got H1 is because I did some intense self-study sessions to help me get prepared, because unfortunately, the lectures and the tutorials did not.

To get full marks on participation, attend tutorials and always do Part A (pre-tutorial questions). Trust me, tutorial marks will SAVE you (friend got 48; had he been present to even a few more tutorials he could've probably passed). The mid-semester test should be a piece of cake - just have your notes handy and you'll be fine. For the assignments, do the first 2. Some people go off thinking they can always do the last one, but BOOM the last one's pretty hard to ace. So do the first 2, so you don't feel pressured to do the last one (still do it, though). It's pretty easy to get a perfect mark for the assignments as long as the answers do not deviate that much - they're pretty lenient in marking assignments. It's nice to compare your E-Views output with that of your friends just to be sure.

Read all lecture notes (also, listen to the lecture recordings) and study them by heart. Memorisation won't work (well, I guess it will, to an extent). Attend consults, and abuse the OLT!The bottom line is just be sure to know the definition of terms, the difference of one technique to the other, when to use a certain technique, which technique to use in various situations, and interpret E-Views results.

Overall, this subject is quite chill. Just don't leave everything to the last minute. It's up to you if you ditch lectures. But attend your tutorials and do your pre-tutes. Submit Assignments 1 and 2. Ace the mid-semester test - that 5% is still gonna be helpful. H1 is hard to achieve, but it's possible..
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: WhoBannedMe on July 22, 2014, 10:04:08 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and Organisms 

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 sem 1

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5 (b/c of Pracs 4 and 5)

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: The other reviews are great but I just want to highlight some important bits for those who haven't done biology before. I didn't do any VCE biology before this subject and was REALLY uneasy about it.

The bio dept counteracts this by releasing "biobytes", short videos on topics that will be covered. These are REALLY GOOD, make sure you watch them and understand everything, namely the names/shapes/function of the organelles in eukaryotes and the processes of Respiration and Photosynthesis.

With respect to tutorials/pracs and workshops, what ever the tutors highlight in workshops is REALLY important and they do a good job of covering them. For tutes/pracs make sure you complete the pre-prac test and the post-prac test. In terms of in-prac assessment:

Prac 1 & 2: [I can't draw so I did horrible in these]
 - Drawing of cells including labels and heading (Use the apendix to help with the format).
 - Multiple choice question(s) at the end of the prac. When the tutors speak make sure you listen! Whatever   they're rambling on about usually ends up as the MCQ.

Prac 3:
 - Graph and short answer question at the end of the prac.

Prac 4:
 - A "point at the structure of the heart" and MCQ on the structues in the heart.
Loved this prac as we cut open an animal heart (Make sure you memorize the structures) so fun!

Prac 5:
 - All MCQ at the end of the prac.
This prac was also enjoyable, cutting open a mouse and identifying the components of the digestive system.

Top Tip: Don't feel unmotivated if you start off on a bad foot, my Prac 1 result was 5.5/10.
 
The other posts pretty much covered everything else.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on July 23, 2014, 03:42:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20003: Quantitative Methods 2

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

QM2, although not as good as its previous QM1 counterpart with Pottenger, is a good subject.

The content revolves mostly around the Regression weeks explored in QM1, and pretty much cuts most of the calculation-work out, in favour of data interpretation. For those who aren't so good at Maths, from what I've heard, QM2 is a lot more forgiving on paper than its Econometrics equivalent. Hirschberg asserts that Eviews is king in this subject, and you can bet on there being at least 50% of both lectures and tutorials revolving around the excavation of data from eviews.

jtvg's review of QM2 paints the image that the resources provided are lacking in both relevance and adequacy. Personally, I don't think this was so much the case.

Lectures were delivered very well by Hirschberg, he explains key concepts successfully and works through many proofs with much detail, typically working through real-life economic data provided by sources such as the ABS (eg. household gambling expenditure). Although one could argue that perhaps only a few slides every lecture were essential to actual preparation for the exam, on the whole they are excellent: they easily replace the chunky QM1 textbook that 'can' be reused for QM2, but you don't really need to do readings from that textbook. I started to attend less and less towards the business end of the semester, but the lecture slides were written in a fashion that could allow even the biggest drop-kick (hi) catchup.

Of course, there is your average Eviews 'filler' slide kind of similar to a bloody Gamefaqs walkthrough, but if a student is able to find those 'key slides' (which is normally towards the summary side of the lecture), they're pretty much set on approaching any question that the tutorial or exam may throw at them. It's really just a matter of studying smart, and not brute-forcing your way through countless practice questions and lecture slides.

Assignments are well put together as well. All the questions you receive are indirectly related to what you might expect on the exam, bar the odd Eviews generation of results. QM2 also allows you to take the best 2 out of 3 assignments, although personally I reckon you should do all of them so you don't have gaps in understanding (skipping the Regression assignment was a mistake!). Last assignment is arguably the most important - it's entirely exam revision and potential question material for at least a quarter of the final exam.

Indeed, jtvg is pretty spot-on about tutorials. Tutorials are not spectacular. In fact, they are poor.

Perhaps I didn't get the most enthusiastic tutor on the block but in-class discussions left much to be desired. You can't really blame the department for this, if you set up a computer lab with a dozen students, you're bound to get an increasing amount of kids swivelling away on spin-chairs as the tutor works through some of the more boring stuff: eg. How to spit out Eviews results. As a result of this, I'd say that at least 50-60% of tutorials are completely useless. Interpretation and grasp of the concepts are most important, the eviews stuff is good to know but by no means essential.

On pre-tute work: This work is absolutely piss easy, and takes less than 10 minutes every week provided you have a copy of Eviews (legally or illegally) at home or access to from uni. Do NOT fall back on these marks. I lost 5 marks from my final score just because I was too lazy to rock up to tutorials, and simply show the tutor some half-assed work. Don't be that student. You don't even need to participate during tutorials or be focused at all. Just do the stupid prep work to score the easiest 10% you'll ever get at Unimelb.

The exam is not difficult but does require you to know your stuff inside out. During SWOTVAC, do consult past assignment solutions and study the Sample Exams solution in depth - these are paramount for success. Mid-sem multiple choice testis a joke. Overall, this subject is a lot more forgiving on the marking side of things, I'd say it's a lot more difficult to fail QM2 than it is to fail QM1 (which I almost did lol) simply because the system's been set up to allow pretty much everyone to pass. There isn't even a hurdle for the exam. So there really isn't any excuse to do very poorly in this subject: no dodgy marking schemes or pointless lectures to blame, the stuff provided is practically spoon-feeding you to prepare in the best manner possible.

From all my mates doing Bcom: they don't really rave about QM2, but don't complain about it much either. I don't blame them though, the 'Pottenger fan club' led by 'Myron Z Gainez' (very good read of a QM1 review) probably doesn't compromise for complete loyalty to its lecturer for QM1..
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: qqla on July 23, 2014, 04:24:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT20001 Cost Management 

Workload:  Standard mix of a 2hr lecture and 1hr tute

Assessment:  Tute participation 10%, Midsem 20%, Exam 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, slides are recorded

Past exams available:  Just the one sample exam with basic solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Just get the textbook: Author is Bhimani and get the green covered edition (I believe it's either 4th or 5th)

Lecturer(s): Kelsey Dworkis

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1

Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Before I say anything, I have to admit that I might seem like a bit of an 'accounting hater', my past reviews for unimelb accounting subjects have called most subjects lousy lol. I actually enjoy accounting, but I dislike bits and pieces about how these subjects are taught.

Anyway, Cost Management follows the trend of most accounting subjects: it's another mixed bag. The content by nature is very dry. You can't really blame anyone for this. You will be working through concepts such as different costing mechanisms, and how to calculate budget overhead variances and such. This isn't its main problem though.

I had mixed feelings about the lectures. Kelsey is actually a fantastic lecturer, but I had the slightest feeling that most of the slides were recycled from previous years. She actually communicates the concepts quite well, even though some of the examples left a bit to be desired: in both complexity and relevance. For lack of better word, the slides were very basic. We'll look past the lectures though they're meant to be basic so that every single person in the theatre leaves with some sort of understanding. So on the whole, lectures are fine. But here is the worst problem of the subject. You will be pointed towards the textbook as your bible of knowledge for furthering knowledge, closing theory gaps and consolidating understanding. kelsey y u do dis

Firstly, this is lazy teaching. Although the textbook is written rather well, there are many bits that aren't relevant to ACCT20001, and I say ACCT20001 because you have different names of systems from Great Britain floating around that can sometimes confuse you. This isn't that much of an issue, but when you have tutorials that are pretty much ENTIRELY focused on mastery of the textbook questions, you're in for trouble. Why? Exam questions will boggle you and be written in a style that is very different to what you might expect from all the tute work you did. Thus, tutorials suffer greatly. Although the tutor in charge likes to babble on about how tutorials were 'supposed' to inspire great discussion, I'm sure that most if not all tutors were just working through a solution pack and delivering mini-lectures, or rather, 'doing the homework' by themselves onto the whiteboard.  Do you learn anything from copy pasting solutions onto the board? I don't know. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

And finally, the stress over tutorial preparation. I feel sorry for the kids in my class that actually had a LOT of decent contributions in class, but would fall down in the 'homework' department as they might've forgotten to bring the work in. Cost Management is hella anal about this. Tute prep for this class is summed up as such: Do your homework, and raise your hand like a robot to spit out copy pasted figures and numbers and cruise your way towards a 10%. Actually raise some good talking points but don't do your homework? gg

The mid-semester test is one of the first instances where you will realise how textbook based this subject really is. You'll get a bunch of multiple-choice questions that are rather well written, but lack similarity to what you've been learning in tutorials. The sample test provided this year was very similar to the actual test that I sat, but again, I found myself questioning 'what do I need to study?'. You can do all the readings and practice questions from the textbook that you like, but still fall short of an excellent mark if you fail to pinpoint those areas that are sketchy by nature: eg. Week 1: Planning and Control is a very subjective field that is difficult to fairly assign multiple choice questions to.

However, it is the exam that will bite you in the ass. It's a three hour slogfest, and I found myself absolutely clueless during SWOTVAC over what to study. Normally, I'd shoot straight towards lecture slides, but these were too basic. Tutorial questions were lacking relevance, they were often 40 min questions that beared little similarity to the ones in the sample exam. Readings? Modern and contemporary questions around areas such as ABC costing weren't terrifically covered.

It's simple really. Create ORIGINAL tutorials (this means, adapt 'take-home' questions, not prescribe textbook question after question) so that this opens the channels for quality discussion in tutorials and you have yourselves, a near perfect subject. The subject coordinators love to emphasise how our understanding for theory needs to be holistic, but how can you do this if the practical is completely isolated topics? Thus, the luck factor comes back into play. If you put your eggs into certain baskets, you might do better than the kid that studies very hard for every nook and cranny of the subject.

So Cost kind of sucks in this way. If you're that kid that likes the traditional textbook-crunching way of tackling a subject; this subject is for you. Unfortunately, it was 2edgy4me.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Belgarion on August 02, 2014, 08:10:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20011 Business Negotiations - Winter Intensive 

Workload:  4 lectures and 2 tutorials a day for 5 days

Assessment:  Class Participation 10%
Participation in negotiation simulations in class 25%
Individual reflective essay based on negotiation simulation
(completed during intensive week and in-class) 15%
Take home exam 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No but a few sample question were given

Textbook Recommendation:  Lewicki, R, J., Saunders, D, M., and Barry B. (2011). Essentials of Negotiation, 5th edition. In my opinion, you must have the textbook and i will explain why. Luckily it is easily found on the net.

Lecturer(s): Peter Gahan

Year & Semester of completion: July 2014

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Being an intensive subject, it can drag on a bit at times. It involves back to back tutorials and lectures. We started at 9 am everyday, had a lunch break for an hour at 12:30 and then continued and finished around 4-5 pm everyday. We were given a bunch of pre-readings before the week had begun on top of the textbook readings. Honestly, i did all the pre-readings and found that they were not that helpful. I did not do the prescribed textbook reading as they basically prescribed the whole book (and i never read the textbook anyway. ;D)

Lectures
I have to say that this is the best subject i have done at university so far. Peter is a fantastic lecturer and quite easy to follow. We learnt a variety of topics such as: communication, differing negotiation styles and different types of negotiation. The only problem i had with the lectures were that i found it hard to apply it to the assessment at times. The content could get a little dry but i found it interesting overall. Everyday Peter lined up a guest lecturer (although one cancelled), normally an individual who is an expert in negotiations, such as an AFL player manager. I liked the real life perspectives they offered and the experiences they shared.

Tutorials
Tutorials consisted of various 'negotiation simulations'. I found the tutorials one of the best parts of the course. By negotiation simulation, they basically mean little games. The simulations often involved things like negotiating over a used car or an international negotiation between 2 countries. It often involved working with little groups within your tutorial so you got to know everyone really well. Normally the tutor would just oversee things and give a debrief at the end. Time flew in the tutorials as we all had so much fun

Assessment
The 10% for class participation is just for showing up to the tutorials (so show up to all of them and you are guaranteed at least 10% already).

 The participation in the simulations just involves having fun and practicing your debating skills. It helps to apply what you have learnt as well, but they are mostly common sense. Comparing my mark for this to others, i found that those of us who scored highly were the ones who contributed to class discussions during the debriefing at the end which involves having participated in the negotiations. All you have to say is something like how the negotiation went, what you think, etc. It was not hard at all. They will give you a rubric before the week starts based on the marking for this, but really it is up to the tutor's opinion and as long as you have contributed, you will get the marks.

Now the essay i found was the most difficult piece of assessment, but that is not saying much. It involved a negotiation simulation on the last day followed by an essay write up in class. They gave us a marking criteria beforehand for what should be included in the essay and you just had to follow it. They give plenty of time to write it and most people finished early.

Finally, the exam (i use the term loosely). The take home exam is released the week after the subject is finished. It is available for 2 days. It consists of 50 multiple choice questions worth 0.5 marks each and 10 short answer questions worth 2.5 marks each. All the answers to these questions can be found in the textbook. With the multiple choice questions, most of them involved exact wording form the textbook. The first 25 mc questions involved A-E answers while the second half were true/false questions. The answers for the short answer questions could also be easily found in the textbook (except for 2 questions, one involving you talking about what you learnt the most throughout the week and another based on a movie we watched during a lecture)

Overall i found this a fun and not too challenging subject. if you have any questions, feel free to pm me.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 86 on August 07, 2014, 07:58:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20011 Business Negotiations 

Workload:  4 lectures and 2 tutorials a day for 5 days

Assessment: 
Tutorial attendance 10%
Participation in negotiation simulations in class 25%
Individual reflective essay based on negotiation simulation (completed during intensive week and in-class) 15%
Take home exam 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No but you wouldn't need them if they existed anyway

Textbook Recommendation:  Lewicki, R, J., Saunders, D, M., and Barry B. (2011). Essentials of Negotiation, 5th edition

Lecturer(s): Peter Gahan

Year & Semester of completion: July 2014

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

If you're looking for the easiest and quickest H1 possible, Business Negotiations is for you. This subject is so easy it's not even funny. You go through all the lectures and tutorials in 5 days, Monday to Friday. Classes run 9-5 with an hour break from 12:30-1:30pm. You do 2 lectures and 2 tutorials per day. They persistently stress that you do the pre-readings before you begin the subject as you will struggle otherwise, which is a load of bull by the way. While some of the readings are interesting, they are absolutely not necessary to do well in the subject, and the exam does not assess them specifically.

First and foremost, if I were running the subject I would rename it to 'Principles of Business Negotiation' because honestly, this whole subject taught us about negotiation, not how to negotiate.

Lectures
Lectures were incredibly boring (save the fact that Peter Gahan had a sense of humor but that's about it), and not needed to do well in the exam or even needed to have an idea of what to do in the tutorials. The good thing was that the lectures were a summary of all the pre-readings so if you can't be bothered reading all that crap just read the lecture notes and save yourself some time. The lectures were an absolute drainer! Thank goodness Peter plays a healthy amount of entertaining video clips throughout the lectures to break the otherwise dry content. On some days he also plays full films which you can skip and just watch at home after. There were also guest lectures in which one ditched at the last minute and the rest were boring anyway (feel free to go home when it's their turn to deliver their lecture)

Content wise the subject and lectures didn't provide too many in-depth skills and knowledge. If you possess common sense, you will do well.

Tutorials
Tutorials were almost completely unrelated to lectures which rendered them practically useless. I found that the tutorials were an absolute waste of time, unnecessary and did not further my understanding of the concepts covered in lectures. You could have done none of the pre-readings, attended no lectures and still do well in the tutorials because honestly, all the exercises (they call them "negotiation simulations" but not be fooled by the name) they gave were nothing more than shabby negotiation situations ripped off the internet and filled to the brim with loopholes and technical fallacies that required nothing but common sense to do well in. The tutorials had a poor focus and sense of direction because of this. Many people ended up negotiating things that were simply not considered in the problem sheet.

Assessment
For the 25% allocated to class participation, as long as you talked a lot and looked like you knew what you were talking about (either through enthusiasm or hand movements and not laughing), you'd score highly in it. The 25% is all about participation and trying, and not really about applying ideas from lectures.

The exam (would you believe it) was the easiest part of the course in my opinion. In addition to being a takehome exam where you're given 2 days to do it, all of the questions were copied word-for-word from the textbook. (you can find the textbook online BTW, no need to waste money buying a copy) If you know how to use the SEARCH feature on your computer or laptop, you'll find answers to 95% of the questions in the textbook alone.

Conclusion
Business Negotiations is a joke of a subject. I wouldn't even consider it a real subject. In a normal 12-week semester, the course content would probably end by week 3. Tutorials were useless and the exam was a complete joke. You could have received the exam without doing any of the readings, attending any lectures or tutes and still do well because it's all ripped word-for-word from the textbook anyway. As I said in the opening paragraph, if you want a quick and dirty H1, you've found the right subject. The only real selling point of Business Negotiations is that it runs in July and can be completely in a very very short time frame, on top of being easy.

The reasoning behind my rating comes down to the poorly thought-out and poorly executed tutorials and lack of sense of direction that the subject seemed to suffer from. The tutorials seemed to be strung together loosely a week before the subject was set to commence, however the lecture notes were quite good in their summation of the readings.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: liuyang721 on August 19, 2014, 04:31:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM40006/ECOM90013 Econometric Techniques

Workload: 2 1.5-hour lectures and a 1 hours of tutorial per week for 12 weeks. Total Time Commitment: 48 hours over the semester including class time

Assessment:
1. 3 Written Assignments (25%)
2. Tutorial Preparation and Attendance (5%)
3. Two hour exam (70%)

Prescribed Textbook: 
NO, some optional readings

Lecturer(s): Dr. Song Yong

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2014

Lectopia: Yes

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 75 (H2A)

Comments:

Lecture:
Although the subject offer lectopia, still need to attend the lecture since Yong's handwritten notes sometimes is not captured.
The subject is hard and really require a lot time to study.

Tutorial:
Charlie the tutor is a nice guy and you just turn up will get the 5%.

Assessments:
The 3 assignments are generally ok, except the second one has a lot of matrix things in it. Generally everyone got 23/25 for the three assignments.

Exam:
The exam is very difficult. It was 3 hours in 2013 and before, but Yong cut to 2 hours. 2013 and before had 4 questions but the 2014 paper had 5. No one is able to finish the exam and the average grade for the exam is less than 30/70.

Overall:
The subject scale up a lot and the average is around 73 according to the lecturer. It is best to have some linear algebra and stochastic process knowledge before attempt this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mahler004 on October 22, 2014, 11:05:19 pm
Major: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

First Year Subjects: 

Second Year Subjects:

Third Year Subjects: 

This major is available for both Biomedicine and Science.

Year of completion: 2014

Comments:

Right, let's get the 2014 semester 2 subject reviews started. I obviously haven't completed my major yet, but barring any disasters over the next week and a half, I should be able to complete the major at the end of the semester. I'm giving myself a night off to relax (read - procrastinate) prior to getting stuck into hardcore study for my two exams over the next fortnight.

Reviewing a major is a funny thing, and your experiences with the major will largely depend on if you actually enjoy the content in question - I love biochemistry (hope I don't sound too tacky!) so I'm obviously going to enjoy learning about it. This is why I haven't attached a score to the major, as your enjoyment of the major will largely depend on your interest. The quality of the teaching staff is consistently high (especially in the prac subjects,) and I can honestly say I've never had a lecturer I'd consider 'bad' in any of my biochemistry subjects. The only complaints I have about the subjects are relatively minor - I loathed the small (7.5%) mid semester tests as I generally feel the effort required to do well is not adequately rewarded (a larger mark - even 10% would be more ideal.) In third year (unlike second year,) the 'theory' subjects have a written component (assignment or the like) which consists of 15% of the final mark. On the whole, the subjects are well taught and fairly assessed.

As the name suggests, the major devotes about half of it's time to biochemistry and half to molecular biology. In third year, the subject BCMB30001 largely deals with 'biochemistry' (with a strong structural biology focus,) and the subject BCMB30002 deals with 'molecular biology.' The distinction between the two isn't clear, and isn't really worth dwelling on. Unfortunately, if you like one of the two a lot, you'll have to do the other, although I don't see that as a downside. There's very little (in my opinion, too little) chemistry in biochemistry - for third year, only a little bit of thermodynamics is really needed, and there's very little hardcore organic and inorganic chemistry. Generally, the content in third year builds on the content presented in second year biochemistry although there's less of a focus on rote memorisation (that's definitely not to say no memorisation is needed,) and more of a focus on experimental techniques (more on this in a moment.) If you liked second year biochemistry, chances are you'll like third year biochemistry.

You have to do a third year prac subject (Advanced Techniques in Molecular Science) which is a fantastic subject and a great deal of fun (as my subject review reflects.) I can say it's been the best subject I've done in my degree. There's also an opportunity to do a third year research project (BIOM30003,) in the department. If you're going to do this, get in early. Spots fill up rapidly, especially for popular projects.

Biochemistry as a major has a heavy focus on experimental techniques, every subject in third year will devote a substantial amount of lecture time (say 20%) to techniques, and will expect you to know them well, and apply them in an exam. This differs from other majors in my experience, and can be a major sticking point for many students. I actually see this as a major plus in the major - the techniques that are taught are key techniques, and allow you to properly engage with the scientific literature.

Generally, people do a biochemistry major for one of three reasons:

I'd estimate there's a split about equally between the three, with maybe a slight bias towards the premeds. As you all know, any major is good to be a premed, just choose something that will get that mega GPA but still provide a good fallback. Biochem is an excellent major for doing research - as I've indicated, there's a strong focus on research in third year, and if your grades are good enough (H2A average or thereabouts,) it's a great department to do Honours in (which is my plan next year.) It's probably one of the better majors if you want to do typical 'wet' lab work (along with MIIM/straight chemistry.)

On the whole, I've really enjoyed my biochemistry major. It's a strongly recommended major if you're looking to do postgraduate life science research, or just want to learn more about biochemistry.

Note - regarding subject choices. In first year, you don't have to do biology, but it's a 'strongly recommended' prereq for BCMB20002. You can probably get away with not doing it if you did biology in year 12, but it doesn't hurt to do it. In second year, the subject BCMB20003 isn't a prereq for any third year subjects, but it introduces a lot of concepts that come up in third year, and generally eases the transition. It's perfectly possible to go well in third year having not done it, but it definitely helps.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on October 24, 2014, 09:54:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC10051 Sports Coaching: Theory and Practice 

Workload:  1 X 1hr weekly lecture, 1 X 2hr tutorial/practical per week

Assessment: 
- On-line tests related to readings (25 per cent) bi-weekly - 3 X 5% MCQ quizzes + 10% coaching certificate
- Coaching unit and rational (50 per cent) (exam period)
- Presentation (25 per cent) (mid semester) - A coaching session that runs for 10-15min per person

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  N/A but sample assessments given

Textbook Recommendation:  Readings are provided on LMS

Lecturer(s): Many lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Sem 2

Rating:  3.8 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) - Not out yet

Comments:

A very bludge breadth but quite enjoyable. Didn't attend any lectures and the coordinator and staff became progressively disappointed/upset with the appalling lecture attendance rates across the cohort

First 3 tutorials you have will be at the education buildings where you go over the weekly readings with your "reading circles" AKA reading groups of ~5-6 people. Then the next 2 tutorials/practicals you have will be at the uni sport stadium where you actually get to play some sport - It's pretty much like a PE class :) You kind of forget how fun PE was back in the day- the practicals were good to take mind off things esp with uni. Also if you take this subject try to contribute as much as you can in these 2 practicals as it will give you a good idea of how to run your own coaching session.

In week 6 you will have the normal tutorial at the education building where you will be grouped up into sport groups for the coaching session (e.g. for us it was Basketball week 7, netball week 8, soccer week 9, AFL week 10).

So from week 7-10 you will be running OR participating in the coaching sessions. I coached soccer but I didn't do as well as I would have liked for it. Just make sure you try be as active and encouraging as possible - for some it came naturally since they naturally coach/referee sports. I on the other hand, haven't really played sport since year 10 LOL. I also felt the marks were pretty harsh or maybe it was just my tutor. I recall people who previously took it got 90+ for the coaching practicals...

Quizzes will be 5% each and are MCQ based. They shouldn't be too inaccessible if you have done your readings. It's hard to bluff these because even though the readings are on the LMS, they are scanned as a pdf so you can't really Ctrl+F to search for relevant keywords. You have 1 week from the day of opening to complete the quiz.

The good thing about part of this assessment is that you get 10% for a coaching certificate - free marks :DDDD

As for the essay I haven't really started but I definitely should. It revolves around developing a coaching program for an individual or group spanning 6 weeks. You will need to include your aims for them and what coaching philosophies you have and what styles you have. As to how hard it is to score H1 for the essay let alone the subject, I will update this soon ;)

I gave this subject a 3.8 for the reason that more than often I was doing doing assessments/tasks not because I really enjoyed them (c.f. pharmacology) but because it was a hurdle requirement or assessed. What was also a little bit of a letdown was that my tutor never responded to emails despite knowing our group emailed her to ask questions/help. The coordinator didn't want to be contacted by email and only wanted to chat about assessments or other matters in person after the lecture. Whether the lecturers/tutors who respond/contact via email are the minority or vice versa is another matter but from my experience so far, most staff I contacted from other subjects are very open to chatting/answering questions by email.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on October 24, 2014, 10:23:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001 Pharmacology: How Drugs Work 

Workload:  3 X 1hr lecture, 5 X 1hr "special" topic lectures across the semester, 4 X 1 hr tutorials

Assessment: 
Continuing assessment of practical and computer-aided learning work during the semester (20%) - 10% pracs, 10% Self-directed learning tasks (SDLs)
Mid-semester assessment (20%) - MST test of 30 MCQ, 10 SAQ
A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (60%) - 60 MCQ + 6 SAQ where you pick 5 (I think)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, quite a few I think.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't need one but if you're super keen then can't go wrong with Rang & Dale

Lecturer(s):
N.B: stolen from Nubs
•   Jane Bourke
•   Graham Mackay
•   David Newgreen
•   Tony Hughes
•   Christine Wright
•   Alastair Stewart
•   Peter Crack
•   Catherine Laska
•   Michelle Hansen
•   James Ziogas
•   John Fitzgerald
•   Ken Winkel
•   Michael Lew

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 sem 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) Not out yet

Comments:

Like others have echoed, this subject has probably been one of the most well taught and interesting subjects I have taken to date. The cohesion between the content is rather amazing and so interwoven. I'm still ~3-4 weeks behind in lectures and when I mean behind I mean actually committing the content to memory rather than just a simple glance of the lecture slides. As of now, my favorite lectures were on the autonomic nervous system (Graham), Tony's lectures on pharmacokinetics, drugs for the cardiovascular system (Christine), Jane's lecture on drugs in sport and also the immunopharmacology lecture (Alistair). Kind of sad that Jane moved to Monash as I heard she used to lecture a larger portion for pharm - she was really funny and I felt she explained the concepts really well. I didn't really enjoy the toxins lecture - the stuff to me was mindnumbingly boring and the slides were just utter crap.
You are expected to memorise many of the drugs - sometimes it is just the name but sometimes you need to memorise the mechanism of action and side effects etc.

Tutes I would say are important to attend as they don't release answers for the SAQ - pretty bad for me because I didn't go to any :'(

You have 2 practicals for the semester (6% and 4% respectively)- 1st prac the assessment is based off a worksheet you hand up. I initially scored pretty bad for this but luckily I recognised that they made an error (missed a graph) in marking which lifted my mark :) 2nd prac assessment is based off an online quiz - make sure you take notes here because you will not be able to answer the online quiz without them.. I'm not really a practical kind of guy so I was initially really crapping myself about this section of the subject but in reality it isn't as bad as chem or bio pracs omg... Nevertheless, I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed the practicals either which is making me question whether a pharmacology major for me is something I should pursue.

The 3 SDLs (4%, 4%, 2% distribution respectively) are rather tedious but free marks. Beware they take marks off for pretty minute things and for not being specific enough. You should probably aim to get at least 80% of the 10% (>8/10) here.

The MST is 20% so study hard for it. From my recollection there weren't many trick questions but make sure that you literally know everything as they can test you on anything. I walked out with people around me claiming how "easy" the MST was - average was 28/40 -> 70%.

As for the exam - I can't really comment at the moment but will probably edit later. The exam will be virtually identical in format/structure as the MST so get familiar with it - it's a pretty standard structure/format anyway.

Overall, I thought this subject was great and if there was no pharmacology practical core subject I would've 100% decided on my major already :P Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on October 24, 2014, 11:19:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20002: Microbes, Infections and Responses 

Workload:  3x1hr lecture, 5 x 3 hour practical per fortnight, 1x CAL (done at home)

Assessment: Written practical reports throughout semester (15%),
A 45-minute multiple choice question test mid semester (20%),
Online quizzes (pre-practical class) throughout semester (5%)
A 2-hour written exam in the end of the semester examination period (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams, but the staff put up some sample questions during the two review lectures.

Textbook Recommendation:  I don't even know which textbook you buy so you definitely don't need it.

Lecturer(s):
L. Brown
H. Cain
O. Wijburg
K. Waller
T. Stinear
C. Simmons
R. R. Browne
D. Purcell

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments:
Wow. What a damn good subject. The Department of Microbiology and Immunology definitely knows how to run its subjects. This was my favourite subject throughout the semester - it was very interesting, it was EXTREMELY well taught and the staff take great care in running the subject. They were very approachable, always happy to answer questions, and they kept us informed and updated consistently throughout the semester. They also gave us individualised feedback on our MST (which pretty much just said "you should revise this and that"). The coordination was perfect. They even set up a Facebook study group for all of us!

The practicals were the most enjoyable out of any subject I've done. Each practical revolves around several case studies - you're presented with background information on a patient's history and their symptoms, and it's up to you to test the samples they give you and diagnose them. This actually ties in very nicely with the lecture material, since you're going to be learning about infections and how to diagnose and treat them after all. You'll have to test stuff like live flu samples and faecal samples! And be warned, you will definitely be pipetting a lot, especially in the haemagglutination-inhibition test!

Each practical goes for 3 hours but it's not stressful - you go through everything as a group, with your demonstrator explaining the case study and guiding you along. There is no in-prac assessment either. Firstly, you have to do a pre-prac quiz before each practical, which are fairly easy to do. For two of the case studies you need to write a practical report. The staff give you a proforma which tells you how to set up your report and which questions you should consider answering in it. There was a word limit of 500 words on the discussion though. These are harder to score well in - a lot of it is up to the hands of your demonstrator and some of them can take marks off for the smallest things. They also give you back your reports with a lot of feedback. I never got over 9/10 for my reports so if you do then well done. Two of the case studies were assessed by post-practical quiz, and one of those case studies was a CAL.

I guess what would deter prospective students is the workload. If you've done MCB, you'll probably be used to the amount of information they try to cram in one lecture. Having said that, a lot of the time the lecturers only talk about what's on the slides (apart from Roy), so there's no need to "write down EVERYTHING the lecturer says" either. Lecture notes across the board were of a very high standard - very clear and concise.

The first week is spent revising your basic microbiology and immunology - the course of an infection, bacterial and viral pathogenesis, as well as the immune response. Pretty relaxing here.

In the second week, you begin to learn different types of infections. The first topic is GIT infections, and you will go in depth into laboratory diagnosis, pathogenesis from invasive bacteria, non-invasive bacteria and parasites, and then you also learn a little bit about epidemiology. There is quite a bit of content in these lectures and lots of details to memorise - making tables is definitely helpful here. There's a lot of bacteria they talk about and you need to know features of each one. And you definitely should remember everything, literally everything, on the pathogenesis and laboratory diagnosis slides.

You then move into vaccine responses, mucosal immunity, and the human microbiome. Not much to say here, they were easier to study for though since you could just focus on understanding immunity.

You then look at respiratory infections involving S. pneumoniae, M. tuberculosis and influena, learning about pathogenesis, treatment and epidemiology. There was less to remember than in the GIT infections. You also get a lecture on emerging viral diseases which link up with very recent events such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as well as highly pathogenic bird flu.

You then move into STIs, covering herpes simplex virus, HIV, HPV and epidemiology. We had guest lecturers from the Virology department come in here and lecture, which was really good since these guys are leading researchers as well. This was probably the easiest out of the whole "infections" block.

For the last part of the course, you move to health-care acquired infections. These seem to be much more reliant on common sense rather than brute memorisation. But don't neglect it because you definitely should know about how the chain of infection can be broken etc.

The last two lectures covered Legionella and Dengue fever. A bit more random, since it didn't really come in any of the other themes. But this was pretty much the same as learning about all the other bacteria we had before.

The MST covers Weeks 1-6, and consists of 40 MCQ. Know your stuff well, because it's testing your recall and to a smaller extent your application. There were no ambiguous questions though which was a good thing. The average mark was 30/40. The exam consists of 50 MCQs (the vast majority on the latter part of the course), 3 fill in the blanks questions, and 2 short answer questions. It's very fair and if you've studied everything thoroughly it should be pretty straightforward.

Overall, this subject is amazing for anybody who has any sort of interest in Microbiology and Immunology. While there is quite a bit of material to swallow, it never feels like a drag simply because it's so well taught and intriguing. The subject material isn't even that hard - it's quite simple, but there's just a lot of things to know. If you don't make the effort to learn everything then you will find it difficult. According to previous years data, the amount of people who get H1 tends to hover in the 35-40% range so don't feel deterred from taking this subject! You won't regret it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mahler004 on October 25, 2014, 12:12:05 am
Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001 Pharmacology: How Drugs Work

Workload:
Assessment:
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Several available from the library website and the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation: A couple of recommended textbooks are given, like most biology subjects, they're only really useful as references.

Lecturers: Too many to list - see other reviews.

Most lectures only take one or two lectures.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Comments

Pretty good subject. Like all the other reviews, I took this subject to fill in a gap in my study plan (needed a random second/third year subject.) It's very good - better then I was expected, and there's a good diversity in topics.

The semester starts with some fairly basic pharmacology. There's a bit on receptors (trivial if you've done biochemistry,) and fairly basic pharmacological terms (i.e. EC50s,) and pharmacokinetics. There's three lectures on autonomic nervous system pharmacology (basically just physiology,) which is very well taught. The subject then moves onto a series of five or so lectures which wouldn't be out of place in a law subject - lectures on drug regulation, drug discovery and a history of pharmacology. There's a good deal of diversity in the subject, it's not all science, and in the earlier weeks they teach you a lot about the non-scientiffic aspects of pharmacology. I've heard from friends that this is developed a lot more in third year.

After the first few weeks, the subject moves into something more typical of a 'science' subject - each lecture (or two) is devoted to therapeutic strategies to treat certain diseases. For example, there are lectures on:

Of these topics, for me the lectures on cardiovascular pharmacology and analgesics were a (surprising) highlight.

Yes, you do have to memorise a lot of drugs - it's really not as bad as it sounds at the start of the subject. Some drugs you just need to know that it acts on a specific receptor (e.g. propanolol acts as an antagonist on the β adrenoceptors,) some you have to know more detail, side effects, etc (e.g. propanaolol can cause nightmares, tiredness.) I strongly recommend investing in a flash card program for your smartphone/laptop, makes studying a lot easier.

The final two weeks deal with toxicology. There's a couple of lectures on basic toxicology, then a lecture on toxins and the final lectures deal with drugs used to treat bacterial infections, viral infections and cancer.

Generally, lectures are fairly good - although there is some variability in quality with 15 lectures. Most lectures that take multiple lectures are quite good. Like others have said, I'd strongly recommend attending the tutorials, they only give answers to short answers in the tutorials, and they give a good deal of information about the exam and what they expect.

There's two pracs. They're really easy and kind of boring. In the first prac, you generate antagonist/agonist response curves (i.e. add differing concentrations of a drug and look at the tissue response,) in the second prac you use a few drugs to try and figure out the receptors present in a tissue. The pracs are assessed using a prac report form (for the first prac,) and an online quiz (for the second prac.) They're pretty straightforward.

There's also some short assignments ('self-directed' learning tasks.) These are apparently fair game on the exam and MST, although there's usually only one or two MCQs. They shouldn't take too long to do (only a couple of hours,) and are pretty easy marks. Like any science assignment you do, just make sure you're sufficiently anal with units, captions etc. The assignments are introduced in a 'special topic,' which is again, accessible. They pretty much tell you what to do, so it's an easy place to pick up marks before the exam. It'll make your SWOTVAC just that much less stressful.

There's also a 20% 40 minute MST. It's pretty straightforward, and it's a similar style and difficulty to the final exam. Keep in mind that most of the more difficult content in pharmacology comes in the second half of the semester. It's worth 20%, so yeah, study for it. The SDLs and pracs are supposedly accessible, but there's only usually one MCQ. Unlike the reviewer below me, I felt that the MST covered the content across the first half of semester fairly and equally (just that we had only had two therapeutics lectures by that point.) The MST wasn't too demanding - about 30% of the class got a H1 (but about 40% either passed or failed as well.)

This will be the first exposure most people have to pharmacology (it was mine.) It actually involves very little chemistry - the subject is about the effects of drugs, not the organic chemistry of making drugs (so it's not Breaking Bad.) It involves a fair bit of physiology and anatomy, a little bit of biochemistry (mainly drug/receptor interactions.) Most of the physiology is taught at a simple level. There's a bit of chemistry, but it rarely goes beyond high school level (literally just acids and bases.) In terms of difficulty and workload, it's easier then the other second year subjects I did (biochemistry and chemistry.) It's supposedly less hardcore then anatomy and physiology. Only a two hour exam, although unlike most other subjects, there's a substantial MST (20%.)

On the whole, pharmacology is a interesting, fairly well-run subject. You learn a lot of interesting stuff and it's directly relevant (I've had my parents start to quiz me about the drugs they're taking!) The only downsides are the kind of useless pracs (either have six pracs, or none at all,) and the fact that some topics can be touched on superficially (although it does allow a good breadth in topics to be covered.) If you've got a free spot in your study plan in second or third year, I strongly recommend taking it.

Edit:

Exam was very fair - everything that was assessed was in the lectures/pracs/workshops. As expected, the questions overwhelmingly came from the lectures - only a few multiple choice from the workshops and the pracs (so definitely still worth revising.) They generally didn't test minutiae, and although you had to remember drug names, simply recalling drug names wasn't a major focus of the exam. Many multiple choice gave drug classes 'e.g. an ACE inhibitor,' not drug names 'e.g. captopril' as answers. On the whole, if you'd studied, the exam wasn't too challenging.

The more social sciencey aspects of the course weren't really emphasised in the exam. Do revise them, but focus on the science.

50 of the 110 marks were for 'mixed response' questions, which are more like VCE biology exam questions then longer essay-like questions seen in other biology subjects. You chose five out of six to do.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on October 25, 2014, 01:19:15 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure & Function

Workload:  6x1hr lecture per week, 4x2hr anatomy pracs per fortnight, 1x2h physiology practical per semester

Assessment:
Written laboratory report (1000 words, 10%);
Two tests during semester (20% total, 10% each); and
Two 2-hr end of semester exams (70% total, 35% each)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. I think I only went to a handful of lectures throughout the semester.

Past exams available:  Practise exams of both papers are available from 2009-2010 on the LMS. The 2011 exams were on the UniMelb library page, as well as Paper 2 for 2012. Jenny also put in some sample anatomy "label-the-diagram" pictures throughout the semester. There were no practise materials for Physiology. Practise material for Physiology from past exams were uploaded in SWOTVAC. However, you can find more PHYS20008 questions and get them from the UniMelb library or from people who took the subject last semester. There was also no practise materials for Pharmacology but similarly, you can get questions from PHRM20001 students. There was also some Pharmacology practise questions too.

Textbook Recommendation:
General Anatomy by Chris Biggs is a handy book to get you through the "Principles" lectures in anatomy (so maybe 3-4 weeks). A lot of the lecture slides have diagrams that come out of this book and the slides tend to follow the book as well. It is also useful for your ADSLs.

Anatomedia is useful for the ADSLs but a lot of it just contains text from General Anatomy

The lecturers take off many diagrams from Grey's Anatomy but I don't think you really need to buy it. You can just google image things. In addition, I don't think anatomy is a subject you can really study just by reading text off a book. I never used Netter's Clinical Anatomy apart from a few ADSLs on the upper and lower limbs.

Human Physiology by Silverthorn is set for pre-reading before the physiology lectures. It's a decent book with nice-looking diagrams and the explanations are clear enough to follow. For most of the semester, I never did much pre-reading but before the physiology exam I read through the textbook seriously, using Charles' lectures to help me go through it. Not much pre-reading was assessed in the MST but some parts of it were on the exam.

I don't think the Pharmacology department ever even mentioned their textbook. Not useful anyway.

Lecturer(s):

Anatomy
P. Kitchener [Neuroanatomy] - you need to definitely write down the stuff that's not on the slides.
C. Anderson [Embryology]
V. Pilbrow [Bone, Articular System, Vascular System, Skin] - Varsha talks about examples in her lectures and it's important that you get all this down. This may be gibberish to you at this stage of the course because you haven't actually learnt what she's talking about yet, and she is a bit difficult to understand.
S. Murray [Musculoskeletal System]
J. Xiao [Gastrointestinal, Cardio, Lower Respiratory, Renal, Urinary] - Always tended to finish in around 40 mins
J. Ivanusic [Upper Respiratory, Reproductive]
Note these are the exact same lecturers in Science, with the exact same slides.
The anatomy department was fantastic. All of their slides were very clear.

Physiology
D. Williams [Neurophysiology, Cardiovascular, Respiratory]
J. Bornstein [Digestive]
S. Harrap [Renal]
M. Wlodek [Reproductive]
+ A few guest doctors who lectured on applied physiology.

Pharmacology
A. Stewart [Drugs and Receptors]
G. Mackay [Autonomic Pharmacology]
M. Lew [Pharmacokinetics]

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating:
Anatomy: 1.75/2
Physiology: 0.5/2
Pharmacology: 0.5/1
Overall: 2.75/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (92)

Comments:
By department:

Anatomy
In line with previous reviews, I think Anatomy was the most well-taught part of the course. It may seem boring in the beginning. Neuroanatomy is taught well and embryology can be a bitch to understand since you have to visualise folding in 3D. Varsha's lectures on Bones etc are a bit dull but necessary, although she did teach bone ossification wrongly in HSF and was much more clearer in ANAT20006, so try watch the ANAT20006 lectures if you need clarification. After this, anatomy became a lot more enjoyable as you move onto identifying important structures in the body. You also do learn some clinical stuff in the musculoskeletal lectures especially (often about fractures, tears, compartment syndrome, endangered structures etc)

Anatomy is very much a visual subject and you should definitely take this into account when you study. I didn't write any summary notes for anatomy and just printed the lecture slides with labels and many annotations. This was quite effective and efficient. I don't believe writing and reading is going to really help you improve your anatomy - it's all about identifying structures and then commenting a little bit about its significance. Writing and reading in my opinion would just be excessive.  Definitely pay attention to the diagrams in the lecture slides, even to the small detail.

You also get ADSL worksheets which complement each lecture series. These are helpful, but you definitely don't need to review these to do well. That being said, apparently the anatomy department likes to use images from the ADSLs in the exam so try go through them if you can. There is no quiz so ADSLs are not assessed in any way. I wish they did though because they are actually good practise. None of the "extension" material in the ADSLs come up in assessment either, so if you want you can skip the more obscure parts.

The anatomy practicals are pretty cool but you should really review the material before. If you don't know what the hell is going on and can't name a lot of things (which was me for like 3/4 practicals) then you're not going to get much out of it since you're just too confused to know what the demonstrator is talking about. They pretty much are just to help your learning and are not assessed. You pretty much just rotate around 5 stations, and at each station you're looking at some specimens with a demonstrator. Some demonstrators will actually explain a lot of stuff to you, others will just sit back, tell you to identify structures, and do nothing.

Assessment was also very fair, always covering the material, and to be honest, was very much on the easy side. Compared to the ANAT20006 MSTs they are exceptionally easy to do well in. Anatomy questions are apparently similar to past exams, so use them. Also try to find any student who is willing to give you questions from their ADSL quizzes.

The best way to learn anatomy is to get involved in identifying things and having quiz-offs. And you also have your own body. Use it. This is very helpful for understanding locomotion and the types of joints involved in each movement.

Physiology
Lol. If you don't know by now, physiology is the bane of this subject. Teaching quality is not great and I don't think I've seen a cohort this frustrated with something like this since Physics.
 
To be honest, I never paid any attention to the Neuro, cardio and respiratory lectures in HSF. I just grabbed ALL of Charles' lectures and studied off them, and then I listened to David at 2x speed. They're the exact same lecture slides with the exact same material, but for some reason David falls behind very easily and spends a lot of time digressing. I mean, one time he was stuck on the same slide for like 20 mins. He actually didn't even lecture on Smooth Muscles since he fell behind, and just told us to do the pre-reading for it. Sometimes even the PHRM20001 lectures explained their physiology better.

Later in the semester, we had 4 guest lecturers come in to lecture us on applied physiology. Most of these lectures seemed important and worth studying for the exam. This was relating Cardio and Respiratory physiology to clinical practise, so the lecturers came in to talk about how some diseases arise and what they can lead to (i.e aortic stenosis). 2 of them were decent and actually explained their material quite well. One was a bit nervous and sort of mumbled into the microphone but if you took the time to listen back to it, the material was ok. The last lecture was when our cohort just did not give a shit any more. I don't even know what the hell went on in that lecture after listening to it, but it was advanced respiratory physiology that we had never been exposed to and did not get references for. The lecture slides were also totally different and the lecturer spoke at 1000000x words per minute.

Digestive physiology was only explored in 2 lectures and I felt that the lecture slides were badly written and incoherent. In addition, I don't think it really explored the full picture of digestion as well - it seemed more like I just got a fragment of it. I had to listen to both Charles and Joel and combine the two to make sure I got the whole picture. Joel likes to test the pre-reading too (a lot of which he does not dwell on), so make sure you listen to Charles because he actually goes through it. 

Stephen and Mary were decent physiology lecturers and actually explained the content well. No problems here!

You also get "concept checks" for each system. Basically it's just a short quiz on the LMS that's not assessed, and it's designed to give you feedback. However, we were never notified when the concept checks were added to the LMS, and the brilliant thing was that they disappeared after some time without warning (this was purposely done). So even if you did the quiz you couldn't check over it again. And these concept checks were never put back on the LMS for the whole semester too, so people would often prntscrn their responses. So make sure you save them and look over them in exam time.

Now, there's one style of questions that all students hate. The infamous "increase, decrease, no change, or not enough information" questions. These are annoying. I would rather have short-answer questions than this. I felt that these questions did not let you demonstrate your critical reasoning and detailed knowledge. Sometimes you have to assume something, sometimes you don't. Not many practise questions are put up in HSF so it is imperative to grab practise questions off PHYS20008 students, as many of the questions that actually come up are related. Some of our MST questions were just ripped off those seen in PHYS20008.

The physiology practical takes place at around Week 11 and you have until the end of week 12 to submit it. Again, it's about the cardiovascular response to dynamic and static exercise, which was not addressed in our lectures. Luckily Charles had an entire lecture on exercise so that was immensely helpful. In addition, they do direct you to a relevant textbook so it's not too bad. The report consists of 11 questions. The last question was quite random and in my opinion was chucked in just to justify our lecture in "Scholarly Literacy", and we had to identify appropriate articles that would help us in answering a particular research question. Overall, the practical report is not too hard. Some of your data might not make sense though - if this is the case, email Charles, who runs the practical. He allowed me to use somebody else's data since my data was acting completely opposite. Alternatively he also said that I could talk about expected results and what sort of experimental errors I could've encountered, but with the 1000-1200 word limit I opted for the former.

So, to sum it up, focus on PHYS20008 rather than the physiology component of HSF.

Pharmacology
I was a student of PHRM20001 so my opinion is a little biased here, but I felt that Pharmacology was not necessary in HSF. It only skims the basics of Pharmacology and is definitely not integrated enough with physiology to justify it being there. You spend 3 lectures talking about how drugs bind to receptors, 1 on autonomic pharmacology (which is acceptable), 3 or 4 talking about Pharmacokinetics and then 1 on drug development. Seriously, drug development. They couldn't have at least lectured on something that was more physiological, could they?

While Graham and Michael are great lecturers, I thought that Alastair took too much time when he was lecturing on how drugs work. There is not much to know in this part and he does love to digress. It took a whole lecture just to go through affinity. I think this was taught much better in PHRM20001. That being said, although these lectures are bludgy if you're doing PHRM20001, don't neglect them and just add in stuff that's not in PHRM20001, especially Michael's lectures on adverse drug effects.

I gave this component a low score because I felt that it just clogged up space in HSF, which could have otherwise been used for important physiology lectures that were ripped out of the course. It didn't seem to relate very much to anything else we learnt. It would've been a lot better if they talked a little about therapeutics, such as treating asthma or hypertension, but this was not elaborated on.

The Pharmacology questions on the MST are fair though and sometimes they're assessed by "fill-in-the-blanks". There's also a nifty short answer where they give you features of made up drugs and ask you which drug would have the smallest Vd, would be eliminated the fastest, etc.

OVERALL COMMENTS
To me, this subject feels unnecessary. It is pretty much ANAT20006 and PHYS20008 mushed into one subject, with bits being taken out due to the Pharmacology component and other parts  (particularly in Physiology) being taught quite badly. I would rather have done ANAT20006 and PHYS20008 separately than HSF. You get the exact same lecture slides for Anatomy and Physiology, so you're pretty much being tested on the same material. However, you get less resources. A lot less. ANAT20006 students get ADSL quizzes for each topic, you just have the ADSL worksheet and no quiz. We were given some Physiology practise material though (although most of them were just pulled off the past exams in the UniMelb library).

Therefore, you should really contact other students for their resources. Grab anything you can from PHRM20001, ANAT20006 and PHYS20008, because you're not getting any from HSF.

HSF is structured so that you'll have a lecture on the anatomy of one system, followed by its physiology (or the other way around). I didn't mind this, it felt natural. However the lectures aren't integrated. I feel that this may have been purposely done, because the staff have said that it's up to the students to integrate the material themselves. This actually stirred up quite a lot of controversy in our cohort and the coordinator ended up asking if we would like integrated questions in the exam, but the cohort turned it down probably because we didn't feel at all ready to begin answering integrated questions. So the anatomy and physiology/pharmacology remained separated. If the lectures at least guided us on integration, I think the cohort would have been more receptive to the idea of having integrated exams. But they weren't.

The MSTs weren't too difficult but it's very hard to tell where you went wrong. The first MST tested Neurophysiology, Neuroanatomy, Embryology, and Varsha's lectures. It consisted of around 30 questions and two "label-the-diagrams"/"fill-in-the-blanks" questions. The second MST followed a similar format but tested Musculoskeletal, Gastrointestinal, and Pharmacology. It was meant to test Digestive Physiology as well but that didn't come up at all for some reason.

Anatomy is the first exam and it consists of 3 sections.
-Section A has 25 MCQ and is mostly weighted on what wasn't in the MSTs, so Cardio, Respiratory, Renal, Urinary and Repro.
-Section B has "label-the-diagrams" and "fill-in-the-blanks" questions covering the whole course.
-Section C requires you to respond to four long-essay questions covering the whole course.

With the exam, there was a definite emphasis on the latter half of the Anatomy content. Neuroanatomy, embryology and anatomical principles were not featured at all. You could've just studied from Simon's lectures onwards and still do well. A lot of things weren't covered in assessment and it definitely annoyed me seeing as how I spent so much time learning the intricate details of everything and memorising as much as I could. The exam turned out to be much easier than expected.

The second exam assesses physiology and pharmacology and it is ALL MCQ, so don't waste your time doing the short answer and long essay questions from past exams. Unlike Anatomy, this exam is more difficult. It demands a thorough understanding (not just your rote-learning) and there are a few traps that are easy to fall into if you aren't perceptive of small detail. Many of the questions are your "increase/decrease/no change/not enough information" ones as well as some of your more traditional "pick the correct answer" questions. As said, the increase/decrease questions can be a pain in the ass as you're left doubting yourself so much. With those questions it's best to scribble a flowchart of the likely response. Pay attention to the wording too. One of the harder questions on the exam involved the Baroreceptor reflex integrated with your neurophysiology, which I felt was a pretty nice question that really tested how you think, as you needed to be aware of the responses involving both systems. Pharmacokinetics was also assessed through the "increase/decrease" format, where they pretty much have to use the features of 3 made-up drugs to answer the question. A lot of the drugs mentioned in HSF weren't assessed at all (in fact, I don't think any drug was).

Indeed, exam pre-reading is assessable and the physiology department has loved to test small detail on the slides, so always pay attention to any graphs they give you. To do well here, it's imperative that you go beyond the set lectures and read the textbook. Or just watch lectures from PHYS20008, since they will actually go through the material that HSF doesn't have time for with and yes, sometimes they have assessed those things in the past. To prepare for this exam, definitely focus on the MCQ portions of exams, read the textbook, and have a sharp eye for detail. 

So really, this subject is essentially just a poor mis-mash of ANAT20006 and PHYS20008 with basic Pharmacology thrown in. I didn't actually find it hard since I just hoarded resources off Science students, but was just frustrated with how the subject is constructed and the quality of the physiology section.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on October 25, 2014, 02:10:09 am
Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001: Pharmacology: How Drugs Work

Workload:
3x1hr lectures per week
2x3hr practicals per semester
3x1hr tutorials per semester
3x1hr workshops per semester

Assessment:
Continuing assessment of practical and computer-aided learning work during the semester (20%).
Mid-semester assessment (20%).
A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).
This subject has a practical component. Completion of 80% of the practicals, and practical-related exercises, is a hurdle requirement.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, there are a few in the UniMelb library. The ones on the LMS only give you one section of the exams. Sample questions in the review lectures and the tutorials may be used for practise.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't even know the textbook, so don't buy it.

Lecturer(s):
J. Bourke
G. Mackay
D. Newgreen
T. Hughes
C. Wright
A. Stewart
P. Crack
C. Laska
M. Hansen
J. Ziogas
J. Fitzgerald
K. Winkel
M. Lew

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (92)

Comments:
This was a well-taught subject that was run smoothly and was interesting. Workload is light compared to anatomy and physiology.

There are three themes. The first few weeks were spent talking about how drugs work. Affinity, efficacy, potency, agonists/antagonists, pharmacokinetics, and autonomic nervous system. Make sure you know your autonomic nervous system damn well because these are very important for understanding therapeutics. There is not much to know in the other parts of this theme.

Then we move onto the second theme which was therapeutics, which was of course my favourite part of the subject since it integrated physiology and was quite clinical too. Other people have already said which topics were mentioned so I won't repeat it. But teaching here was excellent. There is not much anatomy though, I think the most I ever heard about anatomy was for like 5 mins in the autonomic nervous system. All you really need to know is the normal physiology and then you need to manipulate it with drugs to try counteract the disease you're trying to treat (i.e blood pressure is dependent on cardiac output and TPR, and we can use ANGII antagonists and ACE inhibitors that prevent ANGII from constricting the vessels so we decrease TPR in a hypertensive, etc).

The last theme, which was about toxicity, I did not really enjoy, mainly because it was pretty dry compared to therapeutics. You learn about environmental contaminants, venoms, and selective toxicity.

You also get a few random lectures, such as Pharmacogenomics, Drug Development, Drug Regulation and Sociological Drug Use (which was pretty much just a guy telling a story the entire time). These don't tend to be heavily emphasised in the MST or exams so just appreciate them I guess.

There's no good advice I have to just "memorise" all the drugs they talk about. You just have to memorise, use flash-cards or use your traditional summaries and tables. Some drug classes have certain suffixes too (-zosin = alpha1 antagonist, -olol = beta bloker, -pril = ACE inhibitor etc), so that makes life easier too. You should remember what class each drug belongs to, their action, their side-effects and selectivity (i.e whether they bind to alpha1 or beta 2 adrenoceptors, or whether they are selective for the CNS or NMJ). Make sure you actually know their names accurately, because many names can be very similar (Naloxone, Nabilone) and very long to remember, and when you're revising it's easy to mix drugs up. Here's a brief list of some drugs that you're likely to hear in the course, and yes the names can be a bitch.

You have three SDLs to do throughout the semester. You have to download a program which simulates an experiment and work through a worksheet. These aren't very hard to complete and shouldn't take too long but the assessors like to take off marks for tiny things, like making your horizontal axis longer than the data set. The last SDL is assessed by an online quiz.

The first prac is pretty damn boring. You pretty much spend a lot of time just waiting, while you obtain a concentration-response curve for various agonists and antagonists. The second prac is better, your given some pig ileum and you have to work out which receptors are on it by adding different agonists and antagonists. The first prac is assessed by a worksheet you hand in, the second by an online test.

There are only 3 tutorials throughout the semester, and they're often presented either by a lecturer or a PhD student. A tutorial worksheet is uploaded to the LMS and answers are uploaded after the tutorial. You just go through the whole worksheet in one hour. If you've revised, the worksheets are relatively straightforward and most of what the tutor is saying should be stuff you already know about. Because of this I didn't exactly find it very helpful all the time.

Workshops I didn't really pay attention to, they introduced some of the SDLs. They also talked about careers in pharmacology.

The MST was meant to test Weeks 1-6, and was supposed to cover the beginning therapeutics but for some reason didn't, disappointingly. It seemed to have been weighted more to the first few lectures on how drugs worked. Anyway, it's not a hard test. There was two pages of short answer questions (worth 10 marks) on Pharmacokinetics and there were 30 MCQ. Apart from your traditional A, B, C, D style MCQs, the Pharm department looooves to give questions where you have to match the options to a particular drug. Something like:
A) Salbutamol
B) Losartan
C) Captopril
D) Benzodiazepine
E ) Phentolamine

1. Is an allosteric modulator of the GABA receptor
2. Is an alpha blocker
3. Is an ACE inhibitor
4. Is a beta 2 agonist
5. Is an ANGII antagnist

That is often seen in past exam questions, too.

I felt the exam was very fair, it covered almost all of the lectures and if you have made the effort to learn everything then you will probably find the exam straightforward.

A little warning: it's not just the lectures that are assessed, but also the SDLs, practicals, and the workshops. Yes, the workshops. Th MST had a question that was from one of the workshops (which was extending Cholinergic Pharmacology) and you're expected to know drugs that were mentioned in the SDLs even if they weren't in the lectures.

Overall, a great subject which relates to applied physiology extremely well. It was not too demanding and leaning about how drugs could treat disease was definitely the highlight.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mahler004 on October 28, 2014, 12:12:52 am
Subject Code/Name: POLS20008 Public Policy Making

Workload:

Must attend 7/10 tutorials.

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but lecturer makes extensive use of videos which aren't recorded for copyright reasons.

Past exams available:  No exam. Lecturer put up good (H1 quality) past assessments.

Textbook Recommendation:  Althaus, C., Bridgman, P. & Davis, G. (2012/13) The Australian Policy Handbook (Fifth edition.) Pretty much all the readings come from the textbook, so you do need to buy it (although it's also available at the library on overnight loan). Fortunately, it's not too expensive ($50.) And yep, you'll be lining our Vice Chancellor's pockets even more.

Lecturer(s): Dr Scott Brenton

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating:  4.5/5

Comments: Oddly enough, this is the first review of a politics subject on ATAR Notes. I guess it shows the audience here. This is apparently one of the more popular politics subjects, and is taken by both arts students doing the politics major, and is a pretty common breadth subject (I took it as a science student.)

Scott, who takes the lectures, is a good, innovative lecturer. Lectures are interactive and Scott makes extensive use of technology (especially videos, news reports, etc.) It's not just him talking for two hours. As a science student, attending arts lectures is unusual - in science, lectures mainly present content which must be thoroughly learned and recalled in exams, in arts, lectures are more about giving context for assessment tasks and tutorials. The lectures do this extremely well. You also get to watch an episode of the Hollowmen, which is almost worth taking the subject for in itself. The lectures cover basic politics (only for about half a lecture,) theories of policy making, policy implementation and the role of various groups in the policy making process (the government, students, lobbyists, the public service, etc.) They are reinforced by the readings, which basically involve working through a public policy textbook.

Of special note are the guest lecturers. Nicholas Reece (who also teaches in the first year subject Australian Politics,) gives a lecture on communication and the role of political staffers. Reece was a senior staffer in Gillard's office and has a lot of stories to tell - his slide on the 'day of the life of a political advisor' almost completely turned me off the role. John Brumby, the former Premier of Victoria, also gives a lecture about the role of political leaders. A former Liberal senator, Prof. Russell Trood gives a lecturer on foreign policy. Again, his stories are worth attending the lecture for.

The tutorials involve discussion of the textbook readings and the lecture content. Scott also uploads some items to act as discussion pieces (often a recent-ish news article.) I won't comment too much here, as your experience will largely depend on your tutor (other then saying my tutor was great.) They're fairly typical Arts tutorials.

Finally, the assessments. The first assessment, the "Policy Brief" involved writing a 1500 word paper on an issue in the Victorian election. You were expected to compare and critique the policies of both major parties, and provide a statement on how important the issue would be in the election. This year it was challenging - the essay was due in mid-September (so well before the election campaign had gotten started,) so finding media and resources was a challenge. Last year (2013) the assignment was to do the same but with the Federal election. I'm not sure how they'll do it next year with no Federal or state election. The writing style here was similar to a newspaper op-ed, but could be formatted as an argumentative essay.

The second assessment, the "Policy Research Paper," involves writing a 2500 word paper on a policy of your choice. You had to prepare a (federal) Cabinet submission, a media release and a literature review. This year, you could choose the policy you wrote on, in previous year the topics were restricted. There's, again, sample assignments on the LMS which should help with formatting the cabinet submission and media release. The literature review is similar to an essay, but not really. You have to use the academic literature to provide evidence for your policy. Both assessments are innovative and relevant - it's much more fun and relevant writing a cabinet submission or an op-ed compared to writing yet another essay...

Like the review below this one, I'd like to address the question, present with any breadth subject, about the value of the subject. A good breadth subject will teach you something new and useful, and the reason I took BA breadths through my degree was to maintain and improve my writing skills, something which I really don't think is emphasised enough in the BSc. Plus, it allowed me to build on my already present interest in politics. I've considered undertaking a carrier in the public service after Honours (probably though one of the absurdly competitive grad programs,) so this was also to get a feel for what that would be like.

The handbook suggests "Politics at Level 1" to take the subject. This isn't entirely necessary if you're doing the subject as a breadth student. If you know your House of Representatives from your Senate, your PM&C from your DFAT, your states from your federal government, and your public service your ministerial staffers, you'll be fine. I've done the first year subject Australian Politics, and the third year subject American Politics. American Politics was a fantastic subject, but a very different subject. Public Policy Making is a great choice if you're looking to go into the public service or into policy analysis, or if you just want to learn more about the way policy is made in Australia.

Highly recommended.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on October 28, 2014, 03:56:01 am
Subject Code/Name: SCRN30005 The Digital Screenscape

Workload:  1x 1.5 hour lecture, 1x up to 3 hour screening, 1x 1 hour tutorial (must attend 80% to pass)

Assessment:
40% - 1500 word essay presented though a blogging platform of the student's choice (due ~mid-semester)
60% - 2500 word research essay (due first day of exams)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  N/A (no exam)

Textbook Recommendation:  Just a book of readings. They're all posted online, and as the price of the reader magically jumped from ~$15 to >$40, I'd go the online/DIY route.

Lecturer(s): Dan Golding (and he's only staff member for this subject)

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2 2014

Rating:  4.9 out of 5 (yeah I'm picky)

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A fascinating subject will appeal to anyone interested in film and media. As a bonus, it is really well taught and constructed.

Comments:
So if you've come across my reviews of Film Genres or Hollywood you'll know I kind of have a pre-disposition to loving these subjects. While equally fantastic, DigScreen marks a bit of departure in content. Rather than strictly cinema studies, the subject focuses on the study and criticism of Digital Media. Pretty comprehensively too, I might add.

The subject basically consists of three main units: Unit 1 is on Digital Cinema; Unit 2 is on videogames and play; Unit 3 is on "Digital Selves." It's early, but I'll briefly run through what each of these units entails...

Unit 1, as I said, is on digital cinema. The films screened here include Super 8, District 9, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 :(, and Gravity. The main themes through this unit are the death of film (i.e. physical celluloid), remediation, digital aesthetics, and the neo-baroque.

Unit 2 is on videogames. The only film screened in this unit is Indie Game: The Movie. Screening times in other weeks are used for what Dan calls Lab Sessions. Here, the collective class plays (or watches others play, as the case may be) games ranging from mega-studio games such as The Last of Us and Portal to mobile games including Duet and Space Team. These sessions were quite fun and really interesting. In the final week of this unit, the screening time was used for a lab session with the Oculus Rift VR set. This was (obviously) mega-cool. Studying games critically and thinking of them as art forms is initially a process that is quite alien, and, to some, may seem quite odd, or even pointless. Dan really hammers home the value in this though, and this unit was probably the most interesting of the three.

Unit 3 is on what the subject calls "digital selves." This included things like our interactions with social networks, our relationship with technology, the critical implications of AI etc. Films screened here included RoboCop, Her, V for Vendetta, and the documentary Catfish, as well as two episodes of the (distributing but quite interesting) TV show Black Mirror. Though all the lectures in this section were very good, this unit was probably the hardest to get through as some of the readings were quite full on.

Dan is a really good lecturer. Why? Here's why:

For many of the same reasons, he's a really good tutor too.

I guess being the lone staff member of the subject kind of makes this Dan's baby. In the hands of someone else I could definitely see this format going haywire, or ending up as some madman's experiment. Dan, however, is dedicated enough to make it work, and the subject really benefits from his presence as it's (benevolent) overlord.

Additionally, the subject is really well constructed. With the split into three inter-related but individually discernible units, it helps to (a) appeal to a greater range of students and their interests, (b) provide a more holistic view of the "screenscape," which is obviously one of the subject's main objectives, and (c) [I forgot what I was going to write for (c)].

The blog essay is a really interesting idea too. Giving students the freedom to present something uniquely is quite brave for a subject, but I found it quite liberating and I found the format very conducive for my style of writing. I wish I could write more essays like that. Here's what I came up with if anyone's interested.

More generally, however, the essays are quite difficult to write. They ask you to engage with some pretty complicated ideas, and you can end up somewhat bogged down in the theory. This was the probably the biggest step-up I noticed between this as a level 3 subject and the previous level 2 SCRN subjects I've done. The approach I took, however – and it wasn't always easy – was come up with an idea. Essays I've written in the past are generally good (IMHO ;D) but when I look at them critically, they really just respond to a set question, and that's about it. I'd like to think the couple of essays I've come up with this semester are a bit more interesting, mainly because I've come up with somewhat of an original idea and concept to build upon. Dan is really good with that too, in that he provides a lot of different topics for each essay, but also allows students to either alter these topics or come up with one of their own (in conjunction with him of course).

The 0.1 point that I've doffed off the rating is because of the readings. Though most are quite interesting, some of the readings are very lengthy, very artsy, very esoteric, and therefore hard to get through, especially during the busy times in semester. This is to be expected however, and doesn't take much away from the subject on a whole.

Again, we get to the question of how valuable a subject like this actually is to someone like me, who is an engineering major. I've kind of come up with a job interview friendly justification of this. These subjects invite you – and, indeed, teach you – to look at seemingly simple concepts in a high degree of depth. They aim for engagement rather than simple recognition, understanding rather than formulaic application; a method of tackling intricate and complex issues critically and with attention to detail. They also requires you to write, and write well. Writing that flows, writing that is concise, writing that is nuanced, writing that allows you to convey a defined and codified message. This is invaluable to communicating ideas, and communicating in general. Further, it’s something I enjoy, and it’s something that provides a distinct disjuncture from my other studies. These are all good things!

Unfortunately, it seems as if the future of this subject is uncertain. It is definitely taking a year off next year (I've speculated that this is for budgetary reasons), and Dan has all but completed completed his PhD, so who knows where he'll be. Regardless, this is a really great subject, so if you're interested in digital media and up for a challenge, don't hesitate in taking it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on November 04, 2014, 10:15:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30010 Systems Modelling and Design

Workload: I won't even try to describe the labyrinthine structure of this subject here. See the comments.

Assessment:
5% – Geotechnical Lab Report
5% – Hydraulics Lab Report

20% – Geotechnical Design Assignment
20% – Hydraulics Design Assignment

50% – 2-hour exam

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, kind of... (again see the comments).

Past exams available:  On library website

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s):
Geotechnical: Stuart Colls
Hydraulics: Roger Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2 2014

Rating: Overall: 1.75/5
Geotechnical: 3.5/5
Hydraulics: 0.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: Half of this subject is horribly taught and a constant burden. The other half is mostly okay. Overall it's quite poorly conceived and in need of review.

Comments:

Structure
This subject is a mess. It feels like the structure of this subject has been designed with the aim of making it as confusing as possible. It is basically two subjects amalgamated into one – Geotechnical Engineering and Hydrological Engineering. They are kind of just slapped together though – these aren't just topics, they're completely different subjects. There is basically no cross-over as the two components are taught completely independently, and the order of the lectures is jumbled around. Oh, and in the middle you throw in some pracs and labs somewhere. I'll try to describe the structure of the subject below:

In weeks 1-8 there are two lectures per week that run for two hours each:

After week 8, the lectures finish. There are no more lectures.

Still with me?

In weeks 3-5 lab classes run. Each student has one two hour geotechnical lab (on soil seepage) and another for hydraulics (on the hydraulic jump). A lab report for these is due week 6 IIRC (maybe 7 actually).

In weeks 6-9 geotechnical computer lab classes run to work on the geotechnical design assignment.

In weeks 9-12 hydraulics computer lab classes run to work on the hydraulics design assignment.

This structure might be okay if the staff bothered to explain to students prior to timetabling. When you register for classes you are smacked in the face by the millions of classes you have to register for just this single subject.

Geotechnical
Okay, so the geotechnical component is okay. The lecturer, Stuart Colls, was very good, even if he was working off someone else slides (those of the recently retired Prof Ian Johnston). Ian, as far as I can tell, was Stuart's PhD supervisor, so using his slides really doesn't cause any issues. The geotechnical tutor (and there is only one (for a cohort of >250 students)) was also quite diligent in answering questions on the discussion board and a good tutor overall, although her marking for the final assignment was remorseless (a friend said he got marks taken off for a typo in what is essentially a quantitative assignment).

Hydraulics
Okay, this section was the most poorly executed component of a subject I've ever done at UoM.

Roger Hughes, the lecturer for the hydraulics component, was an outright bad lecturer. Rather than slides, he insisted on presenting everything through the document camera, thereby getting students to print out and fill in a large word document, including many diagrams that must be filled out quickly. This requirement for rapid sketching and jotting inhibits any actual absorption or understanding of the content. That said, his explanations of the material weren't that bad, but he had a really weird, disjointed way of speaking which made listening to him a chore.

Hughes also seemed to have complete disregard for the needs of revision or for people who could not make the lecture (which could be expected to be a pretty high % given that the lectures ran from 5:30pm to 7:30pm). Several times he did not wear a microphone (making the recording impossible to listen to) and the wrong document camera was recorded (making it even more impossible to follow). Just complete laziness, lack of regard for students, and embarrassing behaviour for a UoM lecturer. I know the University makes it pretty clear that lecture attendance is compulsory, but it even made the lecture recordings practically useless for going back over material in revision.

Eventually, a completely filled-in version of the notes was only provided during SWOTVAC after many students had complained.

I managed to get access to last year's lecture recordings, when the subject had a different lecturer for the hydraulics component. These were so, so much better. The lecturer actually bothered to construct coherent lecture slides. He explained things much more clearly and provided examples for pretty much everything introduced, which helps you understand what will be on the exam and how you are to go about answering questions. This may be the most monumental downgrades in a subject's quality of teaching ever (although this may be surpassed whenever someone takes over for Charles in Human Phys). The only problem was that the content was slightly different, but most key concepts were the same as this year.

But if the lecturer was bad, the tutor for hydraulics was even worse. Answers to discussion board questions asking for clarification of the (poorly written) assignment briefs were of the form “see the handout…” or “this question has already been answered" – not acceptable. If questions are being re-asked, it's because they are either unclear in the handout or the previous answers have been inadequate (or both). The people doing this course are not stupid (well, for the most part). She couldn't seem to grasp this.

Assignments
The assignments for this weren't too bad. The labs were quite good and well run (although the hydro tutor spoke pretty much inaudibly which didn't help) and the reports weren't too complicated.

The geotechnical design assignment was pretty good too. This involved investigating a slope and designing some method to stabilise it. Though, as I mentioned earlier, it was marked quite harshly.

The hydraulics design assignment was a little bit worse. The assignment sheet was poorly written and (again, as I mentioned earlier) the tutor wasn't particularly useful in clarification. Once you got your head around it though, it wasn't too hard either.

Both of these assignments were completed individually rather than as a group.

Other
The only available consolation time with tutors for this subject clashed with the 2-hour lecture for Structural Theory and Design, a subject that most if not all students who do this subject would also be enrolled in. I – and I'm sure a few others – informed the staff of these and nothing was done to address it.

Also, it was not until week 12 that we actually got any marks back for an assignment. Even then, feedback consisted solely of ✓s and ⤫s. Very insightful. Also, the exam was today, and we still haven't received our marks for the two design assignments. These are worth a total of 40% – students are going into an exam with 40% of coursework hanging in limbo! (eventually these were received on 25th (a casual 6 weeks to mark a relatively straightforward geotech assignment)).

Summary
This subject isn't too difficult. Having only 8 weeks of lectures (one of which is introducing assignments and another of which is revision) means it doesn't really have too much content. I guess I can see why whoever designed the subject thought that they could get away with rolling these two components into one subject.

Overall, the geotechnical component was the subject's saving grace. This section was properly lectured and worked examples were provided for the exam. The hydraulics component, meanwhile, is omnishambles. The lecturer is bad, the tutor is useless, and no worked solutions were provided for the exam revision questions. The subject requires a major overhaul in both structure, quality of teaching, and resource allocation (i.e. more (competent) staff!).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on November 07, 2014, 07:01:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20005 Techniques in Molecular Science

Workload: 1 x 1 hour lecture weekly, 1 x 1 hour tutorial weekly, 1 x 3 hour prac weekly

Assessment: 7.5% MST, 7.5% practical exam, 35% theory exam, 10% class performance, 5% assignment, 35% reports

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, four available (more than enough)

Textbook Recommendation: Techniques in Molecular Science Lab Manual (must buy), don't bother with the recommended text

Lecturer(s): Amber Willems-Jones

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: Comments are under each spoiler!

The Pracs
Each semester there are 9 pracs, with the ninth prac taking three weeks to complete. The pracs are:

Prac 1: Use of pipettes and spectrophotometers
Prac 2: Isolation and analysis of plasmid DNA
Prac 3: Restriction enzymes and restriction mapping
Prac 4: Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and primer design
Prac 5: Introduction to cell biology/preparing buffers
Prac 6: Kinetic properties of enzymes
Prac 7: Estimation of protein
Prac 8: Exploiting size and charge to separate proteins
Prac 9: Purification of lysozyme

Each of the pracs is scheduled to last three hours, though most will run short. The only one that really put everyone under the pump was prac 6. It wasn’t a particularly difficult prac, it was just long.

Overall, the pracs were really enjoyable. You get the opportunity to use a lot of equipment and learn how to use it properly. We used UV spectrophotometers, PCR machines, micropipettes, some thingamabob called Floid. You’re introduced to a lot of techniques that are relevant to a variety of biological sciences.

Personally, I think the pracs are a perfect introduction to practical work. There’s an enormous breadth of techniques to learn and there’s plenty of support to learn them. With that said, the demonstrators do encourage you to work independently and to use your brain. You’re not molly-coddled, but at the same time you still don’t feel like you’ve been dropped in the deep end.

For each of the pracs, you have to answer a few questions (more about those in assessment), except for pracs 3, 7 and 9, for which you’ll have to write a report.

I’m not one for prac work typically. I hated it in physics, biology and chemistry. This, however, I loved. I was excited to show to the pracs and genuinely interested in what we were doing.

Assessment
There’s a lot of little pieces of assessment in this subject, and it’d be a lie and a half to say that they’re not time consuming.

After each prac, barring those with reports, you have to complete questions about the prac. Normally these involve some calculations and presentation of data. These can be extremely time consuming, though the good news is that you are granted a pass or fail mark for them and as my demonstrator said to us “it’s pretty fucking hard to fail”.

During each prac, the demonstrators will assess your prac performance. These marks are only worth very little and it is relatively difficult to do poorly. If you do make a mistake, you will be penalised, but it’s not worth worrying about.

There’s also a practical exam. This involves doing an experiment (with plenty of time to do it I might add) and then answering some questions about that experiment. It changes each time, though this semester it was based on experiment six; so we had to do an activity assay for glucose-6-phsophate dehydrogenase. All pretty simple stuff. Indeed, the class average was 78% with more than 100 (out of about 150) students getting an H1. I completely screwed up my results so I wasn’t one of them unfortunately :p

There’s an assignment about pH. This is essentially year 11 chemistry with a little bit extra. It’s not difficult. Everyone in my group got more than 20/25, so it was all fairly straight forward. The extra stuff you’re taught is self-explanatory and none of it is particularly taxing. There’s also a mid-semester test, which for the first time was completely based on calculations. The average was again pretty high and I certainly felt that the test was straight-forward. A little bit frustrating that it was all MCQ though.

The most important pieces of assessment are the exam and the reports. On the reports: these can be a little nerve-wracking. They do require a lot of time, effort and attention-to-detail. There is a hell of a lot of support though and there are always resources available to check what you’re doing. At no point did I feel as though we’d been left high and dry. The prac book has really specific instructions about how to write a report and there is a lecture/tutorial given early on in the piece that explains how to do this. The biggest bonus of the reports, though, is that they’re done at home. The other bonus is that the first is worth less than the second which is worth less than the third. It is really important to pay attention to the detail. A cursory look at the rubric for the reports will reveal that the lion’s share of the marks come from the way you present data and not your discussion. Make sure you do these properly. I felt like I’d produced some really good reports only to be smashed on the marking because I’d made careless error after careless error.

On the exam: it’s tough. There’s no time for a toilet break or to day-dream about that really cute girl sitting in front of you. Amber packs a heap of info into it and you really are expected to remember all the details. That said, I came in relatively underprepared and felt ok with the exam. That there are only 12 lectures in the subject makes it a lot less complicated, so that’s a bonus. Just don’t be like me and underestimate the difficulty of the exam, they are tough and they will take you the full two hours.

Lectures and Tutorials
The lectures deal with the basics of molecular science and the purification of proteins. The content is genuinely quite interesting, so that’s a huge bonus of the lectures. In some cases, the lectures relate quite well to what you’re doing in the pracs, so that’s even better. For the most part, however, they go above and beyond where the pracs go, so they do feel a little bit isolated. Personally, I found it very easy to forget that we had lectures and didn’t really buckle down until the day before the exam, at which point it was far too late to do so. So the top tip there is make sure that you stay on top of the lectures. It’s not a particularly big ask, though with the work you do for the pracs it can feel like a bit of a pain. That said, some of the stuff you learn is pretty cool so it should be ok!

The tutorials were probably not all that helpful. A lot of students didn’t go. Indeed, the attendance was so bad at one of them that Amber just decided to cancel it and wish everyone a happy holidays. Personally, I viewed them as a bit of an optional extra and would only encourage those who are particularly struggling with a topic to go. For that purpose, they are great, otherwise they’re a waste of time.

Coordination
This subject was brilliantly co-ordinated. The semester went off without a hitch, which is quite a tough ask for a subject that has so much assessment and so many pracs. All of the pracs felt well organised, and there were rarely issues at all. The lab was always set up properly, the demonstrators knew what they were doing. Everything in the labs ran like clock-work.

Amber was extremely helpful when approached. When I had a couple of technical issues this semester, Amber went above and beyond to help me out with them. She even went as far to put my graphs in for me on my questions one week. Another highlight of Amber’s coordination were the occasions when the lecture capture didn’t work. Rather than merely supplying the same lecture from last semester, Amber would actually record the lecture de novo in her office and post the video for it on the LMS.

I cannot stress enough how well this subject is coordinated. Against the backdrop of HSF—which is a shocking subject—this subject was a godsend. Everything ran as it should have. You never felt as though there was no place to go to find your answer and Amber was perhaps the most receptive and helpful coordinator I’ve had.

The Gist
This subject is difficult, but it never feels impossible. You know that you’re expected to work hard, but it really doesn’t feel like hard work. Most importantly, I feel like it’s left me confident in the lab, which was an enormous change from how I felt in Chemistry, for example.

It’s well run, it’s interesting and everyone leaves with a wealth of knowledge that they know will be useful should they find themselves in a lab again. Even better is the fact that the techniques that one learns in this subject are applicable in a number of areas. Personally, I would recommend this subject above other second year prac subjects. I honestly feel as though one could walk into any third year prac and still feel a cut above the rest because they’ve done this subject.

Highly recommend!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on November 07, 2014, 10:35:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: THTR20021 - Shakespeare in Performance

Workload:  1x1.5 hour lecture (usually closer to 70 mins) and 1x1 hour tute

Assessment:  1x1000 word Short Essay/ Passage Analysis; 1x10 minute performance in tutes with 1000 word write-up; 1x2000 word Research Essay

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, though occasionally some of the videos were under copyright, so weren't included in the lecture capture.

Past exams available:  No exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook, subject reader is a must. The handbook specifies Oxford editions for all the texts but this isn't necessary.
Texts studied are: (in order)
-The Taming of the Shrew
-Titus Andronicus
-Midsummer Night's Dream
-Hamlet
-Macbeth
-The Tempest

Lecturer(s): Dr. David McInnis

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 6 Out of 5... yes I can do that... shut up, this is English, not maths.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I'll try and go through this systematically so this isn't just an extended gushing rant about how wonderful this subject is:

Texts/Readings:
The workload was more than manageable. Chances are you've studied Macbeth or Hamlet before anyway, and if you haven't, this LMS for this subject gives you access to all the BBC performances, alongside a program that scrolls through the text while you're watching (as well as basically every other known Shakespeare adaptation in existence!) Even if you're familiar with the plays, this is probably recommended since this isn't a standard 'here's a book, write what you think' kind of subject. How things are performed is really central to a lot of the lectures, and tutorial discussions, so knowing what the standard BBC version gives you a good starting point for the plethora of other adaptations.

Films:
^And I do mean plethora. For each text we would have discussed at least three different adaptations ranging from the bizarre (Macbeth set in gangland Melbourne) to the sardonic (Taming of the Shrew in the London political  sphere) to the grotesque (literally any version of Titus Andronicus.)
You can get by without watching all of them, of course, though whichever texts you're planning on using for assessment, the more alternate views and performative choices you can discuss, the better.

Assessment:
This was what almost put me off this subject at the start of the year; I'm fine with essays, but I am so not a 'theatre-kid.' I have no performance background at all, and I really don't enjoy acting. The tutors were quick to allay fears during the first week, telling us we weren't actually required to perform if we didn't want to; you could join a group and just be a 'backstage' light/sound operator, or the brains behind the operation. Furthermore, you aren't at all judged on your acting abilities, the task is simply an exercise in performance decisions.
There's a lot of freedom here: you can chose any scene in any text, and you're even free to modify, modernise and mutilate the text as you see fit. The actual performance environment is pretty casual, just an open studio room where tutes are held, and everyone was always really supportive.
Being a Theatre Studies subject, it does of course attract some skilled thespians who put many of us to shame, but this subject is more about the thought that goes into the performance than the way it is performed. (Hell, I got a H1 on that section and I was far from the most talented actor in the room.)
After the performance you're asked to explain some of the choices you made, for instance, dialogue, positioning, costuming, sound, modifications to the original text, etc. and then by next week you have to do a 1000 word write up of this process. It's not a formal essay, and following the set formula of subtitles and prompts is pretty easy.
The other assessment is fairly straightforward; just regular English essays with a bigger emphasis on how a text might be performed

Tutorials:
Again, I was a bit worried this would consist of a bunch of drama exercises involving finding your spirit animal or passing energy around a circle, but there was none of that. We had the occasional performative or reading exercise, but you could usually opt out or just let others havev their time in the spotlight. Even then, I found myself enjoying a lot of the tasks anyway since it was more about the intent than the delivery.
Tutors are very open to ideas as well, so if you're in a group that would prefer some more performative sessions or more discussions of the readings then they're always willing to work these into the lesson plan where possible. Both tutors (from what I heard, but I can defintely confirm this for mine) were approachable when it came to content/assessment-related questions, and frequently opened up additional office hours when assessment was due.

Lectures/Co-ordination:
I saved the best for last. Most people who've taken a first year English subject will know David McInnis. He's widely regarded as one of the best lecturers in the department, and you can tell this is his pet subject. These lectures were the highlight of my week and I often wished they were more frequent. I feel like David probably knows more about Shakespeare than Shakespeare himself did. Although each lecture centred on a certain text, the breadth of concepts and criticism was incredible, and there was just the right balance between information on slides and additional verbal stuff.
He's also the subject co-ordinator and the whole thing was run just as well as his lectures. Everything was clearly set-out, the LMS page wasn't nearly as messy as my other English subjects, and the sheer amount of resources and help available was staggeringly good.

Overall I'd say this is an incredibly fun subject, definitely geared at the English-inclined, but don't be put off by the theatre-studies elements.

Now here's a bunch of amusing images from the lectures to win you over:
(http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/75/36/38/753638518b1eac9a736f49988ba2e955.jpg)
(http://31.media.tumblr.com/4f140bc9931a156d8aa3b5c052f2e938/tumblr_muw2lhe3Tb1shne3jo4_500.jpg)
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s2ED75ueQ6k/UQ-tlFntKSI/AAAAAAAAa_I/mvNOSMD78Yo/s1600/00.jpg)
(http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0055/2332/products/You_Discussed_Me_Brown.jpg?v=1310063972)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kandinsky on November 08, 2014, 12:01:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10208 - 19th Century Music and Ideas

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

Lectopia: Yes but without images. Go to the lectures – it’s really important to see the slides/listen to the musical examples/read through the scores with the lecturer.

Past Exams available: none

Textbooks: Norton’s Anthology of Western Music. However, this textbook is REALLY expensive ($100 even when second hand!). Since I was doing this subject for breadth, I decided to use the ones in the music library, even though they’re older editions. There is no problem with doing this. I really suggest you don’t buy the textbook, unless of course you’re doing the Bachelor of Music.

Lecturers: Professor Kerry Murphy (gives most lectures), Rachel Landgren (PhD student who gave a few lectures), Dr Suzanne Cole (gave one lecture)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014

Rating: 5/5

Mark/Grade: ‘coming soon’

Assessments: 60% - 2000 word essay; 20% - 2x500 word assignments analysing a piece of music; 20% - 1 hour listening exam

Comments:

Lectures / Coordination

It really was such a pleasure to do this subject. The lectures, with their mixture of historical/social discussion and musical examples/analysis/videos of performances, are so much fun. Professor Kerry Murphy, who took the majority of the lectures, organised the subject really well, and her enthusiasm for the subject was rather infectious. The other lecturers were equally wonderful. I noticed that there was a lot of humour in the lectures – quite often the whole lecture room would erupt in laughter. Now, it is important to note that this subject is a core requirement for the Bachelor of Music degree, so most of the people doing it are music students; I only met a handful of people doing it for breadth. I feel that you should only do this subject if you have a real interest in Classical/Romantic music and have some knowledge of musical theory – you also need to be able to read music for the assignments, otherwise it would a bit tricky to do well. The subject covers exactly what its name says: it surveys the 19th Century from its very beginning (the influence of Mozart/Haydn and Beethoven), through the middle periods (Liszt, Wagner, et al.), to its very end (Puccini, Mahler).

Tutorials

In tutorials, we discussed the readings and listened to/analysed some musical examples in greater depth. It’s really important to go to the tutorials, because in them you examine all the pieces that could be on the exam and focus on a particular issue (such as women and Lieder in Germany, or the development of the symphony through the 19th Century). I was somewhat surprised how few people turned up each week. In my first tutorial, there were only two other students plus myself. There were never more than six people in any tutorial, even though there were more people on the list! I soon discovered that music students are rather more lax about attendance than even arts students… An amusing moment at the exam was when there weren’t enough seats in the lecture room for all the people who turned up – all through the semester it had only ever been half full!

Texts/Readings

The readings are quite straightforward. You need to know the important points/facts in the readings. Your tutor will discuss the most important things in the tutorials. You also need to listen to the specified pieces before the tutorials. This is so enjoyable. It hardly feels like studying. For instance, you might listen to a Brahms symphony or an aria by Puccini.

Assignments

2x500 word assignments (20%): you write 500 words on a question about a particular piece of music. Usually, you have to analyse the music and discuss the harmonic/social/historical issues. But some questions also ask things like ‘What is Romanticism’ – so you can write more broadly in those cases.

Essay (60%): The essay is really important (as you can see). It is also really difficult. Your points should all be substantiated by musical examples (e.g. discussing orchestration/harmony/tonal issues/melodies/chord progressions). So you have to be able to read scores ( so I suggest not doing this subject if you can’t). I spent a long time on my essay, because it is difficult to find some more obscure scores (you have to rummage around in the music library/in databases on the internet) and then you have to make sure your arguments are based on a thoughtful analysis of them. I kind of wish they made the essay 3000 words, especially since it is worth so great a proportion of the mark. That’s the only criticism I have of this subject.

Another thing to note about the essays/assignments is that the tutors/lecturers are really harsh markers. If you make the smallest mistake in your referencing style, they will take marks off. I’m not sure why music makes such a big deal about referencing, but just be aware that you need to make all your references perfect. Be aware that you need to work hard on each assignment to ensure you get H1.

Exam (20%): You listen to four excerpts of music, and have to know what work they are from and then discuss all the aspects of that work, including context (historical/social issues), genre (e.g. chamber music, symphonic music), musical style (realist, Romantic?), and any other important things discussed in tutorials/lectures. You listen to all the pieces in lectures/tutorials. The best way to prepare is to make a set of notes on each piece and constantly listen to all the pieces. In the last week of the semester, they put up a list of the sixteen odd pieces that could be on the exam. This helps to focus your study a bit. I have to say, I was surprised by how underprepared many of the music students were for the exam…some of them were saying afterwards that they only recognised 1 of the 4 pieces. The exam is really quite simple if you prepare adequately for it and bother to revise the pieces beforehand…

In sum, this subject was great! I think I will do other music breadths in the future because they are well run and an absolute pleasure to take part in ☺
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: yearningforsimplicity on November 10, 2014, 05:29:34 pm
For any of the psych majors here... *crickets*  :'(  :P

Subject Code/Name: PSYC30021 - Psychological Science: Theory & Practice

Note about subject: This subject is the Capstone subject undertaken by all Psychology majors. It basically extends upon the topics that have been introduced in 1st and 2nd year Psych and also introduces a few new topics. That said, 1st/2nd year psych is not a strict prerequisite but I believe the subject is a lot easier if you’ve at least got some psych background (e.g. in lab report writing and statistics).

Workload: 1x 2 hour lecture each week and 6 x 2 hour research seminars across the semester (conducted on alternating weeks, depending on which research topic you choose – you are given a list of research topics and timings before the semester starts and you can choose which one interests you, e.g. my research seminars ran in weeks 2,3,4,6,8,10).

Assessment:
Group poster worked on and completed within the research seminar classes – 10%
Individual lab report based on the poster due late in the semester (1500 words) – 50%
2 hour end-of-semester exam (4 compulsory essay style Qs – you don’t get to choose!) – 40%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes!

Past exams available:  No! But each lecturer provided 1 practice exam question and a brief guide of answering tips e.g. structure, how to discuss studies etc.

Textbook Recommendation: N/A

Lecturers:
Lecture 1: Intro to subject. Scientist-Practitioner model & ethical principles – Judi Humberstone & Bob Reeve

Lecture 2,3,4: Social Psychology lecture series –Yoshi Kashima
->Lecture 2: "How does my social environment influence me?" From the thinking man to talking nets & beyond
->Lecture 3: "How can we change social behaviour?" - the role of mass media and public campaigns
->Lecture 4: "Does our culture influence us? Can we influence our culture?" The case of climate change

Lecture 5&6: Cognitive neuropsychology lecture series – Sarah Wilson
->Lecture 5: "What is cognitive control?" The role of the prefrontal cortex in regulating complex human behaviours
->Lecture 6: "Should I let them operate?" Applying knowledge of the prefrontal cortex in clinical neuropsychology

Lecture 7,8,9: Moral, social and political psychology lecture series –Jeremy Ginges
->Lecture 7: Cooperation, markets and morals
->Lecture 8: Devoted actors and intergroup conflict
->Lecture 9: Intergroup perceptions and intergroup conflict

Lecture 10&11: Psychology of Addiction (Gambling, Alcohol, Drugs) - Rob Hester
->Lecture 10: "Can people control their addictive behaviour?" - the role of cognitive neuroscience & public policy in addressing addictive gambling and drugs
->Lecture 11: "Are people in control of their behaviour while intoxicated?" - prevailing issues in alcohol and drug intoxication

Lecture 12: Exam briefing & future pathways discussion –Katherine Johnson

Note: Only lectures 2-11 are examinable. (1 essay question per lecturer)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 (H1)

Comments: This was the psychology major's capstone subject so like Research Methods for Human Inquiry, I was required to take this subject. I did enjoy this subject though there was sooooo much content! However, I found that even though I did have to cram a lot for this subject (fell behind during semester), it wasn’t actually that bad! Maybe that’s coz I’m so used to doing psych subjects but the way this subject integrated content and the way the lecturers presented their content was really good and made everything seem a little more manageable and interesting :)

So basically at the start of semester, you are put into a research seminar group (based on your choice and which study most interests you). There are a range of research topics offered, and you’re sure to find something that interests you! Because each seminar represents a different topic, it’s not like previous years where you can just timetable yourself into *any* tutorial – you must make sure you choose the correct tutorial number corresponding to your chosen/desired research study :)

At the start of semester, you form into groups (which usually just means forming a group with whoever you’re sitting with in the first tutorial) and then start thinking about what specific topic you and your group will formulate in relation to your broader research issue. Then you basically work on creating a research study of your chosen research topic/question and create a huge poster with all your lab report details on it (intro, method, discussion etc). The poster is pretty pro (not like the ones you do in grade 6 or anything LOL) so you basically do all your stuff on this powerpoint slide and then send that off to Judi so she prints it off for you on an A1 poster. Then, there’s a poster presentation night where you present your poster for the world to see :P Right after you finish your poster, you need to start working on your individual lab report (the same way you do your lab reports in previous psych subjects) and (for us) that was due roughly 2 weeks before the exam, so it’s good to start it early so you have more time to study for the exam :)

Anyways now that I’ve mentioned the whole research seminar side of things, let me talk about the exam. Basically you get 4 essay Qs and you are expected to write about 4-5 pages for each one, incorporating empirical research (in-text citations were not compulsory but would probably impress your assessor hahah). In terms of timing, I felt that 2 hours had me pressed for time but that’s probably coz I spent 15 mins extra on one of the questions. Writing ~15-20 pages in 2 hours is no easy feat; so use reading time wisely to try and plan your answers in your head or identify which empirical studies/research you could use in each essay Q. The questions they give are fair but can be vague if you haven’t studied the content enough. So as long as you do listen to all the lectures and understand the fundamental point that each lecturer is making, you should be fine for the exam :) Oh and don’t underestimate the power of cramming during swotvac! :P (I’m a bad influence T___T hahah).

All the best! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on November 12, 2014, 04:44:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP90051 Statistical and Evolutionary Learning (from 2015 onwards: Statistical and Machine Learning)

Workload: 2x one-hour lectures, 1x one-hour computer lab

Assessment: 50% final exam (3 hours), 10% mid-semester test, 2x 20% projects.
The exam and total project marks are hurdles. If your mid-semester mark is lower than your average project mark, the mid-sem mark is dropped.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No, but a practice exam was made available. The content of this subject has changed quite a bit in the last few years and is likely to be different again next year.

Textbook Recommendation: There are a couple of recommended texts. "The Elements of Statistical Learning" by Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman covers most of the course and can be downloaded from the authors' web site.

Lecturer(s): Dr Ben Rubinstein, Dr Justin Bedo, Dr Vinh Nguyen.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This subject covers a wide variety of techniques used in (choose your preferred buzzword) machine learning, data mining, Big Data, etc. Basically all of the methods of analysing data that don't fit under the traditional banner of "statistics". Because it covers so much, you don't go into very much depth in any of the topics in the lectures, but you do get a good idea of what methods are out there and what circumstances you might want to use them in. This subject is very much a case of "you get out what you put in", and sometimes feels a bit muddled when trying to explain mathematical ideas without using any actual maths, which is why I've only rated it 4/5.

The assessment during semester is in the form of open-ended projects which allow you to explore the methods in more detail and actually apply them to a practical task. The first one was about analysing social network data, trying to predict where users lived based on their friends and the time of day they were active. The second was handwriting recognition. Both projects were fun but challenging - expect to put in a lot of time if you want to do well. The first project had a competition website with a live leaderboard so you could see how well you were doing compared to the rest of the class. The second project was apparently supposed to too but the course coordinator didn't have time to set it up.

There are three lecturers for this course. Ben Rubinstein took the first half of the course in a "topic of the week" format, covering a lot of methods with little depth. Justin Bedo taught neural networks (3 weeks) and Vinh Nguyen taught evolutionary algorithms (3 weeks). Both Ben and Justin have experience working in the industry, Ben at Google and Justin at IBM. Of the three, Ben was my favourite lecturer, although I may be biased because I already knew him before taking the course... I least enjoyed the evolutionary algorithms part of the course, which could be summed up as "hey cool, this trick works in nature and it works when you implement it on a computer too". Other people might love it, though.

There is a prerequisite subject listed, a computer science subject on "Knowledge Technologies". In practice, the most important knowledge to have is programming experience (ideally in a high-level language suited for data analysis, e.g. Matlab, Python or R) and some probability and calculus. The lectures try to avoid going too deep into the maths, and there's an "intro to probability" document handed out at the start of the subject, but to get the most out the course, you'll need a little bit of maths.

The specific topics covered apparently vary a bit from year to year. This year we looked at:
- linear and logistic regression
- ensemble methods: bagging and boosting
- regularisation, model complexity and overfitting
- Support Vector Machines and kernel methods
- Probabilistic Graphical Models and Hidden Markov Models
- neural networks and "large scale learning" (methods for parallel computing etc)
- evolutionary/genetic algorithms for optimisation

Rambling aside: From the perspective of a mathematician, "machine learning" looks a whole lot like "statistics", but the focus is different. In statistics, the data you're dealing with usually has a nicely structured interpretation, and you want to answer specific questions within that framework. It's about understanding the real-world process that generated the data rather as much as it is answering questions about the data itself. In machine learning, the data is usually big, messy and unstructured, and all you care about is being able to make accurate predictions about future observations. Different approaches for different situations!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ReganM on November 12, 2014, 07:52:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: HIST20010 The First Centuries of Islam 

Workload: 

Contact Hours: This subject is taught intensively between 13 – 24 July 2015 with a daily 2-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial.
Total Time Commitment:
170 hours

It's a WINTER INTENSIVE. WINTER. INTENSIVE.

Assessment:

A document exercise 1500 words, 30% (due Monday after end of the teaching period) and a 2500 word project, 70% (due 1 month after the end of the teaching period).

Hurdle requirement: students must attend a minimum of 75% of tutorials in order to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day; after five working days, no late assessment will be marked. In-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes. With screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. Past exams available, they were helpful in telling you what kind of questions would be given, but beyond that they weren't super helpful.

Textbook Recommendation:  No need to buy a textbook, lol. It's only for 2 weeks. They do tell you to read tutorial readings, which were quite long etc. I ended up going to Officeworks and getting them printed and bound into a book. I then wrote notes in that book.

Lecturer(s): Richard Pennell, Abdullah Saeed (ugh sorry if I get this wrong)

Year & Semester of completion: Winter, 2014

Did this in the last 2 weeks of my winter holiday. :)

Rating:  3 of 5

Personally I enjoyed my experiences with this subject but I don't know whether I'd recommend it to others.

My grade: H1

Comments:
Note: I did this subject as a breadth subject, I am a B-Sci student.

Overall, I did this subject because I didn't want to do 4 subjects during my first semester of the year. I would recommend people take this subject if they do 3 subjects in the second semester. The subject takes up 2 weeks of your winter holiday and it's a little depressing how little time you get for your holidays. :P

I also did this subject because I was interested in learning more about Islam, because I have Muslim friends. This subject did teach me a little about Islam, but not as much as I was expecting. One of the two assessments focused on architecture, so we were taught about many Islamic buildings in the lectures (although I didn't find this information particular relevant to the building I ended up doing).

Lectures:[/b]
2hr lecture in the morning, 1hr tute in the arvo. Doesn't sound too bad right? However there were also extra mini lectures (that sounded like they were recorded in Richard's lounge room) that Richard recommend people watch before the actual lectures (some days only).

Looking back I wouldn't go to the lectures, we weren't exactly examined on anything in the lectures. It was a bit strange. The lectures really only provided background knowledge to what we were to be taught in tutes. I would just watch the lectures at home at super speed if I were you. (NOTE: Lectures may change, who knows)

The lecturers themselves, Richard and Abdullah, were amazing to listen to. They were great speakers and the content was interesting, however it didn't help that while I was stuck getting to uni at like 10am to listen to this lecture, my friends were out having fun. ):

Tutorials:[/b]
On the other hand, tutes were amazing. I attribute that to my amazing tutor (Shout out to Eddie). He was 10/10 one of the best tutors I've had at uni. He went through all the content in the tutorials really well, and gave us great background information. I would recommend you go through the readings before you go to the tute, but if you don't have time/don't understand the readings it's fine, your tutor should go over it with you.

I would definitely go to the tutes, because not only are they interesting, but you will also meet other students and be able to complain about the subject with others. By the end of the two weeks I think everyone in my tute kind of new eachother, it was pretty good. The tutorials will go over the readings, and the take home exam has two questions which relate to two of the readings so I would definitely recommend going because without going to the tutorial it would be stupid hard to

However, if you get a crappy tutor you might be a little out of luck. My friend had Richard as his tutor and apparently he tended to ramble a bit.

Best get in early if you want a good tute time slot.. you don't want to have to wait around at uni for 4 hours after your exam for a bad tute time (assuming you also go to the lectures).

Assessment 1:[/b]
"A document exercise 1500 words, 30%" (due Monday after end of the teaching period)<-- From handbook

Assuming they don't change this subject around, this would refer to the take home exam we were given. You were given a choice of answering questions from maybe 3 or 4 of the tutorial readings (which is good, because you can choose the reading you feel the most comfortable with). Each topic had 2 questions you could answer, so a maximum of 750 words per answer.

Luckily I wrote nearly everything my tutor said in the tutes, because I found my notes so useful when I was writing the answers. While it's a take home exam, the readings are often so obscure that the internet won't help you answer the questions. SO GO TO THE TUTES PEOPLE.

Assessment 2:[/b]
"2500 word project, 70% (due 1 month after the end of the teaching period)" <-- From Handbook

This assessment was a 2500 report on an Islamic building. You are supposed to integrate everything you've learnt into this report. You can given a list of projects and you sign up for one of your choosing. Having little to no knowledge of Islamic buildings I YOLO chose a building.

My building was super obscure, there wasn't a Wikipedia page on it but there was one of the person it was built by. I really had to learn how to do research using books and it was a great learning experience. However... you should really start on this project ASAP. By the time the due date rolls by (1 month into the semester), you have assessments from your other subjects due and it gets a little crazy.

It was kind of hard finding information on your building, and my advice is to live at the library and just utelise all the books they provide.

Conclusion:[/b]
So the subject really wasn't the bludgey winter subject I was looking forward to, it was kind of the opposite. I already had an interest in Islam, but if you don't and you hate buildings and hate writing essays I would definitely do another subject.

However I did put in the hard effort to do well in the assessment and it paid off. I had a great tutor and it definitely helped. If you get a bad tutor the subject might be harder for you.. as for my friend who got the bad tutor, he still did well in the subject. I guess the subject might be hit or miss for many people.

I do have a feeling they might change things around, because Richard was really open to hearing our feedback.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 12, 2014, 10:30:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10003: Genes and Environment

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 hour per week of tutorials or workshops. 2 hours of practical work per fortnight and 3 hours per week of e-learning including independent learning tasks, pre and post laboratory activities.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:
A 45 minute, multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%); a combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class, completion of up to 5 on-line pre-practical tests, written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words and up to 5 short multiple choice tests (25%); an assignment based on the practical content and not exceeding 1000 words ( 10%); completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a 3 hour examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (50%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. an 80% attendance at the practical classes together with a result for the assessed practical work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: One extended sample exam (it has more questions than the real exam) given out at the end of the semester, with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: D Sadava, D M Hillis, H G Heller, M R Berenbaum, Life. 10th Ed. Sinaver/Freeman, 2013

The textbook wasn't as useful as it was in semester 1. You'll find that less references are provided by the lecturers, and the few references that are provided are often very short and contain superfluous information. Since you've probably got it from semester 1, it's still worth holding on to, and it definitely contains some very interesting and insightful information. It might come in handy if you need a bit of extra help as well.

As in semester 1, you'll also have to buy a practical and tutorial/workshop workbook, containing the practical tasks and the tutorial/workshop worksheets, as well as some additional worksheets to supplement the independent learning tasks.

Lecturer(s):
Dr Alex Idnurm (Botany): Lectures 1-6 - Classification and Parasite Taxa
Assoc Prof Rob Day (Zoology): Lectures 7-14 - Disease and Transmission, Evolution of Resistance, Hominin Evolution
Assoc Prof Dawn Gleeson (Genetics): Lectures 15-36 - Genetics

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

In terms of structure and co-ordination, this subject is very similar to its semester 1 counterpart. However, as you'd expect, the content is vastly different, so it's a change from what you've previously been studying. Most people I spoke to seemed to prefer Genes and Environment to Biomolecules and Cells; personally I preferred semester 1 just by a little bit, but this subject was definitely run to a pretty high standard compared to the other subjects I have taken so far. It has quite a different focus in terms of learning skills as well, which suited some people but challenged others. Overall, I thought it was a worthwhile and useful subject to take.

Unfortunately the three 8am starts carry over from semester 1, and it's clear that attendance really starts to drop off over the course of the semester (I think Dawn was a bit shocked to see how many vacant seats there were in the lecture theatre). There was an incident this year where one lecture didn't get captured due to a widespread outage of the lecture capture system, so if you're inclined to stay at home and watch the lecture later, it's important to realise that technology fails at times and that you might be left without anything as a consequence. Oddly enough, when Dawn tried to substitute the lecture that didn't get recorded this year with its equivalent from last year, she remembered that lecture had been interrupted by a fire alarm - in other words, students who missed the lecture had no way to make it up! This was probably just bad luck, but it's worth keeping in mind nonetheless. :P

The first two weeks are taken by Dr Alex Idnurm from the Botany department, who is new to the university. He covers classification and parasite taxa (i.e. viruses, bacteria and archaea, fungi and protists, and their relevance to human disease). I know it sounds awfully similar to the animal taxa component covered in semester 1, but you'll be relieved to know that this unit actually takes a completely different course. A lot of specific details will be thrown at you, and it will seem daunting, but Alex emphasises that he wants you to develop a broader understanding and appreciation of the concepts presented, and worry about all the examples later. The main purpose of all the examples he provides is to help illustrate some of the concepts he is bringing up, or highlight a particular exceptional case. To help us along, he provided a FAQ sheet that explained which examples were quite important and which were largely unnecessary to learn (in this case it was more that we just had to be aware that it existed). His questions on the mid-semester test and exam tended to steer away from memorising specific details, but it is necessary to be aware of at least a few of them so that you can refer to them if need be. That being said, since Alex was new Dawn didn't allocate many questions to him for the mid-semester test or exam, so perhaps in the future you'll need to know about his lectures a little bit more. As long as you're able to integrate all the concepts and examples and highlight the special cases, you should be fine.

The next eight lectures are taken by Assoc Prof Rob Day from the Zoology department. He covers disease and transmission, evolution of resistance and hominin evolution. As the lecturer said himself, these topics are vastly different to most of the biology you've been exposed to before - it has a very strong ecology flavour to it. I'm going to be honest here and say that I found this unit particularly dry and thus didn't engage in the lectures terribly well, and it probably didn't help me when I was trying to learn the content later. You're going to be exposed to a lot of specifics (whether they be species, specific details about them, their life cycles, particular characteristics about various circumstances etc.) and you're expected to learn it all. There are a lot of things that seem completely irrelevant, but they do get assessed, so lean on the safe side and learn anything that appears on a lecture slide (even if it means that you feel like you're learning about history when you look at the agricultural and industrial revolutions). I'm not a fan of mindless rote-learning, but a lot of this part of the course demands it, so if you're like me you're going to just have to accept it and try your best. Most of us drew a line at some point though, and were almost willing to forsake some marks because it was that painful. :P Make sure you attend the lectures as some slides and images are not put up on the LMS (and I discovered that one of these slides was assessed - only after the exam though, when I happened to discover that I had taken a photo of that relevant slide on my phone :P ). These eight lectures are really odd, because it feels like you're going slowly and yet so much information is being thrown at you it's not even funny.

The first 14 lectures weren't really my cup of tea, but this all changed once we started the genetics component with Assoc Prof Dawn Gleeson. Not only did I find genetics fascinating (well, more fascinating than when I was studying it in Unit 4 Biology) but Dawn was an amazing lecturer (if you refer to my semester 1 review, you'll see that my favourite lecturer was Dr Mary Familari - people have noticed that I seem to have this thing for elderly women - don't judge me! :P ). She used to be the chief examiner for VCE Biology and is the current co-ordinator of first year studies in Biology, so she's very mindful of the transition to university and does her best to make it as smooth as possible (which is evident through the BioBytes made available to you on the LMS, which you can refer to before lectures if you think it might help). She's not only passionate about genetics, but education as a whole, and she is very friendly, funny and helpful. Seriously, I don't know how she manages to respond to emails so quickly. <_< Her lecture slides are a bit of a dog's breakfast, but I found that this really forced me to work on how I collaborated my lecture notes. They're generally needlessly long and most of the time she won't get through them all, but it's OK since she doesn't have defined boundaries for her lecture slides like other lecturers do (this is probably because her part of the course is so extended). It might seem like you're falling behind, but most of the time she just tacks extra slides onto the end just in case she moves through more quickly than usual (this rarely happens though). In the past I've heard that the cohort has fallen behind, but we managed to finish all the content on time.

Genetics requires a different mode of learning and a different set of skills compared to most of the other areas of Biology that you have been exposed to so far in that there is an increased focus on problem solving and understanding processes. This was warmly welcomed by most students, particularly after the content-heavy lectures prior to genetics. However, it does get challenging at times, especially since problem solving is difficult to establish and teach in a lecture setting. In addition to the workshops and tutorials, Dawn will provide plenty of questions in her lecture slides and on the LMS and I recommend doing them all. Problem solving in genetics is something you need to sit down with and consolidate in your own time. To guide you along, she will briefly go through some examples in lectures but relying on these is probably insufficient. In particular, note the setting out in the solutions. I think a lot of people dismissed it as unimportant at first and didn't realise the significance until it was too late. For those that did VCE Biology, you'll know that precision and accuracy are absolutely vital to success. Just like last semester though, don't become complacent - yes, a lot of the content will seem very familiar to you, but I can assure you that it gets extended upon a lot this semester, so relying on previous knowledge won't be anywhere near enough. This is particularly relevant to the problem solving component of the genetics unit.

Just like last semester, there are five practicals that make up 25% of your grade. These link in with the lecture content quite well, so they're particularly useful for the hands-on learner. I'm not sure if it was just because we were more used to the expectations by now, but I noticed both in my own results and the results of the cohort that the marks for in-practical assessment (in fact, for the practicals in general) were significantly higher. For some reason though, I kept making silly mistakes in the post-practical tests. :P Anyway, as per usual, good preparation is key in order to get through the practicals without any undue stress. If you can, have a go at answering some of the questions at home before the practical to save some time while you're in there. Dawn actually took my group's genetics practicals, which I found quite handy since she was able to integrate her lectures and the practicals incredibly closely.

The workshops and tutorials are essentially the same as last semester. Most people still found the workshops to be completely pointless, so they tried to pick up attendance by providing hints for the upcoming practical. The few minutes they would go over these hints were actually pretty helpful, but a lot of the time we were just sitting there listening to the tutor, answering questions or filling out a worksheet. That being said, I found the problem solving classes quite helpful since the environment was far more conducive than the lecture theatre. Even if you decide not to attend the workshops, I still highly recommend going through the tutorial questions and worksheets. They generally make for good revision and are an extra source of questions to practice your genetics skills with. I personally felt the tutorials were far better due to the smaller class size, although workshop attendance was often so low that it felt like I was in a tutorial anyway. :P For some reason, a lot of people stopped turning up to the tutorials prior to the practical as well, although I don't recommend this because this is when you get feedback for your mid-semester test and assignment and is the best time to ask for help or address questions. I was very fortunate to end up with Lyn O'Neill as my tutor again this semester - she explains the concepts very thoroughly (this is particularly helpful in practicals where everything often feels so chaotic and rushed) and marks quite fairly (I've heard some horror stories from people with other tutors from the Biology laboratory).

The mid-semester test is run exactly like last semester and is worth 10% of your grade. It covers the content in lectures 1-14 and generally speaking the marks were noticeably lower this semester compared to semester 1. As I've said, this is largely due to the large amount of specific details you'll need to commit to memory, which is only made more difficult by the dry nature of the content. If you start revising for this early, you'll probably find that you'll cope a lot better. I personally found the test fair, but there were quite a few questions that seemed really ambiguous to me. Occasionally a question would be removed from the test because Dawn felt the ambiguity was beyond reasonable, but generally it was really important to read the stem of the question and each option really carefully. The only positive is that this test really does force you to consolidate lectures 1-14 before moving onto genetics, and additionally there is a reduced weighting of these lectures on the exam due to them being covered by the mid-semester test. A practice test will be released for your reference, and you'll find the actual test questions similar to the types of questions that can be asked on the final exam.

The assignment is also quite similar to last semester and is also worth 10% of your grade. There are two parts: the first part revolves around using the university's eFly genetics program, which allows you to generate particular crosses and observe the results. The assignment got released too early this year (we hadn't covered enough of the relevant content yet in lectures) so it got drastically simplified to compensate. That being said, the results for this part were generally poor. This is one of the few times in this subject where you actually get feedback on your written work (if you think about it, the only other time you're assessed on written work is Section D of the exam, which you don't get to see again once you've submitted it) and I think people were quite confronted by all the corrections that had been made on their work. Biology is all about precision and accuracy, and too many people forgot about this when completing their assignment. If you want a good mark, you need to make sure your explanations are watertight. Additionally, take care with how you present your crosses (particularly the notation - although you get warned about this). I lost one mark because my tables didn't have lines in them. :P If you sit down and complete this assignment carefully and properly, then you should have no issues. If you're unsure at any point, do not hesitate to ask for help from the tutors or from Dawn herself. The second part involves developing skills about using the online library resources by finding a particular article related to a given topic. This is then followed up on in a workshop where you get asked some relatively simple questions about what you have learnt. This part of the assignment is not very difficult and most people who lost marks on this section were generally careless.

There are also 5 assessed ILTs that make up 5% of your grade this semester. Additionally, you are also asked to complete some revision ILTs, and although these aren't assessed, they do have a due date, so do complete them. They complement the lectures far better than they did last semester, and the assessment itself should not pose any difficulties.

The final exam is also of the same format as last semester and is worth 50% of your grade. The exam is predominantly focussed on genetics and is significantly more difficult than its semester 1 counterpart, particularly when it came to timing. I complete section D first since I often go overtime here, and I can guess questions from sections A, B and C if I run out of time. I also went overtime for section D last semester, but I made it up on section A, which didn't happen this time around. A lot of people I spoke to had incomplete answers for section D, so keep this in mind. I managed to finish with about 30 seconds to spare, so I had no time whatsoever to look over my answers. In fact, if I wasn't sure about something, I just had to put down an answer and move on - there just wasn't enough time. Two of the section D questions were written by Dawn - one was a problem solving one involving a genetic cross, and the other a theory-based question. The other question was provided by Rob Day, who had very specific instructions on how to complete the question (e.g. 200 word limit, marks deducted for dot points, marks awarded for logical order of arguments, etc.). The questions in sections A, B and C took me longer to complete than expected since a lot of them involved problem solving, but other than Rob Day's content (which I had largely given up on and so found very difficult) I thought the exam was fair in terms of difficulty. Thankfully the smaller weighting of the exam means that you have a lot more scope for error, so hopefully a less than perfect performance won't be particularly damaging to your grade.

This is all I can think of for now, so I guess I'll leave it at that. In some respects, this subject is more difficult than Biomolecules and Cells, particularly if excessive rote learning (lectures 1-14) or problem solving (genetics) isn't your strength. However, I wouldn't say that Genes and Environment was completely impossible either, and there were definitely a lot of parts that were very interesting to learn about. If you'd like any extra information or have any questions, please feel free to ask. Good luck! :)

I thought I'd leave you with the following image. Rob Day will show it to you enough times during the semester that it will become fixed in your brain anyway. Surely some early exposure won't hurt. :P

(http://www.acanadianfoodie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/child-kissing-pig.jpg)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: abcdqdxD on November 13, 2014, 12:57:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: INTS10001: International Politics 

Workload:  2x1 hour lectures, 1 hour tute

Assessment: 25% 1000 word essay, 50% 2000 word essay, 25% 1000 word take home exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  One past exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  Personally, I've only used the textbook once. Biggest waste of money so steer clear of it.

Lecturer(s): Avery Poole is the subject coordinator, however there are a few other guest lecturers from other parts of the faculty.

Rating:  0.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: N/A

Comments:

Well what can I say? This is simply the worst subject I have ever done. You will struggle to stay awake in lectures, lecturers ramble on but lack depth. The level of detail in lectures is a joke, you will struggle to get an H3 on your assessments if you simply went by lecture content. However tutes are actually pretty interesting depending on the tutor if you participate in discussions. The quality of your tutor will make or break your experience in this subject. Personally I had a horrible experience with my first tutor and had to swap tutes. Assessment wise, it's pretty clear cut. 3 take home essays including the exam, comprising of 25%, 50% and 25% of your grade. The marking criteria is fairly obfuscated despite their best attempts to make it transparent. If you are considering this as breadth thinking it would be an easy H1, you cannot be more wrong. Stay away from this subject if you are not in the Arts Faculty.

/end rant
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: CossieG on November 13, 2014, 01:35:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP10001: Foundations of Computing

Workload:  3 lectures and a 2 hour workshop per week.

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: 
Yes. There were a whole bunch of past mid semester tests and a few practice exams, most with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook required.

Lecturer(s):
Bernie Pope. A great lecturer, he had very detailed slides and his projects and exam were very well written. However, his lectures can get pretty boring from time to time. His advanced lecture on how Python works was very interesting.

At various times throughout the semester, there will also be guest lectures from various companies and institutions.

Guest lectures and advanced lectures aren't assessed (even though they make guest lectures 'examinable' to boost numbers). I normally skipped these lectures.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 semester 2.

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
This subject is an introduction to programming and computation, and is a prerequisite for all other I.T subjects (Unless you sit and pass a programming test, which takes you straight to COMP10002). For the first 8 or so weeks, you are taught a programming language called Python, and for the last few weeks you move into some basic theory of computation such as recursion, algorithmic thinking and program performance.

Note that Tim Baldwin takes the subject in first semester, and thus the course might be slightly different from semester to semester.

Python itself is quite a nice language, and relatively easy to pick up as long as you put in the work during semester. Some of the harder parts of the language aren't taught, such as classes and exception handling, but they aren't too hard to learn once you're familiar with the language. The lectures build up on themselves quite nicely, so if you review the slides after each one you'll pick the language in no time.

The last few weeks are an introduction to computational theory, albeit a very basic one. You learn the basis of algorithmic thinking, and recursion (one of the tougher concepts to learn) and analysis of program performance. By this time of of semester, I had pretty much stopped going to these lectures since the content was pretty hand-wavey and my time was better off used learning more Python.

The projects were very well written, and extremely fun to do. I found myself so absorbed in them that I finished them in the first night that they were assigned! There is something extremely satisfying about writing code and watching it work exactly you want - it becomes almost addictive.

The exam was quite unlike the past papers they gave us, I found it easier. The exam was so well written that I actually enjoyed sitting it lol.

My advice:


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on November 13, 2014, 03:45:24 pm
Subject code/name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2

Workload: Weekly: 4 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour practical

Assessment:
2 assignments2 x 5%
45 minute mid-semester test10%
3 hour exam80%

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: 5. No answers or solutions were provided.

Textbook recommendation: I do recommend the printed lecture notes from Co-op. They are essentially the lecture slides, which aren't available anywhere else, and you will want copies of the things gone through in lectures.

Lecturer(s): Professor Barry Hughes

Year and semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your mark/grade:

Comments: Yo. Welcome to AM2. Prepare to die.

This subject is pretty much MAST10006 Calculus 2 and MAST20026 Real Analysis combined, with 5/9 of the contact hours, so the pace is fast.

Anyway, I believe AM2 is probably the best taste of pure mathematics you can get in a level 1 subject. This subject is not highly intuitive; at times it seems you are just being thrown abstract facts which together conclude another (perhaps more abstract) fact. I suppose you shouldn't expect any more though, because the results you learn are the fruits of many centuries of work by the brightest of mathematical minds.

Subject content
Real Analysis
For the Real Analysis portion of the subject, a significant underlying concept is being rigorous — if you want to state something, you prove it from basic definitions (most of the time). Granted, doing well in assessments doesn't require being good at this, because you'll probably be reproducing familiar proofs or processes anyway.

Decimal digits... really don't appear much during the first 3 or 4 weeks of Real Analysis lectures. Compared to AM1 where you might have spent a while row-reducing matrices (requiring a lot of number crunching), you'll spend that time trying to get your head around logical yet abstract arguments and processes.

Impressions towards this subject generally become pretty extreme at this point in time — you'll probably either hate it to bits (most people), or absolutely love it (aliens). If you have a true appreciation for the logical framework of mathematical results, you may be an alien.

You will learn about the notion of a limit for a sequence and a real-valued function (and fusion-ha — a sequence of real-valued functions), ways to confirm the existence of a limit of a sequence, continuity of a real-valued function, and the Intermediate Value Theorem.

And the order hierarchy. Yes, you must know the order hierarchy.

Assessment on this part of the subject revolves around establishing whether limits of sequences or real-valued functions and calculating them using the definition of a limit or limit laws (and the order hierarchy). You may be thrown the odd question requiring a proof of one of the simpler limit laws.
Calculus 2
Everyone in the subject breathes a sigh of relief once we begin Calculus 2 content, because a little of this is familiar ground that you would have trod on (whoa, that's the past tense of tread) to bits in Mathematical Methods and Specialist Mathematics.

Essentially the Real Analysis parts before this teach people what a limit actually is, which in Mathematical Methods is not really expanded upon at all. Once you have this idea of what a limit is (hopefully), you can then fully appreciate the origins of differential and integral calculus.

This part of the course is itself split into 5 topics:
  • Differential calculus
    You learn the true meaning of "differentiability" (using the idea of the limit) and some vital theorems, such as the Mean Value Theorem or Taylor's Theorem with Lagrange's Remainder.
  • Integral calculus
    You learn what the integral that you used so much in Mathematical Methods and Specialist Mathematics actually means, and some new techniques to integrate.
  • Differential equations
    You learn and use some new techniques to solve differential equations involving first and second derivatives. There are a few application examples which pop up a lot, such as inflow-outflow questions and electric circuits.
  • Improper integrals
    You learn what an improper integral actually is (the limit of a proper integral). In some ways this is similar to the earlier work on limits — you work heavily with confirming the existence of an improper integral using various tests.
  • Infinite series
    Again this is similar to the work on limits. You will be using various tests to see if a series (a sequence in disguise) has a limit, and of course you apply this not only to series of real numbers, but also to series of real-valued functions.

Any test for existence of the limit that is introduced during work on improper integrals and infinite series needs to be known word for word. Applies for important theorems learnt during any of the 5 topics as well (should be clear which ones are important by the end).

The hardest of the 5 topics are probably improper integrals and infinite series — the hard part being knowing which test to use and how to apply it.

Personally I found learning the Calculus 2 content less interesting than the Real Analysis content, as it was a lot more process oriented in my opinion. But anyway, I'm an alien, so...

Lectures
Not much to say for lectures. Rock up 4 days a week, sit there watching and hearing Barry go through lecture slides and example problems.

AM2 lecture recordings have screen capture, but you won't be able see what's written on the whiteboard if you don't go to lectures.

Should you go to lectures? I think so, because that way you can see Barry doing examples problems in person, and actually copy what he writes from the whiteboard. You miss Barry's spoken comments if you copy them from another person, and sometimes they are quite important to what he is writing.

When Barry writes out solutions to example problems on the whiteboard, generally he is copying it from a sheet he's prepared earlier. He'll still mostly explain whatever he writes on the whiteboard as he writes it though, except in some lectures with so much content that Barry really ends up just copying the solution and slightly neglects the explanation.

Barry has taught this subject for a number of years. You can guarantee he's the best AM2 lecturer there is, because I don't think there are any other AM2 lecturers.

Yes, Barry has his moments of rambling... Generally on things like "third year Complex Analysis", "second year Differential Equations" (a subject he takes), moral, ethical, and philosophical correctness in the context of maths problems, "Calculus 2 students" (lol) and so on... But otherwise Barry is pretty enthusiastic about what he teaches, so if you don't insist that the subject is a piece of crap then you'll probably find lectures bearable at the least.

Practicals
Your practicals involve you doing problems, just like pretty much any maths subject. The questions all come from the post-lecture exercises though (which was kind of disappointing after coming from a maths subject where I got fresh questions in practicals).

If you can do all the selected questions from the practicals, that's a pretty good indication that you are on track. The selected questions generally revolve around the core coursework, rather than some of the other questions in the post-lecture exercises which can be more about investigation of a specific part of the theory, or requiring a proof with a certain amount of innovation.

Practicals begin in the second week.

Assignments
You have 2 assignments for this subject. The first one is purely on Real Analysis content, while the second one covers everything up to differential equations.

Each assignment is marked out of (an astounding) 50, and then scaled to 5% each. Because there are so many marks, the marking scheme is actually quite strict, and tutors try to be more strict in the correction of untimed assessments anyway. For example, in the second assignment, rearranging a differential equation to a certain form described in the lectures was worth 1 mark. It was literally just subtracting a term from both sides of the original equation, but if you didn't write the equation out in the rearranged form, you lost the mark.

The first assignment is noticeably harder, because Real Analysis requires more rigour in general, and also people take a while to get their heads around this part of the course.

Solutions to each assignment go up on the LMS after they are all corrected.

Mid-semester test
The mid-semester test covers the first 5 weeks of lectures, which is all of Real Analysis, and pretty much 1 week of differential calculus (definition of differentiability and Mean Value Theorem, essentially).

There are no past mid-semester tests available, and I feel like Barry doesn't really adhere to any specific structure when he writes the test anyway.

Know all your theorems and definitions (and variations thereof) up until this point word for word. You will be expected to reproduce these, and then apply these.

The mid-semester test is for most people the first piece of timed assessment on something as rigorous as Real Analysis, so while the course content probably induces a lot of panic up until this point, the mid-semester test isn't set at a ridiculously high level of difficulty, relatively speaking. The hardest questions will be proofs of some of the more basic results you have encountered up until this point.

Solutions to the mid-semester test go up on the LMS after they are all corrected.

Exam
Ho ho, a classic 3 hours maths exam.

The hardest parts, as I may have hinted earlier, are Real Analysis content, improper integrals, and infinite series. Everything can be handled quite comfortably with sufficient practice, but with these 3 areas, it will take a lot more practice, and possibly some creativity (with improper integrals and infinite series).

Again, know your main theorems, definitions and tests. You will be expected to reproduce these, and then apply these.

There are plenty of past exams available, but there are no answers or solutions. If you do enough of them, you'll notice some of the questions come from post-lecture exercises almost exactly, and I'm not just talking about "evaluate the limit" questions.

As mentioned, pace is fast. VCE mathematics is nothing compared to this (although you may have realised VCE mathematics was nothing compared to AM1 already, too). Even AM1 might be nothing compared to this. You will definitely need high levels concentration in lectures, and it would be good to attempt the post-lecture exercises that accompany the printed lecture notes, too. Unless you've actually done the subject before, I don't envision you can motivate the proofs or processes of absolutely everything (and most likely hardly anything). You will want the practice on questions in post-lecture exercises. There are answers to some of the post-lecture exercises at the back of the printed notes. No solutions are provided though.

The lecture slides are almost identical to your printed lecture notes, so if you need to look up something in the slides, go to your printed notes. (You'll probably be doing this a lot.) Anything in the slides but not in the notes is not examined.

Everything snowballs very quickly in this subject, so try to be on top of things; it is very hard to catch up when you're behind.

AM2 is compulsory for most commerce students majoring in actuarial studies, so apparently actuarial students make up half the cohort. The other part of the cohort will consist mostly of science students, as all second year maths subjects and some physics and engineering subjects have Calculus 2 or AM2 as a prerequisite, I think. Don't quote me on this.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: CossieG on November 13, 2014, 04:36:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003: Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload:  Two one hour lectures and one tutorial per week.

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available:  Yes, tonnes, with very detailed solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  There is one, I suggest buying it (I did - I'll tell you why later)

Lecturer(s):
Graham Richards. Oh Graham, Graham, Graham. His lecture slides were insanely detailed, and he often made some amusing remarks during the lectures. Unfortunately I missed most of these due to his extremely long-winded explanations putting me to sleep.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 semester 2

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
I think a lot of people coming into this subject from Intro Micro were expecting something entirely different. I was too, but to be honest I didn't really know what anybody was expecting. However, despite all the negative comments I heard about this subject, it's actually not all that bad. The content is pretty interesting (and relevant to everyday life), and Graham's extraordinarily long lecture slides turned out to be a blessing for me. His lectures basically consist of him reading the lecture slides off of the projector, occasionally throwing in a looooooong explanation of something, and then skipping a few slides to make up for the time he lost while talking. I swear, I was dead asleep within the first 15 minutes. But the good news is that I could just go home and skim past his lecture slides, read the corresponding textbook pages, and be off on my merry way.

The content itself consists of the concept of GDP and surrounding concepts (calculating, GDP as a measure of living standard), the Keynesian model, the Reserve Bank Australia, the aggregate demand - aggregate supply framework, the Solow-Swan model (and determination of production functions), and the market of Australian currency (and the determination of the exchange rate).

The bits on the exchange rate, and the bits about the overnight cash market were by far the most interesting parts of the course for me personally.

The big hitters on the exam are consistently (and I mean every year): the Solow-Swan model and the market for Australian currency. Another important thing about the exam (and this subject review), is that the questions barely change year by year. By barely I mean that the multiple choice part of the exam is pretty much identical to previous years, and there will ALWAYS be a question on the two concepts I mentioned above. However, every year there will be one curveball question that will throw you off completely. This year it was worth 10 marks and I literally came up with BS to write because never in my wildest nightmares would I have expected it.

They tend to be pretty strict on the marking for this subject, so come exam time I suggest you study the solutions to past exams like the bible - especially the ones on the Solow-Swan model and the market for Australian currency. Yes, I know I've said it three times now but its the one thing I want you to take away from this subject review.

All in all, a pretty good subject, but you will hear a lot of negative comments about the subject and Graham (he's really not that bad). If you stick with it you'll learn some pretty damn interesting things. And don't forget: Solow-Swan model, and the market for Australian currency.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 13, 2014, 06:28:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10007: Physics for Biomedicine

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour tutorial per week; 28 hours of practical work (8 x three hour laboratory sessions and up to 30 minutes of pre-laboratory activity) and 10 weekly assignments of 30 minutes each during the semester.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:
Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. attendance and submission of work for at least 80% of workshop sessions together with a result for assessed work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. However, Prof Robert Scholten writes on the blackboard a lot, which won't be captured. It's probably best to make the effort to come to his lectures at least.

Past exams available: Yes, all the way back to 2008. However, only answers (not worked solutions) are provided.

Textbook Recommendation: R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition Addison-Wesley, 2010.

You'll be asked to pre-read before lectures and complete problems from the textbook afterwards, so this textbook is required. If I recall correctly the Physics department may have a copy of this textbook up online somewhere. If not, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it. I found that it explained the concepts quite well, although it probably goes into more detail than what you need to know.

In addition, you will need to purchase a lab book with all the practicals in it and a logbook to write your reports in.

Lecturer(s):
A/Prof Martin Sevior: Weeks 1-6 - Motion, Fluids, Thermal Physics
Prof Robert Scholten: Weeks 7-12 - Electricity, Magnetism, Electromagnetism, Sound, Light, Radioactivity

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

So many of you know that I absolutely detested Physics during high school and dropped it after Units 1 & 2. I thought I was done with it, until this nasty surprise of a subject came up. I've heard terrible things about Physics for Biomedicine in the past and I was prepared for the absolute worst (I didn't think it could get any worse, but then again I was likely to be wrong). Well, to my surprise, it didn't eventuate, and, if it's humanly possible, may have changed my outlook on Physics just a little bit.

I should probably first explain my prior background in Physics before proceeding because it's going to make a fairly big difference compared to a lot of other people. I came from a fairly advantaged position in that I had done VCE Physics Units 1 & 2 and VCE Specialist Mathematics Units 3 & 4. In other words, I was pretty much in the most advanced position to be taking this subject over Physics 2: Life Sciences and Environment. The only technicality was that I hadn't done VCE Physics Units 3 & 4. Honestly, I had at least touched on 90% of the content covered in this subject before so not a lot of it was new. In comparison, there are students in there with no background in Physics whatsoever, and only completed VCE Mathematical Methods (CAS). So there was quite a distinct gap here. That being said, just because I had seen it before didn't necessarily mean I already understood it - I didn't understand it then, and frankly, I'm not sure if I understand it now. :P But I guess it probably made a difference in some ways anyway. So to sum up, no, Physics for Biomedicine was not my first real taste of Physics as a science (but I sure hope it's my last :P ).

So Physics for Biomedicine is designed to provide an introduction to Physics for those who have not completed the subject at Year 12 level, and is primarily concerned with giving you some preparation for the upcoming GAMSAT. In terms of GAMSAT preparation, the VCE Physics course probably prepares you better - this subject is not sufficient alone and the staff are open to you about that from the beginning. This will get you started off, but you're going to have to learn a lot more on your own during the summer in order to sit the GAMSAT with confidence. Being a Chancellor's Scholar, I'm fairly fortunate that this isn't a concern for me so now that the exam is done I don't need to continue studying. Ultimately this is the reason why you're taking this subject, although they regularly make the effort to show how Physics relates to the rest of life science. Sometimes this was done in a really condescending way (like talking about the velocity of red blood cells in veins <_<) but in many ways I was quite surprised with its relevance to biomedical science and while Physics isn't my absolute favourite (or an absolute necessity given my fortunate position), I'm glad I was made to do this subject anyway.

A/Prof Martin Sevior takes the first six weeks of the course and teaches you about motion, fluids and thermal physics, while Prof Robert Scholten takes the second six weeks and goes over electricity, magnetism, electromagnetism, sound, light and radioactivity. I'm pretty sure both take other first year Physics courses (if I'm not mistaken I think Martin is a lecturer for Physics 1: Fundamentals over in Science) so they're very familiar with the difficulties many face when first introduced to Physics, and they make a real effort to address these right from the beginning. The lecture notes are comprehensive and easy to follow and you'll go through plenty of worked examples and conceptual questions during the lectures (although there was one lecturer - who I won't name - that usually rushed and did a pretty crappy job lol). In addition you also get to witness a lot of demonstrations during the lectures. At times they felt like a waste of time, but a lot of them were interesting. Personally, a lot of the time Physics seems to go against my "common sense" so actually being able to see it in real life helped me significantly in accepting understanding the concepts. :P Overall I thought that both the lecturers were reasonably competent. The subject has undergone a change from previous years in that it was recognised that light and sound (which were previously not part of this course) were actually fairly prominent on the GAMSAT (and amongst some of the most relevant knowledge to biomedical science students) and so Rob substituted them in for relativity and quantum physics. My only qualm though is that these changes were being made as we were going along, rather than prior to the subject's commencement. It meant we were left with constant uncertainty and an unclear sense of direction during the semester.

In terms of studying this subject, Physics for Biomedicine is quite different to the other core subjects you do in first year. There is very little note-taking but quite an emphasis on conceptual understanding to guide your way through all the quantitative problem solving. A lot of people found the content overly difficult - and I often found it difficult as well - but I think it was just that many weren't used to the confusion that tends to come when you study Physics, while I was quite accustomed to it. :P In reality, I could see that a lot of the concepts had been watered down quite a bit for us, which is why you need to go further in your own time once this subject has been completed. Overall, once I had gone over the entire course properly during SWOTVAC, I think fluids was the most difficult topic, but it took me quite a while to grasp many of Rob's topics.

There are eight practicals to complete in this subject and they make up 25% of your grade. Like many I don't really like practicals that much but given my inability to visualise the concepts very well on my own I can appreciate why there are so many of them to do throughout the semester in addition to the demonstrations during lectures. How well you do in this component of the assessment though is largely dependent upon your demonstrator. Mine was pretty crap: most of the time he walked in 15 minutes late and was unaware of what we were doing until he took a lab book and read through the practical himself. Then he mainly just told us when we were doing things wrong and didn't help us out on how to fix it - other than telling us to "think about it." <_< However, he was an incredibly lenient marker - it makes me wonder if he even read our work - so the final result ended up in my favour. I think we were supposed to swap demonstrators and partners half way during the semester, but this never happened for us. I've heard that the practicals get scaled in accordance to your exam score, and that only your best ones contribute to your final grade. I'm not actually sure about these rumours so I can't confirm them with you at this stage. The experiments you do are almost identical to the ones done in Physics 2: Life Sciences and Environment (in fact this subject as a whole ends up very similar) and due to the course changes a couple don't line up with your lecture content at all (and some of the new topics have no practical component to them); however they shouldn't pose you too many problems.

Prior to each practical, there is a pre-lab in the lab book which you should make an attempt at completing (my demonstrator was obsessed with these for some reason), and an online pre-practical test which counts for a small percentage of the practical grade. These tests are much more simple than the ones for Biology and Chemistry so don't stress about them too much. Similar to the Chemistry practicals in semester 1, it is your job to write up a log/report of what's happening during the practical. Plenty of guidance is provided online on the LMS and in the lab book (which poses you questions and tells you where the mark allocations are) and after a few goes you'll eventually get it right. My first entry, like many in my group, was apparently too long and detailed (again, I'm not sure if this is just my demonstrator being lazy or not) but on the second go I was getting them about right. Your logbooks remain in the laboratory so unfortunately you can't prepare beforehand by writing the introduction, aim, equipment and method from home (although my demonstrator let us take them home once by mistake :P ). Most of the practicals aren't exceptionally pressured for time with a couple of exceptions, like perhaps the first practical or when you waste a lot of time trying to assemble rather complicated equipment, so as long as you're diligent you should be able to complete your write-up in the lab. What's most misleading about the Physics practicals is their timetabling: the timetable stipulates that they go for three hours duration when in reality they only go for two and a half - the last half hour is assigned to the demonstrators marking the logbooks. This really caught me out at first. Some demonstrators will ask you to leave when the two and a half hours are up regardless of whether you've finished or not; others (like mine) were more lenient and allowed us to stay on until we were finished.

The other assessment during the semester are the ten assignments, which total up to 15% of your final grade. These are done through the MasteringPhysics program, where you answer all different sorts of conceptual and quantitative questions. They tend to become tedious and a bit of a pain after a while, and they can take a couple of hours to work on each week. They shouldn't pose too many issues, although the internet should be able to help you out if you need any help. If you treat the assignments properly, they can be a good learning tool.

The usefulness of the weekly tutorials is largely dependent on your tutor. In many classes the students were encouraged to get together in groups and work out the problems on the whiteboards, but my tutor insisted that we just watch her write up the worked solutions (consequently we always finished the class really really early). The tutorial sheets themselves are actually quite good, and worked solutions are provided for them at the end of every week. I guess they somewhat render the tutorials a bit pointless, although attendance was taken for each one, even though tutorial attendance is not an assessment or hurdle requirement. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you complete the worksheets and follow up any problems or queries.

The final exam is three hours in duration and worth 60% of your grade. It consists of short answer questions only, with a total of 150 marks. Each major topic gets tested in one question and most questions are quantitative in nature. Our exam was quite different to the other past exams due to all the course changes, but they're still worth doing nonetheless, especially for the parts that are still in the current course. Overall the exam was challenging but not impossible if you had made a good effort over the course of the semester. There was one question on content that we hadn't covered in lectures but was assigned as a textbook reference so don't neglect your readings throughout the semester. Since the MasteringPhysics assignments and the practicals are not difficult to do well in, it's quite likely that you will have a fairly large scope for error on the exam if things don't go to plan. I managed to complete the exam with about 15 minutes to spare and had enough time to check over some problems.

This subject definitely didn't stoop down to the low expectations I had at the start of semester, but there are some ways this subject could be improved. If any changes are made to the course for next year, I hope they're all sorted out prior to the commencement of the semester, and that the practicals are all relevant with more adequately prepared demonstrators. People always find Physics a challenge, and I'm not going to deny that, but with persistence and hard work you should be able to see some progress being made. The general consensus amongst our cohort was that Chemistry for Biomedicine was overall a more painful experience compared to Physics for Biomedicine, if that's any consolation. :S I hope this subject isn't too difficult, provides you with an adequate start to your GAMSAT preparation, and also gives you an appreciation for the role Physics plays in biomedical science. I think that's all I've got to say for now, but if you'd like any extra information or have any questions, please feel free to ask. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: notveryasian on November 13, 2014, 08:49:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload: Two 1 hour lectures a week, 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  2 group assignments worth 10% each, 45 minute mid semester test worth 10%, 2 hour hurdle exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  1 specimen exam with solutions given.

Textbook Recommendation:  The textbook recommended by the lecturer was "An Introduction to Actuarial Studies" by M.E Atkinson and D.C.M Dickson. The textbook isn't necessary but does contain extra problems besides the tutorial questions given. If you want to buy the textbook try looking online as there is only a few copies in the Co-op at any time.

Lecturer(s): Dr Xueyuan Wu

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

This subject introduces the various techniques and methods used in Actuarial Science. Whilst it does not go into much depth, the content of the subject definitely provides enough material for you to appreciate the way in which actuaries approach and solve problems.

The course is split up into 3 major topics: Financial Maths(4 weeks), Demography(3 weeks) and Actuarial Practice and Contingent Payments(5 weeks). Within the Financial Maths part of the course, you learn about different interest rates that are used in valuing different financial instruments, such as simple interest, simple discount and compound interest. After that the course moves onto to annuities, and the application of them in bonds and housing loans. This part of the course is somewhat simple, but it is important to solidify your knowledge of these basic ideas with the tutorial problems.

After Financial Maths, you briefly study Demography, which is the study of human populations and their changes over time. This is an introduction to the statistical side of Actuarial Science, as you learn about the different demography rates which can found by analysing gender/age groups of human populations. The course also looks at human population pyramids at a basic level. Next you look at ideas of mortality and life tables, which is where the actuarial notation begins to build up, and everything will start looking the same to you. :P Rounding off Demography you study models of population growth and different ways of measuring fertility within populations.

The last topic can really be split into two separate topics, contingent payments and actuarial practice. Contingent payments builds upon your study of financial maths, except it deals with uncertainty that is involved with such payments. These come up in life insurance, where an insurance agency seeks to set the correct level of premium for its various customers, who each have different probabilities of survival. The last part of the course is actuarial practical, and is the most boring topic of them all. I think I fell asleep 5 times in the second last lecture because the content was so dry. There is a lot of theory which is taught ranging from general insurance to superannuation and pensions. Don't be too worried if you don't end up remembering all of it, as much of it is not examinable.

As for the lectures themselves, the lecturer was sometimes hard to understand due to his accent, but overall he was quite  good and delivered a few laughs here and there. I recommend attending the lectures as the lecturer sometimes writes extra notes on a projected screen, which you can not see if you are watching lectures online. Also, printing lecture slides is also a good idea as there are spaces for you to fill in the blanks during class.

In all honestly, my tutorial experience in this subject was quite bad. My tutor simply wrote answers to problems on the board, without any class interaction, even though the solutions were posted on the LMS at the end of week. After a few weeks I questioned myself why I was still going to them and I stopped, finding it much more convenient to just work on problems at home. There is also an Online Tutor for the subject which you can ask questions on.

There are 2 assignments during the semester, one due around week 3 and the other due around week 10-11. They are both group assignments on excel, and you are allowed to choose your group assignment members, provided you email the lecturer your group members before the weekend between week 1 and 2. Otherwise you will be placed in a random group, which was what happened to me. Make sure at least one of your group members know how to use excel to a decent level, as it will save you a lot of time. The assignments themselves weren't difficult at all, and achieving full marks is very possible.

I can't comment too much on the Mid-Semester Test, as I was overseas when it happened. The lecturer may post it on the LMS during SWOTVAC with the solutions.

The exam is what you would expect of a hurdle exam, with enough "easy" questions on the exam and a few trickier ones to separate the cohort. For exam revision, make sure you have a sound knowledge of the mathematical concepts and do the tutorial questions, especially the questions marked "Exam questions." Also be aware that you may be asked for clear definitions on the exam, and are able to clearly explain some of the actuarial notation in words.

Overall, I had a good experience with ACTL10001, whilst tutorials left a lot to be desired, the lectures weren't so bad and the group assignments were quite fun. One of the best parts of this subject is the fact that almost all the people who do ACTL10001 do almost the same subjects, so it is really easy(I found at least) to make friends and form a social group at uni.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on November 14, 2014, 12:57:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: JAPN10002 Japanese 2

Workload:  1h lecture + 1.5h speaking class + 1.5h writing class. 80% Attendance to the classes (but not the lecture) is a hurdle requirement.
Beyond this, be prepared to put in a few hours a week to keep on top of the vocabulary and kanji that you have to memorise to keep up! I made a heap of quizlet lists based closely on the textbook/required vocab, you can use mine or make your own.

Assessment:  Lectopia Enabled:  Yep!

Past exams available:  None, and no sample exams, see comments.

Textbook Recommendation:  Genki I Textbook and Workbook, high recommended! Should have them from Japanese 1. They are used heavily in classes and exam texts are based on the reading practice in the kanji section of the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Jun Ohashi

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87 (H1)

Comments:

Okay it's the end of my first year of Japanese study and I'm quite annoyed at the Japanese department. There's a lot of inconsistency and disorganised-ness going around and it could have been organised way better. Having said that, the excitement of learning japanese and learning about japan somewhat made up for it. The content was certainly fulfilling to study and the improvement I've made from knowing zero japanese at the beginning of the year is very very satisfying. I'll try to give an overview of everything here, though please note I'm not describing the fun and exciting bits, this is just an overview of what you're getting into. You have to decide if it's worth it! (it was definitely worth it for me, and this is a pretty harsh review, so you can imagine how fun and exciting the japanese part must have been :) )

Lectures: I started out attending all but by the end of the semester didn't bother. They're okay if you have read the week's chapter beforehand because you can follow along and they're only one a week. You don't really learn anything in the lectures though, all the learning takes place in the classes and from the textbook and lectures are pretty much just notifications.

Seminars: These are hard and great, if you have a good sensei. I was stuck with a useless guy in Japanese 1 but my japanese 2 seminars were both very helpful. Learned and practiced a lot. I recommend trying to work ahead and be familiar with the week's vocab and grammar before coming in to each seminar, so you're not lost. My seminar 2 sensei was especially great, she spent a few minutes each week going through the kanji with the non-kanji-background students (there were ~3 in my class including me) and that effort really helped me keep up with the dozens of symbols you have to learn.

Written tests: These are weird, you get a sheet of paper and the teacher starts a stop watch and you have to translate, read, write kanji and all sorts of stuff really fast. Then there's a dictation section which is equally fast paced. Be prepared to drop marks for missing strokes and ambiguous true/false questions, but these are otherwise fine if you learn the kanji before the day.

Oral tests: Most dreaded assessment for me. I'm not as strong a speaker as writer in japanese so these were stressful. The first one is in a pair so if you get a partner who isn't lazy, it's not a problem. Just get up a google docs and practice a few times together etc.
The solo one was much harder. We had to write and memorise an essay, in japanese. The topic this year was sport and its influence on culture and for me that was the most boring topic ever. You need to memorise the whole essay in japanese as you're not allowed any prompts during the recitation. Make sure you include some grammar-rich sentences and that your speech is fluent, and you'll get an 8+/10 easy.

Final essay: The essay theme is actually the same theme as the second oral, and the idea is that your response for both is more or less the same. There's a week and a half to write up a good copy after the oral. No problems here.

The Exam: the 2h exam was made up of 20 MC questions (with only 3 possible responses, haha), two short japanese texts followed by japanese true/false questions, a sentence/response matching exercise (hardest and most time consuming in my opinion), some kanji reading and writing questions, a short translation exercise and then finally two short, guided compositions (one 'fill in the blanks' and one guided 'write a letter to your friend. 1) Start with a short greeting. 2) mention that it's getting warmer here in Melbourne' etc)

The reading content from the exam (the two short texts, the fill in the blanks and the letter) all came more-or-less from the kanji section of the textbook, where after each week's kanji there's a written text and some writing exercises. Do these throughout the semester and again before the day and you'll be set. For example, the second text was pretty much verbatim the tanbata festival story from chapter 12 in the textbook.

The exam itself really only requires you to know the stuff in the kanji, vocab and grammar lists from each of the 6 chapters studied. Unfortunately there are a few rogue words in there that aren't on the lists but you can get around them and figure out the answers anyway. The only thing assessed that isn't directly studied was how to sign off the letter at the end with 'look forward to seeing you…' or something along those lines, we were never told to remember the expression but that's it.

The Department: Okay, the lecturer pretty much doesn't respond to emails. If you need anything from him, tough luck. If it's language related, best to email/ask a seminar sensei in class. The LMS has all lecture notes and course information in office file formats and doesn't use PDF. I wrote very angrily about this in the SES and hopefully they change for next year but I wouldn't count on it. Marks are uploaded with a huge delay and sometimes not at all. You get your writing tasks back the week after, with the marks on the paper, but don't expect info on how you went on the final oral and essay until after the exam/if at all. That's why this subject gets a 3/5.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on November 14, 2014, 01:12:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: JAPN10001 Japanese 1

Workload:  1h lecture + 1.5h speaking class + 1.5h writing class. 80% Attendance to the classes (but not the lecture) is a hurdle requirement.
Beyond this, be prepared to put in a few hours a week to keep on top of the vocabulary and kanji that you have to memorise to keep up! I made a heap of quizlet lists based closely on the textbook/required vocab, you can use mine or make your own. Note mine also has the stuff for Japanese 2.

Assessment:  Lectopia Enabled:  Yep!

Past exams available:  None, and no sample exams, see comments.

Textbook Recommendation:  Genki I Textbook and Workbook, high recommended! Should have them from Japanese 1. They are used heavily in classes and exam texts are based on the reading practice in the kanji section of the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Jun Ohashi

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86 (H1)

Comments:

Overall, a cool breadth subject if you're interested in familiarising yourself with Japanese culture and language basics. It's fast paced and maybe the effort required to keep up isn't worth it for some, but I thought it was. See my Japanese 2 review for more depth on all this stuff.

Lectures: Lectures are okay if you have read the week's chapter beforehand because you can follow along and they're only one a week. You don't really learn anything in the lectures though, all the learning takes place in the classes and from the textbook and lectures are pretty much just notifications.

Seminars: These are hard and great, if you have a good sensei. I was stuck with a useless writing sensei, so my kanji vocab and reading skills we're eh by the end, and we missed a lot of grammar subtleties that other classed were shown.
I recommend trying to work ahead and be familiar with the week's vocab and grammar before coming in to each seminar, so you're not lost.

Written tests: These are weird, you get a sheet of paper and the teacher starts a stop watch and you have to translate, read, write kanji and all sorts of stuff really fast. Then there's a dictation section which is equally fast paced. Be prepared to drop marks for missing strokes, but if you learn the kanji and vocab before the day you're set.

Oral tests: Most dreaded assessment for me. I'm not as strong a speaker as writer in japanese so these were stressful. The first one is in a pair so if you get a partner who isn't lazy, it's not a problem. Just get up a google docs and practice a few times together etc.
The solo one was much harder. We had to write and memorise an essay, in japanese. The topic this year was public transport.
You need to memorise the whole essay in japanese as you're not allowed any prompts during the recitation. Make sure you include some grammar-rich sentences and that your speech is fluent, which is possible with enough practice! I wish I practiced more.

Final essay: The essay theme is actually the same theme as the second oral, and the idea is that your response for both is more or less the same. There's a week and a half to write up a good copy after the oral. No problems here.

The Exam: the 2h exam was made up of a mix of multiple choice questions, true/false sections involving questions or text in japanese and the other in english, sentence/response matching exercises (hardest part in my opinion), a kanji test and a very very guided letter composition which is simple translating.

Fortunately the only vocab and kanji you need are the ones in the vocab and kanji pages of the book from chapters 1-6. Unfortunately there are a few rogue words in the exam that aren't on the lists but you can get around them and figure out the answers anyway.

The Department: Okay, the lecturer pretty much doesn't respond to emails. If you need anything from him, tough luck. If it's language related, best to email/ask a seminar sensei in class. The LMS has all lecture notes and course information in office file formats and doesn't use PDF. I wrote very angrily about this in the SES and hopefully they change for next year but I wouldn't count on it. Marks are uploaded with a huge delay and sometimes not at all. You get your writing tasks back the week after, with the marks on the paper, but don't expect info on how you went on the final oral and essay until after the exam/if at all.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on November 14, 2014, 02:52:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP10002 Foundations of Algorithms

Workload:  3 x 1h Lecture + 1 x 2h practical per week. Worth also spending a few hours on exercises if there isn't an assignment to do.

Assessment:  Lectopia Enabled:  Yep!

Past exams available:  None, but a sample exam and solutions is provided. PM me if you want the 2014 sample exam too, idk how much it changes from year to year though.

Textbook Recommendation:  Programming, Problem Solving and Abstraction with C Textbook written by Alistair, I high recommend!

Lecturer(s): Alistair Moffat (or Ben Rubinstein if you take it in semester 1)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 94 (H1)

Comments:

Overall, an awesome subject providing a thorough intro to lower level programming (with C) and into algorithmic thinking. Topic covered include:  The assignments were challenging and fun, with about 15 hours work needed to complete each to a high standard, possibly more or less depending on how many times you get stuck on an elusive bug. If you can understand all the programs shown in the lectures, you'll have no problem nutting out the assignments over a weekend. Remember, 3 hours debugging saves 15 minutes of planning, so avoid making rough program sketches on paper before you start coding ;)

The mid semester test was a killer, nobody got full marks this semester because it's so easy to screw something up when writing it by hand. Use a pencil and remember to bring an eraser (oops) to save years of re-writing lines. If you've done the exercises up to date you'll have no trouble with the actual content of the test, it's just the writing.

The lectures were awesome and Alistair is really passionate about what he's teaching, and it shows through the care he puts into his explanations. He is prompt to respond to emails and always clear about what is required of students.
We had Ben Rubinstein for 3 lectures near the start of the semester and he seemed alright too.

The workshops were okay, the demonstrators/tutors are really experienced IT students and are more than capable of helping you set anything up or sort out any bugs you're having. I did the exercises/reading of the book at home so I didn't really need the workshop time, but it's a good 2 hour practice block if you don't have the time outside of uni. I found the workshops more interesting because when nobody needed help, me and a few others would just talk about cool computing research stuff with, or get course advice from the demonstrators.

And finally, the exam was fair. Alistair gives a list of things to study if we wanted a good/great mark, and after spending a few days before the exam going over these concepts I was rewarded by an accessible exam that was clear with no surprises. He says he always includes a few marks/60 that are supposed to be only achievable by 2-3 of the 100 or so students. In the sample this was a really tough question out of nowhere, but in the exam, everything was well balanced and there was enough time to have a good think about the hard ones.

Really great subject overall, so glad I decided to take it!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on November 14, 2014, 03:23:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10002 Physics 2: Advanced

Workload:  3 x 1h Lecture + 1 x 1h tutorial per week, plus a 3 hour practical in 8/12 weeks of the semester.

Assessment:  Lectopia Enabled:  Yep!

Past exams available:  Plenty, 4 of which are given with numerical solutions on the LMS and more stored online if you're after more questions (can even look in the non-advanced stream and in some of the old first year physics subjects - same stuff, different unit names)

Textbook Recommendation:  I think it's like college physics or something but I never bought/saw a copy. I preferred to do my own research online using hyperphysics, khanacademy, etc.

Lecturer(s): Asc. Prof. Andrew Melatos for electromag and Prof. Geoffrey Taylor for the rest

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 (H1)

Comments:

The big question is whether taking advanced physics is worth it. I don't know the answer, I didn't take regular physics 2. But I do know that everything we covered in this subject was covered to a pretty deep standard. I don't have any questions regarding the content, after making notes on all the stuff we were introduced to. The assignments and the exam tested this knowledge deeply and the pracs explored some of the concepts to give us a feel for the physics.
Topic covered were largely the same as the regular stream afaik, but with a focus on problem solving, derivations and the calculus behind things. Topics include:  The pracs, though a tad disorganised at times, were relatively easy to score well in if you managed to write everything that was asked about even if you didn't fully understand it all. Writing so much made the pracs pretty hectic and rushy, but was worth it for the 10/10's. this would vary by demonstrator, most likely.

The weekly assignments and their accompanying practice assignments actually saved me. Every weekend I would watch the lectures, do the practice assignment and then very slowly answer the questions on the real assignment. By the end I had gone from knowing nothing about the week's content to close to mastery of it. I'd then, over the next week, attempt to solidify that understanding in the form of comprehensive written notes. Some friends said they easily found the answers to most of the assignment questions with a verbatim google search, or at least answers with different numbers in the question, but I highly recommend learning the content even if you then check with a quick google before submitting each answer. The practice was invaluable and the assignment questions were great in guiding my study without the textbook.

The exam was tough, but study paid off. You get a really muddled formula sheet and it has a heck of a lot of unexplained letters and symbols on it so I recommend going through and sorting out what's what BEFORE going into the exam. Identifying all the formulas on the two-page sheet actually took me a whole day, some of them were obscure and used letters I wasn't used to, or no vector notation, etc, and there are zero labels or ordering to the formulas it's literally a free-for-all.
Practice exams only have numerical solutions so it was tough to mark practices since there are always a lot of explanation questions, but I guess going back to the lecture notes or a textbook to see if there was anything you forgot in an explanation would be the way to go here.

Overall, I enjoyed the challenge of the advanced stream and I'm glad I decided to keep it up despite not getting any extra credit. I feel like the derivation/calculus rich approach sets me up for physics subjects next year, and the content was definitely interesting enough to make it worthwhile for me.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Renaissance on November 14, 2014, 04:30:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10003 Engineering Systems Design 2

Workload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures and 1 x three hour workshop per week. Total Time Commitment: 170 hours.

Assessment:

3 hours end of semester written examination: 60% HURDLE, must get 50%+
Weekly workshops (team assignments and projects and individual quizzes): 30%
Online assignments: 5%
Online forum participation: 5%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, 5, without solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: There is a custom textbook for the subject that is compiled from 4 other textbooks but it is useless since lectures and workshops are excellent.

Lecturer(s):

Digital Circuits: Gavin Buskes
MATLAB: Shanika Karunasekera
Mechanics: Andrew Ooi

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 2.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

This is the best subject I have done at university so far. It is just very well organised and very well taught. The workshops and assignments are excellent and very useful and teach stuff relevant to the final exam. Also I really like the fact that the final exam is only worth 60%. I would prefer if it was worth even less and the assignments/workshops worth more because I believe that continuous assessment throughout the semester is more accurate than just basing the entire assessment on the final.

However, there are some drawbacks to this subject.

The biggest drawback is the groups. Group members can be really boring and lazy but they can also be awesome. Depends on how lucky you are. Luckily the final is a hurdle so those who don't participate in the assignments will not get away with it.

The second biggest drawback is the programming section. It is just very boring and badly taught. They replaced the lecturer due to student feedback last semester and redone the lecture notes but the programming section is still terrible. One reason why the programming section is so bad is that they use MATLAB... anyone who knows any other language knows how bad MATLAB is. I didn't go to most of the programming lectures but went to all other lectures and I didn't even read the lecture notes, that is how useless they are.

One other thing I don't like about this subject is that it covers too many topics such that it is not possible to go into much depth about any one particular topic. Technical universities in the USA unusually have separate introductory subjects for mechanical end electrical engineering. For example, MIT's 6.01 Intro to electrical engineering and computer science I. They also use python instead of MATLAB, which is great. The reason why I prefer separate subjects for mechanical and electrical engineering is that one can go into more depth in a more specialised subject.

This subject isn't easy, it is very demanding, by far the most demanding subject I have done yet but it isn't as difficult as I would like it to be, and that is due to the fact that it covers too many topics so it isn't possible to go into much depth. The lectures are very comprehensive and there are no tricks in this subject, you know exactly what you need to do to get the marks. Getting a H1 is very manageable IMO, unless you are super lazy and don't participate in assignments and workshops.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on November 14, 2014, 05:55:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90011 Modelling: Mathematical Biology

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture, 1x one-hour computer lab / tutorial

Assessment: 3x assignments, 25% each. Two-hour exam, 25%.

Lectopia Enabled: Nope.

Past exams available: Nope.

Textbook Recommendation: There are two recommended textbooks:  "Mathematical Models in Biology", L. Edelstein-Keshet (1987); and "Mathematical Biology", J. D. Murray (2003). No need to buy either of them.

Lecturer(s): Professor Kerry Landman

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This is a great subject, highly recommended for anyone interested in real-world applications of maths! It's called "Mathematical Biology" but you could argue that it's really a course in modelling scientific problems using maths, where all of the examples just happen to come from biology. This a nice break from most of what's called "applied maths", where the problems come from physics and engineering. There's no biology knowledge assumed, and if you're expecting any highly-specific models of particular biological systems, you're in the wrong place. It's also not a pure maths subject, so if you love theorems and proofs, you're also in the wrong place.

Lectures: Kerry is a great lecturer. She's very enthusiastic and this subject is directly connected to her research interests. The lectures are quite old-school, in that everything important goes on the whiteboard and you have to copy it down. Ideally with multiple colours and a ruler, since the diagrams are an important part of understanding the concepts in the course. At the end of every 2-hour lecture, I emerged with three pages full of maths and pictures and my head spinning with new ideas. (If you've done lots of applied maths before, the general techniques will be slightly less new, but still enough to be interesting and exciting.) This is the only subject I did this semester where I didn't miss a single lecture.

Course content: I feel like this course was teaching "how to be an applied mathematician" on a few levels simultaneously, although the connections didn't really click until I got to the end of the semester. The overarching idea is that you can take a description of a biological system, distill it down into the most important bits and write it out in the form of equations. Usually the equations are nonlinear and have no exact solution, and a numerical/computational solution might not give you the insight you want. But through a bunch of clever tricks, you can still figure out the qualitative behaviour of the system: what are the equilibrium points and long-term behaviour? Is the system stable after small perturbations? What happens when you change parameter values? Sometimes highly simplified mathematical models have inspired biological experiments to prove or disprove particular hypotheses. There was an emphasis on relating properties you'd deduced about the mathematical system back to the real-world problem.

On the maths side, the tools of choice are discrete-time models (two weeks), ordinary differential equations (two weeks), partial differential equations (six weeks), stochastic models (one week) and cellular automata (one week). That's a lot of differential equations. I hope you like them.

On the biology side, it was almost a new topic every week. We covered: simple population models, host-parasitoid systems, insect outbreaks, epidemics and infectious disease models (including the maths behind vaccination and herd immunity), "invasion" processes (on a cell and population level), chemotaxis, morphogenesis and cancer modelling. There were often surprising parallels to the maths describing cell-level and population-level phenomena, which I thought was cool.

Assessment: Unfortunately, I'm not so much of a fan of Kerry's marking. I'm not complaining about any particular marks I got, but it was sometimes hard to know what was expected in assignments. People had marks deducted for being "inelegant", not writing enough or writing too much. Most people's marks improved dramatically after the first assignment. The exam is only worth 25%, and the one this year was ... surprisingly pleasant. No really nasty calculations, lots of sketching diagrams and discussing qualitative aspects of biological systems.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on November 14, 2014, 08:23:30 pm
Subject code/name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload: Weekly: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:
2 group assignments2 x 10%
45 minute mid-semester test10%
2 hour exam70%
To pass the subject, you need 50% in the exam as well as 50 overall.

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: None, but 1 specimen exam with solutions is available.

Textbook recommendation: Atkinson, M.E. and Dickson, D.C.M. (2011) An Introduction to Actuarial Studies, 2nd Edition. Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
The lecture slides on the LMS will suffice, so I don't feel this is highly necessary, unless you want access to some more problems for practice. Also, this book wasn't available in Australia when I had to buy it, I think, so I had to have it shipped from overseas.

Lecturer(s): Dr Shane (Xueyuan) Wu

Year and semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your mark/grade:

Comments: The one and only level 1 actuarial studies subject. Welcome to actuarial studies.

Before I studied this subject, I legitimately still had no idea of the technical side of actuarial studies, so this was truly an introduction to actuarial studies for me.

Subject content
The mathematical flavour is quite heavy for a non-MAST subject. Of course, that shouldn't be a surprise (hopefully). For the mathematical enthusiasts out there, I am inclined to believe this would be one of the few non-MAST subjects where you might actually be expected to produce a mathematical proof.

The handbook lists one of either Linear Algebra and Calculus 2 as a prerequesite, but I don't really think you actually need anything from either of those subjects. The mathematical knowledge you need coming into this subject is basically only:
  • How to algebra (VCE level knowledge will do)
  • How to differentiate (VCE level knowledge)
  • How to integrate (VCE level knowledge)
  • Discrete probability work (Mathematical Methods level knowledge will suffice)
  • Geometric series
    This may actually be one of the things you should learn. It's a topic in General Mathematics Advanced (the precursor to Specialist Mathematics), but not every school does that topic, I think. And not everyone does General Mathematics Advanced before Specialist Mathematics, either.
  • Working with the summation sign
    It comes up a lot. Be comfortable with it.

The subject is divided into 4 topics. Officially it's 3, but I believe the last topic is really 2 topics together.
  • Financial mathematics (weeks 1 to 4)
    You learn how to value financial transactions and financial instruments by incorporating the time value of money (the notion that a payment of $1 now is worth more than a payment of $1 at any time in the future). Often these transactions involve a series of payments at scattered time intervals, rather than a lump sum payment at one point in time.
  • Demography (weeks 5 to 7)
    You investigate when one person might die and when people in a population might die.
    That's basically it.
    There is some stuff on summary statistics about fertility and age distribution as well.
    Oh, and populations pyramids...
  • Contingent payments (weeks 8 and 10)
    How do you value financial transactions in which payments aren't certain to occur?
  • Actuarial practice (weeks 9, 11, and 12)
    What is the actuary's role in insurance? What are the features of insurance policies?

There is an emphasis on familiarity with first principles, general reasoning and conceptual understanding across the whole subject, which for me was quite refreshing, as it wasn't the formulaic work that I expected in a discipline revolving around applied mathematics.

None of the mathematical processes are actually that complicated if you are very familiar with the principles behind it all, and even then, just knowing the "formulas" will do most of the time. The scope of difficulty of proof questions is also quite narrow — you're only required to reproduce proofs he shows in lectures, and there aren't too many. All of them are pretty much showing algebraic relationships between different mathematical expressions. It is quite possible to memorise all of these proofs (which is hardly the point of a proof question, but oh well).

One aspect that may be slightly difficult is timing. By that I mean things like
  • At what point in time does this payment occur?
  • At what point in time does this person die?
  • At what point in time does the interest rate change?
This subject is absolutely riddled with things happening or changing at different points in time, and you need to have a very clear idea of what happens when before you approach problems. It is a good idea to plot stuff on a timeline when there is a lot happening.

(More comments on what to look out for are under the mid-semester test and exam sections.)

Lectures
Lectures are pretty standard. There are 2 a week, and Shane goes through lecture slides, completing example problems along the way.

Each week's lecture slides are posted on the LMS before the start of the week. These have blanks in them, and you can fill them in during the lecture. After each lecture, the full lecture slides for that lecture are posted on the LMS.

It's probably not highly necessary to attend lectures actually, because the vast majority of the content is in the completed slides.

The lecturer was fantastic for me (may or may not be my bias for the subject speaking). Shane is focussed and moves through lecture material efficiently. As for other things like accent, while Shane is obviously not a native English speaker, he is definitely quite fluent, and I had no problem understanding what he was saying at any time. He is actually quite funny and kind as well.

Shane has quite high expectations for the cohort in this subject. I still remember in the first lecture when he said something along the lines of "full marks on the assignments is normal". Personally I think he's being quite reasonable, as the level of complexity in this subject is probably nothing compared to that of actuarial subjects in later years.

Tutorials
From what I've heard, the tutorial experience is generally not so good in this, but, luckily for me, I had an amazing tutor.

You are given problem sets which you must (should) complete before the each tutorial, and in the tutorial the tutor will basically go through solutions to each problem. Problem sets cover the content in the lectures of the week prior, and are the types of questions that appear on the exam, so it is a good idea to do them. There are 13 problem sets altogether (starting at Problem Set 0), so Shane goes through the last one in the last week of lectures.

My tutor also provided a lecture summary, but that's only because he was awesome.

Tutorials begin in the first week.

Assignments
This semester both assignments were Excel assignments, and they were both really easy. Supposedly they are not always both Excel assignments.

Your assignments are done in groups of 3 or 4, and you can email Shane during the first 2 weeks if you have a group in mind. Otherwise you are randomly allocated a group.

The coursework tested in the assignments is really just the basics. You should have no problem completing the assignments if you know the basics taught in the lectures.

The first assignment is only on the first 4 weeks of financial mathematics, and is pretty much basic financial transaction valuation stuff.

The second assignment is on demography and contingent payments. You'll deal with life tables and expected present values of transactions.

As far as technical Excel skills, there is not much required. If you know how to enter formulas (with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and the occasional exponential), reference cells, lock references (to either column or row), and "fill down" (copy the formula to a range of cells), that's basically it. Of course, you can be more efficient if you know some other Excel functions, but they're not essential for these assignments.

And remember:
Quote
Full marks on the assignments is normal.

Mid-semester test
The mid-semester test is difficult. Material assessed is the first 6 weeks i.e. all the financial mathematics, and most of the demography stuff.

You are allowed an approved scientific calculator for this test. This is the official list:
  • Casio FX82 (with or without any suffix)
  • Casio FX83 (with or without any suffix)
  • Casio FX85 (with or without any suffix)
  • Sharp EL531 (with or without any suffix)
  • Texas Instruments BA II Plus (with or without any suffix)
  • Texas Instruments TI-30 (with or without any suffix)
Shane makes it very clear that there is absolutely no leeway with this, so make sure you have one of these.

Personally I found it helpful to have a calculator capable of displaying your 3 or 4 most recent calculations and results at the same time, because often you need to refer to multiple results at a time, both for input onto your calculator, and for writing down on your paper, so I bought the Texas Instruments TI-30 even though I already had one of the other approved calculators.

What makes it hard? Shane puts a lot of questions on the test, and so you are very tight for time for the 45 minutes that you are given. What makes it worse is that although the ideas aren't that complicated, you'll be tapping your calculator a lot, which introduces scope for your calculator weighing you down by being a slow and inconvenient piece of technology, and also you typing the wrong things into your calculator.

The financial mathematics part was mostly valuing financial transactions and instruments. As for the demography section, mostly survival function and life table stuff, with some discrete probability work infused.

One thing which should catch most people out is the sketching of one of the demography graphs or a population pyramid. I think Shane is pretty aware that the other mathematical stuff dominates the course up until this point, so most students pay little attention to the graphs which are shown in lectures. It is a surprise for most students when it appears on the test. Well, it certainly was for our cohort when we had to draw a population pyramid...

I would recommend being familiar with the shapes of graphs for each of the columns in the life table i.e. , , , , , and for a developed country. Luckily they are pretty similar for both genders, so you don't have to remember two sets, although obviously be aware of the major gender differences, such as higher life expectancy for a female than a male of the same age. Some of these graphs are shown in the lectures. Others are in the textbook (you could probably look elsewhere if you don't have the textbook).

Also know the shape of a population pyramid for underdeveloped, developing, and developed countries.

The mid-semester test didn't have any proof questions on it, but, to be honest, proof questions are fair game as well.

Exam
The 2 hour exam was not so bad, and was quite similar in difficulty to the specimen exam which Shane provided. I was certainly less rushed for time than I was in the mid-semester test.

This is what Shane has to say on exam preparation:
Quote
By the end of semester you will have been presented with about 150 problems of varying length and of varying degrees of difficulty. If you understand the solutions to these questions you are adequately prepared for the end of semester examination. If you do not understand the solutions, extra problems will not help you.
He is referring to the problems in the problem sets as well as the designated exercises in the textbook.

The worst topic to prepare for is probably actuarial practice, as the content is really really dry and uninspiring. These questions generally require worded answers, and they test you on your knowledge of various insurance products and the actuary's role within them. I have a feeling Shane doesn't particularly enjoy this section either. The questions that appeared on the exam for actuarial practice were luckily not as intimidating compared to the ones on the problem sets, and even the ones that appeared on the specimen exam were quite superficial. You can answer these questions in dot points, and that's how Shane likes them answered, too.

Overall I think this subject is quite manageable as long as you have some reliable mathematical ability. The amount of algebra might be intimidating at times, but none of the concepts behind it are too complex. If you are looking for a commerce elective or some breadth and have a preference for something mathematical, this should suffice. The financial mathematics side of things might also be useful if you intend to major in Finance, but obviously there are the higher level Finance subjects where you learn the maths, so this isn't essential so to say.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: bubbles21 on November 14, 2014, 08:59:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30003 - Drug Treatment of Disease

Workload:  3 lectures a week, 6 or so tutes and workshops held in lecture times

Assessment:  70% exam, 10% on attendance to workshops, 20% to 3 or so online open book tests.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, lots.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing.

Lecturer(s):
Lots
Year & Semester of completion:
2014 -sem 2
Rating:   3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Don't know yet.

Comments:

Alrightyyy, so comments. I guess I'll start with assessment? I'm not really sure who that question is directed at... Maybe its the holiday euphoria... :o

Workshops and tutes are held throughout semester, 3 workshops and probs 3 tutes. They are held in lecture times. Workshops are essentially a lecture but you get given a sheet which has questions on it that you answer throughout the lecture, submit it at the end and that's it. Not really sure if they actually grade it or just check to see if your student number is there and have written something on the page. Either way, just make sure you go and don't forget like I did. Woops... Oh and the workshops aren't assessed on the final exam.
Tutes are in lecture slots too and they just present you with a question and show you how to answer what to include. Pretty useful for the exam.
The 20% is 3 or so quizzes on the LMS, they have maybe 15 questions for you to do in 60 minutes. All multichoice, just have your notes in front of you and that 20% is yours.
And then the exam... 2 hours, 6 questions that are 10 marks each. You choose your 6 questions from 7 though which is nice. The questions may be split into a,b,c or just a question like choose two anti-hypertensives and explain their mechanism of action and their advantages and disadvantages. The questions this year were fair except for 1 question, who knows how fair the marking will be though.

Lecture topics are in the handbook link. The lectures are typically presented in a "here's the disease, here's the problem with the disease, here is how we fix/fixed/will fix the problem"
I didn't enjoy this subject nearly as much as I did last year. Maybe it was because the teaching quality maybe wasn't as good, or maybe because it seemed like a lot of content we had already covered before (I mean christine wrights lectures on hypertension were essentially exactly the same plus learning the mechanism of side effects).
So for the new topics, they are obviously new which means new and interesting stuff to learn. But for the topics that were covered last year that are again covered this year, you basically just learn the mechanism in more detail(if possible) plus learning the mechanism of the side effects. Thats probably why I gave this subject a 3.5. Because while the new stuff was interesting, the old stuff seemed boring(even though i'd forgotten it all from last year) and perhaps the lecturing quality wasn't as good. I don't know, I guess i'm just a bit apathetic about the subject. That said, if i could go back in time I would probably still tell myself to do the subject... maybe..hmmm maybe not.

Pm me for any questions.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on November 14, 2014, 09:32:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING10001 - The Secret Life of Language

Workload:  2x1 hour lectures, 1x1 hour tute per week

Assessment:  3 Assignments throughout semester (totalling to 50%) 2 hour exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but occasionally you'd miss things that the lecturer would explain on the board (eg. writing out certain IPA symbols) but there were repeat lectures if you were busy.

Past exams available:  Yes, just one

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Language by Fromkin et al is "highly recommended," but unnecessary. The lectures go into heaps of detail, and there's an online version available. If you really want to buy it, don't pay the $120 that the co-op demands, there are plenty of 2nd hand versions floating around.
Course manual is a necessity though.

Lecturer(s): Rachel Nordlinger and Jill Vaughan

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Wow this was awesome.
Stonecold and El2012 have already reviewed this, but a fair bit has changed since '11/'12, including the actual lecturers, and fair chunk of how the course is structured.

Just some preliminary comments clearing up the many misconceptions regarding 'prerequisites' for this subject:
- English Language is not needed. I hadn't done it, and the people who did said it wasn't a massive advantage.
- Ling10002 - Intercultural Communication (the semester 1 subject) isn't a prereq either. Apparently (I didn't do that one either) it was more about sociolinguistics and practical experiments, whereas this subject only spends a week or two on those areas and is more theory-dominant.
- Knowing a second language is also not compulsory, but this is a definite advantage. You're not memorising vocab from other languages or anything, but if you have a basic understanding of grammar in languages other than english, many of the core concepts will probably make way more sense. Essentially when lecturers bring up things like the passive voice or different lexemes, being familiar with these should save you some googling and initial confusion, but again, it's not a formal prereq.
The split between those who did and didn't speak another language was around about 50/50; you can definitely get by without it though.
- This is also pretty accessible for EAL/ESL students, there were a fair few in my tutorial and the exam caters for those who speak a language other than English, so even that's not a massive advantage.
 
I came into this subject with a few languages under my belt, but absolutely no linguistic experience, and I was absolutely smitten within ~20 minutes. This is a somewhat biased review, but I feel like the subject has earned it :)

Major selling points:
- The breadth of content was really good. This subject is essentially a tasting platter of all the different linguistics fields in later years, and whilst quite a bit to cover, it rarely felt too rushed or vague. More on each of these areas later.
- Lectures were consistently engaging. Plus, lecturers would frequently ask if there was anyone who spoke whatever language we were talking about as an example, and there was almost always someone available (Russian, German, Lithuanian, Malay, Greek etc.)
-The way the tutorial exercises are structured, you can have a sound grasp of basic Icelandic (for example) grammar and pronunciation within minutes. Tutes were very practical, but they didn't slow down for people who missed content in lectures. My tutor would frequently dismiss questions unless he thought they were worth answering. That's not to say the staff are unhelpful - they're lovely! But there's no handholding here. I suppose if you sought out tutors/lecturers out side of class time they'd go over concepts in more depth, but the course is reasonably fast paced for an "artsy" subject and you're expected to keep up.
-Assignments were basically problem solving exercises. If you didn't understand these process in lectures, you'd be in trouble. There were a couple of odd questions that relied on knowledge outside what had been demonstrated, but even these were pretty simple once you got your head around the basics.
-aaaand to continue the pictorial summations of awesome subjects, if you take Secret Life of Language you get to study stuff like this:
(http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/imalinguist.jpg)
note: I haven't taken the exam for this subject yet; will update this when I do
COURSE COMPONENTS:
Morphology
The study of word structure.
In this unit you'll study words like 'abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjiginjing.' Which the lecturer can say fluently, much to my amazement. Basically this covers all the grammar rules regarding word classes (noun, abstract noun, adverbs) as well as parts of words (prefix, root, suffix.) You'll also cover all the different ways words are altered (eg. why do we drop certain letters, why are some letters silent, etc.) It might sound dry, but it's actually really interesting. This was an excellent intro topic and gave everyone a chance to ask the embarrassing questions like 'what's an adverb' before moving on to bigger and better things.
Syntax
The study of sentence structure.
This was a little more complex, but definitely built off the skillset developed in Morphology. Lots of funny tree diagrams that demonstrate different parts of sentences, and heaps of other languages thrown in for counter points to English grammar. This is where there was a more notable difference between second language learners and others - since grammar isn't taught often or well in primary school, most people I knew only had a grasp on subject/object-focused sentences or aspect markings from whatever other language they'd picked up. Relatively steep learning curve for those who hadn't done any of this, but otherwise okay.
The first assignment was based on these two areas of study.
Semantics and Pragmatics
The study of meaning and context.
There were a lot more definitions to remember in this unit, and fewer application tasks. Most of it was focused on how words and sentences related to one another, eg. exploring the five different types of opposites that can exist --> is the opposite of red green, or is it the absence of red?
2nd assignment was based just on this section, and to me was the hardest of the three.
Phonetics and Phonology
The study of sounds and sound systems.
This was my favourite area and I enjoyed every minute of it. You'll get to learn how to make sounds in languages you never knew existed, and if your main language is English, you'll get to know how weak and lazy your vocal tracts are compared to other languages that have clicks and trills and all sorts of wonderful stuff.
There were also fun experiments to do with language intuition, for example, the lecturer would give us a made up word ('bamity') and we'd have to pluralise it. Obviously you know it's 'bamities,' but when you say it, it sounds like you're ending it with a 'z' not an 's.' Even though we think of pluralisation in English as being a simple addition of 's' to the end of the word, there are actually three different sounds we use:
bet --> bets (s sound)
bag --> bags (z sound)
badge --> badges (ez sound)
^This was one of the many 'omg I never thought of that' moments in lectures :P
All round cool component of the course that I loved learning about; some weird new concepts and definitions, but very manageable. 3rd and final assignment was on this section, the other lectures made up about 30% of the course and were only assessed in the exam.
Sociolinguistics, The Brain and Language, Language Acquisition
I've grouped these together since there were only a few lessons on each. These did feel a little sparse, especially socio and historical linguistics, but since they're not major components in 2nd/3rd year subjects, they were kind of just skimmed over, which was a shame, but understandable.
***
Exam - still to come!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 14, 2014, 11:07:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10011: Experimental Design and Data Analysis

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment: One written assignment of up to 10 pages due in the second half of semester (5%), eight to twelve homework quizzes (a combination of written and online) due at regular intervals during semester (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held during semester (5%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, all the way back to 2008. However, solutions were only provided for the 2012 and 2013 exams.

Textbook Recommendation: There is a MAST10011: Experimental Design and Data Analysis reader that you will need to buy from the Co-Op book shop. This essentially contains all the notes and questions you need for this subject.

There is a textbook but it's only "recommended" and not "prescribed" - M. M. Triola and M. F. Triola, Biostatistics for the Biological and Health Sciences, Boston, Pearson, 2006. It doesn't get referred to in the lectures so it's not necessary at all. Many past high achievers have never even looked at the book. I personally didn't have it either. A handful of people did bother to get the textbook and said it was quite good and explained the concepts well.

Lecturer(s): Dr Guoqi Qian

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

At the end of Year 12, I was keen to pursue statistics at university. I did all three VCE Maths subjects and my most favourite topics were Data Analysis from Further Mathematics and Probability from Mathematical Methods (CAS). Had I pursued a Science degree, I'm almost certain I would have taken some sort of statistics or probability subject somewhere along the way. I'm glad I took this subject because it's pretty much confirmed to me that had I done so I would've made a terrible mistake. I'm not sure if it's my study technique, but I just don't think I'm geared to studying MAST subjects at university. I found both Mathematics for Biomedicine and Experimental Design and Data Analysis really difficult to learn during the semester and that everything all finally came together only once SWOTVAC had arrived. Once it finally made sense, my soft spot for statistics did return, but given the trouble this subject had caused me during the semester, I don't think I have much of a desire to pursue the study area any further.

Experimental Design and Data Analysis is one of the two core MAST subjects taken in first year Biomedicine along with Mathematics for Biomedicine. This year they made students who had studied Biology at Year 12 level enrol in Mathematics for Biomedicine in semester 1 and this subject in semester 2; those without any Year 12 background in Biology were asked to do the reverse. I think this was just done to get fairly even numbers for the two subjects in both semesters, rather than potentially getting a skew. Anyway, this subject has been a part of Biomedicine for a number of years now and teaches some pretty important skills depending on where you want to take your degree.

There are a few distinct differences compared to Mathematics for Biomedicine: it's been running for quite a few years now so any initial teething issues this subject may have had when it was first rolled out have most likely been well and truly ironed out, and there are a heap of resources in this subject. One of the small negatives of Mathematics for Biomedicine is that you don't go through an exceptional amount of examples, and you only get assignments, exercise sheets and tutorial sheets to practice with, and their questions are not like those on the exam (to compensate you get one sample paper with no solutions). In this subject you go through heaps of worked examples in the lectures, and you get an entire book of notes with worked examples on almost every second page, problem sets at the end of each topic and even exam-like revision problems when you're studying for your exam. You also get a set of summary notes which are provided to you in the exam (these are towards the back of the reader, after the statistical tables - these are also provided for your exam) and past exam papers too (although not all of these have solutions). It's a completely different scenario to Mathematics for Biomedicine and I think most of us were really happy that this was the case. However, the general consensus amongst our cohort was that overall Mathematics for Biomedicine was a more positive experience and that its well-documented teething problems are basically non-existent now.

So let's move onto the lectures. The whole semester was taken by Dr Guoqi Qian; he was a new lecturer to this subject, although I believe he does take other probability and statistics subjects at the university. He seemed like a really nice guy and he definitely knew his stuff, but he had a really strong Chinese accent which often made him difficult to understand. Consequently a lot of people stopped coming to the lectures as a result (attendance of about 35% became the norm, rather than the exception). One of the previous lecturers for this subject was Dr Davide Ferrari - he has a strong Italian accent and so a lot of people found they had a similar problem understanding him, but since I'm Italian I actually had no trouble whatsoever. In fact, he filled in for Guoqi a couple of times during the semester and people looked even more confused when he was taking it, when I personally felt those lectures were the ones I learnt the most. :P Accent barriers aside, it was clear Guoqi was trying his absolute best and while people did find it difficult a lot of the time, we definitely didn't blame him for anything.

During the lectures you will go through the basics of the concepts and work through plenty of worked examples. The lecture notes are provided beforehand on the LMS, but they're just selected sentences copied from the reader so I stopped printing off the lecture slides and instead started following with my reader. The reader contains absolutely everything you need to know, so at times the lectures in this subject feel a little bit redundant. However, sometimes the reader is lacking or contains a mistake, which is why it's important you don't just completely ditch the lectures. The Mathematics and Statistics department just seems to re-use the same lecture slides for this subject, which became apparent through Guoqi's lecturing. It often looked like he was unfamiliar with the notes - for example sometimes a particular concept would pop up and he wanted to explain something else first, so he'd scribble his notes all over the lecture slide only to find that the next slide had the content he wanted to discuss. It was clear he could just look at the notes and it would made sense to him immediately, but obviously that doesn't just translate to all of us students sitting there in the lecture theatre. A lot of people who stopped going to the lectures got access to the lecture recordings from semester 1, when Davide took the subject, and watched those instead. I gave him the benefit of the doubt given that it was his first time taking the subject, and if he takes it next year he will definitely be more familiar with the subject and its content. 

The content in this subject can be rather confusing to understand at first, but once it clicks you start to see that it's not as difficult as it appears. What threw me off is all the notation - get used to seeing a lot of it. Once you get past all of that, you'll see that the maths in this subject is actually quite simple (seriously, you spend 95% of the time calculating a 95% confidence interval :P ). In fact, a lot of the mathematical content follows on pretty nicely from either VCE Further Mathematics or VCE Mathematical Methods (CAS). There are a lot of formulae, but pretty much every single one you need is on the summary sheet provided for you in the exam and most of the time you just need to find the right one and plug in the numbers. What makes this subject difficult is not actually the mathematics, but the statistical theory behind it all. We got emphasised during the semester that data analysis is not actually mathematics - it uses mathematics because it's an integral tool, but the sooner you actually understand the statistical reasoning behind it, the better you'll do. You will be expected to explain concepts during the exam, so manipulation of numbers is not enough.

The weekly tutorial classes for this subject became quite vital for many of us since this was the time we were able to address our conceptual difficulties and follow up with any questions we had found particularly difficult. The questions on the tutorial sheets are good, but there isn't a week's delay in the content which means that if your tutorial is earlier in the week you're likely to get very little out of the questions simply because you haven't learnt the content yet. I'd advise future students to be mindful of this and to try to get a tutorial class towards the end of the week. In the past the tutorial rooms have had whiteboards around the entire room and students would be encouraged to get in groups and work on the tutorial sheet problems together. Unfortunately due to timetabling reasons most of the classrooms this semester only had one whiteboard at the front of the classroom, which meant this wasn't possible for us. Instead, most tutors requested that we completed the tutorial questions prior to the tutorial, so most of the tutorial was just spent going through the answers. Clearing up any mistakes was important, but I don't think the lessons were as useful as they could've been as a result. My tutor was Dr Robert Maillardet - the tutor co-ordinator for this subject - and given the circumstances I thought he did a very good job. He was a really nice person, he knows his stuff very well and he was extremely helpful so I'm glad I ended up in his class. In the past, people have recommended Sharon Gunn but unfortunately she wasn't tutoring this semester.

Immediately after the tutorial you do a one hour computer laboratory class where you are familiarised with the statistical program Minitab. The usefulness of this class ultimately depends on which semester you're taking this subject in - if you take the subject in semester 2 then one of your assessments is a lab test where you get assessed on how well you understand and can use Minitab. There is no lab test if you take this subject in semester 1 and so the computer labs are just designed to aid your understanding as it allows you to experience first hand the key concepts. However, the questions in the exam often provide Minitab output for you to work with, so regardless of which semester you take this subject in you need to have at least a basic understanding of the program. Anyway, I'll talk more about the lab test a little bit later. At first I was freaking out but to tell you the truth Minitab is quite a simple program to use once you get the hang of it. If you're someone who likes coding, you can type in commands if you want - otherwise there are easy-to-use and straightforward dropdown menus you can use to execute whatever you want to do. The biggest issue with the class though is that you get no guidance - you get a worksheet to work through but no one actually teaches you how to use the program. The worksheet contains a lot of the commands but sometimes it doesn't and it's easy to get really confused, give up and just walk out of the class early (as a lot of people do). If you ask for help you will receive it, but I'm not terribly sure if leaving us to our own devices is the most effective way to go about things. There was a bit of confusion - the lab sheets were relevant to Minitab version 16 but this year Minitab version 17 got released and so many people were unknowingly using the later version by mistake. In many respects the two programs operate similarly, but there are a few distinct differences so make sure you use the correct program (particularly if you're going to be doing a lab test). During the computer lab you can also download the program onto a USB for use at home (this comes in handy for your assignment and if you don't finish the lab sheet during the class but want to finish it at home). Mac users: note that the program only works on PC.

In both semesters 10% of your grade comes from the completion of weekly quizzes. There are 11 over the course of the semester but only your best ten count towards your final grade. Additionally, you get three attempts, with your best score taken as your final score for that quiz. These are supposed to be multiple choice questions from past exams so they're good practice, although they can be particularly challenging at times. Given the circumstances though, it shouldn't be too difficult to do very well on these. If you take this subject in semester 1, your other assessments are two assignments, worth 5% each. In semester 2, you complete one assignment worth 5% and one lab test sat during week 12, also worth 5%. In the past people have preferentially enrolled to take this subject in semester 1 to avoid the lab test, but to be honest I much preferred having a lab test to another assignment. The lab test asks you three pretty simple questions and you use some Minitab commands to get an answer. You are allocated 45 minutes for this test, but I saw a lot of people done in some ridiculously short times (like 10 minutes <_<). Even those not the best at Minitab thought it was pretty easy. The assignment(s) consist of eight questions, which I later found out during SWOTVAC were taken from past exams. Apparently our semester was given a "simple" assignment but most of us still found it quite difficult. Eventually we did get it though. Unlike those in Mathematics for Biomedicine, you are allowed to type your assignment up, but whatever you do, you cannot exceed eight pages (excluding your graphs). However, a lot of tutors request that your assignment is sequential; that is, you don't put graph pages at the end and put "see graph number x" in your assignment. You should aim to finish a question at the bottom of the page, and then have the relevant graph on the next page, and then start the next question after that page. You'll need to use Minitab so make sure you download the program during one of your computer lab classes.

The final exam is three hours in duration and is worth 80% of your grade. This is quite a bit, so in the past the department has put either a 10 or 20 mark buffer to compensate (the exam is usually out of 110 or 120). However, this semester they decided to remove it because the cohort results were becoming too negatively skewed. They re-assured us though that if the cohort does exceptionally worse in comparison to previous semesters that a statistical adjustment would be made. The exam consists of 20 multiple choice questions (worth two marks each) and a series of short answer questions worth either 90 or 100 marks. Oddly enough, there is no multiple choice answer sheet given to you in this exam, so you just write your answers on one of the pages in your script book. Most of the questions are similar to what you have been exposed to over the course of the semester, and some were recycled old questions. Despite the difficulties we had faced during the semester, most people thought the exam was fair, with no pressing issues.

The amount of resources that support you in this subject is exceptional and one of the big positives of Experimental Design and Data Analysis. However, changes to the approach of the lectures, tutorials and computer lab classes would be quite welcome. This subject is difficult, but if you persist you'll see that a lot of it is repetition or just building on earlier concepts and it won't be as challenging as it used to be. A bit like Mathematics for Biomedicine, I'm confident the final outcome will be fine for most people - it's just the journey along the way that's a bit of a pain. Despite the fact that it can get boring at times, the theory and skills you learn in this subject are very important. That's all I can think of for now, but if you'd like any extra information or have any questions, please feel free to ask. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: e^1 on November 15, 2014, 12:28:55 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20018 Discrete Maths and Operations Research

Workload:   3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  Four written assignments (20%), and a 3-hour written examination (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available:  Exams from 2009-2013 were given, but without answers on LMS. Charl encouraged to ask questions instead.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Dr Charl Ras

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: P

Comments:
A step-up from first year:
I thought I would pass through by cramming, which I would do with Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra last semester. This was not the case at all. There is quite a good amount of proof that you will need to comprehend and do if you want to truly understand the course, which I struggled at. So as a good measure you probably want to spend a good amount of time understanding the proofs you are given, and get decent at writing proofs (eg. proof by contradiction). Speaking of this, it may appear strange that this subject is more applied based, far from being abstract compared to first year math subjects. So I guess if you are into pure mathematics, you may not enjoy this subject and otherwise if you are into solving practical problems.

What is operations research?
Well, it is simply about using mathematical methods to find solutions, or making better decisions towards real-life problems. As an introduction to this field, you are taught linear programming, and how to solve a linear program (LP) using the Simplex Method. Solving non-linear or integer programs are not taught, due to its general difficulty in finding its solution. If you want to learn that then you can pursue more subjects about operations research.

You are also taught some concepts of discrete math, including finding the shortest paths, a bit of graph theory, systems of dividing things fairly and some voting systems. The lecturer, Charl Ras seemed friendly, at least when I attended his lectures up to the later weeks. He would regularly ask questions regarding a problem (of course, the same people respond and everyone stays silent... including me, ha).

Weeks 1-6: Operations Research
As mentioned above, you will learn what linear programming is about, as well as the Simplex Method. The methods covered in the Simplex Method is rather straightforward (given that you have done tons of calculations before), so you will probably want to understand the process and why it works (eg. the Fundamental Theorem of Linear Programming). You will also learn about sensitivity analysis (parametric changes), which deals with how the solution changes if you alter a linear program. Overall, I found to be the easier than the discrete portion of the course. If you slept in Linear Algebra, you might also sleep in this portion too (if you just want to calculate like me).

Second half of semester: Discrete Math
Various concepts are taught, broken up into four sections:

Activity networks: You have a problem where you want to find a minimum amount of time to get from A to B, where activities/tasks between them require previous tasks to be completed before they can start. That is basically what problems you solve in this part of the course. You also learn how to find shortest paths, and the betweenness centrality (a method for finding the importance of a node connected to other nodes). Compared to the rest of these sections, you just had to follow methods to achieve your answer. Easy as that.

Graph theory and scheduling: Finding the vertex chromatic number (minimum of colours of a graph so that no adjacent edge/node has the same colour), bipartite graphs, and finding which jobs to assign to people according to their abilities (as an example). There is some proof here which threw me off, which was made worse by not attending lectures and getting behind. So if you are new to graph theory and proofs, you probably want to keep up with the content.

Fair division: You are taught different ways to distribute portions of goods fairly/equally to other people. This part is more subjective, as you are required to explain why a system is not envy free, equitable etc.

Voting systems: I found this to be the most interesting of all the discrete math topics, despite having no interest in politics. In this part you are taught 5 voting systems--most of them relatively basic--as well as some principles which makes a voting system fair to both candidates and voters.

I found this part of the subject to be more difficult, mainly due to its broadness and lack of interrelations between the sections.

Tutorials and assignments:
I had a rather friendly and approachable tutor (A. Kumar), and unlike Vector Calculus I was far more interested in coming to these tutes because of it. Other than that, these tutes are a good warmup for the concepts taught and so it's probably worth coming to them.

As well as some typical calculating work , you are also given proofs to solve in the four assignments. I found these questions to be the most difficult of all, but there was usually only one in each assignment. If you've been paying attention the rest of the questions should be similar to the example questions shown in lectures. Each one is worth 5%, and were usually marked out of 50-60.

Exams:
You are permitted to bring a scientific calculator and a one double-sided A4 sheet of notes to the exam. As for past exams, they are provided on the LMS without its answers. Charl simply suggested us to ask questions, in person or through e-mail if we had any problems. As for the actual exam, I found the exam to be fairly reasonable (even if I choked).

I will probably be expecting a poor mark, but that was not the reason why I rated this subject 3.5/5 (lol). To me at least, you may want to spend a consistent amount of time studying the proofs, and why this is that. I found this to be the most difficult, so get a good idea on how to do proofs and understand them. As a consequence of this, I also regret not spending enough time on this subject; I concede that the study demand for it was higher compared to first years. But don't let this put you off, of course (just be consistent and you'll be fine). This subject might give you an indication if you like solving real life problems, or if operations research is for you.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Renaissance on November 15, 2014, 06:23:33 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1

Workload: 24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorials. Total Time Commitment: 170 hours

Assessment:  2 assignments due in weeks 6 and 11 worth 10% each. Final written exam worth 80%. Yes, 80%... how stupid.

Lectopia Enabled: The lectures aren't recorded but the lecturer recorded the lectures in his own time.

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 with solutions, the rest without solutions. I found the past exams useless since the exam had nothing to do with them, it was so much harder.

Textbook Recommendation: I didn't buy the textbook, it is Australian so it is too expensive, can't find it on Amazon.

Lecturer(s): Dr Jordan Neyland. He is American. I don't like this guy because of the terrible exam he made.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 2.

Rating: 0 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: I don't know yet, probably something terrible... really hope there is scaling. I did this subject because I thought it was easy but it will most likely drag my GPA down which is very depressing. When I finished the exam I was seriously contemplating dropping out of university. That is how depressed this subject made me.

Comments:

This is by far the worst subject I have ever done in my life, including all the subjects I did in K to 12.

The lecturer is really boring and uses stone age teaching methodology. The content is incredibly boring, most boring, uninteresting, uninspiring, etc. thing I have ever had the displeasure to study.

I had so much fun in my other subjects but this subject made me depressed at times. The thing is that I didn't need to do this subject at all but I guess it was just bad decision making on my part to take this as breadth.

The final exam was terrible. ~50% of the exam was about 1 topic, dividends, and that topic wasn't covered well. The exam was very tricky and had nothing to do with past exams.

The tutorials were terrible and the tutor was mostly clueless. The tutorial questions were too easy compared to the exam.

This is finance, which is meant to be practical, but after you complete this subject, you will be as clueless as you ever were going into the stock market. The final exam is worth 80% which is just stupid. Top universities usually test students throughout the semester using problem sets, projects, assignments, etc. and the final is usually worth like 25% because that is a more accurate form of assessment. I don't know what is wrong with the finance department for using stone age teaching techniques... but I think I am generalising here since this is just 1 subject.

I will not do commerce subjects for breadth anymore.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst experience ever and 10 being the best, I would rate taking this subject a solid 0. I should have withdrawn from it when I had the chance.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Strawberry101 on November 15, 2014, 04:06:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: SCIE30002: Science and Technology Internship 

More information can be found here at the Science student centre website.. it might be even more helpful than the handbook entry.

Workload:

Contact Hours: 80-100 hours placement, 2-hour induction, 6 hours pre-placement, 2 hours mid-placement, 6 hours post-placement
Total Time Commitment:
Estimated Total Time Commitment of 120-144 hours

Assessment: 
(Click on the spoiler to read what I have to say about each assessment)

In general, there weren't clear guidelines on what was expected of us from each assessment. This meant that no one knew what was expected of us in our essays, and when we went to hand them in everyone had written about different things, but in the end I think this was fine. Janet seemed more interested in reading our varied responses, and people got high marks as long as they had something decent, I don't think she deducted marks from people because they deviated from what she had intended.

2,000-word career case-study based on an information interview with an employee in your placement organization, due mid-semester (40%);
So Janet gives us a question sheet with possible questions we can ask our interviewee. You get to pick who you interview, but I recommend you interview the most senior person you can, you will get the most valuable information from them.

I think Janet's questions focused on what students can do to improve their chances of being employed once they graduate. Personally my interview went in the direction of why it is so difficult for science students to find empolyment, and so I wrote about that in my case study.

Other people had other focuses in their case studies and I'm sure it was fine.

15-minute individual presentation on a work-related or discipline specific topic, presented late in the semester (20%);
A solo oral presentation at the end of the semester. I hate oral presentations but this one was fine because:
a) You are doing it solo
b) You will just be talking about your internship experience, which is really easy

So most people just gave a broad intro as to what they did during the semester. It was actually really interesting to listen to, because everyone went to different places to work. Most people then went on to talk about the differences between uni and work, and the differences between expectations and their experience. Seriously, most people actually over time because of how much they had to say!

So my advice is to actually keep an eye on time, because Janet didn't actually push people to stay within the time limit and she deducted marks for going over.

2,000 word post-placement essay addressing the connections between your BSc course learning and work placement learning, due at the beginning of the examination period (40%);
This essay is about reflecting upon what you've learnt from your university classes vs your internship. My headings were along the lines of "Technical Skills", "Soft skills", etc.

Wasn't very hard at all and a lot of the content was shared with my talk.

80 hours of satisfactory work placement, confirmed by placement supervisor (hurdle);
I think this is done by emailing your supervisor and confirming that you spent atleast 80hrs at the internship.

So this subject is very time intensive. It's not like all the other subjects that have 80% of the time as "Self study", for this subject you actually have to show up at a place as if you were working there. Some people did 1 x 8hr day a week (for 10 weeks), some people did 2 x 4hr days.. it really depends. It's between you and your host to figure this part out

Seminar attendance of 80% (hurdle).
The worst part of this subject was attending mandatory "seminars" (2hr lecture). These only occured twice a week for the first two weeks of uni (and then once or twice in the semester before the end of semester where we had to listen to other peoples presentation). I don't think they were that useful. They consisted of life pro tips and a personality test. I think the useful content could have been condensed down into a single seminar. None the less we had to go to them.

None of the content was examinable.


Lectopia Enabled:  The only lectures we had were the "induction" ones at the start on semester. They weren'tcontent heavy at all and the lectures would be put up online. The induction lectures were really just to help you transition from university to a workplace environment.

Past exams available:  No exams! See: Assessment.

Lecturer(s): Janet Hergt

Janet was really lovely. She was great at answering emails and she was keen for us to get the most out of our internships, while also being realistic. I think she is currently marking our final essay reports while on holiday!!

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014


But can be taken in Semester 1.

Rating:  5/5

Would highly recommend to people.

Your Mark/Grade: ??????????????????

Comments:

So what is the internship subject about? Well, I think it complements the Science Research Project subject. Is that the word? What I mean is that if you are not interested in doing a research project during your semester, but would rather experience a workplace environment, this is probably the subject for you. Unlike the Science Research project where you legitimately have to do a project, this subject focuses more on the working part.

Some people actually did do projects, and lucky for them they didn;t have to a write up. However many people actually went out and "worked", whether it be as a junior person in a team at a plant, in a research lab or helping people design and build things. It was really very varied, and the options are limitless. Personally I did my internship in a "workplace" environment, and I did get to participate in some projects.

I would definitely recommend people do this subject. It gives you real life contacts outside of uni, and if you wanted to do an internship during summer/winter, you might as well do it during uni for credit! You won't get paid (you can't get uni credit and payment at the same time), but this might you more appealing to hosts, because they won't have to pay you AND they know you're doing it for credit (so you're committed to doing well).

It's a huge time sink though. I did 8hrs A WEEK at my host for this subject.My other subjects like like, 3 x 1hr lecture and that was it. So it's a big undertaking. Maybe do it when you have 3 subjects rather than 4.

As for picking your host, you should be picky and dedicate lots of time to finding a host, it's like finding a job, but don't be super desperate and pick the first host that accepts you, I think you should have a good think and talk to the host more, because there were people who were unhappy with their placement at the end of the semester (due to expectations =/ reality).

People went to so many different places to work, it was awesome. When picking a host I would aim super high and hope for the best. :) It can be daunting being a uni student and working with super smart people, but as Janet often tells us, we were only there for the semester, and so it's ok if we mess up. :P

If you're serious about taking this subject, go to the info sesh they have for good tips. This subject is for people more curious about how working works, rather than how research works. You should do the Science Research Project if you're into that.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on November 15, 2014, 04:16:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30001 Stochastic Modelling

Workload: 3x one-hour lectures, 1x one-hour practice class

Assessment: 2x assignments (10% each), three-hour exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture for the document camera.

Past exams available: Yes, from 2009, mostly with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: The recommended text is "Elements of Stochastic Modelling" by K. Borovkov (one of the faculty members here at Melbourne). No need to buy it. Everything you need is in the lecture notes.

Lecturer(s): Dr Nathan Ross

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This subject is a core unit for the Statistics and Stochastic Processes major, and an optional unit for Applied Mathematics. It's far more theoretical than you might expect a "modelling" subject to be, with plenty of formal definitions, theorems and proofs (although no need to produce any proofs in the exam or assignments). All of the examples in the tutorials and assignments were toy problems designed to illustrate the maths rather than realistically describe anything in the real world.

The basic principle of stochastic modelling is that you have a set of probabilistic rules describing how a system changes from one state to the next - similar to how ordinary differential equations provide rules for how a system evolves in time, but in a stochastic process, there is randomness involved. In this course we mostly looked at processes where the rules depend only on the current state of the system. These are called Markov chains (or Markov processes). We also focussed on systems where the state space was discrete, although possibly infinite.

For each kind of system covered in the course, we looked at long-run average behaviour (what is the chance of observing a system in a given state?) and the probability of particular events happening - for example, all servers being busy in a queuing system, or a gambler reaching a particular level of winnings before losing all of his money. There was a brief foray into Markov decision theory, which is about making decisions that affect the behaviour of a system in order to maximise some goal (the examples we saw were expected winnings in a game of chance, or expected profit in a house sale). I would have liked to have seen these ideas developed further!

Throughout the course, Nathan kept mentioning that to solve more interesting problems with these methods, you needed to do computer simulations. In light of this, I was disappointed that there was absolutely no computational aspect to this course.

The topics we covered were:
- discrete-time Markov chains (4 weeks)
- Markov decision theory (sadly, only one lecture)
- Poisson processes (1 week)
- continuous-time Markov chains (2 weeks)
- queuing theory (1 week)
- renewal theory (1 week)
- Brownian Motion (2 weeks)

Lectures: Nathan is very American, talks slowly, pronounces "zed" as "zee", and occasionally makes jokes - which is confusing, because he never sounds like he's joking. But he also explains concepts clearly, draws plenty of pictures and provides examples. The lectures go into more detail than what's written on the lecture slides; a typical lecture would cover 6–8 slides.

The worst aspect of the lectures was the timetabling: two at 9am and one at 4:15 on Friday afternoons! Lecture attendance had to compete with sleeping in and going to the pub, and since the lectures were recorded, I skipped almost a third of them. Apparently previous years have been similarly unpleasant and the draft timetable for 2015 has all of the lectures and the practice class at 9am.

Tutorials: I didn't go to a single one of the practice classes. This was a mistake, as when it came to study for the exam, I found that the tutorial problems had a variety of new and difficult problems on them and it would have been nice to have thought about them a bit earlier in semester.

Assessment: The two assignments were fairly simple, but like most maths subjects, the bulk of the assessment came from the exam. Tutorial problems and past exams are the best guide of what to expect, although this year's exam was longer and harder than I was anticipating (I think I only attempted 85% of it).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Renaissance on November 15, 2014, 05:32:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2

Workload:  Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week. Total Time Commitment: 170 hours

Assessment:  4 assignments due every 2-3 weeks through the semester each worth 5%. Final written examination worth 80%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Sadly, no.

Past exams available:  Yes, 4, with answers.

Textbook Recommendation:

There is no textbook for this subject but I highly recommend these free textbooks:
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcI/CalcI.aspx
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcII/CalcII.aspx
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/DE/DE.aspx
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/CalcIII.aspx
They are extremely useful and cover and explain the material better than the lectures.

Lecturer(s): Dr Christine Mangelsdorf, Dr Antoinette Tordesillas and one other lecturer whose name I don't know. Dr Christine Mangelsdorf is by far the best. She goes straight to the point and doesn't waste time. Dr Antoinette Tordesillas over-complicates things.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 2.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet received.

Comments:

I think too much time was spent on the introductory topics, that is, limits, sequences and series, hyperbolic functions, complex numbers and integration, which were mostly covered well in high school. 6 weeks were spent on these topics, which was very boring. Things got more interesting in weeks 6 to 12 but I think the introductory topics could have been covered in the first 2 weeks and more time spent on the remaining topics.

This subject mostly involves mechanical work, once you know the method, it is quite easy to apply it to different problems, unlike say linear algebra or real analysis, which are much more conceptual.

I was going to do accelerated maths 2 but it is too difficult and as an engineering major I don't really need to do it but this subject is too easy in comparison. I would love if there was something in-between accelerated maths 2 and calculus 2.

The assignments are very easy but marked harshly, which is understandable. The final exam isn't all that difficult but you have to be fast to complete it.

I am not a big fan of take home assignments. People copy of each other or simply copy of the internet. I see them copying in the library, in the lecture theater, etc. Take home assignments test who you know, not what you know. I am however a big fan of problems sets and quizzes but doing quizzes in lectures wouldn't be possible I guess, or just too expensive. I don't like that assignments are every 2-3 weeks. It would have been better if there were weekly assignments. I am also not a fan of the maths departments 80% "policy". That is just ridiculous. A final exam should never be worth 80%. May be 20% for assignments, 20% for mid-semester test and 60% for final. That would be reasonable.

I like that there are heaps of applications in this subject, that made it much more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

It is very important to do the problem booklet and the past exams and to do them well. There are no tricks in this subject. If you know everything and did the work, you will get a good mark.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: e^1 on November 15, 2014, 07:38:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP10002 Foundations of Algorithms

Workload:  3 x 1-hour lectures and 1 x 2-hour workshop per week.

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available:  No past exams, just a sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation: Moffat, A. (2012). Programming, Problem Solving, and Abstraction with C, Revised Edition. You can buy either the hardcopy or e-book version of it (e-book is somewhat cheaper).

Lecturer(s): Alistair Moffat.

Year & Semester of completion: Semster 2, 2014

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments:
Contrary to the other reviewers of this subject, I found this subject unexciting and dull for the first initial weeks. I was more interested in the algorithms he had to teach, but as an introductory course it is understandable that a lower level programming language (ie. C, and specifically ANSI C) would also be taught in order to get a glimpse of the process behind computers. So if you are new to these kinds of things, then you will probably have an intriguing time.

Alistair Moffat, as you might have heard is a very enthusiastic, engaging and (tries to) humorous lecturer. If you needed an answer from him via e-mail, he would usually respond within less an hour if he wasn't busy. Sadly, I did not bother to come to his lectures after the third week because I found the introductory C content to be in some way, like teaching Python again (from COMP10001). In learning C, you learn its programming constructs, including arrays and pointers. Certain problem solving techniques (divide and conquer, generate and test) are also revised in this subject. I can't say much about workshops either since I stopped attending them from the second week, but surprisingly I found Alistair's textbook to be immensely useful. Initially I was sceptical about buying a textbook which could have been made free (if he gets so little profit from it, and if the content can be found anywhere on the internet), but the book contained almost everything that you need to know for this subject. When I mean the textbook does not cover everything, this includes pattern searching algorithms, like the Knuth-Morris-Pratt string search algorithm and the Boyer-Moore-Horspool algorithm; watch the lectures then. Otherwise, reading its pages alone allowed me to keep up with the content.

Computing algorithms--as you would expect--is the meat of this subject. After all, Alistair's motto is "Algorithms are fun!". Despite this, I found some of his explanations to be unclear (possibly because I was behind) even if I used the textbook. As a supplement I would use other websites to learn how they worked. If it helps, here are the websites that I used:

With this clarification, I found to appreciate algorithms and what Alistair really meant (although he should change his motto, how long has he held that for?). It gave computing more than just mere "instruction-telling" to a computer expressed as a programming language.

Mid-semester test:
As the name says, it isn't worth much (10%) but you should do well if you've have studied up to this point. For us, I believed we had ours in week 5 or 6. Topics covered included using basic programming constructs of C (iteration statements, pointers, arrays, control statements etc.) as well as the Big-O notation. I didn't particularly do well in this but it wasn't hard either.

Assignments and exam:
The assignments were fairly interesting (not as fun as COMP10001 was imo). The first assignment involved finding the relevance of a text file based on a query, like a Google search for instance. Simple use of algorithms were encouraged, and so was more of a C programming exercise than anything else. The second was creating a program which could hold a binary search tree, and I found this to be more slightly "algorithmic". These assignments I believe will help you practise on your C language, although I wished the assignments involved the use of more complex algorithmic approaches to solve a problem. Moreover, I found these assignments to be a bit straightforward and thus lacking in creativity. When I say this, I compare them to the COMP10001's Daifugo assignment for example.

Now, the exams. Although there was only a sample exam, doing exercises in the textbook or gaining programming proficiency in some other ways sufficed to prepare you for most of it. As Alistair had mentioned, there would be a few last questions which very few could answer, so this shouldn't surprise you too much when you go to your actual exam. Otherwise, the rest seemed fair and reasonable.

Note that I have rated this subject 3/5, and could have rated it lower. The main reason for this being the appreciation of algorithms that I found through the semester. I wished the subject had provided a greater density towards teaching algorithms, but as I have mentioned teaching a language like C would help those pursuing computing majors into learning C++, as well as getting a closer grip behind computers etc. Regardless, I had some initial familiarity with C# and a tiny bit of C before the start of this subject.


Fun.stuff.goes.here():
Thought bubble-sort was bad? Then you might not have heard of Bozo sort...
Bozo Sort
And although insertion sort is a generally slow sorting algorithm ( average case), I thought it sounded [strangely] pleasant.
Insertion Sort


EDIT:
I have had someone ask  for past exams and questions for this subject. I do not have them anymore, sorry.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: teexo on November 15, 2014, 09:26:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10002: Introductory Financial Accounting

Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial a week

Assessment: Individual assignment (25%), tutorial participation (5%), 3hr exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: None, but there were many practice topic questions available on the LMS

Textbook Recommendation: Introductory financial accounting, the book is very unappealing as it is black and white.. I bought it and barely touched it, in the rare moments where I did open the textbook I found it confusing to find things and there was way too much info. Lecture slides and tutorial work were more than enough to help you through this subject.

Lecturer(s): Greg Cusack

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I'm back to review another accounting subject! Don't judge me but I enjoyed this subject, mainly because I also enjoyed VCE accounting and ARA, and this subject was quite similar to both.

IFA mainly focuses on double entry accounting but there is a lot to remember. VCE accounting students will cruise through about weeks 2-5 as it's just double entry with a few differences. The last few weeks though, you'll get hit with new content and it starts to get messier and more complicated.

A lot of people I knew said Greg, the lecturer, was similar to a high school principal because he tells people off for chatting and using their phones during his lecture. At moments he also tells us to put down our pens so he can have our full attention haha apart from all this though, I honestly think he is a great lecturer. If you did VCE accounting, you'll probably find some of his explanations of simple double entries very long and boring, but when you get to the new content you'll find that these long explanations are actually extremely helpful.

Tutorials are also very useful, especially if you get a tutor who knows the subject inside out like the tutor I was lucky enough to have. Definitely pay attention in tutes because the questions you do in them are similar to the ones you'll get in the exam, so it's important that you understand how to do those type of questions and get your tutor to clarify anything that confuses you. If you struggle with tute questions, you'll struggle with the exam. Simple as that.

I recommend the subject to those who are pursuing an accounting career, or those who have done accounting in the past, especially those who did well in it in VCE and enjoyed it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 15, 2014, 10:11:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: ITAL10002: Italian 4 (also ITAL20008: Italian 4)

The two subject codes relate to whether you're taking the subject as a first year or a second year (or more accurately as a level 1 or a level 2 subject - this may be important for breadth reasons).

Workload:
Contact Hours: 4 hours. 1 x 2-hour seminar and 2 x 1-hour seminar.
- The two hour seminar is your language class, with a focus on reading and writing about a particular topic or theme. The one hour seminar is your grammar class, focussing solely on learning and consolidating grammar points. The tutorial is your conversation class, obviously focussing on developing your speaking and listening skills.
Total Time Commitment: 8 hours per week, including 4 hours of class time. Total 96 hours.

Assessment:

Under university protocol the assessment needs to be unique for each subject code, even if the subjects themselves are essentially the same. You will notice that the only difference in assessment is that second year students also need to fill out an online reflective diary over the course of the semester.

ITAL10002
This subject has the following hurdle requirements: Regular participation in tutorials is required with a minimum of 75% attendance. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day and in-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked.

ITAL20008
This subject has the following hurdle requirements: Regular participation in tutorials is required with a minimum of 75% attendance. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day and in-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked.

Lectopia Enabled: No, as there are no lectures in the subject. Grammar slides will be made available on the LMS after each grammar class.

Past exams available: No.

Textbook Recommendation: (same as Italian 3)
You will also need to purchase a subject reader which will be used throughout the semester.

The textbook is absolutely essential as you will be working through it over the course of the semester. The student activities manual is not necessary, but you have to buy the textbook and the workbook together so you'll end up buying that too. The student activities manual is not used in class but can be used as revision. Given the lack of revision material for this subject, I'd recommend using this book over the course of the semester anyway.

Obviously you don't necessarily have to have the Collins bilingual dictionary - any will suffice. I use the Garzanti bilingual dictionary, recommended by my teachers at high school since the Italians tend to do a better job at translating English than we do translating Italian :P. It's a really expensive dictionary but since I've used it a lot over an extended period of time, I've got my use out of it. While it's an amazing dictionary, it's probably not worth it if you're studying Italian only in the short term. You're not allowed to use a dictionary in the mid-semester test or the exam, only the take-home assignments. The use of an online translator is strictly prohibited and may result in the cancellation of your enrolment at the university.

Lecturer(s):

As I said, there are no lectures in this subject but Elisabetta Ferrari took both language groups* this semester.

* Note: The two seminar classes are streamed together. When preparing a timetable, make sure you look at the repeats - if the repeat number is the same, the classes are linked. Conversation classes are not linked.

Francesca Isaia took the conversation classes this semester.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This was still my favourite subject at university this semester, although Italian 4 was not quite as amazing as Italian 3 was last semester. That being said, it was still a pretty awesome breadth subject to take and very easy to do well in. Definitely worth considering if you'd like to learn a language but are intimidated by the difficulty - Italian is a pretty easy language to learn anyway, but the assessment structure and the staff make it a whole heap easier. This subject is the equivalent to Year 12 Italian but it's much easier to do well in compared to taking Italian in VCE.

The grammar points we learnt this semester were:

Perhaps it was because I already knew most of the grammar points taught in Italian 3 prior to enrolling in it, but I found this semester focussed much more on learning new grammar points. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but one of the differences I happened to observe across both of the semesters.

I think 95% of what I said in my Italian 3 review pretty much applies to this review, so make sure you check it out if you haven't already. I'll just describe a few more key differences between Italian 3 and Italian 4.

The structure of the assessment is pretty much identical, with the exception of a five minute oral presentation this semester, worth 10% of your grade. The oral presentation is not at all like the oral exam in VCE - in this subject you just sign up for a particular topic and deliver a presentation to your conversation class. Generally speaking the topics relate to one of the texts you've looked at in your language class, but there were a few other topics as well. Some are creative, others require you to talk about a specific person or thing. You're not supposed to prepare a speech beforehand but most people do anyway (including myself) and memorise it in such a way that it sounds off-the-cuff. You're allowed a few cue cards or notes (which you submit to the teacher so they have a record of the assessment), but you'll fail if you read straight off them. As long as you make sure you address the key criteria, it's not particularly difficult to score well in. One big area where people tended to lose marks was for the class participation requirement - you need to involve your class in your discussion in some way. I created a Prezi presentation, some chose to draw diagrams on the whiteboard over the course of their presentation, others with food-related topics actually cooked the food and brought it in for us to eat! A couple of people did nothing though and consequently lost marks. For the sake of the rest of the class listening to you, try to do something interesting and a bit different to make your presentation more engaging. Given the small class sizes it shouldn't be too intimidating.

I think the main difference I found between the semesters was the quality and usefulness of the conversation class. Last semester, it was a class I couldn't wait for each week; this semester they weren't anywhere near as good. They heeded the advice of reducing the amount of reliance on technology, but failed to provide enough adequate activities to work through - consequently we would finish them all with 20 minutes to spare and people would just start talking in English again. Unfortunately I think Francesca also had a competing commitment that slightly clashed with my conversation class which meant that she often turned up late as well.

There's a couple of relatively small reasons as to why I've decreased my rating from 4.5 to 4 out of 5 for Italian this semester, but ultimately what's going for it is its relaxed, easy-going nature and high quality teaching staff who are only too happy to help you out. For example, I requested an extension for one of the assignments this semester due to my cousin's wedding and for Elisabetta to give it to me with no questions asked was just a breath of fresh air from all the bureaucracy that's only too endemic in Science/Biomedicine subjects. Generally speaking, Italian 4 marks the end of the journey for most breadth students, since Italian 5 departs from grammar and takes on a very strong literary flavour to it. That's largely due to the fact that you've basically been taught all the grammar you'll ever need to know by now. I'm not sure if it's the end of the road for me just yet, but it has been an enriching year made all the better with the ongoing help and support from Elisabetta. I literally cannot thank her enough for taking my Italian to a whole new level. That's all I got to say for now, but as always if you'd like any extra information or have any questions, please feel free to ask. In bocca al lupo! (Good luck! :P )
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: notveryasian on November 16, 2014, 01:22:58 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1

Workload: 4 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 classroom tutorial per week, 1 computer lab tutorial per week

Assessment: 3 online assessment tasks worth 6% in total, 3 written assignments worth 9% in total, 45 minute MATLAB test worth 5%, and a 3 hour exam worth 80% (no calc)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 6 past exams along with a long list of exam questions. No solutions are given.

Textbook Recommendation: The textbook for the subject was "Elementary Linear Algebra: Applications Version, 10th Edition" by Anton and Rorres however the lecture notes are all you need.

Lecturer: Paul Norbury

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments:

For a lot of people, Accelerated Mathematics 1 is the first taste of university mathematics. Together with Accelerated Mathematics 2, it covers the content of the three subjects Calculus 2, Linear Algebra and Real Analysis. This subject doesn't quite have the same mathematical rigour as its successor, but still requires a deep level of understanding to get the most out of the subject.

The topics covered were:
Topics 4 and 9 were Calculus 2 topics, topic 3 was a Real Analysis topic and the rest were Linear Algebra topics. The subject covers a lot of material in a short amount of time, so it is important to stay on top of things by completing the questions in the booklet and rocking up to tutes.

Paul is a great lecturer who talks a lot about stuff that isn't on the course, but nevertheless interesting. Some of the things he says can be pretty confusing, but as long as you're understanding the slides then you're all set. He always holds a short break halfway through the lecture, so you always have the chance to ask the person next to you what the hell is going on. Make sure you print out the lecture slides so you can fill in the blanks during the lectures.

There are 3 online assessment tasks during the semester. Each test has a maximum of 10 questions, some of which are short multiple choice, but most of them will require a bit of working with a pen and paper. For each online test, you get 3 attempts and your best attempt is recorded. For the written assignments, you may get a sheet of 8 or so questions, with only a few of the questions being marked. If you are keeping up to date with the homework then you can definitely score quite well in them.

I had a pretty good tutor in this subject. He recognised that almost all the class was far behind so he gave a summary of the previous week's lectures and worked through the set questions with the class. Straight after your class tutorial you generally have your computer lab session, where you learn some of the basics of the software program MATLAB, and some applications of the stuff you do in class. At the end of semester, there is a 45 minute MATLAB test worth 5%. Around half of the test is quite easy, while the rest of it involves some tricky code or function that is hard to get working.

The 3 hour long exam might be daunting at first, but it isn't as bad as it seems. There are plenty of practice exams and practice questions which prepare you well for the real thing. If you can be up to date with the problem sets by the start of the mid semester break, you're can definitely set yourself up for a good mark.

So if you're thinking about taking this subject, be aware that it is very fast, and you will have to work hard so you don't fall behind. However, the hard work pays off and it can be a very rewarding subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cameronp on November 18, 2014, 12:07:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30027 Modern Applied Statistics

Workload: 3x one-hour lectures, 1x one-hour computer lab per week.

Assessment: 6x minor assignments, for a total of 20%. Three hour exam, 80%.

Lectopia Enabled: Nope. No lecture notes online, either.

Past exams available: Yes, but they're useless since the content changed completely this year. We were given a practice exam instead.

Textbook Recommendation: No required textbook. Everything you need to know is in the lectures.

Lecturer(s): Dr Owen Jones

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This is an optional unit for the Statistics and Stochastic Processes major, but if you intend to seriously pursue statistics, you should take it. At last you'll get to learn about statistical techniques from the latter half of the 20th century. (Want to see 21st century techniques? You'll need to do a Masters!) This is the first year that Owen Jones taught the course - previously it was Guoqi Qian - and the content has changed completely, from covering a lot of material with little depth, to covering two methods in glorious detail.

The first half of the course is on Generalised Linear Models. These have a silly name, because General Linear Models (note the lack of "ised") are also a thing that exists, but are different. These provide a theory which encompasses a whole bunch of different regression techniques: linear regression, binomial regression, Poisson regression, multinomial regression... The material is quite technical and has a lot of formulas and methods you need to know for dealing with different types of data.

The second half of the course is on Bayesian statistics. I really enjoyed this part of the course, because it was totally unlike anything I'd seen before. Rather than treating the parameter values in your model as being fixed and the data as being subject to random errors, you treat the data as being fixed and the parameter values as being subject to random variation. This provides a completely different but mathematically elegant approach to statistics, which can be expressed intuitively as "I am updating my beliefs about the model based on observed data". The actual equations end up being impossible to solve exactly most of the time, but we went into detail on the methods to calculate them numerically (Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and the Gibbs Sampler). These numerical methods are quite general and allow you far more flexibility with your statistical models than traditional methods (which have assumptions like "this thing has a normal distribution" already baked into the formulas you use). It's a shame that nobody at Melbourne Uni does much Bayesian stats, because I would love to learn more about this.

There were also a couple of interludes on computational methods, covering numerical optimisation and simulating random variables of different distributions. None of it is particularly tricky but if you haven't done any computer programming at all it might catch you out. I slept through these lectures because I (thought I) had seen it all before. But don't think "oh this computer stuff will never turn up in the exam" - we had questions where we had to describe an algorithm in words and describe what a piece of code would do.

Lectures: Most of the subject is taught in the old fashioned "copy down everything from the blackboard" way, which I like. It means that the course can't go any faster than the speed of handwriting, which is important when tricky mathematical proofs are involved. Unfortunately, Owen's handwriting is terrible. So are the jokes that he tells (at one point he tried to make a bilingual pun in Latin and English).

Computer labs: Not particularly exciting, but some of these introduce new material as well as providing a more practical/applied take on the course. Some of the exam questions had a striking resemblance to problems from the labs.

Exam: You're allowed to bring in a page of handwritten notes which means that there's no memory work. The exam had a little bit of plugging things into equations but was mostly testing conceptual understanding. So that's nice. Which is not to say that the exam was easy!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on November 18, 2014, 11:41:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30009 Structural Theory and Design

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture, 1x one-hour lecture, 1x one-hour tutorial per week, 1 single lab class in week 11.

Assessment:
3x "Home Lab" Group Assignments (5% each)
Week 11 Lab Sheet (5%)
Design (Group) Assignment (10%)
3 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Yes, and fully worked solutions are provided dating back to 2010 (*fist-pump*).

Textbook Recommendation: Nada

Lecturer(s): Elisa Lumantarna

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A difficult and immense but well-taught subject that acts as a great precursor to Masters.

Comments:
This subject is a lot of work and pretty tough, but it is really well taught and well organised. The prerequisites of this subject are Eng Materials and Eng Mechanics, and it draws from both of these subjects and uses them as a basis to build upon for structural engineering. This is the first subject in a series of three ST&D subjects which continue into the Master of Engineering Civil and Structural streams, so, despite being a third year subject, it remains somewhat introductory in terms of its complexity. Therefore, nothing in the subject is too difficult conceptually, but there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of stuff to remember.

Lectures
Elisa gives most of the lectures and is fantastic. If you're going into this subject you probably already know that from doing Eng Materials.

She basically finds a way to take all the overly confusing statics stuff taught in Engineering Mechanics (e.g. deflection, indeterminate systems etc.) and presents it in a far more barebones, straightforward, and useful manner. She's really good at explaining the content and illustrating concepts with diagrams.

Elisa is also really quick and diligent in answering questions and addressing concerns both on the discussion board and via email. I always appreciate lecturers/coordinators who actually give a shit, because that is a quality that has been distinctly lacking in some of the other subjects I've done (hello SMD and Imaging).

I guess the only thing I could be critical of is the design of the lecture slides. Sometimes there were just way too many things on a single slide and it could all get a bit jumbled. I've put an example of this below in the spoiler tag where the stuff shown on this single slide really would be more effective as four separate ones. That said, the design of all examples and figures in the slides were very good.

Clutter
(http://i.imgur.com/sOk37cz.png)

Tutorials
I've come to realise that tutes are often the worst (or at least the most tedious) part of engineering subjects. They basically just consist of the tutor doing the week's problems on the board whilst the (overfilled) class copies down their workings with little (if any) interaction. I pretty much stopped showing up in the second half of semester. This was both because I didn't feel there was much value in it, attendance wasn't marked, and I was occupied with the wonderful SMD assignments.

Assignments
My experience of the assignments was basically a microcosm of my experience with the subject at large: not too difficult, but lots of work. All the assignments (bar the small lab report) are done in self-formed groups of three. I'm not always a great fan of group work, but when you can choose you're own group and your group members are reliable it takes the pressure off a bit.

The home lab assignments were pretty cool. They basically involved taking some of the theoretical concepts learnt in the lectures and designing your own system to test their accuracy. The first one was on beam deflection, the second on beam design, and the third on concrete column design. These weren't too much work, but the "250 words" claim in the handbook is BS. They are more work than that would seem to suggest.

The design assignment is probably the biggest thing that you're intended to take out of this subject – and in saying that, it's kind of silly that its only worth 10% (should be at least 20). You basically have to do a preliminary design of all of the structural elements for a mezzanine balcony type structure: slab, beams, columns etc. When first presented, this sounds a little intimidating, but your hand is kind of held all the way through it. Again, lots of work, not too difficult.

The only issue I had with the assignments is that the marking took quite a while. I think the longest wait for a mark was probably about 6 weeks, and the shortest would be 4. The feedback received is also quite minimal.

Exam
After doing most of the past exams made available, I found the exam set for this semester to probably the most difficult one. It was fair, but they seemed to introduced a higher degree of complexity into some of the questions that would usually be pretty simple and stock standard, which wasn't much appreciated by me. I think I did okay though.

Overall
This is a really solid subject. As I've said, it's well taught, well coordinated, and well constructed. That said, it is also a tough subject. There is lots of content and lots of assignments, so you really need to keep up during semester to avoid the requirement for an enormous cram session in SWOTVAC.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cnguyen599 on November 19, 2014, 04:44:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: ZOOL20006 Comparative Animal Physiology 

Workload: 3x 1 hour lecture per week (sometimes less), 5x 3 hour practicals, 1x 3 hour CAL lab (towards end of semester).   

Assessment: 2x written task sheets (15%), 1x scientific report (20%), 1x 3 hour written exam (multiple choice, short answer, extender answer) (65%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes. 3x short + extended answer section (no answers), 1x multiple choice section (answers).

Textbook Recommendation: Hill, Wyse & Anderson, Animal Physiology, 3rd Ed, Sinauer Associates Inc. 2012.
I didn't use it all that much to be honest. Only used it as a substitute when I wanted to clarify something or when the lecture recordings were down. Also used it as reference for my prac report; though a very minor part. *Cough* Download *Cough*

Lecturer(s):
Laura Parry
Tim Jessop
Andrew Allen
Angelina Fong
Mark Green
Kathryn Hassell

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014.

Rating: 4.5/5

Comments:
If anyone has done Human Physiology, this subject is REALLY similar. Pretty much all the concepts you covered in Human Phys will be transferrable to this subject, or vice versa, but I feel Human Phys goes into much more detail. With that said, even though they are similar that does not mean you can skip them due to the many animal related examples you are expected to remember.

Some of the topics I covered (in order) include:

. Adaptation, acclimation, acclimatization, homeostasis (2 lectures)
. Hormones and pathways of hormone action (1 lecture, though similar content is also found in other topics)
. Osmoregulation (3 lectures)
. Stress response (2 lectures)
. Nutrition and metabolism (2 lectures)
. Thermoregulation (1 lecture)
. Cardiovascular system (3 lectures)
. Neural (3 lectures)
. Respiritory system (2 lectures) 
. Reproduction (2 lectures)
. Environmental impacts on reproduction (2 lectures)

LECTURES
The lecture content is not all too tough. Unlike first year Biology however, you would want to remember all the examples they give you. Examples are your friends, because you can use them as part of your answers in your exams. Also, compared with my other subjects, there are fewer lectures which you will have to study. Throughout the semester you will get these research lectures which are basically a “you might find this interesting” lecture. While you don’t have to remember everything about these lectures in super detail, using the content in these lectures as examples in the exam (short answer or long answer) will get you extra marks according to what I was told by the lecturers. So I encourage those who are doing the subjects to not skip out on them.  But if you find you don’t have enough study time to go through them, don’t stress. Surprisingly by the last 3 weeks you would usually only get 2 lectures a week or less (also happened a few times during semester as well), giving you a chance to catch up if you need to or start early preparation for your exams; but seriously don’t fall behind in the first place.

Lecturing quality was pretty consistent. No bad things to say about them really except I was unlucky and there were times where lecture recordings mucked up and there were no replacement lectures. Some lecturers may choose to upload previously recorded lectures online, others do not. So if you rely on lecture recordings (like me!) you have to accept some of the risks. Oh, Laura is also a really great enthusiastic lecturer but will name and shame you if you bust in the front lecture door 15 minutes late. So be respectful and try to come in early or through the back door if you are late.

PRACS AND REPORTS
In place of tests, you get practicals which will teach you how to write scientific reports. Not those ones you did in Chemistry where you just had a brief discussion and conclusion, but ones where you are expected to find academic sources as reference. So get used to using Google Scholar, Melbourne uni discovery and how to read a scientific paper (there should be plenty of resources on the internet). They won’t throw you into the deep end immediately, but will slowly build up to a complete report over time. Each report, builds on from the previous not in the information that you will be discussing, but the sections. E.g. first report was not really a report but was about statistical analysis, the second you had to include an abstract and a result section, the third you had to include abstract, result, and discussion, you get the picture. Those of you with statistics background may have an advantage (I did not do statistics) as you are required to perform some statistical analysis with some of the data you obtain from the practicals. There are instructions that will be posted on the lms, so it shouldn’t be all too bad. But of course if you are confused, you can always use the discussion board or email a lecturer. Go through the reports when you are done very carefully, as you can lose marks for neglecting some small things and finish them ASAP. Given that you are provided with a generous amount of time to finish, you want to submit your papers right on time to receive feedback and improve your next report (late papers won’t receive feedback). Otherwise, you are just doing yourself a disservice. You will not be able to do a good job at the last minute, because the number of readings you have to do and their complexity can be quite intense. As for what I actually did in the pracs, it was pretty neat. Working in groups of 4, I was able to examine the effect of vasotocin on frogs by literally injecting the hormone into cane toads using a needle. I looked at the metabolic rate of mice and bees. I was able to see a “zombie” frog heart beat in a ringer solution. So yes, you will be using live animals instead of looking at plants (not hating on plants, but they are pretty boring). Furthermore, the practicals related to the lecture content, which was fantastic.

The pacing is very chill compared to Chemistry, and therefore you don’t have to rush to get your data; you have 3 hours to do everything which is plenty of time if you work at a regular pace. The tutors are also very kind and easily approachable. This doesn’t mean you should slack off and talk to your neighbour; it just means that you shouldn’t be feeling like you are in an episode of Master Chef. So 5 pracs in total with 1 CAL lab. The last prac (5th) is not assessed, however you will have a compulsory exam question in extended response. This prac required me to examine the development of abnormal gonads in fish, where you basically dissected a fish to examine its gonads and also look at some pre-prepared microscope slides to examine deviations in structure. DRAW OUT WHAT YOU SEE UNDER THE SCOPE!!! TAKE NOTES!!! FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!!! While there may not be an assessed report, they can test you on images and data (further detail when I describe exams). As for CAL labs, you are basically given a simulated experiment on a computer (A “flash game” one of the tutors described it) and answer questions on a task sheet as you progress through. Answer all the questions to the best of your ability, because they too are part of a compulsory exam question in short answer. This reminds me, the other pracs you also get task sheets that have practise exam questions and questions based on the prac. I only did the exam questions because I was lazy, but the questions relating to the prac can give you ideas on what to mention in your report.

EXAM
The exam was very generous. You get 3 hours to an exam worth 65 marks: 20 marks multiple choice (20 questions), 25 marks short answers (5 questions), 20 marks extended (2 questions). So those of you who done Biology first year, it is somewhat similar (I emphasize somewhat). The multiple choice should be a breeze if you studied all the lectures. Unlike Human Phys it is not necessarily these “apply your knowledge” questions, rather recall what you remember from your lectures. So rote learning is the way to go (for all MC and SA and EA). The short answer and extended answer will require you to write quite a bit. They are worth 5 marks a question (for short answer) and 10 marks (for extended answer), so you have to vomit all of that information you studied onto the page to make sure you get full marks. Note however that you are able to choose the 4 questions out of 6 for short answer you want to answer and 1 question out of 2 for extended answer. You have to do one compulsory question based on the prac 5 and CAL for both of these sections. In preparation I was given some practise exam questions on the task sheets (as mentioned before) which they will release example answers along the semester (be warned that they do not release it immediately, for task sheet 4 for example the practise exam answers were released in the week before the exam started). The thing is, that some of the points you mention are worth 0.5 marks instead of the expected 1, so you have to be pretty detailed.

Content from practical 5 and the CAL lab were on the exam so learn those! I made the mistake of just skimming through practical 5 and I had no idea what GSI or HSI units meant for the extended answer question despite it being bolded on the practical manual (everything you need to know should be in these). I also found the compulsory prac 5 question for extended quite tricky. It asked you to describe a table of data (fish characteristics e.g. height, weight, sex, GSI, HSI, etc, same table you would have seen in the prac) and an image (microscopic fish gonad specimens), and then interpret it and how you would test that your interpretations were true. Quite unusual compared to the standard question. I didn’t know exactly what the key things that you had to describe, so I couldn’t focus my answer and just wrote on as many things that I could think off e.g. any trends and relationships between the various variables. In retrospect, I guess it was more testing your knowledge of describing data in pracs. Other prep tools included 3 past exams (only short and extended answer section) no answers and 1 multiple choice exam section with answers released close to exam time. Overall, the exam was super fair and if you study the content thoroughly you can do very well.

There were also these things called animals of the week on lms. I wasn’t sure what they were and no really explained to me their importance until near the exam. Basically, they are more details about some of the examples used in the early lectures. If you were to use them as examples in the exam you would get bonus marks.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall I really liked this subject. It wasn’t all too stressful or complicated, the assessment was fair and I was able to do a lot of cool stuff. Definitely consider it if you are interested in zoology or if you didn’t get into research physiology.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 86 on November 20, 2014, 10:09:34 am
Subject Code/Name: ENEN20002 Earth Processes for Engineering

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

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

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

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

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Andrew Western, Sam Yuen

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2014

Rating:  1 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Unfortunately this is a core subject for Engineering, which is a disappointment because it's a boring and uninspiring at best. You spend the first half of the course pulling your hair out over two veeeerrryyyy long rainfall catchment excel model assignments which aren't even assessed in the final exam or anywhere outside of the assignments. Whether you do the assignments or not makes no difference to exam preparation.

The whole Earth Processes team are a bunch of clowns who are far too concerned with red tape and proper procedure to realise that the subject needs major improvement. The first two assignments are completely unnecessary and actually hinder your ability to learn the first 6 weeks of content. The workshops are an absolute joke even by engineering workshop/tutorial standards. You spend half the time either doing nothing or listening to the tutor talk rubbish, or both. Since there are good worked-solutions available for the tutorials, you're better off going through them in your own time.

The exam structure almost never changes. Knowing this, you can simply spam all the papers out (2009-2013) and you will become very familiar with the questions as they almost always repeat every year. The solutions exist, but the Earth Processes team refuse to make them available because they know people will just memorise the solutions. There are Google Docs floating around with good-enough solutions. Many of the answers conflict with each other but if you work through it you'll be able to figure it out. Additionally, a lot of the exam questions are repeated word-for-word in some lectures. So checking solutions to papers is a matter of finding them in the lectures or using Google Docs. You can find the student-produced Google Docs solutions by searching for ENEN20002 Earth Processes for Engineering on Facebook and joining the group that appears in the search results.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Whynot123 on November 20, 2014, 01:56:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005 Genetics & The Evolution of Life

Workload: 
-   3 x one hour lectures per week
-   1 hour per week of tutorials or workshops
-   2 hours of practical work per fortnight and
-   3 hours per week of e-learning including independent learning tasks, pre and post laboratory activities.

Assessment: 
•   A 45 minute, multiple choice test held mid-semester (10%);
•   A combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class, completion of up to 5 on-line pre-practical tests, written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words and up to 5 short multiple choice tests (25%)
•   An assignment based on the practical content and not exceeding 1000 words (10%) ,
•   Completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%)
•   A 3 hour examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (50%).

A pass in the practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. an 80% attendance at the practical classes together with a result for the assessed practical work of at least 50%).

(Weighting of assessment seems to have changed for 2015, have a look at the handbook for more details)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. No problems here. You should have no problems watching and listening to the lectures at home.

Past exams available:  No, only a sample exam. The sample exam had more section D questions than were on the actual exam.

Textbook Recommendation: 
-   R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2010
-   Prac manual from the co-op bookstore (it’s about 25$)

You don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to, but I found it pretty useful in explaining concepts and for providing useful insight. The diagrams are pretty helpful too although the lecturers usually put them on their lecture slides. The lecturers also provide you with references to the textbook.


Lecturer(s):

Lectures 1-16: Dawn Gleeson (Genetics)
Lecture 1: Genetics: variation and the genome
Lecture 2: Structure and replication of DNA
Lecture 3: Genes, alleles and chromosomes
Lecture 4: Behaviour of chromosomes and alleles: segregation of alleles
Lecture 5: Multiple alleles and other extensions to Mendel
Lecture 6: Sex determination
Lecture 7: Inheritance related to sex and X inactivation
Lecture 8: Two genes and independent assortment
Lecture 9: Gene interaction
Lecture 10: Gene linkage: departure from independent assortment
Lecture 11: Multifactorial and polygenic inheritance
Lecture 12: Techniques and Manipulation of the genetic material
Lecture 13: Gene expression: Transcription and the genetic code
Lecture 14: Gene expression: Translation
Lecture 15: Mutation
Lecture 16: Using genomic variation for identity

Lectures 17-24: Rick Wetherbee (Botany)
Lecture 17: Earth history and evolution of life
Lecture 18: Classification and evolution
Lecture 19: Protists: the primary producers
Lecture 20: Protists: animal-like consumers and fungal-like absorbers
Lecture 21: Fungi: the great recyclers
Lecture 22: Plants invade the land
Lecture 23: Seed plants
Lecture 24: Flowering plants (Angiosperms)

Lectures 25-32: Theresa Jones (Zoology)
Lecture 25: Introducing the Animal Kingdom
Lecture 26: Animal diversity: from worms to arthropods
Lecture 27: Animal diversity: from molluscs to chordates
Lecture 28: Animal diversity: the big picture
Lecture 29: The vertebrate story: where Primates fit in
Lecture 30: The Hominid family
Lecture 31: Ecology and evolution
Lecture 32: Natural and sexual selection, adaptation and extinction

Lectures 33-36: Dawn Gleeson (Population Genetics)
Lecture 33: Hardy-Weinberg: calculating allele frequencies
Lecture 34: H-W departures: selection, non random mating
Lecture 35: H-W departures: mutation, migration & genetic drift
Lecture 36: Natural selection & speciation

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2.

Rating: 4.7 Out of 5

Comments:

Lecturers  
I really liked all the lecturers in this subject (most of the time :P). Dawn was really good, easy to understand, takes you through each example step by step, provides you with heaps of practice questions, she’s easily approachable for any queries and she’s really nice! She also provides you with a 'what to know' slide every here and then which really helps cause it tells you exactly what you need to know. I liked her lecture slides. Some people complained because they were overly long and hard to understand. I had no problems with this, as long as you pay attention in the lectures and write down notes on your lecture slides you should be okay. If you're not, there's always the book to help you out (most of her diagrams are from the book). Often she wouldn't finish what is on the lecture slides in one lecture but she would go over them during the next lecture.

Rick was really engaging and enthusiastic. You can tell this guy knows his stuff. He's lectures were clear and he was clear with what he expected from us. One thing about Rick was that his lecture slides were a bit dry. He would take out (essential) pictures and diagrams which would make them look really dull. Most of the diagrams are in the textbook though.   

Theresa’s lectures would get dry on a rare few occasions. I found that at times she would just read off slides (rarely though). Most of the time she would explain everything really well. Her lecture slides were fantastic though, provided us with everything that we needed. But, she wasn't explicit about what we should know and what we shouldn't. In the exam tutorial she said that questions can be taken from any part of her lectures (without exception). Basically, she wanted us to know everything she presented on the lecture. This was a real pain, but her questions weren't that hard in the exam so it was alright. 

Tutorials
Okay so, there’s a tutorial every week which takes place in the first hour of your allocated three hour prac time (the one before your prac is called a workshop). They were useful at times at other times they really weren’t much of a help. You basically go over the tutorial worksheets at the end of your prac manual but at times they’ll give you something else to do. I found the genetics tutorials really helpful as they would take you through potential exam and MST like questions. The rest of the time they were okay. Recently, during the workshops they’ve been taking you through the practical and they may hint at assessment tasks that you have to do in the prac, so yeah you’re choice on whether you want to go or not :P

Assessment  
Okay, so there’s 5 forms of assessment in this subject:

Practical assessment-ongoing throughout the semester (25%) 
You have 5 practicals throughout the semester (well 6 but the first one isn’t assessed) worth 5% each (5 x 5 = 25%). Each practical is out of 10 marks (same as 1st semester, but I’ll still go through it incase you're interested):

-   1 mark comes from a pre-practical test done on the LMS. It is untimed and open book. There are 10 questions on the test and you are required to get 8/10 or more to get the mark for the pre-prac. It has to be done before you come to the practical class. You shouldn’t have a problem with the pre-pracs, the answers to them are in your prac-book.
-   5 marks come from in-prac assessment. This may take the form of a quiz at the end of the practical, or you may be required to hand something in. Sometimes, you may to show your tutor something that you’ve done in the practical
-   4 marks are from the post-prac test. These are TIMED 15 minute tests. They’ve made it longer from last semester from 10-15 mins. These test your understanding of what you’ve done in the prac so pay attention !

You will be assigned to be in either group A or B. Group A have their pracs one week earlier than group B.


Mid-semester test held in week 6 (10%) 
A 45 minute multiple choice test held during your tutorial time. This tested lectures 1-14. It was much more challenging than last semester. I was really pushed for time and wasn’t able to do a few questions properly. It’s out of 25 marks. It mainly consisted of genetics questions with a few questions on DNA replication. The genetics part can take a while if you haven’t practiced it well so make sure to practice well. A practice MST was posted on the LMS, make sure you do it because some of the questions were similar to the ones that were on the actual MST.

Probably a week after the MST, the answers are posted onto the noticeboard in the Redmond Barry Building (they don’t post it on the LMS for some reason) if you want to have a look at the answers.

Independent Learning Tasks-ILTs (5%) 
There were 5 independent learning tasks that you had to do throughout the semester. It involved clicking through an online ‘tutorial’, after this you had to do a final quiz. Each ILT was worth 1% and you had to get 5/10 on the quiz to get the 1%. Some of the ILT content was linked in with the lectures which was good, but some of it wasn’t. If you really want you could use google to do these, but these are examinable so I would suggest going through them.

Assignment (10%) 
There were two parts to this both due a week after the mid-semester test (or 2 weeks if you were in group B):

Part 1 was the take home part. Firstly, you had to use this program called e-fly to generate a cross. Using your results you had to answer some questions, indicating ratios, alleles, which allele is dominant etc… Secondly, you were assigned a topic and you had to search for an article based on it using the library database. You also had to answer questions on the way such as what keyword would you use? You also had to watch two videos which taught you how to search. You had to apply these techniques to search for your article.

Part 2 was a mini ‘test’ done in your tutorial class. The questions were on independent assortment but involved two genes and gene interaction. There were 3 questions and these shouldn’t be too hard if you have studied. You may feel that you are pushed for time so you’ll have to learn to do them quickly. Many people did not do this well because they thought it was going to be on the article they had to search up. IT IS NOT, don’t be fooled !   

Exam (50%) 
Okay so, the exam was in the first day of the exam period and it was a step up from BIOL10004, don’t expect it to be the same. You will be massively pushed for time if you don’t have good technique and if you don’t how to solve genetics problems fast enough. The structure was the same as semester 1. It was out of 180 marks. Section A was multiple choice, Section B,C was fill in the blanks from a box full of choices and section D was three essays worth 10 marks each, one essay from genetics, one from botany, one from zoology.

Multiple choice questions were okay, you have one mark and two mark questions. Some of the two mark multiple choice genetics questions really required you to think. The Botany and Zoology section was mainly testing your understanding of the lecture material (no problem solving here).

Section B and C were fair. The first question of Section B really put me off though, they had pictures of 4 fossils and they required you to label the species to which the fossil belonged to. Luckily, the options weren’t too confusing and I was able to narrow down the option to like 6 or 7. A majority of this section was dedicated to genetics. Make sure you are proficient with genetic ratios with two genes (9A-:B-;3A-:bb;3aa;B-;1aa:bb) and gene interaction (recessive epistasis, dominant epistasis and all the other ones) and make sure you know how to do calculations with a three point test cross. You also need to know how to do a chi square test and need to be able to calculate allele frequencies. Make sure you get lots of practice. There was only one question on botany (surprisingly) about the evolution of land plants, it was pretty long though. Wasn’t too hard if you learnt the phylogeny and know where the key adaptation appear. There were a lot of zoology questions here, so revise it well. Weren’t many questions on the hominid species, but I would still recommend learning the name of the species.

Section D was the essay. For this section, make sure to have a few examples (makes the essay stronger), don’t go overboard and write down everything you know about the topic. Try to have some structure (there are marks dedicated towards this). Usually, there's a problem solving question for the genetics question, but for us it was on sex determination. It changes every year so just be prepared. The last question of this section was really weird, it is about some meteor hitting an ocean in Australia (something along those lines) and it asked you to write about the consequences. If you had read about the previous extinctions and their consequences, you should be able to link them in here. I couldn't think of anything else to write for that question lol. Yeah, that was pretty much the exam :P
 
Recommendations
Try to start revising early for this subject because there is a LOT of content here. DON’T leave it all to SWOTVAC, try starting a few weeks before hand.  To do well in this subject:

-Stay on top of the content, use the MST to revise the first few lectures and use the mid-sem break to catch up on the middle block of lectures. That way, you won’t have too much to do during SWOTVAC
-Do lots of practice with genetics problems. Dawn usually posts up question sets on the LMS with answers and solutions. DO THEM !
-DON’T FORGET to do the ILTs, pre-pracs and post-pracs. These make up a pretty fair portion of your mark
-Do the sample exam
-Know what you will be doing in each prac so that you won’t be lost.


Final Comments
Overall, a pretty fun subject and an enjoyable one to study. I really liked the diversity of topics covered. At times, I was put off by the botany content because I wasn’t really that interested but Rick presented everything really clearly and in an enthusiastic way which made it fun to learn. There are a lot of new terms that you will have to learn here, it may put you off at times. Just hang in there, don’t try to cram everything into your brain, let it settle and you’ll find that everything comes together really well (remember reading this in a previous review, it’s so true !). That’s pretty much all I can think of right now. If you have any queries, feel free to give me a PM :) !
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cnguyen599 on November 23, 2014, 02:38:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20076 AUSLAN and Visual Communication / EDUC20069 Deafness and Communication   

Workload:
EDUC20076 - 1x 1 hour lecture, 2x 1 hour 30 min workshop, 1x 1 hour 30 min tutorial each day for 5 days (Monday to Friday).
EDUC20069 - 1x 1 hour lecture, 1x 2 hour tutorial each week.

Assessment:
EDUC20076 - Reflection essay (30%), Documentation of practical learning (20%), Practical resource (50%).
EDUC20069 - Practical resource (50%), Essay (50%).

Lectopia Enabled: 
EDUC20076 - No (Only two lectures were recorded).
EDUC20069 - Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No.

Textbook Recommendation: No.

Lecturer(s): Sorry, there were quite a few and I forgot most.

Year & Semester of completion:
EDUC20076 - July, 2014
EDUC20069 - Semester 2, 2014

Rating:
EDUC20076 - 2/5
EDUC20069 - 3.5/5 

Comments:
So the reason I’m grouping these two subjects together is because I find these two subjects really similar. I did AUSLAN and Visual Communication (AVC) in winter (July 14th to July 18th), and to be completely honest, it felt like déjà vu doing Deafness and Communication (DC) considering how similar the content and the assessment were. I’d say the major difference is that AVC focuses more on teaching you the very very basics of communicating through AUSLAN and involves more physical activities. It was like a drama class; not that I ever took drama. For lectures you will cover things like:

. History of sign language
. Various perspectives on deafness
. Deaf community
. Science and technology related to deafness (more focused in DC)
There are some others but you have a general idea of what to expect.

In DC, it is a pretty chillax subject. You have a single 1 hour lecture along with a 2 hour tutorial a week. So those of you who want a relatively spacious time table, consider doing this subject in semester. AVC is an intensive subject that runs throughout the week (Monday to Friday). You would expect a day to look like:
9 am – 10 am Lecture
10:30 am – 12 pm Workshop
12:40 pm – 2:20 pm Workshop
2:20 pm – 4:00 pm Tutorial
(The workshop focused on learning how to communicate using AUSLAN while the tutorial was more of reflection on what you learnt for the day as well as time to do some of your assignments)

If you are planning doing the intensive, it may get a little tiring considering that you have assessment due at the end of the week and on Monday of the next week. Maybe it is because I lack the endurance but I felt like doing absolutely no work when I got home and so the quality of more work suffered. I would urge you to do readings as soon as possible for AVC, ideally the weekend before the intensive week starts and minimize how much you have to do during the week. Both of these subjects involve a lot of group work in the tutorials or workshop, which is something I greatly enjoyed. And I’m not sure why, but the amount of girls in these two subjects seem to greatly outnumber the guys. 

Each of these subjects you have some set readings. I found that for AVC, the readings were slightly simpler as it had less scientific reports. Nonetheless, expect 10 plus pages of chunky text.  Depending on the essay prompt you decide to select, each of these readings will have different levels of significance. Some you may find useful, others useless. For DC, I pretty much only used a single set reading because that was the only one which related to my topic (Noise induced hearing loss). I would advise that you look at the different essay prompts as soon as possible so that when you go through the course, you can selectively decide what you should add to your essay and what is safe to ignore. Sometimes I felt that the readings were a waste of time because none of it related to what I will be talking about; I should have just skimmed over these rather then investing effort into making summary notes. For AVC, I used the majority of the readings in my essays but I would also recommend that you should considering going beyond the set list to get top notch marks.

AVC you have 4 pieces of assessment:
. Reflection essay (1200 words)
Pretty much an essay on what you learnt through your intensive week. How has your perspective changed? You should make use of readings as well as lectures and workshops for your reference. I made the mistake of only using my readings. It is also important to talk about things in detail, rather than just skimming the surface of several different topics. Therefore you will have to balance quality vs quantity which I am still unsure of myself. For AVC I used most of the the readings as reference since I felt they may go to waste considering I have already wasted them. Rather what I should have done is add more focus to my essays and utilize the references at the end of those set readings to expand my essay in more detail.
. A play 
Yeah… Remember the part where I said it is kind of like drama. Well… it is drama but you have to put on a performance based on a fairy tale for the deaf tutors. You will be utilizing the communication methods you were taught in your workshops. So you introverted Science students! Bust out of your shell and give your performance of a life time. Doesn’t have to be Oscar worthy since it isn’t marked and you will be doing it in a group. Just have fun with it. Don’t slack off either since it is a hurdle. You will have some time to plan during your week, so use that wisely.
. Practical resource (500 words)
Basically design a resource that will inform, educate or entertain a certain target audience. This can be a video, a game, a brochure, etc. If you a creative you will have a blast. If not, you may struggle like me and end up with a bland informative brochure. You also need to write a 500 word rationale and also include references in it.
. Documentation of practical learning
This was fricken BS. Since I was part of the first cohort, things weren’t explained that clearly. From what I was told, you had to present a resource that you would use to help you learn certain elements of communicating AUSLAN. They said you shouldn’t focus purely on lexicalised signs, but also on the other elements of the language (you would have went through this in the workshop). They then give you a vague word limit of 500 words where they failed to explain whether the words in your resource would be included in the word limit. They also didn’t mention how much resources you should use either. I asked whether using 2 references from a workshop and lecture was fine and lost marks for that. And this is work 20% and due on Friday of that week! I found that quite unreasonable. The entire purpose of this assignment was ridiculous in the first place. You mark me on how I learn things? What does that mean? I get 100% if I learn the way you want me to learn? Get out of here. And they decided to explain the assessment like 2 days before the assignment was due! I would think that they would explain it on the very first day to give us time to prepare considering we are there from 9 to 4 + transport, but no!

Now remember when I said AVC and DC were similar. Well for DC, one of the assignments (worth 50%) is the exact repeat of the practical resource. So if you invested ALL of your creative juices into the AVC assignment, squeeze that sponge you call a brain to gather some more because you can’t reuse your previous one. Strangely for me, I was able to come up with a better idea the second time round, probably because I had more time to think about it. I recommend you start thinking about it the first week you start this subject, because you don’t want to be like 80% of the other students who’s best idea was a bland informative brochure. I had the advantage since I already did AVC and started panicking on what to do for my resource the second week. The second assignment is your standard 2000 word essay and you are able to select from 5 or so prompts. Look at these early on in semester and decide which you would want to write about so you can see which readings is important or not. Also familiarise yourself with Google Scholar, Discovery and reading academic papers because you need 15 PLUS REFERENCES in order to get top marks! I know, I was shocked just having left Knowledge Learning Culture where I used 8. Some topics you may find you can find plenty of resources for, others not so much. I chose a topic about noise induced hearing loss so there were plenty of resources, but others weren’t as fortunate. One important piece of feedback my tutor gave me was to compare and contrast articles. So if you want top marks, consider that advice.

Personally I would recommend DC over AVC, because it was better organised, less assignments and overall less stressful. Keep in mind however I was the first cohort for AVC so there may be changes in the future from feedback. Ultimately these two subjects aim to raise your awareness about deaf people and the deaf community, which is always a good thing. I can see that this subject will make me a much more conscious person in the future. And who knows, it might be the spark to get  you into learning AUSLAN, a language in sore need of help due to its dwindling numbers (apparently translators get lots of chaching but it's not about the money... kinda). Also learn a few more hand signs besides your middle finger.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: buzzwith on November 23, 2014, 06:21:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: HPSC20015 Astronomy in World History 

Workload:  2x 1 hour lectures, 1x 1 hour tutorial for 2 weeks

Assessment:  -2 short assignments (15% each)
                    -Observation report (30%)
                    -Exam essay (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, sample exam/essay questions provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn’t buy one

Lecturer(s): Gerhard Wiesenfeldt

Year & Semester of completion: Summer 2014

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Overall, this subject was enjoyable and interesting (for the most part). The assessments were not too difficult. And you get to finish around 2 (if you got the earliest tutorial)

The observation report involved having to attend either 2 day observations of the sun (1 hour each) or one night observation (2 hours), they’re compulsory. We had to make our own tools ect to record readings. That was all interesting and cool. The report could be written as a scientific report or creatively (journal). They provide sample essays on lms. You also had the option of writing the report in groups (max 3) however word count would be increased.

The short essays and final essay were just like any other. Nothing out of the ordinary

The only negative thing about the subject is that the lecturer was veerry boring! I didn’t attend most of the lectures, and only went to the ones discussing anything relevant to my assignment topics.

I recommend this subject to everyone, especially if you’re good at writing essays.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: danza312 on November 24, 2014, 05:49:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20150 Music and Health

Workload: 1x 2 hour lecture per week.

Assessment: Essay on creating a music playlist for personal wellbeing - 2000 words, 50%. Due Week 6.
                       Essay on a playlist for exercise - 1500 words, 40%. Due at the end of Swotvac.
                       10 Weekly Tasks (around 100-150 words each, though there was no word limit):
                         - Weeks 2-4 - Select a piece of music to achieve a certain outcome, and blog about your experience.
                         - Weeks 5-7 - Post in the Discussion Forum on a particular topic given by the lecturers.
                         - Weeks 8-9 - A reflective blog on how the subject has changed the way you use music.
                         - Weeks 10-11 - Contribution to a music project in the lecture. If absent from the lecture, you must write lyrics for a given backing track.             
                       Each worth 1% for a total of 10%.
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture.

Textbook Recommendation:  Levitin, D.J. The world in six songs: How the musical brain created human nature. London: Dutton Publishers, 2008.
                                                   I never used this book, as there was a wide range of readings given by the lecturers which covered lecture material and was free to access.

Lecturer(s): Katrina McFerran, Cherry Hense, Imogen Clark, Sandra Garrido, Jason Kenner.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 79

Comments:
I'll have to be upfront about this and say that I mainly picked this subject since it looked light, with only one lecture a week, few assessments, and no exam. I'm also not a music student, and I'd imagine that those taking this subject as part of their music degree will have a much different impression. This subject is certainly very light on material, with only a few lectures relevant to the assignments and the rest mostly material for your own personal interest. The lectures however, when they worked, were engaging, and certainly different (in a good way) from the standard dry science lecture. The assessments didn’t take up too much time either, but the fact that there is scaling on this subject makes it difficult to get a good score.

Lectures:
Each lecture begins with one of the lecturers leading the group of around 300 in singing a song. Yes it is slightly awkward, and yes it all seems a bit dumb, but everyone else has to do it too, and its actually a decent way to relax and take your mind off things. You sing one song for a few weeks at a time (for example, the first song was by the aboriginal band Tiddas), and you can sit up the back and do nothing if you want, so its ultimately harmless.
The lecturers mix around, with one taking the first half, and the other with the second half. All of the lectures are practitioners of music therapy, and are clearly passionate and motivated to teach their work (especially Kat). The first lecture delved into a highly psychological and completely confusing dissection of what it means to be healthy, and it never cropped up again. The high points of the subject are when they start to talk about more logical associations, such as the links between Music and Love or Violence, and the properties of the music which cause them to influence the individual. Following are various lectures on music and relationships, joy, identities, exercise, relaxation and peace, all of which had a nice blend of biological reasoning and social sciences. However the lectures did sometimes drag on, and the two hours sometimes took forever to finish. I think they knew this, since they made efforts to mix it up with activities (making up stereotypes for genres of music), and movies/anecdotes which demonstrated the applications of what we were learning to music therapy.
To sum up the lectures then, they were interesting and engaging, but often felt pointless due to their irrelevance to the assessments and their length did start to drag on after a while. The lack of lectopia capture is also strange, since the lecture slides are given out after the lecture. This is more an annoyance than anything, but it'd definitely be better if the capture was included (previous years seemed to have it, so this may not apply).

Assessment:
The assessment, however, was not as laidback. Having 90% of the marks locked up in essays is daunting, especially when 50% of those are due only a few weeks into the semester. The first assignment was a 2000 word essay on a personal playlist that you create. You give that playlist a context (e.g. cheering you up when you're depressed), and use 150 words per song to justify each song's inclusion, as well as if you thought it created the desired effect. This is a particularly vague task, and the only preparation you're given are the first 3 blogs that you write, which are similar, as well as the lecture material, which gives you the reasoning you need. However feedback on those are never given, so you're mostly in the dark. The introductions and conclusions are not as aimless, as clear points are given on what to write. I found it difficult to justify all 10 songs with a unique reason, as most of them overlap. You also needed a minimum of 6 references, however I ended up using one for each song as well as those in the introduction and conclusion, as it was easier to justify the songs (and increase the word count) by including sources. A common criticism given in the feedback for this assignment was that the references and justifications seemed forced, and I feel like this is a consequence of the need for 10 songs to fill out your playlist.
The second assignment is quite similar, but much more structured and therefore easier to write (especially since you now have feedback from your previous essay, though it is a bit thin). It is worth 40%, and involves a playlist again, but this time only for exercise. You rate each song based on the Brunel Music Rating Inventory-3 (BMRI-3), which determines how useful the song will be for exercise on a scale of 6-42. You then do the exercise and see if the songs were as useful as the BMRI estimated. Since each song only needs 100 words, it is quicker and easier to write, as you are given a clear structure on how to approach each song.
Another point about the assignments is that they are scaled, so most marks end up around the 70-80% range. Since you also compete with those doing music degrees, it can be difficult to get a particularly good score above this range.
The weekly blogs are particularly easy to complete, and you only need to complete them to get the mark for each (I don't think they read them at all). Each takes 5-10 minutes. For the last two, writing down your name on a roll at the start of the lecture will get you the mark (you don't have to actually do anything), and I recommend this over the song-writing that I had to do for being absent from the lectures, which can be painful (my lyrics were probably the most embarrassing things I'll ever write). Since these 10 marks are effectively guaranteed as long as you keep up, it does mitigate the scaling of the major assessments a little bit.

Final Comments:
Ultimately this is a subject which is perfect for those with an interest in music, and is good for those looking for a subject which needs almost no time commitment. The scaling however makes this a subject that is not easy to do well in, so your essay and research skills need to be competitive to be able to get a higher mark. The lectures themselves vary between interesting and terminology-filled dullness, though thankfully it’s mostly the former.
This subject is a unique experience for science/biomeds like me since you don’t really have to know anything. You just need to show up, listen and be engaged, with none of the stress that comes with the average fact-filled science lecture, making it quite refreshing. If you just want a quick and easy H1 breadth, this probably isn’t the best choice. But if you're fed up with cramming an endless stream of bones of the upper limb, and have an interest in music in general, this subject is definitely recommended as long as you don't care too much about your marks.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on November 25, 2014, 05:22:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20014 Food For a Healthy Planet II

Workload: Three hours per week (2 x 1 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tutorial)

Assessment:  An essay (2,000 words), worth 20%, due week 8.
A mid-semester test (1 hour), approximately at end of week 6, worth 20%.
Final exam (2 hours) exam in the examination period (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen cap.

Past exams available:  Yes but without the MCQ.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Various.

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: The content of the subject is pretty easy. Anyone with a science background should pick stuff up quick. The tutes have I think a 75% attendance requirement. There are 5 forums (basically normal lectures) with guest lecturers that are NOT recorded and will be assessed. The first forum is assessed in the essay. The other 4 will be assessed in the final exam. Personally after the first forum I skipped all of them. The slides are more than detailed enough on their own (and I found the first forum the lecturer just read from the notes). Anything you don't know/understand on the forum notes you can easily google. The marking is a bit vague. You get past exams/tests and I definitely suggest doing them. This is especially true for the final exam.

The final exam consists of some MCQ followed by short answers on lectures and then short answers on forums. For the lecture short answers I think you have 9 options and need to pick like 6 to address. For the forum short answers you get 4 options and need to address 2 (we got lucky and one of the forums had contradictory info so we only needed to do 2 out of 3 lol). The forum you did for essay will NOT be assessed in the final exam. For the final exam you also get a double sided A4 cheat sheet. The forum portion is 25% of the final exam and the past 3 exams pretty much had the EXACT same questions. Hell, I managed to type out all the important bits from all 3 forums being assessed and stuck it onto my cheat sheet with room to spare (think size 6 font lol). That's an easy 25% right there. For the lecture questions just doing the practice questions will give you a good idea of what to expect.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: pink0829 on November 25, 2014, 05:51:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30002 Drugs Affecting the Nervous System 

Workload: 3 lectures one hr lectures per week

Assessment: Continuing assessments comprising LMS delivered assessments (15%) and a multiple choice question assessment delivered during the semester (15%)
A 2 hr examination in the examination period (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2010-2012.

Textbook Recommendation:  Individual lecturers will recommend reading specific parts of different texts that are available at the library while the handbook gives two texts that are relevant for most lectures. But all this is for interest and not assessed. So I would recommend not buying the books if this is the only pharm subject you are doing and just go to the library if you really need one.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof J Ziogas, A/Prof RA Hughes, Dr Mark Habgood (1 lecture), Dr M Hansen, Prof D Hoyer, Prof P Beart, Prof B Dean, A/Prof P Crack, Dr J Taylor, Dr R Hester, A/Prof C Wright, Dr C Laska and some lady who took the schizophrenia lecture who wasn't listed in the lecture timetable

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: This subject can be done either as part of the neuroscience or pharmacology major. If you are from a neuroscience background --> while the subject has pre-requisites you can contact the coordinator and he will let you do the subject without the pre-reqs. If you haven't done PHRM20001 I would recommend getting hold of a biomed student and reading their pharm notes for BIOM20002 (which is also a pre-req). This is just so you know and understand the basic principles of pharmacology which the coordinator would ask you to read up on anyway. You can look at PHRM20001 notes if you have access to them but that covers a lot of stuff not required for this subject so getting the notes off a biomed student would save you a lot of time.

Content
So this subject was interesting and coming from a neuroscience major I quite enjoyed the pharmacology/therapeutics parts of the subject. The subject starts off with some basic neuro concepts like blood brain barrier, nerve transmission etc. as well as some topics on neuronal survival and neuropeptides. The subject then moves on to neurotransmitters with a lecture devoted to each of the 6 major neurotransmitters. These particular lectures are given are by different lecturers so they have different ways of presenting them. For example for some lectures you were expected to know the areas in the brain the neurotransmitter was made and which parts/ pathways it acted on. But the basic idea of this section was to introduce us to the actions of these neurotransmitters, how to modulate them via drugs to enhance or reduce these actions in certain disorders/conditions. The next section covered things like apoptosis and neurotoxicity and the immune system in the brain. The rest of the subject was on specific nervous system disorders like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Schizophrenia, Addiction, depression as well was pain, epilepsy and sleep. These lectures focused on how they may arise as well as the drugs used to improve these conditions. I really liked this part of the subject because it was disease focused and most of the lecturers presented them well.

Tutorials/quizzes/written assignments
Yes, there are tutorials. But these are during lecture times and there are four of them spread out across the semester with the last one for exam preparation. So what happens is the lecturer would email a past exam question (based on a topic covered in the preceding weeks) that will be discussed during the tute. And before the tute he will also make available a multiple choice quiz on lms generally covering all the topics covered up to the tute which doesn't count towards your final mark but you have to do it before the tute. During the tute students are expected to give their input while discussing the question and are encouraged to attempt the question beforehand. I felt the tutorials give a good insight to what the lecturer expects from you when answering their exam questions. The tutorials are of course recorded and you don't have to go to them but the lecturers often do write on the board and the students who answer questions asked by the lecturer aren't clearly heard in the recordings so you might miss out on stuff if you don't go.

The written assignments are what counts to your final mark. It's basically your answer to the question discussed in the tute. The tute questions tend to be the essay questions from the Part A of the exam which I will get to. So with the help of the discussion in the tute you are meant to write up an answer to the questions and submit it via turnitin before the deadline. For the first two written assignments, the deadline was 48 hrs after the tute but for the third one we had to submit it by 5pm the day of the tute. So not sure how the deadlines are going to be in the following years and how many written assignments are going to be done but there is definite chance that this type of assessment may continue because of the positive feedback the lecturer said he got. I reckon this was a good way to practice answering the questions for the exam so definitely take advantage of it. Each written assignment was worth 5% and was marked out of 10. You don't get specific feedback but email the lecturer if you want feedback on it and they are always happy to help.

Midsemester exam
Held in week 6. It was based on lectures week 1-4 and had 30 multiple choice questions. Pretty straightforward. Worth 15%

Lecturers
I've listed the names of all the lecturers above. Some of the lecturers were repeating their lectures given to PHRM20001 so for those who haven't done PHRM20001 or can't remember stuff from PHRM20001 everything is repeated so you don't have to worry about it. But this happened in like 2 or 3 lectures anyway. The rest was new content (I think). Some of the lecturers were great. They were funny and really interesting. There were others who were a bit dry but they weren't too bad. Overall, I thought everything assessed in the exams was fair and was discussed in the lectures anyway. So if you know your content thoroughly the exams should be fine. I'm not going to go into detail about each lecturer and their content because this subject has changed so much over the past few years that I think they might change a bit of it next year. Most of what the lectures talked about was generally material that could be assessed. Very rarely the lecturer would talk about something you didn't have to know for the exam and most of them were pretty clear as to what you should know for the exam. They do have diagrams that were taken from various textbooks and literature so you won't have to know all of the diagram just the relevant bits to the lecture. But if you have any questions about individual lecturers and what they would assess from their lectures I would suggest you email them directly. They were all very nice and helpful with any of the queries I had.

Exam
The exam was in two parts. The first part was the essay question/long answer questions. We had to select 4 out of the 5 given questions. Each was 20 marks and you should allocate 20 mins for each. These types of questions are what are discussed in tutes. So doing the tutes would be good practice for this type of question. Some of the questions were from individual lectures while there was one that expected us to integrate information from different lectures e.g in our exam we had a question asking us to compare and contrast neurotransmission of acetylcholine and substance P which were discussed in two different lectures but different lecturers so expect something like that. There are past exams available to work out what types of questions are going to be asked and they were really helpful. You don't have to do the past questions but just having look at them would mean you would know what to expect in the exam. Also just a hint James gave us at the last tute: the topics/tute questions assessed during the semester are very unlikely to pop up on the final exam. He did however say that only lectures not assessed in the midsem will have multiple choice questions and unless I was mistaken there were about 3 or 4 questions that were related to topics already covered in the multiple choice exam so you might want to make sure he is clear. That brings me to Part B of the exam which was 40 multiple choice questions. Again straightforward and not too hard. Nothing on there wasn't on a lecture so as long as you know your lectures well you will do fine in this section. It was 40 minutes so 1 mark=1 min. I'd suggest trying to finish this within 30 mins so you have an extra 10 minutes for part A which is worth 80 marks. Since the MCQ section was only introduced this year I think based on the feedback they got from previous years the past exams had no multiple choice questions. However the quizzes that are made available before each tute should be enough practice for this part. The coordinator also made it available during swotvac for revision. But really after 5 semesters of science/biomed I don't think you would really need any practice for MCQs :P

That's all I can think of saying right now. If I remember anything important I'll add to this. I just wanted to include some subjects that I or a friend thought would be helpful if taken with PHRM30002 due to overlapping content (that would make life a hell of a lot easier for a third year 8)) or because they complement each other. I'll add more to the list if I find or hear about any other subject that might be helpful in anyway:
I hope this was helpful and sorry it's a bit later than I expected it to be posted. I didn't go into too much detail about each of the lecturers or the topics because there might be a chance that they change some stuff around next year. In terms of difficulty this subject would rate a 2.5 out of 5 where 5=braincrushing hard. The subject also might be a stepping stone for most people who are planning to do honours and is pretty well organized. Good luck with your subjects and message me if you have any questions or if something on here wasn't clear :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Whynot123 on November 26, 2014, 09:37:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003 Chemistry 1

Workload: 
•   3 x one hour lectures per week,
•   6 x three hours of practical activities during semester,
•   1 x one hour tutorial/workshop session per week,
•   6 hours of computer aided learning during semester,
•   8 hours of independent learning tasks during semester.
Estimated total time commitment of 170 hours

Assessment:
•   Three equally weighted 30 minute on-line tests conducted during the semester   (6%)
•   Ongoing assessment of practical work throughout the semester (20%)
•   A three hour written examination in the examination period (74%)

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, some lecturers like to write on the document camera which doesn’t appear in the lecture capture. The organic lecturer also brought in models which once again wasn’t captured.

Past exams available:  Yes, a ton on the library website. Solutions for the past 3 exams were given on the LMS. Last years exam was given as an exam wiki on the LMS for everyone to contribute to. The answers were checked and explained in the exam revision lecture during SWOT vac.   

Textbook Recommendation:  A. Burrows, J. Holman, A. Parsons, G. Pilling and G. Price, Chemistry3 2nd Ed, Oxford University Press, 2013.

The textbook was extremely helpful for physical chemistry, I would highly recommend trying to get a copy for this section of the course. There were also prescribed questions from the textbook, which was useful in consolidating the information given in the lectures.

Apart from this, you also need (co-op prices given):
•   Laboratory Manual (ca. $15) – They post this file on the LMS, but it’s better to buy it, it’s less of a hassle.
•   Tutorial Workbook (ca. $9)- This isn’t essential, they also post this file on the LMS, so if you download the file on your laptop/tablet/smartphone and bring it into the tutorial, you’ll be fine to work off it.
•   A4 duplicate notebook ($9 or from newsagent)- this may be compulsory or not, depending on your prac demonstrator.
•   Organic model kits (ca. $30)- optional. Useful for making organic molecules and understanding their 3D structure.
•   Lab Coat $23
•   Safety glasses $7 OR safety goggles (only if you intend to use contact lens) $10

Lecturer(s):
Lectures 1 - 12 (Organic Chemistry): Associate Professor Craig Hutton
Lecture 1-5: Structure and Bonding of Alkanes (sp3 Hybridisation)
Lecture 6-7: Structure and Bonding of Alkenes (sp2 Hybridisation)
Lecture 8: Benzene and its derivatives
Lecture 9: Structure and Bonding of Alkynes (sp hybridisation)
Lecture 10: Functional Groups
Lecture 11-12: Spectroscopy and Determination of Structure

Lectures 13 - 18 (Physical Chemistry): Professor Muthupandian Ashokkumar
Lecture 12-14: Gases
Lecture 15-18: Energy and Thermochemistry

Lectures 19 - 24 (Physical Chemistry): Professor Peter Tregloan
Lecture 19-21: Spontaneity, Entropy and Free Energy
Lecture 22-24: Chemical Equilibrium

Lectures 25 - 30 (Inorganic Chemistry): Associate Professor David McFadyen
Lecture 25-26: Acids and Bases
Lecture 27: Trends in the Periodic Table
Lecture 28-30: Molecular Structure and Bonding (Lewis structures, Formal charge, Resonance, VSEPR – predicting the shapes of molecules, Polarity of molecules, Covalent Bonding, Valence bond theory)

Lecture 31 – 36 (Inorganic Chemistry): Dr Chris Ritchie
Lecture 31: Molecular Structure and Bonding cont… (Molecular orbital theory, Intermolecular forces)
Lecture 32: Ionic Compounds and their Solutions
Lecture 33-34: Structures of Solids
Lecture 35-36: Main Group Chemistry 

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2.

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Comments:
Okay so, this has to be the worstly taught subject that I’ve taken this year. It wasn’t too bad, but after doing fundamentals in semester 1, I think there’s a lot to improve in this subject. This may be because I did this subject in semester 2. My friends who did this subject in semester 1 didn’t have the same problems with this subject as I did.

Content
I found the content to be really interesting (most of the time). It built up on the knowledge from fundamentals, there were some things that were repeated all throughout the course but there were more details in this subject than fundamentals. It was really helpful to have the background knowledge. 
You start off with organic chemistry, you go into the details of bonding of Alkanes including the various types of isomerism (conformational, structural and sterio). Then you move on to alkenes, including benzene, and then alkynes. You also learn a whole lot of nomenclature along the way. At first, you may have trouble visualising 3D molecules in your head, this is were an organic modelling kit or a youtube video will come in handy. You then move on to functional groups. Make sure you learn all of the functional groups, including the nomenclature. Make sure you don’t get confused between functional groups that have similar names (e.g. and amine and an amide) because you are expected to know the difference. You finish off the organic section by learning about spectroscopy. You will be expected to know how to use spectroscopic techniques to determine structure, so make sure you do some practice.

The next block of 12 lectures is physical chemistry. If you’ve done physics before, you shouldn’t find this part too difficult. You start off with gases and the ideal gas law. Make sure you know how to use this properly with the CORRECT UNITS. You also learn about Dalton’s law of partial pressures before moving on to the kinetic theory of gases. There are a few formulas here that you will need to know since they aren’t given to you on the exam. Also, make sure you know the difference between an ideal and real gas as this is a common question on the exam. After gases, you move on to thermodynamics. You basically learn about the first two laws of thermodynamics. You need to be able to calculate enthalpy and manipulate equations using Hess’s law, calculate entropy, Gibbs free energy (as well as a whole lot of other stuff which I forgot now). The last 3 lectures for this block is on equilibrium, you go into more details in inorganic chem.

So the last block is on inorganic chem. This can be challenging at times, especially buffer calculations. You learn about acids and bases, pH, buffer kA, kB before moving on to trends in the periodic table (electronegativity, electron affinity, metal character and a few more). After this you learn to draw Lewis structures and predict shape using VSEPR. You also look into the valence bond theory and the molecular orbital (MO) theory. For the MO theory, make sure you know how to calculate bond order. The second last part is on structure of solids. This can take a while to visualise. Make sure you go to the tutorial of this section, it was really helpful. And the last part is on main group chemistry. You go over the chemistry of all the elements in the periodic table so there’s a lot of memorizing to be done here !

Lecturers
Some lecturers really gave me a hard time in this subject.
Craig Hutton was really good. He spent a lot of time explaining the main concepts and went through heaps of examples. He also brought in a number of 3D models which I found very helpful.

Professor Ashok was hard to understand at first, but you’ll eventually get used to him. It’s best to attend his lectures since he writes on the document camera which doesn’t appear on the echo recordings. He teaches straight out of the book and uses examples from there. I don’t know why, but when he uploaded the lecture slides before the lecture he would leave out the questions. After the lecture he would upload them again with the questions which really made no sense. I also felt that he taught us things that we didn’t actually have to know for the exam. Funny thing was, he would write up a formula sheet for what we needed to know for the exam but in the exam I only remember using a few of them.

Peter Tregloan was excellent. He would get us engaged into the lectures using QP polls which was really beneficial to test our understating. His lecture slides were good as well, had everything you needed.

David McFadyen was my tutor for the while of fundamentals. I really liked him as a tutor and now I realize that this guy sure knows his stuff! He was funny at times as well. He explained things clearly and his lecture slides were really good.

Dr Chris Ritchie was easily the worst of the lot. He was really dry most of the time. He would simply just read off the lecture slides, no examples, no explanation…nothing. I think the whole cohort was really frustrated at this guy, evident by the lecture attendance. What made it even worse was that he would finish some lecture in 35 minutes after which he would go back and try to explain things again. I think the worst part was that the content was fairly new to everyone and was a bit dry. I didn’t attend most of his lectures. I found the lecture slides and the book to be sufficient.

Tutorials
Tutorials take place in the chemistry building. The tutorial questions were really beneficial (I think they are past exam and MST questions) but the tutors weren’t that good at explaining what we actually needed to do to answer the questions. Out tutor for organic chem was good, but the tutors for physical and inorganic weren’t the greatest. At times they would just put of the solution on the document camera without even explaining it. The tutor for inorganic, especially for the section on buffer, left us more confused than we were when we walked in!

Good thing is, the tutorials aren’t compulsory and at the end of each 4 week block, the solutions for the tutorial questions are uploaded on the LMS. So, a better option would be to do the tutorial questions at home and if you have problems you can visit the learning centre in the Chem building. You’re choice though. If I knew the tutors were going to be like this, I wouldn’t of attended most of them.

Assessment
Three equally weighted 30 minute on-line tests conducted during the semester (6%)
These are basically 3 online tests that you must complete after each block of 12 lectures. Each test is worth 2%. This may not seem like a lot, but it does add up so take these seriously. If you study for these they shouldn’t be too hard.

For the first one on organic chemistry mainly tested your understanding of functional groups, nomenclature (alkanes, alkenes, alkynes) and isomerism.
The second one was the one on physical chemistry. Lots of calculations here, especially using Hess’s Law so make sure to practice.

The third one on inorganic chemistry had questions on acids and bases, buffers and Lewis structures mainly. 

These could change in future years so I would suggest doing quick revision of the whole block before attempting them. I found doing the ChemCAL’s very effective for both the MST’s and the exam so I would highly suggest you do them.

Ongoing assessment of practical work throughout the semester (20%)
You’ll have 6 practicals throughout the semester. They aren’t evenly distributed (I had 2 in the last 2 weeks of the semester -.-). Each one is worth 3.33% so take them seriously. You have to complete a pre-lab (on chemical) before you go into the prac. You have to get 80% + to get a prelab receipt which you have to write down on a tear off slip in your prac manual. Some of these pre-labs are really annoying. You would get the answer wrong if you didn’t have the correct significant figures and if you didn’t answer the question they wanted you to answer it. Good thing is you can do the pre-lab as many times as you want before your prac. I think the pre-lab is worth 1 mark out of the 10 for the prac.

Depending on the prac, you’ll have different types of assessment. Sometimes you have to answer questions while at other times you have to hand something in. You also have to write up a report for each prac. Keep it concise and to the point and you should get the marks (have a look at your prac manual for how to write one up).

The key to the pracs is to be prepared. Understand what needs to be done. The questions that you have to answer are given in the prac manual, so make sure you know how to do them. Try starting the write up at home and if you can, answer some of the questions. This will ensure that you’ll finish the prac on time and maximise your marks.

A three hour written examination in the examination period (74%)
Exam was made of two parts. Part A was multiple choice and Part B was short answer. Each part was worth 50% each. If you’re not quick and efficient, you will struggle with timing. Try not to be a perfectionist (like me at times lol) when drawing organic molecules or when doing calculations. As long as you have the main parts down you’ll get the marks, come back to them later to check them if you have time.

Part A was multiple choice. There were 2 mark, 3 mark and 4 mark questions here. It covered most of the course (including the ILTs!) There were a few tricky questions here that really required you to think. If you’re really struggling and don’t know what to do, try eliminating options. You should be able to finish this section within the recommended 1.5 hours.

Part B was short answer. Once again covered most of the course. Try to attempt all the questions and don’t spends too much time on question and you should be fine.

All in all, a fair exam. If you know the content you’ll be fine. Not many trick questions except for a few multiple choice questions. To study, revise lecture notes, do the chemCALs, do the MST again, do past papers and do the tutorial questions. When doing the past papers be aware that in the past section A was worth 2/3 of the mark and Section B was worth 1/3. I don’t know if it’ll change in the future but for us it was 50/50.

Recommendations
To do well in this subject:
•   Stay on top of the lecture content, try not to fall behind
•   Practice regularly
•   If your struggling with something, go and visit your tutor or the learning lab
•   Don’t forget ILTs are a hurdle requirement
•   Do the MSTs again for revision (they’ll be available in feedback mode after a week or so after you’ve done it)
•   Be prepared for your pracs
•   Do the past-papers under exam conditions
•   Don’t try to do everything perfectly in the exam. Get the main points down and move on. Come back to the question later if you have time.

Final Comments
Although a poorly taught subject at times, the content was interesting which made studying for it a whole lot easier. I think the majority of students will take this subject in semester 1, so you’ll probably have different lecturers/tutors if you do. That's all for now, PM if you need anything and last but not least, goodluck :)           
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on November 27, 2014, 01:59:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE30005 Human and Medical Genetics

Workload: 3 x one hour lectures per week.

Assessment:  One assignment (problem based) less than 1000 words due during semester (10%); two short tests (written and/or online) during semester (each 10%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen cap.

Past exams available:  Yes, but not very good. The latest one is 2011 (the rest are 2009 and earlier but during this period it was a different subject/had a different code). There was a fair bit of stuff in them that was no longer in the course. There are also practice tests that you should do as revision for actual tests but also for the final exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Sem 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject is recommended if you are doing genetics as a major. It isn't a required part of the coursework but many of the topics you will have touched upon in previous subjects. I'd say this was probably the easiest genetics subject (next to GENE30002 although I scored higher for GENE30002) for me. It covers a bunch of interesting stuff. I think the first few lectures deal with haemoglobinopathies (Sickle cell anaemia, HbC etc) and how they occur etc. I suggest you memorize basic details concerning how they occur (i.e. a substitution mutation swapping glutamate to valine in codon 6, glutamate to lysine, creation of a cryptic splice site, etc). This is followed by sex determination which was pretty straightforward (at the end of this series of lectures there should be some diagrams in the notes concerning FOXL2, SRY etc in a pathway format. If you can understand these diagrams then that's good). Pretty sure there was some stuff on epigenetics, a bit on CRISPR/Cre-lox, etc. Also stuff on GWAs, linkage, missing heritability (easy marks on the final exam if you just remember like 5). Also stuff on chromosome structure and how to read them (short arm = p, long arm = q, etc) which is pretty easy. There is also chromosome changes like translocations, Robertsonian translocations, (for both just remember alternative segregation = good and leaves one homozygous normal and one homozygous balanced while the two unbalanced chromosomes result in bad gametes. Adjacent segregation = all are screwed. Note the loss in fertility in translocation carriers from all those dead gametes), inversion loops, etc. There is a bit on pre-natal tests and PGD too. Should probably remember what abnormal diploids are and what they result in (hytadidiform moles, ovarian teratomas) and the fact that they indicate parental imprinting and are thus evidence of epigenetics. Triploids are also evidence of epigenetics. Also know about parental imprinting and when it occurs/is wiped (will probably be a question on this). Know an example of a post-natal test such as that for PKU or Cystic fibrosis and also what treatments may be done (CF will be easy if you have done biomed as you cover that in M2M which is done in first sem).

The assessment is 2 tests, an essay, and an exam. One test was written and worth 10% I think. The essay was worth 5% and wasn't really an essay (actually maybe they were worth 7.5% each. Not sure). We got randomly assigned a pedigree type (autosomal dominant, X-linked, reduced penetrance, etc) and had to draw a pedigree for it and explain what made this pedigree differ from other pedigrees. The other test was online and composed of 15 MCQ. Pretty easy since you can study beforehand and then use your notes/google during the test.

The exam was MCQ followed by those short answers (section B) where you have options in a box and have to fill in the blanks using those options (may be used more than once), followed by normal short answers. Some surprises in the MCQ because the practice exams were outdated. I remember one section B question was entirely on the end of one lecture on evolution concerning Bantu (I think farmers?) and something-origin hunters and their migration/admixture history. Had to guess pretty much the entire question (with some inferences based on vague things I remembered lmao). I remember there being a lot more evolution related questions on the exam than I had expected (considering we only did 2 lectures on human evolution). Some of the evolution stuff was a bit tricky (mtDNA analysis shows that the mtDNA of I think it was Mungo man is NOT basal to Homo Sapiens. Not gonna check my lecture notes but pretty sure he said their mtDNA split off really early from ours so it can't be basal). Also for the consanguinity effect I noticed a lot of people got confused. Can't remember the exact thing but between first cousin marriages or w/e, the LESS alleles of a recessive trait there are in the population, the MORE homozygotes will form. i.e. lower q/recessive allele is, higher proportion of affected children in the inbred population (read the graph and it makes sense).

All in all this subject is pretty easy if you have a genetics background (and even if you don't there aren't really any tricky concepts). The main drawback of this subject IMO is the lack of up-to-date practice exams.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on November 27, 2014, 02:42:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE30004 Genetic Analysis

Workload: 1 x one hour lecture per week; 1 x one hour tutorial per week; 1 x three hour practical per week.

Assessment: Written assignments/problem solving tasks equivalent to a total of approximately 1000 words (15%); practical reports equivalent to a total of approximately 3000 words (30%) (The due dates for the written assignments/problem solving tasks and practical reports are distributed across the semester); Written report on a journal paper due late in the semester (20%) 20-minute oral presentation once during the semester (5%); a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen cap.

Past exams available:  Yes, lots. There was also a sample exam with answers which was useful.

Textbook Recommendation:  Just the practical/lab book.

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Sem 2.

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This subject was probably the hardest one for me out of the genetics ones (next in line to GENE30001) but it might've been because I didn't do the pre-req subject (didn't know I needed to but luckily I got a waiver or else gg extra year just to do one subject). I haven't done a practical subject since first year (excluding HSF and Frontiers but they don't really count as completely different type of practical and only had like one for both of them) and so...my practical skills are somewhere along the lines of beyond crappy.

The experiments are well run and there are only 12 lectures with I think the first one largely being a bludge so this makes the final exam pretty easy to study for (only need like a day or two). There aren't really any prac reports. Instead each week (or sometimes second week) you get a piece of assessment that is related to the prac you are doing (such as creating a plasmid map, using Artemis to identify a protein-coding gene etc). I highly, HIGHLY recommend finding a group for these. Even if you go into the subject knowing no one, talk to the people at your table and try to set something up because a lot of these assessments are complete pains. One thing that I didn't realize until halfway through the subject (by which point in time I stopped giving a crap) is that for each assessment, the lecture immediately prior to it probably covers it (the reason I didn't give a crap was because our lecture was on Mon while our prac was on Tues...cbf being that up to date just saiyan). Thus if you're ever confused as hell during one of those assessments, look through the lecture notes that are on the same week. Having said that the practical assessments are a pain, you do learn a lot from them (the bioinformatics one sukked for me because I didn't know anyone else doing the same one so I had to trawl through databases and Artemis on my own). The plasmid map took forever but was only worth like 1.5% lol (swear it took hours). The first assessment we had I think we had to draw a flowchart on how we would perform a practical. Was kind of iffy as to whether or not we needed to include certain details (since they told us don't put in things that are obvious but wtf is supposed to be obvious?). I can say mention alkaline phosphatase and why you need it (prevents vector self-ligation). I didn't mention the why you need it part (because that seemed obvious...) and lost some marks. There was one on epigenetics which was really easy (define epigenetics, work out which of these bases would be methylated, etc). The bioinformatics one IMO was the most difficult and annoying because we were pretty much thrown in the dark. They gave us our gene and pretty much told us to use Artemis/databases to work out the structure of the largest protein-encoding gene and any relevant details. No real guides or anything on how to do this.

The oral presentation was easy for me. You should start IMO about 2 weeks before your presentation. What I did was read my paper once to get a gist. Then I read it again but typed out everything in my own words on a word document. I also took the pictures and stuck them in the document with little explanations as to what they meant. I then created my powerpoint by simplifying things even further and cutting things I didn't think were massively important (a lot of the experiments in the paper were redundant). This was a bit difficult for me because you have to cut out quite a lot. Basically by the time I was done I knew the thing inside out. There were two problems with my oral (lol). The first was I didn't practice beforehand and ran outta time. The second was I had way too much text (I normally prefer lecturers who put in a lot of text because it means less time spent listening lmao). Still got an H1 tho. On the other hand if you get nervous doing public speaking this is gonna suk for you (but luckily for you it's only worth like 5%). I actually know 2 people who skipped theirs and got sick notes (and one of them skipped his repeat too...). You definitely want to know your paper pretty well because at the end of your speech there is a person specifically chosen to ask you some questions and the lecturer responsible for your paper will also question you. I recommend you be familiar with any diagrams you put in the slides and put in a decent amount of them. This is because it prevents you from just reading your slides as you can turn around at the screen and point at the diagrams and be like "so you can see X is spreading along here and here. This demonstrates Y and is consistent with what the author's were expecting". The diagrams are meant to supplement any text you put in the slides so if you can explain the diagrams you don't even need to read the text. This makes it look like you know your stuff (which you do lol) and is more interactive because you get to wave the laser pointer around.

The journal report is based on your paper but is worth 20%. It was pretty easy but is contingent on you actually understanding your paper well. Basically summarize the entire paper in your own words but make it as dry as possible (they will give you tips on this). This is due after the oral so if you did what I did and wrote a word document on everything you can just simplify everything from that. Maybe throw in a diagram or two if you want.

The tutes have compulsory attendance. At the start of each one you get handed a marking sheet where you have to write your name and student no. They were pretty boring tbh. Basically two students present their oral and the students mark their oral (this does not contribute to their grade, it is just to let the speaker know how the student's thought their presentation was). That's it. After the first couple I just got my friends to fill my sheet for me (they live right next to uni while I have to travel like 50 mins. Tfw only subject on the day is a compulsory tute).

For the final exam the past exams are a good indicator of what to expect. If you can answer those you will probably ace it. They say that the practicals are assessed on the exam but you really only need a passing knowledge of them. In addition, most of the questions in the exam require you to really understand the topics. You will get things like how would you perform X experiment (list what types of vectors you would use and why, any features they have that are important etc).

So basically a pretty interesting subject and you learn a lot but need to put in effort. Also reminded me why I hate pracs.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hehetymen on November 27, 2014, 03:08:27 pm
Major: Genetics

All of the required pre-reqs are in the handbook. Cbf putting them all up as they are different for biomed and science students.

Year of completion: 2014

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Average Mark: H1

Comments: Good major. I found most of the subjects easy to understand. There aren't any tricky things to learn or a lot of ROTE memory. For most of the subjects past exams were really useful. I'd say the major is easy-mid level in difficulty if you enjoy genetics but if you don't then it can be dry as fuk (for me population genetics sukks but it is bearable). Anything on individual subjects I will have already reviewed so idk not much to say. I'd say if you liked BCMB20003 then IMO this major is somewhat similar (at least GENE30002 and GENE30005) in that there is a bit of pathway memorization. I liked BMCB20003 and genetics and both felt like roughly equal difficulty for me. On the other hand GENE30004 and GENE30001 are pretty different lol. I found some of the stuff I learnt in BCMB20003 translated into the former two. Mostly just memorizing pathways and understanding them I guess.

In terms of prospects, so far I haven't had trouble getting honours offers. Of the supervisors I have spoken to, none expect me to know anything anyway (practical-wise). They have told me they will teach me any techniques etc I need to know. There are quite a few projects that involve genetics in some format (although usually only as a secondary component. Biochem and immunology seem to be the major ones I have seen). Even non-genetics projects will consider you tho if you have decent marks. Then again, I have only really looked at WEHI, MCRI, and the genetics department lol. I'm sure if you look into more institutes you will find enough prospects.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on November 27, 2014, 03:24:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30002: Corporate Finance

Workload:  1x 2-hour Lecture per week, 1x 1-hour Tutorial per week

Assessment:  70% Exam, 20% Midsemester Test, 10% Pre-tutorial Submissions (which serves as attendance)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Practice exams available; past exams can be searched through the past exams archives

Textbook Recommendation:  Business Finance (Peirson, Brown)

Lecturer: Henny Jung

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Topics include IPOs and equity finance, debt finance & leases, capital structure and WACC, payout policy with taxation, capital budgeting for mutually exclusive projects with different useful lives, project cash flow and risk analysis, real options, takeovers, M&As, divestitures, demergers, buy-outs, and corporate risk management.

It is basically an extension of Business Finance topics, which I think is conceptually easy to understand and has tons of real-life applications, but the nitty-gritty can be difficult to digest, especially in later topics. It builds on knowledge from previous finance subjects, but it also touches on topics in accounting (which I reckon should've been explained more, rather than just assuming that all Corp Fi students know how to compute F/S outcomes).

Henny is a very intelligent person, but due to her not being able to speak fluent English, her lectures are VERY hard to sit through (aka you can just listen to the recordings if you want). Her slides are super detailed, like 30 slides more than some CorpFi slides I've seen. Despite the information overload every after lecture, her lectures are very helpful in understanding the concepts thoroughly. She also invites guest lecturers, which is nice.

Students are somewhat 'coerced' into attending tutorials, due to the pre-tutorial (Section B) submissions, i.e. basically a set of questions you need to answer and the handwritten answers must be submitted at the start of every tutorial. But then again attending tutorials are actually really beneficial to students because (1) they don't release the answers to Section B questions, and (2) the exam questions are DEFINITELY similar to the Section B questions. Also, instant 10%!

The midsemester exam is a heart breaker. The median score was H2B, but the mode was like H3 at best. It was multiple choice format, but I found it tricky because there was a "some of the above" type of choices which was a bummer. Really hard questions + really tricky choices make for poor midsemester results. Advice: (1) know how to unlever and re-lever betas and know the details of rights and dividend issues, (2) know your options (i.e. debt & equity as options, operating lease as option, etc.) (3) focus on qualitative questions, and (4) MASTER THAT SH*T.

The final exam was definitely (and fortunately) easier than the midsemester. Three sections to the exam - Section A is 'modified' true or false, where you have to know whether the statement is true or false AND explain why it's either true or false; Section B is multiple choice, like the MST but with no "Some of the Above"-like choices; and Section C, which is a long-problem type of question, both qualitative and quantitative questions.

They remove some topics, which makes the studying much much easier. However, this means that the remaining topics must be mastered. Especially for essay questions, you need to be able to capture most of the 'keywords' they're looking for. Knowing how to do the quantitative/calculations questions is a given. Use the Section B questions as guides on how to answer qualitative questions, as they will be as difficult, or perhaps easier, than the tute questions. These calculation questions are tricky, esp for takeovers and real option analysis.


Overall, Corp Fi is not a walk in the park (for most people, at least) but it can be an enjoyable journey. Very applicable in real life, especially if you're going to embark on a career in Corporate Finance or Consulting.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 27, 2014, 04:13:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20069: Deafness and Communication

Workload: 1*1 hr lecture per week + 1*2hr seminar per week

Assessment:

-one practical assignment due mid-semester(50%);

-one 2000 word essay due during the examination period (50%)

Hurdles:
-80% attendance requirement in lectures and seminars. So there's the option of missing (a) 2 lectures only (and therefore not writing 2 reflections), (b) 2 seminars only or (c) 1 lecture (and therefore not writing 1 reflection) and 1 seminar

-Essay "plan" for the practical assignment (see below)


Lectopia Enabled:  Most lectures were recorded, but I recall there being 2 that weren't.

Textbook Recommendation:  Journal articles posted on the LMS. You don't have to read every week's allocated reading as many of them will be irrelevant to your two assignments, but it's good to read perhaps half of them.

Lecturer(s): -

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Deafness and Communication is quite a good breadth subject where achieving a H1 (or close to) is possible. Prior to taking the subject, I hadn't thought much at all about deafness and honestly had no idea of just how complex many of the issues surrounding it were. It was satisfying to finish the semester with an abundance of knowledge about deafness in general.

Lectures

I'd encourage students to attend lectures rather than listen via echo360. The lectures are delivered at an appropriate pace (not rushed) and towards assignment time, you take away the concepts that are most relevant to your assignment topics. Most of the lectures were interesting, but I think you're bound to find one or two that are a little dry. As part of the attendance requirement, you are required to write "reflections" after each lecture, these aren't marked or anything and just consist of 3/4 or so lines perhaps summing up the key topics you took away from a lecture, or writing some questions about a lecture that you'd like to find some answers to. You don't have to physically attend each lecture in order to submit your reflections for meeting the attendance requirement, as they may also be emailed to your tutor. However, it's better to actually attend the lectures and submit reflections that way as you tend to put them off during the semester to the point where you realise that you haven't emailed 4 reflections in by week 12.

Seminars

I can confidently say that i've never experienced seminars/tutorials that are as chill as the one's in D&C. They mainly consist of watching youtube videos about the lecture topics and lots of group discussions and activities (mainly with the people on your given table). Sometimes, though, I felt like what we were dwelling on topics that were quite irrelevant to the subject. For instance, we spent 2 seminars learning how to finger spell. It probably would have been more beneficial to use that kind of time in order to discuss the two assignments either as a class or from the tutor addressing us.

Practical Assignment

This was a hard assignment in the sense that you didn't know if you were doing it correctly. It consisted of a "resource" that addressed a specific target audience, such as secondary school students or primary schoolteachers, about a specific topic of deafness as covered through lectures. For instance, you could target the family of an elderly individual who has age-related hearing loss and provide them with some information about the kind of changes that may need to be implemented in order to communicate appropriately with that hearing-impaired family member. Or you might choose to target a couple who have just found out through screening that their newborn baby is profoundly deaf and provide them with some information about the cochlear implant. There are so many possibilities that you can choose, and honestly I spent most of my time thinking about what topic I would choose as opposed to physically creating my resource. In addition to the resource, you are also required to write a 500 word mini academic essay (i.e. avoiding the first person "I") that should include why the resource is relevant (e.g. if your resource is about the cochlear implant you could talk about how the number of deaf individuals that are undergoing cochlear implant surgery is on the rise and why), who the resource targets and why, and why your resource is appropriate for that target audience (e.g. if your audience is primary school students you might choose to make a children's book). Your tutor will also inform you that you must email them or hand in a plan for your resource (however, you can change resource topics at the last minute if you want to). What I took away from this assignment was that many students chose brochures or posters for there resource, so if you choose to go down that route then think outside the box (i.e. creatively) about how yours will look different from the rest. I ended up choosing to do a website, and I was surprised to be the only one in my seminar group that did that. It's not overly difficult to choose a technical approach for your resource as you can use website hosting sites such as google sites and I felt as though a brochure or poster was too constricting to fit in all the information I wanted to. With the resource, there is a designated seminar where each student speaks about their resource and why they chose their respective resource (don't worry, the oral presentation itself does not count towards your assignment mark), but it's good to be confident about it as you do put in a lot of hours for this assignment.

End of semester essay:

You are given a choice of 1 of 5 essay topics to select and the 1800-2200 word academic essay is due in the first day of the exam period. For this reason, it is good to make a start on the assignment early (e.g. plan your references and what you will discuss early in the semester), as you may find that you have an exam the day of or the day after your essay is due (not fun). Make sure your APA 6 referencing is flawless and that you read over your essay numerous times to avoid silly mistakes (for instance I forgot the word "to" about 5 times in my essay). Overall, I think the essay is harder to do well in compared to the practical assignment. I think you are more likely to get higher marks for your resource/500 word essay for the amount of hours you put in than the 2000 word essay. So that's just another reason to make a start early on this assignment and not to cram for it in the final days that it's due.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ReganM on November 27, 2014, 09:55:47 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL30001: Reproductive Physiology

Workload:
Contact Hours: 36 lectures and 6 tutorials


Assessment: 
-weekly online quizzes due during the semester (35%);
-a 50 minute mid-semester test in week 6 (10%);
-a literature review of no more than 1000 words due week 9 (15%);
-a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. <3333

Past exams available:  No. Sample exam only with a few practice questions. They would go through the questions in one of the final tutorial.

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn't buy a textbook.. maybe I should have.

Lecturer(s): Geoff Shaw, Mark Green, and many guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014

Rating:  2/5

tl;r

Interesting content, hard to succeed in. If you're looking for an easy subject to get good marks in, STAY AWAY.

Your Mark/Grade: H3

Comments:

I did this subject because I wanted to do a physiology subject (I hadn't done one before and thought it would be beneficial). My major is Zoology and this subject could count towards my major. Luckily before the end of the semester I switched this subject out with another one on my study plan, so that it wasn't one of the 4 major subjects I had listed.

Why does it count towards a zoology major? That's because Repro doesn't just cover people reproduction, it also covers animal reproduction. I found both aspects of the subject really interesting, the comparisons helped to highlight the range of differences in reproductive strategies and physiologies of different species. On the downside, it meant memorising a lot of information not only about human reproduction, but animal reproduction too.

This subject is not to be taken lightly. You won't only be expected to remember information, you will also be expected to apply it to new situations and reason through problems using information you've learned. What effect does adding testosterone have on the HPA axis of a castrated ram? Who knows. The subject was definitely much harder than I expected.

This doesn't mean I hated the subject.. on the contrary I found everything to be really interesting, and a majority of the lectures were really well presented. I often listened to the lectures while on the train, the content was so interesting it was like listening to a podcast. Mark and Geoff in particular were great lecturers, and I wish I did more of their subjects in my degree. Mark and Geoff were also great subject coordinators. I swear this subject is one of the best coordinated subjects I've ever had. After ever assessment Mark and Geoff were kind enough to tell us the means and medians of the marks, so we could gauge how well we went.

So what prevented me from getting a H1? I think it was underestimating how hard the assessment would be. I was only able to get really good scores later in the semester, when I had a better understanding of how the assessment works.

All in all, I would highly recommend you seek advice from past students who have done this subject you gauge how well you think you'd do in this subject. This subject is definitely no bludge subject, and if you want something that will give you a H1 will relatively less effort this is not the subject. This doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it. The content was definitely amazing, and it is one of the more interesting subjects I have taken this year. It's just that the assessment was fairly brutal and if you are trying to choose between two subjects you should really have a good think about which subject you think you'd do best in.

I think you can do this is in your 2nd year, so I would recommend you do it then if you can, maybe don't do in it in your final year when all your subjects are intense. :)

Lectures
On the whole the lectures were really well formatted. Everything that is on the slides is relevant information, and I felt that the lecture content was just enough for the time we had.

Mark and Geoff were amazing lecturers, and I always looked forward to the lectures they presented. However the guest lecturers were really hit and miss.. mostly miss. They often had heaps of lecture slides with crazy amounts of information, most of which we were expected to know. I'm grateful that the most confusing guest lectures (Implantation and DNA modifications) were not covered in detail in the exam (I think at most they were MC questions with only the easiest concepts from the lectures included).

I understand it's probably because the guest lecturers aren't as used to teaching as Mark and Geoff are, which sucks because they obviously have a lot of knowledge and they are evidently trying to condense years of research into a 1hr lecture.

Lectures were always recorded.. we only had issues when the Echo recording system went down, and even so Mark and Geoff got us an older recording to listen to.

Tutorials
Tutorials are held sporadically throughout the semester, like maybe once a fortnight. They were useful in that you can ask questions about concepts and lectures to Mark and Geoff and they will go over them for you, which is incredibly useful. In all honestly I think I only made it to one of these tutes, because of timetable clash, but they were still really good to listen to.

I think if you plan on going to the tutorials, you have to have some questions ready to ask and you have to be willing to ask them in front of the class.

Online Quizzes
The online quizzes were much harder than expected, especially the first few. For the first few quizzes I would highly recommend some group study, working with friends (or on your own) to go over your understanding of the content. It may seem frivolous to do this for a 5% assessment, but the early concepts are built upon for the rest of the semester so it;s worth it to get a good understanding of the basics.

You can have you lecture notes out in front of you so I would highly recommend you have them out.

As the semester goes on the quizzes definitely got easier. In the first few I would get 50% but in the last few I got more like 80-90%.

Use up ALL your time. Don't rush, take your time with each question to make sure you get it right.


Mid Sem and Literature Review
The mid sem was much harder than expected. It consists of MC and some define the word type questions. The word might be "Chorion" and you should be able to write a lot on it (2-4 points). My mid sem involved having to label the reproductive system of a tammar wallaby (which is in the slides). Other people had to label other things.

The literature review was a bitch. You are given a paper and you have to do your own research into the topic that the paper covers. It was a bit vague about what was expected, and so many people ended up doing badly. My topic was on "Alternate pathways of virilisation" and I think I looked up like 15 papers.

My advice for the lit review is to super study the original paper they give you. Know this paper off by heart, I'm serious. I made a table with a summary of the important points for every section, which really helped me understand what went on. I would also study the diagrams and figures, since we were expected to label a diagram in my lit review test. There was also a question in the lit review on disorders of sexual development, so you should know your lecture content too.

I really didn't like the lit review because it was so much memorisation and I think only 1 of the papers I studied became relevant in my answers. Maybe I studied the wrong papers but with minimal guidance it's really not too far fetched to expect that I studied the wrong thing.

Exam
Exam consisted of multiple choice (1 mark and 2 mark questions), define the word things (like "luteal cell", oogenesis, spermatid etc) and then you have to answer 2 long answer questions. One from two different sections, but in each section there are 4 questions. It covered all the content that had been taught, including stuff from before the mid sem. The MC questions are not as specific as the ones in the quizzes, because you don't have the luxury of having your lecture notes in front of you. :P

The long answer questions were really quite general. To revise for these questions my friend and I tried to think of some broad questions they might ask, that incorporates many of the themes in multiple lectures. I think one of the ones I answered in the exam was like "How is reproduction manipulated in cows?" or something along those lines, and it was really quite good because I could draw on information from like 5 or 6 lectures, haha.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: inamagneticfield on November 27, 2014, 11:23:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10002 Physics 2: Advanced

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 8 x 3 hours practicals, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week (#goingtotutes lol)

Assessment: Practical Work: 25%, Online Assignments: 15%, Final Exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled: Yep, recorded lectures, not that you'll be referring to them much

Past exams available: About 5 or 6 this semester, with brief answers

Textbook Recommendation: Physics for scientists and engineers; recommended.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Andrew Melatos for electromagnetism, Prof. Geoffrey Taylor for the rest (tfw when no Jamieson right guys), one special lecture with Dr. Roger Rassool (tangent city)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester II

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: Still waiting, hopefully north of 75 this time.

Comments:
Now, this subject was on track to be my favourite. The first 6 weeks of the course are incredibly illuminating for those of us who have yet to formally wet our beaks in vector calculus and its myriad applications to physics and a very interesting extension on year 12 physics. Thermodynamics and fluid dynamics aren't super captivating, but you have to know them. What I took issue with was the teaching of the quantum physics and modern physics units, which were a little handwavey (and seriously, we're not GOING to understand quantum in first year, especially with the memorize-details-about-all-these-experiments and quantum numbers and ughhh tacked on), but this is no fault of Geoff Taylor's, just the structuring. I really liked him! Luckily, nuclear was a good finish. Additionally, the tutes and lectures aren't all that useful (not to say the lectures aren't enjoyable, but I'll get to that). In the case of the tutes it's just a lot of anti-social attempting 2 or 3 of the problems on the sheet, so that's why I gave it 4/5. As to only being my second favourite of the semester, well, it's not my fault linear algebra got so damn interesting  :P.

Lectures
Now to be more specific, Andrew Melatos took us for the first 6 weeks, and they were a wild ride. This is likely to be the first time most students have gotten mathematics really all up in their physics, so for first year it's a step up. Setting up all the various integrals seemed daunting at first, but it's really not so bad with a bit of practice and understanding. I found it be to quite fast paced, but I'm sure some of you will be more comfortable than me. If you've done UMEP maths and went straight into Vector Calculus you're gonna have a good time, I'm told. Anyway, it's all really interesting and fun here, Melatos makes sure of that with his excellent lecturing presence.

Geoff took over for the rest of the course, and he was great too. Again, I thought quantum and some of modern physics was really annoying to learn, but if you have the textbook it should be fine. Anyway, my issue with the lectures is that they still don't seem like the optimal way to learn, it's not like Calc II where you walk out with expansive and perfectly sufficient notes. You could definitely learn successfully from the textbook or internet, which is what a lot of people did, but why not take advantage of the cool lecturers and all that in addition?

Practicals
Since you've done Physics 1: Advanced, you know the drill. 8 x 3 hour sessions (well, our demonstrator cut us off at 2.5) with a lab partner (or a group of three in my case) and a hopefully amiable demonstrator. You get your pre-lab done on the train, and ask the boys something along the lines of "you guys read the lab manual for this one??" and you're good to go. I think loudly rapping along to phone-speakers Kanye West with my partners and disturbing everyone around us might be my favourite moment of the academic semester, haha. They're pretty interesting this semester, but I will warn you the Planck's constant prac is hell, and the flowing fluids prac is god tier. Usually the demonstrator will cut you off before a particularly difficult (in terms of time) to complete section of the prac, or Geoff Shute (this man is the king) will give you a printed out sheet of paper detailing what you should do if/when some of the equipment is defective. Pracs were fun this semester.

Tutorials
These weren't for me so I'll keep it brief; I only went to one. WARNING, if you have a low-ish work ethic you will almost certainly not do the sheets in your own time, but if you don't go you should definitely attempt to work through them, even in swot vac.

Online Assignments
I think these weekly assignments physics students endure are the single greatest factor increasing hangover intensity and unpleasantness at Melbourne uni, hands down. Weekly assignments sucked for me since I did four sciences this semester, so I'd have 3 - 4 assignments every weekend. THAT BEING SAID, some of the questions are very interesting. Mad props to James Richmond for choosing a bunch of (mostly) fascinating questions every week, albeit with some verbose wording. They range from sorta easy to pretty hard. Some of the answers are online too. If you go to lectures and do the assignments, you're learning the physics to a good standard, and it isn't tough to get close to 100% with a bit of focus. But yeah, these were like a painful back massage, in the end good, you can kinda get into it if you try, but a little rough at the time.

Exam
The 2014 exam was pretty decent, but good god that 2013 exam... Melatos went very very hard that year and he certainly restrained himself this time. I think it was OK, if you study and look at the practice exams you'll be okay. Word to the wise though, it's not like Calc II or something where it's all standard questions, you have to be creative in the exam to answer the electromagnetism questions correctly. The rest of the exam is still tough, but manageable with study.

All in all, I would recommend this subject instead of the normal physics. There's still a hell of a lot of physics left, but at least you've learnt as much as you can so far, even if, for most of the cohort, it'll be our last physics subject. As for me, I'm still tossing up eng vs. science (yay for getting pressured into immediately going to uni after year 12 instead of like getting money and travelling), yet this subject made a strong case for physics!

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: inamagneticfield on November 28, 2014, 12:16:42 am
Subject Code/Name:ENGR10003: Engineering Systems Design II  

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week in the classic first year eng PLT, 1 x 3 hour workshop per week from week 3 to week 12

Assessment: Oh god, so many quizzes, online activities, pre-workshops etc #necessary... I'll just say EXAM: 60%, NOT EXAM: 40%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Recorded lectures, bonus video lectures, completed notes, lots of resources on the LMS.

Past exams available:  I think there was like 2 1/2 this year, I didn't do any.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is a textbook, but I haven't met anyone who bought it.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Gavin Buskes (10/10 human), Prof. Andrew Ooi (rhymes with gooey), and A/PROF Shanika Karunasekera.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester II, 2014

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H3 (I swear this doesn't usually happen...)

Comments:
First things first, this is an excellently coordinated subject, where the lecturers and the workshop tutors are doing their very best to make sure you learn, and to make you succeed. Gavin gives you a little speech about how he has no interest in a bell curve mark distribution, he wants everyone on the H1 side of the scale. And you know what, he is 100% telling the truth about this (Andrew's speech is more about how he wants to see people get a final score of 8% since it apparently hasn't been done before, hahaha). This is a subject where you have all the training you need, but since the exam is a hurdle, the rest is up to you (which I hope you read in the key and peele singing sort of voice..). As for the content, it's 1/3 digital systems, 1/3 programming, 1/3 mechanics. I liked the whole first unit and bits of the other two, so as to whether or not you'll find it interesting, guess you're gonna have to wait and see.

Lectures
The lecturers are awesome for this subject (YES, EVEN SHANIKA despite what a lot of lazy kids who have no drive to practice programming might tell you) and the notes are sufficient, so you can rock up to the lectures and sit back and relax and learn. I would recommend going, even though I never went to one after week 6 or so due to laziness and some other stuff. Not much else to say, this subject keeps a nice pace, neither fast or slow. People talk negatively about the MATLAB unit year after year, but I thought this time around the lectures were OK with nice examples. I'm almost 100% sure the criticism comes from this sort of attitude: "UGHH WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO BUY MATLAB AND ACTUALLY PRACTICE THIS MUST BE THE LECTURER'S OR THE COURSE'S FAULT". But yeh, you gotta practice programming. End of story.

Workshops
These are fun. Excellently coordinated, and very social. You get to apply exactly what you learn in the lectures, and have a good time doing it. An excellent part of the subject. Usually you get to leave early, but some weeks can be incredibly rushed, taking up the full 3 hours and barely finishing.

Assignments
Do these REALLY need to be so hard? Weekly group assignments, and when they are tough they are tough. If you have a smart person or smart friends you'll be fine.

Exam
The exam is a hurdle, so unless you want to repeat ESD in the summer four days of the week while your mates are at the beach, study hard. Now my review is going to deviate into something of a cautionary tale. Keep up with ESD, or I promise swot vac will be stressful. Granted, the exam is very fair, no matter what the fail rate is (usually around 20% I think), the exam you sit is completely fair. It's just a matter of whether or not you've studied, and to get a high score, how much of the 10 mark programming and/or circuit question you get done. So if you haven't been contributing, this is where your rekt meter goes up. I was losing sleep before the exam, because I kept getting the 'blessing' (it was really a curse) of having smart, clearly defined leaders in every group that were content to let me do about 20 - 30% of the assignment. I stopped going to lecturers, and had no idea what was even happening for a lot of the units. Needless to say, swot vac was stressful, having to learn about 8 weeks of content in 2 nights before my exam. Luckily I did okay.

But yeah, keep up with the assignments (that means do them!), and take solace in the fact that the exam you sit won't be so hard.

Complaints
The stupid pre-workshops, stupid peerwise. These suck. Easy marks though, so do them.

PASS
From mates, I've heard PASS was super helpful, so if you're looking to ace ESD II I'd look into this.

All in all, this subject is pretty cool. Killer lecturers, killer workshops, hard assignments, mostly interesting content, stupid mini-assessment that practically begs you to forget about it, and whenever you're needing a little conversational material with the ladies you can always segue into "so do you KNOW about the 7-4 hamming code?". I didn't do as well as I wanted to, but that's on me and nobody else.
This subject kinda feels like Clint Eastwood is training you for a big fight, holding your punching bag and so forth, but at the end of the day you gotta step up and win the boxing match alone. And try not to get punched in the back by the exam.
I would recommend this subject, it's an exciting true beginning to an engineering career (ESD I pls).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on November 28, 2014, 03:42:09 pm
Subject Code/Name:  PATH20003 Experimental Pathology

Workload:  1 x 1 hour lecture per week, 1 x laboratory (3 hours) or workshop (2 hours) session weekly.

Assessment:  Performance (10% - continuously assessed), 5 x practical reports of 1,000 words each (15% each = 75% - submitted fortnightly), one hour multiple choice exam (15%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exam papers since it was the first time that the subject was offered, but there was a sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  None, but Robbins & Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease would be helpful. Pubmed is also useful.

Lecturer:  Jo Russell

Year & Semester of completion:  2014, Semester 2.

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments:

Considering that this was the first time that the subject was offered, it was very well-organised and was a good complement to PATH20001. The topics covered are in a similar order to those of PATH20001, so again, it does make sense to do both if you are that way inclined.

In no particular order, the subject's content comprised haematology (namely, Haemophilia), forensic pathology, genetic disease, reversible and irreversible injury, and immune complex-mediated disease. Five topics and five reports - simple enough. The reports were supposed to be approximately 1,000 words each, but you will inevitably exceed the word limit. Despite University Policy indicating that penalties apply when the word limit is exceeded, demonstrators were quite lenient. That being said, waffling will prove costly. As always, check with your demonstrator, and I am sure that they will tell you how much you should look to write.

The lectures were helpful in indicating the content for the following weeks' practicals and workshops, and contained information pertinent to the exam.

Each week, there was either a practical or a workshop. They alternated on a weekly basis, and each practical corresponded to a workshop and vice versa. In the workshop, there was usually a series of questions to be answered that related to the practical.

The exam was exactly as it was billed to be; entirely multiple choice with questions relating back to the five topics covered, as well as some general pathology and practical technique.

Overall, it was a fantastic subject. The only reason I gave the subject 4.5 instead of 5 out of 5 is because I prefer Arts subjects, even though I am enrolled in Science. (So, take it as a 5/5.)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jtvg on November 28, 2014, 08:32:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30001: Financial Accounting Theory

Workload: 2x 1-hour Lecture, 1x 1-hour Workshop

Assessment: 70% 3-hour Final Exam, 30% 1.5-hour Midsemester Test

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No - Matt doesn't provide any past midsem/final exams, just a few practice questions which may or may not be helpful

Textbook Recommendation:  Financial Accounting Theory (Scott) - yep, recommended (must read, actually) as some answers to final exam questions can be found on the book, also, it's really helpful as it does contain examinable topics that could not be put in the lectures due to time restraint

Lecturer: Matt Pinnuck

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

FAT is like the driest subject ever (as if accounting's not dry enough, let's put some theory in it). Previous accounting subjects are waaay more interesting than this. However, FAT is quite a good subject in that it gives accounting students a firm foundation of what accounting is and why it exists. It's not your typical debit-credit financial accounting stuff - it's all theory.

The course tackles topics on behavioural finance such as market efficiency, rational decision theory, behavioural biases, risk aversion/neutrality, etc. and is essentially made up of 2 components: adverse selection (valuation objective) and moral hazard (contracting objective), both of which are problems associated with information asymmetry and connected with the purpose (or rather purposes) of financial accounting information. It also seeks to explain why inefficient financial markets and managerial labour markets impact demand for accounting information (cost and fair value) and accounting regulation. I guess you're bored already just reading this.

The good thing about lectures is that Matt is a really lively and funny bloke. He loves to crack jokes (even though nobody else laughs with him), but yeah, he does keep the lecture hall alive. Attending lectures is really not necessary. But take note of what he says (warning: he talks fast), whether or not it's included in the lecture slides -they're very important, and sometimes, what he says off the slides is more important than what's actually written on the slides. Overall, lectures are not that interesting but at least it's not THAT boring.

Workshops are good in that there's really some in-depth discussion going on among the class (I found that 3rd year students are more opinionated and are less shy to contribute to tute discussions). Workshops have structure, which is always good. My workshop leader (Priyanka) is lovely, she always gives super important summaries at the start and runs through more important 'exam-like' workshop questions. Attendance to workshop is not required, and solutions to workshop questions are uploaded weekly, but workshop discussions give really good insights which can be useful in the exam.

Midsemester exam's pretty easy, average and median score was H1. One just really has to exert an effort to deeply understand the theories - important people, argument, evidence, implications, counter-arguments, etc. There's not a lot to study for the midsem, and the computation questions are pretty easy (basic CAPM). The midsem is all multiple choice. Some people seem to find multiple choice better, but IMO it's harder than essay-type tests!

Final exam is definitely much easier than the midsemester. In our case, it was a 13-question essay-type theory (and some computational) questions. The unfortunate thing is ALL TOPICS are equally examinable, so lots of studying must be done. Again, one must be able to 'master' the theories by heart. I even made an intricate diagram of topics, which is useful due to the fact that almost all FAT topics are interconnected. One piece of advice is when you're studying for the final exam, try to incorporate each topic with previous topics. What they look for in exam answers is (1) how in-depth you have explained the theory appropriate for the situation, and (2) how well you have inter-related that theory with other theories discussed in the subject. There were also some questions which ask you to regurgitate lecture slides, especially the strengths-weaknesses type of questions - thus, you need to be able to memorise key points of comparison, and be able to write it in an exam question. Calculations are easy, it's mostly Bayes theorem and expected utilities so mastery is just the key. We were also asked to make an 'ideal-conditions' balance sheet and income statement, so just be ready with that. Again, the only difficult thing about the exam is studying for it. Once you've studied well, it's just a matter of writing down what you've learned.

The only thing I would have asked is for Matt to give out past exams, or at least give MORE practice questions. And also to stop being a chatterbox (he likes to talk too much to the point that often he couldn't finish the lecture slides on time).

Again, despite the dryness of this subject, I love this subject because it made me realise the essence and importance of accounting, and why accounting and accountants exist in the first place. It kinda gives you a sense of purpose as a future accounting professional *or perhaps it's just my cheesy self*.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: neatfeet on November 28, 2014, 08:35:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30001 Cardiovascular Health: Genes & Hormones

Workload:  3x 1hr lectures per week, 3x 2hr tutorials during semester (1 for each theme)

Assessment:  3 mid-semester tests (20% each), 3 assignments (2x 10%, 1x15%) (no exams!)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Sample questions provided for Theme A and Theme B, none provided for Theme C

Textbook Recommendation:  None, lecture notes are sufficient. Journal articles are provided as reference in case you need further clarification, but are not assessed. Silverthorn/lecture notes from 2nd year physiology may be useful for revision.

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating:  3/5

Comments:

This subject is split into 3 themes, each with 10 lectures on assessable content, 1 Q&A session, and 1 mid-semester test during the 12th lecture slot (weeks 4, 8 and 12). I am going to mention the structure of the tutes below, since there were only 3 and each of them were run a different way.

Theme A: Blood Pressure – Causes and Consequences

Theme A covered blood pressure and looked at some aspects of cardiac disease. The lecturer was really great as he explained everything really well. It is a good idea to revise your 2nd year Physiology lectures on the Cardiovascular System and the Kidneys beforehand, as he does assume you remember the basics!

The tute for this theme was more of an opportunity to ask questions and clarify difficult areas, although the lecturer did go over some of the areas he could only touch on during the lectures. It’s also a good opportunity to ask any questions you have about the assignment. 

The test for Theme A was 40 MCQs and a sample test was provided.

The assignment involved drawing up a flow-chart that outlined various cardiovascular responses to a particular situation. This assignment seemed straightforward, however over 100 people failed. I think this was mainly due to not going into the amount of detail he expected from us, but sadly this was not included in the instructions (as we were told to construct a 'simple' flow chart :/ ), so make sure you clarify with the lecturer exactly how much detail you need to go into.
 
Theme B: Perspective on the Heart

This theme covered cardiac cells and cardiac action potentials in detail. While I found the content interesting, I wasn't a big fan of the way the lectures were presented. For the first 15 minutes of the lecture, we were quizzed on the previous lecture, which isn't a bad thing, but it was done in a slightly intimidating way. If you do plan on attending these lectures in person, it's a good idea to revise the previous lecture and know what was covered, or else invest in an empty-lecture-seat costume in the hope that you won't have to stammer an impromptu answer into the microphone for the entire cohort to hear.

The tute was an opportunity to look more in depth at an article that we would write on for the assignment. During the tute, several PhD students presented a short talk on three articles. Based on these presentations, we had to choose which article we wanted to do for the assignment. It's a good idea to actually read the articles beforehand so you don't end up choosing one that is a bit more challenging than you expected (oops). After we chose our articles, we were then put into groups and had to dissect the main points of the article/come up with opposing views (depending on which group you were in).

The test for this section was also 40 MCQs but the questions were quite wordy which meant lots of reading which meant running out of time. Sample questions were also provided.

Theme C: Programming & Reprogramming

Theme C covered cardiovascular pregnancy adaptations and was probably my favourite theme. Many of the lectures overlapped with each other which made revision much easier. The lecturers for this theme were good and I can't find fault with them.

For the assignment, we selected one of 4 articles on LMS, so when we turned up to the tute, we just went to the group for the article we had chosen. We were given worksheets (which were helpful) and were made clear on what was expected of us in the assignment. For the assignment, we had to write both a lay summary and a scientific summary on the article (this is actually very similar to the assignment for the subject Frontiers in Physiology, so you do get a bit of practise that way). This is due during the exam period.

The MST was split into 25 MCQs and 25 extended MCQs. The test did cover some of the experimental results obtained from journal articles (these were referred to in some questions e.g. 'Blah and deBlah (2014) said that…') so make sure you know these.

Final thoughts

Overall, this was a good subject. It was very popular, with many people choosing it because there were no exams. However, it's important to keep up-to-date since you don't have swotvac to catch up if you fall behind, and to understand exactly what is expected of you in the assignments.

If you have any questions, please feel free to PM me :)

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: neatfeet on November 28, 2014, 08:49:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30008 Frontiers in Physiology

Workload:  3x 1hr lectures per week. Contrary to the handbook, there is no weekly 3hr practical: this is mainly to encourage you to have weekly meetings with your wiki group.

Assessment:

1 assignment (20%)
1 Wiki group project  (40%)
Exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  None, but if you have done Muscle and Exercise Physiology and/or Neurophysiology in Semester 1, or are doing Cardiovascular Health in Semester 2, the past exam questions from those subjects may be helpful.

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating:  4/5

Comments:

Lecture Outline:

Week 1 – introductory lectures. These were not assessed on the assignment or exam.
Week 2 – lectures on experimental techniques in physiology (e.g. microscopy, electrophysiology, etc.)
Week 3-5 – frontiers lectures on 3 areas: Muscle and Exercise, Cardiovascular, and Neurophysiology.
Week 6-10 – these lectures were assessable on the exam. Again, these lectures were split into the 3 areas, with 5 lectures on each area. You can just focus on 2 areas (these will be the areas you do on the exam) which means you only have to go to 2 lectures a week.
Week 11-12 – These lectures were supposed to be careers lectures, but they didn't end up happening so there were no lectures for the last 2 weeks of semester (woop woop)

Individual assignment   

For this assignment, we had to pick 2 lectures from weeks 2-5, each from a different area (muscle, neuro, cardio or techniques) and write 2 summaries on it: one for a lay audience and the other for a scientific audience. This meant we didn't really have to focus on (or even go to...) the other lectures. However, when you submit your assignment for peer review, you will get the assignments of 3 other students to review, and these assignments may not be on the same lectures you focused on. So it might be a good idea to go to/listen to all the lectures so you can give the best possible feedback (and hopefully receive some in return!) The assignment is worth 20% and 5% of this is made up of the marks from submitting the reviews and how helpful people found your comments. I highly recommend doing the peer review as it is an easy 5%! After submitting the final copy of the assignment, we didn't get any helpful feedback: the comments on turnitin seemed to be copied and pasted directly from a marking rubric. However, if you really wanted the feedback, you could probably speak to the coordinators in person.

Wiki

You're pretty much on your own for this project. It's not like a prac subject where you get to check things with a tutor every week, so it's up to your group how you want to approach your topic. You will be given a list of topics to choose from and I would recommend that you do a bit of research before putting in your topic preference because a topic may sound interesting, but there may not be much/useful literature on it.

Another thing I would recommend is to decide on your approach early. We were told that we would have to submit a statement outlining our approach to the topic. This didn't happen and, as my group wasn't particularly organised, this meant we were floundering for several weeks before we finally decided on an approach. Even if you don't end up submitting a statement, I think it would be great to check your approach with the coordinators, just to make sure you're on the right track and that you don't end up going round and round in circles. As with any group project, there are always people who don't pull their weight and others who end up dictating. 10% of the wiki mark goes to a peer rating, where your group members rate you and you rate them on various things like organisation, communication, contribution to the project, etc. This was really good because it means you are marked according to your contribution to the project. Also, knowing that your group will rate you reminds you to be nice during the meetings, no matter how much you want to throw things :P

Overall, my wiki project wasn't as smooth sailing as I hoped it would be. Some people had really fantastic groups that were organised and did most of the work at the start of the semester rather than leaving things to the last minute, so they definitely had a much better experience than I did.
 
Exam

The exam was broken up into the 3 sections (muscle, cardio and neuro) and consisted of MCQs and everyone's favourite extended-MCQs. You choose 2 areas for the exam. There were 43 questions for cardio, 57 questions for neuro and 63 questions for muscle. I thought this was a bit weird, because if you did cardio and neuro, you would have less questions to do during the set time than if you did neuro and muscle. (However, don't be fooled by having less questions for cardio, I heard they were pretty hard. Think back to 2nd year phys were there were those questions with options for Increase, Decrease, No Change or Not Enough Info *shudders*) Because the examinable content is only from Weeks 6-10, this means you have 5 lectures for each section (10 in total for the 2 areas you choose) which makes for a light exam revision load.

Final thoughts

While this subject wasn't everyone's cup of tea, I enjoyed it, mainly because I liked the content (which overlapped with muscle and neuro from semester 1) and the light exam load :P I liked the amount of choice in this subject, however I think this may have been a bit confusing for some, especially at the start of semester when we were having lectures that weren't being assessed and we were all like why are we here?

If you have any questions, please feel free to PM me :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: neatfeet on November 28, 2014, 08:58:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30004 Sensation, Movement & Complex Function

Workload:  2x 1hr lectures per week. 3x 3hr workshops throughout semester (plus 2 online workshops that you complete in your own time)

Assessment: 

1 Assignment (15%)
1 Mid-Semester Test (20%)
Exam (65%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2010 and 2011. Sample questions for MST and exam were also provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  There was no prescribed textbook. If you have Neuroscience (Purves et al) from Principles of Neuroscience that might be helpful, but it isn’t necessary. They do refer you to other textbooks at the start of lectures, but those are only for extra reading. The lecture notes are sufficient for the exam.

Lecturers: Various

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Comments:

This was a really great subject. It was really well run and the lectures were really interesting. The lectures mainly focused on sensation (e.g. vision, pain) and various aspects of cognition including language, reading, emotions, mental health, aging etc. Knowledge from Principles of Neuroscience was assumed but everything you needed to know was in the lectures or workshops.

Workshops

The timetable said that the workshop lasts for 3 hours, however Colin rarely ran over 2 hours. Because there were so many students enrolled in this subject compared to previous years, they had to cut down the number of workshops to fit everyone in, so instead of having 5 workshops throughout the semester, there were 3 workshops and 2 online workshops you had to complete in your own time. I really liked the structure of the workshops: we were given a worksheet to fill in as we went through the module but you weren't on your own for this as Colin would talk for a while, give you a few minutes to answer a couple of questions, and then discuss the answers afterwards. My favourite workshops were the ones for language and vision: there were little tasks built in to the module that tested your reading speed or optical illusions, which made them very fun! The information from the workshops (both in-person and online) were assessed in the MST and exam. The workshops are also a great opportunity to ask any questions on the lectures up to that point.

Tests and Exam

We were given sample questions for the mid semester test. The midsem itself had 20 MCQs and we were given 30 minutes to finish it (which was heaps of time). It was fairly kind, there was nothing very difficult. It was during the 2nd lecture slot of Week 8.

The exam was made up of 40 MCQs (1.5 marks each) and 3 essay questions (20 marks each). The MCQs were of similar difficulty as the MST, except they were more focused on the lectures that weren't covered by the MST. There are a couple of past papers from 2010 and 2011 which were all essay questions and were really good for practising. Colin also gave us some sample essay questions which were also very helpful.

Assignment

The assignment involved responding to a particular article about brain imaging. There was an online workshop to help with this which was quite useful and you are given quite a lot of time to work on it. We were given the assignment at the start of the semester and it was due at the end of Week 9.

Final thoughts

I highly recommend this subject. It forms part of the Neuroscience major but is still a great subject even if you're not doing the major. It was very interesting and you are given a lot of help in the form of sample questions. The workload was fairly light as there were only 2 lectures a week.

If you have any questions, please feel free to PM me :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on November 28, 2014, 09:09:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20009 - Research Based Physiology 

Workload:  1X1hr lecture per week, 5X3hr practicals, 6X2hr workshops.

Assessment: 
Written reports of up to 1000 words each due during the semester (20%);
Class participation during the semester (5%);
Effective PRS participation and contributions (5%),
A research-project and written report of up to 2000 words due during semester (30%);
Ongoing assessment of e-Learning activities(10%);
A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2009-2012.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing. An electronic copy of the PHYS20009 book is provided but you are expected to print it out and bring it to your practical/workshop sessions.

Lecturer(s): Dr Deanne Skelly.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Sem 2.

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Comments:
Overall, not a bad subject but definitely not the greatest subject I have taken to date. I picked this subject in pursuit of a physiology major and also because everyone has said that a H1 is easily attainable/in the bag.

I'll start off with the lectures - to be brutally honest the only reason I went was for the PRS marks (5%). This was a pain in the ass cause I live pretty far away from uni and it doesn't help with not being able to drive and having to rely on public transport. You need at least 75% attendance and attendance is not taken in 1st week. So if you do the math you have 11 lectures where attendance is recorded so you need 11X0.75 ==> 8.25 Lectures --> 9 lectures to get the 5%.
Lectures were mind-numbingly boring. They were spent talking about
-pre-practical material (just a very cursory analysis of the concepts)
-post-practical material (review of some of the results expected in the practicals)
-the 30% thermoregulation assignment (title/intro, methods, results, discussion/conclusion/abstract) <--- 1 lecture each from week 5-9 or something.
Lecture content wasn't heavy but a tip for the thermoregulation assignment would be to start early, hand in the drafts and follow word for word what Deanne says in the lectures. I got complacent and just relied on intuition and messed up the introduction (failed - got an N grade) LOOOOOOOOOL.

I personally found the 4 practicals extremely fun :) You got to see a snapshot of how the equipment works and actually apply the concepts you learn. It's also a great way to make new friends etc since you're allocated into a group (alphabetical order though).  You get to find the blood pressure of your group/yourself, find out respiratory parameters, look at physiological (CV/Resp) responses to exercise (static vs. dynamic) and also look at the physiological changes to muscle contraction.

Workshops were good fun as well, we often finished early and you need to submit an online assessment with the group. These tasks contribute to 10% of the grade so try to work well as a team.

Another 5% of the grade comes from participation/contributions in the workshop/practical sessions. So definitely don't be the one in the squad who just mopes around and hopes everyone will answer and contribute and just scab off other peoples work. You learn a lot more from contributing and finding out where your strengths/weaknesses in your understanding of the content lie.

Many people will tell you that  the assignment is great because it relieves a lot of pressure come exam time. I personally object to this because the RBP exam was on the first or second day of the exam period and we didn't get the marks for the assignment until a week or two after the exam. As a result, there was no good way of predicting how well you had to do on the exam to do relatively well etc. I found the assignment to be extremely time consuming and I'm glad I at least passed the assignment overall.

Another thing I personally disliked was how the practical marks were not given in percentages but instead as grades. I didn't like this because grades give little indication of how well/bad you may have done. I.e. H1 = 80-100 and P=50-64. Something that could be improved would be to provide an actual percentage mark so the students know how well/bad they may be doing.

With regards to the exam - I found the exam very fair. Make sure you do them as they are MANY repeat questions. This is what saved me somewhat in the end since I messed everything else up.

EDIT: A massive pro of this subject is Deanne's impeccable ability to promptly answer emails. I constantly emailed her questions etc even letting her know about Medical certificates since I was sick for one of the pracs and she responded very quickly.
 
PM me for any questions.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on November 30, 2014, 12:49:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30002 Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits

Workload:   3 x one hour lectures per week

Assessment: 

2 x mid-semester assessments (25% each)
1 x two hour end of semester exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No (expanded on later in this review)

Textbook Recommendation:  Definitely do not need it, but as stated in the handbook Purves etc al., Neuroscience, 5 th edition, 2012: Sinauer Associates

Lecturer(s): Main lecturers; Andrew Allen, Graham Barrett, Joel Bornstein

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 1.

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

The review for NEUR30002 is finally here, after an abundance of PMs. As i'm writing this subject review now and I completed NEUR30002 in semester 1, keep in mind that I have forgotten much of the subject's content. Overall, I actually quite enjoyed this subject and much of the content (i'd say 30-40% overlaps with that of NEUR30003, which makes revising a lot more easier). It is likely that you will learn the broader concepts in NEUR30003, but NEUR30002 addresses the same concepts at a narrower level of detail e.g. neuronal pathways underpinning the touch sensation.  I'd say this subject is one which combines ROTE learning and applying your knowledge, though the ROTE learning facilitates your ability to answer application questions.

Lectures

I thought the lectures were well-delivered by most of the staff. However, there were a few lecturers that would frequently run overtime such that the end of the recordings couldn't be captured on Echo360. No need to worry though, I ended up listening to those lectures with lectopia and whatever I had missed at the end of the lecture recordings was never examinable, just read over and understand the corresponding slides. But if a lecturer simply runs out of time and leaves say 15 slides left then he will either tell you if you are or aren't expected to know those specific slides, and they will hold their word for that. Also note that this is a subject where there will be moments where you find that it is better to physically attend the lectures and other moments where you listen via Echo360, depending on the lecturer. It is fine to do both or one over the other depending on how you learn. What I liked about the lecture notes in particular was that the summarys or "key concepts" given at the end of each set of notes were very detailed and allowed me to focus heavily on the key points of each lecture. For the sake of performing well in the MSTs and the exam please note that this subject requires you to understand the detailed structure, architecture and function of ion channels, types of neurons, glia etc. and involves many neuronal pathways (e.g. for the direct/indirect dopamine pathways, you reallly need to memorise those diagrams that are in the lecture notes!). I found that the lectures started off with building your knowledge at the neuronal/ion channel level and then involved broader areas of study e.g. memory, injury to the nervous system later on in the course. In terms of lecture content, we covered:

lecture topics
Introduction to the course and the brain
Cellular components of the brain
Modulation of membrane potential - I (revise your PHYS20008 lecture notes if you have forgotten the key concepts)
Modulation of membrane potential - II
Introduction to metabotropic receptors
Modulation of neuronal function by metabotropic receptors
Measurement of neuronal activity I
Measurement of neuronal activity II
The dopaminergic neuron
Focus on disease: Parkinson's disease, stem cells (wasn't examinable this year on in both the the MSTs and the exam)
Axon Initial Segment and the Nodes of Ranvier
MID SEMESTER TEST (1-9)
Focus on disease: AIS/channelopathy/epilepsy
Principles of information processing/What determines neuronal activity
Cellular basis of sensory transduction- mechanoreceptors
Special sensory transduction mechanisms
Presynaptic processes - VGCC, vesicular release, presynaptic proteins
Presynaptic processes - axonal transport and structural neuronal polarity
Maintenance of the neuron and synapse- neurotrophins
The post-synaptic density
Neuronal circuits - enteric nervous system I
MID SEMESTER TEST (10-21)
Neuronal circuits - enteric nervous system II
Mathematical modelling of neurons
Neuropsychiatry and gut
Focus on disease: Gut microbiome (neuro-immune interaction?)
Autonomic reflexes - spinal cord
Autonomic reflexes - medulla - baroreceptor reflex
Autonomic reflexes - transmitters and modulators
Autonomic reflexes - thought and emotion
Focus on disease: Injury to the nervous system – autonomic dysfunction in spinal
Injury to the nervous system 2
Injury to the nervous system 3
Focus on disease: Repairing the nervous system.
Cellular basis of memory
Septo-hippocampal system


MSTs:

Just your standard MCQ tests, but notice how they are quite heavily weighted (25% each). So revise well for these (obviously i'd aim for 2 H1s on these but a H1 and a H2A should be enough to give you a H1 for the subject overall if you do well in the exam). Definitely your performance on these tests should reflect how you will perform on the end of semester exam. Therefore, revise the subject's content during the semester for the two MSTs to reduce your reliance on cramming in swotvac. IIRC, The structure of the MSTs was some normal MCQ (a,b,c,d) questions but also a fill in the blank question (a more unique type of MCQ question).


Exam:

If you love MCQs, then this subject is for you! Provided the exam structure hasn't changed for 2015 onwards, everything in this subject is answered on an MCQ answer sheet. The end of semester exam consists of the a,b,c,d MCQ questions (much like on the two MSTs) and a large amount of fill in the blank questions (like in your BIOL10004/5, PHYS20008 exams). I much prefer this kind of format as I find it triggers your memory to answer questions, unlike where you have to write a whole page of notes answering a specific question (which also makes your hand kill). In addition, I think if you know your subject content well, you shouldn't be that pressed for time answering these kind of MCQ questions. One issue for many students, however, is that you aren't provided with any real MCQ practice tests/ exams at all in the subject. I didn't really find this to be an issue though as it's really a subject where you need to memorize and understand the lecture notes thoroughly. The detailed key concepts given at the end of each lecture also reduce one's need for practice tests/exams.

In summary, I did enjoy this subject in the sense that if you put in the hours there shouldn't be an issue to get a H1. Sometimes the lectures might be a little dull, but the fact that the subject examines you fairly makes up for that. PM over the summer if you need more detail about the subject.

 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on November 30, 2014, 04:27:50 pm
Subject Code/Name:  FREN20012 / FREN30014 French Travel Writing

Workload:  1 x 1.5 hour lecture per week, 1 x 1.5 hour tutorial per week (for 10 weeks).

Assessment:  2 x Quizzes (5% each = 10%), 4 x Blog posts (5% each = 20%), 1 x Devoir sur table (20%), 1 x Dissertation (50%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Not applicable.

Textbook Recommendation:  Not applicable; some readings were made available on the LMS.

Lecturer:  Jackie Dutton

Year & Semester of completion:  2014, Semester 1.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H2A

Comments:

N.B. French Travel Writing is offered once every two years.

The subject was enjoyable and well-structured, and the subject outline clearly indicated the due dates for all assessment tasks, as well as the topic(s) to be covered in each lecture/tutorial. The workload was very manageable, especially considering that the subject only runs for ten weeks. Given that one of the texts studied was published in 2013, it would seem possible that the texts might change in 2016. The texts were Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Jules Verne), Tintin au Congo and Tintin au Tibet (Hergé), and La nostalgie heureuse (Amélie Nothomb).

The quizzes were designed to test the content of the lectures and the texts. They were short are pertained to the overarching concerns of the lectures, as well as the narratives, characters, and concerns of the individual texts.

The blog posts addressed some of the concerns in the lectures, but were more organic in the sense that you could approach each post as you saw fit. For example, "La carte postale" was one topic in which you were required to design a post card (or choose a picture) and then detail its significance and context, as well as pen a message in accordance with the context.

Importantly, the devoir sur table and dissertation must be written using different texts. We were given the prompts for the dissertation in the first week of the semester, so choosing separate topics/texts is made a little easier. The devoir sur table was open book and required a thorough understanding of the texts (but technically only one text) and an understanding of the lecture material. It was presented as a series of prompts.

Perhaps the best part of this subject was the dissertation, as you could theoretically select any topic to write about, even if it was not covered in the course proper (but approval is a must). Irrespective of the topic chosen, your essay plan must be approved before you can commence writing. I chose to write about a text that was not taught. I presume that it was more difficult to construct an essay about a topic that was somewhat removed from the lecture content, so I would advise sticking to the prescribed texts.

Jackie made the lectures and tutorials genuinely interesting and engaging, and it was a good "break" from my science subjects.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on November 30, 2014, 05:27:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL10001 - Modern and Contemporary Literature

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

Assessment:  [same as ENGL1002 - Lit. and Performance] 1x800 word close analysis (20%) 1x1200 word essay (30%) and 1x2000 word research essay (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture but we got stuck in a dodgy lecture theatre and the recording quality was pretty awful most weeks. Lectures can definitely afford to be skipped, esp. for texts you're not writing on for assessment, but don't rely on the echo to pick up the slack. They also took ages to upload (sometimes a whole week after the actual lecture :/)

Past exams available: No exam for this subject.

Textbook Recommendation:  Course reader has all the necessary articles, but is MASSIVE! Like, I do a lot of reading-based subjects, but this one was bigger than all my other subjects combined. It's not like there was an abundance of material either, it was just poorly organised photocopying (ie. one article was about 30 pages of little A6 scans on a whole A4 sheet each, and wasn't double sided -.-) Hopefully they'll edit this down next year.
Most texts studied are available from Fishpond/Book Depository for less than $10. Don't buy from the Co-Op.

Lecturer(s): Various, and I've been told this changes from year to year. Each text is presented by a different person with Joe Hughes and Paul Rae (subject co-ordinators) being the only repeat performers.
Others included: Grace Moore, David McInnis, Stephanie Trigg, Tyne Sumner, Ken Gelder, and Denise Varney.
For the record, I've noticed the Theatre Studies Department and the lecturers teaching the plays were usually a lot better, but this is just my opinion.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 2.7 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Although Lit. and Performance wasn't technically a prereq, this subject is essentially an extension of that course, picking up from the late 19th century and continuing till the early 2000's. The assessment was structured in the exact same way, and judging by the atmosphere in my tute, people who'd done Lit&Performance were a lot better off than those relying on the ModCon marking rubrics or explanations of assessment.
I found the first semester subject to be much better co-ordinated, even though I enjoyed more of the texts in ModCon.

Lectures: This was a mixed bag; some lectures (most notably Paul's Godot week) were incredibly engaging whereas others consisted of monotonous repetition of other people's readings of the text - as well as the bane of the English subjects: reading straight from powerpoint slides! >:( I know this is a thing in other subjects too, but my god is it tedious to sit there listening to someone read someone else's opinion for 20 minutes when you could have just read it yourself. Because this latter style or presenting was more often the case, lecture attendance dwindled considerably to the point where we were sent slightly desperate sounding emails asking us all to come back  :-\
It was a shame because some of the lectures were really awesome, but I found myself checking who the lecturer was ahead of time to determine whether it was worth going or not.

Tutorials: Again, I get the impression these varied greatly between which tutor you got. Apparently almost 40% of the cohort re-enrolled in different tutes throughout the semester because they were stuck with someone they didn't like. Personally I found tutes quite enjoyable, even though most weeks the activities consisted of reading out sections (~3 pages) of the text and discussing them - which is fine in the early weeks, but after a while I started missing the holistic focus of Lit. and Performance where we'd consider the implications of an entire text, or compare it to other approaches. Overall they were a lot more enjoyable than lectures, and they were a good opportunity to control the discussion since most tutors seemed to have a pretty fluid lesson plan. If you have questions about the assessment, ask them here as the English department do not like using email.

Assessment: If you've done English in Semester 1 then you'll be cruising. If you haven't, I'd highly recommend buddying up with someone who has because the  "task outline" given in ModCon is basically useless. Essays are all fairly straightforward, and they weren't that strict about referencing; I found so many mistakes in my essays after I handed them in, but I never lost marks :P
Secondary readings are invaluable, but you should definitely go outside the subject reader as those ones were rarely any help.
Feedback for this subject was less than helpful, however.
Here is an edited version of the comments I got for my second essay:
Quote
This is a superb theorisation of waiting as existence preceding essence, negative space which precisely makes meaningful by repetition in lieu of a symbolic designation of a given thing's meaning. Your secondary reading is strong here and provides interesting vectors for you to posit the enduring legacy of the dialectic of possibility and the impossibility which didascalia, dialogue, and dramaturgy together exacerbate through direct and arbitrary encounter as theatrical counterparts.
If anyone knows what this means, could you please PM me...

Readings: This is probably going to turn into a little rant, but when I talk about readings I don't mean the actual articles we were assigned to read, but rather the way we interpreted or 'read' the text. Whereas the other English subjects I've done were always open to, and in fact were often incorporating alternate interpretations, this subject was way more hardlined. This permeated lectures, tutes, and assessment, and was the most frustrating part of this subject.
For instance:
[we're discussing how To The Lighthouse is a metaphor for Woolf's experience as a mother, and we've just been shown a quote from Woolf herself that refutes this reading - ie. something along the lines of 'no you fools, that's not what my book is about!'] "But can we really prescribe any more importance to this [the author's!] interpretation of the text than our own?" <-- this was said without irony. The rest of the lecture went back to the aforementioned reading without any acknowledgement of alternate views.
These weren't presented as possible readings, or extensions of interpretations, but instead simply 'what the text was about,' and there was little room for disagreeing when you're given essay prompts or questions in tutes that deliberately push you in these directions. You could circumvent this in assessment if you were clever about your challenging, but more than once I was kicked out of class for trying to acknowledge these dominant readings as flawed, and I'm not normally the annoyingly opinionated one in tutes, but by week 6 I was seriously sick of the incredibly restrictive discussions.
Part of this could be attributed to the fact that we have one week/ two lectures/ less than two hours to cover an entire text. Of course there was no way to cover all, or even most interpretations, but seeing as Lit and Performance managed to navigate this timing issue well, it was disappointing to be given the 'oh well, that's all the time we've got' excuse when concerns were raised.

This subject has a lot of potential, and in the right hands it frequently flirted with being very enjoyable. Hopefully in future years the approach will change and there'll be more of an even-handed look at the books studied, but for me there were just too many glaring logical inconsistencies and frustratingly dismissive answers for this subject to rank highly.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Azsy14 on December 01, 2014, 05:15:52 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20007 Cognitive Psychology

Workload:  1 X 2 hours of lecture per week + 1 X 2 hours lab/tutorial per fortnight, hurdle requirement such that you can only miss one tutorial

Assessment:  30% lab report, 10% online MCQ tests (1 for each week), 10% presentation and 50% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Nope, but graded MCQs give you a good idea of what the exam's gonna be like.

Textbook Recommendation:  Not necessary. I got it and barely used it. The lecturers did an excellent job.

Lecturer(s): Meredith McKague, Daniel Little, Phillip Smith & Geoff Saw.

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating:  5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments: Probably the best (and most interesting) of all the subjects I've done so far. I'm gonna major in psych so I have had the chance to try out MBB1, MBB2, Dev Psych, Bio Psych, P&S Psych and this thus far and it's definitely the most cohesive of the lot and very well-executed.

Meredith does the very first lecture and the final three. Her lectures pertain to language use and the grounding of symbols in simpler iconic/indexical representations and how they all relate to cognition. I found her lectures challenging yet rewarding/interesting since some of the concepts were almost esoteric at times. She did an excellent job maintaining audience interest while still being very informative and this shows in her lecture slides (not too dense and ~30, with 'personalized commentary' accompanying each ppt). You will learn a lot from her lectures.

Phillip does the next 4 weeks. He covers the attention part. Initially, I found his lectures pretty dull/dry but they became much more interesting once I understood the gist of the experiments covered. His lectures are very well-structured and you feel like you're undertaking a chronological journey towards what's known of attention these days. The bits on peripheral/central attention and selective attention operating on objects instead of space are particularly enjoyable.

Dan continues for the next 3 weeks. His lectures were pretty hands-on and always started out with a mystery of sorts, unravelled at the end of the lecture, making it all the more tempting to be there for the lectures. His lectures were not as difficult to grasp initially as Meredith's or Phillip's but they were extremely content-heavy (be prepared for ~100 slides!). He also does the online statistics module and attempting the associated questions is a hurdle requirement.

Geoff does one lecture on the biases in reasoning and judgement. I can't comment on his style since I missed that lecture but judging by the slides and Echo it was really fun!

The lab report was quite difficult since we were the first batch to cover a novel condition in criminal lineups (no previous studies!). This led to much confusion about finding appropriate references and conceptualising and defining it in relation to the other lineups. If you do this subject and get a similar lab report I'd suggest doing lots of research into this!

The presentation is graded (10%), with two dates to choose from (somewhere mid-semester or towards the end). The grading is pretty lenient, so expect it to give your grades a boost (I should know, since I'm horrible at powerpoint presentations yet did quite well).  :P

The online MCQs each week (all to be submitted at end of semester) were quite tricky. They were also timed and graded. Those questions were the sort to be expected during the exam.

The exam consisted of 108 MCQs, with each week given equal weightage in terms of number of questions asked (some are also set aside for the online statistics module). I didn't find it too challenging but that could be because I'm very interested in psychology and 'get' the stuff in lectures without too much effort. I found Meredith's section quite nerve-wracking (to make matters worse our exam started with her section!) as there were always 2 answers that competed in terms of accuracy/relevance to the question. Make sure you know her stuff well and understand it from every angle! Dan's section was very content-heavy but should not be a problem if you're thorough with your revision. Phillip's section should be pretty straightforward. Also, the stats section was noticeably easier than the ungraded questions online (hurdle requirement) so don't fret.  :D

Overall, even as someone who enjoys psych subjects, I can say this is one of the standouts (at least for those up to the second year). It's very cohesive and well-executed due to the very competent lecturers and should be interesting regardless of your background. If you're doing it as a breadth I strongly recommend getting acquainted with the nature of such subjects by picking either MBB1 or MBB2 or both beforehand.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on December 02, 2014, 12:07:18 pm
Subject Code/Name:  PATH20001 Exploring Human Disease - Science

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1 hour CAL per week.

Assessment:  CAL (10%), 2 x Midsemester tests (15% each = 30%), two hour final exam (60%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No.  A sample exam for sections A and B of the exam was supplied.

Textbook Recommendation:  Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease. The textbook is probably useful only if you plan on continuing with pathology in third year. Otherwise, the lecture material should suffice.

Lecturer(s):  Vicki Lawson, Vera Ignjatovic, Chris Hopkins, Tom Karagiannis, Theo Mantamadiotis, Fred Hollande, and Melissa Davis.

Year & Semester of completion:  2014, Semester 2.

Rating:  4 out of 5.

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments:

Pathology is a fascinating subject, and is no doubt important if you wish to study health science, particularly medicine. Compared to other second year science subjects (such as BCMB20002 and PHYS20008), I felt that pathology was less conceptually driven and more reliant on rote learning. That is not to say, however, that the subject is entirely based on regurgitating facts.

The lectures were consistently informative, and did not require all the prescribed readings. Again in comparison to PHYS20008 where the readings were essential, I felt that pathology's readings provided more depth to the subject matter, but said depth was not directly assessed. The lecturers were all effective in explaining key concepts. Lecture topics included injury, inflammation, healing, infection, immunity, haemostasis, blood vessels (and associated disorders), genetic disorders, and cancer. Additionally, the last lecture tied together the underlying principles from the preceding topics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of pathology.

CAL classes were sometimes held at uni, but at other times, could be completed at home. Essentially, they were a way of reinforcing the lecture content with a series of questions followed by an online quiz. The quiz was usually five questions long and did not take long. Provided that you had attended the lectures and completed the CAL worksheet, the quiz itself was not too difficult.

Obviously, the common theme in mid-semester tests is to ascertain if students have retained and understood the information presented in lectures. Unsurprisingly, the mid-semesters did exactly that. They were fair in the sense of both time allocation and assessed content. The occasional question pertained to general knowledge, but the majority were firmly rooted in the lecture and CAL material.

The exam had three sections: A - multiple choice, B - extended multiple choice, and C - long answer. Section A was similar in form to the mid-semesters and had an emphasis on the lectures that were not previously assessed in the mid-semester tests. Section B was similar to section B of the ANAT20006 exam. Section C required you to answer one prompt from a bank of four. Long answer means a coherent answer, consisting of full sentences, paragraphs, etc. Overall, I found that reviewing the lecture notes and CAL questions was an effective way to prepare for the exam. I should note that unlike the mid-semester tests, time was slightly more of an issue in the final exam.

With a manageable workload, engaging content, and good lecturers, pathology was certainly a well-run subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: 90+FTW on December 02, 2014, 02:42:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: SOLS10001 Law in Society

Workload: 2X1 lectures per week, 1x1 tutorial per week.

Assessment: 500 mini essay (10%), 2000 essay (50%), 1500 take home exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes.

Past Exams Available: No (or at least, not that I'm aware of)

Textbook Recommendation: None. Just do the readings - I cannot stress this enough.

Lecturer(s)   Claire Loughnan (WONDERFUL LECTURER. Probably the best I've ever had)

Year & Semester of Completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:
Law in Society is a wonderful subject and the main reason I’ve decided to minor in Law & Justice (was originally going to minor in Crim, since I’m majoring in Classics). This subject is incredibly thought provoking and I promise you, it WILL challenge your worldviews. I feel much more informed having completed this subject and I would gladly take it again haha. Alas, I can only recommend it to everyone else :)

The tutors are absolute experts and the lecturer, Claire Loughnan, makes every lecture interesting. Sounds cheesy, but she actually makes you EXCITED about learning. We study a number of controversial topics, including homosexuality, refugees, colonial law and Female Genital Mutilation/Female Circumcision. In doing so, we examine the language used to discursively frame these issues and the way in which the State, represented by the Law, controls and harms its individuals while concealing it. It’s a subject that really opens your eyes.

With that said, I actually met a lot of students who believed that it was difficult subject. Rightly so, I'd say. It's CERTAINLY not a 'bludge' subject. You examine the legal philosophy underpinning most societies and how this affects us, the individuals. This can become quite tricky and the tutors often challenge you to form original perspectives. You MUST do the readings otherwise, you will struggle to perform well. I cannot stress this enough. Most students in MY class who didn't do the readings actually ended up failing :/

I don't really know what more I can say, except DO IT!!!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AzureBlue on December 02, 2014, 03:32:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI10209 / MUSI20168 / MUSI30233 – Glee Singing

Workload: 1 hr lecture and 1.5 hrs of rehearsal time per week

Assessment: Differs based on the level you take the subject at.
•   Level 1 is a learning log (25%), weekly 5-question online MCQ test (30%) and participation (45%)
•   Level 2 is a learning log (25%), song analysis (15%), weekly 5-question online MCQ test (30%) and participation (30%)
•   Level 3 is a research assignment (40%), weekly 5-question online MCQ test (30%) and participation (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, audio only, and only the lecture portion of the class is recorded.

Past exams available: No exam, only public performance.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook. For each rehearsal, you get the sheet music in a folder.

Lecturer(s): Vicky Jacobs

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2014

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Glee Singing is a really fun and easy breadth to take! The lecturer was really enthusiastic about Glee, made the subject enjoyable and catered it so that it was very accessible to those with very little experience in music and singing.

I found some of the lectures quite interesting. After each week (apart from week 12), there would be a 5 question multiple-choice quiz on the LMS about the material covered in each lecture (google is your friend!). You should be able to score really highly in this as long as you are careful, review the lecture slides and attend the lectures. The lectures ranged from topics including lectures about the songs we would sing, a bit about the artists involved, an introduction to different singing styles (legit/twang/belt), vocal health, warming up, song form and structure, performance elements and how the voice works.

Throughout the semester we rehearsed the following popular songs:
•   All about that bass (Trainor)
•   Firework (Perry)
•   Mad World (Jules)/Highest Ground (Wonder) Mashup
•   Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf)
•   Royals (Lorde)
•   Happy (Pharrell)
•   Sing (Palmer)

The tutorials also included some warm-ups, singing in rounds and sight reading at the start. The sight reading consisted of the lecturer showing some music on the projector and the group using solfa to sight sing it – rhythmic exercises are also included. Therefore, you do not really need to be experienced in music in order to participate in this subject although if you are, this could be too basic... but there's not so much of it that you get really bored.

Although I overall liked the subject, I found the main thing that detracted from this subject was the somewhat arbitrary marking system for participation, which made up a large percentage of the final mark. Due to the large class sizes, the lecturer could not really assess each individual’s singing ability and hence other than recording the number of tutorials you show up to, quite a large portion of your mark is determined by your ability to recall one line of a lyric of a song during roll call. This would only happen once a semester and hence is a really haphazard way to mark the students’ participation and singing ability, especially when there is more to singing ability than being able to recall one lyric. (I believe just ‘turning up’ to all the tutorials gets you somewhere in the 70s for participation mark). However, the lecturer is considering ways to improve the way this is marked in the future.

The learning log (1000 words) involves recounting your experiences in the subject and what you learnt. The best way to tackle this is to think of some problems encountered during the semester or areas you found challenging in the songs and demonstrating ways you improved on this through practice. I believe this would be quite a bit harder to write a whole essay on if you were already very experienced at singing. The song analysis (500 words) is not an analysis of form, key etc of the song but instead an analysis of how the song (must choose one of the songs studied throughout the semester) is used in society culturally etc. This is very broad and there are many ways you can tackle this task! Of course, lots of further reading is essential in scoring a high mark in both these areas (eg. Do some research and find some papers on the specific thing you found challenging, or why the composer included some particular technique in the song and how that relates to what he is trying to express). The research task for level 3 Glee Singing is again quite broad: 'Pick any popular song from the last 50 years and research how it changed the world or reflected the changes in the world.' (1500 words) Chicago referencing is used.

The public performance is an informal performance like a ‘pop-up choir’ in front of the VCA building for half an hour. There was no opportunity given for anyone to do solos, and you are welcome to bring any of your parents/friends along to watch the performance if you wish, and sometimes passers-by stop to listen to the performance.

I would recommend Glee Singing to anyone with an interest in choir singing and/or popular music. I found the subject quite laid-back as someone who is reasonably experienced in singing, but in order to score a high mark and get the most out of the subject, a decent amount of research should be undertaken for the written components of the subject.
 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Whynot123 on December 03, 2014, 11:09:35 am
Subject Code/Name: ISLM20003 The Qur'an: An Introduction  

Workload:  
Weekly:
-   1 x 1.5 Hour Lecture
-   1 x 1 Hour Tutorial

Class attendance (lecture and tutorial) is required for this subject; if you do not attend a minimum of 75% of classes without an approved exemption you will not be eligible for a pass in this subject.

Assessment:
•   In-class test in Week 9 (30%)
•   Interviews & journal assignment due in week 10 - 500 words (20%)
•   2,000-word major essay due in the examination period (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, the audio is hard to hear. Also, sometimes to lecturer forgets to turn on the microphone so you can’t hear the audio. It is best just to attend the lectures.

Past exams available:  No, there is no exam for this subject. No sample essays were given either.

Textbook Recommendation: 
•   Saeed, A. The Qur'an: An Introduction London, Routledge 2008
•   Abdel-Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford 2005

You will need to get your hands on the first one since the subject is basically taught from the book. The second one is a translation of the Qur’an, you don’t have to use Abdel-Haleem’s one if you don’t want to, you can use any other one of your choice. Both books can be found online (I have a pdf version of both, PM me and I’ll send it over) so you don’t have to buy them.

Lecturer(s): Professor Abdullah Saeed, Mr Rowan Gould

Lecture 1: Introducing the Qur’an and its Context
Lecture 2: The Early Revelations
Lecture 3: God and Humanity in the Qur’an
Lecture 4: Prophets in the Qur’an: The Religion of Abraham
Lecture 5: The Qur’an and Other Religions
Lecture 6: The Qur'an in Daily Life
Lecture 7: The Qur’an and Interpretation
Lecture 8: Law, Ethics and Gender in the Qur’an
Lecture 9: Mystical Approaches to the Qur’an
Lecture 10: Modern Approaches to Qur’anic Interpretation
Lecture 11: Eschatology of the Qur’an
Lecture 12: Western Scholarship on the Qur’an

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2
(From 2015, according to the handbook this subject is only offered in semester 1)

Rating:  4.4 Out of 5

Comments:
This was quite an enjoyable subject. I’d think that anyone with an interest on the Qur’an or Islam would find this subject quite enjoyable. It is an introductory subject so you don’t need any prior knowledge about the Qur’an or about Islam. The content was easily understood with the help of the readings. There aren’t many contact hours and the workload is fair. The most challenging part is probably the research essay, but if you start early (talking Week 3-4) it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Course Structure
This subject was run pretty well. There is one 1.5-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial per week. On top of this, every week there are probably 4-5 “required readings” that you will be required to do before you come to the lecture every week. These are mainly chapters from other relevant books with the pdf version posed on the LMS although sometimes you will be asked to watch a video. I found that in some weeks, the readings were unmanageable and were overly long and hence didn’t do them. However, I would highly recommend doing them, if you don’t have time just skim through it quickly so you have a basic idea of the content. I say this because some of the questions on the class test in week 9 were taken from the readings.

There are also “Recommended Readings”, these are optional readings. They provide you with more insight on what is going to be discussed in class. If you don’t have time, just leave these ones alone and do the “Required Readings”

Lectures
Lectures were taken by Abdullah Saeed and Rowan Gould. All of them were focused around the Qur’an. You start with an introduction to the Qur’an, where it was revealed, when it was revealed and then move on to topics in the Qur’an such as the concept of God, humanity, other Prophets and other Religions. The last few weeks are concerned with interpretation and modern scholarship on the Qur’an.
I found Abdullah’s lecturers to be much more engaging and easy to understand. He would define concepts using simple English and was very enthusiastic about his teaching. Whenever we asked him a question, he would answer it really well, at times he would take upto 5 minutes to answer a question just to make sure we understood his answer ! However, at times I think he was a bit too slow and towards the end he would sometimes rush through the lecture.   

Rowan was okay, he was understandable if you really paid attention but he would often use complex terms and words without explaining them to us and this makes him really hard to follow. He would get too philosophical at times, which tbh wasn’t required. He wold often use one tone throughout his lectures and this put many people to sleep. He was less engaging at times, but a good thing about him is that he wouldn’t rush through the lecture.

These lectures weren’t your standard sit there and listen type of lectures. You could ask questions during the lecture. We would also get a break in the middle for relaxing/asking question/etc…

Tutorials
Rowan took all the tutorial classes (afaik), they were held in the Sidney Myer building. These tutorials were a really good opportunity to ask questions about things you were unclear about or discuss something of interest to you.
In the tutorial you would be given a tutorial sheet which had questions on the lecture and the tutorials. Often, you were given a few verses on the Qur’an that you had to read and answer questions on. You would do this with other people on your table. Most of the questions did not require a yes/no answer, they were asking for your views on an issue/how you interpret this verse. At times however, the questions would be based on facts.

After the tutorial, you would be given a quiz to take home and do. MAKE SURE you do this and do it properly. Most of the test questions were similar to the ones on these quizzes. The answers would be posted on the LMS and you would go over the answers in the next tutorial class.

I found tutorials effective for consolidating the information given in the lecture. It was also a good time to meet your classmates. Would highly recommend going to them.

Assessment
There were 3 assessment tasks:

In-class test in Week 9 (30%):  
This was a short 70 question multiple choice and true/false test taken during the lecture time. You are given 60 minutes to complete it and the questions were based on lectures, tutorials and the prescribed readings. At first, it may seem like there is isn't going to be enough time to answer all the question, but have no fear probably about 1/3 of the class finished early. There were no trick questions, as long as you had listened to the lecture, done the tutorial questions and gone through the readings you should have no problems with this. The tutor would also hand out a quiz at the end of each tutorial. Make sure you know how to answer these PROPERLY. If you get the wrong answer, find out why you got the wrong answer and what the right answer is etc…

In 2015, this seems to have changed to a 1,000 word class test (according to the handbook). I don’t know if this means they’ve changed the format of the test, I would hope not, I found the test to be really fair. 

Interviews & journal assignment due in week 10 - 500 words (20%):
There were two stages to this, neither of which was too time consuming:
Part 1 involved interviewing two of your friends about selected verses from the Qur’an. There were three sets of verses, but you only had to select one. You had to interview your friend about their interpretation of the verses, how they came to their understandings, whether or not the verses were fair etc… You had to do these during your own time.

Part 2 is the actual write up which you will be handing in. You have to write up your reflections on the interview results, along with your own reflections on the verses into 500 words. You had to write about firstly how you and your friends interpreted the verses, then the differences and similarities between you and your friend’s views and how these may have come about. This isn’t a formal essay so you were allowed to write in the first person. I found it really hard to fit all my reflections into 500 words (even though there was a 20% margin) and I had to leave out a lot of details. Try not to go into too much depth with the interpretations, try to point out the major themes of your selected verses and leave the minor ones alone (or give them a brief mention).

2,000-word major essay due in the examination period (50%):
This can take a while to do, so I suggest that you start early! For this essay, you are given a choice of 6 questions. Alternatively, you can make up your own question and have it approved by your tutor. I would highly suggest choosing a topic early in the semester. That way you can research your topic and get your resources so that you are set to write up your essay.

From the subject guide: The purpose of this assignment is to develop your ability to conduct independent research into a broader area of study regarding the Qur’an and its interpretation, to engage critically with scholarly arguments in the field, and to present an argument in clear, coherent, written English.

Try writing out an outline before you start and e-mail it to your tutor. The tutor is really helpful in helping you come up with ideas and suggesting resources. By having an outline, it will ensure that your essay is focussed around the question and will ensure that you do not deviate off topic.

The examiner is not looking for a simple yes/no answer, but rather wants to see that you can engage in some of the scholarly debate regarding the Qur’an. Keeping this in mind, try to keep your essay neutral. It is somewhat like the journal exercise in that you can compare and contrast views. Remember, when you cite a scholar and his views, you have to discuss it and question it not just simply state it. Try to avoid generalisations and simple descriptions. Also, make sure you have a fair few sources.

In terms of the marking criteria:
-20 % is for research and referencing, so make sure you know how to reference. Make sure you are consistent with your referencing, don’t switch between styles half way through your essay because you thought the Harvard system was easier…

-30 % is for structure and expression, which is why I emphasize doing an outline before you start. Also remember this is a formal academic essay, so write in clear, academic English. In terms of structure: The essay has to include an introduction which outlines the issue you are discussing and the main argument. I would highly recommend sub-heading for the body paragraphs (will help to organise your ideas better) and the conclusion should draw together your essay and synthesize the results in a clear and concise manner.

-50% is for your argument and analysis. This makes up half the mark for your essay, so put a lot of thought into your argument. Try to avoid generalisations as I’ve said before and try to explain your argument (with examples if necessary). Remember that the essay is 2,000 words, so make sure your argument can fit the word limit (you should have no problems with the word limit).


Final Comments
Overall, a well coordinated and enjoyable subject. However, a drawback of this subject is that the course co-ordinator (Abdullah Saeed) is hardly available. He has other commitments overseas. He only took half the lectures (I think) and he was really hard to contact. I e-mailed him multiple times but he didn’t respond, so if you want to talk to someone about the subject, it would have to be Rowan. Rowan was easy to contact, but at times I would have preferred to talk to Abdullah.

If you know how to write a good, argumentative essay and know how to reference, I recommend this subject (70% of the assessment is essay based). I picked this subject because it wasn't 100% essay based and the journal exercises was only 500 words (compared to 1,500 in other subjects I looked at). 

So yeah, stay on top of the assessments and this subject shouldn’t be too hard. If you have any other queries, feel free to contact me ! Goodluck :D 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on December 05, 2014, 07:28:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20001 Organisational Behaviour

Workload:  1x2hr lecture, 1x1hr tute

Assessment:  10% Individual Assignment, 30% Group Assignment, 10% Tutorial Participation, 50% 2hr Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture

Past exams available:  No, but one sample exam

Textbook Recommendation:  University compiled textbook “Organisational Behaviour” – it is quite useful to have especially for assignments but I just borrowed it from the library. If you do buy it, try textbookexchange.

Lecturer(s): Graham Sewell and Zelinna Pablo

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, Semester 2

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Comments:
Content: Micro (topics relevant for small teams such as perception, motivation and conflict) and macro (organisation-based topics such as communication, culture and power) topics.

I actually found the micro topics much more interesting as they talked quite a lot about aspects of behavioural psychology but the structure of Graham’s lectures ruined it – too much wiffle waffle and new concepts seemed to jump out of nowhere. Macro, on the other hand, was very well taught by Zelinna. She uses loads of examples and diagrams to help you understand the frameworks you need to use to apply to the case studies.

Assessment: Tbh not sure if micro was intentionally unclear because they wanted us to explore the topics ourselves through the assignments. Regardless…

There was a helpful workshop that explained what was expected for the 10% individual assignment. Definitely check it out, look at the sample assignment response they give you, make sure you find lots of sources and answer what you’re being asked for and you’ll be fine. If you end up not being fine, its still… err.. fine for lack of a better word, cause you get a ton of constructive feedback. Beware APA referencing! Its quite easy to drop marks for that, sadly.

The 30% team assignment depends so much on the competency of your team – if possible, make sure you pick the same tutorial as your friends (generally 5 or 6 members in a group WITHIN the tutorial)!! I’ve heard of mean tutors who split up friends into different groups, but at least have one reliable person you know with you or else you might end up having to carry your team.

First up, don’t expect a super great mark for your team assignment. They put the assignment up like two weeks before you’ve actually finished learning the content, so don’t bother starting until then. That being said though, definitely make a timeline and set strict time limits for when shit has to be done by. Be aware of any mid-sem exams or other assignments for other subjects! You’re probably going to be in for a rough ride those last two weeks before its due… Anyway, I think the first and most important task is to draft the structure of your report. Everything else just falls into place. Send it to your tutor for feedback, then continue tweaking it as you start researching, then send it to your tutor again.

Tutorials: I didn’t find tutorials that useful, but I had a really fun tutor and it was basically a chill session. Do go for the tute marks tho – do the pre-tute work and chat with your tutor and you’ll probably get a 10/10.

Exam: Blehh. 4 questions – one based on a micro topic asking for a reflection on your experience for the group assignment, and three based on a macro topic asking you to apply frameworks to a case study that you’ve previously encountered in tutorials.

I didn’t really like exam because the questions were literally one line and super broad, eg. Using theory X analyse what went wrong at ABC Ltd, and it was basically another memorisation exercise in that you have to memorise the frameworks. Make sure you think about each combination before going into the exam because there is quite a lot of content you can potentially address, and the more you do, the higher your mark. Time is an issue though, so don’t elaborate too much.

Overall: Don’t do this if you don’t have to. There are way easier subjects to get good marks with. Please don’t torture yourself with a 30% team assignment and memorising 60% of the course for the exam. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on December 05, 2014, 07:56:59 pm
Thanks to ReganM for her reproductive physiology review, where I have stolen some parts. I thoroughly recommend that students/AN members that have considered this subject to read all of the reproductive physiology reviews posted.

Subject Code/Name: BIOL30001: Reproductive Physiology

Workload: : 36 lectures and 6 tutorials (so 4* lectures/week (happened once in the semester) or 3*lectures/week + one tutorial every now and then)


Assessment: 
-weekly online quizzes due during the semester (35%);
-a 50 minute mid-semester test in week 6 (10%);
-a literature review test held approx. 2/3 weeks after the mid semester test (15%);
-a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No. Sample exam only with a few practice questions. They would go through the questions in a tutorial.

Textbook Recommendation
:  Don't need it. Lecturers never once referred to a textbook in the semester.

Lecturer(s): Geoff Shaw, Mark Green, and many guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014

Rating
:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Personally, I tend to choose subjects based on two reasons; 1) I think the subject will be of interest to me and/or 2) The assessment doesn't appear too daunting. Though, during reproductive physiology I only gained some interest in the subject at about week 10 (due to the lecture content being delivered at that time) and the assessment for the most part was quite difficult relative to my other subjects. Thus, most of the time I found reproductive physiology to be more of a "chore".

This subject is 80-90% ROTE learning, plain and simple. The title + the assessment format make this subject appear significantly easier than it actually is.

Lectures

I thought that each lecture had SO much packed into one hour. Most lectures felt like they had 1.5-2 hours worth of content. As a consequence, I lectopia'd most (approx 75%) of these lectures as I simply couldn't keep up in class. Once I started listening via Echo360 I felt a little less lost with everything.

The lecturers themselves, i'd say average-good. Not exceptional but certainly not terrible at all. I do appreciate how the lectures consisted of very newly publicised scientific research, especially with regards to the material that the guest lecturers delivered. As ReganM also stated, Mark & Geoff were very prompt with replying to emails and were very active contributors on the discussion board.

I think towards the end of semester you can kind of tease out what the most important concepts are in the subject. Any specific parts of lectures that I thought to myself "how on earth can this be examinable???" in the final exam or MST was generally not examined.

Lecture topics:

Lecture 1 Introduction
Lecture 2 Female tract and ovaries
Lecture 3 Endocrinology of the ovary
Lecture 4 Male tracts and testis
Lecture 5 Spermatogenesis and testis endocrinology
        Tute
Lecture 6 Hypothalamo-pituitary-gonadal axis 1
Lecture 7 Puberty
Lecture 8 Seasonal Breeding
Lecture 9 Menopause
Lecture 10 Marsupial Reproduction
        Tute
Lecture 11 Fertilisation
Lecture 12 Early embryo development
Lecture 13 ART and IVF
Lecture 14 Implantation
Lecture 15 Maternal Recognition of Pregnancy
Lecture 16 Placentation
Lecture 17 Parturition
       Tute
       Mid Semester test
Lecture 18 Lactation
Lecture 19 Breast and Breastfeeding
Lecture 20 Germ Cells
        Tute
Lecture 21 Sexual Differentiation
Lecture 22 Diseases and Disorders-Human sexual differentiation
Lecture 23 Diseases and Disorders-Non-human sexual differentiation
        Tute
Lecture 24 DOHaD
Lecture 25 Reproduction and Environmental Disruptors
Lecture 26 Epigenetics in human health and disease
        Non-teaching week
Lecture 27 Manipulating domestic animal reproduction 1
Lecture 28 Manipulating domestic animal reproduction 2
Lecture 29 Stem and iPS cells
        Tute
Lecture 30 Diseases and Disorders 2 Ovarian
Lecture 31 Diseases and Disorders 3 Uterine
Lecture 32 Diseases and Disorders 4 Pregnancy
        Tute
Lecture 33 Diseases and Disorders 5 Male infertility
        Tute- Exam details
Lecture 34 Diseases and Disorders 6 HIV/AIDS
Lecture 35 Human Population Growth


Tutorials

All in all, I didn't gain much at all with regards to attending the tutorials. I would generally feel lost at how some (probably rare) students seemed to pick up concepts so easily.

The tutes are made up of students asking questions for clarification to Mark and Geoff about specific parts of lectures. They would refer to lecture notes slides and paraphrase what had been said in lectures or draw some diagrams.

I probably went to 2 or so tutorials out of those provided, they certainly aren't essential for attending/listening to on ECHO360 in order to do well in the subject. I'd much prefer if the tutes had consisted of 50-60% set questions of a worksheet followed by some questions asked by the students later on.

Assessment

(i) Quizzes

I actually found the online quizzes "ok". They were definitely harder than what I had expected but they were manageable enough. Much of the time, the questions ask about a certain statistic where you can directly refer to lecture notes and grab the answer. However, some of the time they might have asked about lecture content that wasn't actually stated in the lecture notes but said by the lecturers themselves.

In order to well in these quizzes, i'd say to follow these rules:

1)Type as much as possible from the lectures onto MICROSOFT WORD. That way, if you can't find an answer to a specific question on the lecture pdf files you can directly command + f or control +f to find the answer on the microsoft word file (provided spellcheck is working). Open up all microsoft word files for the assessable lectures assigned for each quiz.

2)Open up all PDF lecture files on your computer that have been downloaded from the LMS directly. Again, command +f or control +f these lecture files to find a specific answer to quiz questions that might ask something like "what is the % of blah who suffer from blah?"

3)Not needed but I found this to be time-effective. If you have access to two laptops, use one to open up the quiz + lecture files from the LMS (can therefore use multiple internet tabs for both of these) and another laptop to open up all your microsoft word files.

(II) MST
I found the content that was being tested in the MST to be fair. However, the marking in this subject is very strict. The class average was something like 55%, therefore I was exceptionally grateful for receiving a higher mark.

The MST consisted of your standard a,b,c,d MCQ questions, a diagram that you had to label (therefore study lecture diagrams that don't seem to be exceptionally difficult e.g. studying the women's reproductive tract diagram as opposed to diagrams about stem cells), and short answer questions where you are asked to define or write what you know about a term. The terms given to us that we had to define were more broad than specific so that we could write as much as possible for them. So, my tips for answering the define a term questions is write whatever you can for them, whilst staying within the time constraints.

If the test were all MCQs, I think the class average would have been higher.

(III) Literature Review Test

The lit review test was the bane of this subject. This was the first year that they changed the lit review from an assignment format (i.e. doing at home by yourself) to a test, and I have no idea why. The reasoning was that it would be easier for students, though I found it to be the exact opposite.

For the lit review "you are given a paper and you have to do your own research into the topic that the paper covers". The lecturers put up 3 lit review papers that you could choose to study on the LMS, but there could only be 100 students in each topic. So choose your lit review topic as soon as they are uploaded onto the LMS so that you don't get forced into a topic that you don't like.

ReganM's review of the lit review test covers the format of it well, so I won't repeat it. Again, the class average for the lit review test was exceptionally low at about 55%. It was a very ambiguous form of assessment and it's hard to NOT run out of time in the test.


 (IV) End of semester Exam

It was that time of year again where it was time to study for exams. By now I was freaking out, because my average in the semester for 60% of the subject was borderline H2B/A.  This meant that I had to score 85%+ on the exam in order to H1 the subject overall. As a consequence, I studied like there was no tomorrow for the exam and there was SO much content to look over.

For preparation, I memorised everything I could from the lectures and pretty much disregarded the tutorials, as I found that in the tutes we were just repeating what had been said in lectures. Additionally, I answered around 80% of the long answer questions that were provided for some of the lectures during the semester. I'd also recommend going through the online quizzes (YES- screenshot each question in the online quiz) and practicing the sample practice questions provided for the MST and exam.

The 2hr exam format was again the a,b,c,d mcq questions and define the term questions, identical to that of the MST. Also, you had to choose 2 out of 6 long answer (essay type) questions. You'll find that the sample long answer questions are much harder than those in the actual exam. The sample long answer qs seem as if you'll need to draw material from 5-6 lectures to answer each question. However, the long answer qs in the exam only required you to draw material from 1-2 lectures in each question.

Overall, I found the exam very fair if you had studied appropriately. I wasn't pressed for time as I initially thought, because you could answer around 80% of the MCQ questions during reading time + look over the long essay topics. The recommended time for you to answer the long essay questions (2 of them) was 30 minutes (15 mins each). Though, I found I needed around 30 minutes for 1 question alone to write all that I could. So, definitely answer as many mcq questions during reading time to compensate.

So, to quote ReganM and leave a final point about this subject "Interesting content, hard to succeed in. If you're looking for an easy subject to get good marks in to contribute to a high GPA, STAY AWAY"
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: watto_22 on December 08, 2014, 09:53:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10003: Genes and Environment

Workload:
Contact Hours: 3 x 1hr lectures, 1hr of tutorials or workshops (alternates), 2hr practical each fortnight

Assessment:
Midsem - 10%
Pracs - 5 x 5% ; of which 1% preprac test, 2% in prac, 2% postprac test
Assignment - 10%
Independent Learning Tasks - 5 x 1%
3 hour Exam - 50%.

Pracs are a hurdle requirement, needing 80% attendance and marks of at least 50%

Lectopia Enabled?: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available?: One extended sample exam (it has more questions than the real exam) given out at the end of the semester, with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: D Sadava, D M Hillis, H G Heller, M R Berenbaum, Life. 10th Ed. Sinaver/Freeman, 2013

As mentioned, the textbook was not as useful as it was in semester 1. 

As in first semester, the practical/tutorial/workshop workbook is essential for prac/tute/ILT information

Lecturers:
Dr Alex Idnurm (Botany): Lectures 1-6 - Classification and Parasite Taxa
Assoc Prof Rob Day (Zoology): Lectures 7-14 - Disease and Transmission, Evolution of Resistance, Hominin Evolution
Assoc Prof Dawn Gleeson (Genetics): Lectures 15-36 - Genetics

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments:
Similar to Sem 1's BIOL10002, the 3 x 8AM lectures presented one of the major difficulties with this subject.
Little of the lecture content is especially difficult, the trouble comes primarily from the quantity of material covered.
With the first two weeks (delivered by lecturing debutant Dr Alex Idnurm) covering a huge variety of animal taxa, from very early on it is difficult to know quite how much detail is necessary in your understanding/recall (one lecture had 9 slides about cladograms!)
I found the lecture slides from this section very thorough, although it could probably all be distilled onto a single page summary. This content was primarily assessed on the MST, with only 20 marks out of 180 on the exam relating to this portion. However, as I'll mention later, the skew to this subject's assessment was especially notable when 15 of those 20 marks for this section came in a single (fill-in-the-blanks) exam question.

The next area of the course, covering ecology and parasites with Assoc Prof Rob Day, was even more content heavy. As Stick mentioned in his review of this subject, there hardly seems to be much in these lectures and then suddenly you have to know (how to regurgitate) an enormous amount of information.
I actually found his first lecture absolutely fascinating, about the history of disease and biosecurity, but after that it was just a lot of specific, detailed rote-learning about parasites and their lifestyles.

After those first five weeks, it's on to Dawn and genetics for the remainder of semester. You quickly appreciate that she is a very experienced lecturer, with extremely thorough powerpoint slides covering a wide range of material. I think this was about the first time this year that Biology tested a concept rather than specific pieces of information, which was great news for some students and perhaps less so for others. The main concern here is that the problem-solving skills required for this section of the course are difficult to teach, especially so in lecture format, so attendance at tutorials/workshops is particularly useful at this time.

Those tutes/workshops occur each week. If you have a prac, a tute will happen, and with only about 20 students this is an opportunity to ask your tutor specific questions.
Workshops are arguably less useful, as having ~100 students means that little student/tutor interaction is possible, and it is really more of a time to complete the booklet questions. However, I found discussing the questions with the other students present a valuable way of learning and revising. Generally only the more driven students are there, so they are perhaps more likely to have (correct!) answers to your questions.

The pracs were largely enjoyable and a nice opportunity to revise lecture content in another format. Often several activities/procedures are occurring at once during the prac, so it's definitely worth looking over the format of the prac before getting in there. (That said, I found a 5 minute skim-through to be absolutely sufficient.) Make sure you remember to complete preprac and postprac tests - they make up 15% of your overall grade!

The written assignment was quite poorly done by this cohort.
It comprised of two sections: eFly and database searching.
Precision and correct notation were crucial for the eFly component, with marks deducted for explanations that were too long-winded, incorrect layout of answers, lack of key terms, poor font choice and a whole lot of other minor errors. I felt like the department were really looking for reasons to take away marks here.
Fortunately though, the database searching portion was fairly straightforward.

The MST was all multi-choice and is the major source of assessment for Dr Idnurm's and Day's lectures. As such, there were a lot of very particular bits of 'knowledge' tested. It is valuable though as a revision exercise for these sections of the course.

ILTs are effectively a free 5%. Just remember when they're due and get them done beforehand.

Finally, a 50% exam is a nice way to end the subject. Not worth too much, nor too little, it is clearly set out - as in, we knew how many questions from each lecturer in each section - and in that sense is quite predictable.
Because a lot of this content is straight factual-recall, there is not much reason for time to be an issue.
However, people always manage to be rushed.
The extended responses (3 x 10mark questions) need to be done quickly. This means practicing calculations from three-point test crosses and practicing writing sentences as explanations.
Some of the multi-choice are problem solving, but not any sort of problem never seen before.
For the rest of it, just hope that what you know is what gets examined as there are few clues in the questions. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me.

This peremptory manner of assessment is my major frustration with this subject.
It is not unreasonable for biology, amongst other disciplines, to test particular pieces of knowledge; however, it would be great if that knowledge tested could be part of the major themes or concepts.
In that sense, having basically a single question on the exam to test all of Dr Idnurm's content is ridiculous. Moreover, Rob Day devoted an entire 8 mark question on the exam to stuff from a single lecture slide, as well as most of his multi-choice questions to single sentences about minor details.
Contrastingly, I felt that the assessment for genetics/Dawn's section was indeed focussed on those major ideas and resultantly far more reasonable.

In the future, I hope that the exam - at least the rest apart from Section A's multi-choice - focusses more on key concepts rather than specifics.
Prac assessment is similarly haphazard, sometimes evaluating three particular questions (out of, say, a dozen) while ignoring the rest of inprac assessment.
Equally, a 'model layout' of the assignment would be of great benefit - maybe not having this is a deliberate move, in an effort to separate students?
The ILTs are, as I mentioned, free marks and could easily be testing lecture content under timed conditions rather than non-related material without time constraints.

Overall, the vast amount of information covered in this semester ensures that each student will (hopefully!) find something of particular interest. The subject is generally seen as somewhat more difficult, probably due to the trouble of rote-learning very dry content. However, the problem solving aspect to genetics is a very welcome change for most, and by the end of semester you will appreciate the way that first year maths/stats/bio come together ready for the integrated nature of second year Biomed.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on January 02, 2015, 01:19:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: OPTO30007: Visual Neuroscience

Workload: 1*3 hr lectures/week

Assessment:

-2 * 30 minute mid semester tests (15% each, one mid and one late semester)

-1* 3 hr written examination (70%)


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes (albeit with some reluctance), one of the lecturers was rather disappointed at the rather low lecture attendance (as such the first tutorial wasn’t recorded). Many of the recordings had errors (relatively inaudible) but I’m pretty sure this was just due to faulty recording equipment in one of the lecture theatres.

Textbook Recommendation:
  Handbook states E R Kandel, J H Schwartz, T M Jessell, Principles of Neural Science, 4th Ed., McGraw-Hill, 2000 (I never needed to use it)

I don’t think you need it but there were some lecture topics (namely Light adaptation, dark adaptation, disorders of eye movements) where I felt that I needed to do wider reading via the internet or refer to my first year “Vision: How the Eye Sees the World” subject textbook “Visual Perception: A Clinical Orientation” (4th ed. Steven H Schwartz). Borrow that book if you have a chance when those lecture topics are running, otherwise the internet will suffice.

Lecturer(s): -

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating: 3.8-4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I’d say this is a subject where students should enrol if they are actively interested in/want to advance their knowledge of the visual system of the eyes and brain. It’s a major plus if you have taken any subjects in the past that has dealt strongly with vision (Although taking one of the two subjects is a prerequisite, I think that principles of neuroscience and neurophysiology don’t give you enough background about visual neuroscience’s subject content). It can be difficult to wrap your head around much of the lecture content as it’s presented at an intermediate level rather than at a beginners level.


Lectures


Provided the ordering of lecture material hasn’t changed, the subject starts off with general anatomy/structure of the eye (e.g. cornea, lens, vitreous humour). It then takes you into a detailed look into the retina (5 lectures were devoted to it), you look at layers of the retina (knowing what each of the layers do) e.g. functions of amacrine cells vs. ganglion cells vs. bipolar cells vs. horizontal cells vs. photoreceptors. Then there were 4 or so lectures devoted to the visual cortex looking at cell types (e.g. neurons that only fire if motion is presented to the eye or neurons that only fire if an object of vertical orientation is presented to the eye) and functional architecture.

You then look at object, motion and depth recognition. Visual attention, visual development & amblyopia is next, followed by plasticity (critical periods) & learning of the visual system. Larry Abel talk to you about the functions/structure of superior colliculus & pulvinar (don’t think the pulvinar was that important to know), balance systems of the eyes and ear and how they work together, eye movements (types, terminology) and eye movement disorders (e.g. nystagmus- the different types, their waveforms (not much detail goes into knowing the different waveforms). You look at light and dark adaptation (how the visual system adjusts to light vs. dark environments).

There are some lectures as well on visual prosthesis (the bionic eye) and also about 5/6 lectures I didn’t mention as the material is a little complex to explain. Many of the lectures are heavily focussed on very up-to-date research that the department of optometry & vision sciences has conducted.


Tutorials (Only two in the semester)

IIRC, the first tutorial was held before the first test. It wasn’t recorded on lectopia. It had about 30 or so questions listed where the class/lecturer would discuss. Probably half of the questions were directly from lecture material but the others required more abstract thinking. Attend the tutes if you have a chance.

The second was the last class held for the semester. Just your usual end of semester review kind of thing.  Use the tutes to ask questions about questions in the mid semester test you didn’t know the answer to and they will tell you the answer.

Mid sem Tests

Two tests with about 30 MCQ questions in each. According to the class averages, the first test was much easier than the second. There was a 77% average for the first test and although they didn’t state it, I’m guessing a H2B average for the second.

Personally, I performed better in the second test just because I was more disciplined in my study. The first test IMO examines your broader knowledge of the lectures and the second one is much more specific (and IMO just dealt with more difficult concepts).
 
With each test, they will inform you of the topics that were the most difficult for students to answer. It’s important you find out the answers to those corresponding questions or other ones that you couldn’t answer in the MSTs either through tutorials or email correspondence with the specific lecturers.

Exam

I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t a big exam. This was the structure “Section A will consist of 60 Multiple Choice questions, each worth 1 mark. You should allow 1 hour for this.

Section B will consist of Long Answer questions. You should answer any TWO of three questions. Each question is worth 30 marks and you should allow approximately 30 minutes for each answer. Answers of Section B should be in a SEPARATE booklet of its own.

Section C will consist of Short Answer questions.  You should answer any SIX of nine questions.  Each question is worth 10 marks and you should allow approximately 10 minutes for each answer.”


If you don’t answer as many questions as you can during reading time for Section A then you will be pressed for time for the whole exam. I left 6 or so MCQ questions to answer for later in the exam that I never answered as I spent lots of time in Section C. In Section B I answered one of the extended questions with no where near as much detail as I would have liked to go into.

Section A was probably the most simple.

Section B was testing your broad knowledge of a few topics in the semester (it’s fair if you have given yourself enough time to answer the questions). You can go into HEAPS of detail in many of these questions.

Section C was probably the most difficult, testing quite specific knowledge about many lecture topics. Try to avoid taking lots of time to decide which 6 questions you will answer. They almost felt like extended response questions.

Unfortunately, for semester 2 this year staff only gave practice/sample questions to work through only about a week before the final exam, so it was a little late notice. It might be good to practice your timing with some of those sample questions in preparation for the final exam.

I’d say this is a subject that’s probably one of the more difficult ones to achieve a H1 in (e.g. you don’t have the joy of fill in the blank/all mcq questions that you’ll find in principles of neuroscience or neurophysiology).  Definitely take this subject if you’re dead set on pursuing graduate studies that look further on at the visual system (e.g. masters in vision science).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Starlight on January 06, 2015, 11:06:52 am
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30003: Principles of Neuroscience 

Workload:  3 lectures per week

Assessment: Midsemester test worth 30%. Exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with capture.

Past exams available:  I couldn't find any on the past exam files through the library's digital repository. Practice questions are provided each week during the semester.

Textbook Recommendation: Handbook states Purves et al. Neuroscience 5th edition, 2012 Sinauer. This is a subject where you definitely do not need a textbook to supplement. I don't think I ever ventured outside the lecture material/recordings to find additional information.

Lecturer(s):
80% taken by Peter Kitchener. Rest is various lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion
: 2014 - Semester 1

Rating: 4.7/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:


I thought this subject was for the most part, incredibly well taught. It's probably one of the easier level 3 subjects if you put in the expected amount of work.

Lectures

Topics Covered
1. Introduction/ history of the nervous system
2. What should a nervous system do? (neurophysiology: Movement of ions, AP transmission)
3. Where is the nervous system? (brain anatomy)
4. Development of the nervous system (embryology, like in second yr anatomy)
5. Nervous system: Injury and repair (in the CNS Vs. PNS)
6. Vision 1: The Retina
7. Vision 2: Central processing of vision
8. Touch (processing of, types of mechanoreceptors and their location)
9. Auditory system (how we hear; processing of hearing)
10. Gustation & Olfaction. Taste and smell
11. Neural Control of Digestion
12. The lower motor neuron/ alpha motor neuron (connections between spinal cord and muscles)
13. The upper motor neuron (connections between brain and spinal cord)
14. Modulation of movement: Cerebellum and basal ganglia (brain centres modulating the upper motor neurons e.g. how the basal ganglia and cerebellum modulate the motor cortex)
15. Language (distribution of language in the brain, evolution of language)
16. Autonomic nervous system
17. Homeostasis (e.g. of water balance, body weight)
18. Pain (processing of)
19. Learning & Memory
20. Molecular mechanisms of memory (storage of)
21. Studying neuronal function (how are things measured at the neuronal level e.g. number of action potential spikes)
22. How do we study the brain
23. The evolution of the human brain
24. Fear
25. Motivation & reward
26. Disorders of the nervous system/ mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia, depression)
27. Disorders of the nervous system part 2, critical periods
28. Social Cognition
29 More cognition (calculation, estimation, prediction, planning)
30. Disorders of thought and mood
31. Drugs (alcohol, cocaine, opiates, heroin etc.; their neural mechanisms)
32. Consciousness (theories of etc.)

Lectures give you a broad insight about the neural mechanisms of how our body's different sensory and motor systems work (vision, touch, hearing, memory etc. etc.), how the nervous system is studied/measured at the neuronal and brain level, various disorders of the nervous system/what can go wrong with and without drugs etc. It really expands your knowledge about many of the processes that the body goes through each day.

With peter kitchener's material, lecture slides mainly consist of pictures. For the most part, it's what he SAYS that you need to pay attention to/ is assessable. Other lecturers had more text included in their lecture notes.

Mid Semester Test

If 2015 is the same, then the mid sem test will be held the week after the non teaching week period, so you can devote an incredible amount of study to the test. For preparation just memorize and understand the lecture material and over the semester practice with the sample questions they give you. The assessments through the year only consist of MCQ questions and extended MCQ/fill in the blanks. I prefer these kinds of questions because I find that they tend to trigger your memory about the coursework, rather than having writers block in answering large essay type/extend response written questions.

I expect that most students found the MST harder than the exam. For a few of the questions, it seemed the staff were examining us on concepts that were less emphasised (and also quite specific) during lectures. Just try your best to get a broad understanding of everything and memorize stuff that is presented in tables etc, try not to predict what lecture material will be tested and in turn neglect concepts that could very well be in the mid sem test.

Exam

Thought this was very fair, it rewarded the students who put in the effort to study hard. Most of the questions (around 80%) I found examined your understanding of lecture content. However, there were a few questions that did examine material that just had to be ROTE learned.

PM me over the summer for any questions (but I won't be sending lecture slides/notes, you don't need to pre-study).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Amity on January 17, 2015, 02:34:23 am
Subject Code/Name:  FNCE20001 Business Finance 

Workload: 2 one hour lectures and a one hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  2 multiple choice assignments (7.5% each);  midsemester exam (25%) and a two hour final exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No. It was available during semester 1, however. Slides are very detailed so lectures aren’t *necessary* for a good mark for a capable student.

Past exams available:  No, although there was 2 (or maybe 3?) sample exams provided. This is consistent throughout both semesters, and summer, as far as I’m aware.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook is Business Finance (G Peirson, R Brown, S Easton, P Howard and S Pinder), McGraw-Hill, (11th edn), 2012. I’ve been told that this is also that textbook used for corporate finance in third year, so if you intend on completing that as well it may be worth picking up a copy. I bought a copy of it for busfi and barely used it.

Lecturer(s): Sturla Fjesme (first half) and Vincent Gregoire (second)

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 2

Rating:  3 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Personally, I did not like this subject. I’m sure that many others do, but I found the content to be boring, not overly challenging (at least compared to some maths subjects I’ve taken – though this is a bonus for some!) and felt that the style content was presented in left something to be desired. It did, however, serve as a good introduction to investments and corporate finance, and covered quite a bit of content in these two areas.

The subject is split into two halves; the first 6 weeks focuses on investments, while the second half of semester looks at corporate finance.
For the investments side of things, you start off with some basic financial maths (types of interest, debt vs equity, etc) and then spend a few weeks discussing some theories/models for pricing assets and portfolios. The two covered in more depth in this section would be modern portfolio theory and CAPM, but you do look quickly at some others like the principle of no arbitrage. If you come from a maths/hard science background then you would most likely find this to be very straightforward. The concepts are definitely far easier than first year maths/chem/physics/etc. On the other hand, if you haven’t really done any finance before a lot of it may seem to be quite new and different and it may take a little while to get used to.
These lectures would typically involve stating some formulas/theories and then doing a few practice problems. There wasn’t that much in the way of really deriving (or proving) anything, although it is an introduction so I guess that’s somewhat to be expected. I quite disliked this approach and prefer the more rigorous approach of the actuarial stream of financial mathematics but that’s just a personal thing. I’m probably more in the minority for that haha. Aside from that (which persisted through the whole course, not just investments), I didn’t have any issues with either of the lectures, not that they can really be blamed for the structure of the course. Actually that’s not quite true – they didn’t record lectures, which isn’t nice when some of us live a long way from uni. Thankfully the slides were detailed and you didn’t have to attend a lecture if you were willing to sit down and go through the slides afterwards. You get all the formulas on a formula sheet for both the midsem and final.

The corporate finance section is a lot more theory based, and in general you analyse broadly a firms financial policies - investment decisions, capital structure, whether or not dividends are paid, etc.
You start off this by looking at a few methods for comparing projects – with the big two probably being NPV and internal rate of return. These four or so lectures are more mathematical, along the lines of the first 6 weeks. The remaining portion of corporate finance is much more theoretical, and you deal a lot with Modigliani/Miller analysis when looking at capital structure and dividend policy. Finally, the last week covers some derivatives. So you look at futures/forwards and options and how you can use them for hedging.

I didn’t go to tutorials as I didn’t find them necessary. My tutor was actually very good though and explained things well, gave some background information, etc. But still you went along to watch someone go through problems for an hour. In my opinion, you’re better off doing them by yourself. The solutions were uploaded so you could check the answers if you had trouble, or you could attend a pit-stop tutorial if need be. Although I feel obliged to note that I don’t normally attend tutorials – I only go to tutorials for maths (because you get to write on the whiteboards! And you actually work with a small group of friends) and the compulsory commerce ones.

For assessment, there were some multiple choice assignments and it wasn’t uncommon for students to get full marks or close to it on both of these (they were only worth 15% in total).
The mid semester exam was probably a shock to most people, I think the average was something like 14/20, although considering it was multi-choice I’m not sure if that should be considered bad or good haha (I think midsems are generally easier than finals? That may just be me though). The hardest thing about it would definitely have been the theory, especially when you get those multiple choice questions that are so very close but have slight differences and you have to discern which of them is correct, or perhaps if more than one/none are correct. To do very well in this, you actually have to know all the content very well, rather than just being able to “do the maths”. Unfortunately, one or two of the questions were drawn from something that was quite obscure, as in just a passing note in a lecture. If you know the content well though, it was certainly quite doable. 
The final also had a large portion of theory on it, probably something like 50/50. I think ours had a bit more maths than previous semesters though. Again, you need to know the content very well - know why the theories work and what they rely on, etc. The exam focuses on the second half of semester more; the first quarter or so was drawn from the first six weeks and was all multiple choice - similar to the midsem - while the rest of the exam was more of an extended response, where you had to analyse some projects (more maths) or apply theories (expect to write quite a bit). We were told that only the second six weeks of the course would be in the extended response, but believe it or not, the first extended response question came from the first 6 weeks. So make sure you revise the whole course!

Of all the second year units I have taken, I would definitely have to say that I found business finance was the easiest (potentially aside from organisational behaviour which can be a bit of a mixed bag :P). Having taken a couple of semesters of financial maths and being quite mathematically minded I found it quite straightforward and boring. Going back a long way now, I think the maths problems are generally easier than maths methods ones if that helps. In general, if you’re good at maths and have a good memory then it shouldn’t be very hard to get a H1, provided you’re willing to do all the tutorial questions, memorise all the lectures, etc. I think our semester there were 5% of people that got above 85, but in first semester there were 10%. That said, a lot of students take the course (800 ish in 2014 sem2).
If you struggle with maths, then it will probably take a bit of effort to get a H1, but if you are diligent in doing the tutorial problems, redoing lecture examples, and ensuring you understand the content well, then it is certainly doable. If you took the accounting/maths pathway instead of finance 1 then it may appear a bit confronting at first, though it should come together quite quickly and the accounting subject may help you make more sense of the second half of the semester. Some of my friends found busfi to be quite hard, so perhaps it’s best to just take my advice with a grain of salt, or maybe they decided not to memorise all the theory aspects in the course, which certainly would hurt a bit.

I’m probably a little bit harsh on the subject, I'm a bit biased towards maths and economics I'd say. Overall the subject probably covered too much content to be able to go into the depth that I would’ve liked. It is however, an introduction to finance, so I guess it serves its purpose in that regard and you get into some more complicated stuff in third year and beyond. As a closing note let me stress that you should be prepared to explain things, and not just “do the maths”, even in the investments side – eg give the assumptions of a particular formula, or how a parameter is estimated in practice. If you want to do well you need to know all the content well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: someguy773 on January 18, 2015, 11:54:52 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20007 Cognitive Psychology

Workload: 1h tute + 2x1h lectures per week

Assessment:
1500-2000 word Lab report (40%) due mid-semester. You do the experiment, go over the results and stats, and make the graphs in the tute.
2 hour exam (50%), multiple choice. No tricks if you've studied the material.
Group presentation (5%) and individual 500w paper (5%) on a topic of interest such as Artificial Intelligence or Language and Cognition.
Online quizzes as hurdle requirement.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with slides.

Past exams available:  No. The lectures and the tute notes are what you need to study.

Textbook Recommendation:  The book prescribed is online for background reading. It's not on the exam and I wouldn't recommend it.

Lecturer(s): Good. Pretty interesting and the lecturers are nice and clear. Even the stats was less dry than other psych subjects.

Year & Semester of completion: 2013

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This is an interesting subject, especially for those with a more mechanical way of thinking. There is an emphasis on language in cognition. The lecturers and tutors are really, really lovely (go with Geoff if you can), and will definitely engage with any questions you might have. It's not a terribly hard subject, but I don't think it would grab everybody's interest.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Amity on January 19, 2015, 07:25:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL20001 Financial Mathematics I (FM1)

Workload: two 1-hour lectures, one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  2 excel assignments (10% each), midsemester exam (10%), final exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available: No.  One sample was provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Compound Interest and its Applications. The textbook is published by the university and is available in the co-op bookshop for a small (~$20) cost.

Lecturer(s): Zhou Jin

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, semester 1

Rating:  4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: The content in this subject was not very challenging, and consequently, it was a rather boring (for which I have taken off a point) and easy subject, though potentially not incredibly easy to score high in. The main “problem” (though some would disagree) is that all of the content in ACTL90001 Mathematics of Finance 1 is spread across FM1 and FM2 in undergrad, and FM2 contains the more interesting content. This means that the pace of content is incredibly slow, and it became pointless to attend lectures as you could learn the content faster on your own at home – which I and quite a few of my friends did. Fortunately the textbook is very good and the subject follows the textbook very closely.
The subject starts with an introduction to interest (effective, simple, rates of discount, nominal, force of interest, accumulation factors, force of interest, etc, if those words mean anything to you) which doesn’t take very long.
You then spend quite a while deriving a lot of different types of annuities, not just the ordinary ones you saw in an Introduction to Actuarial Studies - you see increasing and decreasing annuities, with potentially multiple or continuous payments per period. You may also get asked to derive a closed-form formula of some annuity that is described to you in words, and so it is a good idea to focus on the methods of which these annuities are derived. Whether you decide to actually remember derivations for formulas done in lectures (and quite a bit of time is spent on this, or so I assume because I never went) is up to you, and perhaps what your lecturer hints at. You also need to memorise all the formulas (of which there are quite a lot) and become adept at solving problems quickly – the problems in the textbook are great in addition to the tutorial problems. You should do them all.
The next major section of the course focuses on project analysis – so ways of measuring the (typically projected) performance and comparing projects. Of course, you use the NPV and IRR methods (a little while is spent on some theory behind equations of value, as well, which are used to solve for IRRs). There’s a few other things like payback period, discounted payback period, and a couple of others that escape my memory now.
Finally, there is a little bit of time spent on some background to financial markets and how they operate, as well as a little theory on derivative securities and other investment options.


The two assignments weren’t too difficult and we did them in small groups. Most students got 10/10 for both assignments. The midsemester exam was also quite easy, and consistent of mostly basic problems. I think the class average was 16-7/20.

The final exam was long and difficult – far harder than the content in this subject, and it was this that really separated the students, especially as we were expecting (rightly or wrongly) an easy exam based on what we had been told by previous students. This couldn’t have been further from the truth and it probably remains the hardest exam I’ve sat at university to date. Our results were significantly scaled up, and considering that the centre for actuarial studies states that marks are not standardised to fit a specified distribution, and to quote, “if all students achieve a standard of H1, then all students will receive this grade. Likewise, in the unlikely event that no student achieved the performance required for an H1 grade, this grade would not be awarded”, I think this suggests that our exam was a little (or a lot!) harder than normal.
The meat of the exam was on project analysis, but this also incorporated other aspects of the course as well (as in, you may need to use some certain annuity to do it). There were a few free marks (eg on some theory of financial markets, or on basic questions like finding a rate of discount) that probably made up 10-15% of the exam. You needed to be quick and be able to think independently on problems that you hadn’t seen before. Of note, I think there were a few questions that were very similar (although not identical) to some tutorial questions, so it would probably be worthwhile reviewing those close to the exam. No formula sheet is provided for the exam, and there is a lot of formulas that you are expected to remember.
Of course, any of the information regarding assessment is subject to change with different lecturers.

Overall, enjoy the fact that content is not too difficult and is covered at quite a slow pace, but don’t take the subject too lightly and assume it will be a guaranteed H1. As this forms the CT1 exemption with ACTL20002 Financial mathematics 2, you should definitely try and get yourself a good mark ‘in the bag’, so to speak.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Amity on January 19, 2015, 10:33:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20001 Intermediate Macroeconomics 

Workload:  two 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment: 
Two written assignments (requiring some computation in excel) - 12.5% each
Online multiple choice test – 5%
Tutorial participation – 10%
Final exam – 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, around 3-4 “useful” ones, there were more but not specifically relevant to the course.

Textbook Recommendation:  Unnecessary.

Lecturer(s): Chris Edmond

Year & Semester of completion: 2014 Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Probably my favourite subject to date. Chris is a brilliant lecturer (although he said that he wouldn’t be teaching it in 2015 – he’s still the contact listed in the 2015 handbook). The course is quite demanding and moves through a fair amount of content, which, along with being more difficult in general, made it the hardest second year commerce subject I have taken. However, the content is interesting and is presented very well by Chris.

The course was more or less taught from scratch, but without prior knowledge from introductory macroeconomics the pace would have been terrifying. This definitely helped though in that you didn’t need to brush off your notes from a year ago at the start of the course. In general, intermediate macroeconomics took most of the things studied in first year and applied a more sophisticated model – typically a dynamic one, one that gives a “time path” of variables over a number of periods as they return (or perhaps not) to their equilibrium values. The maths involved in these seems to throw some students off as the algebra can get quite messy, however there doesn’t tend to be anything “genius” required in it – it’s just rearranging equations. If you’re fine with that then there’s nothing to worry about.

The subject starts with short-run macroeconomics, with the start looking very similar to introductory macroeconomics, before spending a few lectures putting together and applying the IS-LM model, which is basically sets of {output, interest rates} that describe equilibrium in goods and financial markets. The key difference from introductory macroeconomics being that now output varies with the interest rate. Chris likes to stress the importance of the (relative) magnitudes of the slopes of the two curves and the implications this has for fiscal and monetary policy, as well as what determines the slope – so make sure you learn this.
You then look very quickly at the labor market in a slightly more complicated way than in first year macro. Some of this pops up a little bit later in the course as well.
The next major topic is the dynamic aggregate demand/supply model, which is essentially a much harder version of the AD/AS model that you would have previously seen. It is important to be able to explain what causes each periodic readjustment, rather than just move this curve here and another curve there in order to get full marks.
The third topic is long-run macroeconomics, extending the familiar Solow (-Swan) model as well as a few smaller lectures on sources of growth and the beneficiaries of it.
Finally, you revisit the short-run the macroeconomics in the open economy.

Assessment
The assignments were completed either on your own or in a group of up to three people. They were quite difficult as there was a question for a couple of marks on each assignment that was deliberately unlike anything things seen in lectures or tutorials, and required a bit of original thinking. It’s worth mentioning that you needed to use excel in order to compute things over many periods and draw some graphs, although there wasn’t anything too complicated required from excel.

The online test only tested the first 4 or so weeks of material from memory, so with a bit of study it wasn’t too difficult to score highly in this. It is only worth 5%, but it’s nice to be sitting on a good mark going into the exam.

The tutorials were compulsory and you had to attend and complete the blue sheet prior in order to get your 10% (the usual pink sheet, blue sheet method was used). Of course you were allowed to miss one or two, but the pink sheet solutions weren’t uploaded so you needed to attend to get them. Unfortunately there tended to be a lot of content on the pink sheets, so most of the tutorials felt very rushed.

The exam questions were easier than the assignments, and you only had to do two of three in each of the two extended response sections. The easier questions tended to be longer, however, and you didn’t have an awful lot of time as explaining things could often take quite a while. If you are serious about doing well, then you need to have a good grip over the whole course. This also helps with the multiple choice – if you’ve seriously studied then you can pick a few of them off quite quickly without having to work them out.

Overall, with challenging and interesting content and a great lecturer, this subject was a great experience. In addition to this, it helps with building general knowledge of how the economy works – something which is certainly worth knowing. I would definitely recommend this subject to anyone, especially those with a little bit of a mathematical bent!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: liuyang721 on January 20, 2015, 11:00:14 am
Subject Code/Name: ECOM40004/ECOM90011 Financial Econometrics

Workload: 2x 1.5 hour Lecture each week

Assessment: 1x 3000 words group (2 people) assignment (50%), 1x 2 hour Final Exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled: No, lecture was delivered in tutorial room

Past exams available: Yes, 2012 Only

Textbook Recommendation:Analysis of Financial Time Series 2nd edition, Ruey, S Tsay, must have.

Lecturer(s): Tomasz Wozniak

Year & Semester of completion:2014 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:82

Comments: The subject is very time consuming if you haven't done ECOM30004/90004 Time Series Analysis and Forecasting. But the subject is interesting and the R coding part of the subject is probably the best. The group assignment is based on R and you only have 1 week and a bit to finish it, which is extremely short, definitely write the R programs before the assignment is released. I feel my assignment was not well written, but Tomasz gave everyone 90+. The final wasn't that hard if you had studied everything and did all the take home exercises from Tomasz. Overall I recommend is subject as it combines theory and practice. Also knowing how to code in R is a good skill for programming.   
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ReganM on January 28, 2015, 12:03:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: BTCH20002: Biotechnology 

Workload: 
Contact Hours: Lectures: 12 x 2 hours, Forums: 4 x 3 hours, Tutorials: 12 x 1 hour

Assessment:
Upto four written assignments less than 2000 words total throughout the semester - 25%

Written test (one hour) in week 8 -15%

Written Exam (2 hours) end of semester examination- 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture.
Note: I tried to appeal to the coordinator to say that we needed screen capture (a 2 hour lecture with no screen capture??? ugh), I don't know if they will actually enable it though.

Past exams available:  Can't recall. I think we got a sample exam?

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn't buy any textbook.

Lecturer(s): Prem Bhalla (one or two lectures), Edwin Wong (also the tutor), David Tribe and other guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014

Rating:  4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (close to H1 though D:)

Comments:

Overall I enjoyed the content of this subject. There were very few topics taught each week (like maybe one concept every lecture, so 12 concepts in total) and some of it I was already aware of (eg. Pluripotent stem cells, multipotent and iPS). There was also some artificial selection of crops and such.

The worst part was the actual teaching of the lectures, they were just so long and most of the lecturers sucked at presenting their content and knowledge. The only thing that saved me was going to the tutorials, run by Edwin Wong. Edwin was like the powerhouse of this subject. He was there at every lecture, and he taught all the tutorial time slots. Thus he knew what was presented during the lecture and I presume he understood what we needed help in, because his tutorials would suddenly make the lectures make sense. 10/10 would recommend you go to the tutorials.

Best part was the forums, which I will go into more detail below.

I did this subject as a random Level 2 science credit, and it makes me wonder if I would have enjoyed a Biotechnology major instead of the major I have, it opened my eyes to the opportunities available in biotechnology. :)

Lectures
Lectures were held once a week for 2 hrs. It was such a grueling two hours that I actually regret going to the lectures I went to.

The lectures did not have video capture, which is what made me go, as listening to the lectures it was sometimes hard to follow which slide the speaker was up to. Speakers would also have huge sets of lectures (like 60 slides) so it was even more hard to figure out where they were.

None the less I would still rather just listen to the audio at 2x and struggle though it, because even at 1x many of the lecturers weren't that great and I might as well endure the 2x than the 1x.

Going to the tutorials helped me understand what the lecturers were talking about, but I got the sense that all the lecturers (except for Edwin), were researchers FIRST and lecturers SECOND. So they knew what they were talking about but sucked at explaining this stuff at a Level 2 science appropriate level.

Forums
Best part of the subject. So for 4 times throughout the semester a 3 hr "forum" would be scheduled.

Often this would involve 2 people who work in the INDUSTRY (ie. they're working in a biotechnology field) coming in to speak to us, which was amazing because you could see how biotechnology is actually applied to different aspects of our lives. We would also have a brief 10 minute break between speakers to relax and stretch our legs, and this was great because snacks would be provided as well (chips, soft drink, biscuits etc).

The forum would have a small assessment (like answer 2 questions, 500 words) with them, which meant you had to take notes. But we're given the questions ahead of time so you can judge what you need to write down. Sometimes the speakers didn't really provide a lot of information that was useful, so I would stretch what they had said I could make the 250 words, haha.

The highlight of all the forums was this excursion we got to take to the CSL plant which was cool because you got to see how biotechnology is applied in a mass production of drugs kind of way, but we couldn't really see much because we had to stay behind windows and such. None the less it was still cool.

The forums were quite enjoyable, and I guess if you were an eager person for biotechnology it gives you the opportunity to approach these people for advice.


Assessments
Unfortunately I don't recall exactly what was on the assessments, but I do recall that studying for them was a pain in the ass. Luckily the end of the semester exam only the second half of the semester was assessed (because the first half was assessed by the MST).

I think to study for the test you should go over the slides, but also use other online resources to better understand the topic and the concept.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on February 12, 2015, 06:01:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001: Finance 1

Workload:  3 x 2h lectures and 3 x 1h tutes per week, for 4 weeks

Assessment: Two assignments worth 10% each. 2 hr exam is worth 80% (100 marks available).

Lectopia Enabled: No screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yup, lots of past exams can be found in the unimelb library. One exam with solutions was uploaded on the LMS. The past exams tend to recycle questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Financial Institutions and Markets by Hunt and Terry. I never really used it as the relevant questions from the textbook were in the tutorial. I didn't really use it for the assignments either.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Sturla Lyngnes Fjesme. He's a good lecturer and explains things pretty well, but sometimes his notes lacked detail and were hard to understand. They also seemed to contain some irrelevant things.

Year & Semester of completion: January intensive, 2015

Rating:  2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments: I'm not giving this a negative score because I think the tutors and lecturers did a decent job teaching the material. Sturla made the material more interesting and the tutorial questions were clearly based off the lectures and are good sources of revision. There are also consultation times with the tutors. But yes, this subject is pretty dry and dull, especially coming from someone who has never really been interested in commerce subjects and the like. The text on the slides is enough to switch on your hibernation mode. Despite Sturla's lectures, I could not stop myself from falling asleep almost every lecture. This is what you learn about:
The maths involved in the course is not hard since all you need to do is pick the right formula and plug in the numbers. It is very formulaic. The bigger challenge is to wrap your head around understanding each step in the calculation and why you do it, but really as long as you know what steps you need to do, you're bound to get the correct answer.

The two assignments are less straightforward and do require a little bit of effort (by a little bit, I mean one or two days). Each has a word limit of 750 words and five pages. All you need to do is answer a few questions. The first assignment involved the best way to finance a housing loan after winning the lottery, the second assignment was about how banks could raise their cash and security levels. For some reason my friends and I lost marks for choosing less obvious methods of financing, which we did because there are originality marks. So, instead of using your lottery earnings as a nest-egg deposit while you repay the mortgage, splooge all your lottery earnings on the house immediately...because it's the most obvious!  In the second assignment you had to calculate how many bonds/shares/securities you'd need to issue to raise the amount of cash the bank needs.

Will have more details on the exams later, but the past exams seem to repeat the same type of calculation and theory questions so if you do them, you should be good to go for the exam.

Anyway, Finance 1 is not a very difficult subject but it is a definite bore. What I have learnt though is that if you want to make big bucks throughout your life, choose a career in finance.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: makeevolution on March 01, 2015, 12:42:39 am
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10004 Engineering Systems Design 1

Workload: 3x1 hour lectures per week, 1x3 hour workshop per week

Assessment:  -Weekly subject reflective journal (10% in total, Hurdle requirement*). -Intended Learning Outcome (ILO) 1 is addressed in the reflective journal
-Short quizzes, held during semester (5% in total, Hurdle requirement*). Addresses ILOs 2 and 6
-Team online blog, submitted three times during semester requiring 10 hours of work (10% in total**). Addresses ILO 1
-In-class team-based project assessments due throughout semester (15% in total**). Addresses ILOs 2, 3, 4 and 6
-Two hour written examination held in exam period (25%, Hurdle requirement*). Addresses ILOs 2,3 and 6
-A written end of semester group report, 40 pages in length (including diagrams and calculations), due in the exam period (35%**). Addresses ILOs 2 - 6.

* The indicated individual assessment items (totalling 40%) are a combined hurdle requirement.

** Students work in teams of 5-6 on these indicated assessments and thus the workload is expected to be divided equally within the team.

(The hurdle changes a lot, I took this subject in 2014 semester 2 and the hurdle requirement was only the final exam)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, only about 4 in the past exams Ballileu library, and it was only up to 2011, whereas now the style of questions have changed a lot. No answers, tutors don't give complete answers. This part of the subject sucked because workshop questions were limited, so I did not have a lot of practice before the exam. The lack of a subject syllabus made it hard for me to do questions from other resources (which questions apply to me and which don't).

Textbook Recommendation: Just borrow the intro to engineering from ERC, no need too much. Maybe buy MATLAB if you are definitely taking engineering/physics as a major, but if not then just use MATLAB at ERC computers.

Lecturer(s):Gavin Buskes, Carolina Tallon

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2014

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86

Comments: Overall the subject was pretty good. The first 2 weeks are about who you are as engineers and what you do as engineers (like a seminar thing). You'll play problem solving games in both lectures and the first workshop. After these weeks, you will start learning theory about things that will be useful for your group project. There is a group project comprising 35% of your final mark, where you have to design a solution to a certain engineering problem using the theories learnt in the lectures. This varies from year to year, but for me it was about an engineering problem regarding water supply to a remote area. I guess it will be the same to 2015 because I looked at the handbook and the subject overview covered what I had learnt. I had to learn fluid mechanics (volumetric flow rate, pipe flow, Reynolds number, Fanning friction factor (just google these if you're interested) etc.), aerospace engineering (tip speed ratio, continuity equation), chemical engineering (CSTR, pseudo first order reactions, etc.) and project economics (payback period, rate of return, etc.). These stuff are learnt at a pretty basic level, especially aerospace, so its not too hard. The very hard bit was chemical engineering. I would say that if you had not learnt calculus, don't take this subject because this bit has a lot of differential equations, and you have to actually integrate stuff (even though the lecturer and the handbook doesn't imply that), not just give out results in terms of differential equations. Chem eng took a whole lot of my time just to understand what it means. Actually the fluid mechanics part also had diff eq in it, but not as confusing as chem eng. Project economics was 6th grade math, not that hard.

The group project was really demanding. You and your group really have to step on the gas as early as possible, because you & your group WILL make mistakes. You will be put into groups in second workshop. I strongly suggest that you make friends and know people in this subject early, so that you can get a good group (you choose your own group BTW), because you will work with them until the end. In the following weeks you and your group will do a series of experiments to gather experimental data as an empirical basis to help model the real system you are designing to solve an engineering problem. You will also have to do research and comply with given parameters when designing the system. In week 8 you and your group will have to do a presentation to show your group's progress, which is 15% of final mark. Design part is actually fun because you get to play around with cool stuff (3D printers). Download FreeCAD or other engineering design software because you will need it in aerospace engineering. In the workshops you will also do exam style questions.

You might want to do some experience with MATLAB before this subject because you have to do some MATLAB programming as well, even though not rigorously. This MATLAB  part is all about practice; you cannot just read the lectures and expect to be able to implement it. Beware though, they also ask stuff about MATLAB in the exams (write a full programme to solve diff eq), while MATLAB in this subject is thought to only be used to solve diff eq for your design and create graphs and charts for the final report.

The lectures were good, Gavin is a very experienced lecturer and he is funny (you won't fall asleep in lectures due to him, well maybe will due to the content of the subject). He's helpful (when you ask him questions he answers thoroughly). However he tends not to live up to his promises (for example he told the class that he would post recent (2014) exam along with answers to LMS, never happened) so when he promises that he will do something don't get your hopes up. Carolina is fine (she taught chem eng and project econ, Gavin taught the other things), but she is somehow boring and unclear when explaining the differential equations. Expect a lot of independent study to understand her part. She is not so helpful when asked questions regarding content.

The tutors were helpful, but the consultation times were very limited (due to this subject not being a prereq for other subjects I guess (except some chem eng subjects), so not a lot of people take it, I took it by mistake :P). Take notes of the exam style questions solutions when they are being explained in the workshops, because that's the only time they will go through the problem thoroughly. They won't go into detail in the consultation sessions, and solutions are not put up on LMS.

There are also free marks here (weekly reflective journals and team online blog). Just put in the work here, no need too much thinking and you'll get the mark.

The exam was pretty difficult if you don't thoroughly know how to derive the differential equations for each module (fluid mech and chem eng). Multiple choice is very very tricky (5 possible answers with the last one being 'none of the above', the same format for mid-semester quiz). Revise MATLAB thoroughly because they give trick questions about MATLAB a lot. Apart from exam style questions in the workshops, maybe try to borrow some books from ERC for practice questions before the exam.

All in all, this is a good subject, but expect a lot of work from the group project (especially if your group members aren't hard workers   >:( >:( >:( ). Not an easy H1 personally, depends on your group report and your exam. Just beware that there are some hurdles here so be careful not to miss them.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Kaille on March 04, 2015, 01:30:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: CLAS10003 Intensive Beginners Latin 

Workload: 1 x 1hr lecture, 1 x 2hr tute, 5 days a week for 7 weeks. Additionally, a translation passage to complete daily as homework

Assessment: 1 midsem 35%, 1 final exam 35%, 6 exercises totalling 20% (best 5 contributing to final grade) and 12 vocab tests totalling 10% (best 10 contributing to final grade) completed during the semester.

Recorded Lectures:  No

Past exams available: Yes, a sample midsem and final with answers were provided

Textbook Recommendation: you will need the Reading Latin Text, but not the accompanying purple exercise book.

Lecturer(s): Bradley Jordan, tutor was James O’ Maley

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 summer semester

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Looking back, this subject was definitely not easy, but if you put in the work everyday, you should be able to do well. Most of the people in my class were arts students but personally I think this subject would appeal to a more mathematical/science-y brain because it’s a very logical and formulaic subject - with a few exceptions of course! Having already learned another Romance language I thought I would have some sort of advantage going into Latin. This was true to some extent, i.e. I knew the grammatical use of a ‘gerondif’ in French which was similar to gerundive structure in Latin. However, if you have a good grasp of English grammar then learning Latin grammar should really only be a small extension to your knowledge. In saying that, I definitely think if you have any idea about Roman stories or philosophers you may be slightly better off because you aren’t going into the Latin translations completely blind.

The first couple of weeks were actually quite stressful and there were times where I seriously considered dropping out because I wasn’t sure if I could cope with the work load. We would finish an entire chapter everyday and since the lectures weren’t recorded it was up to you to go back and revise what you didn’t understand. The tutes were good for consolidating your knowledge and the class atmosphere was really conducive to learning, everyone there was really interested in the language which kept me motivated  to learn things I wasn’t particularly passionate about, like Caesar or Vergil or Cicero.

The structure of the course is unique in that you come in 5 days a week for 7 weeks, for a 1 hour lecture and 2 hour tute. It basically forces you to make friends. I was lucky enough to already know someone in the class so the awkward introductions weren’t really a problem for me, but I found it really useful to work with a group of people; it really lessens the load. Originally, we started with around 27 students but this whittled down to 19, which I think says something about the work load, but like I said, if you’re willing to put in the effort it’s pretty manageable. Towards the end of the semester it definitely got a bit easier, not because what we were learning was simpler but rather we had developed some knowledge of the language so by the end we just adding to the skills we already learned rather than learning something ENTIRELY new everyday. 

In terms of the assessment, the tests start off easy but get much harder around the middle of semester, but I think they were useful in that they forced me to revise concepts such as the declensions and conjugations as I went, rather than leaving everything to the last minute. The exercises are straight forward and I normally worked with others so the in-class 30% was pretty obtainable. The two exams have basically the same format: conjugations, sentences to translate from Latin to English and English to Latin, and a seen and unseen translation.  You are given the sentences to prepare and the seen translation a week beforehand so for the most part you can prepare pretty well for the exam. I personally found the midsem to be MUCH easier than the final exam because by the end of it I could not be bothered anymore.

The recurring themes in the book revolve around ‘the father’s daughter and the pig’ or the ‘sailor who was in love with the pirate’ so by the end of it you get pretty sick and tired of translating sentences that do not make ANY sense and by all accounts are completely counter-intuitive, but all in all it was a good subject. Brad’s lectures were pretty thorough and James was pretty approachable and I think they made the subject as fun as it could be. You probably don’t need to go to all of the lectures and tutes and I found it relatively easy to catch up at home. I would recommend this subject to people who enjoy learning languages, although some days I literally wanted to gouge my eyeballs out because it was SO confusing, but for 25 credit points you get to spend your summer in a nice quiet uni with some really nice people, which to be honest, is much more pleasant than it sounds.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on May 29, 2015, 06:34:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002: Molecule to Malady 

Workload:  3 lectures and one tute per week. Tute basically functioned as an extra lecture or was used for reviews and MSTs.

Assessment:  Two 45 minute MCQ MSTs worth 20% each and written exam (60%). Each MST will test two modules. The MCQs for the last two will be on the exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available:  No past exams but you are given a few sample questions in review lectures and on the LMS. Weekly feedback quizzes are also up on the LMS if you want to do them.

Textbook Recommendation: Don't even bother lol. However, there are review articles posted on the LMS and the lectures are clearly based off them. They're very good reading if you have the time.

Lecturer(s): Lots. Lots of top-class researchers talk about their field and it's extremely up to date and relevant.
M. Ryan [Muscular Dystrophy]
E. Yiu [Muscular Dystrophy]
B. Crabb [Malaria]
S. Lewin [HIV]
J. Denholm [Ebola and TB tute - not assessed]
N. Walsh [Rheumatoid Arthritis]
J. Moi [Rheumatoid Arthritis]
S. Metcalfe [Cystic Fibrosis]
J. Massie [Cystic Fibrosis]
D. Tarlinton [B-cell Diseases]
M. Horne [Neurodegeneration]
R. Cappai [Parkinson's]
A. White [Alzheimer's]
P. Crouch [Motor Neuron Diseases]

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: This is an excellent subject, but it's hard. There is so much to know and so much detail presented to you.

M2M is a special sort of core subject that sets Biomedicine apart from Science etc. You're not going to get an opportunity to learn about diseases from researchers who are literally at the cutting edge of their field if you're not in Biomed. Since it's a subject full of disease, it acts as a "taste" of what it's like to study medicine. There are six modules in the subject: Muscular Dystrophies, Pandemics, RA, CF, B-cell diseases and Neurodegeneration. In each module, you will learn about the molecular pathogenesis of the disease, as well as diagnosis, treatment, future therapeutics currently in development, and other clinical aspects. It's a well thought out approach as each module presents as a sort of narrative in a funny way.

What's really good (but not really needed for assessment all that much) is that in each module, they invite a patient to speak about their experiences living with their disease. It's a nice change to move from the theoretical side of things to speaking about it clinically, and it brought a personal touch to the subject. These are not asssessed (although sometimes the lecturer who interviews them does explain some relevant information) but it's refreshing to hear from the perspective of a patient.

Can't complain about the lecturers. They're really good and you'll be taught about all the new, trendy advances in research and clinical trials. Many of them have actually made signficant leaps in their field so you're really being taught by the cream of the crop here. They also post up answers to FAQs on the LMS which were very helpful in clarifying detail. At times they were a bit too in-depth so focus only on what was elaborated on in lectures.

Make sure you know your shit though. Details are everything! Don't just focus on molecules, focus on clinical details as well. Yes, sometimes epidemiology has been asked. In M2M it's easy to think that you know everything but you'll find that the MSTs will test for pretty specific things. There are lots of distractors in the multiple choice so be very careful when you're doing the tests. The MSTs are pretty difficult (even though we normally averaged 28-29/39) so yes your grades are going to be taking a hit no matter how hard you study. A question or two inevitably gets taken out because everybody has answered it wrong or it hasn't been elaborated on.

The final exam is 3 hours long. It has the 40 MCQs on the last two modules and then you have to do 4 out of the 6 modules for the short answer section. It's best to study 5 out of the 6 modules in the exam so you have a backup in case you don't like some of the questions in one particular module. In the short answer section, each module has two questions, and each question has its own parts. You have to use a new booklet for each question and use a new page for each part. Most of the parts range from being 2-8 marks. While there's a whole lot you could talk about when answering, make sure you stick to answering the question and don't fluff around much, especially if it's only worth 2 marks. If it says to briefly list or describe, do that. You will end up running out of time if you just fling down every single relevant detail you remember so decide on what's most important and what's needed.

Here's a checklist of the general points you should memorise in this subject.
Muscular Dystrophies
Know the features of skeletal, smooth and cardiac muscle. Know about your Type I, IIA, IIB fibres.
Know the differences between a myopathy and dystrophy.
Know the structure of skeletal muscle.
Know about the different methods of metabolism in muscles
Know the features of the Dystrophin gene - where it's located, how big it is, etc.
Know the role and structure of the Dystrophin protein and any of its homologues.
Know about how DMD and BMD are diagnosed - what are the limitations with each method? Know your stats too.
Know the clinical symptoms of DMD and how to differentiate it from BMD. You should also know how the disease progresses as people age.
Know the pathogenesis and signs of the other muscular dystrophies (Myotonic, Limb-Girdle, FSHD.
Be able to describe how patients with DMD are managed. You should know the limitations for each intervention and any improvements it can make.
Know the reasoning of future therapies, along with their limitations

Pandemics
Know the difference between P. falciparum and P. vivax. Explain how their molecular differences result in their geographical distribution.
Know the life cycle of Plasmodium.
Know the role of PfEMP1 and what consequences this has for the parasite.
Understand how Plasmodium evades the immune system by regulating expression of its surface molecules.
Know how proteins are trafficked out of the parasite into the host cell and why it can be a potential target.
Understand how Plasmodium invades the red blood cell.
Know the three different sorts of vaccines that have been trialed against Malaria.
Know the virological features of the HIV virus - its size, genome, which animal it comes from, the structural proteins, etc.
Understand how HIV invades the cell and how some individuals can "resist" invasion
Know how viral proteins from HIV counteract host proteins.
Understand the normal immune response to HIV - how the infection is initially controlled etc.
Know the impact of HIV on the immune system.
Understand the reasoning and impact of HAART, PrEP, etc.
Know possible approaches to developing vaccines against HIV, as well as activites that reduce risk.
Know the barriers to curing HIV as well as possible approaches.

Rheumatoid Arthritis
Know the genetic, hormonal and environmental risk factors of developing RA.
Know about how we monitor disease activity in RA as well as how to diagnose it. You should know the patterns of joints affected and how to differentiate it from osteoarthritis.
Know articular and some extra-articular manifestations of RA.
Know the difference between sensitivity and specificity.
Know the features and roles of all the different cell types and molecules that are involved in RA.
Know the pros and cons of the two mouse models we use in RA research.
Understand the physical structure of bone.
Undersand how bone is formed and resorbed, and how imbalances can lead to osteoporosis etc.
Understand the balance between RANKL and OPG in particular. Know some therapeutics that target this pathway.
Know the pattern of bone loss in RA.
Understand how both inflammation and osteoclast activity contribute to disease activity.
Know the features of a good clinical trial.
Know the targets, side-effects and efficacy of all DMARDs, bDMARDS and some other small molecule inhibitors
Know the pattern of treatment in RA - how often are patients treated, how much drugs do we have to put them on, etc.

Cystic Fibrosis
Know the clinical features of CF and how it affects multiple systems of the body.
Understand the structural and molecular mechanism of the CFTR protein.
Know the features of the CFTR gene as well as the roles of other gene variants. Know how it is transmitted down generations
Know the different models of CFTR in the lungs and in the sweat ducts.
Know the different classes of mutatons in CF, as well as the frequency of some of the CFTR mutations. Be prepared to describe some specific examples.
Understand the process of diagnosis in CF - this should encompass Guthrie cards, genetic testing, and sweat tests
Know the reproductive limitations of CF patients
Know how the lungs develop.
Know how inflammation contributes to the complications in patients.
Know the role of bacteria such as Pseudomonas in perpetuating inflammation in the lungs.
Know how patients with CF are treated as well as possible future therapies (and their limitations!)
Know the population groups that are over-represented in CF and why

B-cell diseases
Understand how B-cells develop and how they respond.
Know the features of an antibody, as well as how genetic recombination occurs both before and during an immune response.
Know mutations that can block B-cell development and its impacts.
Know the signifiance of the germinal centre.
Understand how B-cells elicit help from T-cells and how disruptions to signalling pathways results in immune deficiency
Understand how B-cells can transform into cancers. Know the different types of cancers (Leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma etc) and how they're diagnosed.
Know current therapies that target the B-cell as well as some future drugs.
Learn how monoclonal antibodies are made, how they work, what they're used for, and some limitations.
Understand how the immune system can be "revved up" to kill tumours through checkpoiint blockade, and how broadly neutralising monoclonal antibodies can target HIV.
Understand how B-cells develop tolerance during development, and how lapses in this process can cause autoimmune diseases such as SLE.

Neurodegeneration
Know the clinical features in Parkinson's, Motor Neuron Disease and Alzheimers, and how they overlap/differ.
Describe what may cause each of these diseases.
Describe the relevant proteins (a-synuclein, amyloid beta, etc) that are found in each neurodegeneration. Know how mutations in these proteins can cause neurotoxicity - that is, aggregation, disruption to normal cellular function, propagation, and hence disease.
Know the signficiance of hormonal factors such as Dopamine.
Know the pathological signs seen in Neurodegeneration.
Know the genetic risk factors in familial Parkinson's disease
Understand the significance of some metals in Alzheimers disease.
Know the pros and cons of some assays and animal models for neurotoxicity
Know the different cell types involved in degeneration and how they can contribute to neuroinflammation etc
Describe some potential inhibitors that have been trialed for use in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and how they might work.
Know the significance of detecting early AD patients and how to do it.
Understand the significance of SOD1 in familial motor neuron disease and its mechanism. [/list]
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Paulrus on May 30, 2015, 06:10:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10003 - An Ecological History of Humanity

Workload:  Two 1 hour lectures and one 1 hour tute per week

Assessment: 10 x 150 word journals (assessed weekly, worth 37.5% in total), 1 x 500 word tutorial paper (12.5%), 1 x 2000 word research paper due in exam period

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen-capture

Past exams available: N/A

Textbook Recommendation: None. A New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting is the prescribed text, but it's not worth buying. There's an abridged version of the text available in PDF form on the internet if you know where to look.

Lecturer(s): >implying i went to the lectures

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating:  1.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: N/A

Comments: 
Let me preface this by saying that I've always actually been pretty interested in history and the environment. So, having read the subject description, I went into this subject expecting it to be a thought-provoking exploration of environmental issues, viewed from a number of different historical and social perspectives.

Instead, each topic consisted of the same banal platitudes repeated ad nauseam, with all the subtlety of a man getting hit in the nuts with a sledgehammer. Every topic was some kind of variation on "This is how we used to do things. This is how we do things now. We are DESTROYING the environment because of CAPITALISM. Maybe we are not as advanced as we think??!?!?!?" It's hard to sum up in my own words just how irritatingly smug and self-congratulatory this subject was, so I'll let this actual quote from the lectures (on the topic of macroparasites) sum up what I mean.
Lecturer: "However, I'd urge you to consider that there may be a far more insidious, far more destructive parasite on this earth... Mmm, yes... It's HUMANS". I gave up on going to the lectures after a couple of weeks.

The assessments are all pretty easy, but they're not always entirely clear about what they want you to write. The best piece of advice I can give for the journals is to not summarise the lectures. They're looking for a personal reflection on the topics, so you're better off making up something about how the topic inspired you and made you think, or reflects some dark aspect of human nature.

All that aside, there were one or two topics which were vaguely interesting, so I gave it a point for that. The other 0.5 was because our tutor was mostly nice and gave us Freddos in the last tutorial.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Mieow on May 30, 2015, 06:41:49 pm
Subject Code/NameCHIN10005: Chinese 1

Workload:  2 x two hour seminars, 1 x one hour practical

Assessment:  
Two short tests (Week 6 and Week 12) 20%
 vocabulary test (throughout semester) 10%,
oral test 10% (5 minutes, in week 10)
listening comprehension test 20% (30 minutes, week 10)
2 hour examination 40% (during examination period).

80% compulsory attendance

Lectopia Enabled:  N/A

Past exams available:  About 3 from 1998-2000 but they're not relevant to the current course

Textbook Recommendation:  
Wu Zhongwei, Contemporary Chinese for Beginners (Textbook), Sinolingua, 2010.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Du Li Ping,  Zhang laoshi('teacher' in Mandarin) and Jin Laoshi

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not Yet Received

Comments:

This is a pretty chill breadth to take even if you're not completely interested in pursuing Chinese studies seriously. The staff are all really nice and they'll crack a lot of jokes during the class so the atmosphere is always very warm and fun. As an avid language learner who really wants to be proficient at a language ASAP, I found that the pace was a little too slow but since it was for beginners with absolutely zero learning experience I can understand why the pace is that way. They take attendance every lesson and you need at least 80% attendance to pass.

The textbook is a requirement because all your vocab tests are based off that book, and you read through the texts every week so you'll be severely disadvantaged if you don't buy one. In previous years they covered a total of 10 lessons in the semester (roughly one every week) but after listening to the student's opinions they reduced it to only 5 lessons (so one every fortnight). On one hand I find that this is too little since the grammar is pretty easy to follow, but on the other there are about 50 characters to learn in each lesson so having to memorize 50 characters every week would be hell. The expectation is to learn 250 characters each semester anyway so if the staff found a way to finish 10 lessons in the semester with a total of 250 (rather than 500) characters learnt then it would be at the perfect pace imo.

In this subject there aren't any lectures but there are seminars where you basically sit in a class of about 20-25 students; in seminar 1 you have Du laoshi and in seminar 2 you get Jin laoshi. Personally I found seminar one to be quite boring and pointless up until midway when Zhang laoshi took over the 2nd hour of the seminar. Basically all you do in this one is read the Chinese texts in the textbook, where Du Laoshi reads it first and the class follows after. He'll then go over each and every word in the vocab list, explaining radicals and what they mean (boring). He'll then put up his grammar notes onto the projector for the class to read, which just explains what they are and how to use them. Roughly in week 6, Zhang laoshi takes over the 2nd hour and this is where Seminar 1 starts getting useful. Sometimes she'll have the class read over the texts again which can get really boring but then after that you'll start doing worksheets to apply your Chinese which are incredibly useful.

In the practicals you do listening exercises and vocab tests. The first few weeks you just do activities to train your ears in listening to the tones and phonetics of Mandarin. In about 2 pracs we watched Mao's Last Dancer (subbed, obviously) and in another we watched a doco on dumplings. I wish these were non-compulsory classes because I would've not gone had it not been for the compulsory 80% attendance requirement. The vocab tests are pretty easy, Zhang laoshi will tell you which characters of the vocab list she'll test you on but on the actual vocab test there'll only be 10 words. You do 5 in the semester, about one every fortnight. I've seen people sit at the back and look on their phones the characters that they don't know on the test - quite sneaky but it's 2015 and it happens(and I don't endorse it either!).

Finally, seminar 2 is held with Jin Laoshi. I think he is a really great guy, very funny and very approachable. Some lessons you will pair up with another person in the class and write up a script to a roleplay based off the text in the book and then present it. Although a good activity to socialize, I didn't find it all that helpful in learning Chinese (maybe to practice pronunciation or something idk). In other lessons he'll have a list of about 10 grammar points or grammar words on the board and all you have to do is make sentences with them. He'll ask every person what their sentence was and make any corrections if necessary. These don't really take up the whole 2 hours of the seminar but he'll dismiss the class early anyway.

To do well in this subject all you've got to do is consistently revise your characters and know the grammar. I did Japanese in high school so learning characters was familiar to me since one of the Japanese alphabets derived from Chinese characters. If you leave all the character revision to swotvac you're going to have a pretty horrible time and probably won't remember all of them. The key is to do the 'drip method' - doing just a little bit of revision consistently each day. At the start of semester they upload on LMS worksheets for you to practice characters. It's tedious, but once you overcome that you'll ace the subject. Just keep practising writing them and eventually you'll be able to write them without even thinking about it due to muscle memory.

As for assessments, they were all pretty easy except for the listening task. The short tests is basically one double-sided work sheets which could include anything from circling the correct sentence, to pinyin or to translation. Again, just know your characters + grammar and you'll do fine. For the oral exam there'll be three facedown sheets with the texts from the textbook but ONLY Chinese characters with no pinyin. You pick one and read it aloud. Pretty easy assessment if you just practice and learn the texts from the book off by heart. For the second part the examiner will ask a few basic questions that you have to answer in Chinese and that'll be it.

Throughout the semester you get two spoken assignments which are unassessed but are meant to help you with your pronunciation. It took the staff quite a while to give feedback on the first one, and I didn't even get feedback for the second one so that was pointless.

All in all this is a pretty good breadth to take. The bulk of the work goes into learning/revising the Chinese characters so try not to save them all to swotvac. Lots of assessments but they're all pretty easy to do well in so getting a good mark in Chinese 1 shouldn't be a problem. That's all I can think of for now so if you have any questions feel free to PM me.

I'll come back to this later with info/tips on the exam after I've done it :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 06, 2015, 06:59:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30002: Principles of Immunology

Workload:  3 lectures per week

Assessment:  Two 40 MCQ MSTs (45 mins) worth 20% each. End of semester exam worth 60% (2 hours)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams available. However, you do get optional revision questions weekly and before each assessment some sample SAQs go on the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation:  Janeway's Immunology I think? Never used it.

Lecturer(s):
A. Brooks
O. Wijburg
S. Bedoui
T. Gebhardt

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments: Really, if you have any sort of interest in immunology, no matter how mild, do this subject because it's really well coordinated and the lectures have been of consistently high quality. I have nothing bad to say really. Most of what you need to know is on the slides already (be prepared for tons and tons of diagrams) but make sure you write a lot of stuff down for Sam in particular, as his slides are brief compared to the other lecturers. Thomas' entire lecture slides were pretty much diagrams from textbooks as well. I should also note that a few of the lectures were just repeats of each other - for example, we got a whole lecture on innate immunity which used the same slides as a previous lecture we had.

There is rote-learning in this subject of course but this focuses a lot on your understanding of the principles. You need to not only be able to remember what molecules and factors are involved in the process you're talking about, but how the entire process occurs. I guess it made studying for immunology easier as you won't have to spend copious amounts of time flicking over your notes praying that the info gets stuck in your head.

The first part of the subject is pretty easy. Then it moves onto a more moderate-high difficulty. The material itself is split into three sections.

You begin in Molecular Immunology. Here, you learn about organs and cells involved in the innate and adaptive immune system in a general sense, before spending around three or four lectures on how antibodies are generated and how they function. You also get a lecture on monoclonal antibodies which is not too hard. You then spend the same amount of lectures on the structural, functional and genetic basis of MHCs and TCRs. The section ends with a lecture on signal transduction during T-cell activation. This is the easy part as it builds on what you've learnt in first and second year with slightly more depth. MST1 will be on this.

Next up is Cellular Immunology. You start off learning about the innate immune system - cells first, then signalling pathways, then dendritic cells specifically, then the whole complement cascade (your mind might hurt from all the tongue twisting names involved in this lecture). This part ends with a lecture on different lymphocyte subsets.

Following this, you've made it to Immune Mechanisms. This is probably the most heavy section. It presents as a narrative in a sort of  way. You start off with a whole lecture on cytokines and chemokines. After this, you learn the whole process of development in B and T-cells, beginning from the initial genesis to their transition as battle-ready effector lymphocytes. This is probably the most interesting part of the subject I guess, and this will be tested on MST2. After this the order of the lectures gets a bit random - you end off with a lecture on memory, NK cells, immunopathology, HSV infections (which pretty much was just a recap of a lot of processes you've already learnt) and the final lecture is just elaborating on several experiments that were done to see if checkpoint blockade is a viable to treat cancer.

So I did say that this subject was really predicated on how much you understand the processes involved. This can make assessment hardish. I think the average for the MSTs usually hovered at around 27-28/40. Each MST has around 20 questions of the normal A/B/C/D/E type. In the latter half, they present like five statements in each question and A = 1, 2, 3 are right, B = 1 and 3 are right, C = 2 and 4 are right, D = Only 4 is right, and E = All of them are right. These questions are painful. Try doing these by elimination - you're most likely to lose marks on this section. We never got a detailed feedback on which topics we got wrong in our MSTs though which was a bummer. Before each MST there was a review lecture that is just a Q&A with the lectures, so if you want to make the most out of it make sure you email questions that have been nagging at you.

The exam will be pretty tough if you have a memory lapse. There are 20 MCQs (worth 0.5 each) on the post-MST2 stuff and then 50 marks is allocated to short answer. Each question will be broken up into two parts, part a and b. Each part is worth 5 marks each. Losing 1 mark in this means you drop 1% of your grade so make sure you know your stuff. Some questions will ask you to draw diagrams too.

TL;DR - A very interesting and rewarding subject if you like learning how war is fought using cells and molecules. If you want to do well, make sure you put in the work, otherwise you will suffer.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sjayne on June 15, 2015, 02:46:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC10003 Mind, Brain & Behaviour 1 

Workload:  3 one hour lectures (totalling 36 hours) and one two hour tutorial (12) a week.
3 hours of research participation (hurdle requirement).
Total Time Commitment: 170 hours time commitment

Assessment: 
One three hour multiple choice exam (60%)
Laboratory assignment(s) of not more than 2000 words (40%)
Participation in three hours of research activities and attendance at 80% or more of laboratory classes are hurdle requirements.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No. There were multiple-choice questions for each topic available with answers as well as a list of possible questions for the sensation and perception topic (1/4 of the exam).

Textbook Recommendation: 
There is a whole list of recommended textbooks but you don't need to buy them and it isn't worth it. Just borrow them from the library if you need to.

Lecturer(s):
Dr Simon Cropper (Subject coordinator and takes Sensation and Perception)
Dr Jason Forte (Neuroscience)
Dr Stefan Bode (Learning and Cognition)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (!)

Comments:

I was extremely excited for this subject having completed VCE psychology and loved it, and I wasn’t disappointed. No prior knowledge was needed but having done further maths in high school definitely helped with the Quantitative Methods, and some of the learning and memory theories in vce psychology were brought up again. Completing these subjects won’t give you an advantage as the majority of the content is new and they go through everything thoroughly.

Lectures: All of the lecturers were really good and they each have their own unique style. The neuroscience lectures (Jason) seem fairly content heavy but when compared to other science subjects, they aren’t that bad and learning about how the brain works is pretty interesting. Simon takes you on a bit of a rollercoaster of sensation and perception and I admit to walking out of one or two of his lectures wondering what the hell I had just learnt- but I enjoyed every second of them! The content is about primarily the visual system and how we interact with the world. He doesn’t use notes in his slides but uploads summaries and his music taste is pretty rad. Learning and cognition (Stefan) was my favourite section. You learn about different learning and memory systems and theories, language (briefly) and then towards the end you delve into consciousness and free will. This section is less science-y and really makes you think and question things that you never have before.

Tutorials: The content in the tutorials isn't gone over in the lectures, so attending them is necessary if you want to do well (plus there’s a 80% attendance hurdle). My tutor was amazing and went through everything in a lot of detail. Some of the classes are a bit odd (supertasters anyone?) but you also go through research methods and quant methods (the maths stuff-don’t worry it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it).

Assessment: Apparently this changes a little from year to year but we had to write two essays. One long one about a sunset, yes you have to sit down and watch a sunset, and a short one that was about the Kaleidoscope Exhibition at the Ian Potter Gallery in Fed square (this one will most likely change). A lot of people found these a bit abstract and out there but I promise if you pay attention in the assignment tutorial then everything will make sense. I found this assignment quite enjoyable but it was hard to work out what we were meant to do. This is the reason why I’m only giving this subject a 4.

Exam: It’s all multiple choice and is split into four sections: Neuroscience, Sensation & Perception, Learning & Cognition and Quantitative Methods. For S&P you have a general idea about what will be on the exam (I mean you even get a list that has the questions in it), and most sections are quite fair.  Though, I will mention that some of the neuroscience questions were on information that was only in the notes and not covered in the lectures.

Final comment: If you are interested in psychology and the mind then definitely make sure you take this! It is a prerequisite if you want to major in psych and if you're not sure then it might be good to take it just to keep your options open. There is so much more to this subject than just sitting the exam and getting a mark, it makes you THINK (especially if you are just learning facts in other subjects).  It isn’t easy but it isn’t extraordinarily difficult and it’s worth it! I should probably add though, that despite me adoring this subject a lot of people didn't.  If you don't like science then you will most likely struggle during the neuroscience section and the assignment is fairly abstract as well as a fair chunk of the content.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 17, 2015, 12:38:38 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20001: Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine

Workload: Contact Hours: 99 hours: 6 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour practicals/CAL per fortnight and 9 x 1 hour tutorials. Total Time Commitment: 340 hours (including non-contact time).

Note: There are four CALs - the biochemistry, cell biology and pathology CALs can be done at university while the genetics CAL is completed at home. Microbiology/immunology involves two 90 minute practical classes held roughly at the same time as your scheduled CAL timeslot (so putting them in other places in your personal timetable won't change anything). The "tutorials" are workshops; essentially lecture slots that the lecturer uses to summarise concepts, expose the cohort to practice questions or extend upon the concepts covered in lectures.

Assessment: 5 x continuous assessment exercises during semester - 10% (2% each); 2 x intra-semester tests during semester - 20% (10% each); 2 x 2 hour examinations during the exam period - 70% (35% each).

The continuous assessment exercises refer to the LMS test that becomes available once the whole cohort has completed the CALs/practicals.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: The 2013 mid-semester tests were made available to us as revision during the semester. For the final exams, we were supplied with 2010, 2011 and 2013. This might vary from year to year, but 2010 can be found on the university library website. Note that the format of these exams is very different from the current exam format.

Textbook Recommendation:

Prescribed textbook: Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P, "Molecular Biology of the Cell", 5th Edition

Recommended textbooks:

It might be worth having your hands on a version of the prescribed textbook, although all the lecturers emphasise that only content covered in the lectures is examinable. Hence, I didn't use the textbook that much this year. As to all the recommended textbooks - I didn't even look at them once. However, they're not too difficult to "find" (*cough*) so it might be good to have them there anyway.

Note also that the 6th edition of the prescribed textbook is now available. It doesn't matter which version you have out of these two, the lecturers tried their best to provided references for both.

Lecturer(s):
Dr Terry Mulhern: Lectures 1-17 - Biochemistry
Dr Michael Murray: Lectures 18-22, 27-29 - Genetics
Dr Marnie Blewitt: Lectures 23-24 - Epigenetics
Dr Trent Perry: Lectures 25-26 - Genetics in development
Assoc Prof Robb de Iongh: Lectures 30-35, 38-42 - Cell biology
Assoc Prof Gary Hime: Lectures 36-38 - Cell junctions and the extracellular matrix
Prof Roy Robins-Browne: Lectures 43-48 - Bacteriology
Prof Lorena Brown: Lectures 49-51 - Virology
Dr Odilia Wijburg: Lectures 52-57 - Immunology
Dr Vicki Lawson: Lectures 58-66 - Pathology
Dr Tom Karaggianis: Lectures 67-68 - Neoplasia

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2015

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

As all the other reviews do for this subject, I'll have to start with the inevitable truth - this subject is a very difficult one. This was something I really didn't want to believe or face, but no matter how I tried to see it BIOM20001 made sure I got a good slap in the face about it anyway. I guess the part I find difficult to come to terms with is the fact that I was managing the first six weeks of this subject just fine. I wasn't having any trouble. I wasn't feeling exceptionally overwhelmed by the workload. I had been lulled into a false sense of security, believing that maybe the cohorts gone before us were just exaggerating how difficult it would be, or that it was merely a matter of actually doing your work (first year can allow you to be a bit slack at times). Then week 7 happened, and I never quite got back on my feet again. This subject is a lot of work, although it can definitely be completed without having to drop your study load. That being said, I totally understand why so many people do it now. Yes, you can complete this subject having two others on the side, but you might struggle to really balance yourself. I know that this eventually became a problem for me, although all this might be more a reflection on me than on the subject itself. All I can say is to brace yourselves and be prepared for the upcoming challenge. Compared to first year, I also found myself having to actively memorise a lot more content. I'll also re-iterate, however, that the concepts covered in this subject are not particularly difficult - the challenge merely presents itself through all the content you need to know.

All of that said, this subject is a great opportunity to get a taste of the various majors on offer in third year. There will be sections you love and others you hate, but at least you can actually make an informed decision on what you want to do. This is a luxury Science students miss out on - generally they are forced to have to eliminate options coming straight out of first year, whereas you can systematically work through each one and potentially decide through a process of elimination (which is essentially what I'm doing). So in that sense, I'm grateful for this opportunity. Regardless of how you feel for each individual topic, you'll find that the quality of the teaching staff is generally quite high, which makes this subject more bearable.

In terms of the format, you'll generally have six lectures and a workshop, or seven lectures per week. As I said above, the workshops are essentially lecture slots that the lecturer uses to summarise concepts, expose the cohort to practice questions or extend upon the concepts covered in lectures. Importantly, they're not like the workshops in first year biology, and they're not a waste of time. You should definitely make sure you go over these classes and treat them seriously. Personally, I found the workshops very helpful in clarifying my understanding of the various topics. The lectures are essentially as they are in other subjects. You'll have one every day, and on some days, two, so it is absolutely imperative that you get in the habit of summarising lectures the day that they're conducted. If you wait until the end of the week, you can see yourself falling up to seven lectures behind, which is not an ideal circumstance to be in at all. This subject is sequential and moves fast, and if you haven't properly consolidated the content covered in the previous one, it can be difficult to understand subsequent ones and it can all quickly snowball into one huge problem. This can make things particularly hard at times because students are left very little time to sit with more difficult concepts and understand them before moving on, so I can only hope this may be addressed in some way in the future (perhaps having two lectures on Monday, Wednesday and Friday would be better for that reason, I'm not sure). It is one of the reasons I have not awarded this subject 5/5.

In addition, you'll have a CAL (which stands for computer-assisted learning class) roughly every fortnight, and, towards the end of the semester, two practicals for microbiology in place of a CAL. Given that the genetics CAL is completed at home you essentially only have three of these CAL classes. In these classes you go through a website or program in the computer lab and fill out a worksheet. This is all done individually and at your own pace - if you run out of time the CAL was generally available to do at home afterwards, so it's not a big problem (I only ever finished one CAL on time -.-). In fact, the biochemistry and cell biology CALs could pretty much be completed at home if you really wanted to do that, but the advantage in going in is that staff are available to answer questions you may have. Once all the CAL class groups have had their CAL class, a test on the CAL content becomes available on the LMS. This is generally just a 10 mark multiple choice quiz with a one hour time limit, although this can vary from case to case. I was in the first CAL group which generally meant that the test became available two weeks after I did the CAL, so I was forced to revisit the content before the assessment. If you can, try to get into a later CAL class so you don't have to do this. In general, I did not find the CALs useful, relevant or interesting, and is another reason I am not giving this subject a 5/5. In terms of assessment though, it wasn't too difficult to get most of the 2% for each one, and in a subject like this one, I guess people are happy to do whatever in order to get some extra marks.

From here forth, I'll go through this review analysing each section of the course separately, but be aware the concepts are never really kept in isolation but integrated together. This is important to bear in mind when it comes to assessment. During the semester, make an effort to be aware of the links, and make a mental note of them in the back of your mind. From time to time lecturers would actually pull slides from another part of the course to demonstrate the link, so it's evident a lot of time and effort has been made for integration.

Weeks 1-3: Biochemistry

Your first set of lectures will cover the key concepts of biochemistry and molecular biology, which are taken by Terry Mulhern. The good news is that this is taught significantly better than first year chemistry, and I found it much easier to understand. Personally speaking, it's still not one of my favourite topics to learn about, but at least I was left with a much more positive taste in my mouth compared to first year chemistry. Terry's also a very good and thorough lecturer, although he had the tendency to speak a bit fast at times. I found the content was presented in a manner that was appropriate and for the most part not too difficult to follow. This part of the course covers all the biomacromolecule structures and functions (with a stronger focus on proteins), as well as key reactions of metabolism (glycolysis, Krebs cycle, anaerobic respiration, fermentation, and the electron transport chain) and how these are regulated. Yes, you will need to know all the details of these reactions. As you can probably see, you will need to commit to memory a lot of information. I'm sure you've already heard that you'll need to know the amino acids, including their three letter and single letter codes. I would strongly suggest getting onto this sooner rather than later. Given that I was aware of this before starting this subject, I worked on learning these over the summer holidays so that I already knew them prior to the semester starting. In the end, this proved to be a massive help. I used a flashcard app on my phone to learn them and worked through it from time to time and found that a very effective way to learn them. Metabolism all gets covered in week 3 essentially and it can be challenging to have to try and become familiar with a metabolic pathway in time for the next lecture so that everything made sense. That being said, I found that it wasn't as daunting as I initially thought. The most difficult part of this section is the regulation part, but with time and persistence I found this eventually clicked. Biochemistry is a bit of an odd one, because while you have to spend a lot of time actively memorising content, once it's memorised, it's very easy to understand, and your understanding will hold your memory intact. For example, once you know about the structures of the amino acids, their properties are easy to understand and recognise. Similarly, the metabolic pathways and their regulation actually make a lot of sense. It's essentially the reverse to how it works most of the time, where understanding facilitates remembering.

Terry mainly used his workshops to clear up any confusion about the questions he would pose at the end of these lectures, or would expose us to practice multiple choice questions which we would answer on quickpoll. This turned out to be very helpful for the assessments, so I would make every effort to attempt questions and go to (or watch) the workshops.

The CAL for this part of the course involved reading an experimental procedure and answering questions. The content doesn't really tie in with the course that well and beyond the CAL test the content never really came up again. Technically all CAL, practical and workshop content is examinable but not in this case.

I'll just put a note at the end that GAMSAT pretty much co-incides with metabolism, which can make this excruciatingly difficult if you're in this boat. To be honest, I don't know if I could've coped if I also had the GAMSAT to contend with. Anyway, bear this in mind, and go in with a game plan.

Weeks 4-6: Genetics

Ahh, genetics... my safe haven. For me genetics is not the most interesting aspect of biology, but it comes to me easy, and the whole discipline really is about understanding the concepts in favour of knowing all the little details. Michael Murray takes the bulk of the lectures in this block and he will emphasise to you that actually understanding what is presented to you in lectures is far more important than knowing some random tiny detail that would otherwise be fair game in pretty much any other section of the course. For this reason, I really liked this part of the course as it was a nice change from the rest of what the course seems to focus on. The lectures predominantly focus on gene expression and cancer, although some time is also dedicated to advances made in genetics research. Again, the content was presented in a clear and appropriate manner. In addition, Marnie Blewitt takes two lectures on epigenetics and Trent Perry takes two lectures on genetics in development. I personally love epigenetics so I found those lectures very interesting. Marnie has the tendency to speak quite fast but she was very professional - if you need to definitely rewatch her lectures again. However, at the time I found Trent's lecture content a bit confusing. In the end though, it's not terribly complicated and with a bit of persistence you will get it. Given that it's only a couple of lectures it never makes up a large portion of the assessment anyway.

All the lecturers provide practice questions at the end of their lectures, which are generally gone over at the start of the next lecture (if applicable) but may be addressed in workshops if they caused particular problems. However, I found the workshops slightly less useful for this section. Unlike in other sections, the lecturers relied on students suggesting concepts to re-cover. In theory this should work but most students didn't seem to have that many problems so the classes sort of went to waste.

The CAL for this section ties into the course slightly better compared to biochemistry, although it was still a bit detached. It involved using a program to deduce a particular genetic outcome. At least you do this one at home. In terms of further assessment, the content never really came up again either.

Weeks 6-8: Cell biology

The next part of the course is cell biology, taken by Robb de Iongh, with cell junctions and extracellular matrix covered by Gary Hime. Pretty much everything in the course can be linked to the concepts covered in this section, which makes sense given the title of the subject and the fact that the lecturer for this section is also the subject's co-ordinator. At the end of first year I thought this would be the section that I'd end up pursuing further but in the end I actually found cell biology the least enjoyable part. It probably had more to do with the rote-learning and the way you have to think to learn the information than anything else. Nonetheless, I personally found this section difficult - understandably things went a bit downhill for me here. You'll learn a lot about cell processes, structures and signalling pathways which I don't think I appreciated in the end because of the fast, demanding pace of the lectures. Robb and Gary like to merely put diagrams of the processes, and given how I was feeling at the time I decided I'd cut and paste them into my book. If there was one mistake I had made in this subject, it was this. There is a reason why they choose to present the content in this way - it's the easiest way to convey the information, and the diagrams are pretty much self-explanatory. Additionally, knowing the diagrams proves very helpful in the assessment. If I had taken the time to actually draw out all the diagrams, I would have understood all the content very quickly. In the end, my shortcut pretty much backfired and I spent most of my time needlessly confused. That being said, I think some areas were still confusing to me in general so I think this also just highlighted a weak point.

Robb uses the workshop in this section to explore cancer in greater depth, even though you learn about it heaps in lectures. However, he makes the effort to integrate his own concepts as well as the concepts of others, and this is extremely handy for the assessment. You're asked to read a scientific article on cancer prior to attending, although only a handful seemed to do it. You could probably get away with not reading it, but if you have the time, why not have a read of it anyway?

A positive is that the CAL pretty much ties in perfectly with the lectures. While it merely involves reading a website and filling in a worksheet, it's probably a good way to further consolidate your knowledge in another learning format. I'd suggest that this CAL would be good for exam revision too, given its relevance to the course.

Weeks 8-10: Infection and immunity

This part of the course is spread fairly evenly between bacteriology, taken by Roy Robins-Browne, virology, taken by Lorena Brown, and immunology, taken by Odilia Wijburg. Roy's section is first up, and you'll spend time learning about bacterial structure and virulence, as well as mechanisms to combat bacterial infection. As other reviews have warned, Roy likes to tell a lot of stories, which can make their way into examinable content, so don't just sit there thinking that they're irrelevant (which, in all fairness, is easy to do because they don't come across as particularly important) but make every effort to jot down the key message of each one, as well as any additional bacterial species he happens to mention. While we still received a number of these stories this year, thankfully feedback from previous cohorts had been heard and Roy showed a lot of restraint when it came to the assessment - none of his stories or extra bacteria actually came up anywhere. However, there's never any guarantee, so don't take the chance. We then moved onto having just three lectures on virus structure/virulence and antiviral mechanisms with Lorena. Lorena's officially my favourite lecturer now. She was so nice and also an amazing lecturer. She doesn't quite go into the same level of specifics as Roy, but it's important to take note of the key examples. The microbiology lectures are then followed up by a week of immunology lectures with Odilia. Odilia's slides are amongst the best I've seen at university - they are incredibly well laid out and pretty much contain all the information that you need. Hence, it might seem like she's reading off the slides, but it's so much easier to compile all the information compared to other lecturers who seem to mention a lot of important stuff that's not written down (and hence easy to miss). I guess it's evident the microbiology and immunology department is very thorough in their teaching, backing up the positive words I hear from others taking MIIM subjects. Anyway, Odilia does contain a few so-called "slides of death" which you'll need to commit to memory as well - if you haven't gotten the picture by now, you'll probably come to see that learning the amino acids will become the least of your problems in this subject compared to the content you need to memorise in all the other sections. :P I also liked Odilia's workshop for this section, where we went through practice multiple choice questions together.

Instead of a CAL you actually have two practical classes for microbiology in the Peter Doherty institute. Given that there are no other practicals in this subject, and that most of the other subjects students tend to take alongside this subject don't have practicals either, it was quite a nice change to be back in the laboratory again. In these classes you go through a real case study to try and figure out the cause of an infection. Relax - they're nothing like first year: you won't be traumatised by having to do a tonne of stuff in a short period of time or face poor marks. The sessions are not jam-packed as they are in first year, and at the end of each session the demonstrator takes the time to go through all the answers on the worksheet. Additionally, there's no in-practical assessment either - the assessment is the same as it is for the other CALs. For your benefit, the department also puts up some practice questions for you to do, which was really nice of them. Hence, I found that I was actually able to appreciate what was going on for once. It may be a good idea to be familiar with the bacteria you come across in these classes only because Roy might wish to exploit them in assessment.

As you can see, I enjoyed this section for a number of reasons. The teaching standard was exceptionally high, and the content was appropriately balanced between memory and understanding. Additionally, while there was a lot to memorise there weren't any pathways to remember, which, for me, was a plus. ;)

Weeks 11-12: Pathology

The last section of this course is pathology, taken by Vicki Lawson. Given that there's only 11 lectures dedicated to this section, some felt this part of the course came across as rushed and disjointed, and many found it to be the most difficult area to learn. Contrastingly, I think this proved to be my favourite part of the course. Vicki does tend to talk quite fast so reviewing the lectures again might be necessary, but she makes the effort to emphasise the need to sit down and think about how the concepts relate to one another, and I really liked her as a lecturer anyway. I also personally found the content just seemed to click and make a lot of sense. Perhaps part of the reason why I enjoyed this section so much was because the link to medicine is, for once, extremely explicit. That being said, it probably wasn't my strongest area either (weird, I know). Here you'll spend a lot of time on immunopathology (i.e. injury, inflammation, would healing and hypersensitivity), so there's a nice link to Odilia's content. The final two lectures of this subject are taken by Tom Karaggianis, who formalises a lot of the concepts you've already learnt about neoplasia (cancer). Pretty much nothing covered in his lectures was new, but again the reinforcement proves helpful for the assessment. Vicki's workshop was run in a similar fashion to Odilia's.

The CAL for this section also ties in with lecture content quite well as it's essentially a summary of Vicki's lectures. However, as it is not a website but rather a program, you must complete this CAL at the computer lab. Don't make the mistake that many made and not turn up, and then have to try and find another time when the computer lab was free, and find the program on the computer, to work through the worksheet.

Assessment

Given the relatively high failure rates of previous years, the staff have made an effort to try and simplify the assessment and make it more manageable, and this showed in this year's assessment.

In addition to CAL tests, your other mid-semester assessments are two mid-semester tests, held in weeks 6 and 11. Both tests contain 30 multiple choice questions to be completed in 30 minutes. These are generally not hard if you've made the effort to do the work properly and review the content. Many of the questions require you to recall information, but I felt enough questions also required a more solid understanding of the concepts taught. Some sections managed to do this particularly well - off the top of my head I'd say biochemistry and immunology tended to do this quite effectively. Most people know that this subject is difficult, so many (including myself) invested more time studying for these this year compared to first year biology. This showed in my results - I did significantly better in my tests this year, despite the extra difficulty of this subject. Test 1 covers biochemistry and genetics, and test 2 covers cell biology and infection and immunity. Generally, cohorts tend to do better in test 1 compared to test 2; this probably has to do with the fact that you generally get the mid-semester break to study properly for test 1, which is not a luxury you get for test 2. However, for some weird reason, our cohort did much better on test 2. I personally got the same result for both tests and found them both similar in difficulty (although I felt less prepared for test 2). For each test you'll get a review lecture where you actually receive (collective) feedback on how the test was conducted, and questions answered correctly by less than 50% of the cohort are gone over again. I really appreciated the effort that was put into these review classes.

Your very last lecture covers exam information and is worth paying attention to. No doubt you're aware that BIOM20001 has two exams - exam A, which consists of 80 multiple choice questions and 40 marks of fill in the blank questions; and exam B, which consists of integrated short answer questions. In the last lecture you will be told which topics are to be integrated for which questions in exam B. This is where that mental list you've been compiling over the course of the semester comes in handy. During SWOTVAC, it's a really good idea to sit down and make a list of all the concepts that could possibly be integrated, and for larger concepts (e.g. cancer) you may wish to write some summary notes that actually tie in all the information from the whole course. You should be able to predict what sorts of concepts will come up in your exam B.

Exam A was never really a concern for me given that it was multiple choice and fill in the blank, but previous cohorts had reported that it was difficult to complete on time. This wasn't the case this year. Most found this exam comparable to the difficulty and style of the mid-semester tests and was therefore considered manageable. Since pathology is not covered in a mid-semester test, there are more pathology questions in the multiple choice section, but these were fairly similar in style to the questions Vicki asked in her CAL.

Exam B is the exam that scares most people. It's your first ever short answer exam for biology at university, and it seems like an absolute nightmare given all the detail you're expected to know. However, in the end it wasn't actually that bad. The practice exams that you'll receive mainly consist of long answer questions rather than short answer questions, and so while they are worth doing for practice, they are not representative of what the actual exam is like. In terms of structure (as well as the focus of questions), exam B is much like the short answer section of the VCE Biology exam. The sections are integrated in the sense that they all relate to a particular concept, but generally each individual question only really required knowledge from one part of the course. Note that you will be expected to draw diagrams for many of the questions - so make the effort to learn them! They don't have to be perfect but try to ensure they are somewhat representative of the concept if you can. The focus of the exam is also not what you'd expect - it's not so much splurging down all the details you can think of for a particular concept; rather it's about finding connections between concepts and being able to make inferences and apply knowledge to various observations. Hence, I really enjoyed this exam, because if you actually deeply understood all the concepts, you were sweet. That being said, it's also difficult to know how you went because none of the answers were really explicit either. In previous years it also seemed many people failed to finish, but this year I think most people managed to get everything done just in time. I personally finished with a handful of minutes remaining. Definitely work at a brisk pace.

tl;dr

This subject is conducted at a very high standard, although that doesn't mean it doesn't have its drawbacks. It's not very difficult concept-wise, but with such a high workload it can often seem overwhelming and get the better of you. When picking other subjects, I implore you to choose wisely, because this subject requires a large time investment - easily two subject's worth, if not more. Not that this is a standardised unit of measurement, but to indicate to you the size of this course, I used up eight exercise books for this subject, compared to three in subjects with a normal load (so you can sort of see this subject is actually more than the workload of two normal subjects, if you get what I mean). If you can find a way to make things work though, you'll find that you'll be absolutely fine, because the staff go to great lengths to try and make the journey as smooth as it can possibly be for you. Be prepared for the challenge, and embrace it - ultimately this subject is tough but as everyone says it's worth it in the end. Other than that, I think that's all I've got to say. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on June 17, 2015, 03:58:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30011: Medical Microbiology: Bacteriology

Workload:  3 lectures per week.

Assessment:  Weekle quizzes worth 5%. Two MSTs of 40 MCQ each, worth 40% together. The exam goes for 2 hours and is weighted 55%. It has 12 MCQs, 26 marks of fill in the blanks, and 6 questions (each worth 10 marks) for short answer.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams, but some lecturers will put up some revision questions on the end of their slides. You can also use your old weekly quizzes for more revision.

Textbook Recommendation:  Bacterial Pathogenesis: a Molecular Approach by Wilson et al. I never even had a look at it.

Lecturer(s): A lot.
O. Wijburg
R. Strugnell
E. Hartland
R. Robins-Browne
T. Stinear
H. Newton
J. Denholm
J. Rood

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: Are you good at memorising? If you have a poor memory, then this subject is going to be very hard for you. Even if you're good at memorising things, it's still quite a bit to swallow. I'd have to say that this was probably only just as packed as M2M. If you're studying this with MIIM30002, you can expect some overlap but there's not too much - you're learning about how bacteria cause disease in this subject. In essence, you learn about pathogenesis, treatment and diagnosis for many different types of infections. There's a lot of detail in this subject; be prepared to name many acronyms and

Odilia begins with an overview of the immune system and how it responds to bacterial infection. Not so difficult here. Following this you move onto bacterial genetics with Richard, where you learn how bacteria regulate their genes and how they can exchange them. There's also a few lectures on using molecular Koch's postulates to identify virulence factors in bacteria. After this, the subject begins to become a lot more interesting - you begin to learn how bacteria adhere, colonise, invade, survive, and spread between cells in detail. This block of lectures is centred around learning from many examples so it's easy to confuse things from one bacteria with another. Liz lectures for this block and is probably one of the most clearest lecturers I've ever had - even though what she's teaching is just more memory work I felt that this section was probably one of the easiest to memorise. Her last two lectures are on secretion systems and that should wrap up the first half of the course. This will be assessed in MST1.

The latter half of the course has more focus on specific infections. Anyway, next up, it's time for Roy's stories. If you haven't had Roy before, make sure you dictate everything he says because any word that comes out of his mouth is examinable. And be prepared for him to make you answer questions in the middle of a lecture (never sit at the back of the theatre, lol). You get a number of lectures in diagnostic microbiology, antibiotics, E. coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These lectures should be familiar to you if you've done MCB and the 2nd year microbes subject, especially the ones for E. coli. Roy didn't end up finishing his lectures on antibiotics so we weren't taught about testing for susceptibility, which was a bummer though.

Following this, Tim talks about Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium ulcerans and Staphlycoccus aureus infections. What's unique in these lectures is that he links them with bacterial genomics. First, you'll get a lecture on how they sequence the bacterial genome, and then throughout the lectures on infection he'll integrate them with some applied genomics (for example, using phylogenomics to determine if the same bacteria is spreading through different communities, or how VISA mutants form in hospitals). You also get a lecture on TB epidemiology by Justin. That makes up the content for MST2.

You then move onto Coxiella, Rickettsia and Chlamydia infections with Nicole. Odilia presents a pretty straightforward lecture on vaccines and the course ends with Julian lecturing on Clostridium infections.

Moving onto assessment, the weekly quizzes on the LMS should be free marks for you. All of the questions are pretty easy and if you have your notes out while you're doing it you should be getting close to full marks all the time. The MSTs are also pretty decent too - the average was around 32/39 for the first MST and 30/39 for the second. If you've done the work they should do well. You also get a detailed email that shows you what areas you went wrong in during your MSTs so that's helpful in knowing where your weak points are. You'll get a revision lecture a few days before each MST which is pretty much just a Q&A so bring any questions that are nagging you.

All in all, this is a very interesting subject but if you're not prepared to commit things to memory, then you're going to suffer. It's an excellent subject to do in conjunction with Immunology - it's not the best thing if you're doing something like Anatomy or Physiology. This course involves a lot of cell biology and molecular detail - you're learning about bacteria, after all!

TL;DR: True to its name, you're going to be learning about bacteria in the context of medicine. Therefore, expect to store in a ton of detail. It's best to study this when learning Immunology to get an insight into both sides of infectious disease!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Mieow on June 17, 2015, 05:53:09 pm
Subject Code: MAST10006: Calculus 2

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures, 1 x one hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  4 x assignments every 2-3 weeks (20%; 5% each)
                         1 x three hour exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled: No

Past Exams available: 2013 Semester 1&2 + 2014 Semester 1&2 exams are posted on LMS with solutions at the end of semester.
Plenty more on the exam library if you want more (just remember Sequences and Series won't be on them + no solutions)

Textbook Recommendations:
Prescribed: You need to purchase the lecture slides/coursebook from the Co-Op shop
Recommended:  - Hass, Weir, Thomas, Adams and Essex, Calculus 1 & 2, custom published text, Pearson, 2010.
               - Hass, Weir, Thomas, University Calculus Early Transcendentals, 2nd edition, 2012
      
Lecturers:
- Prof. John Sader
- Dr. Christine Mangelsdorf
- Dr. Bill Holmes
- Dr. Anita Ponsaing

Year & Semester of Completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not Yet Received

Comments:

This was an incredibly fun subject to take! The aim of this subject was to cover a broad range of topics without much depth to them. So really all that's required of you is to remember the formulas and know when/how/where to plug in the numbers. People who get a study score of 29 or more in Specialist Maths 3/4 can enrol in this subject in Semester 1.

Lectures:
I was blessed to have Professor John Sader as the lecturer in my stream, and I really recommend him to everyone taking Calc 2. He is incredibly enthusiastic and engaging, so learning the content can be quite fun with him as your lecturer. Be aware that he can go quite fast though (sometimes we finished lectures 10-15 minutes early) so if he's going too quick give him a heads up, even if one person is lost he'll go over it again for you. Just remember to be considerate towards others; you don't want to put the lecture on hold for everyone else because you keep asking questions. He also often spends a few minutes at the end of lectures to let you ask questions as well, but the time/opportunity to ask questions is often short because the line gets long very quickly and he'll need to leave to let the next lecturer into the theatre. Generally all you do in these lectures is go through a bit of theory and then straight into worked examples that you copy down into your lecture slides. Most of the time they weren't difficult to follow along, Calc 2 is about as difficult (or maybe even easier) than Spesh imo. You start off with Limits and then move on to Sequences&Series which I didn't really like. My favourite topics were probably First+Second Order Differential Equations because these were straightforward to do and had various real life applications to them which made them interesting. There's no textbook required in this subject, all you need is the lecture notes which you buy at the co-op store and you'll be given Problem Sheets on your first lecture. At the end of every week the subject co-ordinator will post on LMS which questions you should be able to do. The recommended textbook is something you should go to if you want another source of information or additional problems to do if you completed the ones in the problem sheets.

Assignments:
Okay so these assignments were probably the worst thing about Calc2. They were damn hard. Sometimes I didn't even know how to read the equations that were in the questions. Fortunately I formed a study group with some other Biomed kids and we often discussed the assignments together so it made doing them less stressful. Try not to do them the weekend before they're due because you'll probably need more time to think through them. You get them roughly every 2 weeks so they mostly cover content from those previous two weeks although every now and then you'll need to refer to content from before that. My advice would be to do them the Monday they're handed out. Sit down, think about the question and what formulas you can use to get to the final answer. They mostly only assess you on things you learnt in the last two weeks so you should get yourself on the right track eventually. Try to form study groups as well because you can help each other out and it'll make finishing them a lot easier. Personally I think their contribution to our final mark was weighted way too low considering how difficult they were which can be a good and a bad thing. Good in that if you're struggling with them it won't be too detrimental to your grade, and bad because I feel like I should've been awarded more for the work I put into them. Oh well. There's only like 2-4 questions on each assignment anyway.Showing your working out is a huge factor in these assignments, so make sure you justify every step as required and use correct notation.

Tutorials:
In tutorials you get into groups of 2-4 and you try to work through a problem sheet on the whiteboard together. The tutor will come around to see how you're going and it's a good opportunity for you to ask anything if you are struggling. The questions are always on the topics covered the previous week except for week 1 when it's just revision of Spesh. These were a pretty good opportunity to make friends and to revise content so I would strongly advise going to them. The tutorial questions themselves are uploaded onto LMS but the solutions are handed out at the end of the tutorial so if you want them you have to go (unless you can nick them off a friend). You're not actually required to go to these tutorials but tutors still take attendance. I overheard that it's because if you failed but were very close to passing, they'll look at your attendance in tutes and try to lift your grade a little bit to help you reach the Pass mark.

Exam:
The exam is 3 hours long and is, unfortunately, worth 80% of your mark. So it's basically the only assessment that counts and determines if you pass or not.  Personally I wish it was worth less, 60-70% would be reasonable with maybe an MST but it's really not that hard. You can often predict what questions will be on them based off what was asked the previous semesters. There's normally about 10 questions that extend from a-d and can be worth anywhere between 8-19 marks. The questions aren't particularly hard, the difficult part is having to remember like 100 formulas and worked examples from the lectures off the top of your head since you only get one formula sheet, and you can't bring any summary sheets or calculators. Questions are often very similar to that of the problem sheets so make sure you do all of them thoroughly and follow up with any questions at the consultation hours. If you're not well prepared for the exam then you'll struggle to complete all questions on time. Students who prepare thoroughly and know exactly what to do as soon as they see the question + can work through it quickly will most likely fully complete the exam. So to perform well on the exam do the past exams ASAP (they're uploaded onto the LMS in like week 11) and to go over all the problem sheets as soon as possible.

Other:
This semester they trialled 'Video Consultation' and 'Supplementary Videos' which is basically a very Khan Academy-esque method of learning for you to do at home. The problem is there were only like 2 videos uploaded over the entire semester so maybe they just stopped trying because the cohort was unresponsive to this. In the supplementary videos a professor just goes over several questions and explains how to do them. This semester the video tackled a question on continuity that ended up being on the exam so I'd recommend just watching them anyway. A little bit of revision can't hurt :)

TLDR:
A very fun subject to take if you enjoyed Methods and/or Spesh. The content isn't too difficult to wrap your head around and can be quite fun at times. Assignments can be hard but get started on them early, exhaust all your options and eventually(hopefully) you'll find yourself on the right track to getting the final answer. Exam is worth a huge portion of your mark so if you want to do well prepare as soon as possible. Going over exams, problem sheets and tutorial sheets (in that order) should be enough for you to prepare. The key is to get started early since there's a lot to remember. John Sader is a brilliant lecturer and I heard Christine is too (but I'm sure they all are ;)).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on June 19, 2015, 06:51:34 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90049 Structural Theory and Design 2

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture, 1x one-hour lecture, 1x one-hour tutorial per week, and a couple of optional computer labs spaced through the semester

Assessment:
3x Individual Assignments (5% each)
GUNT Lab Sheet (5%)
Design (Group) Assignment (10%)
3 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Yes, and fully worked solutions are provided dating back to 2011 (amazing)

Textbook Recommendation: No textbooks, but you'll need to download and print two Standards that are to be used in the open-book exam:
AS3600-2009 - Concrete Structures
HB48 - Steel Design Handbook

These can be printed out at Officeworks for about $45 all up including covers and coil binding (which you want as the space on an exam table is notoriously small)

Lecturer(s): Elisa Lumantarna (most of the lectures) and Massoud Sofi

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: A well taught subject that is a bit too voluminous for it’s own good.

Comments:
I could almost copy and paste my review of Structural Theory and Design 1 into here and it wouldn’t be much different. ST&D2 has the same staff, covers essentially the same content, but steps up the level of time you’ll need to commit to get a good mark (which was already high in ST&D1).

Lectures
The subject is split into 4 parts: in the first 4 weeks you’ll cover the structural design of concrete beams, slabs and columns; the next four are on steel beams and columns; and the last 4 are on some fairly novel methods for finding bending moment and shear force diagrams (i.e. the direct stiffness and virtual work methods). If you’ve done ST&D1 (which basically everyone heading into this subject will have), you’ll have already done some preliminary stuff on the steel and concrete sections. ST&D2 steps this up a notch, with modification factors in place of some of the assumptions made in the earlier subject as well as some stuff on the detailing of reinforcement and connections.

Elisa Lumantarna is the primary lecturer here again and is once again really good. While the subject matter for ST&D isn’t too hard per se, it can get intricate at times, and she has a good knack for simplifying the complexity of some of the topics.

But the issue with this subject is that it all happens at a really fast pace. With three hours of lecturers a week that all introduce new content, as well as lengthy tute sheets and lots of laborious assignments, things can get over the top. Each of the elements would be fine in isolation, but, as the assignments naturally lag the coursework, being caught up in the content of the past few weeks really inhibits your chance of learning the content of the current week. It means that you’re almost always behind by the very design of the subject. Not a great feeling, especially with similar things happening in other subjects.

To fix this I’d try to reign in the three weeks it took to teach the direct stiffness stuff (bring it down to two), and use week 8 as a revision week. This is when the design assignment (mentioned below) is in full swing, which makes it really hard to take in new stuff while trying to apply what you have just learnt to a major project.

Assignments
As mentioned above, the assignments for this subject are pretty involved and take up quite a lot of time. That isn’t to say they are bad, however; they force you to engage with and reify some of the content being taught, and they’re not too difficult once you get your head around them (which can take a while). Again, with this subject, it’s volume more than anything that makes it difficult.

As with ST&D1, there is a major “design assignment,” this time involving the design of a multi-storey carpark using both concrete and steel members, as well as drawing up the details in AutoCAD. Though it can be completed in groups of up to 6 people (self-chosen, which is nice), it is still a pretty massive undertaking and can be somewhat life-consuming if you leave it till the last couple of days. But like ST&D1, it’s nice to come out of a subject having done a “landmark” piece of work that you can hang your hat on. That said, it should be worth more than 10% for the amount of work it entails, even with a 4-6 person group.

Tutes
As I did with ST&D1, I stopped going to tutes in about week 5. It’s not because they weren’t useful; the level of teaching here is a bit better and more engaging than ST&D1. The main reason I stopped going is because I got behind. As the tutes cover the content that is taught in that same week (i.e. stuff being taught in a Monday lecture is the tute material for Wednesday (this usually lags by a week for most subjects)), if you’re not up to date with the lectures – which I really wasn’t in any meaningful way until the end of SWOTVAC – there is no point going to the tute.

Thankfully, fully worked solutions are provided at the end of each week on the LMS, which is really appreciated and should be standard among all subjects (looking at you, Maths and Stats Department).

Exam
One of the best things about this subject is that it provides full solutions to past papers dating back to 2011 (again, this should really be a standard at the uni). This means that you can really get a good feel for what is examinable, and should be able to set yourself up pretty well.

This year’s exam was really tough though. Consensus was that it was way too long. Usually I finish exams well within the allotted time (or at least with a few minutes to spare), but this time I didn’t get to finish everything despite writing non-stop for the full 3 hours, without taking a second to check anything. Generally, they are quite lenient markers in this subject (they purport to be more interested in the method than the bottom line), so I still think I’ll do alright, but I don’t think whoever wrote the exam anticipated its arduousness (that actually is a word btw).

One thing I’d add to the assessment of this subject is a slight focus on the “theory” side of Structural Theory and Design. The assessment is basically all quantitative, and – as you have the Steel and Concrete standards to follow – you can probably do okay without really comprehending what you are doing. Some more qualitative and theoretical questions might prompt a less superficial understanding and would be a nice break from the 3 hour numerical bombardment that embodies the current exam format.

Overall
This is a subject that is very indicative of the “step up” that Masters entails. I probably put more work into this one than I did in any subject of undergrad, and definitely more than any other subject this semester. But I think I might be in the minority in that I enjoy these subjects. Lots of people struggle with the content – which is understandable as it does get a bit intricate and convoluted at times – but if you have a pretty good handle on it and put the work in you will get rewarded with solid marks. And I find that if a subject is well taught and the assessment/marking is fair, then your performance is entirely in your hands. That’s all you can really ask for IMO.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ChickenCh0wM1en on June 21, 2015, 12:17:24 am
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30008 Drugs: From Discovery to Market 

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture weekly; 1 x 1 hour tutorial every three weeks (during lecture slot 3)

Assessment:  Four assignments (15% - 2.5, 5, 5, 2.5% resp.), mid semester test (15%), final exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation: Don't need any book.

Lecturer(s): Gary Anderson
                    James Ziogas
                    Michael Lew
                    Alastair Stewart
                    Sarah-Jane Beavitt
                    Tony Hughes
                    Ross Bathgate
                    Dan Hoyer
                    Guillaume Lessene

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2015

Rating:  0.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: It's probably going to be really bad

Comments:

Going to pretty much reiterate what T-Rav said. It's without a doubt the worst subject I've ever taken in uni.

Coming from PHRM20001, I had extremely high expectations/esteem/respect for the Pharmacology department and was at many points considering switching to a Pharmacology major from my Neuroscience/Physiology major.

As T-rav said, the content wasn't too difficult and it wasn't dry - in fact, some parts were actually extremely interesting (i.e. Pharmacodynamics, Pharmacokinetics, Kinases, Enzymes etc, and GPCRs).

The real problem I have with this subject is the assessments and the lack of organisation with this subject.

Assessments were definitely hit and miss -
Whe first 3 assignments (case studies) we had were extremely interesting, we had to read a bunch of "state of the art" journal papers on the class of drugs which would be used to treat Chronic asthma, Cystic Fibrosis and also the Hepatitis C Virus . The content here was good but the problem was that they split the assignments into a "draft" (generally worth 1/5 of the 2.5% or 5%) and a final report (usually due a week or 2 later worth the remainder mark).
In theory this should be great since we have a draft where we can play around with various styles of writing and then get feedback on our draft to do nothing short of excellent for the final! WRONG - instead of getting the case study instructions/information 1 week prior to the due date, we'd often get them 2-3 days before the due date - and I know it's probably not a big deal to fuss over 2.5% but when we're in 3rd year trying to not destroy our GPA even further and thus prioritize 30% mid sems over this, it's a big deal.
To add to this, we didn't get any feedback for the drafts before the due date so we were pretty much left in the dark for the assignments.

The 4th assignment was a "exam preparation" task where we had to answer a "typical question" you'd get in the exam. So it was due on the last day of semester which is fine and theoretically, since we had 1 week of SWOTVAC we could expect to get feedback for this so that we could optimise our chances in the final exam!! However, even though it was due 29th of May - as of 20th June, I still have not gotten feedback for this task which in theory should have given me/everyone else the edge for the exam.

MST - was total bs - 4 X 10 mark questions in 40 minutes which is 1/2 the time we'd have on average compared to the final exam (6 questions in 120 minutes). I guess the absurd assessment  speaks for itself when >30% failed and the average was ~55%. Interestingly the coordinator said that the distribution of the scores was just where he'd expect and want them to be which means that we're all actually so screwed unless there is going to be some scaling involved.

Final Exam - don't really know what to say for this tbh - the stuff which I was expecting to come up didn't come up, and the stuff which came up I wasn't well prepared for. I guess it comes down to luck on what comes up since a lot of the content isn't assessed S:

Another bit of a rant about the weird assessment - we had 15% for a 40 mark MST, and 70% for a 60 mark Final exam which is all SAQ not MCQ. This means the even if you had 100% for the Assignments (which isn't very likely)/ and you had say an above average MST mark (60% or so) - you'd have 15+9 = 24 marks / 30 potential marks

Thus to H1, you'd need 56%/70% on the exam which means you need 48 marks/60 on the exam. I'd say this isn't impossible but it's definitely not easy and especially when the marking seems so stringent (20 information bits for 10 marks) and variable - some lecturers want X, others want XYZABC, and most of the time when you email them, they'll say some generic stuff like "all content is examinable".

In closing, content not bad, assessment is horrible and the organisation and coordination of this subject is nothing short of a disaster. I haven't met anyone who did PHRM30008 who genuinely enjoyed the subject + thought the assessment was good + thought the staff were well organised. T-Rav wasn't bsing about it - I'd wager that 99%+ of the cohort felt the same way about the assessment + organisation of the subject.
PS - don't take this subject unless you need it for a Pharm major especially if you want to have a good GPA (mine's probably going to fall hard unless there's some ridiculously insane scaling or standardisation involved)

If I were to go back in time, I wouldn't have spent my level 3 subject slot on this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on June 21, 2015, 12:59:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP20007 Design of Algorithms

Workload: 2x 1h lecture, 1x 2h workshop (half theory, half coding)

Assessment:
10% - Programming Assignment 1
10% - Mid-semester test in lecture
20% - Programming Assignment 2
60% - 2h exam in exam period

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep! Recordings and slides are great

Past exams available:  Yes, 2013 and 2014 with solutions (so 2015 too i guess if you do it in 2016)

Textbook Recommendation:
Not required, slides are enough, but Dasgupta’s ‘algorithms’ covered most of the stuff in the course, and is pretty good. There's also MIT's 'Introduction to Algorithms' (and their opencourseware subject of the same name, which I did watch all the lectures from), which cover the material in a lot more depth than required for this subject.

Lecturer(s): Andrew Turpin (with two guest lectures, from Alistair Moffat and Mathias Petri)

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 (H1)

Comments:

Great subject, if you actually had fun in first year algorithms it’s totally worth doing this subject even though it covers slightly more/harder stuff than the second semester equivalent ‘Algorithms and Data Structures’. I personally found it all really interesting! I was also the student rep for this subject.

The assignments are a fair bit of work to understand and then actually code up, and basically no time is spent on writing C code in lectures it’s all assumed from first year. This caught the whole cohort off guard in the first assignment which assumed a lot of C skill that people hadn’t used in a while, and there wasn’t much help available.

That said, the subject isn’t about C code or any code really, it’s about the algorithms and all mid semester test/exam questions that require code just want pseudocode english descriptions of what you would do. This allows us to go into detail on some of the most foundational data structures and algorithms in computer science like graph algorithms and balanced tree data structures. We also covered some very interesting computing topics in the second half of the course including compression theory, greedy algorithms, dynamic programming and NP-Completeness. Fun!

The exam stepped up from past years, which Andrew told me after it was finished, because ’too many H1’s’ in previous two years. So that was a surprise but it was still a completely accessible exam that tested us fairly on the stuff we had studied. No big surprises.
EDIT: Now that marks are back it looks like I got 73/80 on the exam (assuming no scaling) which is probably fair even though I was aiming for full marks sadface.



Overall, this was my favourite subject this year because of the interesting and intuitive content covered. Recommended if you enjoyed the first year subjects and were curious the whole time about what else you can do to solve computing problems!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on June 21, 2015, 02:29:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC20009 Thermal and Classical Physics

Workload: 3x 1h lecture, 1x 1h tutorial, 1x 3h lab (every second week)

Assessment:
5% - Mid semester test on thermal physics
5% - Thermal physics assignment
5% - Classical physics assignment (the classical section of the previous year’s exam)
20% - Lab reports, prelabs and performance
65% - 3h exam in exam period, (roughly 35:30 thermal to classical ratio)

Lectopia Enabled: Yep! Recordings which capture the thermal slides, but classical has no slides. Also all derivations were done on a whiteboard (for some reason they decide not to use a document camera despite Jamieson routinely complaining about whiteboard lighting in one of the theatres). The classical lecture recordings are therefore purely audio but Melatos covers the provided lecture notes basically verbatim so you can follow along from home.

Past exams available: Yes, 2009-2014 but no solutions. I recommend having a Facebook group like we did where the cohort collaboratively solves most problems and reaches some consensus on answers.

Textbook Recommendation:
Thermal:
Highly recommend the Thermal Textbook D.V.Schroeder’s ‘Introduction to Thermodynamics’ because it’s awesome and actually teaches you the material, unlike the lectures.
Also there’s a lot of overlap with the first half or so of MIT’s propulsion course which has an  online textbook (some symbol conventions may vary)
I didn’t get a chance to read the thermodynamics sections of the Feynman Lectures on Physics but I wish I had. I’m trying to read them from start to finish though and thermodynamics is near the end of the first volume.

Classical: no need for a textbook if you spend the time with Melatos' notes, but they do assume a lot so maybe you'll wanna try the Feynman Lectures sections on Rotation and Principle of Least Action.
Melatos also recommends two classical physics texts, one by Landau and one by Goldstein, but they're quite terse mathematically and cover material at a depth beyond what's needed for this subject.

Lecturer(s): David Jamieson for Thermal and Andrew Melatos for Classical

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 1

Rating: 2/5

Mark/Grade: Somehow, 94 (H1)

Comments:

thermal
I was pretty disappointed with how thermal was taught because the concepts we cover are all pretty intuitive and easy to explain to someone, but Jamieson is not very good at employing these intuitive explanations and prefers to dash through many concepts without actually saying much of substance about any of them. The amount of material seems small because not much is mentioned in lectures but he's actually packing in a shitload of complex concepts for students to go slave over in their own time.

This is why at the end of the semester some of my friends still had misconceptions about some of the very important fundamentals which I cleared up in the first chapter of the textbook. Indeed, the textbook is your friend here if you’re after understanding in this subject, otherwise I recommend you prepare really well for the tutes and take advantage of the tutorial time to ask the stellar tutors for help on any questions you’re stuck on.

classical
For classical physics, abandon all notions of F=ma and motion from high school --- we approach mechanics from a far more theoretical perspective. This was taught far better than thermal, because Melatos is both enthusiastic and competent in communicating the concepts, but the classical material is really involved and the questions are much more conceptually and mathematically demanding than thermal! and unfortunately he assumes a lot of the cohort and could stand to make his lectures more accessible by just explaining each assumption as he goes. For example, I spent the whole semester thinking Physicists were playing some giant practical joke on me by using the word 'unity', not knowing that they could have just been saying 'one'. Like, "c is a constant of order unity" (how long does it take to explain that the first time it appears in the notes!?).

Other things that are assumed include a good understanding of Rotations from first year, good understanding of Simple Harmonic Oscillators with damping and driving forces even though it isn't covered in first year physics (it's in calc 2 where they don't teach you any physics interpretation of it) and lots and lots of calculus including total and partial derivatives (calc 2/vector calc) and many uses of the multivariable chain rule and the vector product rules (vector calc).

Melatos' lecture notes themselves are quite good once you spend the time to digest them, and the pacing is much more appropriate than thermal. But, it takes way more time to digest each concept. It's super important to sort out all the concepts he introduces and step through the derivations, understanding each step and each symbol. The derivations may not be as important for the exam as the results but stepping through them is important in making sure you know what’s what in classical physics.
Like the previous review, there is a point where all the classical stuff kinda clicks and you get the point of approaching mechanics in this super formal and complex manner. It lets you work some really cool examples and if you put in the work, you can truly appreciate what you’re doing.

labs and assessment
The labs were similar to first year labs except you get to take your book home to finish the report, and then it’s due the next afternoon. This is a pain if your lab is on Thursday and you don’t have any other reason to travel to campus on Friday, so think about this when timetabling. If you also take Quantum Mechanics and Special Rel and the same time, register for the same lab time slot in both, you will have labs in alternating weeks (starting week 1!). If you are only doing thermal, like me, you may start in week 1 or week 2 depending on whether you’re randomly placed in the odd week group or the even week group.

The labs are also pretty long and to get it all written AND completed in the 3 hours is a bit steep, especially if you want high marks like I did. But, they’re only every second week so it’s not too bad. Unfortunately, the labs were highly unrelated to the content and this made them seem like a big time commitment for relatively little return, as it was such an isolated part of the subject.


The assessment was alright, the mid semester test was a breeze if you were up to date and knew your definitions. The thermal assignment was a joke, it was a series of research questions that were very poorly worded and we didn't really get enough information to know what was required for the marks (and the 6 question assignment was out of 300, with no allocation within questions). The classical assignment was, like in previous years, the classical section of the previous year's exam. This was more rushed than the thermal assignment but it was also a lot clearer what we had to do to get the marks.
The exam was fair and my last ditch effort to master the subject paid off because I was assessed on a lot of what I worked hard to understand in the few days before the exam. Hopefully this is reflected in my mark when its released.

Overall, this was my least favourite subject this semester for some of the above reasons, and also because it took so much more time to get by than any subject I have ever studied. When you add the hours I spent cleaning up the mess Jamieson made of thermal, the hours I spent trying to make sense of classical, and the hours I spent preparing for and writing up labs, it really wasn't worth it for me: the material was rewarding and interesting when you finally get it but not worth the amount of time it took to get there, which is a real shame because I think it could have been made far better organised and far more accessible if the lecturers tried.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on June 21, 2015, 03:02:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20080 School Experience as Breadth

Workload: across semester: 10x 1h seminar, plus a full day weekend class near the start of semester, plus 40 hours placement in a primary/secondary school (~6 full school days)

Assessment:
60% - Reflective Academic Essays due throughout semester:
 - Professional Teacher Identity
 - Observation topic from placement
 - Teaching/learning activity
 - Classroom challenge
40% - Final Essay on an Education Issue, free choice, due in exam period
Hurdle - complete 40h of placement, achieve 80% attendance at seminars, and run one of the seminars on some education topic (in a group)

Lecturer(s): Rannah Hetherington and Malcolm Cocking for the science stream, but not sure about the arts/maths/language streams.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Mark/Grade: 98 (H1)

Comments:

This was a really cool breadth subject! There was basically no content to learn it was all about discussion and stuff so that was hugely relaxing. Placement was a bit of a time commitment but it was worth it and I got to see what school was like from the perspective of a teacher, rather than a student. I was lucky to have a placement that was close-ish to where I live and a placement teacher who had a timetable that suited my uni timetable perfectly.

The essays were also a huge time sink with the research and reading you have to do and this was foreign, coming from science and maths subjects and not having written essays since VCE english (not that they were anything like academic essays back then! referencing and stuff was completely new) but i was rewarded for my efforts with great marks and hopefully will also be rewarded for my effort on the final essay.

You get quite a bit of freedom with what to write which means you can chose things you are interested in and that keeps it kinda fun.

I highly recommend this subject to anyone who has ever considered teaching, I’m really glad I took it and it was a fantastic breadth subject!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: teexo on June 22, 2015, 05:11:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT20001: Cost Management 

Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial a week

Assessment: 1hr mid sem test (20%), tutorial participation (10%), 3hr exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: They posted three with solutions on LMS

Textbook Recommendation: Management and cost accounting 5th edition, sadly most of the tute questions are in the textbook so you will need it, but the book itself in terms of the content is not very useful as some topics are taught a bit differently and simpler than the way the book teaches it, the subject is a bit messy like that but I'll explain more later...

Lecturer(s): Sujay Nair

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, semester 1

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Very much unlike the other accounting subjects I have previously reviewed here, I was not a fan of this subject. The subject is quite messy as I alluded to earlier, and I will now tell you why.

The problem is in the tutorial questions that are set from the textbook. These questions are usually ridiculously complicated, to the point that my tutor would only have time to work out and explain in detail one or two of the qs in the tute while many of my friends' tutors would simply flick through the answers of every question with very brief explanations, not exactly ideal ways to learn. While you can access these answers on LMS at the end of the week, the problem lies in the fact that tutors are really pedantic when checking whether you've completed the tute work and giving you tute marks for it, so you'd end up losing tute marks because the questions were too hard to actually finish.

I would say the textbook and tutes are linked together, whilst the lectures are linked with the exam. The book and tutes are like an extension to what you really need to know, they basically overcomplicate the subject and make it seem harder than it actually is. You will see once you get the practice exams, and even when you get the practice mid sem tests, that the questions you've done in tutes are harder than what you'll be assessed on. All you really need to be ready for the exam is to be able to do the practice exam qs and understand the examples taught in lectures as well as memorise definitions and advantages/disadvantages etc. I should also quickly mention that the mid sem test is 30 multiple choice qs, and the exam is all short answer.

The lecturer Sujay is not a bad lecturer, but his lectures are basically him summarising what is on his lecture slides, he explains things quickly and not in detail so unless you've already read and understood the content on his slides before listening to the lecture, you might get lost quite easily as it takes time to realise how he calculates certain things, where he got the numbers for it, which numbers he used etc. Lecture topics were basically learning different methods of allocating indirect costs, breaking even, budgeting, costing and pricing decisions.

I would highly not recommend this subject unless of course if you're doing an Accounting major (like me), in which case you have to take the subject. In my experience anyone who's not doing Commerce and chooses to do Accounting subjects as breadth end up regretting it but in saying that, if you're keen to take on the subject don't let me stop you because it will teach you things that are useful, especially if you were to open or run a business that sells goods.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 22, 2015, 05:30:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20001: Principles of Genetics

Workload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour problem class per week.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment 170 hours

Assessment: Three online tests/assignments of equal value during semester (30% in total); a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled: For lectures yes, with screen capture. However, the problem solving classes are NOT recorded.

Past exams available: Yes, all the way back to 1998 when the records begin if you're that way inclined. ;) The most relevant papers (2009-2013) were provided on the LMS. However, none of the exams come with solutions. The 2007 exam was converted into an online exam so that we could receive feedback.

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

You don't really need it - it explains the genetic basis behind the concepts you learn at the molecular level, but this is not the focus of this subject. It's usually a required textbook of other genetics subjects though so it may prove useful to have a copy on hand anyway (it's not hard to find *cough*).

Lecturer(s):

Ronald Lee: Lectures 1-6, 9 - Mendelian genetics
Hayley Bugeja: Lectures 7-8 - Mendelian genetics (chromosomal inversions and gene interaction)
Chris Cobbett: Lectures 10-12 - Extrachromosomal genetics
Alex Andrianopoulos: Lectures 13-22 - Bacteriophage, bacterial and special eukaryote genetics
Phil Batterham: Lectures 23-35 - Population genetics
Stephen Hardy - Problem solving class teacher

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2015

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Prior to sitting down and writing this review I was going to give this subject a very high rating, but then when I thought about it more carefully I realised there's a number of things that could be improved in this subject. Evidently, you can probably guess that I enjoyed taking the subject anyway and would still recommend it to others if genetics is your thing.

As students of science (I mean this in the generic sense), particularly in the field of biology, it can often get frustrating when it seems like we're merely encouraged to commit details to memory without ever having to think about them too much. This is why I like genetics, because that philosophy goes straight out the window. The whole discipline centres itself on understanding the key concepts, and, in many cases, using them to apply your knowledge and solve problems. The latter is particularly true of this subject, so it was a real nice change from all my other subjects this semester. It is true that this subject has a relatively light workload and is "easy" compared to most other biology subjects at second year level, but this isn't the subject for you if you have an aversion to digging out a calculator and working stuff out. The maths isn't at all difficult or complex, but if it isn't your thing then it's not going to be a particularly fun ride. If you're not deterred, then I would highly recommend taking this subject if you're looking for something to complement more demanding subjects (as a Biomedicine student BIOM20001 comes to mind). The great thing about this subject is that it starts off somewhat difficult but actually continues to get easier over the course of the semester. So, you can devote a bit more time to this subject when it needs it at the start of the semester while your other subjects are still warming up, and then let it take a bit of a back seat later on. Additionally, if you did first year biology as breadth and are looking for a way to continue that further, I'd say this subject would be a suitable choice. This subject is a prerequisite for both Science and Biomedicine students for the genetics major.

Anyway, onwards with the review. You're probably wondering how I can enjoy a subject so much yet give it a rating that doesn't quite seem to fit that sort of attitude. It comes down to a fundamental flaw regarding the lectures. This subject is a problem-based subject. All the assessment requires problem solving. Yet chances are you wouldn't pick it if you had the lecture notes before you right now. An overwhelmingly large amount of time is spent covering the genetics at the more detailed molecular level (and this is consolidated by the readings from the textbook) yet essentially none of that is really assessed. This is particularly true of the Mendelian genetics section which you initially start off with. It's all very interesting but sadly rather irrelevant in the end. Not to suggest it's a shame the focus is on problem solving, that side of genetics also interests me. It's more the disparity between what is taught and what is assessed. Hence, the most important classes in this subject are actually the problem solving classes. I'll go into more details about these later on but I felt I needed to address this major point first. There are other reasons here and there for the reduced rating, but this is the main one.

Onto the actual lectures themselves. The first three weeks of the course cover Mendelian genetics is mainly taken by Ronald Lee (Hayley Bugeja filled in for two lectures). This is the part of the course that relates and builds on the genetics knowledge you learnt in first year. I found the concepts relatively interesting but as mentioned before this is the section where not enough time is spent explaining problem solving techniques (although they do go through some examples). It's the most difficult part of the course for this reason, but by SWOTVAC it had all come together rather nicely.

Week 4 is taken by Chris Cobbett, who covers extrachromosomal genetics such as mitochondria, chloroplasts, plasmids, cytoplasmic inheritance/maternal inheritance and maternal effect. Given this goes largely ignored in first year and so is new, I found this part quite interesting. The concepts and problems are also generally quite simple. Since there's only three lectures dedicated to these topics they only ever make up a small number of questions on the mid-semester test or exam.

The next three weeks or so covers more new concepts - bacteriophage, bacterial and special eukaryote genetics - and is taken by the subject's co-ordinator, Alex Andrianopoulos. Alex is a great lecturer and the content we covered here was actually my favourite part of the course. This section feels a bit more conceptual with an ever so slightly reduced focus on problem solving, so it's a good change of pace for those who prefer to be more grounded in theoretical understanding.

Approximately the last five weeks is focussed around population genetics and is taken by Phil Batterham. Phil's also a good lecturer, but understandably most (including myself) find population genetics rather dry and boring which can make the lectures a bit painful to endure at times. A significant portion (but not all) of this topic relates to the content covered in weeks 1-6 of MAST10016 so Biomedicine students who took that subject may feel more familiar and comfortable with these areas. However, this subject looks at things from the biological perspective rather than the mathematical perspective, so there's less emphasis on the mathematical models and their derivations. This may be a drawback for some who want the complete picture, but to compensate a document is put up on the LMS covering the derivation of the key formulae you will be using. I think I preferred looking through the biological lens and hence didn't mind the seemingly lacking mathematical basis (I can tell you I never looked at that document LOL). For Science students, most of these concepts will be new, although it's the easiest part of the course so it definitely shouldn't cause any concerns here.

Each week in addition to the three lectures you'll also have a problem solving class, taken by Stephen Hardy. This is where you actually cover the problem solving side of the concepts you learn in lectures, and it is absolutely crucial that you attend these as none of them are recorded. I often felt that these were the classes that mattered most for the exam, which is perhaps not the way it should be given we also have 35 actual lectures. Stephen will generally go through some past exam questions or write up his own questions to demonstrate particular ideas that may not have been explicitly conveyed during lecture time (and this can be annoying because it makes you wonder what else you've missed because the lecturers have failed to get it across). While Stephen is a great teacher and the problem solving classes were useful, I'm not a fan of their format - instead of running many proper tutorials with small groups, the subject opts for four larger problem solving class sessions held in lecture theatres. Most seemed to think that there could have been a greater benefit in having more intimate class sizes and more direct interaction with the teacher. Personally, I found the class difficult to follow from time to time due to the "one size fits all" nature Stephen has to adopt in order to make these classes work, as well as the confusion of having so many other students around me. Additionally, it was encouraged we have a look at (and attempt, if we were keen) the problems to be covered in the class, which are put up on the LMS. However, I was in the first session and often they were not put up until after I had left home in the morning, which meant I usually never even had the chance to print them off, let alone look at them! These shortcomings of the problem solving class are further reasons for the reduced rating of this subject.

For further practice and revision, the staff make available a set of "online tutorial" questions over the course of the semester. For those of you who have taken problem based subjects before, you might know the difficulty of learning concepts without actually getting any chance to consolidate and practice them until much later on, so I guess that's what the purpose of these questions are. These are usually not in the style of exam or mid-semester test questions though; they really are more designed for you to get the hang of the concepts covered. A handful of these questions happen to be covered in the problem solving classes as well. Feedback is provided, although sometimes you would get "correct, but there may be more correct answers" when required to select a number of options from a list. This is a bit deceiving though because it actually meant you chose all of the right options. You can also work through the practice exam questions, although these questions are also rather distinct to the style of questions on the mid-semester test. Importantly, however, there are no solutions for these exams. I can appreciate the reasons for this, but it ultimately means there's no way to know for sure that you're doing things right. A few times over the course of the semester a massive "awakening" would occur amongst the cohort when some bright spark would figure out that we'd all been doing a particular type of question wrong all along. In many instances though, the only time you realised you might be doing something wrong would be when you got your results for the mid-semester test, or when you did the 2007 exam for practice.

Now, onto the semester's assessment. All of it (including the exam, for that matter) is multiple choice, for those of you who like it that way. ;) I'm generally a fan of multiple choice (I find it easier) but the questions are not all worth 1 mark each (in fact, rarely were there ever 1 mark questions). This means that your answer will be all or nothing, which can be particularly damaging if you make an error in an eight mark question (which popped up on this year's exam). Hence, I actually have some mixed feelings about this approach, as I'd like to see students rewarded for at least knowing the concept and having some correct workings. In the problem solving classes there's also a bit of a focus on correct notation, but ultimately it's irrelevant because you're never given the chance to show your workings anyway (although I guess it can help in terms of clarity). There are three mid-semester tests over the course of the semester, each worth 10%. The first one covers all of Ronald and Hayley's material, the second one covers Chris' material and most of Alex's material and the third one covers most of Phil's material. These are all multiple choice and conducted on the LMS over the course of three days with a time limit usually of one hour. None of these were particularly difficult with adequate practice and preparation (Phil's test in particular should be quite easy to do) and I don't think I was ever pushed for time.

The final exam is two hours in duration and is worth 70% of your grade. It consists of 120 marks worth of multiple choice questions. I found this year's exam slightly different to all the other past exams, but there were still enough recycled questions on there anyway. You should be able to complete this exam with plenty of time to spare (I finished with 45 minutes remaining), so pace yourself and don't rush because you might make an unfortunate and costly mistake. When you go through practice problems, it seems like a lot of them take up a lot of space for workings, but in the exam you don't get given any additional room - you just get the space near the question. Hence, you need to get clever about how you work stuff out - it might be worth practicing this over the course of the semester as you work through the past exam questions. One thing that I often found though was that I couldn't do the genetics all in my head; I did need to put stuff down. However, I found that there was usually enough space to work out the questions in the exam. This should also be telling you that you mightn't need to write too much down in order to figure out a seemingly difficult question. To emphasise the focus of this subject, only about 10 marks were dedicated to specific detail (and to be honest it wasn't even that specific). The irony is that for one of the questions I struggled to remember the answer anyway due to the fact that I was dedicating the memory side of my brain to other subjects. :P I guess don't completely ignore the detail, but don't waste your time fussing over it either, because you certainly won't be rewarded for it. You are permitted a scientific calculator in the exam.

tl;dr

I've outlined a number of problems in my review, but given that the focus was so different to all my other subjects I really enjoyed it anyway. This subject isn't very hard and at times you may wonder how they can get away with it being that way when you have so much revision material to work with, but I think it's because you rarely know how you're travelling until you actually get to an assessment. Hence, I don't actually think the overall cohort result is alarmingly high so as to cause concern for the department. The content is for the most part interesting and taught fairly well and the workload is lighter, making it an appropriate subject to choose strategically if you've got bigger problems on your plate. That's all for now, but feel free to ask me further questions. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 23, 2015, 11:18:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB20007: Genetics, Health, and Society

Workload: Contact Hours: 36 hours: 12 weeks of two 1-hour lectures per week (24hrs) plus one 1-hour small group discussion or workshop per week (12hrs).
Total Time Commitment: 170 hours

Note: This semester the tutorials started in week 6 and ran until week 12.

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. Note however that many of the guest lecturers appeared unfamiliar with the lecture recording system and when help was not provided audio or visuals may not have been captured. Hence, lecture attendance would be recommended.

Past exams available: No, but other revision material is provided.

Textbook Recommendation: Reading and reference material will be provided by lecturers or tutors at the commencement of each theme.

Lecturer(s) and course outline:

Nature, nurture and societal health
A/Prof Dawn Gleeson: Lecture 2 - Human reproduction & Lecture 4 - Disease susceptibility
A/Prof Alison Trainer: Lecture 3 - The human genome; Lecture 8 - Clinical uses of genetic testing & Lecture 10 - Public health economics of genetic testing (in conjunction with Prof Danny Liew)
Prof John Hopper: Lecture 5 - Twin studies
Dr Natalie Thorne: Lecture 6 - Clinical bioinformatics
A/Prof John Craig: Lecture 7 - Epigenetics
Prof Patrick Kwan: Lecture 9 - Phamacogenetics, pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine
Prof Danny Liew: Lecture 10 - Public health economics of genetic testing (in conjunction with A/Prof Alison Trainer)

Genetics and reading the future: self and human populations; law, art, media and sport; visible and invisible differences
Prof Sylvia Metcalfe: Lecture 11 - Non-clinical uses of genetic testing
Dr Jan Hodgson: Lecture 12 - Psychological and social aspects of genetic testing (in conjunction with Dr Melody Menezes); Lectures 21 & 22 - Psychology of appearance
Dr Melody Menezes: Lecture 12 - Psychological and social aspects of genetic testing (in conjunction with Dr Jan Hodgson)
A/Prof Leslie Cannold: Lecture 13 - Identity and paternity fraud
A/Prof Emma Kowal: Lecture 14 - Race science
Prof Loane Skene: Lecture 15 - Forensics and paternity; Lecture 17 - Ownership of DNA; Lecture 18 - Sharing of genetic information; Lecture 19 - Genetic discrimination; Lecture 23 - Genetics and sport (in conjunction with Prof Kathryn North)
Dr Ainsley Newson: Lecture 16 - Ethics of genetic testing
Prof Ingrid Winship: Lecture 20 - Genetics, art and media
Prof Kathryn North: Lecture 23 - Genetics and sport (in conjunction with Prof Loane Skene)

Evidently, this subject has a lot to do with genetic testing and its applications, and is run quite closely with the genetic counselling staff at the university.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2015

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I initially picked this subject because I thought it would be easy and thus manageable alongside some very demanding units. However, to my surprise, I found it to be eye-opening and fascinating, and, dare I say it, my favourite subject this semester.

When I walked in for my first lecture, I saw the theatre absolutely full with Biomedicine and Science students, who, like me, were probably after something with a light workload and the chance of a more easy H1. The first four weeks of this subject are quite biological in nature, and in some respects overlap significantly with the more straightforward genetics aspects of BIOL10003/BIOL10005. For students who have done either of these subjects, none of this will be particularly difficult; this is probably the reason why so many pick this subject. I thought it would be those weeks that would end up turning out to be the best, but it's actually the last eight weeks that take everything to a whole new level. They prove to be incredibly interesting and thought provoking lectures, and are the actual highlight of taking this subject. I wouldn't say this subject is a complete walk in the park for a high result, but the workload is lighter (appropriate for a breadth subject) and the concepts generally quite simple, especially if you have some prior biology or genetics knowledge. BIOL10003/BIOL10005 are not pre-requisites but they are recommended and I'd probably say you'd find it much more difficult (and probably too demanding for a breadth subject) if you didn't have either of those up your sleeve.

This subject made me see genetics in a completely different way and it made me start to appreciate the significance of what I was learning for the real world. In a sense, I think this subject will prove to be more useful than any other biomedical science subject I'll take in my undergraduate degree. This might sound drastic, but I would strongly urge anyone thinking of going into any sort of clinical health profession (not just genetic counselling or clinical genetics) to do this subject. Additionally, this subject would probably improve invaluable for anyone perhaps looking at sitting an MMI for a graduate-entry health course. I know that some of the questions that were posed in this subject were extremely similar to MMI questions that I have had to do, and some of the other background information would have helped significantly in tackling other questions.

Anyway, onwards with the review. As I've said, the course sort of has two facets to it: a more biological side, covered in the first four or so weeks; and then a more societal viewpoint, which is the focus of the last eight weeks. As others have pointed out, this isn't the subject for you if you don't like open-ended questions and having to really think about the answers. Generally I would consider myself someone who prefers concepts to be more concrete or black-and-white, but I felt in this subject that I always had plenty on my mind and plenty to discuss and share. I've always been an individual who has appreciated the minds of those who are able to think in this sort of way but have never felt like it's been something I've proven good at myself. This subject changed that for me, partly due to the fact that it does provide a little bit more structure to work with (and you probably don't need to write as much), and partly because the content resonated with me on a deeper level. I really engaged and connected with this subject. For those of you who have done first year biology and are looking for a manageable level 2 breadth, I would recommend this subject partly because of the overlap, but be prepared to answer questions where there is no real correct response. Don't let it scare you though.

Onto the lectures themselves. Despite the fact that it seems like a new lecturer comes in for every lesson, the subject has been excellently co-ordinated and the topics are arranged in a very logical order. Hence, despite the worst fears of some in a subject like this, the lectures do not come across as disjointed. However, you might not appreciate this at the time - it all made a lot of sense later on when I finally got around to revising this subject during SWOTVAC. The drawback with this format is that you're inevitably going to have some lecturers that are better than others - that's just life. This subject had some of the best lectures I've ever had at university but also some of the worst. Luckily nothing proves to be too difficult but it can cause a few headaches along the way. Additionally, as each lecturer knows they only essentially have the one timeslot, some move through at full throttle which can make things even more confusing. At times, lecturers would simply omit slides if they ran out of time, although I imagine in a subject like this where they're all coming from everywhere, the assessment has been prepared well in advance so I'd still make the effort to learn them. I'd encourage the lecturers to perhaps cut back on the content in future years if they are to take the subject again - it's better to cover less and do it appropriately than rush through it for the sake of it and leave students confused. This is the only reason I have given this subject a 4 instead of a 5/5. As I said, the lecturers come from everywhere - some are full-time University of Melbourne staff - from a number of different departments, some are clinicians working at various places in the Parkville precinct, some are staff from other universities, and some are other professionals out in the working world. In addition, some lecturers would actually invite guest speakers to talk about their own personal experiences of some of the concepts that we have learnt. Again, it was very interesting and insightful, and I learnt a lot from what they had to share with us. You really do get a truly unique perspective on the topics at hand as a result.

For the first 5 weeks there were no tutorial classes, meaning the subject only had two contact hours per week. This is a bonus for students looking for a subject with a low time commitment. In week 6 the tutorials started. These are another fantastic part of this subject and I would highly recommend attending them purely out of interest (attendance is marked but not compulsory, and it doesn't contribute to assessment). Basically a scenario or dilemma with a set of questions would get uploaded prior to each tutorial, along with a small amount of readings that would help you better contextualise the issue. The class itself involved a round table discussion of the questions posed in said scenario or dilemma with the tutor. It seemed like many people in my class didn't do their readings but it still worked out OK (they usually only took me around 15 minutes though, so I don't know why people didn't do them). I guess I enjoyed this class because the others (and myself) were willing to share our thoughts and ideas with everyone else. It's probably not worth attending this class if you have no intention of contributing to the discussion or putting any ideas out there (or not listening to them). My tutor was a recently graduated genetic counsellor so it was really interesting to hear her perspective and insight on her personal experiences of many of the matters that came before us in the lectures and tutorials. As an added bonus, most of these classes finished 15-20 minutes early.

In week 11, the traditional tutorial was replaced with a visit to the campus' Ian Potter Museum of Art. This was the first year in which it had been done, and was an excellent idea. It was evident the co-ordinators (Ingrid and Patrick) had taken the time to sit down with the museum's curator to actually go through the purpose and objectives of this subject, and as a result it was clear she had taken a lot of time to familiarise herself with what we were learning. Hence, when we got there, we knew she was very knowledgable and had made a lot of effort in selecting the artwork and tying in its relevance to the key principles of the course. Again, I'm someone who's always appreciated the more creative side but have never been very good at it myself. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the visit and got heaps out of observing and brainstorming the artworks together. Not related to the review, but I'd also recommend taking a visit to the museum anyway if that's your thing - it's free and open every day except Monday.

As you can probably see, a lot of this subject revolves around having a good grasp on the key concepts and not getting too pre-occupied on the details. It's necessary to know some of the specifics that they present, but it's not like your standard second year biology subject. Hence, this is a subject where you need to think and think quite deeply. You're going to be exposed to a variety of different scenarios of which perhaps only a few are directly addressed in the lectures. Otherwise, it's up to you to come up with an appropriate answer that reflects the key principles of this subject. Don't expect any spoon-feeding, and don't expect to rote-learn your way to success. The tutorials should help in getting a grasp of what's expected of you and can provide good practice on what to do for some of the assessment tasks.

During the semester three multiple choice mid-semester tests are completed on the LMS under a time limit of one hour. To make things a bit more difficult, no backtracking is allowed (this usually means you won't be spending the whole hour on the test). Test 1 covers lectures 1-6 and is worth 5% of your grade, test 2 covers lectures 7-12 and is worth 10% of your grade and test 3 covers lectures 13-24 and is also worth 10% of your grade. I found tests 1 and 2 relatively straightforward but test 3 was where things started to get a bit ambiguous and tricky. Read questions carefully and take caution if you choose to look up the answers in the lecture notes. A H1 should be attainable for all of these though if you have been paying attention.

Additionally, there is a group assignment to be completed in the second half of the semester. Now, like many, reading the words "group assignment" is enough to ensue feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. However, I'll say this - remember that most of the cohort consists of Biomedicine and Science students, who are generally hard-working and are aiming for high results in order to be competitive for graduate-entry courses. Perhaps this is a generalisation which is not appropriate to make, but in my experience, as well as the experiences of others, the group assignment was generally not too bad - everyone seemed to pull their weight and do the work. It is worth 15% of your grade and involves watching a film or reading a book and then creating a wiki page and a 10-15 minute presentation for the class. Given the apparent advantage in having a film, groups presenting films present their work in their week 10 tutorial while those with books get an additional two weeks and present their work in week 12. My group consisted of two other second year Biomedicine students and a Commerce student and we got The Black Balloon, a film about a boy with autism. When we got to the first tutorial and were asked to get into groups and decide on a text, us four all seemed to latch onto each other rather quickly and we all were extremely keen to do this film. It turned out later there was a reason why - all of us have a family member with the condition. It was beautiful, and it meant that we were all really eager to take the opportunity to do this assignment. Generally each text had four questions that needed to be answered, so most groups (including ours) opted for each member answering one question. There's no word limit to work with so simply discuss the concepts for as long as you need to in order to feel you've covered all the necessities. This means there will probably be some questions that require less work than others, but it still works out that everyone puts in roughly the same amount of effort. You then compile your answers on the wiki page and then work together on the layout and visual side of things (you can include images, videos etc.). You then must take all that information and tweak it slightly so it becomes a creative presentation you can deliver to you class. The key word here is creative - you can't just do a typical presentation, as creativity is one of the criteria you need to address. You will be given some examples to work with - our group opted for a talk show format which worked out well and meant we didn't need to change our original work too much. Other groups seemed to put in less work in comparison, but I'd say for the sake of the class to try and make things interesting. You will be given a marking rubric and successful past assignments as guidance throughout the assignment period. The final marks were on the whole quite high for this task.

The final exam has 120 marks and is of two hours duration, worth 60% of your grade. It consists of three sections. Section A is multiple choice involving 20 questions, each worth 1.5 marks. These generally relate to the content covered in the first four weeks. Section B is an integrated question involving a scenario that allows all the aspects of the course to be fleshed out. These are broken down into smaller questions (approximately 5 marks each) - in total this section is worth 30 marks. An example of such a question appears in the lecture notes of lectures 1 and 24. Section C involves selecting five questions from a bank of nine. This section is worth 60 marks (12 marks per question). Some questions were broken down into smaller parts, while others were not. As others have said, this exam can be difficult to complete on time (I only just finished) but I didn't think it was terribly hard. I completed the multiple choice questions in reading time and so was able to make up time before moving on to section B, only to lose it and end up back on time for section C. Sections A and B were very manageable but for me section C was a bit difficult. The questions in this section just involve you explaining some of the concepts presented to you in the lectures, but for some questions it felt like you could write a lot whereas for others it seemed like there was less to say. For the latter two sections, I felt like I had plenty to discuss, but remember to keep it in perspective - you need to try and finish the exam. Ultimately, it's hard to know how you've gone for a subject like this but I felt reasonably happy upon completing my exam.

For revision, the mid-semester tests are re-opened and you can get feedback to determine which questions you got wrong. Additionally, a practice section B question is made available during the semester which you can give to your tutor for feedback. A handful of lecturers provided some scenarios at the end of their lecture notes and others provided multiple choice questions. Some examples of section B and C responses are also put up on the LMS for your reference, and you may wish to use the questions as practice as well. The tutorial questions are also rather similar in style to a section B question. I felt like doing all of these, in addition to briefly combing through the lecture notes, put me in good stead for the exam. Hence, it's not a big deal that no past exam is available, as there is sufficient material for you to work with.

tl;dr

This subject was a massive eye-opener and made me realise just how much the knowledge that I'm currently gaining is going to impact on society. If you have a background in biology and are looking for a breadth subject with a more manageable workload, I can highly recommend this subject. However, be prepared to face challenging ethical dilemmas and come up with answers to them on your own. It seems off-putting but when the content is this interesting I found it came to me relatively easily. That's all I've got to say for now, but feel free to ask me any questions. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on June 25, 2015, 01:56:12 am
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90044 Engineering Site Characterisation

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture and 1x one-hour lecture per week, 4x 3 hour practicals spaced throughout the semester, a 1 hour labs/tutorials in each of the non-practical weeks (so 8 in total)

Assessment:
3x Online Quizzes and Assignments (5% each)
Individual GIS Assignment (5%)
4x Group Reports (30% total)
2 hour exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: No, only one sample paper is provided (without answers)

Textbook Recommendation: You’ll be given an electronic version of a Geotechnical Site Investigation manual, but nothing needs to be actually purchased.

Lecturer(s):
Mahdi Disfani – Geotechnical
Cliff Ogelby – Surveying
Massoud Sofi – Wind and Earthquake Loading (and fire risk)
Graham Moore – Cross-Boundary Pollution

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 3.25/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: The value of this subject is bolstered by its practical work and the relative simplicity of the assignments, but you’ll also notice the word “basic” a lot through this review. Ultimately the content is pretty dry and mundane.

Comments:
So this subject is a bit of a amalgamation of a bunch of fields of engineering and project management that culminate in site characterisation. Obviously, the content taught here is highly applicable to work in the field as a professional engineer, and – though it does straddle the boundary at times – it never reaches the point where the content is so common sensical that building a subject around this stuff seems superfluous (which was the main problem with Risk Analysis, a subject I did (and reviewed) last year).

The main topics covered, all from a site characterisation perspective, are:

Lectures
The main lecturer for the subject was Mahdi Disfani, as he covered the geotechnical component, which accounts for the first 6-7 weeks of the 12-week course. This was his first time teaching the subject (and first semester at the UoM), and – though he is a good guy – he wasn’t a great lecturer for this subject. However, I don’t think this is really his fault, as his lecturing style was fine and he does seem to know his stuff. The main issue is that the teaching materials and content were completely unchanged from previous years, which meant that Mahdi was using someone else’s slides. This led to times when he didn’t fully explain everything on the slides, skipped over stuff, or sometimes spent too much time emphasising things that weren’t of particularly relevant to the assessment or objectives of the subject. I managed to track down last years lecture recordings, where the subject’s coordinator, Guillermo Narsilio, was the lecture. These lectures seemed far more comprehensive and a lot more consistent with what was on the slides.

So to fix this, I hope Mahdi – if he is going to continue to be the lecturer for this subject – builds his own slides, or at least revises the current ones in such a way to better shape them for his style of lecturing.

Most students will know the other lecturers from other subjects. Cliff Ogelby will be familiar to anyone who did either Mapping Environments or Surveying and Mapping (see my review for the latter here), and his slides and approach is essentially unchanged from those subjects, though the scope is obviously far narrower. Massoud Sofi, who runs through the AS1170 standards for wind loading and earthquake loading, is one of the staff for the Structural Theory and Design subjects (reviews for those here and here) and High Rise (review for that upcoming).

Overall, the lectures are fine, but never anything to write home about. Despite being dull at times (there is a lecture literally titled “boring,” for instance), they are generally adequate at teaching the content, but they never reach that level of “wow, that was a really good lecture.”

Assignments
The fact that there is an assignment that covers almost every topic taught is probably the best thing about the design of this subject. However, the trade-off with this comprehensive approach is that they are all very simple and not particularly challenging.

Most of them involve getting out in the field and completing some practical activities, with a very basic site visit report after going to Yarra Bend Park, a report on ground penetrating radar and seismic testing after a on-campus prac, and a basic topographic levelling exercise and report. All of the pracs were very well run and well conceived, and each report is completed in randomly allocated groups of 3-4 people. None of these assignments ever reach the complexity or amount of work where group dynamics should become a huge issue. So, in that sense, it’s a good chance to meet some people.

But this lack of complexity results in a kind of banality. Your hand is held quite tightly throughout the entire process and they don’t require any deep level of research or critical thinking. Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice to have subject where the stress is minimal and the assignments are straightforward for a change, but it’d be more valuable if the assignments were a little more mentally stimulating and freewheeling.

There was also a basic assignment on wind loading (which was, again, really straightforward and an easy 5%) and a couple of online quizzes within the first half of the semester, the first very simple, the other a little convoluted but still easy enough.

And there were also two computer-based assignments: the first, which was completed individually, was on basic GIS applications; the second, completed in groups, was on noise propagation, which integrated a bit of MATLAB coding. Again, your hand was held throughout these assignments, as they essentially required students to follow a set of step-by-step directions.

Tutes
Tutes were up and down. The geotechnical site investigation tute sheets were a complete joke because they are archaically written and provided neither codified sets of questions nor directly assessable answers. Even worse, the tutors had access to a full suite of worked solutions (though, as I said, the questions were kind of wishy-washy so I don’t know what form the answers took) but they weren’t made available to students, which seems absurd on quite a few levels. I have no idea who designed these but they are very much in need of a revamp, preferably by filing them in the incinerator and coming up with something completely new.

The other tutes – one on levelling, one on cross-boundary pollution and another on cultural heritage – were all quite good and the level of teaching was high.

But overall, this subject is in need of some new and improved tutorial materials that fall more inline with the content of the lectures and that provide a better indication of what is examinable.

Exam
So, as I mentioned in the assessment section, only one example paper was provided and no solutions were offered (though some crowd-sourced solutions have been posted on the non-official facebook site). To me, this always appears lazy. It means the examiners can put the same questions on an exam year-in year-out and get away with it, and it seems as if that’s what they do, as this year’s exam had a couple of repeat questions from the sample paper and no doubt from previous semesters.

The exam, however, was quite fair and manageable. And though it did ask a couple of esoteric and overly specific questions (e.g. asking for specific Australian Standard numbers that would have been covered on one slide in one lecture for a good 5 seconds), it generally did what an exam should do, requiring students to have a pretty high level of understanding of the content overall. No complaints about that.

Overall
If I had to describe this subject in one word, that word would be “inoffensive.” The content is fairly simple, the teaching methods are fine, and the assessment should never cause you to break a sweat if you’ve managed to make it this far in your academic career. It does a good job to integrate some practicality into what can sometimes be an overly theoretical approach at the UoM, and this is something that the subject can hang its hat on. But when a subject doesn’t offer any sort of challenge or provide any really interesting or inspiring content, I can’t give it much more than a 3.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: notveryasian on June 27, 2015, 12:26:59 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20004 Probability

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 2 x 1 tutorials per week (one in class tutorial followed by a computer lab session)

Assessment:
4 Assignments due in weeks 3, 6, 9 and 12 (20%)
3 hour exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but only what the lecturer writes down on blank pages is shown, not the slides themselves.

Past exams available:  Yes, 5 exams with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't know the textbook, don't think it's necessary to have

Lecturer(s): Nathan Ross

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75(H2A)

Comments:

This subject is a nice introduction to probability and its applications. If you really enjoyed probability in VCE, you may very well enjoy this subject too. However most of the people who took this subject took it because it was compulsory for them. It was very well run, there were no issues at all apart from a few lectures not being recorded.

In all honesty, if you're quite confident in your mathematical ability, you could afford to slack off in the first few weeks of the subject as the content isn't too challenging. As stated in a previous review, the content starts to ramp up around Negative Binomial, week 5. Things can get pretty confusing and if you're not up to date then lectures can seem much more challenging than they are, and there is no real point in going to tutorials. The content starts to slow down at generating functions and the last few weeks are pretty easy-going.

Nathan Ross is a good lecturer. I thought he explained concepts very well and encouraged a different way of thinking when approaching problems. However, at times I feel that much of what he says isn't very relevant to the tutorials, which can make them very difficult to solve on their own. This isn't necessary a criticism, but perhaps something they could improve upon in future years. I recommend going to the lectures as they you'll be able to see both the notes written by Nathan and the slides, whereas at home you'll only be able to see the notes, however lectures can be placed at bad times (e.g 4:15 Fridays this year), so you can easily fall into the habit of not going to them. I felt that I absorbed much more when I was there in person than by watching them at home.

The class tutorials were okay. Just your standard maths tutorial where you stand around with others solving problems on the boards. If you're not keeping up to date with the lectures, the tutorial problems can be too hard to solve while in class, or at least each one would be very time consuming. I recommend to have a go at solving them before the tutorial so that you can make decent progress with your group. Also check out the video consultations for select questions if you're stuck, Robert Maillardet is very good at explaining the thought process that is needed to solving problems.

I thought the computer lab tutorials were very interesting. They involved looking at some practical applications of probability in MATLAB, combining the methods learnt in lectures with the tutorial problems. There was no assessment during the semester on these computer lab tutorials, which I really think is a shame, as the content was very interesting and it only encouraged people to bum around in these tutes. Working in groups is the best way to get the most out of these tutorials.

There were four, evenly spaced out assignments, each worth 5% each of your total mark. Each comprised of a few questions, with each question having a few parts. Similar to other maths subjects, only some of the questions are marked. While assignment 1 was very easy, the remaining 3 had challenging parts to them and I found it really helpful to discuss and solve the problem with friends.

Yeah...the exam...A fairly challenging one, that really makes you think for the entirety of the three hours. This is not something you easily cram, but rather rewards you for the amount of work you put in throughout the semester. Questions very much resemble assignment questions in style, with usually the last part of the last few questions being quite hard. You're allowed one A4 double-sided "cheat sheet" into the exam, which was really useful since there are a large number of formulae, distributions, rules that would otherwise need remembering. It also helps to put in some past exam/tutorial/assignment questions on your sheet (if you have any space) to help you answer some of the trickier questions.

Overall, this was a good subject. How much you enjoy this subject will most likely depend on whether you like probability in the first place. So if you are one of those people, and looking for a 2nd year maths which does not contain much proof, this is the subject for you.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on June 27, 2015, 09:32:51 am
Subject Code/Name: ECON10005 Quantitative Methods 1 

Workload:  Two weekly 1hour lectures and one weekly 1hour tutorial.

Assessment:
3 Assignments throughout the semester due in weeks 5, 8 and 11. Each worth 10%.
End of semester exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:No. We were given sample exam questions in week 11 however.

Textbook Recommendation:  Business Statistics (shit I'll update this with the proper version and stuff). Can highly recommend! Without it I believe I would have struggled.

Lecturer(s): Jonathon Thong

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

The fabled QM1! I believe when I completed it, it was Jonathon's first time running the subject. As such we received no past exams and everyone was pretty clueless when it came to exam time.

Anyway, I didn't technically enjoy the subject (I don't believe anyone does...) but I really enjoyed the last few weeks of the course where it all came together and I, among other students, had sudden realisations of what everything meant. Jonathon speaks in a sophisticated tone from the get-go, it might take a while to get used to but you can tell he prepares for the lectures and generally knows his stuff (you'd hope so haha). It began looking at presenting data; bar charts in particular, with a focus on not misrepresenting data. The first few weeks I can describe as Further Maths in year 12 - pretty short and sweet data presentation with a look at some regression analysis that doesn't prove too hard. I have to say though, Jonathon did a pretty good job grabbing my attention in those weeks (however it did fade, woops) but I believe he is really a quality lecturer.

The course begins to delve into confidence limits and our interpretation of what they mean. It is soooo crucial to understand how they work and what they do! By now you would've had 1 assignment with a focus on data and maybe a tad bit of proofs but for our cohort, it wasn't overly difficult. For these assignments you're allowed to be in a group of 4 from your tutorial, be careful who you choose! For the first assignment our group split it up evenly and overall we just stuffed up a lot, from then on out I made a pact to do the assignments by myself and then compare with the groups work. Not only is it incredibly helpful for your understanding but it definitely improved our scores.

By the end of the semester, you should understand how to perform hypothesis tests and their significance. It all really comes together in a nice little package and despite maybe some backlash from our other students, Jonathon did well in running the subject.

The exam was incredibly well made and sort of suited how people approached the subject. QM1 is mandatory for all commerce students, with very few other students doing it because of its reputation. TBH I had a small amount of fun :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: LeviLamp on June 27, 2015, 09:50:13 am
Subject Code/Name: ZOOL30006 Animal Behaviour 

Workload:  3 x lectures/week (but only 30 total), 3 x review tutorials, 3 x N&V tutorials, 5 x multimedia presentations (these were documentaries simply played in the lecture theatre - they were absolutely useless in terms of the course, and the first one in particular was an outdated video pushing human superiority by repeatedly reminding us all animals do is respond complexly to environmental cues (which is literally the same for humans), though subsequent documentaries were quite interesting, if you really want to stay).

Assessment:

News & Views Article - 25%

Spoiler
For this assessment, you pick a recent scientific article and then present a summation and critique of the paper's themes and methods in a strange format called a News and Views article. News and Views articles are a form of writing found in the journal Nature, and are like a halfway point between layman's terms and full-blown scientific writing (though to be honest they lean quite strongly toward the latter). The idea behind this assignment is that communication skills are important in science (fair enough), but the vague and ill-explained format of the piece was a definite negative (there were tutorials run for this assignment, which were helpful, but they could have been so much more useful than they were). I don't think the format of any of the student pieces I read, nor my own, actually matched the real N&V template. Both a hard and soft copy are required to be submitted. Word count penalties were vague, but don't risk it - the standard +/-10% rule applies.

Submitting a satisfactory and COMPLETE draft is a hurdle requirement for the subject - this is to ensure that everyone can do full peer reviews for the pieces they receive. The good copy is marked by the lecturers, and you will later receive a "breakdown" of the marks, which is really just a list of scores for each criterion (criteria we didn't get given prior to submission). This breakdown is released several days after the overall score, so be patient! The articles were not marked leniently, and the score breakdown was really not useful in pinpointing any areas for improvement whatsoever. There were several score categories for which not one student (out of over 100) received full marks. A couple of the categories I lost marks for seemed unreasonable after I checked over my paper - further, some criteria had unrealistic expectations. The "understanding of the issues" criterion awarded a 2/4 if your understanding was "solid, but uninspiring". I can safely say that I understood my paper inside out (and I'm not just being arrogant here - I absolutely did), and the reviews I got for my piece backed this up. Receiving a 2/4 for my understanding of the issues was a little disheartening. I also received 3.5/4 for five categories (these five were ones in which not one person got a 4, with the exception of a single person in one of the five) - why? Thankfully, a high quality of writing and good scholarship (lots of appropriate references) will buffer your mark, so please try and excel in these areas when writing your piece. Emailing Mark about this assignment, he simply told me that rather than losing marks, I had "gained marks for my level of insight" and gave no further useful feedback. He is open to email discussion, but it often doesn't achieve anything even if you follow up on these replies. I received 83% for this assessment, though (as for many people) the scores that comprised this overall grade were unevenly very high and very low, depending on the criteria.

Peer Reviews of Draft N&V Article - 3 x 5 = 15%

Spoiler
These involved filling in numerous commentary boxes on a system called PRAZE in order to give people feedback about the draft N&V articles they'd uploaded to PRAZE. Make sure you go really in-depth when giving these reviews, and read the original papers the articles are based on before giving feedback - these reviews are not free marks. I wrote over 6000 words of review material in total - 2000 words for 5%. It is possible to receive 100% for these reviews, but don't underestimate the level of depth you need to go into.

Final "Exam" - 60%

Spoiler
This exam, unlike most sit-down exams, does not directly assess the theory you've learnt throughout the semester. Instead, you are given excerpts from eight different recent research studies and then asked ~three vague questions about the data. Obviously, you will need to incorporate some understanding of course material into these answers, but much of them hinges on being able to quickly interpret the unfamiliar data and then decide what it's trying to show, and how it shows it. Two hours was not enough time to interpret the confusing figures and vague descriptions of the study, and then give in-depth answers to all the questions. I also felt that about 95% of the course content didn't come up at all - and I'm referring only to the theory, not the illustrative animal examples we were given. My advice is to, rather than look at the ridiculously in-depth answers given on the sample exam answer sheet and then panic about this exam, do the practice exam, read as many of the lecture papers as possible, and try to avoid panic in the exam. I'm not really sure how we were expected to produce the sort of immensely complex answers Mark expects in two hours under pressure - reading the study excerpts was time-consuming enough. It is very easy to waste too much time trying and failing to understand how a figure explains the concepts the questions are asking you to link the figure to (the figures were by no means straightforward for most of the questions, and given no part of the course involved learning how to interpret complex graphical data or studies, it seems a bit rude to weight it so heavily on the exam). Good luck trying to H1 this exam - you'll need it. Mark gave the answer of a cocoordinator and fellow staff member an 8/10, without time pressure constraints, so how an extremely rushed, unpolished and inaccurate answer from a 2 hour exam is going to score marks is beyond me. The exam is not only hard to finish well, it's just hard to finish. I and two of the people around my exam seat failed to finish the exam - my friends who did had all overprepared and were writing furiously throughout the exam. This sort of assessment would have been infinitely better as a take-home exam or assignment; these would have also allowed for more in-depth and inclusive questions to be asked, in an appropriate forum.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, without screen capture. Previous years have used screen capture, but Mark Elgar dislikes it. To quote:
"I’m not a big fan of providing audio and visual notes of lectures to students, especially because it removes an important generic/life skill from attending lectures – the capacity to hear something, take notes and then be able to broadly understand and recall what was said.  You don’t get these skills if we provide all of those resources." The fact that all I ever achieved attending his lectures was a 50-minute nap probably suggests that the 20 or so people who emailed him asking for recordings had a point. But audio is fine - you'll have access to the slides.

Past exams available:  Yes, one. Answers are provided. This exam will terrify you. I recommend doing it just so you realise how appalling the final exam's format is.

Textbook Recommendation:  There's a recommended textbook, but nobody ever mentioned it. I think it'd be helpful in understanding the content, but since that's mostly irrelevant to the final exam anyway, you're crazy if you buy this for ZOOL30006.

Lecturer(s): Mark Elgar, Raoul Mulder, Devi Stuart-Fox and Theresa Jones. Tim Jessop took one non-examinable lecture on hormones, but is leaving for Deakin after this semester.

Lecture Topics - they sound like more fun than they are
L1: Introduction
L2: Asking Questions in Animal Behaviour
L3: Methods of Studying Animal Behaviour
L4: Genes and Behaviour
L5: Phenotypic Plasticity and Learning
L6: Hormones and Behaviour
L7: Economic Decisions
L8: Living in Groups
L9: Defensive Coloration in Prey
L10: Communication and Signal Honesty
L11: Environmental Influences on Signal Design
L12: Coevolution and Interspecific Relationships
L13: Competition for Resources
L14: Game Theory
L15: Strategies, Tactics and Personalities
L16: Evolutionary Arms Races
L17: Sexual Selection
L18: Mate Choice
L19: Sperm Competition
L20: Sexual Conflict
L21: Parental Care
L22: Family Conflicts
L23: Mating Systems
L24: Sex Allocation
L25: Altruism and Spite
L26: Kinship and Byproduct Mutualism
L27: Reciprocity and Enforcement
L28: Eusociality I
L29: Eusociality II
L30: Practical Applications of Animal Behaviour

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating: 2.5 out of 5. Points for legitimately interesting lecture content, good coordinator communication and real-world relevance. No points whatsoever for assessment or the ability of the coordinator to understand how to appropriately formulate a subject aimed at undergraduate students and not 50 year-old tenured professors. Seriously, Mark.

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83) - I think there was gratuitous scaling involved here.

Comments:

Unless you're extremely enthusiastic about zoology, do NOT do this subject. The content seems well-suited to a person who wants to take a casual elective on the side and learn a bit about why animals do the everyday things that make them so cute, but it's deceptively dry. Raoul, Theresa and Devi are all good lecturers, and the content itself is quite insightful and thought-provoking, and makes a reasonable amount of sense (though remembering and applying it under exam pressure is another question entirely). Mark and Theresa respond rapidly to student queries, and do attempt to communicate with the class. However, this is where the positives end. Mark is not a switched-on educator - this is not only my opinion, but that of literally everyone I've ever talked to during this subject, as well as people from the previous two cohorts. His expectations are unrealistic, his and Raoul's assessment design has lofty goals to assess students' in-depth understanding but falls critically short and connects badly with the course, Mark's responses to students imply that as a tenured researcher his ideas and decisions are better than that of students, who are simply lazy or don't appreciate the nature of how science works, and even Mark's own lectures leave something to be desired - he waxes lyrical about his own research and talks at the speed of peak hour Hoddle Street traffic. What makes it worse is that the staff are all clearly trying to make the subject a good one that opens students' eyes to a more realistic world of science. Instead, they seem to get caught up in their own ideals and have created a subject I really can't say was more than lackluster. The negatives outweigh the positives, and the exam is an instant no-no if you have any sort of anxiety issues under pressure. I've come out of this subject and its decent lectures with a better appreciation for the evolutionary basis behind animal and human behaviours, and how selfish we all really are, but I still wish I'd never done it.

(P.S. Devi and Theresa are amazing lecturers and gorgeous people; Raoul is also fairly good. No hating on their content delivery here.)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on June 29, 2015, 12:51:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW30004 Competition and Consumer Law

Workload:  1x2hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute

Assessment:  30% 2000 word Assignment (in pairs), 70% 2hr+30mins Open Book Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  None.

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 exam.

Textbook Recommendation: Australian Competition Law (2nd ed, 2013) (LexisNexis); and Consumer Protection Law in Australia (2nd ed, 2013) (LexisNexis) by Alex Bruce. Not very necessary. I never did the readings, and didn’t feel like I needed to do them. Only used the competition book to clarify a few areas, so I suggest borrowing from the library.

Lecturer(s): Arlen Duke, Rhonda Smith

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Comments:

Content: The course is split into two main topics with Consumer Law covering the first half and Competition Law covering the second half.

The lectures are generally taken by both lecturers, with Rhonda going through the economic principles and reasoning behind the legal framework, and Arlen through the specific legislation. Lectures are NOT recorded, so make sure you take lots of notes!

If you’ve done BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law before, the first half of the course should be relatively familiar, which touch on topics like misleading conduct, and consumer guarantees. Even without the prior knowledge, these topics are quite straight forward if you understand how to apply legislation to facts.

The second half is more confusing… Competition Law focuses on a lot of economic principles, and if you’re not from a commerce background it makes it worse. Rhonda does run through economics 101 (those who know it are literally told they can have a break lol) and there are a lot of readings available on the LMS to help.

Tutorials help immensely so definitely attend those if you are having trouble with the content. I also suggest emailing Arlen if you don’t understand market definition because it links in with the rest of the course. 

Assignment: 2000 word partner assignment; you can pick whoever you want to partner with. It’s a relatively straightforward assignment that covers the consumer law content. Its difficult in that you don’t learn the required material until a week before its due, and you do need to think a lot about what the question wants. The best tip I can give is to focus on how the question is worded and what topic its asking you to respond on. Also try to write succinctly, the word limit is constraining.

Tutorials: These were really important in consolidating the content, and Arlen gives great tips to help. Arlen gives an answer structure in an early tutorial, then for the rest just goes through the important points. I found he often missed important points, so make sure you speak up in tutes and ask whether what you thought was relevant or not. Or send him an email afterwards.

Exam: For our exam, it was 2hrs writing time, 30mins reading time. Question 1 (hypothetical) was compulsory, then you could pick between doing Question 2 (another hypothetical) or 3 (pick 3 out of 6 essay-type questions). You get introduced to both types of questions in tutes. For hypotheticals, you are asked to apply law to the given facts. For essay questions, you are asked to discuss a statement which requires more theory-based content (economic concepts, etc).

There was one practice exam which we went through together during the last lecture, and was a good indication of the difficulty of the exam. There is also a revision session a few days before the exam where Arlen takes questions. Make sure you come ready with questions! Arlen dismisses everyone after no one answers his call for questions.

To prepare for the exam, I suggest writing out answers to the practice exam and then compare them to Arlen’s answers, making sure you’ve addressed all the points Arlen made. If you have time, also do this for the tute work. Further, make a one page summary (as Arlen suggests) of all the topics. I found it super helpful during reading time.

Overall: This is a great subject to do if you have enjoyed other law subjects such as BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law. It is structured well and you can really show your knowledge and effort (which is definitely reflected in your marks).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on June 29, 2015, 12:52:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW30003 Taxation Law II

Workload:  1x2hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute

Assessment:  30% 2000 word Individual Assignment, 70% 2hr+30mins Open Book Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with no screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 exam, but not very relevant as a new lecturer is taking the subject.

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Taxation Law (from Tax Law I)

Lecturer(s): Daniel Minutello 

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Comments:

Content: This subject is an extension of the Tax Law I subject, building on previously learnt concepts like income (services, business, passive), deductions and capital gains tax. Don’t worry if you don’t remember much; Daniel definitely helps refresh your memory and it’s not really directly examinable.

I guess I should state upfront that Sunita is not the lecturer. She is the coordinator, but Daniel takes the lectures (and the tutorials as the cohort is quite small). Honestly, his first few lectures weren’t great as he was shy, but he did get better, and his tutorials were quite good (although don’t expect someone like David). You might even remember him as a tutor from Tax I tutes. He does like to draw diagrams up on the board now and then to help understanding, so it’s good to go to lectures.

The content is quite wide ranging, from trusts and superannuation to tax accounting and international taxation. As such, I think Tax II is easier than Tax I, because you really only learn the bare basics of each topic (apart from the first three topics, everything else is one lecture long).

Assignment: 2000 word individual assignment based on the first few topics of company (residency, losses, imputation etc), partnership and trusts. Not a hard assignment, my tips are to include as much detail as you can, and if you get stuck, read the relevant legislation closely, even if Daniel hasn’t gone into the intricate details of a section. For ours, I didn’t think the word limit was that constraining, so write as much as you initially can, and cut down afterwards.

Tutorials: Daniel writes up notes as he goes through the tute work, setting out a good answer template he suggests you use for the exam. Tax II focuses more on income tax /payable/, as opposed to /consequences/, so do be ready to do calculations. Daniel also goes through these well, so tutes are important :P.

If you realise you need help (after getting the assignment back) with legal-writing skills, try sending Daniel some mock question write-ups or go to his consult. He’s quite happy to help out those who are keen.

Exam: The exam is 2hrs writing time, 30mins reading time, and had two hypotheticals examining multiple topics. Thus, be expecting stock in trade, share of trust income, etc combined into one question. International taxation can also pop up anywhere. Knowing where each topic could potentially fit in a question is helpful.

To prepare for the exam, I suggest rewriting out the tute work, and make sure you know what you’re doing with the 30mins planning time. You really need to identify all the issues relevant to the question and set it out in a cohesive format/order.

Overall: If you did well/enjoyed Tax I, you may enjoy Tax II. As with any law subject, comprehensive notes are important, as well as a good understanding of how all the topics link together. You should take this subject if you like tax, law, logical reasoning; and if you want an accredited course in taxation law (Y)!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on June 29, 2015, 12:53:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30001 Financial Accounting Theory

Workload:  2x1hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute

Assessment:  30% Mid sem exam, 70% 3hr+15mins Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, 1 exam, but doesn’t have a full set of questions.

Textbook Recommendation: Financial Accounting Theory (7th ed), Scott. I used this a lot, and it was generally really well structured and consistent with lectures.

Lecturer(s): Matt Pinnuck, Sandip Dhole

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Comments:

Content: No debits and credits! …Which means you either love or hate this subject. It focuses on the purpose of financial statements, and how standard setters can choose standards to reduce two forms of information asymmetry: adverse selection (first half of the course) and moral hazard (second half). The nature of the course is that is it highly interwoven, so you are constantly building on your prior knowledge. Knowing the links between topics is what will get you a H1.

Matt takes the first half, and he’s pretty fun to listen to. There is a lottt of content covered, and Matt often doesn’t finish but I think he covers everything well at an overall theory level. For specifics, you’ll have to refer to the book. I was not a fan of Sandip’s lectures – he teaches very basic concepts, but the knowledge he expects is much more specific, so you’re more likely to need the book for his part of the course.

Mid Sem Test: Relatively straightforward questions, with a few annoying questions in that the topic was NEVER mentioned in lectures (reserve recognition accounting)! It was in the specified readings though, so make sure you keep an eye out for this topic =.=

To revise, I found it helpful to draw out a mindmap and link topics together. As I said, the course is pretty much all woven together so these links are quite important. There were a few simple calculation questions, but mostly theory qs. Keep an eye out for theories Matt focuses on like Ball and Brown, Sloan accruals anomaly, etc. There are quite a few hard questions that relate to these, and they can get super specific, so aim to know them inside out :D.

Tutorials: Ugh the worst thing about this is you actually need the new edition of the book because almost all the tute questions you do are new. Matt actually uploaded the questions for us cause most of us didn’t buy the new edition haha but I’m not sure if he’ll do this again in future. In terms of book content, its mainly the same apart from one or two chapters. You could potentially borrow from the library and get away with buying the older edition :P.

In terms of tutors, Danny gives good exam advice (and even releases a few mid-sem questions as /practice/ but which actually showed up on the exam…) and good notes. Kevin/Arnav’s classes are more of a standard tute, but I preferred their tutes because their classes were smaller and you felt more comfortable with asking questions. Don’t know anything about Duncan or Mark.

In terms of pre-tute work, I don’t think it’s very helpful to write up full answers to theory questions, as there will likely be loads of points that you have missed. Its probably best to just dot point the main things you would mention. Even if you don’t, make sure you read the questions before the tute so you know what’s going on! Also make sure you do the calculation questions: more practice = better, and you’ll follow the tute along better.

Exam: From memory there were six full theory questions at the start. These were short, eg. Information asymmetry means you can never have ideal conditions, discuss. Then there were five or six longer questions which had multiple parts, eg. First part was calculations, then theory questions relating to the facts given.

To prepare for the exam, mindmap! Tute work! Textbook review questions! Practice exam! There are some questions that come up over and over again so make sure you know them. From what my tutor said, the best answers are those that flow logically one point to another, which is why a mindmap is important :P

Overall: This may not be the most fun subject, and it does require a little more effort than most subjects to get a good score, but you can really demonstrate your understanding and be adequately rewarded for your effort.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on June 29, 2015, 01:50:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30007 Derivative Securities

Workload:  1x2hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute

Assessment:  25% Mid sem exam, 75% 3hr+15mins Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No, but two sets of practice questions.

Textbook Recommendation: Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (PNIE) 8th ed, Hull. I didn’t buy it, don’t know how useful it is. Survived without looking at it once though.

Lecturer(s): Ali Akyol

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Comments:

Content: Remember options and futures and forwards from Bus Fi? Those are the focus of this subject. Also toss in a few things like portfolio insurance, dividend yields, etc which are quite similar conceptually to valuing options/forwards.

I’ve heard Ali, who only takes Sem 1, is the better lecturer for the year. His lectures are very overall concept focused and set out clearly. He has quite a few examples chucked in, but its sometimes hard to understand where the numbers come from during the lecture, so utilise the lecture recording afterwards and make sure you know what’s happening.

Mid Sem Test: Average was 17/20. Nuff said? Know the basics. To revise, do the practice questions provided (Ali literally gives you the textbook provided questions+answers), and the previous tute qs which aren’t from the book.

Tutorials: I do think having a good tutor is important for this subject. I had Allen, who is really good for explaining concepts, but I think other tutors may be better if you want solid, write-downable answers for your tute work. It depends on how you learn.

The pretute work is all uploaded at the start of semester, so I suggest printing it out as a book and pulling it out to attempt the pre-tute work. The tutors have all been told to teach us specific ways of answering some questions (profit tables, payoff diagrams etc) that aren’t reflected in the LMS uploaded answers, so its best to go to tutes.

Exam: Seeing how easy the mid sem was, I think everyone was expecting a super hard exam… and that’s exactly what we got. There was a super long question on portfolio insurance (which is different to the one in the practice), and also two hard theory questions, swaps, margin account, arbitrage table, etc.

To prepare for the exam, do the provided textbook questions, and the practice exam questions. Don’t be surprised when you don’t know how to do them – there are lots of questions you haven’t seen before. It sort of makes you realise how much you don’t know, so going to a consult, and abusing the online tutor is a good idea. Its also good to go through the lecture examples as they sometimes don’t appear in tute work, but are examinable.

Overall: DS is often termed the hardest subject of the finance major, and you don’t really realise this until revision time. I guess the thing is to just keep up with the work and make sure you understand the basics, because otherwise you’ll have a lot to learn during revision time. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: aqple on June 29, 2015, 06:08:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC10057 Wellbeing, Motivation and Performance

Workload:  1 x two hour lecture and 1 x one hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 1500 word midterm assignment (30%), 2500 word final assignment (60%)
(10% is for tutorial participation and attendance, but I don't really know how it works)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Positive Psychology: The Science and Happiness of Flourishing, 2nd edition (2013)
(You do not need it, but I do highly recommend it if you want to make the most out of taking the subject - you'll gain a more comprehensive view of the field. I was lucky enough to obtain the textbook from the library for the whole semester)

Lecturer(s): Dr Gavin Slemp, Associate Professor Lindsay Oades
(There were also a number of guest lecturers)

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments: This subject has gotten excellent reviews on here so far, and I really wanted to add to them. I can't think of any aspects that could be improved, the subject was very well delivered and well organised.

The subject is based on the new and emerging branch of psychology called positive psychology. This field focuses on utilising scientific methods and intervention techniques to gain understanding of how humans flourish in life! It's so positive, and that really makes the subject enjoyable. Now, I know there are some negative attitudes towards this field of psychology, you might mock it for its blind optimism, for its inability to reflect the true nature of things which consequentially results in positive illusions. Positive psychology is a recent science, so it will have limitations. But nonetheless, it is a comprehensive field, and there's a lot of new emerging studies, so that's exciting. Especially recently, there has been some focus on the importance of negative events and emotions. In fact, I remember the first lecture, that's what the lecturer introduced us to at the start - negative emotions. So, this is a very practical subject, and you will acquire skills that will help you increase your wellbeing, relationships, and overall life satisfaction.

This is an education breadth subject, so it focuses on how knowledge obtained from the field of positive psychology can be applied to our everyday lives. The aim is to promote wellbeing and life satisfaction through the examination of theories, research and published literature. The practicality of this subject did make it much more enjoyable and relatable. Also, there will be a range of disciplines involved, which the lecturers introduce to give further insight, such as philosophy, psychology, sports science, sociology and biology. Referring to the subject name, you will learn about how to promote positive wellbeing, how to cultivate and maintain motivation, and how to increase performance i.e. to flourish in life.

Lectures
Lecturers were engaging and explained concepts and theories well. And no, they're not the bubbly and cheerful lecturers you might imagine you'd get. There is nothing much I can comment on about the lecturers, they were perfect, and so were the guest lecturers. Anyway, the lectures themselves were great. They go for two hours, so there was a lot cover. I recommend going in to the lectures, and not catch up from the recording. I found it was difficult to sit through the recording, and the lectures tend to involve activities and discussion. The coordinators did a very good job at making the lectures fun and stimulating. Lecturers presented quotes and historical figures to base their topic around, and videos to help us understand better. Topics covered in lectures include: positive emotions, neuroplasticity, mindfulness, workplace performance, scientific methods and research, gratitude, resilience, hope, motivation, flow, positive relationships.

Tutorials
Tutorials are similar to the lectures in my opinion. They follow on from the lectures and go into some more depth. However, in tutorials, we had the opportunity to try out some interventions, so it's more hands-on. There were a lot of students in the tutorials, so the discussion was more like a discussion in a lecture rather than an informal classroom one. Tutors were very helpful and insightful.

Assignments
Both assignments were essays. They were very straightforward essays to write, you just need to be adhere to the typical essay structure. Tutors emphasised that many students wrote their midterm essay in a question-answer format, when this is not what is expected. The assignments will ask you to do your own thinking and extended research. It's not much work to be honest, I completed both assignments a couple of days before the due date (this might not work for you though). I enjoyed researching and thinking about the topics because the content was interesting. Both assignments had set questions that we had to cover in our essay. The midterm 1500 word assignment involved a structured essay about positive psychology, so we had to use journal articles to define it and its key features, etc, and an examination of one positive psychology research area which involved analysing the research methods used in studies. The final 2500 word assignment involved a structured essay about our experience implementing a wellbeing building intervention. This was very fun. We just report our experiences using a positive psychology intervention and whether it increased our wellbeing, factors that influenced its effectiveness, etc. The assignments are very chill, and the final assignment is done well before exam period - so that's one subject you won't need to worry about during the exam period!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Jzyh on June 30, 2015, 10:11:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: HIST20060 Total War: World War II

Workload:  1 x 1.5hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial each week (In week one, there was an online survey instead of a tutorial class)

Assessment:  2000 word essay due during the middle of semester - worth 50%; 2 hour sit in examination - worth 50%. Additionally there is a hurdle requirement of a minimum threshold of 75% tutorial attendance - including the week one online survey.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Essential: Total War Subject Reader (Note: the subject reader was also available free on the LMS)
                                                Recommended: World War II. A New History by Evan Mawdsley

Lecturer(s): Steven Welch

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I took this subject as a breadth and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. That said, I was very interested in the topic matter of the subject and already had a fair amount of background knowledge about World War 2 prior to taking this subject.

The lectures were delivered in the chronological order of the war and were pretty straightforward. Tutorials discussed the weekly subject reader readings (both primary and secondary source documents about the war and its nature). Additionally, there were optional tutorials run by students who had previously taken this subject known as PASS (peer assisted study sessions). I attended several of these sessions and found them to be pretty helpful, especially when it came to examination preparation. Although it is possible to do well without attending PASS, I would recommend attendance to these sessions as it allows for extra time to discuss matters that were missed during the weekly tutorials.

The mid semester assessment was a speech analysis that was handed in electronically. It required a fair bit of research along with some deep analysis of the selected speech. It also requires an understanding of the idea of Total War and its application.

The examination was 25% multiple choice, 25% short essay and 50% long essay in a 2 hour span. The multiple choice was on various facts of world war 2, and a list of important words was given to students around week 10 - 11 to allow us to prepare for this. The short essay required us to analyze a short primary source document from a selection of several source documents. The documents were selected from the subject reader. The long essay required us to write an essay expressing their own opinion and providing evidence towards a certain question/topic about world war 2. A list of essay questions/topics were also handed to us well in advance of the examination, however only a select few actually appeared on the examination.

I would like to stress that this is no pushover subject. To do well, it is essential that you read the subject reader, and thus get the most out of tutorials. The reader was also invaluable for examination preparation - in particular, the short and long essay. I also highly recommend that you read Total War II: A New History. Although, lectures do indeed cover most of what you need to know about World War II, the multiple choice section of the final examination may encompass information that can only be found via reading Total War II: A New History.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on July 02, 2015, 12:03:04 pm
Subject Code/Name:  ANAT30007 Human Locomotor Systems

Workload:  36 x 1 hour lecture, 10 x 3 hour practical

Assessment:  2 x MST (10% each), 2 x 2 hour exam (40% each)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past papers

Textbook Recommendation:  Clinically Oriented Anatomy

Lecturer(s):  V. Pilbrow, C. Briggs, J. Hayes, P. Kitchener

Year & Semester of completion:  2015 Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments:

This subject covers the anatomy (and neuroanatomy in some detail) of locomotion. That is, how one locomotes, coordinates and adjusts movement, and how movement has developed across species to give human locomotion (read evolutionary anatomy). This also means that one is expected to know the musculoskeletal and neurovascular structures that afford humans the ability to locomote. Beyond locomotion, this subject delves into the clinical aspects that revolve around the aforesaid anatomy. For instance, how does a fall result in a particular type of fracture, which structures are likely to be endangered, what are the consequences of such structures being compressed/disturbed, and how is the fracture likely to be repaired surgically. The last point about surgical repair, while beyond the scope of the course per se, is covered by external lecturers and is examinable nevertheless (NB that general understanding is emphasised).

Dissections are arguably the best aspect of this subject. Each week, there is a dissection of a particular compartment of the body pertaining to the lecture material covered in the same and immediately preceding weeks. The demonstrators were for the most part very pleasant to deal with and very helpful. These classes, while three hours in duration, are split between dissection and examination of prosections. The weekly class culminates in a flag race.

Two short tests during the semester: One mostly on the upper limb and spine; The other mostly on the lower limb. They consist of multiple choice questions, none of which were unfair nor too hard. Time is a plenty during these tests.
Two fun exams at the end of semester: A theory one that focuses on an understanding of the musculoskeletal mechanics involved in locomotion and of the importance of neurovascular structures and their relation to locomotor mechanics; A practical one (in lieu of ongoing practical assessment that I suspect would have historically been conducted during dissection classes). The theory exam has multiple choice questions (simple and extended), short answer questions, and extended response questions. The practical exam consists of photographs of dissections and has multiple choice questions that largely pertain to identifying the functional and/or clinical significance of highlighted structures.

I enjoyed this subject, but thought that I would enjoy it more that I did. I would prefer that the Anatomy Department allow us to see our tests after marking is complete, but understand their reasons against doing so. Overall, there is quite a significant amount of memory work involved, but it is worth it because no other subject gives undergraduate students such a good footing for further studies in biomedical sciences, especially with respect to the dissection component of the subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on July 02, 2015, 12:41:23 pm
Subject Code/Name:  NEUR30002 Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits

Workload:  36 x 1 hour lecture

Assessment:  2 x MST (25% each), 1 x 2 hour exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past papers

Textbook Recommendation:  Neuroscience

Lecturer(s):  A. Allen, J. Bornstein, G. Barrett, A. Turnley, J. Furness, C. Parish

Year & Semester of completion:  2015 Semester 1

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments:

From ion channel biochemistry to the clinical consequences of spinal cord injury, this subject covers not only the essential aspects of neurophysiology, but thanks to Andrew Allen, goes above and beyond to include the current research in the field as well. I went into the subject expecting that it would be dull and uninteresting. But I am glad to say that I was abundantly wrong. In fact, it turned out to be my favourite subject this semester (second favourite in my degree).

The lecturers were all very interesting to listen to; I especially enjoyed the "focus on disease" lectures, in which the lecturer discussed the neurophysiology and how it can be implicated in a disease or disease process and hopefully how medicine is aiming to ameliorate the symptoms arising from the disease. I found them to be fascinating given that these lectures were also reliant on current and ongoing research and clinical trials. Graham's series of lectures on memory were excellent and were also a fantastic way to end the semester. Topics covered include ion conductance, ion channel structure and function, neuromodulation, neurotransmission, neuronal circuits (autonomic reflexes), enteric nervous system, memory, and injury to and repair of the nervous system.

The first MST was not too hard. In saying that, it was, however, appreciably easy to make careless errors on the test. The second was fairly easy (and I daresay a little too easy). Either way, both tests were very fair, but time is more of a constraint in these tests compared to other subjects that I have taken. Given that the order of lecture content moved around a little between 2014 and 2015, unfortuantely I cannot accurately advise what will be covered in each test.

The exam was all multiple choice with simple and extended question types. Even though no practice exams were given, I do not think that would have been necessary anyway. This subject emphasises understanding the neurophysiology and applying it. Hence, understand the key concepts and the rest is pretty straightforward. There were no real surprises on the exam, which was a very nice surprise!

I highly recommend this subject. The content covered has great utility not only in the field of neuroscience, but is also somewhat pertinent to critical thinking, which is an added bonus. Hats off to Andrew Allen for taking us beyond textbook science, because this subject definitely benefits from it. So, if you want to know about how the baroreceptor reflex works in detail, or how the hippocampus converts short-term memory to long-term memory, take this subject. It is also worth noting that NEUR30002 has about 30% overlap with NEUR30003, which is certainly helpful during exam time.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on July 02, 2015, 01:15:47 pm
Subject Code/Name:  GENE20001 Principles of Genetics

Workload:  36 x 1 hour lecture, 10 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  3 x MST (10% each), 1 x 2 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1998-2013

Textbook Recommendation:  I did read parts of the textbook, but found it useless

Lecturer(s):  A. Andrianopoulos, R. Lee, P. Batterham, C. Cobbett, H. Bugeja

Year & Semester of completion:  2015 Semester 1

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments:

Please refer to either (or all of) Mr. T-Rav's, Shenz0r's, or Stick's reviews for this subject. I do not wish to quadruplicate the same information.

The good: The tutorials were the highlight of the subject. The subject tutor, Steve, was fantastic to consult, and he was very approachable. I found his discussions very much integral to my learning, especially with respect to the more difficult concepts that Ronald discusses in his lectures. I found phage to be interesting even though I did not think that I would. Kudos to Alex - he made what could have been a very boring three-ish weeks thoroughly engaging. Also, Ronald was especially kind with helping me via email; thanks to his generosity with his time, I finally was able to comprehend translocations and inversion heterozygotes!

The bad: Despite Phil giving us a sheet of derivations for the formulae used for population genetics, I cannot say that I was impressed with this "teaching style." I would have preferred to learn where the equations come from and why they are relevant. Physics does a wonderful job of presenting an equation and explaining why it is used and this leads to a deeper and more robust understanding.

The ugly: Dragons. There is a reason why they don't exist! Also...8 mark multiple choice questions are abhorrent. Especially when you spend almost thirty minutes on it in the exam only to find out that most people had to guess what the answer might have been.

I would only recommend this subject if you want to know more about genetics. I took this subject because I thought it would have less of a dependence on ROTE learning, which is true, but did not enjoy it all that much. In a word: Genetics simply isn't my niche.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on July 03, 2015, 04:25:12 pm
Subject Code/Name:  NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience

Workload:  36 x 1 hour lecture

Assessment:  1 x MST (30%), 1 x 2 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past papers

Textbook Recommendation:  Neuroscience

Lecturer(s):  P. Kitchener, C. Anderson, J. Bornstein, E. Fletcher, L. Rivera, A. Allen

Year & Semester of completion:  2015 Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1

Comments:

First off, I will say that this subject can really be split into two parts: The first concerns mostly what we do know as a scientific collective; The second moves into territory that really pushes the envelope. I think it is important to keep this in mind if you take the subject because for a "science" subject, the content in the later lectures is rather abstract (and maybe even a bit philosophical).

The first six weeks of lectures covers the fundamentals of neuroanatomy, neurological development and injury to the nervous system, sensory systems (similar content to NEUR30002), and the autonomic nervous system. Naturally, these topics lend themselves better to the style of learning emphasised in the course in that it is easy to see where a test question may come from. For instance, knowing a sensory transduction pathway and how a ligand interacting with a receptor is converted into a meaningful receptor/graded/action potential is something that one could possibly anticipate being on a test. Moreover, the weekly study group questions pertaining to this section of the course are fairly easy to answer given that the answer will no doubt lie somewhere in the lecture notes.

The second six weeks is a bit of a departure from the first six, and anecdotally, I found that most (not all) of the people who I knew preferred the content of the first half of lecture series. That said, topics such as consciousness, pain, fear, memory, etc., all pop up in this part of the course, and personally I found these to be really quite intriguing. Despite being less concrete, I would say that Peter (the subject coordinator) handles the lectures very well and they are genuinely interesting to listen to. Again, there are study group questions that the lecturers provide and these shall give an indication of what can be expected in the way of formal assessment.

The midsemester test was very fair in terms of both time and the wording of the questions. It covered the first half of the course, but given that the order of lectures changed between 2014 and 2015, I cannot accurately give an indication of what might appear on the test. What I will say, however, is that I had the feeling that the test would be accessible if one makes the effort to answer the study group questions without referring to the lecture notes.
I thought that the exam was incredibly fair, and possibly the easiest of my exams for this semester. That is not to say that the exam is easy, though. While it was all multiple choice, it consisted of a few question types: Some simple (A, B, C, D), some extended (A, B, ..., Z), and some slightly different. The emphasis was on the second half of the lecture series. Reviewing notes and asking peers questions is probably a good way to prepare for this exam.

Thanks to Peter, this subject was a pleasure to be enrolled in; I enjoyed the lectures since they were fascinating, I found the lecturers to be engaging, and am of the opinion that the testing was transparent and equitable.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: e^1 on July 03, 2015, 08:38:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP20007 Design of Algorithms

Workload:  2 x 1-hour lectures and 1 x 2-hour workshop, per week

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available:  Yes.

Textbook Recommendation:  Algorithms (by Dasgupta et al.)

Lecturer(s): Andrew Turpin

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 3.75-4.0 out of 5.0

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Overview:
As the subject title says, you learn a bunch of algorithms. This includes sorting, graph, compression-related, and a bit of string-searching algorithms. You will also get a glimpse of programming approaches, including greedy algorithms and dynamic programming. Some algorithms are mind-boggling, and interesting. I found it to be a bit all over the place because of so many algorithms to learn, but this was not necessarily a bad thing.

For the first few weeks, you revise on what you've learned from first year. This included quicksort, mergesort, Big-O notation and recursive equations. Not many new things here, but you will need it for your mid-semester test. You will also go through binary search trees (BST), and a similar data structure called AVL trees at some point in the semester. Besides this, you will also learn new data structures, including disjoint-set data structure and hashing.

From there, you learn graph algorithms (a graph meaning vertices possibly connected by edges). Finding the shortest path from A to B (eg. Dijkstra's algorithm), finding the lowest number edge cost so that the edges cover all of the vertices (Prims and Kruskal's algorithm), and finding strongly connected components in a graph are a couple of things you get to learn. These seem quite practical and useful to know, so no complaints here. As an aside, I believe there was a topic that is specially covered for this year. In 2013 Euler paths were covered; this year it was about (unicost) set cover. Hence there were some irrelevant  content in 2013's exams, but I think that was about it.

In learning compression algorithms, you learn techniques to encode text in order to make files smaller, for instance. These included the Shannon-Fano coding, arithmetic coding, and Huffman coding. One of the more 'mind-boggling' methods that I found were Wavelet trees and Burrow Wheel transforms. We also touched a bit on string searching algorithms, but not much on the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm for instance.

Lastly, you learn dynamic programming and a bit about NP and NP-complete problems. Dynamic programming involves trying to solve a problem in polynomial time through splitting into sub-problems, and solving the sub-problems without solving the same one again. Otherwise, the idea of NP involves finding out whether a problem can be verified in polynomial time, but cannot be solved in polynomial time. We touched on this a little bit, but it was in our exam.

Aside from this, you will also learn how to do strong induction and see a bit of proof. However, it did not seem that we had to understand why a method like Wavelet Trees worked; the applying bit is more important (for those bitter in math and proofs).


Lectures and workshops:
You've probably met Andrew in COMP10001 before. He's quite friendly, explains concepts well and gets straight to the point, and his slides were easy to understand. I feel quite bad for him with the criticisms he gets from the bad structure in the assessments he gives. I found him more likeable than Alistair from COMP10002, who seemed more obscure to me despite his humor.

The accompanied book by Dasgupta also helps, and has questions probably harder than the exam. It is worth reading the relevant content in the book, since it does give more detail than Andrew's slides. Otherwise, you can also find a draft of Dasgupta's book somewhere online for free, which some people on the internet have commented that it has less typos than the physical copy of the book. However, I believe the physical copy also contains a code to obtain an online solution manual for the book, which I did not buy.

I did not attend most of the workshops, but for the first few I did attend, one hour was devoted to the tutorial questions, and one hour for a programming exercise. The questions were somewhat tough, so doing questions from the book would help. The programming exercises were easier, and were more of a way to strengthen your basic understanding of the concepts learned. Partial solutions to the workshops were given later, which would be quite helpful in exam revision.


Assessments:
For us, assignment 1 (10% of marks) involved creating an explicit stack data structure to be implemented in both quicksort and mergesort algorithms. Bonus marks also provided interesting tasks, including merging (not dividing!) with space and only using a word for a stack frame in some cases. This was more of a C programming exercise (and stuff you learned from first year)  than anything else. In general, I felt the assessment was clear in what we had to do, although the bonus mark tasks were a bit confusing. We also had to do some Praze feedback after the assignment.

The second assignment was more free in what we could do. A somewhat generic set cover problem, it involved finding the minimum amount of schools such that the schools covered all of the towns, where each school covered 1km in radius. There was quite a bit to do in this assignment, which involved creating a binary min/max heap, some structure to manipulate sets (union, intersection, exclusion etc), a graph data structure and some algorithm for set cover. Fortunately, the workshops gave time to work on some of these needed data structures. Accounting for 20% of marks, cramming it was definitely a bad idea. Nonetheless, I had fun working on it, particularly on implementing an algorithm from a paper, which was a variant on the typical greedy set cover approach.

I found the mid-semester test (10%, in week 7) to be quite fair. If you have done consistent study and practice (not me, of course) throughout the semester then you should have little to no problem with it. Most of the questions were basic and just wanted to see whether you have understood it or not, while the last question was more difficult. Later we were able to get our tests back with solutions.

The exam questions from 2013 and 2014 were easier, compared to Dasgupta's exercises. Going over workshops, strengthening the understanding of concepts, understanding lectures and doing exam questions were helpful for preparation. This years exam seemed consistent in difficulty, so no shocks there. With 3 hours to finish the exam, I found it to be enough to complete most of the questions. Once more, if you were studying steadily and got your sleep, then you would have probably finished it in less than 3 hours confidently :').

In general, I found the assessments to be fair and in some way, enjoyable. It is worth remembering the algorithms after the subject also, since many of them have its practical uses. Particularly, having access to workshops, mid-semester tests and exams (and solutions) helps.


Resources:
Since the lecture slides and the book were very useful in understanding stuff, I did not really use much resources besides these. However, here are a few (the last link is if you are doing set cover ONLY, and requires you to understand proofs):

URL?Topic:
l:m/epp.e7xtroic/tu/thy5wnWavelet Trees
nl:mc/ph/ii..tapmct/tmedreoh/ictpiaersieth    Arithmetic Coding
l:m/dwp.o5trvoi/ctu/thy3lnHuffman coding
o:l/tU0p/7./4gogtAthSet Cover

The decoding is left for you to find these links.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Rod on July 04, 2015, 06:09:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10006 Critical Thinking With Data 

Workload: Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial. (48 contact hours).

Assessment:

*3 written ‘’short’’ assignments (strict 200 word limit for each, assignments worth 5% each)

*3 online short assignments (60 minute time limit, single attempt, 5% each)

*Group work poster for major assignment, including a 4 minute presentation to two examiners + the class (worth 10%)

*Major assignment individual paper (worth 15%, strictly 1200 words)

*10 Weekly quizzes, each worth 0.5%, weekly quizzes can be attempted 3 times in total, no time limit. Quizzes account for 5% of your total mark.

*2 hour and 15 minute examination worth 40%. Made up of 10 multiple choice, and 10 short answers, 100 marks in total.

... In short, there is A LOT of assessment.

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture. All lectures are recorded, tutorials not recorded.

Past exams available: Yes! About eight past exams available, with detailed solutions. Past exams were extremely helpful.

Textbook recommendation: None.

Lecturer(s):

Dr. Sandy Clarke takes all of the core lectures (there are 29 of them). ‘Core’ lectures, meaning the content presented in these lectures will be in your final exam.

The other 7 lectures were ‘’guest lectures’’. These lectures were more important for the assignments. If I recall correctly, there was only ONE multiple choice in the exam that required knowledge from guest lectures, so you really only need them for the assignments.

Guest lecturers include; Dr. Julia Simpson, Dr. David Dickson, Dr. Bonnie Wintle, Dr. Meghan Wilson-Anastasios.

Year and semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your grade: H1

Comments:

What is good about this subject?

*The core lecturer, Sandy Clarke, is AMAAAAAZING. She was probably one of the best lecturers I had throughout semester 1. Not only does she make the content seem really interesting and communicate it in a clear way, but she makes classes extremely interactive and fun. She uses polls, videos and very engaging case studies to present her material. Her lecture notes are very detailed and are enough to do well in the exam.

She is a very nice person and very approachable. She has three ‘’help classes’’ a week where people can approach her for 1 to 1 lessons. I did not go to any of them, but what I found so helpful was emailing her. I really needed help during swot-vac with some exam questions and topics, and she would reply to me within 24 hours. Her replies would be long, well written and extremely detailed. Not just shitty one-word responses which I got from some of my other subjects. Sandy is ultimately really dedicated and one of those lecturers who actually cares about her students and want her students to do well. She was simply awesome, made the subject so much easier for me.

*You do not need any background in statistics to do this subject. The main gains from this subject are to gain really good background knowledge on basic statistics.

Another outcome of this subject is that it allows you to be ‘’critical users of data-based evidence’’. After completing this subject, Sandy promised us we would be able to distinguish what is good data and what is bad data. And nowadays when I ready the newspaper, I am able to distinguish whether the journalist is using reliable and good sources of data or whether they are using very unreliable data. I can understand more complex uses of statistics in newspapers (eg confidence intervals, P-values, meta-analysis).

Other outcomes of this subject include understanding the principles of collecting data, how to think about and describe uncertainty in data, how to draw YOUR OWN conclusions from data and not just accept what the author is saying, and how to critically assess media reports based on quantitive data. So as you can see, this isn’t just a ‘’bludge’’ breadth, you learn lots of things are interesting and may be helpful to you throughout life/your course. 

*The exam was accessible. If you work hard throughout the semester and do about 3-4 past exams you should be able to get a H1 in the exam. It was fair, nothing surprising.

What is bad about this subject?

*The assignments are so HARSHLY marked. The tutor I had literally had such BIG expectations of us, I started out with a near fail (5.9/10) and after realizing how big of an effort you needed to put into these assignments, I was able to later on get better marks. But it should not be this way. It felt as if my tutor felt that we all wanted to be future statisticians, and therefore we needed to get ALL the basics absolutely PERFECT. Any little error, marks off. My tutor needed to realize that this is a breadth subject, everyone in our classes just wanted a basic/background understanding of statistics. Every week my tutor would come to class grumpy ‘’your assignments were not good at all’’, so it wasn’t just me that was finding the assignments really hard, but everyone.

*Felt as if there was too much assessment. Six short assignments, two big assignments, ten quizzes and an exam just felt too much for me. The workload for this subject felt more demanding than some of my other subjects like geography and biology.

Overall:

If you are looking for a breadth that is interesting, very well coordinated, and will be valuable to your education and future, do CTWD. If you are looking for that chilled breadth with very small contact hours and small workload this subject is probably not for you.

Apart from those written assignments, CTWD gives you all the resources you need to do well; several past exams, great lecture notes, constant revision through the weekly quizzes and an awesome lecturer. So if you put the effort in and use all these resources you should be able to score highly.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Paulrus on July 04, 2015, 10:43:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC10003 - Mind Brain and Behaviour 1

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 2 hour tutorial

Assessment: 2000 word essay worth 40%, multiple choice exam consisting of 120 questions worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No, but there are practice questions for each section on the LMS. Simon gives you the questions for his section of the exam in advance as well.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't bother buying anything, the lecture notes cover everything in good detail.

Lecturer(s): Jason Forte, Simon Cropper, Stefan Bode.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments:

Assessment:
The assessment was split into a 2000 word essay worth 40% of the total mark, and a 3 hour exam worth 60%, consisting of 120 multiple choice questions.

The essay is divided into two sections. The first asks you to watch a sunset and then document how your perception of the world around you changes as the sun goes down. The assignment sounds ridiculous, but once you grasp what they expect from you it becomes fairly easy. There'll be a tutorial class dedicated to sharing ideas about this section of the assignment, so even if you can't come up with any ideas yourself you can leech ideas off others. The second section changes from year to year, but the idea behind it is essentially the same. You'll have to go to some kind of art exhibit (this year's was at the NGV, last year's was at ACMI), and then comment on the way the pieces play with your sense of perception. The assignment is quite easy to do well in, with a lot of people scoring around the H2A/H1 range, so don't worry too much about it.

This exam is pretty chill - 120 questions, with 30 questions from each section. You have 3 hours to complete it, but you shouldn't need anywhere near that long. Jason's section is quite difficult, as is Simon's if you haven't prepared properly, but the others are simple enough. Overall, the exam is pretty fair.

Topics
Behavioural Neuroscience - Jason Forte: This topic explored the structure and function of different parts of the nervous systems and how they influence behaviour. Coming from an non-science background, it was was actually pretty daunting at first. This is by far the most 'science-heavy' part of the course, and I've heard a lot of students drop the subject quite early because of this section. For the most part, though, if you look over the notes and pay attention in the lectures you shouldn't have too much trouble understanding them. Jason's notes are incredibly detailed and explain everything well, but I wouldn't miss these lectures if you can avoid it. This section was interesting, but unfortunately required a fair bit of rote-learning to remember all the densely packed information in the notes. Jason can and will test you on almost anything from the lectures, so be warned.

Sensation and Perception - Simon Cropper: Simon's section explored how the various sensory systems of our body (particularly the visual system) construct our own perception of the world around us. This is a section that a lot of people had major issues with. Simon teaches this topic in a way that I can only describe as 'abstract', with the result that many of us left each lecture having no idea what we were supposed to have learned in the past hour. This wasn't just due to me not paying attention (although it was definitely easy to drift off) - everyone I spoke to was equally confused by Simon's lectures. It's a blessing that Simon gives you the questions in advance and that suggested solutions are available on the internet - honestly, I suspect he gives them out because everyone would fail his section otherwise. He's a nice enough guy, but the way he teaches the topic just isn't effective. I would have given this subject a higher rating if not for this section.

Learning and Cognition - Stefan Bode: This part is basically classic psychology, covering a bunch of different theories on memory and learning. This was my absolute favourite section. If you've done VCE psychology you'll be set for about 80% of this topic, but you're not at a huge disadvantage if you haven't, because most of the information is pretty straightforward. Stefan was an incredible lecturer and taught each area extremely well. He was also hilarious and hurled chocolates at us in the last lecture. I love Stefan. What a beautiful German man.

Quantitative Methods: This section is only covered in tutorials, but makes up a quarter of the exam. It covers basic statistics and is probably the easiest part of the course. Obviously, how well this section is taught will depend on your tutor, but it's all pretty straightforward anyway.

Overall, Mind Brain and Behaviour 1 was definitely an interesting subject and the lecturers were, for the most part, pretty great. This subject is a prerequisite for anyone wanting to study Psychology, of course, but it's a broad enough subject that anyone could enjoy studying it. I would have given it a higher rating if not for Simon's section, but either way, it's definitely a solid subject and I'd recommend it to any first years unsure of what to pick.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honestreviews on July 05, 2015, 03:22:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures + 1 x 1 hour tute

Assessment:  Two assignments (10% + 10%), end of semester exam (80%) (ugh)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep

Past exams available:  Yes, plenty. They only provide one with solutions, and the rest you searched up online

Textbook Recommendation:  Financial Instiutitons and Markets (B Hunt and C Terry) 6th edition - did not buy it, and the only time I read it was during swotvac when my much more academically adept boyfriend lent me his copy to let me peruse it for a few days

Lecturer(s): Les Coleman and Zhuo (Joe) Zhong

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 1.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 87 (H1)

Comments:
TL;DR I HAVE SORT OF STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT THIS SUBJECT

This subject is extremely dry. Like vaporised dust. It is rote learning at its finest. My life advice to you is that you DO NOT DO IT unless you're considering a finance major or you're slightly masochistic and/or a ~mathematically inclined person~ (read exam section) and/or you enjoy rote learning and/or want an easy subject to pass/ace.

Lectures:
Hella boring. I barely touched the lectures until swotvac. I stopped attending after week 2  as I found them to be pretty useless. I feel as if Les just reads off his slides a bit, and I bothered to actually watch the recorded lectures up until about the third week and then I ignored lectures altogether. From week 7 (I think?) onwards, Joe started lecturing. I heard his lectures were a lot more interesting (lectured like he actually wanted to be there and enjoyed finance), but I never really turned up and I listened to about one lecture about the bond market so I could do assignment two, so go figure.
 
Tutes:
They were okay, I guess. I sort of mainly went just to copy down the answers, but then they released the answers to all the tute questions so I lost all motivation to turn up. Tute questions are very good revision for the exams BECAUSE YAY SOLUTIONS!! I was never up to date in finance so the tutes weren't very useful to me, but I reckon if you're on task the tutes will probably be pretty helpful.
 
Assignments:
The assignments are okay to do if you put in a decent amount of effort for something like one to three days.* The first assignment was super open ended and basically asked how you'd advise your friend on investing 30k. It’s unreasonable as it was due in like week 5/6, because up to this point you have covered nothing semi-relevant. I also found the marking to be extremely varied between tutors for the first assignment, especially as it IS such an open ended topic. The second one was concerning the issuance of Apple bonds in Switzerland which was a much narrower topic and easily made a lot more sense.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT FNCE10001 IN GENERAL: breadth over depth in this subject. Finance 1 is one long, arduous memorisation task where you're expected to swallow great quantities of information which you haven't truly computed or understood, but spitting it back out onto the exam paper at the end of the semester will be enough to warrant you a H1.**
 
Exam:
The exam is hurdle, but I really wouldn't worry about that too much. About half the marks on the exam are dedicated to 'financial mathematics' (on a formula sheet ALREADY PROVIDED - it seems to me as if the hardest part of financial mathematics IS RECOGNISING FORMULAS) whereby you just plug in numbers from questions into formulas. If you have attained an extremely impressive primary school level of mathematical ability, you'll pass the subject.
 
That being said, despite my mind crying in protest at this subject which was(/probably still will be) the spirit of sheer boredom incarnated (rote learning subjects are to me as Kryptonite is to Superman) I'm scoring it 1.5/5 for three reasons:
   1) one, its boringness (as I said, akin to vaporised dust) isn't really the department of finance's fault. Foundational basics are eye-rolling boring, but a necessary evil
   2) Because of how easily crammable it is. Like I said, I barely touched lectures till swotvac. I didn't even watch them during swotvac, I just read them. You really only have to read lectures to pass this subject. It was my first exam and I had about five and a bit more days to study. I managed to cram all the content in about three days by reading through lecture slides, and did a few practice exams.
   3) 1 sounds too mean, 2 sounds too generous

(PSA for breadth kids: Think doing Finance 1 will help you become an investor? Wrong. Just as taking an intro bio course doesn't make you a doctor, taking Finance 1 doesn't make you Warren Buffett)



* - depends on how quickly you work, 1-2 days was enough for me
** - potentially not true and not guaranteed
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honestreviews on July 05, 2015, 03:40:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures + 1 x 2 hour practical (i.e. tute + MATLAB class)

Assessment: 10 weekly assignments (1% each lol how shit), THREE HOUR end of semester exam (80% lol how shit)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep

Past exams available:  Yep. Three with with solutions uploaded to LMS. There were probably more from the library site, but I didn't bother.

Textbook Recommendation:  Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 11th edn, Wiley, 2013 - Never bought it, never touched it, never got the pdf. I have no clue what it looks like AT ALL.

Lecturer(s): Craig Hodgson (I think there was also another two lecturers… Can't remember their names)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
TL;DR

I thoroughly enjoyed maths for most of the years of my existence. I spent half of my primary school life doing maths problems for the lols and I did spesh as a therapeutic de-stressor last year when English was being an A-grade A-hole (I do not kid - I was THAT person), but I can't say that I enjoyed Linear Algebra all that much. The first few weeks I found it interesting, but as was akin to the rest of my entire schooling career, every subject decided to simultaneously crank the heat up a notch. From about week 4/5 onwards the content got pretty airy fairy and abstract (while other subjects were also getting busier), and I found it hard to keep up.

I dislike things I am not good at (if that much wasn't already obvious). Not understanding things renders me snippy and irritable, but I'll give this subject a fair mark of 3 because it was interesting and doable at the start, and probably would've still been doable if I was proactive enough to seek out help. I find this subject was pretty damn well organised, and there was plenty of help provided. There are many, many consultations where you can just walk in and consult a tutor about whatever you don't get. There's even a discussion board online where you post questions and tutors/lecturers answer them for you (I didn't even find out about this until two days before my exam... DAMN). They also give you all the lecture slides like the week before you even begin the course, and print them all out and bind them. Or alternatively, if you are lazy like me, just go to the co-op and buy it for like $10.

The tutes were also pretty helpful. They came with nice worked solutions (unlike the exercise booklet, in which half the solutions stated "proof required") so I usually learnt through the tute sheets. I'm not sure what most tutors are like, but I quite liked my tutor (who was also my lecturer). He had a very calm and soothing vibe about him with the air of somebody who's genuinely here to help you.
(He also very helpfully replied to my emails within a few hours, provided I emailed at a reasonable time, which was very lovely of him and seemingly a rarity around university faculty. You go Craig Hodgson, four for you Craig Hodgson.)

The MATLAB test was pretty standard stuff. There was this one thing I couldn't get the program to solve properly, so out of sheer desperate I did the 3 (out of a full 22) mark question by hand. Hence I've decided MATLAB is useless and not a great program.

Luckily for most people (including me), the department writes pretty gentle exams, given the sort of torture they could set if they wanted to see students writhe in pain. There's plenty of ridiculously abstract topics they could write on that the course covers for about 1 lecture slide out of 300+ (like something about invariant somethings… clearly I have no clue) but they choose to go with problems that are easily doable within a three hour timeframe. Thank you Craig (and whoever the other lecturers are) for being so gentle and kind on my poor soul.

All in all this was a reasonable subject. I didn't enjoy it a great deal, and I dealt with a lot of swotvac stress ("Omg no, I forgot THIS as well?!?!") but the subject is very well organised and if it weren't for personal circumstances I still believe I would've enjoyed it more.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honestreviews on July 05, 2015, 03:53:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: GERM10006/GERM20007/GERM30005 German 5

Workload:  1 x 1-hour lecture, 1 x 1-hour tutorial, 1 x 2-hour seminar

Assessment:  3 essays (3 x 12.5% each), Mid-sem (10%), Oral Presentation (10%), Listening test/Vocab List/Encyclopaedia Entry (5%), Exam (37.5%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No, no past exams, no sample exams, no sample questions, no clear indication of exam structure

Textbook Recommendation: Grammar Book, never used in class, tutors expect work to be done at home. Buying it will make your life a bit easier.

Lecturer(s): Varies, different tutors take different lectures

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2015

Rating:  1.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2

Comments:

Ah German 5. Out of the 4 subjects that I did this semester, this was most definitely my 4th favourite.

Positives:
1.   You get exposed to some great German literature and you talk about some great German authors and playwrights like Keun, Goethe, Brecht, etc. Some of the essay topics are quite interesting.
2.   Tutors are nice and friendly.
3.   Lectures are recorded, so you can skip lectures and watch them at home.
4.   Lecture slides are uploaded, so you can skip watching lectures at home.

Negatives:

1.   Lectures and Tutorials
The first 2 lectures contained some truly intellectually stimulating content, such as: what books you need, how not to plagiarise, hurdle requirements, a list of online dictionaries, the role of the lecture and a meme asking you why you are here at the German 5 lecture. I kid you not, there is literally a Harry Potter meme asking why you are at the German 5 lecture.
The 1st tutorial is spent on learning how not to plagiarise, how to use a dictionary, and finally, how not to plagiarise. The 2nd tutorial is a compulsory library tour in which you are shown how to search up a library catalogue and how to find a book in the library. This helps you learn how not to plagiarise.

2.   Assessments throughout semester (and some tips)
Oral presentation: You are allowed to bring in cue cards, but if you use them too much, you will be penalised heavily. Huge penalty if you read.

Mid-sem: allocation of marks is bizarre, 3 marks for one sentence. Good luck.

Essays:
You aren’t allowed to ask any native speaker for help, not even to proofread. Feedback is quite vague. You will be told that you have used the wrong word. BUT YOU WILL NOT BE TOLD WHAT THE RIGHT WORD IS.
At some point in history, a genius decided that the best way for university students to learn a foreign language was to a) prohibit them from learning from native speakers and b) provide vague feedback that highlights what is wrong but never explains what is right.

3.   Grammar!
All grammar is done at home and when you struggle with grammar there will be a puzzled face looking at you telling you that you should have done grammar at home so you should know your German grammar.
Yes, because apparently doing exercises from a textbook is meant to replace face-to-face education.

4.   The exam
This is the true pinnacle of German 5.
There are 0 past papers. And 0 sample questions. Oh yeah, and it’s always at the end of the exam period, so everybody will be partying but you’ll still have an exam.
Some tips:
Lecture/Tutorial component: Memorise lots of random context, history and plots of the texts and authors you’ve studied. You’ll be asked obscure questions like, what psychological concepts did Sigmund Freud invent (yes, highly relevant to German 5)
Language seminar component: There’s no real way to prepare. You just have to know how to write some simple but grammatically correct sentences.
Grammar: learn the grammar terms for German, e.g. know how to translate “preposition” and “conjunction” and “adverbial clause” into German, and then learn how to explain (in German) when these are used in a sentence. Then there are some normal grammar exercises.

TL;DR:
Pretty good if you want to learn lots of little tiny bits of German literature. Really bad if you want to actually get good at speaking/writing German. You will be paying money to tour the library. At the end of the course you will learn how not to plagiarise.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dorrigo on July 07, 2015, 10:25:30 am
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30002 Principles of Immunology

Workload:  3 x 1-hour lectures

Assessment:  2 x multiple-choice MSTs (20% each), and an exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No, although some example questions will be discussed in the review lecture(s). There are also weekly revision quizzes (not assessed) released throughout the semester.

Textbook Recommendation: Janeway's Immunobiology. I read it. If you're interested in doing well, I don't see why you wouldn't.

Lecturer(s): Andrew Brooks (9/10), Odilia Wijburg (8/10), Sammy Bedoui (8/10), Thomas Gebhardt (7/10)

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2015

Rating:  4.9/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95

Comments:

I found this subject to be engaging, stimulating and overall a positive experience. As a Microbiology and Immunology major, there was no choice as to whether I took it or not; however, if I were to be given the choice, I would, undoubtedly.

The lecturers were, to varying degrees, clear and concise in the communication of complex concepts, and more than happy to answer any questions. I would advise any future students to pay particularly close attention to everything Sammy says in lectures (roughly a third of the subject). His slides are sparse, but his descriptions are not, and it is his descriptions that you will be assessed upon.

In terms of content, the first few weeks focus on Ig and TCR structure and genetics, the particulars of the innate immune response (PRRs, DC maturation and activation), and molecular immunology. This should be familiar to students who have taken the MIIM2000x subjects, and (presumably) those in Biomedicine, though of course it will be explored in greater depth. Be prepared to ratchet up a gear in the second half of semester, the subject definitely becomes more challenging, as the focus shifts to B- and T- Cell development, obscure, niche Lymphocyte variants; Immunopathology, and even a lecture on cutting-edge breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy. There is a LOT to remember by the time June runs around, but if you manage to study consistently throughout the semester, don't fall behind, and tune in to the level of detail they expect of you, there is no reason you shouldn't do well.

The assessment was fair, and most people did reasonably well. The MSTs were 40 MCQ each, with 20 q's 'simple' style, and 20 'complex.' The exam was ~30 MCQ and a choice of 5 from 6 SAQ.

From the horse's mouth:
Highest mark: 98
Average: 67
H1: 36% of class, H2A: 9%, H2B: 9%, H3: 9%, Pass: 21% and Fail: 16%
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dorrigo on July 07, 2015, 12:00:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: PATH 30001 - Mechanisms of Human Disease

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures per week

Assessment: 2 x MSTs (20% each), Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No.  Some sample questions were provided (for both the MSTs and end-of-semester)

Textbook Recommendation:  Robbins and Cotran is useful, but not always detailed enough in regards to particular pathologies.

Lecturer(s): Mostly Theo Mantamadiotis, a handful by Vicki Lawson, and a scattering of experts who lecture on their particular topic of interest.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: 90

Comments:
Don't do this subject, it's a headache.

The lectures and content are not cohesive, and the semester will be spent jumping from one unrelated topic to another, which makes it quite difficult to immerse yourself in the subject. The first few weeks were particularly frustrating, as we spent time covering seemingly random aspects of cell biology cobbled together with some pathological principles (which in all honesty didn't make much sense half the time). The transition from general to more specific topics was welcome, and the strength of this subject (pitiful as it is), was the focus on specific diseases.

Theo is not a great communicator, which is frustrating as he presents the vast majority of the first ~15 lectures. His lack of knowledge was blatantly obvious in certain areas, which did not inspire confidence. The various experts, and Vicki, were much better - the second half of the semester was a great improvement as a result.

Assessment was... interesting. Both MSTs contained more than a few strangely worded questions. The exam contained a couple of exact repeats from the second MST, case in point of how disorganised the subject could be, followed by long-style MCQ (quite straightforward), and two long-answer questions (a choice from two lots of four).

I repeat, while I managed to do well in this subject, I would not recommend it to anyone. It was a pain.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Fleety on July 10, 2015, 02:49:19 pm
Subject Code/Name AGRI10039: Australia in the Wine World

Workload: 4 full days of lectures and practical classes. (8:30am-8:30pm with generous breaks)

Assessment:
Examination - Theory (2 hours) = 40% (During teaching block)
Examination - Practical (1 hour) = 30% (During teaching block)
2 online quizzes = 15% each (one each weekend per fortnight following the teaching block)

Lectopia Enabled:  No (not really necessary)

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  'A good nose & great legs' by Robert Geddes. The edition isn't important and i would highly recommend picking up this book for the course. It can be borrowed from the university library or it was available for purchase at the start of the week for about $40 (subject to change). The book itself is actually really interesting and appears to have been written in a manner such that anyone can pick it up and learn the principles of wine.

Lecturer(s): Chris Barnes

Year & Semester of completion: July 2014

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments: It's the subject every wine-drinking uni student has clicked on and thought of doing and I thought it's about time the subject got a review.

The subject itself is broken down into 8 modules (Copy/paste):
Spoiler
Module 1: Introduction
This module introduces students to the role of wine in society and the historical perspectives that have led to the Australian wine industry as we see it today.

Module 2: Grape Varieties: Australia vs. The rest of the world
This module covers the major grape varieties cultivate in the world. This will include the “Classic” varieties of the Old World and lesser known but important regional cultivars .The topic of clonal variation will be discussed, especially in its relation the flavour. New trends in hybrid varieties will also be discussed.

Module 3: Viticulture and Oenology
This module will be an overview of current grape growing and wine making practices in Australia.

Module 4: Australian Wine Regions
This module will cover the major and emerging wine regions of Australia. A discussion of climatic conditions and major regional cultivars.

Module 5: Wine Regions of the World
This module will cover the major wine regions of the world. Including brief history, climatic conditions, major cultivars and wine styles. This will be broken up as follows:
•   France
•   Italy
•   New Zealand
•   Germany and Central Europe

Module 6: Wine Business and Commerce
This module will cover wine business in Australia including export and domestic markets.

Module 7: Wine in Society
This module will cover the role of wine in contemporary society. This will be in a World and Australian context and will look at recent history and trends for the future. Wine in religion, culture and politics.

Module 8: Sensory Evaluation of Wine
This module will introduce students to the sensory evaluation of wine. The use of palate mapping and threshold testing will be employed.

Pre-week
There's quite a bit of stuff you've got to complete before you actually begin the intensive week. The coordinators will upload a good chunk of readings to complete in the lead up to the subject. Don't fret though, cause they're very easy reading, relatively interesting and not extensively long. If you've got a family friend or relative who is a wine-nut (cmon, we all do), ask him/her to give you some pointers (tastings) of some common wine varieties. If you've even got the tiniest bit of background knowledge from either working in hospitality or over-passionate wine-o relative you'll walk into this subject with a massive advantage, but its absolutely not a requirement for doing well. I've friends who only knew the difference between Golden Oak 'Fruity Lexia' and dry white and they still did well.
TLDR; read the readings

During the Week
The week is completely undertaken in the Melbourne Uni Agricultural campus in Dookie (near Benalla/Shepparton area). Please note that you will be required to pay $400 for the weeks accommodation including 3 meals a day, tea, coffee etc. Getting to the campus is relatively straight forward. If you don't have a car or someone to drive you then the train service is your next option, and they will organize for buses to pick you up and take you to the campus which was convenient. Each day is long and given the time frame pretty intensive.

Each day's (Monday-Thursday) lectures begin at 8:30am and will usually carry through to lunch with a generous break halfway through. After lunch you usually have another quick lecture and then some "Practicals" in the afternoon. Practicals involve wine tasting and evaluations. You'll look at different varieties, wine faults, production methods and also the difference in aged wine. If you're worried about getting drunk/tipsy during these you've got the option to spit (most people do). You write practical notes as you go but they aren't assessed (however the more you write the better off you'll be as the exam will bring in things discussed). You'll then have dinner and afterwards either another practical or lecture, with the day usually finishing around 8:30pm, meaning you've got a few hours before bed to chill out and review the days content.

On the afternoon of the Thursday however, you will split into 2 groups and visit some local wineries (ours were Tahbilk and Pizzini) where you will meet the winemakers, view the machinery, taste some samples, check out some of the vines and head home.

On the Final day you will have the Practical exam (30%) and Theory Exam (40%). Ill talk about the assessment individually below.

Post Week

You'll complete the two online quizzes which open for a weekend (fri-mon) a few weeks after the teaching block. Each are worth 15%. I'll talk about the assessment individually below.


NB: Some of the structure from this point onwards does not reflect the current course - please be aware it may be different to those registering in the future.

Assessments:

Practical Exam (30%): For this assessment you will be given 5 unlabelled wine samples and you will be asked questions like: Variety? Characteristic flavor? and a specialty question such as: "Has the wine been fermented in Oak?"/"Food matchings?". Most people will do pretty well on this section.
Theory Exam (40%): For this is assessment, it will pretty much separate those who have done the readings/attended lectures and those who haven't. Its not time-intensive and most people finish early. There's multi-choice, short answer and a choice of 2 essay questions from a generous pool of options.
Online Quizzes (15% ea) x2 Well. I'll just say it straight up. They're repeatable and they take the most recent submission for your final grade. There is however a pool of over 100 Q's for each quiz and you'll get 10 each work 1.5 marks. As long as you're willing to put the time in and spam the test for a few hours, 30% for free served a golden platter.
This is no longer the case - the quizzes have been changed to one attempt only. I believe (don't quote me), the weighting has changed to 10 percent each, with increased weighting on the exams undertaken during the week. Just a heads up.

Final Comments

The lecturer Chris Barnes is absolutely fantastic. Been in the wine industry his entire life, very passionate and easy to listen to for the long days of lectures. Super friendly bloke too who is happy to answer questions.
Also, if you go in winter period brings warm clothes cause the conditions are freezing and the rooms they offer aren't heated very well.
Would also like to address a floating comment that this subject has the highest fail rate in the university which is absolutely not true. I heard fail rate "hovered around 2% and the H1 rate is proportionately high".

Would overall recommend the subject to anyone who:
- Wants to lighten their workload during semester,
- Enjoys wine
- Wants to/is working in hospitality during their degree
- Wants the words "wine world" on your academic transcript  8)
Don't do this subject if:
- You don't like the taste of wine
- You've got no taste buds (could prove to be problematic  ;D)
- You don't want the words "wine world" on your academic transcript  ???

More than happy to answer any questions directly via PM! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: TrebleClef on July 27, 2015, 11:54:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10005 Calculus 1
Workload:  (3 x one hr lectures, 1 x practical/tutorial per week. )

Assessment:  (10 Assignments [20%], 3hr end of semester exam [80%])

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes,with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, there are quite a few available, around 4 with full solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is a textbook, but DO NOT buy it.

Lecturer(s): Dr Alex Ghitza, Dr John Banks, and Dr Mark Fackrell

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments:

As others have mentioned, this subject is pretty much specialist maths, minus a bit. I quite enjoyed methods in VCE, albeit I am no math whiz, and only scored a mid-30. So, if you’re like me, not particularly strong in maths, and a gold medallist in silly arithmetic mistakes, exercise extreme caution when doing the assignments and the exam.

Dr Ghitza was a great lecturer, and the lectures consisted of filling in the blanks in the lecture notes bought from Co-op. They were mostly worked examples, which I found really helpful, although some may find the format tedious and dry. The topics are covered fairly quickly, and revision before the tutes is definitely recommended, especially if you don’t really process the content in lectures while you’re copying. 

The assignments are straightforward, with a few tricky questions here and there, but since it’s a take-home, you can seek help if you need to.

The exam, it isn’t easy, and it’s fairly long and requires precision.The questions they ask are all within the realms of whats taught in the lectures of course, but under pressure, simple becomes complex. There are some tricky questions that can really do your head in. For those who are maths inclined it would probably be fairly doable. For those who aren’t, like me, be prepared to work hard in this subject to succeed. Working under timed conditions was my biggest enemy, so practice, practice, practice! Don’t leave the exam revision till the last few days, learn to balance your time between the different subjects, and don’t spend it all on one harder subject like I did. This resulted in panic and mind blanks during the exam.

Overall, the subject was well run, and the content enjoyable to learn. This subject is no walk in the park, but if you work hard, and organise your time properly, there is no reason you wouldn’t excel!  :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on July 28, 2015, 01:13:52 pm
This isn't a review but I've just noticed that the directory in the opening post hasn't been updated since February... perhaps if one of the moderators has time this could be done?

(Feel free to delete my post)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on August 05, 2015, 03:53:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90043 Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture and 1x two-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
Participation (6%)
Case Study Reports (6%)
Group Presentation (10%)
Group Report (20%)
MST (18%)
2 hour exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Nope (chuck testa)

Textbook Recommendation: None required

Lecturer(s):
Predominately guest lectures (yes it's one of those subjects), but multiple lectures were given by:

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 3.25/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: It's a bit of a chore at times, and the assessment/admin could be handled better, but this is an okay subject with high-grade guest lecturers

Comments:
This subject is a lot different to the other first semester Master of Eng subjects. It’s primarily focused on written and verbal communication, as well as a good dose of critical thinking and engagement with real-world engineering infrastructure projects. As such, it’s a subject that some students (particularly international students as the subject demands high-quality written English to do well) struggle with and detest.

As the name of the subject isn’t particularly cryptic, you can probably tell what its about. “Sustainability” is the core theme that runs through the entirety of the course, and this is looked at with reference to (primarily) large-scale infrastructure projects.

Lectures
So as I mentioned, the majority of the lectures in this subject are taken by guest lecturers. You have Hector and Meenakshi that cover some of the core content of the subject that you’ll be expected to integrate into your case studies, assignments and exam answers. Then you’ll have a whole host of other folks from both academia and industry that speak about subjects ranging from cost-benefit analysis to governance to spatial data infrastructure to water resources and so on. While the majority of these lectures are well presented, the content is a bit dry and kind of obvious at times, and not all of it is going to be relevant to your assessment, so it can be pretty easy to doze off.

Assessment
Despite only having one large assignment that carries on from ~week 2 to week 12, this subject has a litany of smaller assessment that’ll keep you fairly busy throughout the semester.

Perhaps the most prominent is the 6 case studies, where you’re given a week to go through a set of “case materials” (new articles, engineering reports and documents etc.) on an infrastructure project and address a few questions. While this seems fine in principle, the way that the case studies were handled made them more of a hassle than they needed to be. You were restricted to writing only one single-sided page as your answer to generally between 5-7 questions, which basically means no more than 100 words per question unless you intend on providing a magnifying glass to read the size 3 font. As you can tell by the length of my reviews, I tend to be pretty (and unapologetically) verbose, so I initially had some trouble fitting in an answer I was happy with within the one page limit.

But, after about the third case study, we were told that we were to answer it as just one flowing piece of writing – a mini essay essentially – rather than just address the questions. This actually made it a bit easier for me, but it would’ve been nice to get a heads up a bit earlier as this is apparently what they expected from the start.

Each of the case studies probably took ~2-3 hours to get your head around the materials and write a response, and many students (including me) complained that they were only worth 1% each, especially when the MST only went for 30 minutes and was worth 18%. (I’d expect that they’ll change this next year.) And for something worth 1% each, they were also marked pretty precisely (I won’t say harshly, as I think I’m a bit of a harsh marker myself); spelling, grammar, sentence construction and presentation are considered just as important as what you actually write.

Speaking of the MST, it was also a bit of a drag. Some of the questions asked were oddly specific, the sort of thing that was posted on a single lecture slide that was on screen for no more than a minute in passing. But the majority of questions were quite common sensical.

The other two pieces of assessment are the group presentation and group project. Here, you’re allocated into groups of 4-5 people within your tute group and given an infrastructure project (generally in Australia and relatively recent or ongoing) and asked to assess its sustainability, primarily using the “models” presented in the lectures. This is another thing that I wasn’t all that thrilled with in regards to the assessment: it seems that taking the obvious and somewhat banal approach of just running through the models is what gets you the marks. A lot of uni assessment is like this – where you just have to “play the game” – but I never think that such derivative analysis is all that useful or engaging.

(Note: there is a subject specific website that covers the majority of the models here)

Anyway, I had a solid group and we ended up doing pretty well for the final report (though not amazing for the presentation), but the mentality of this subject is kind of weird in that it tries to recreate this sort of stereotypically “professional” setting. When you give the group presentation, you’ll be expected to wear “business attire,” and initially, if you wanted to say something in the group discussions in the tutes, you’d be expected to stand up, as if it was the house of reps (this was eventually abandoned after they realised that it just stultifies the actual ability to have a conversation).

Tutes (and Tutors)
One of the tutors that some students who have done a subject in the from the geomatics department will be familiar with is Victoria Petrevski. She’s somewhat divisive as a tutor, but she’s ultimately really good at leading a tutorial and illustrating her (high) expectations for students. Her marking can be a bit nitpicky at times.

But unfortunately, her promise-keeping record rivals Tony Abbott, as on several occasions the prescribed timelines for marking and feedback were not kept. However, when the subject has only two tutors for a cohort of over 300 students, this is quite understandable. And though not much feedback is provided, it's probably more than most eng subjects.

David Wilson is the other tutor and is, by all reports, pretty good too, though an easier marker than Victoria.

Exam
This year’s exam was a little bit of a departure from previous years, with multiple choice questions and one extended response as opposed to simply having four medium length written response answers.

As such, this year's exam almost took as long to read as it did to answer. There were about 8-10 full pages of “case materials” to read, some for the multiple choice and some for the long-answer question.

Some of the multiple choice questions were a bit wishy-washy, and half of them were worth a full 3 marks out of 90, quite significant for a multiple choice that seemingly has a couple of potential answers.

The long answer question was quite straight forward, essentially the same process as you’d done with the 6 case studies throughout the semester, this one on the potential to constructive a massive facility to store nuclear waste in rural Australia. Again, you’re being marked on both what you say and the professionalism with which you say it (and many students detest it for this reason): this isn’t an exam where you can get away with dot points.

Overall
This isn’t going to be a subject that you’re going to put a ridiculous amount of effort into, but, as a bit of departure from the more quantitative subjects I did this semester, I didn’t mind the more discursive and qualitative approach that SIE offers. I might be the exception to the rule for engineers, but I love to write, so the critical assessment of written and verbal language in this subject didn’t phase me like it might to some others (particularly students where English is a second language). If this sounds like you, don’t be afraid to have a few consultations with the academic skills unit at the uni; they can really help you to improve you’re writing to a “masters level.”

(Man that was a long and boring review)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: lachie122 on August 17, 2015, 08:52:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR30002 Fluid Mechanics

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures. 1x1 tutorial. 1x2 hour prac (one per semester)

Assessment:  Assignment on Bernoulli equation and friction 10%, Prac report 10%, Exam 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, see below for issues with this.

Past exams available:  Yes, Library and on LMS, no solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Rackel San Nicholas

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 1

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Comments: Right where to start... A bit of this review will reference a previous review that was posted for 2014 semester 1 as it has a vastly differing opinion of the subject. I would encourage you to read that as well as mine. A lot of the criticism is based on the lecturer, which I believe has changed many times, so your situation may differ, however this is 'my' experience with the subject.

So this subject is HEAVILY theory based, there is a truck load of content to learn over the course of the semester and a lot of difficult concepts to grasp. Some will find it easy others will find it impossible, however most of us struggled with it mainly due to the lectures. Rackel, who you may remember from Engineering Materials, has a very strong French accent and can at times struggle to make sense. English is most definitely her second language, as she herself admitted multiple times. This makes it hard for students to grasp the difficult concepts, especially due to the immense volume of content meaning it had to be explained at a rapid pace. This isn't a good recipe for doing well, which was made all the more worse in that she seemed unable to find a way to work through examples in the lectures. She started off using the doc camera, which was alright except that she would immediately pull the sheet away upon completion not giving anyone a chance to finish copying it down. This also lead to a problem with lecture recordings where she would leave the screen recording the blank document camera and not the powerpoint slides for long sections, although this could be fixed by simply having the slides with you and following the audio. However this changed at about week 3 where she started using the whiteboard which did mean that you could always see the slides on the recording, yet unless you were at the lecture sitting in the front 3 rows you wouldn't be able to see what was on it. This made lectures very hard to follow, and I didn't really get a lot out of them at all. So that was one of the main issues with the subject I had however, again this will most likely not be the case if you study it in the future.

My predominant issue though is with the subject structure. Firstly we were given virtually no opportunity to use the mountains of theory in real life engineering situations, something which I was most disappointed with as it is what I enjoy most about studying engineering, and what I believe we are supposed to be getting out of this course. The only opportunity was in the first and only assignment in which we were given a pretty dull example about a buildings plumbing system. You also spent more time trying to get the right values from the questions due to the poor diagrams than actually solving them. Even the prac was mostly just a setup rig used to sketch graphs that simply proved the theories. Also to add to that the assignment and prac report were worth a grand total of 20% of the final mark. Not only that but they only covered about 20% of the content in the subject meaning the other 80% we never got the chance to apply until the exam, where naturally they were just the same sort of questions in the lectures and tutes with no context or application to real life. Speaking of the exam, you would think given the amount of content there was to learn that a formula sheet would be necessary, especially since pretty much every other eng subject gives you one. NOPE. This of course meant learning every formula, of which there was at least 15, off by heart. Sure some of the equations were given in the questions however there was no way of knowing what to memorise and what to expect to be given. You essentially have to gamble, based on previous exams what equations you'd think you would have to memorize, as some years had some equations given and others didn't. Furthermore 80% is way too much imo, for an exam to be worth, and given there was no motivation to learn the content that wasn't required for assignments, lead to massive cramming and stress levels through the roof. Ideally we should have had 2 or 3 more assignments with some interesting engineering applications that addressed the other parts of the subject.

Finally, tutorials were probably the saving grace of this subject, I went to a few different tutors and found them all way better at explaining the concepts than the lectures. Plus the ability to take down notes for examples was very much needed. I found I learnt most of the subject from the tutes, it was a shame they only went for an hour and couldn't cover more questions. They all follow the basic engineering tutorial format, review the previous weeks material for the first 10 minutes, then work your way through the questions provided, with solutions given at the start of the week after. The only criticism with this was that the solutions were hand written in really bad handwriting, making it hard to understand what values they were using and the logic for answering the question, although if you went to the tute and copied down your own solutions this wasn't an issue.

Conclusions and advice, lectures are an annoying slog, the lack of engineering applications is disappointing, the subject structure is unreasonable, the exam is unfair,the tutorials are a good way to make sure you don't fail. Try to get to learn the concepts as early as possible and keep reviewing them if you can to keep them in your memory in order to avoid the massive exam cramming sessions. Use the discussion forums to ask questions about lecture content as it make much more sense when it is typed down. Good luck if you will be studying it in the future ;)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Inside Out on August 21, 2015, 08:47:47 pm
Subject Code/Name: Elen30013
Electronic Systems Implementation


Workload: 2 lectures a week, one 3 hour lab 
Assessment: exam 60%, log book 30%, group oral presentation 10% 

Lectopia Enabled: NO 

Past exams available: Yes, 5 i think. 

Textbook Recommendation: All the textbook recommendations seem all over the place 

Lecturer(s): Peter Farrell


Year & Semester of completion: 2015 sem 2

Rating:  -1/5

Your Mark/Grade: N/A

Comments: I recommend anyone still doing undergrad, since it is not a core to get into masters, DO NOT DO THIS SUBJECT! You will basically be going through it blindly. Lectures are useless. The lecturer just babbles on and on. There are no workshop guidelines, no steps unlike other electrical subjects. The demonstrator basically just goes "blablabla" in the first 2 minutes of the lab and that's it and you don't even know what you're trying to find out or how to do it. If you ask a question, they will be really grumpy about it and explain it incoherently. I recall Peter talking about how people tested the accuracy of the oscillope for 15 minutes straight. I fell asleep inside. I am dropping this subject even though i will be considered part time and won't get any Centrelink money. That says a lot. This is worse than digital systems, worse then any subject i've ever had. There are no practice questions to work on, nothing to really prepare you for the labs or anything like that. There really isn't any content. It's like cooking something without a recipe. I wasn't going to post anything, but i think we should have more reviews for subjects like these.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mikrokosmos on September 26, 2015, 04:46:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20026 Real Analysis

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures per week, 1x1 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  6 Assignments worth a combined 20% of the grade, 80% exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes lectures are recorded and anything written by the lecturer is captured by the document camera. I never used it however.

Past exams available:  Yes several recent exams, as well as older exams for past similar subjects. Worked solutions for a few exams.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook required, the notes are comprehensive.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Deborah King

Year & Semester of completion:  2015 Semester 1

Rating:  5/5 For thought-provoking and well run subject.

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: This was for sure my favorite subject I've done so far at uni. Real Analysis is an introduction to a more rigorous 'proper' style of mathematics, and is a completely different experience to calculus or linear algebra. The class starts off very gradually, you learn the rules of predicate logic and proof and apply them to very simply examples in set theory and arithmetic. It's very important you understand exactly what all of this means, because the second half of the semester will very quickly go through applications of these techniques. Seriously if you're lost in the first 3 weeks you're gonna suffer later on.

The class is all about proof and logic, very little computational maths involved. The most rigorous math subject I've done, every other subject brushes over the details of some proofs a little.

Dr. Deb was excellent. She communicates the ideas very well, has a great speaking voice, 10/10 lecturer.

However I think this is a subject that's not for everyone. Attention to detail is vital and the entire course is linked together in such a way that it's hard to get back on track if you get lost. Some classmates were frustrated at how silly and simple some of the details were.

Tutorial were a lot of fun, with thought provoking questions, and again, essentially no computational maths. They differ from first year in that students in Real Analysis tent to want be there. My tutor also had interesting insight into postgraduate maths, and opened every tutorial with open discussion about basically anything in maths.

Assignments were easy, the 6th one was an amusing essay which surprised a few people including me.

Exam had some difficult questions, but also some questions that are just free marks (truth tables!).

Subject is not for everyone, but it's exceptionally well presented.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on October 28, 2015, 01:30:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90024 High Rise Structures

Workload: I actually can’t remember, but there’s 36 hours of lectures all up plus a few computer lab sessions

Assessment:
Finite Element Assignment (4%)
Project Part A: Floor Systems (6%)
Project Part B: Lateral Load Resisting Systems (5%)
Project Part C: Wind and Earthquake Loading (5%)
Project Part D: Space Gass Modelling (10%)
3 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Yes

Textbook Recommendation: None required

Lecturer(s):
Mainly Priyan Mendis, but also Tuan Ngo, Massoud Sofi and a couple of guests

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

TL;DR: High Rise broke my heart.

Comments:
It was only after I got my mark and viewed my exam for this subject that a firm attitude of ambivalence towards High Rise set in. I guess that’s why it’s taken me 4 months to write a review – I still really don’t know what I think about it.

Overall, it might be the most interesting subject I’ve done from the engineering faculty at the UoM. But this is probably more due to my personal biases than anything else – high rise building design is a field I’d love to end up working in.

So why the mixed feelings? Well, it’s the subject that broke my H1 streak, and it did so when I expected it to be my best subject of the semester. It actually ended up being the worst I’ve done on an exam since undergrad maths. I feel like a whiney and juvenile twat writing that but there you go.

I think in most other cases I wouldn’t harbour any sort of grudge for a subject that I got a H2A in. That’s obviously a more than respectable mark and one that I’d generally be happy with. But I had a chance to review my exam paper for this one, and found a few points where I really didn’t understand why I had lost marks. And after submitting a few questions to the subject coordinator about this, I never got a response. Hence disgruntlement.

But I’ll try to keep the rest of the review as if I had written it before I had got my result or seen my exam. Overall it’s going to be pretty positive.

Lectures
I can never tell if Priyan Mendis is a good lecturer or not. He’s a good guy, for sure. And he’s got a whole bunch of experience and a whole bunch of valuable insight within the field of high rise buildings. But he often seems ill prepared to actually give a lecture. He’s the sort of guy that will post the entire semester’s lecture slides before week 1, and sometimes I don’t think he’s looked at them again since the last time he gave that lecture. This results in a whole bunch of jumping around slides, chopping and changing, and it makes his lectures quite stilted and stultifying.

Luckily, he also posts written notes for each topic of the subject, which generally go into a solid amount of depth yet remain concise and cogent. Using these is by far the best way to learn the content of the course, and it makes the lectures somewhat superfluous at times.

I should probably mention some of the topics that are covered while I’m at it. High rise buildings encapsulate just about the entire field of structural engineering, so there’s obviously a pretty large pool from which to fish out the content for this subject. Some of the more important things you’ll learn is stuff like how tall buildings resist lateral loads (i.e. wind and earthquake loads). You’ll also learn how to calculate those lateral loads in accordance with Australian standards, and you’ll learn about calculating design/gravity loads on high rises and how they are resisted. These are areas full of innovation and constant development, so it can be pretty interesting. You’ll also learn some stuff about facades, frames, foundations, and fires (and other things that start with f), and get an introduction to finite element analysis (with the program Strand7), which unfortunately isn’t particularly well taught.

Assessment
The first assignment is essentially a finite element modelling exercise. This will be a breeze for anyone with some background in Strand7 or similar programs, but if you’re completely new to this area it can be a little confusing. The interpretation of results is probably the most difficult part.

But the remaining assessment is booked as one continual project (with splayed due dates) that has you come up with a conceptual design of a high rise building. This project is split into four parts: the first sees you design a floor system (i.e. beams, slabs and columns) for a high rise and calculate the gravity loading; the second exercise has you calculate the lateral load resisting capacity of a given LLRSS configuration; the third has you calculate wind and earthquake loading based on AS1170.2 and AS1170.4; and the final involves modelling this LLRSS in ol’ mate Space Gass and monitoring the lateral deflection of your building under the aforementioned wind loading.

This project is probably the best part of the subject. Each of the components is done individually, so your building is kind of your baby. Unfortunately, the design configuration is quite constrained and you aren’t given much creative freedom, but its a good project nonetheless and by the end of it you’ll really feel like you’ve achieved something. Oh and most people I know got good marks for that assignment, so that’s another bonus.

Exam
While I don’t believe it is a hurdle, the exam for High Rise is worth 70% of your final mark. It’s a 3 hour exam, and while it’s not stupidly long like this year’s Structural Theory and Design 2 one was (which I believe was written by Leonard Cohen), there’s still quite a lot to get through.

Luckily, it’s also an exam that is quite easy to study for. The notes that I mentioned earlier have most of the answers within them somewhere, the calculation based questions aren’t that hard, and your pretty much told which topics are going to be on there and how many marks they are allocated prior to the exam.

But like I said in the outset, this was the worst I’ve done on an exam for quite a while, and though I think I was the victim of some harsh marking, I still don’t fully know why I struggled with it. But, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

Overall
I think I’ve gone through this entire review without mentioning that this subject is an elective, an optional subject for Civil and Structural majors. So overall, I think it’s a subject that I’d recommend for Structural majors, whether they are interested in tall building design or not. It’s a subject that pulls a lot of the facets of structural design together, and through the main assignment it puts them into a practical context. But the subject could be improved with better quality teaching and a more open line of communication between staff and students.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on October 29, 2015, 11:20:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30015: Techniques in Immunology 

Workload:  2 classes per week (either lecture, or debrief) and 9 pracs over semester.

Assessment:  Two written reports (1300 words) worth 12.5% each. Two 5-minute orals + question time worth 12.5% each. 2 hr end-of-semester written exam worth 50%. You need to have a satisfatory lab notebook in order to sit the exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Lectures are recorded, some of the debriefs that were held in the Doherty auditorium were as well.

Past exams available:  Nope, but on one of the exam preparation lectures Odilia gives you maybe 3-4 sample questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  All you need are the lab manuals and slides from the LMS.

Lecturer(s):
Dr. Odilia Wijburg (Flow Cytometry, Subject assessment)
Dr. Annabell Bachem (Innate Stimulation of Dendritic Cells)
Dr. Daniel Pellicci (Antigen Recognition by T-cells)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments: I always thought that practical subjects would be the bane of me but this was actually really enjoyable. The staff are incredibly supportive - kudos to Odilia and all of our fantastic demonstrators! Especially simpak for being super cool and chill too!

This subject is mandatory if you are doing an Immuno major (or if you do Micro/Immuno and don't do Techniques in Microbiology). There is almost no new theory in this subject. All the theoretical things you should have been taught in Principles of Immunology during semester 1. All the practicals you do get you to investigate what you learnt (usually just confirming known facts), so the background knowledge is pretty straightforward. You don't need to spend much time memorising details - just know the principles of all of your practicals, know how to interpret your results and relate them to the theory, and it seems like you should be set.

OK, so because this is a practical subject, you spend way less time actually sitting through lectures than you normally would. Lectures are only there to introduce you to the background info you need for each module/unit in the subject, otherwise they are to explain how you should write our oral and written reports. So sit back and chill. You'll usually have around 1 lecture per week. The class after your prac is usually when the demonstrators give you a debrief of the results. Use them to clear up anything you didn't understand dring the practical. They will also tell you what could've gone wrong in the prac and go through other questions in your lab manual too.

Depending on which group you're in, you'll have your own timetable for this subject. Different groups will be doing different pracs and therefore having different classes so be organised. Before each assessment, you also get to consultation session with your demonstrators just to iron out any last-minute questions you have regarding the prac you need to work on.

So, this subject is divided into 3 units. The theme of Unit 1 is the structure and function of the immune system. For prac 1A, you learn about flow cytometry (FACS) for the first time and use it to analyse T-cell development. In 1B, you use immunohistochemistry to stain for B and T-cells in the thymus and spleen. Finally, for 1C you are given a particular case study (all of them involve adoptive T-cell transfer) and you have to analyse it using FACS.

Then your first assessment pops up! You get assigned to do an oral presentation on one of the case studies, or the immunohistochemistry prac. You have a week to prepare your assigned prac with a partner. One of you will do the results/discussion, while the other will do intro/aims/methods and materials. Each person talks for 5 mins, and then afterwards your demonstrators will ask both of you questions. Sometimes the questions can be hard, left-of-field and brutal, but remember that the main point is to get you to talk and think out loud, so as long as you have something to say (even if it might be wrong) just blurt it out. I think the average for the orals was 10.5/12.5 so it is not bad anyway! Odilia has a whole lecture where she explains what you should include in your presentation so remember to check that out. Also, you are marked on your own individual performance. After receiving your oral marks you can get individual feedback if you ask for it.

In Unit 2, you look at innate stimulation of DCs using ELISA, FACS and qPCR. You'll be examining the expression of cytokines and surface markers. After going through the pracs, you get assigned to write a 1300-word report on one of them, with intro, aims, results and discussion. Ideally, you want to use your own data or figures, but if your data is totally screwed you can always use the demonstrator's results and figures. Again, Odilia presents a whole lecture on how long each section of your report should be and what you should include. You don't get your written reports back until like your very last class though, but your work is marked by two demonstrators who all give handwritten feedback on your hard-copy. For one of your prac sessions you also spend the entire time presenting different parts of a journal article about CCR7 expression and you have to explain the figures and experiments in the paper (dw you are not assessed on your presentation, but the journal club content is apparently assessed on the exam).

For Unit 3, you look at antigen recognition by T-cells using FACS and PCR again. You'll be using tetramer staining to look at TCR-peptide interactions, as well as TCR VB bias. For one of the pracs you have to go to a computer centre to determine what TRBV, TRBJ and CDR3 characteristics are being used in your antigen-specific population. You then have an oral and written report on two of these pracs, and the same things apply! Make sure you get feedback from your first round and use it to improve on your second round of assessment.

With the lab notebook, it's a hurdle requirement. It is pretty much a log of each prac you do - you should write up the intro, aims and methods/materials before each prac ALWAYS, and then just record notes and your observations into our book during the prac or when you get home. You need to also paste in any graph or image you generate on the computer, and then you need to at least write a brief conclusion on whether your aims were achieved and what could've gone wrong. It isn't hard, albeit maybe a little tedious and annoying but it is a good habit to practise! At around Week 6 they will check your lab notebook just to see if you're using it correctly - if you get a smile then you pass and if it's a frown its unsatisfactory, you gotta improve your game by the end of semester (because they will check it again to see if you've improved - nobody failed the second time round though). Your lab manual will tell you what you should write in it.

The exam is composed of 4 SA questions that will test your understanding of each prac you do - the principles of the techniques, what you actually did in the prac, interpreting your results etc. The exam is not a walk in the park though. It is quite long and a little hard I guess. You need to actually apply your knowledge, design your own experiments, make figures, describe and interpret the results of data they give you...And you also need to know specific experiments on the journal club. But don't fret - the average for the exam (going by 2014 data) was 51/70, with 40% of students achieving H1. Again, this isn't really too difficult of a subject - you already know all the theory, you are just learning how to confirm them using technology people often use in the lab.

What is really neat about this subject is that all the pracs tie in together really well. The background knowledge you need is pretty much all just revision. You can really see how different experimental designs complement each other in each module, how one technique can compensate for the shortcomings of another, and it gives you a much deeper appreciation of how science actually works. And the pracs are fun as hell as well! Sure, sometimes there is lots of waiting but in the meantime the demonstrators will go through questions in your lab manual or you can spend time filling out your lab notebook. Definitely a positive experience for anybody who likes wet lab-work! And you get to meet some awesome PhD students as well!

TL;DR - You have to do this subject for immuno but everything you learn is RELEVANT to what you've studied before, so it is actually pretty chill. Have heaps of fun, if you enjoyed the MIIM20002 pracs then you will like the third year Micro/Immuno ones!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 06, 2015, 11:49:23 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30001: Frontiers in Biomedicine 

Workload:  3x lectures per week. 4x tutorials per semester (otherwise spent as self-directed group revision). 1x 4hr practical per semester.

Assessment: 
Literature Searching and Bioinformatics Assignment (7.5%)
In-tute debate (5%)
Pre-practical quiz (3%)
Online MST quiz (10%)
Graphical Analysis Assignment (10%)
Peer Marking (2.5%)
Respiratory Assignment (12%)
End of semester LAQ exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Past exams released from 2010-2013.

Textbook Recommendation:  They sell a Frontiers in Biomedicine synopsis at Co-op which you won't use for anything else apart from your respiratory practical. Mainly has outlines of each lecture, otherwise pretty useless.

Lecturer(s): Too many that I cannot be bothered listing all of them (let's just say: A LOT)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: 2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)

Comments: As many of you know, I hated this subject the whole semester. I am pretty sure 95% of the biomed cohort would agree with me. I think someone said this before, but if you can survive this subject then you damn well have earnt your degree already, because you will be very frustrated, lost and you will give up even learning some parts of the course entirely.

OK, so this subject is very different from M2M. In this subject, you're meant to get a tour of new, exciting, cutting-edge fields of biomedicine. Personally, I don't think the fields seemed very cutting-edge to me, apart from stem cells and tissue engineering. You learn about metabolic syndrome (which is probably the best taught and takes up 1/3 of the course), stem cells/tissue engineering, lung diseases, neuropathic pain and drug dependence. In addition you get some random lectures thrown in completely out of nowhere (because it seems as if they don't know where to fit them) - these include lectures on vaccination, sleep, metabolomics, microbiota and, pharmaeconomics. If you're willing to take the risk because you're too frustrated to learn, you can skip some of these random lectures entirely and pray you won't need to answer it on the exam.

Consistently, throughout the semester, we felt that the lectures were very disjointed and just haphazardly organised. Frequently, each lecture is presented by someone new, which comes with a lot of problems. A lot of the time, it was not clear what the aim of the lecture was, we did not know what we were supposed to actually learn from the lecture, and sometimes different lecturers would present inconsistent information. It felt as if the lecturers didn't communicate between themselves too. There was no linear, cohesive narrative like there was in M2M - the order of the lectures was pretty much just spaghetti.

In the lectures, be prepared for lecturers to throw in random tidbits of information without really elaborating on them, you are just expected to understand. Never heard of short hairpin RNAs? Well, I'm just going to throw it in there and hope you understand how they can be used therapeutically. This trend was such a big annoyance in the pain lectures, where you would be told vague details about random parts of the brain, which came across as completely gibberish to non-neuro students.  I guess whether you enjoy a particular lecture or not depends on your field of study - for tissue engineering, you need to think like an engineer and consider stress, strain, also the profiles of the materials you use, or if you're more economically inclined, you might enjoy learning pharmaeconomics (I still have no idea what that lecture was about and gave up learning it after skimming through the first time). But for me, and a large part of the cohort, a lot of the lectures weren't interesting.

When you're studying, you're not expected to intensely rote-learn a huge amount of detail like you do in M2M. In Frontiers, you zoom out from the science and cover social, political, and epidemiological factors as well. It is pretty macro. It's not that bad but it is hard to know what you need to actually remember, and you'll find yourself asking yourself hmm that looks irrelevant but should I bother learning it anyway? You will get a good idea of what you sorta need to take out from each lecture when you get to practise exams though.

OK, onto assignments! These have hardly anything to do with your actual lectures, adding to the frustation. You are going to hear the words “graduate attributes” numerous times until it is drilled into your head. I think it is important to learn how to find resources by yourself and to learn how to peer-assess etc. But it would have been really nice if the content of the assignments were actually relevant to our lectures. Also, you do not get useful feedback for each assignment. Almost everybody in my tute got the same “well done!” on a criteria sheet that was handed back to us - no other comments, even though some of us certainly did not do very well. You will be constantly yoloing your assignments without knowing which areas you can improve on.

In the first bioinformatics assignment, you have to use PubMed and other resources to learn about FLPD and its genetic basis. You practise writing in scientific language, and you also practise writing to a layman. You then have a debate in one of your tutes where you have to present arguments for and against the creation of an Australian Biobank, 6 mins per side.

You also have a practical on the effects of Atenolol on the cardiorespiratory system. The pre-practical requires you to watch a recorded lecture on BP, and you need to actually read your prac book. In the prac, you get someone on a bike, record parameters like HR, BP and FEV1.0, then drug them and observe the effects. It is pretty boring. Then, after everyone in the cohort has had an opportunity to do the practical, you have to do a graphical assignment where you describe and interpret the results. This graphical assignment is actually marked by your peers, and your final mark you get will be the average of each marker. You get a free 2.5% for doing the marking. The median is quite high, 85% for the graphical assignment, but again you are not given constructive feedback. You will not know why someone has given you 1/10 for a perfectly fine answer, but deal with it. Finally, you also have a respiratory assignment where you have to compare the results of the cohort with that obtained from the UK biobank. Sometimes the wording of this assignment is ambiguious, sometimes you cannot really compare the data and have to do your own magical shenanigans to try make it comparable. You also have to write how uPAR is involved in respiratory disease, so PubMed is needed again.

The online MST at around week 7 or so is quite easy, you should get 100% as long as you have your lecture slides open. You have a few days to do it, it is NOT timed, and you can backtrack on your answers.

Your tutes aren't always particularly helpful. They never deal with lecture content, they are always about introducing you to the next assignments. When there is a tute, you should go, because the tutor may drop some hints about how you should format your paper, write figure legends, etc. When you don't have a tutorial (which is for most of the semester), self-directed revision questions are uploaded on the LMS. But because there was no tutor, literally nobody would go.

Finally, the exam. It is all full of LAQs, but it is good as some of the questions tend to get recycled from previous years and you can predict what topics are most likely to pop up. Metabolic syndrome, the practical, smoking/COPD, pain and stem cells will definitely appear, so definitely do not neglect these lectures. For others, just gamble. I gave up learning the drug dependency and metabolomics lectures (it appeared my exam but luckily I was able to leave them). You have to answer 6 out of 9 questions - some questions you are forced to do, for others you can pick. The questions are quite open-ended sometimes and I felt they were a little bit ambiguous, so I just spewed random word vomit and just hoped for the best, I'm not exactly sure what they kinda wanted for some questions. And we also got a question on pain affect/motivation despite having never heard about it before - yup, totally expected from something like Frontiers. Aim to write around a page and a half for each 10 mark question. Study for the exam by going throug the past exam questions and answering the relevant ones (helps to create a google doc so you can discuss answers with other people)

In my opinion, this is probably the worst core subject in biomed. I love biomedicine, but there were so many minor and major annoyances in this subject that just built up into a frothing mess of frustration. The disorganised lectures, the non-existent constructive feedback, not knowing what you were meant to know - there are so many complaints that the students have consistently voiced to the coordinators, but nothing has changed. Here's hoping that something does, or that the whole subject is replaced by M2M 2.0 or something. It feels as if they are trying to squeeze as many random areas in biomedicine into one subject as they can, but it doesn't feel as if lectures complement each other.

This subject is going to make you apathetic, it is going to desensitise you to how bad biomed can be. You are going to feel as dull as this:

(http://i.imgur.com/MUf2j97.png)

TL;DR This subject is terrible and you have no choice but to endure it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yacoubb on November 06, 2015, 12:07:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10004: Biology of Cells and Organisms 

Workload:  Weekly, 3x 1 hour lectures, 1x 1 hour tutorial, 1x 2 hour practical (fortnightly)

Assessment:  Mid-semester test (5%), Short Assignment (5%), Independent Learning Tasks (5%), Practical Assessments (25%), End of semester examination (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. But only 1 examination is provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed text is Biology: AN Australian Focus. I personally never used this and found it to be a complete waste of money. All the content covered in lecture notes will suffice.

Lecturer(s): Alex Johnson, Andrew Drinnan, Geoffrey Shaw, Stephen Frankenberg, Mark Elgar

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)

Comments:
Overall, I found BIOL10004 to be extremely enjoyable, and probably my favourite subject completed in first year of my undergraduate degree. I believe the content was extremely engaging, and the material covered was an extension to VCE Biology, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Alex Johnson - he was great! For many, it was their first semester of university and he made it quite easy for us to follow how the procedure worked. He introduces the basics of Biology, including the universal themes of Biology, biomolecules, cells and movement across the membrane, etc.

Andrew Drinnan - get ready for pictures of weed in every one of his lectures. He introduces Botany, and his endeavour at university is to appeal to youth, thinking we all will love him and relate to him if we see pictures of weed. He also tries really hard to be funny, and it's almost a hit and miss (sorry Drinnan). He covers photosynthesis, cellular respiration, vascular system of plants, plant hormones - basically anything Botany related.

Geoff Shaw - my FAVOURITE lecturer of all time. He is literally this old man who wears shorts in the middle of winter, and he is so quirky it's the best! He introduces Zoology, focussing on sections like negative vs. positive feedback mechanisms, sexual reproduction, and other organ systems like the circulatory system. He is so quirky that he'll stand and tell you: 'MY testicles are currently producing testosterone. Woohoo!'. He is the best!

Stephen Frankenberg - he tried the Geoff line about testicles and it was just creepy. But overall he did a good job in communicating the material. He introduces a lot about the development of animals - READ the book for this bit on development. He uses a lot of images in his lecture series for this particular topic and not many words, so it's important to get your hands on some writing.

Mark Elgar - monotonous, mean and miserable. The power of 3. His lecture series is about animal behaviour. He also spends a lot of time informing us how he takes pride in only 40% of his students passing his third year subject. Learn the different case studies of animal behaviour he provides. These are assessed.

Michelle is the best tutor in Biology. She is honestly full of information that is useful, and helps clarify SO many things amongst us students. She is also really helpful when it comes to practicals, and giving hints on what to do in the prac to ensure higher marks! BIOL10004 was a great experience for me, and although it was a subject I had to do, I was very happy to do it!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 07, 2015, 06:57:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30014: Medical Microbiology: Virology 

Workload:  3 x 1 hr lectures per week.

Assessment:  Two MSTs (worth 20% each). End-of-semester written exam worth 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  No past exam questions given. Damian and Jason go through sample questions during revision lectures.

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Virology, but lecture notes suffice.

Lecturer(s):
D. Purcell (Intro to viruses, DNA + reverse transcription replication cycles, Herpesviridae, Hepatitis, HIV, RNA defences)
J. Mackenzie (Virus life cycles, RNA replication cycles, pathogenesis, Norovirus, Vaccines, Vectors, Viral Defences)
L. Brown (Innate Defences, Oncogenic viruses)
L. Wang (Zoonoses)
J. McVernon (Epidemiology)
C. Simmons (Dengue)
B. S. Coulson (Rotavirus)
Guest lecturers (eg. S. Lewin, I. Gust for HIV flip-class)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments: (So I wrote a review earlier but it got sent to oblivion lol)

This subject is the hardest one out of all the 3rd year MIIM subjects in my opinion, but it is the greatest one. There is so much detail to know in this subject that your head is going to hurt, at times you are going to feel it exploding. But it's still taught superbly and clearly. Jason and Damian, the two main lecturers in the subject, do a fantastic job - they are like the dream duo of lecturers. You always have an idea of what you should focus on and what is important. I had a love-hate relationship with this subject - mainly because at times it made me feel overwhelmed, but everything about this subject was just so interesting that it motivated me to just push myself through. In this subject, you are taught about a whole load of important viruses in medicine - you learn about how it causes disease, how to treat it, how we diagnose it, and also how we're trying to cure/eradicate them. Awesome stuff.

The earliest part of the course is definitely the hardest - according to Damian, that is where the real meat of the subject is. They're not kidding. MST1 only examined materials from 10 lectures and to be honest, it already felt like I was being examined on half a full subject. However, this block is definitely the most important as you will refer back to the fundamentals and replication cycle quite a lot. Initially, you learn about virus classification, structure, and cultivation. Definitely listen to these at home because I felt quite a bit lost already. Then you hone in on the really complicated stuff - replication. There are so much complicated molecular gymnastics in this block, so many proteins and molecules to remember, that you will struggle to fully memorise everything until after many cycles of reading. You learn about replication for DNA viruses, viruses that use reverse transcription, +ssRNA, -ssRNA, and dsRNA. Additionally, you also learn about virus entry, assembly and exit. In these lectures, examples are scattered throughout the different lectures - you are not going to spend time on poliovirus or adenovirus for like 10-15 mins - instead, what happens is that you learn a little poliovirus in one lecture, and then a little bit more detail in another lecture, and so on. You will be learning examples from all the different virus families. It is difficult to integrate everything because you will find yourself accidentally mixing details from different examples. but because Damian and Jason are the main lecturers for this block, there is nothing inconsistent in their slides. Despite the amount of content, the median for MST1 was quite high, at 35/45 - one person even achieved 100% (and 40% got H1)

After MST1, the subject gets a bit lighter but it's probably more intense than other subjects you might study. In this block you start honing in on more specific infections. You have three rather straightforward lectures on viral pathogenesis at the beginning. Linfa (from DUKE-NUS, aka the batman) presents an absolutely fantastic lecture on Hendranipah virus, SARS and Melaka virus. Then you learn about general innate defences vs viral evasion (again, lots of proteins you need to know. Finally, you get a number of lectures on specific infections from Herpesviridae (EBV, VZV, HSV), Hepatitis (A, B, C, D, E), and HIV. The block then ends with a difficult lecture on viral vectors and a pretty easy vaccine lecture. While this block was said to be more easy, the MST2 test was arguably harder, with the median of the class falling from 35/45 to 31/45.

Post MST2, you get some flip-classes on Hepatits therapy and HIV cures. Instead of having a conventional lecture, you have to read over lecture slides and papers beforehand and come armed with questions. You'll probably get more out of it if you actually attend (I never did). Again, you dwelve into some more specific infections like Dengue, Norovirus, Oncogenic viruses, Rotavirus and Ebola. There is also a random lecture on general epidemiology and a more intensive one on RNA defence mechanisms (which involves a lot of molecular detail yet again). This is probably the lightest block.

There are weekly quizzes put up on the LMS to help you revise the material, so use them for your MST practise. Before each MST, Damian and Jason will also run a revision lecture which is pretty much just another quiz (the standard of these quetions are a little bit easier than the actual tests). Like almost everything in MIIM, all of the MSTs are fully MCQ - 30 questions will be your standard Type I questions, and 15 will be Type II (ie Statements 1,2,3 are right, or 1,2 are right...etc). Make sure you read the questions carefully because you are bound to get tripped up by some small detail now and then. The end-of-semester exam has MCQs on the last block, a fill in the blanks section and then a SAQ section. The SAQ has four questions (worth 15 marks each), and each part to a question is generally 5 marks. You will need to use diagrams and it is probably best if you integrate different parts of the life cycle for each virus into your questions

As you probably know, this is a VERY intensive subject and you are going to feel overwhelmed now and then. I mean, in the very first lecture, you are shown something like this:

(http://www.nlv.ch/Virologytutorials/graphics/classificationtotal.jpg)

...And you have memorise all of that, because it is something you will need to keep referring back to. But ultimately, this is definitely one of the most interesting subjects I've had the privilege to study. The staff are fantastic and incredibly approachable - I don't have anything negative to say about the lecturers (it's MIIM so there is never anything bad lol). Everyone who I spoke to thoroughly enjoyed this subject even though tbh everyone who studies Virology is probably a masochist. Viruses are such incredibly complicated machines - they make bacteria look that much more boring in comparison, and honestly Bacteriology was already pretty good! If you have any interest in infectious diseases, you would be missing out on a lot if you don't study Virology - don't be deterred by the amount of detail you have to know, because I think there is a pretty high proportions of H1s anyway.

TL;DR: Pls do this subject, viruses are awesome.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: danza312 on November 07, 2015, 08:12:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30001: Frontiers in Biomedicine 

Workload:          3 x 1hr lectures per week
                           1 x 1hr tutorial occasionally (many are self-directed, so no-one goes)
                           1 x 4 hour practical per semester

Assessment:         Literature and Bioinformatics Assignment (7.5%)
                               Pre-Practical Test (online) (3%)
                               In-tutorial debate (5%)
                               Online MST (10%)
                               Graphical Analysis Assignment (peer marked) (10%)
                               Peer Marking (2.5%)
                               Respiratory Assignment (12%)
                               2hr SAQ exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Past exams from 2010-2013 were available.

Textbook Recommendation:        There is a subject guide that you must purchase solely for the practical notes. It was never used
                                                        outside the prac.

Lecturer(s): Almost a new lecturer for every lecture. Most are skilled and knowledgeable in their field.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2.

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments:
Frontiers in Biomedicine is the final core subject of biomedicine, and most likely the most difficult hurdle you face before the end of your degree. It isn't difficult because of the content, but because of the way it is taught and the disorganisation of each of the subject areas. Frontiers seems to have been based off the core successful structure of M2M from the previous semester: it comprises modules taught by lecturers prominent in their fields, and aims to teach and integrate different disciplines such as pharmacology and immunology in the context of particular diseases. However everything seems to be slightly or significantly worse, from the organisation of the lectures to the assessment and the exam.
Lectures:
Lectures are broken into multiple modules. The first is the metabolic syndrome and obesity. This was probably the best taught set of lectures, with an interesting mix of the biology behind obesity and its associated diseases, but also the social and economical reasons for its prevalence in the current day. It does help that there are 12 lectures in this module, making it the most fleshed out.
The second module is on stem cells and tissue engineering, and it is here where the lecture quality begins to drop somewhat. Some of the lecturers, while very knowledgeable, were not particularly clear in explaining points, and the lecture slides are either mismatched or simply missing. The content however, is still not too bad, with the development of stem cell therapies and the challenges involved in developing tissues from stem cells.
The third module talks about airway diseases such as asthma and COPD. The lecture content frequently overlapped, with different lecturers giving slightly different explanations for the same concept. It also has no particular structure, flipping from asthma to COPD then back to asthma for mast cells then to viruses and then back to COPD. Its a common problem with Frontiers in general: the lack of organisation within the modules. I think that the presence of a 'module champion' in M2M who coordinated the lectures and ensured they had a logical flow and no contradictions made that subject so much easier to study for and to understand.
The fourth module is on pain and neuropathic pain. I feel like this was the worst module, since this time the content was bad along with the organisation. Many brain regions are thrown in with no understanding that we'd never encountered them before and didn't understand what they were (sorry neuro majors, this probably doesn’t apply to you). Concepts such as the pathways of pain from the site of pain to the brain and back down are explained multiple times in different, contradictory ways, and each time more unintelligible terminology is added in. Again there is no particular order to the lectures, making it even harder to revise.
The fifth and final (finally) module is based on addictions to various substances. This was a return to somewhat more interesting content, such as the neurological basis behind losing weight (yes, 7 weeks after the original metabolic syndrome module had finished), and addictions to both legal and illegal drugs. Again the lecture order jumps around for no apparent reason however, and there are obvious throwaway lectures such as public policy approaches and a very entertaining but unassessed talk on vaccine controversies.
Overall, the lectures really do suffer from a lack of organisation and not ensuring that the quality of lecturing is kept at a constant, decent standard. Some lecturers can be decent while others were much worse. Not only this, but some of the basics such as uploading lecture slides on time were regularly not done, adding frustration to what could have been a very interesting look into future directions for therapies.
Practical:
There is one 4hr practical in roughly the middle of the semester. I’d recommend getting it done as early as possible so it doesn’t interfere with any other commitments at the later end of the semester. It’s possible to do it early because it has zero relevance to the lecture material at all. Instead, it’s a rehash of last year’s HSF practical, where you measure certain parameters after exercise. However in this practical you use other techniques such as spirometry to measure respiratory markers, and give a drug to see its effect. These changes do just enough to make the prac not seem like déjà vu, but it is still incredibly boring to sit through.
Tutorials and Assessment:
Tutorials were run about 4 times with an actual tutor. These were generally for getting help with assessment tasks, though these weren’t particularly helpful overall. The tutor was quite nice and happy to answer questions, and it helps that the tutors are all clinicians in some way. In sessions marked as tutor ‘drop-in,’ this actually means a tutor appearing for about a minute before leaving, being entirely useless. Similarly, self-run tutorials consist of a list of questions that no-one ever turns up to do, so you can ignore these as well.
Assessment however, was where the bulk of the frustration in this subject appears. The first literature assignment is one part 1st year biology referencing, and one part frustrating search for obscure information. You need to write about a disease that only a handful of people even have, and the reports written are either case studies on one individual or referencing these case studies. This makes it very hard to even understand what the disease is, especially since the disease is never taught anywhere else and is barely relevant to the lecture material. The second assignment, the debate, is easy enough to do as long as your tutorial group is motivated to do their part and practice the content once before the tute. The pre-prac test was free marks, however it was slightly annoying that you were expected to listen to two additional lecture recordings to answer some of the questions (just google it). Again, the online MST was a nice 10% bonus for marks, simply by referring to lecture slides. The MST certainly does not help in terms of making sure you keep up with the lecture material, since it’s online and no-one actually studies for it. This has severe consequences come exam time.
The graphical assignment isn’t difficult, but is quite tedious getting all the graphs together and talking about it. I’d recommend looking over your assignment from last year to reuse that material in this assignment, because there’s a lot of overlap. Peer marking involves marking your peer’s graphical assignments. This is very quick and easy to do, and these marks are actually used as your marks for the graphical assignment. Everyone in our year level was quite reasonable and tended to mark highly, so don’t expect to get marked low for no reason. The final respiratory assignment is again long and tedious to complete. It also involves researching a disease you’ve never heard of, but at least this one is less obscure and hard to find information on.
I’m going to devote a whole section to feedback here because it’s one of the tenants of how bad the subject is. There is next to no feedback given on what you should be doing or how well you’ve being going throughout the course. All assignments come back with a standard sheet that shows roughly how well you did for each question. The actual written feedback however just consists of ‘well done’ or ‘well written’ even if you’d lost a lot of marks and wanted to know why. The online MST is useless at providing feedback since its online so everyone does it by looking at lecture notes anyway. The tutorials are not related to the content in lectures whatsoever as well, meaning that you have very few avenues to go through if you want to clarify lecture content. In fact, the tutors explicitly say that they will not be able to help with any content. This means that, when SWOTVAC starts, you know absolutely nothing and effectively have to learn the whole course again by the exam.
Exam:
The exam is two hours long and entirely short answer, where you can pick 6 out of 8 questions to answer. Each answer needs to be at least a page long. Also, the choice is quite illusory unlike M2M. This is as you are forced to answer 4 of them (2015 exam), with choice only available for the last two questions. This means you have to prepare to answer any question, unlike M2M where you could get away with not revising two modules and therefore study more effectively for the remaining ones. Though this would be a nightmare normally, luckily the exams are very similar to the past exams provided. Going through these exams and remembering the points in them will take you a long way towards being able to answer everything on the exam. When revising, if you think a lecture is out of place, irrelevant or unassessable, it probably is. Writing out the answers will take almost all of the 2 hours, so don’t plan on coming back to look over answers at the end.
Overall:
This subject was a highly frustrating experience that became a lightning rod for the complaints and bitching constantly present in biomed. Since it’s the last subject you’ll ever do in Biomedicine, seeing this subject be so representative of many of the issues that the entire degree has had is incredibly annoying. Its especially bad since M2M showed how it could be done last semester in an engaging and interesting manner. Instead of this however, there is a focus on fulfilling the holy 'graduate attributes,' which are meaningless to almost all the students and serve as some catch all reason why things are done as they are, such as the need for so many assignments targeting each attribute (maybe not giving lecture notes promotes the attribute of self-study?)
Generally, even the worst subject matter can be tolerated if it is presented engagingly and organised correctly so you know what you’re supposed to be learning at any given time (see Maths for Biomedicine). This subject however, buries the interesting content it may have had beneath a ton of small inconveniences and frustrations, leaving you with a bad taste as you get ready to graduate. It does have some redeeming factors, since the content on its own was interesting, and there was a focus on the non-scientific aspects of diseases (social, policy making etc.) which is almost never touched upon in other biomed cores. We've left our feedback in the hopes that future years will be better (the MST was new for this year, its moving in the right direction and at least it gave everyone 10% for free). However the track record of this subject in terms of responding to feedback in the past indicates that it might take a long time and lots of small changes for it to become worth the effort of getting through it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Mieow on November 07, 2015, 08:34:46 pm
Subject Name/Code: MAST10007 - Linear Algebra

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour tutorial followed by a 1 x one hour computer lab

Assessment:  - 10 Weekly assignments (1% each - 10% in total)
                         - MATLAB test during your scheduled computer lab in week 12 (10%)
                         - 3 hour exam  (80%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes (10am stream was recorded but towards the end of semester 12am stream was uploaded as well)

Past Exams available: Yes, several years' worth was in the exam library. Only solutions to 2014 (Sem1), 2012 (Sem2) and 2010 (Sem 2) were provided.

Textbook recommendation:
  - Not compulsory (can get it from the library):  Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 11th edn, Wiley, 2013.

Lecturers:
- Lawrence Reeves (10am stream)
-
-

Year and Semester of Completion: 2015, Semester 2

Rating: 2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet received

Comments:
Literally the worst maths subject I've ever done in my schooling career, and I really do mean literally. This is a hugely conceptual subject and I feel like NEITHER the notes in the coursebook or the computer labs help you understand or appreciate what's going on in each lecture. I would leave each lecture more confused than the last, and things sort of came together towards the end when I was getting into full-speed exam revision but honestly I think it was too late by then because I was rekt after the exam.

The lecturers are okay. I was in Lawrence's stream who is also the coordinator. He really knew his stuff and was always happy to help anybody who asked him for it, which is a huge bonus. My only negative for him was that I feel like he over-complicates things a bit. Maybe he's just trying to help us get a deeper understanding of the content but quite frankly I could never follow along so I would just zone out and whether he went on to more proofs or not it wouldn't matter because I'd be equally clueless either way. He skips several examples as well, saying it's a homework exercise for you to do which is sort of annoying because if you don't do it there's gonna be blanks in your coursebook but, again, he's happy to help if you approach him first.

Every week in a two hour block you have a tutorial followed by a computer lab. If you've done calc before the tutorial is done in the exact same way: tutorial question sheet, get into groups of threes and work through the questions on the whiteboards. They were a pretty nice way to consolidate your knowledge and was a good resource on how to answer some questions if the examples covered in lectures weren't clear enough. The computer labs were very pointless imo. I think they were supposed to help you visualize the concepts covered in the lectures but I failed to see the correlation between the MATLAB activities and the linear algebra concepts but maybe that's just me. The MATLAB test is pretty straight forward, I was lucky enough to have access to MATLAB from my own laptop thanks to ESD2 but if you're not doing ESD2 then using the university computers might be the only way for you to practice MATLAB for the test.

From week 2 there are assignments due every Monday. They're quite clear and simple enough to do, with the occasional hard question to throw you off. They're each worth 1% which doesn't sound like a lot but they add up to an easy 10% of your final grade so I'd really recommend you do them. About 3 of them are done online and can be accessed via the LMS.

Just like in Calculus, you have access to problem sheets as well. They're good practice so I would strongly recommend you do them. Some of them a pure calculations and others are proof questions which I often skipped because I didn't know how to do them and couldn't be bothered going to consultation hours for. The stated answer at the back of the book always states "Proof as required" which is not helpful at all.
 
The exam is quite fair - like the reviewer before me said, they definitely could have made the questions harder. It's a long exam and the three hours go by fast so you've got to pace yourself and get as much done as possible. After you do 2 or 3 past exams you'll notice patterns in the questions asked each year so they're pretty good prep for the final exam. Problem sheets and tute questions will also be helpful but honestly I think going over lecture examples will be good enough.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Paulrus on November 09, 2015, 08:00:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: MECM10006 - Introduction to Media Writing

Workload: One 1 hour lecture and one 2 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Folio (80%) - Part 1 (35%) due end of semester, Part 2 (45%) due during examination period. Tutorial participation (10%), pitching (10%). The assessments listed in the handbook are actually out of date.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available: This is Arts bruh, ain't no exams here.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed text is Word Bytes. I only really glanced at it, but it seemed like a pretty decent guide to the different types of pieces you'll have to write. You can find a PDF of it for free pretty easily if you know where to look, so it's probably not worth buying. There's also a reader available from the Co-op which is filled with a bunch of sample pieces - if you find yourself struggling with writing any of the pieces, it'd be a good idea to purchase it as none of them are posted on the LMS.

Lecturer(s): Doug Hendrie is the head lecturer, but it'll change from week to week. All the lecturers had pretty extensive experience writing for the media, but some were more entertaining than others. One (my tutor) got into a fight with Hilary Duff once.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments: The only other review of this subject wasn't a positive one, so I thought I might try give a different perspective on it.

Introduction to Media Writing is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Over the course of the semester, you'll learn how to write for the media in a number of formats, and by the end you'll end up with a neat little folio of all your writing. There are six pieces you'll have to write - a magazine profile, a personal narrative article (PNA), a news story, an op-ed (opinion piece), a travel piece, and a review. Additionally, you'll have to write a 75 word 'pitch' for each of these pieces, where you try sell your piece to an imaginary editor. They're extremely strict about this word limit for some reason - if you go a single word over, you'll get a 0. The logic behind this is that concision is a hallmark of good writing. Yeah, I dunno. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The tutorials are extremely hands-on: after the first few weeks, you'll start bringing in some of your pieces to be workshopped in class. The first draft of your magazine profile will be due in week 3, while your PNA and op-ed drafts are due in weeks 5 and 8 respectively. It's a bit confronting the first time you do it, sitting in a room while everyone else discusses your writing, but you get used to it pretty quickly. Naturally, you have to be open to criticism - there was one girl in my tutorial who got extremely defensive whenever someone would critique her work, and it became exhausting whenever we had to workshop her pieces. Basically, leave your ego at the door. For the most part, though, the tutorials were extremely laid-back. Maybe I was just lucky with the tutor and classmates that I had, but our classes were really enjoyable. Our discussions got off-topic a lot of the time and we were prone to tangents (one time we spent about 20 minutes talking about how PTV officers are dickheads), but even the workshopping itself was interesting. Most people I talked to in my tute said it was easily their favourite subject this semester.

Having a mark for tutorial participation is a bit shitty IMO, but it's there and it means that you'll have to speak up in tutorials pretty often. I'm not sure how hard this is marked, but I tried to voice at least some constructive criticism for every piece that we workshopped and I ended up with 8/10.

The only real negative for this subject is that the marking is definitely extremely harsh. One of my friends told me that no-one in his tute got higher than a H2B for the first PNA draft. Your mark will increase if you workshop your pieces well, but only three of your six pieces will receive this treatment. If you're looking to bump your GPA up, then I'd stay away from this subject unless you're a very strong writer.

The harshness of the marking pulled my rating down a little bit, but overall, Introduction to Media Writing was a thoroughly enjoyable subject. And if you don't enjoy it, you can always submit your pieces to a few newspapers and try earn your subject fee back.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nino quincampoix on November 10, 2015, 11:51:05 pm
Major: Neuroscience

Year of completion: 2015

Why a person would/should choose to do neuroscience: a) they are looking for something stimulating, b) they don't mind the occasional challenge, c) they want to learn about many different topics without ever having to conform to a single mode of thinking, and d) they are perspicacious  ;)

Subjects: Handbook

This isn’t a review of the individual subjects. Duh.


I have no idea how to tell this story. I don’t even know how to start it. I guess I could use one of the classic story beginning sentences: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. But what would that even mean?


Well, neuroscience as a whole is a bit of a strange unit: while it incorporates elements of physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, etc. etc., it is none of these and all of these at the same time. Simply, neuroscience is neuroscience…and maybe that’s a good thing.

Before we go any further, some disclosure: I enjoyed this major—I mean thoroughly. I am biased. Neuroscience is wunderbar.


Semester 1 was a blast: principles of neuroscience and neurophysiology. The two go together like lamb and tuna fish. So your workload is relatively reduced for the first six weeks or so, where the two core subjects mirror each other but approach the content from different perspectives. (I found this sort of learning to be conducive to my understanding.) Post week six, things start to deviate from the status quo. Principles moves into more “philosophical” territory, delving into the depths of consciousness and other things alike. Meanwhile in electrophysiology, I mean neurophysiology, you start to look at a bit of electrophys (don’t fret, it’s not overbearing…), a bit of theoretical modelling of neuronal circuits, and a thorough analysis of autonomic responses elucidated through current research. There are some other things that I haven’t mentioned, such as memory, sexuality, autism, pain, etc., but that is not to say that they are undeserving of mention. It’s just that these topics were all quite intriguing and I don’t want to spoil the fun! Oh, and there’s this vision lecture in principles—make sure you go to uni that day, you’ll see... (Pun intended.)

Assessment entirely revolved around multi choice questions. I’m guessing that most people prefer multi choice. To each their own.

Semester 2 is more of an individual journey, since you, the individual, are afforded a greater sense of autonomy. You get to choose from a whole six subjects, of which you must pick two. Allegedly, some of the subjects aren’t exactly fantastic… I can only speak of the subjects that I took: NEUR30004 and PHRM30002. Sensations was good fun, a delight even. But, despite only having two lectures per week, it is content heavy. Pharmacology turned out to be a really interesting subject, which grew on me week by week. Sensations builds on the principles subject, and pharmacology is a different kettle of fish altogether! Topics range from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s to addiction to music (yes!) and to glia (double yes!), and then some. This semester had a markedly different approach to the antecedent one, in that the content was either highly theoretical or quite applied. Either way, it made for a challenging yet enjoyable semester.

Assessment…essays (and some multi choice for all you MCQ fanatics out there!).


At times, you might feel the urge to reconsider neuroscience. (Don’t.) We covered lots of different topics, some of which inevitably aren’t going to rock your socks off. Some topics will, however. And they really do make you leave the lecture theatre saying to yourself, “Shit. That was great.” Also, I mean great in the old, proper sense of the word: the great depression, the great recession (not, “that milkshake was great, dude.”).

So when the times get tough (and the tough get going), and you feel the pressure, relish in the comfort of this whimsically apropos colloquialism:
Quote
“Don’t cry about spilt milk—it’ll be free yogurt by next Wednesday.”
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on November 11, 2015, 11:21:44 am
Subject Code/Name: Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload:  2 one-hour lectures per week, and a 1hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  2 assignments each worth 10%, 2 online tests each worth 5%, tutorial participation & attendance worth 10% and finally the end of semester exam worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 3 were available with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Macroeconomics (highly suggest you purchase it)

Lecturer(s): Graham Richards..!

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 2

Rating: 3.9/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

First of all, Graham, the lecturer, is quite an interesting fella. I heard that this may be his last semester teaching the subject so you might not have to deal with him but that was just the word on the street. For each one hour lecture be expected to have to read 60-65 lecture slides, each with insanely detailed points. In addition to this, he will often mention small points such as the effect of women entering the labour force, and the effect of the baby boomers which he expects you to remember. Coming from intro micro, I expected macro to be sufficiently similar however it really is a step above in terms of difficulty. I heard intro macro relates a decent amount to VCE economics however I can't confirm or deny since I didn't do it, therefore when I came in, everything was new.

You first begin with understanding GDP and CPI and leading indicators (such as consumer confidence), which also form the basis of the first assignment which is largely a self-research task. At about this time, you are also required to complete an online test worth 5% of your grade, this test is generally quite straight forward if you have the textbook as an aid. As for the assignment, as first year commerce students, we hadn't really had the need to reference prior to this assignment and I think a lot of tutors took note of that and didn't take marks off. It really is crucial to understand the first few weeks of the course as it generally piles on quickly after that. After the foundations are set, you delve into the core aspects of economics....the models. First you begin with the classical model to economic growth, then the Keynesian model, then the Aggregate Demand - Aggregate Supply mode, and finally the Solow-Swan model.

This forms the core of the subject, and the Aggregate Demand - Aggregate Supply model forms the second assignment for our cohort. I believe Graham made the assignment to be generally straight-forward but as with assignments, people look far into it for tricks and it quickly became a hot topic between most people. Ultimately I think 3 responses to the prompt could have been granted full marks so it wasn't too difficult on the whole. After this, you are required to complete the final online test for the course, worth 5%. Generally, this test was shockingly hard, for me personally anyway. It picks 15 questions out of a large pool and you get 30minutes to select the best answer, so you could either get insanely lucky or insanely unlucky or somewhere in the middle. It seemed a lot of people complained they got all the hard questions but that may just be due to not preparing adequately. For this test, I highly suggest studying a ton. After the final assignment and test, you have about 2-3 weeks where you begin to learn Foreign Exchange. It gets quite full on towards the end of semester as teaching doesn't stop and Graham continues to pile on content in week 12.

Despite the overload of information, the core topics to understand are relatively straight forward if you spend the necessary time. At this point, I should probably touch on the tutorials. They were ran pretty identical to Intro micro with a blue and pink sheet each week. One sheet is due before each tutorial and one is done during the tutorial (forgot which is which). Again, the ones done during the tutorial each week are pretty important and I suggest you take copious notes for them as they are pretty similar to exam style questions.

If you stay up to date during the semester, the exam period shouldn't be too bad for you. A lot of people fall behind and forget the sheer amount of content in intro macro and then struggle to catch up and cram. As for the exam, it was a reallllll shocker this semester. Graham included a 10 mark question on the difference between 3 aggregates (Real GDP, RGDI, RGNI) which was touched on really early in the semester over one lecture. In addition, Graham asked us to prove the diminishing returns of the Cobb-Douglas production function using algebra which was quite a shock as my tutor had said 'it's not really necessary, if you want to learn it come to my consult'. However it was included on a few lecture slides so it was fair game. Past exams provided a general look into how this semesters exam may be like, but Graham really changed direction. It was a lot more proving how things work rather than looking at a prompt and explaining using a model (although there was one question on this <3 Graham). It may be because he's leaving (is he really though?) or he just ran out of unique questions to ask so the difficulty rose exceptionally. A lot of people felt their studying had gone to waste as a lot of the subjects weren't touched upon in the exam.

Ultimately, Intro Macro was full on. Do not expect it to be easy like micro.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: CossieG on November 11, 2015, 10:12:49 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20029  Engineering Mathematics

Workload:  3 one hour lectures per week, and a one-hour tutorial per week. One of the lectures took place at 5:15pm on Fridays  :'(

Assessment:  3 assignments worth 5% each, the mid-semester test worth 15%, and the final exam worth 70%.

Lectopia Enabled:  No. This was a great frustration to many students especially due to the lecture times.

Past exams available:  Yes, 9 of them. All with answers but NOT solutions. There were also a few practice mid-semester tests.

Textbook Recommendation: 
The recommended textbook is E Kreysig, Advanced Engineering Mathematics, 10th Edition, Wiley, USA 2011. I found a PDF of it online, didn't really use it much during semester.

However I did use Haberman, Applied Partial Differential Equations: with Fourier Series and Boundary Value Problems, 4th Edition. This book is VERY useful for the latter parts of the course. The ERC has multiple copies.

Lecturer(s): Antoinette Tordesillas.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, semester 2

Rating: 1.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

I was originally not going to review this subject, since there are already a few reviews already. However after reading through them and noticing they were mostly positive, I decided that I should review the subject since my review comes from a different perspective.

I did not take this subject because it is a core part of my major. Unlike the other Engineering Systems majors, Engineering Maths isn't required for Comp/Sci. I took this subject as an elective, purely out of interest for higher level and more applied maths than what I was exposed to in Calc1/Calc2 and Linear Algebra. That was a big mistake. More on this later. First, onto the actual subject.

This subject is apparently supposed to introduce the mathematical concepts and methods used by engineers. I say "apparently" because not once were we told how engineers actually use the things we were learning. The concepts and methods in question fell under the following topics:

1. Vector Calculus
2. Systems of ODE's and the Phase Plane
3. Laplace Transforms
4. Sequences and Series inc. Taylor and Maclaurin series
5. Fourier Series
6. Second Order Partial Differential Equations.

I found vector calculus to be most challenging. Mainly because it is such a large topic and the lecturer had to rush through the slides and examples without really stopping to explain the key concepts and ideas. Systems of ODE's was by far the most enjoyable, mainly because I like sketching and the entire topic is basically focused on sketching systems of ODE's. It also gave a new and interesting way of looking at ODE's in general. Laplace transforms I found to be the most straight-forward topic. Everything is there in the formula sheet and as long as you know basic "tricks" like partial fraction decomposition and completing the square, you should be fine. Second Order PDE's, while being touted by the lecturer as the most challenging topic, I actually found to be the easiest. I just rote-learned the technique and was fine with every form of problem.

The assignments throughout the semester were not super hard, but they weren't very easy either. I found it extremely difficult to get full marks on any of them. Some questions were marked quite harshly. Overall they are manageable so you shouldn't worry too much.

The mid-semester test basically destroyed me (and most of my tutorial it seemed - one girl was on the verge of tears after finding her results). It covered the first two topics. Unfortunately for me, my favourite topic was only allocated one question while the rest was on vector calculus. Suffice to say I didn't do very well.

The exam however was the saving grace. I found it to be relatively straight forward (granted I made the decision not to study for vector calculus at all) and I breezed through all the non vector calculus questions pretty easily. This was all made possible by the ample amount of practice exams posted on the LMS.

"So what was wrong with the subject!?" I hear you ask. "The content seems as challenging as expected, and the assessment fair, so what's your problem?". My problem is that this subject is a mess of poor coordination, and tries to cram too much into the semester.

For the first week and a half, we were hit with constant last-minute venue changes, which placed our lectures at the most ungodly times (one was moved to 5:15pm on a friday, another was moved so as to clash with another of my subjects). Even throughout all this, the coordinators refused to record lectures. Wtf? Another thing that personally pissed me off was that the students that passed the midsemester test got their tests back before the students that failed. So essentially, if you failed the test, everyone in your tutorial knew about it. This may not be a big deal to many students but I personally felt it was entirely unnecessary to name and shame students in this way.

I would be happy to forget about these things if the content was better. My biggest regret in my time at the University of Melbourne is taking this subject rather than both of Vector Calculus and Differential Equations. Make no mistake, the content of this subject isn't bad. I'm sure what they taught are used by engineers in ways that elude me, but this subject tries to cram the content of the two aforementioned subjects into one semester, and IMO, it fails to do so in any good way. I feel if I had taken the other two subjects, I would have had more time to do well, and also have gained a deeper understanding.

In summary/my advice:

If you're a Engineering Systems major, you have to take this subject. Might be good to not forget everything the moment you walk out of the exam room just in case (and I hope this is the case) your final year subjects teach you how the concepts are used in engineering.

If you're taking this as an elective/breadth, my advice is to stay away. Don't make the same mistake I did. If you're considering taking this as an elective you obviously have a pretty big interest in math. This is not the subject you're looking for. Take both Vector Calculus and Differential Equations instead. You'll have more time to do well and more time to really understand the concepts and their applications.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 12, 2015, 11:33:47 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30003: Medical and Applied Immunology

Workload:  3 x 1 hr lectures per week

Assessment:  Two 45 min MSTs worth 20%. 2 hr end of semester exam worth 60% (as with all MIIM subs)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  No, but feedback quizzes are uploaded on the LMS every week.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook needed

Lecturer(s):
B. Heath (Tolerance)
J. A. Villadangos (Antigen Presentation)
I. van Driel (Immune Regulation)
D. Godfrey (Tumour Immunity)
P. Darcy (Cancer Immunotherapy)
T. Gebhardt (Barrier Immunity)
S. Mueller (Viral Immunity)
S. Bedoui (Bacterial Immunity)
G. Westall (Transplantation)
P. Gleeson (Autoimmunity)
K. Quinn (Evolutionary Immunology)
N. La Gruta (Allergies)
A. Brookes (Reproductive Immunology)
D. Fernandez-Ruiz (Parasitic Immunity)
B. Chua (Vaccinations)
L. Mackay (Immunodeficiencies, HIV)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating:  4.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)

Comments: Half of this subject is pretty much revision of Principles of Immunology and Molecules to Malady. You focus on diseases of the immune system as well as how it can guard against more specific infections from parasites, viruses and bacteria. There are heaps of lecturers in this subject, each usually presenting for no more than 1-3 lectures. So you do cover lots of fields, occasionally some things will overlap, but I dont't think it really detracted from the experience as all of them were quite good actually. Expect to be presented with familiar concepts from before!

That being said, this subject is pretty deceptive in terms of difficulty. Since a lot of the content is stuff you have sort of learnt before, you might find it quite easy to revise, but assessment is not that forgiving. For some reason me and many of my friends have done slightly worse in the MSTs for MedApplied than we did in Principles! So this subject can get pretty tricky at times - don't make the same mistake we did and assume your prior knowledge is enough to carry you.

MST1 will cover tolerance, antigen presentation, T-regs, as well as tumour and cancer immunotherapy. These build upon things you've learnt in Principles and M2M, but there is nothing that is signficantly difficult about this block of lectures. It's a pretty easy few weeks if you remember your immunology lectures from before. The median for MST1 was 30/40. Half of the MST2 block (barrier immunity to evolutionary immunology) is quite intensive actually. There is a lot of content in the viral immunity lecture especially - it was on par with a normal viral lecture, but don't freak out when you see all the lists of different examples that Scott puts on his lecture slides. Focus on the main pathways that he explains. For the evolutionary immunology lectures, yes you will also have to learn the Drosophila toll pathway and the Imd pathway and compare it to human TLR and TNF. The median for this block dropped to 27/40.

Post MST2 is pretty chill, as the allergies lectures are very similar to the ones used in Principles and the lectures on immunodeficiency, HIV and vaccinations are pretty straightforward. Reproductive immunology however is a major bitch to understand so focus a lot of time on this lecture - it is definitely the hardest lecture to understand in the course and to memorise. In the parasitic lecture you learn about malaria and lymphatic filiaris - if you've done M2M then malaria is no problem!

You also devote two lectures to analysing particular research papers (one on cross-presentation, the other on vaccine design). You probably don't need the specific detail from these lectures, but know what conclusions were made from each experiment (as well as what they generally did). 

As with all the MIIM subjects, weekly feedback quizzes are your best friend for revision! The MSTs are all MCQ and there are typical Type I and Type II questions yet again. I always found the MSTs to be slightly more challenging and harder than waht I expected - I think there is less detail actually examined in the MSTs, what makes it difficult is that they trick you - there are definitely a few oooo snap I didn't see that moments!

Personally, I liked the other MIIM subjects more because half of the content was already kinda familiar for this subject, but this is still fantastic. It truly lives up to its name as you learn about so many diseases that either affect immune system's capacity to fight infections and tmours, or are a consequence of it losing every sense of self-control and going full beserk. While I think maybe there were a bit too many lecturers for my liking, it is only a minor complaint as everything still remained quite consistent and each lecturer seemed to have a clearly defined area to talk about. It is a pretty chill way to end your Immunology major!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spectroscopy on November 13, 2015, 01:39:00 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures + 1 x 1 hour tute (no mandatory attendance and lectures are recorded)

Assessment:  Two assignments (10% + 10%), end of semester exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  yeah

Past exams available:  heaps of them and most questions get recycled in one way or another. They only provide one with solutions, and the rest you search up online

Textbook Recommendation:  Financial Instiutitons and Markets (B Hunt and C Terry) 7th edition - didn't buy it and didnt need to. Everything you will need to know is taught pretty well in the lectures and tutes

Lecturer(s): Jordan Neyland the best bloke ever

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: 5/5 if you're interested in finance topics, 1/5 if you're not

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Summary: if you legitimately enjoy commerce stuff, and further maths style financial maths then this subject is awesome and easy.
if you are doing it for any other reason - it will be harder to do well, and even though you might get that H1, if finance isn't your thing you'll die of boredom.

PRO TIP: You can ROTE learn the content if you want, but there is a smarter way. It is so much less effort and more efficient + better for your grades to listen to the lectures, pay attention, and then google around the idea's that are spoken about at home casually. If you conceptually understand what is happening, you can logically conclude SOOO much of the stuff that other people will have to ROTE learn and commit to memory. Im not saying learn the derivations of the formulas (fk that) but if you understand why a company raises money, and how banks earn their profit, and how prices are decided in the share market, then alot of the stuff that other people will have to memorise will be something that you can just say "oh ok, how does the share market efficiently allocate resources well if blah blah happens then i guess it must be such and such?"

OK, me and most of my friends are really interested in finance, and as such we all LOVED this subject. You learn cool shit bout different types of securities, like how to price bonds, shares, how to raise money if you're starting up your own small business, how you should legally set up your business (LLC) etc. This is a great subject for overall learning about the basics of finance (hence the name). You can choose to rote learn or actually learn the subject, and if you actually learn it then it is 100 times easier and much more rewarding. The stuff seriously isn't too complicated, and also quite useful in the financial decisions we are starting to make at this point in our lives (mortgage vs rent, how much/how long to save).

Alot of people do this subject and don't like it, and it has nothing to do with the way it is run, the subject is run very, very well. If you just think it will look good on your resume/want a "real" breadth/need another subject to do/your friends are doing it/you heard its easy, you will probably have a bad time. I knew a couple people who did this subject and said it was dry and boring etc. I dont know what you expect if you have no interest in finance though, and a few kids who found it boring but then started to relisten to lectures and understand stuff eventually came around by exam time and everyone was cracking jokes about bonds and shares and saying it was a good subject.

Lectures:
JORDAN IS AWESOME. His lectures were really fun. He incorporated a "scandal of the week" in every second lecture which talked about some hypothetical or a wall street story that related to what we had just learnt. He would bring props in to the lectures to apply the knowledge we are learning to small scale examples, and just generally teach really well and speak really clearly. He explains it in such a way that you might never have heard of what an annuity is before the lecture, but become an absolute BOSS at them 45 minutes later. He is a top lad and you should do the subject if he is the teacher LOL

Tutes:
Tutes were good. Haven't heard many complaints about them. The kids who complained about the subject stopped going because there is no hurdle requirement and the population drops a few weeks in. I had the head tutor who was an absolute beast and went through everything quickly and clearly.
basically what happens is a bunch of questions get put up each week and in the tute's they walk you through the answers. pretty simple really but its a good time to ask questions and they will generally tell you about variations of questions and how to approach them. if you are behind in the work you won't know whats going on in the tutes but if you are up to date they are great. tute questions are the best exam revision you'll get other than the practice exam because they have solutions.
 
Assignments:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Finance 1 assignments are generally harder in semester 2.

that being said I thought the assignments were great and very clear. You were given a clear word limit for each question and in answering each part of the question you usually have no words to spare. There will be usually 3-4 marks in the assignment that are just free marks, with 1 calculation question that is usually the main separator, and an "advise your friend"/general finance question which the bulk of kids get most of the marks. If you study for these assignments there is no reason you can't get 100% generally. I  think it's a really fair couple of assignments because you will have to do a fair bit of extra reading to get full marks but its achievable and effort definitely correlates with marks. You want to smash these so that you have a bigger buffer for the 80% exam.
just to highlight the difference in the semesters: semester 1 this years assignment was just a "advise your friend on how they would invest 30K", in semester 2 question 1 made you describe the nuances OF A TRIPLE LEVERAGED ETF. LMAO WE HADN'T EVEN LEARNT WHAT AN ETF WAS IN THE COURSE YET. << those aren't caps locks of anger, because if you did alot of extra reading you eventually learn about all sorts of awesome and different investment vehicles. and it definitely was a do-able assignment.
 
Exam:
The exam is a hurdle, but if you put in a semi-decent cram effort for at least a few days, you shouldnt worry about not passing. About 1/3 of the exam is financial maths. They provide a formula sheet which has EVERYTHING you need, and all you have to do is know which formula to use and how to use it. however they usually add some sort of twist to the calculations where the number they really want you to provide might take a bit of conceptual understanding to figure out what they're asking. Meaning that you'll use the formula to calculate something, and then to get to the final answer you might have to deduct it from something in a previous question or scale it in a certain way or whatever. Its VERY reminiscent of the FURTHER MATHS FINANCIAL MODULE so if you liked that youll be fine for finance 1.

There is a fair amount of conceptual stuff too. In recent years, there is more and more conceptual knowledge in the exams, and especially in Semester 2 exams. If you took the time to follow my pro tip above and understand the ideas that jordan lectures (which he explains so well) these questions are basically just logical deduction. I dont think i had to pull anything out from memory in the exam and it was all just stuff that logically makes sense.

Conculusion:
All said I'm giving it a 5/5 for a few reasons;
 - The subject is run very well, with great communication from staff to students
 - The teaching staff are all AWESOME, VERY KNOWLEDGABLE and VERY WILLING TO HELP
 - All the assessment was very fair.
 - All content taught very well.
 - No mandatory attendance

I personally have no complaints but some people complain about boredom, but if you enjoy finance its not boring. If you enjoy bio a bio subject won't be boring, if you enjoy politics a politics subject wont be boring, and if it IS despite your tastes, then it's probably a poor subject. Finance 1 though gets the love of alot of finance lovers as well as converting some science kids into enjoying it. though i will admit alot of the course are science kids who do it for a breadth that seems useful and they heard is easy and they hate it because they aren't interested in the topics.

After finance 1 you won't be the best stay at home investor but you will definitely be able to put your savings to better use than just a bank account!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on November 14, 2015, 07:07:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002 Biomedicine: Molecule to Malady 

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial (used for MST's or for missed lectures - just another lecture)

Assessment:  2 x 45 minute MCQ MSTs (20% each) + Exam (60%). Each MST will test two modules. MCQs for last two modules on the exam.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes.

Past exams available:  No. Some sample SAQs for each module, feedback MCQ quizzes on all modules throughout the semester with feedback given.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook recommended for this subject, plenty of journal articles provided on the LMS. These aren't essential to read, don't have to read them at all, probably just the topics you struggle with. If you do read them, reading all of them isn't necessary.

Lecturer(s):  Loads of lecturers, many different ones for each module.

Year & Semester of completion:  2015. Semester 1

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H2A 78

Comments:   This subject is structured well, there are 6 modules that each go for 2 weeks each, you are assessed on all 6 modules through multiple choice questions - modules 1 & 2 on MST #1, modules 3 & 4 on MST #2, then modules 5 & 6 on the final exam. Then in the final exam you are given SAQ's on all six modules, but you only choose 4 of them, so choose the 4 you are most comfortable with.

You start off usually in the first week of the module introducing the disease, how you diagnose it, what causes it, what are the aims of treatment. Then in the second week usually you are presented with therapeutic options, these could be drugs, surgery, or monoclonal antibodies.

Module 1 - Muscular Dystrophies.
Module 2 - Pandemics (Malaria/HIV)
Module 3 - Cystic Fibrosis
Module 4 - Rheumatoid Arthritis
Module 5 - B cells and Disease (Monoclonal antibodies)
Module 6 - Neurodegenration (Alzheimer’s/Parkinson's Disease)

Most of the lectures are delivered by clinicians or researchers and they are high quality, not many lectures would do more than 3 or 4 lectures each at most.
You probably could just cruise along and take the subject lightly and cram for the mid semester exams and average H1 before the final exam, but they aren't a good predictor for the final mark. It goes into a lot of detail, so if you want to go well you need to put in a fair bit of work.
For example, for Rheumatoid arthritis you will need to know osteoclasts, osteoblasts, osteocytes, synovial fibroblasts, synovial macrophages, B cells, T 17 helper cells, T regulatory cells, and the specific cytokines that activate them, and the specific cytokines they release (IL1, IL-6, TNF, RANKL, RANK, GM-CSF, JAK-STAT signalling). Then you will need to know the Name and structure of monoclonal antibodies used against these cytokines, as well as other drugs used (DMARDs). This is just for one module and does not include all you need to know for that module. Doing all six is complex so you would want to give yourself plenty of time to know the relevant detail for the modules you are likely to do for SAQs on the exam. However you should have an extra module known in detail as a back up.

Personally I found the Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy modules the easiest, and the B cell disease one the hardest. But depending on your strengths and major some might be easier than others. I felt like the Neurodegenration module didn't provide enough material to really get it, there is so much still unknown about it.

It's not an easy subject at all, you cannot get away with not knowing the specifics in this subject (as with most in 3rd year), this isn't about principles, its about understanding the specifics of these diseases. But the course is well structured and there is help if you need it, with FAQ's as well provided on the LMS.

Definitely the better of the 3rd year Biomed Core subjects, but you will need to work harder to get a good mark.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: vox nihili on November 15, 2015, 01:13:45 am
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30001 Protein Structure and Function

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 hour tute every couple of weeks and 1 x 2 hour computer lab each semester

Assessment:  2 x 7.5% MSTs, 1 x 10% PyMOL assignment, 1 x 5% computer lab and 1 x 70% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yes. Every exam for this subject is available on the library website, including the previous year's.

Textbook Recommendation: How Proteins Work? (Williamson) is prescribed but not needed at all. Indeed, for those sections of the course for which you really need the book it is either utterly useless or has sweet FA about the topic.

Lecturer(s): Paul Gooley (Topologies, structural alignments, multidomain proteins, IUPs and NMR)
                    Mike Griffin (enzyme catalysis and kinetics, allostery, X-ray crystallography)
                    Terry Mulhern (SH2 SH3 PH kinase domains, growth hormone, small angle X-ray scattering)
                    Leanne Tilley (membranes, microscopy)
                    Danny Hatters (protein folding, FRET, single molecule experiments)

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)

Comments:

TL;DR: an interesting subject that doesn't warrant its reputation as the most difficult in biochem

The Content

Overall the subject deals with five distinct modules that, surprisingly, don't feed into each other that well. There is a very small degree of overlap, particularly between Terry, Mike and Paul, but otherwise, the modules are quite distinct. As such, I'll talk about each briefly on its own. The bottom line is, however, that most of the content is really interesting and for the most part well taught. You do leave this subject with a sense that you've got special knowledge and haven't just rote learned the shit out of stuff you'll forget the next day.

Paul: Paul is the first lecturer in the course and the coordinator. To me at least, his first few lectures did feel like a baptism of fire. His first few lectures deal with the basics of protein structure. In essence, he presents the idea that helices and sheets pack together in a very limited number of ways and that, overall, protein structure is basically a combination of a few simple motifs. This requires a lot of memory work in order to digest boring details about angles and various motifs. Personally, I'm utterly useless when anything enters three dimensions so this felt a little overwhelming.

He then moves on to discuss multidomain proteins. He presents the idea that having multiple domains appears to be advantageous and provides four examples of such advantages. In this section, the concept of effective concentration is presented. It's fucking awesome and nearly stands alone as a reason to do this subject. With that high behind you, it's straight into NMR. Don't expect to understand this. You won't. For the most part, Paul is quite a good lecturer. He's easy enough to follow and with a little bit of work his lectures do become relatively easy. The exception to the rule is NMR. He's an NMR expert and unsurprisingly struggles to dumb it down. Everyone I spoke to struggled with it, but it turns out ok in the end because he doesn't ever seem to ask questions about how it works, just about what you expect to see (which is easy and explained really well!). Paul then wraps up with a discussion on intrinsically unstructured proteins (IUPs), which is also pretty cool. Overall, he's good. His stuff is really interesting and not too intense. Critically, there is no chemistry at all!

Mike: Mike only takes four lectures. He starts off discussing mechanisms of covalent and non-covalent catalysis. These are quite tedious and it's extremely difficult to predict what he wants you to know. This is also the only time during the course that chemistry rears its ugly head. He then moves on to allostery, which is kind of interesting, and enzyme kinetics, which isn't. Finally, Mike talks about X-ray crystallography. As with NMR, it's a little difficult to follow and Mike does struggle to some extent presenting it on our level; he does, however, do a pretty good job explaining the physics behind it and for that he should be congratulated because it is hard to grasp. Overall, he's fun to listen to because he clearly loves proteins so much but his topics are probably the driest of the course.

Terry: Terry's module, for me at least, felt like the course I expected. He actually goes through structures. Terry's first few lectures examine the structures of the following domains: SH2, SH3, Fn3, Ig-like, kinase and PH. This sounds scary, but it's not. As anyone in a position to take this subject should know from second year, Terry is a wonderful teacher and really does make it easy to digest. Indeed, he uses PyMOL (a modelling program) to show us the structure of these domains. It is really, really gratifying to look at protein structures and see how it all works—it does really feel like you've gained a skill. For this part of the course, I actually got PyMOL and had a play with the structures we were looking at. I'd recommend this 100%, made it very easy to remember and it felt good having developed a skill.

Terry then moves on to growth hormone and the growth hormone receptor. This is pretty similar to his previous lectures and is quite interesting. There's some funky stuff happening with growth hormone so it is quite interesting. Finally, he moves on to small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Once again, some of the background is hard to grasp but when it becomes clear that he's only looking for certain things it is relatively straightforward. He does have a habit of asking tricky questions about SAXS, so make sure you actually get what everything means and don't just try to rote learn it. Indeed, this is sage advice for all of Terry's stuff—he does ask the trickiest questions and really expects you to understand in detail what he's on about.

Leanne: Leanne is just what you need for the fourth module. It's just after mid-semester, you're feeling tired and are pretty well rundown. The pace of Leanne's lectures is a lot slower than the others and a lot of the content is really straightforward. She starts off with a discussion of biological membranes and then discusses transport processes. 90% of the content in these lectures is pulled straight from VCE biology, so they're a breeze.

After that, she begins to discuss how we isolate membrane proteins and how they're analysed. This leads into a discussion about microscopy, which can become a little dense and does require a lot of thinking. Leanne explains microscopy extremely well, however. Indeed, her technique section of her module is by far the best taught and easiest to understand. We then look at the structures of some membrane proteins and bioinformatic techniques used to analyse such structures. Finally, we move on to two lectures about "membrane and disease". These lectures deal with the mechanisms of entry of Ebola, influenza and HIV. They also discuss malaria in some detail. Leanne is an expert on malaria so the malaria lecture is quite tough. I was lucky enough to come into proteins with quite a good understanding of malaria thanks to M2M; however, Leanne does have a tendency to ask really complicated questions on this area so make sure you know it well. As an aside, she also wears artemisinin earrings, which is just wonderful. Indeed, it was particularly lovely to have a tute with her—someone who works on artemisinin resistance—the day after the Nobel was given to the lady (Tu Youyou) who discovered artemisinin.

Danny: Danny is the final lecturer in the course and his lectures cover folding. Some of the concepts he presents are really tricky to get your head around, but Danny manages to break these down pretty well so it is hard, but not overwhelming. He starts off with the basics of folding, discussing the kinetics of folding and how we measure folding rates etc. He then moves on to more complex systems and begins to discuss misfolding. From misfolding, he moves into mechanisms used by cells to prevent misfolding and also discusses the concept of excluded volume, which is basically the idea that cells are really crowded and this makes folding proteins a bit of a pain in the arse really. Finally, Danny looks into FRET—in a lot of detail, which is wonderful—and single molecule experiments.

Not only is Danny's stuff really interesting and really cool, the way he presents it is fantastic. After his first couple of lectures, Danny had a tendency to explain concepts and then go into the details of experiments that proved it. Moreover, he did it in such a way that it was a) understandable b) really interesting. Quite often he would say that a certain paper or series of experiments was really neat and you couldn't help but agree with him. You really did feel like you were being taken through the science and not just expected to rote learn and it was wonderful. Personally, I really felt as though I left with a good understanding of the concepts he presented but, moreover, a good understanding of the science that led to it. It really felt wonderful and, somewhat incredibly for the past few weeks of my undergrad, I felt really happy to be learning it. Interestingly, his exam question this year really did follow suit. He didn't ask us to regurgitate knowledge, he asked us to interpret results and explain what was going on. It felt so wonderfully fulfilling to look at graphs and look at results and be able to interpret them with my knowledge. Such a fantastic departure from rote!

The Assessment of the Content

Computer lab: you attend a 2 hour session that takes 1 hour if you're quick. You work through a worksheet that teaches you how to use PyMOL and are then asked to make a figure and draw a figure legend. It is quite cool and it sets the foundation well for the upcoming assignment. Moreover, it's very easy to perform well.

Assignment: each lecturer prepares an assignment. Basically, each of these looks at a different protein and you have to draw a structure of the protein (on PyMOL, relax!) and then answer some questions about its structure and the methods used to obtain the structure. This is all relatively straightforward and really doesn't require a lot of effort. Also pretty easy to perform well on. Weirdly, also a bit fun.

MSTs: the first covers Paul and Mike's stuff, the second Terry and Leanne's. Both have an MCQ and SAQ component and last for thirty minutes. The averages weren't overly good but the exams are balanced and fair. Leanne does have a tendency to ask way too much for the time she allocates, something which carries onto the exam. For instance, she did once ask four questions—in an SAQ format—and allocated five minutes to those four questions. Good luck to whoever could manage that, you are truly a God among men.

Exam: three hours and worth a lot. First time it had MCQs was this year; the MST is a really good guide as to how the MCQs will look. I also imagine that this year's will serve as a good reference for coming years' exams.

The SAQs are relatively straightforward. Paul's are nowhere near as difficult as you'd expect; all of it is just simple recall. Mike's are much the same. They both tend to repeat questions. Terry seems to enjoy writing really tricky questions. He tends to split half of his marks into simple recall and the other half into applying knowledge. You really have to know your shit to be able to pull any marks from some of his questions. He'll provide a situation and then ask you to rationalise that situation in the context of what you've learned. It's hard and it spooked a lot of people this year, and no doubt in previous years, but if you know your shit it'll feel somewhat nice to get them.

Leanne's questions appear to be repeated and do centre around the same themes each year. Past exams are a really good guide for hers. As mentioned, she does have a tendency to ask waaaaaay too much for the time she allocates so make sure you save some time elsewhere. She also likes diagrams so prepare for that too! Lastly, Danny's questions are much like Terry's: he doesn't appear to be content with you being able to vomit the knowledge out, he really wants you to use it. He provides a situation and then asks you to explain it with the knowledge you've gained. Really, his and Terry's questions are a masterclass on how exam questions really ought to be written. They are bloody hard, however, so don't slack off!

Overall

Overall, this subject appears to have a reputation that it doesn't deserve. People seem to see it as a really hardcore subject only for those obsessed with proteins and biochem. I really don't think that's the case. To do well, it does require someone who can digest difficult concepts but it is certainly no onslaught of terror. Moreover, the amount of work required to keep up-to-date in this subject is quite manageable; there really isn't a huge amount to learn.

Personally, I took a BCMB major because I was most interested in molecular biology. This subject scared the shit out of me. I thought it would be a challenge I wasn't sure I was up to. As it turns out, that was all ridiculous. It is manageable. It's hugely interesting. And the stuff you learn really is quite different to the protein stuff in second year. It's a good subject, do try it!

Is it really as scary as it sounds?

No.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on November 15, 2015, 01:36:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20070: Learning via Sport and Outdoor Education 

Workload:  6 lectures (1-1.5 hours most finish early), 1 Fun Run (on a weekend, finished by lunchtime), 1 Bush Walking Camp (3 days over a weekend and one day during the week), 3 running training sessions (1-1.5 hours).

Assessment:  2 x 750 word autoethnographic journal entries (15% each, both submitted at the same time 30% total) due week 10. 1 x 2500 word autoethnographic report due end of semester (70% of final mark). You won't get your final marks Released until you pay the additional fee for completing this subject as you need to pay for travel and hike instructors for the camp - it would not be more than $200. 80% attendance hurdle requirement.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, maybe a bit dodgy though.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  All of the course material is covered in lectures, and the lecturer explicitly tells you to only reference the sources he covers in the lectures, there is no need to find outside sources.

Lecturer(s): John Quay

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, S2.

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 86

Comments:
Best subject at the university! Pretty much outdoor education from high school, where you get to go for a 3 day camp/hike at Wilson's Promontory National Park. The subject was initially designed for international students so that they could experience the National Park, but it is welcome for anyone, and most are local students.

The first 2 weeks of semester you get introduced to the subject and what you need to do to write an autoethnographic report. An autoethnographic report is a combination of autobiography and ethnography, so you don't need to reference it, you describe your own feelings and thoughts as you complete a fun run, or bush walk.
Then for the next 3 weeks in the lecture slot, you meet at the athletics track and participate in running training, you are split up into groups of ability and the distance you are going to run in (5km, 10km, 15km). These sessions are not hard, and if you are injured you don't have to run, you can do gym rehab work, but everyone needs to complete the fun run. You are encouraged to take autoethnographic notes during training and after the fun run, this is pretty easy, you can just write it down on your phone, or do a voice recording, or take pictures.

The fun run is on a weekend, you need to organise your own transport there, it starts at the Xavier College primary school in Kew, i got a lift in a car, but there is a bus that goes right past it. The fun run fee is included in the additional fee at the start of the subject. This fun run is usually finished by lunchtime.
That completes the first 5 weeks of the course.

The next 3 weeks of the course are dedicated to the Bush walking camps. You are allocated to groups by filling out an online form where you note your previous experience and ability to do a bush walk. So if you want to stay in a group of friends maybe try to put the same answers down, but you may be able to swap with others later but this isn't usually possible, only approved by the coordinator depending on circumstance.
If you chose the week 6 option, you have a lecture where only those who are allocated for week 6 attend, this goes over safety, what to bring, what you are going to do, who is going to share a tend with who. If you need to hire anything its worked out in that session. Everyone else has the week off.
Once you finish your camp you get the other 2 weeks off, i.e. if you camped in week 6, you get week 7, 8 off. Everyone gets week 9 as a week off to compensate you for missing one day during the week, as the camps are 3 days long and span the weekend, so you miss either friday or monday.
These camps are without a doubt the best part of the subject. If you have never hiked before or are injured, you get placed in the base camp group and only go on day trips and don't need to carry all your stuff. If you have hiked before you pair up with your tent buddy and share the responsibility of carrying your tent and food in backpacks during the hike. Once you get back home after the 3 day bush walk, then you take your autoethnographic notes, there is no need to take them when your on the camp. Its awesome, plenty of Wildlife, great views, the beach at Sealer's cove is beautiful.

So after everyone has week 9 off, weeks 10, 11, 12 get into the academic side of the course, and introduce you to the theory behind learning through outdoor education. This may be a bit challenging for some to understand, but the lecturer is great and will really help you if you need it, I didn't seek help from him but if you're stuck it would help. You really don't want to miss these sessions, as mentioned above, all of the material which you will need to reference is provided in these lectures and you only really need to reference a few paragraphs of the essay. A lot of it is introducing your autoethnographic reports from the previous assignment and interpreting your own feelings and how you felt you learned during the experience.

Assessment is very fair, and this subject isn't something you are likely to get ever again in your education, I really regret not doing outdoor education at school!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on November 15, 2015, 02:19:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20068: Sport, Education and the Media 

Workload:  1 x 1 hour lecture per week. 1 x 2 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  8 brief summaries of readings provided throughout the semester (10% all up, not marked, just a hurdle)
1600 word case study due mid semester (40%)
2000 word essay on a current issue in sport (50%) due end of semester.
In my year there were quizzes but I think they were taken out.
80% attendance requirement.

Lectopia Enabled:  Maybe, I did but i had a clash, so if you don't have a clash they might not provide them, they get really annoyed if no-one shows up to lectures.

Past exams available:  N/A but sample essays were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A, most of the material you will end up referencing is covered in the readings you do, but you might need to reference outside material on the essays.

Lecturer(s): Anna Krohn, sometimes a guest lecturer

Year & Semester of completion: 2014, S1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1, 86

Comments:
At the start of semester you cover why sports education has developed into our society, it didn't exist in the mid 19th century. So this covers the meaning of sport to our society, how it became a part of our education system, and then how sport impacts children and how you teach sport to children. This is the task for the first case study, you are given scenarios, e.g. when are kids ready to start sport? What sport or programme should they take up as a start? You just provide a solution to the case scenario.

Then the subject goes into how sport impacts our social life, and the role it can play in socialisation. We actually had a compulsory Field trip to the Ian Potter Gallery on Swanston street and had to look at a piece of artwork that related to sport and write a reflective essay about it and what it meant to you.
We also had another field trip to the MCG sports museum, which was pretty fun, and you get a free tour of the MCG. You have to pick out an exhibition from the sports museum and reflect on it and hand it in and then you're done.

The final part of the course you cover how social theories apply to sport, social theories covered are; feminism, conflict, capitalism, functionalist theory, interactionist theory. You also cover how sport is portrayed in the media, how women are presented in sport, how the sports section in a newspaper may be directed to a particular sex, how it mostly consists of top level elite sports and not a lot of amateur local sport.

In the final essay you have to spend the first few paragraphs analysing a newspaper and describing how it is made up and the significance of this, e.g. advertisements (esp. betting), News, Finance, Sport, Classifieds, etc. For the sport part you elaborate on how much sport is provided, whether it is mostly male sports, or elite sports, what type of sporting code (Melbourne  vs Sydney paper). This is only a short part of the essay, and isn't where you get most of the mark.
The majority of the mark is attained from the second part where you pick out 2 or 3 social theories and related them to a recent issue you have found in sport and the media. e.g. if it was 2012 you would find an article on Lance Armstrong and relate these social theories to that. You need to provide the article you found when you submit. Relating the article to a social theory is probably the hardest part, I would recommend feminist theory, or capitalist theory as they are a bit easier to understand, and easy to find articles on those issues.

You also do reading circles in this subject where you talk to people in your group about what you read, and you need to create a Facebook page or e-mail so you can send each other your summaries.

I like sport so I found this subject good and would recommend it to anyone who likes sport or did physical education at school. There are no practical sessions, so I did find it a bit boring. If you don't enjoy sport at all I probably wouldn't recommend it, but you don't have to love sport to do it. If you are passionate about how women are represented in sport, or how certain ethnicities are excluded from sport you would go well in this.

It's a fairly easy subject, so definitely give it a go if you want a subject that you can take a bit easy but still be able to grasp it when you need to.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 15, 2015, 09:22:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure and Function

Workload:

Contact Hours: six x 1 hour lectures, one x 2 hour Computer-aided learning workshop (for 12 weeks) + 3 additional 2 hour sessions and one x 3 hour practical (for 7 weeks) per week

Total Time Commitment: 340hrs

Assessment:

Written laboratory report (1000 words, 10%); two tests during semester (20% total, 10% each); and two 2-hr end of semester exams (70% total, 35% each)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. However, by not attending the lectures you won’t be able to participate in the Personal Response System (PRS) in physiology lectures.

Past exams available: Yes. There are two copies of exam 1 and five copies of exam 2 available in the university library repository. Additionally, you can use the PHYS20008 exams for physiology revision. Some physiology revision questions are also provided on the LMS. Note that the format of these physiology resources are no longer representative of the physiology assessment in this subject though. Unfortunately, no pharmacology questions were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:

Eizenberg, N., C. Briggs, C. Adams & G. Ahern. "General Anatomy: Principles and Applications". Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007.

I didn’t really use this book that much, except for the ADSLs from time to time. Other anatomy textbooks are provided through the LMS and are also there to provide support for the ADSLs. Pre-reading wasn't really examinable.

Silverthorn, D.U. "Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach". San Francisco: Pearson, 6 th Ed. 2013.

This textbook is absolutely essential, because pre-reading in physiology is examinable. I generally found it quite useful and easy to read so it’s worth having a copy anyway. Shouldn’t be too difficult to "find" (*cough*).

Lecturer(s):

Anatomy (28 lectures)
Dr Peter Kitchener - Neuroanatomy (2 lectures)
Assoc Prof Colin Anderson - Embryology (2 lectures)
Dr Varsha Pilbrow - Systems anatomy (5 lectures)
Dr Simon Murray - Vertebral column and back; upper and lower limbs (7 lectures)
Dr Junhua Xiao - Visceral systems - gastrointestinal system, cardiovascular system, thoracic walls and diaphragm, lower respiratory tract, urinary system (9 lectures)
Dr Jason Ivanusic - Upper respiratory tract; male and female reproductive systems (3 lectures)

Co-ordinator: Assoc Prof Jenny Hayes

Physiology (26 lectures)
Co-ordinator: Prof David Williams - Neurophysiology, muscle physiology, digestive physiology, cardiovascular physiology, respiratory physiology, reproductive physiology (22 lectures)
Prof Stephen Harrap - Renal physiology (4 lectures)

Pharmacology (11 lectures)
Prof Alastair Stewart - Pharmacodynamics (5 lectures)
Dr Michael Lew - Pharmacokinetics (4 lectures)
Dr Graham Mackay - Autonomic pharmacology (2 lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2015

Rating: 2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I'll cut to the chase: this is definitely the worst Biomedicine core subject we'd had to date. So many enter with high hopes because for the first time we actually got to study anatomy and physiology - I went in with low expectations given what I had heard about this subject and somehow still walked out disappointed. The biggest disappointment is that they don’t really need to do that much to fix this subject up, but it seems like people are reporting the same problems every year and they're not really listening. In the end, I've decided to give this subject a pass overall because ultimately the staff are half way there with it. I initially marked the anatomy component out of 1.5, the physiology component out of 1.5, the pharmacology component out of 1 and the assessment out of 1, and found that I had given them all 50%. When one department got something right, the other managed to get it wrong, or half the area of study was taught well at the expense of the other half.

With BIOM20001 done and dusted most students will not find taking another 25 credit point subject like this one difficult or jarring to tackle. You'll have six lectures each week - this time, a morning and afternoon lecture every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This was a welcome change from BIOM20001, and personally I did find it easier to maintain focus and keep on top of my work with the day's gap in-between. There's no regular workshop timeslot unless a lecturer replaces a lecture with a workshop, so in general there were less workshops during the semester - this may be a positive or a negative depending on how you learn. Like last semester, I found the workshops this semester helpful but I'll get into discussing those later. Four anatomy practicals and one physiology practical take the place of the CALs you had in BIOM20001. Overall, BIOM20002 is lighter in workload than BIOM20001 - it is definitely no more than two normal subjects worth in terms of demand (this makes sense if we consider BIOM20002 as a substitute for the equivalent Science subjects ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure, and PHYS20008 Human Physiology) and so many people choose to (and successfully) study two selective subjects alongside this one during the semester (such as myself).

The way this subject is structured is that you'll generally study a system's anatomy or structure before moving onto its physiology; while pharmacology is sort of dumped in the middle of the subject around the time of the first mid-semester test. This involves very slight re-arrangements of the order of lectures offered in the Science equivalents ANAT20006 and PHYS20008. In that sense, BIOM20002 could make studying anatomy and physiology a bit better but the gain would not be significant. I have a feeling it is for this reason the staff call this subject an "integrated" subject but I think you can start to appreciate that simply re-arranging the lectures is not really integration. I think they finally started to yield on that point this year, although I'd say the level of integration was still insufficient. Anyway, I'll get into that more a bit later. From here on, I'll explore each discipline separately in this review.

Anatomy

I'll be honest: the thought of studying anatomy actually terrified me and it was for this reason that I wasn't looking forward to studying this subject at all. I didn't really know how much anatomy we had to learn, and I was anticipating that I'd have to learn and label all 206 bones and the 400 muscles in the body or something. If it's something concerning you, I'm glad I can reassure you that you won't be expected to know all that detailed information in this subject. If we take a look at the Science equivalent of this subject, the title is "Principles of Human Structure" - the key word there is principles. Of course, you'll still need to know a fair amount of specific details but where possible the staff try to relate that back to more general principles and clinical applications. In that sense, anatomy became much easier to swallow and enjoy. What did catch me off guard though was the fact that we had to learn about different parts of muscles and bones; I guess that was something I had overlooked. Now that I'm at the other side, I can safely say that studying anatomy actually wasn't that bad or difficult at all; while it still wasn't my favourite thing to study I have walked away with a newly found appreciation of anatomy, and I no longer fear subsequent studies in anatomy (perhaps I'm wrong in thinking this though LOL).

Your first anatomy lectures are taken by Dr Peter Kitchener where you'll explore neuroanatomy - more specifically principles of the central nervous system, its protection and fluid supply; and the somatic and autonomic (sympathetic and parasympathetic) peripheral nervous systems. Peter is a good lecturer, but his slides are very light in terms of content and while he doesn't speak particularly fast you'll need to write a lot of information down. I'm not sure if it was because of this but I found neuroanatomy rather confusing initially. What I'll say is that it will make a lot more sense as the subject progresses - a lot of the subsequent anatomy that follows requires a basic understanding of the underlying guiding neuroanatomy (which is why you do it first), and as you start to explore these areas you will become a lot more comfortable with the topics discussed in the first couple of lectures.

Much of this also applies for the embryology lectures, taken by Assoc Prof Colin Anderson. In this block you only get a chance go through an overview of the processes in embryology - the topic is rather complex and there's not a lot of time to get into things at a deeper level. Colin was also a good lecturer and at the time I thought these lectures were actually quite good. What I found over time though was that I was hopeless at memorising all the information. 😝 I'd probably advise regular revision on these two lectures - it's nothing exceptionally difficult but it can get rather tricky at times, making it difficult to remember answers when it comes to the assessment (more on that later). In particular, pay close attention to the diagrams and videos provided. Embryology (like anatomy as a whole, really) is especially visual so it's often only really possible to understand the processes once you understand how it happens visually.

Dr Varsha Pilbrow was up next covering systems anatomy (this includes the muscular, skeletal, articular (joints), vascular and integumental (skin) systems). This part of the subject is definitely the most "principles" grounded in this subject - you don't discuss specific regions of the body at all but rather the general principles of these systems throughout the entire body. There's still some stuff to memorise, but much like the former lectures you've had the goal of this block is to prepare you for the upcoming regional anatomy. Varsha's lectures were probably my favourite anatomy lectures. They're not at all difficult, but I'll warn you that she talks very fast and you'll need to write down a lot, so pay close attention.

Up until this point, all the lectures you've had have largely been grounded in principles. This changes as there is a shift in focus to regional anatomy and studying various systems in the human body. This is probably the area of anatomy most people think of when they hear the word anatomy. Many were looking forward to these lectures - I on the other hand was not, but as I said earlier I wasn't overwhelmed like I had anticipated because there's a lot of detail you don't go into, and where possible, the lecturers try to bring the specific details together into more general principles. At times though this can be difficult - as Peter said to us early on in the journey: "People often ask why something is so in my lectures; in anatomy there often is no why - it is what it is," - and having no underlying framework can make some things much more difficult to memorise due to the lack of context. When it comes to these lectures, I highly recommend changing the way you study. The earlier anatomy lectures can more or less be studied as normal, but these upcoming ones should be studied in a different context. You could take notes as you normally would, but sitting there sticking in the diagrams and writing in the labels is likely to become tedious and probably won't be helpful as you're not practicing your memory for the assessment. Instead, I used an online quiz program which allowed me to upload the images and blank the labels, and I'd regularly practice labelling the diagrams and writing the descriptions on my phone as I was travelling to and from university. Something along these lines - perhaps flashcards, or blanking out the labels and printing out several copies to practice every now and then - would be far more effective (as long as you don't neglect the description - I think some people got too good at just memorising labels and didn't actually understand what they were learning).

Dr Simon Murray teaches the vertebral column and back and the upper and lower limbs (you'll look at the bones and joints, muscles and movements, and nerve and blood supply). Despite being a good lecturer, this was the most difficult part of the course for me as my memory struggled to take in all the information. My advice is to really pay attention and focus on the general principles and then try to progressively build in all the detail. I also advise you to learn the specific detail Simon says is non-examinable - I was a bit annoyed by the fact that muscles of the forearm, dermatomes and myotomes all appeared on both the mid-semester test and exam, despite being told to 'understand the principles' (obviously very confusing to hear).

The bulk of the anatomy lectures are taken by Dr Junhua Xiao, who covers most of the visceral anatomy. She had a strong Chinese accent that was at times difficult for me to understand, but out of all the anatomy staff she was the best at telling us exactly what we had to know for the assessments. Personally, her block of lectures were actually the easiest for me to learn and study (perhaps by this point in time I had grown accustomed to my new mode of study and the things I was initially unsure of had started to click) - maybe the exception was the inguinal canal, but with a bit of persistence even this made sense without too much trouble. To be honest, I thought there were better anatomy lecturers but I regard Junhua as my favourite for a reason I'll get to a little later in this review. A small number of lectures were taken by Dr Jason Ivanusic, covering the upper respiratory tract and the male and female reproductive systems. His lectures were structured much like Junhua's, and he was also a decent lecturer.

To supplement your studies in anatomy, there are four anatomy practicals run during the semester. Going into this subject I didn't really know what to expect of these, and I was a little afraid I wouldn't cope. Thankfully (or perhaps not, depending on your stance) the practicals are purely observational and you don't have to worry about having to physically do anything yourself - samples are prepared beforehand, and you can handle them if you wish. Additionally, these practicals are not at all assessed - they are purely there for you to learn. In that sense, I got a great deal of benefit out of these practical classes. One bit of criticism is that the staff seemed like they always wanted to finish early, and I don't ever recall getting the whole two hours worth of lab time. Generally finishing a class early is a positive, but I felt at times teaching was needlessly rushed as a consequence.

Further supporting resources include access to the anatomy museum (which I can't comment on because I didn't use it), and the ADSL worksheets (ADSL stands for anatomy directed self learning). These worksheets predominantly summarise the content covered during lectures and give you the chance to practice your labelling skills. There will be some parts that seem like they have nothing to do with the lectures (this is especially true of the neuroanatomy ADSL) - even though ADSL content is technically examinable, don't worry about these parts because I never saw them come up again. The questions in the ADSLs tend to have a clinical focus and are probably good practice for some of the questions that may pop up on the anatomy exam. You'll be provided regularly with references to the anatomy textbooks to find the answers - it's this part of the ADSLs that makes them rather time-consuming - they look deceiving so allow yourself some time to work through them.

In terms of the lecture content, anatomy probably is the best taught component in the course. However, this doesn't mean their lectures are perfect. Probably one of the most annoying things about the anatomy lectures was the labelling convention - or lack thereof. Most of the time the structures to be discussed were listed on the side of the diagram, and there was no line to point to where that structure was. Instead, the lecturers usually used their cursor or pointer to point at the structure, which can be a bit ambiguous (especially if it's just a small groove or something) and if you were looking down writing or typing you essentially missed where that part was. Additionally, a lot of the descriptions of body parts and clinical significance was left off the slides (most of the time the slides were just diagrams) leaving you to have to write down copious amounts of information. This is particularly frustrating because as I'll get to a bit later, a significant amount of the anatomy assessment relates not so much to the labelling aspect of the subject but rather the descriptions and clinical significance.

Additionally, I was not impressed with the anatomy department's attitude towards this subject. Out of the three areas, the anatomy staff on the whole were the least willing to integrate their content with content provided as part of the other disciplines. They insisted on having their own end of semester exam, effectively killing any final opportunity to integrate physiology and pharmacology with anatomy. Furthermore, it encouraged us to study anatomy in isolation from the other disciplines - in SWOTVAC I was revising the anatomy of some structures and looking at their physiology only after the anatomy exam was over, and that just doesn't seem right to me. In addition, most of the lecturers just walked in and opened their ANAT20006 lecture slides, giving lectures as if we were in an anatomy-only subject. Sometimes a lecturer would say "this has implications for the physiology of this structure... but you'll hear about that in the physiology lectures" and just leave it hanging there for the other departments to deal with. To me, this was incredibly disappointing. Importantly, I point out that Junhua was the exception - she often went above and beyond to discuss some of the physiology relating to the anatomy she had just discussed (often she'd say "I know I'm only supposed to teach the anatomy but this is an integrated subject so I'm going to talk about the physiology for a moment..." - it almost sounded like the anatomy staff had been instructed not to delve into the physiology at all) and I'm really thankful she did that.

The anatomy department were also not particularly helpful in regards to the mid-semester tests. Rather annoyingly, feedback was vague and questions that were answered poorly in the tests were not handled well by the staff - instead there was an underlying accusatory tone in their review that the content was clearly explained in their lecture series and that it was our fault for not understanding. I understand the anatomy department's wishes to not release practice material for these assessments (and I don't have a problem with that) but things were not handled well when people needed help.

It is for these reasons I have given the anatomy component of this subject a 0.75/1.5. If these problems are to be fixed, I think the co-ordinators need to pay closer attention. I have a feeling many of these problems are borne out of the fact that Assoc Prof Jenny Hayes (the anatomy co-ordinator) doesn't actually take any of our anatomy lectures, and was only present for some of our anatomy practicals. I think this is a shame, because I've heard great things about Jenny from third year students. I hope it's something they'll look into.

Physiology

In summary, what the anatomy department did right the physiology did wrong, and vice versa. 😛 In fear of promoting breach of copyright and not being objective in my review, I'll just say that I agree with what others have said in their reviews of physiology (especially the lectures) in this subject. I really didn't want to believe them, but rather quickly I came to realise that it was the truth. Perhaps what I will say is that we often got very vague explanations and regularly fell behind (mostly this meant we had to follow up the parts we didn't get to on our own). If I had to pick out some exceptions, it would be neurophysiology and respiratory physiology, as well as renal physiology by Prof Stephen Harrap (although we got a very simplified message). People tried to give feedback regarding the quality of the lectures, but didn't have the heart to exactly be honest, and instead requested in a rather polite fashion that we "have more lecturers so that we gain different perspectives." This left David rather confused, because apparently in previous years this had been suggested and he took this on board but then those year levels complained that they didn't like those lecturers. I guess it's difficult to communicate that sort of message. 😕

On the positive side, the physiology department was by far the best at integrating the three disciplines taught in this subject together. For example, David watched all the anatomy lectures and regularly pulled slides from them in order to highlight certain points - it's a shame the anatomy department failed to reciprocate. Similarly, effort has been made to try and integrate physiology and pharmacology rather closely, although I'd say that they still have a lot of work to do in that area. If you compare the lecture schedules of BIOM20002 and PHYS20008 you'll see that some of the lectures in PHYS20008 are made to make way for the pharmacology lectures - in return, the pharmacology lectures now try to supplement the physiology we effectively missed out on but it wasn't done particularly well (it also means those removed topics do make their way onto the assessments). An integrated physiology/pharmacology question appeared on our exam this year, which was rather difficult but to me, a step in the right direction.

I think it might be worth spending some time talking about how to study physiology, given that like anatomy it requires a bit of a different strategy. Physiology is all about understanding the content - some memory work is necessary but it is secondary. Hence, the physiology department has invested a lot into creating the "flipped classroom" strategy to help the process become more active and rewarding (let's face it, lectures are a pretty passive way of learning). You'll be asked to do some assigned pre-reading before attending the lecture, which is examinable. Now, when I say examinable, I don't mean that some random line in the textbook is going to make its way onto your exam, so don't stress about having to take notes from the readings or anything like that. The reason you need to pre-read before the lectures is that the lectures are framed with the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of the concept to be covered already - basically if you don't pre-read you'll struggle to understand the lecture. For the neurophysiology lectures online pre-reading modules were provided as an alternative to reading the textbook. I usually did both but to be honest I thought the online pre-reading modules were better. Throughout the lectures you'll then be asked some practice questions (they're rather similar in style to the questions you'll see in your assessments) which you respond through your PRS clicker. You can probably appreciate that if you have no clue of the content beforehand you'll probably be guessing these aimlessly, effectively defeating the purpose of this system, which is to provide you with feedback and address any misconceptions as they arise. You are then encouraged to review the lecture afterwards in a way you see fit (the way you usually do it is probably fine). The PRS clicker costs $10 to hire and is a valuable learning tool over the course of the semester. However, it seemed like most people chose not to hire one or stopped bringing it to lectures *shrugs*.

The physiology practical takes place towards the end of the semester and relates to cardiovascular responses to exercise. You'll be asked to write a report (it's actually just answers to ten questions) worth 10% of your grade. My advice, again, is to take heed of the lecture advice (*cough*). People often lose quite a lot of marks in the mid-semester tests, so the report provides you with a good opportunity to boost your grade. As always, taking care when writing your report will prove beneficial. You get a rather silly lecture during the semester on scholarly literacy, which literally provides you with no help for this report at all (the content is largely irrelevant lol).

Concept checks for each topic are provided as revision on the LMS once they are completed in lectures. These are quite useful in testing your understanding, although sometimes you couldn't access the feedback to see where you went wrong. Hence, it's a good idea to take screenshots of your responses prior to submitting the test and then figuring out later with friends where you went wrong. Additionally, there was a tab on the LMS labelled "weekly quizzes" but this remained blank for the whole semester. :S Thankfully, you also have access to plenty of physiology revision material in preparation for assessments. 

Most people tend to do quite poorly in the physiology section of the course, either because of the lecture reason (*ahem*) or due to the fact that they're not taking on board the advice of the staff and trying to learn the content more actively. I, on the other hand, found it to be a strength, and I consequently lost the majority of my marks on the mid-semester tests due to anatomy (damn failing memory XD).

In all, I've also marked physiology 0.75/1.5. While the lectures themselves were rather woeful (similarly reflected in the assessment), I appreciated the effort the physiology department was making in trying to actually integrate the three disciplines together and make up for the unwillingness of the anatomy department to do the same. In addition, the resources and feedback they provided were comprehensive and useful.

Pharmacology

The pharmacology component in BIOM20002 is quite small, being only 11 lectures in total. It's designed to cover both the basics of pharmacology so as to cover prerequisites for third year subjects requiring a basic knowledge of pharmacology, and cover some aspects of physiology that are not actually covered in the physiology component. However, as you can probably appreciate you barely get to scratch the surface of pharmacology, so if it's something you think you would like to pursue it's probably best to take PHRM20001 Pharmacology: How Drugs Work. Those studying PHRM20001 were probably at an advantage when it came to this part of the course because it seems like it was essentially repeated their pharmacology subject (and perhaps taught better); that being said as a non-PHRM20001 student I didn't find it overly difficult.

The first half or so of the pharmacology lectures are taken by Prof Alastair Stewart, who predominantly covers pharmacodynamics (the actions of drugs on the body). This is the part of pharmacology that ties in rather well with biochemistry, dealing with drugs binding receptors and their cellular responses. I didn't find it that interesting, and to be honest I felt this topic was needlessly drawn out (apparently in PHRM20001 it's done in just one lecture). The second half explores pharmacokinetics (the actions of the body on drugs) and is taken by Dr Michael Lew. On the other hand, I really enjoyed this part of the course and the connection between physiology and pharmacology became far more explicit. Michael was a very interesting lecturer (if not a bit eccentric) and explains things pretty well. In-between you'll have a couple of lectures dealing with autonomic pharmacology (drugs affecting the nervous system) by Dr Graham Mackay, re-inforcing some neurophysiology that may not have been explicitly covered in physiology. At the time I didn't engage too well with the lecture material, but upon reviewing them I actually did find them interesting. You'll also get some rather random lectures on drug discovery and development - to be honest, these were incredibly confusing and they felt largely unnecessary (in the end, I don't think we ever had a question in a test regarding these lectures).

As you would expect, a number of drugs are brought up in this section of the course (especially in Graham's lectures), but most are not explored in great detail - they're mainly used to highlight a key concept. Hence, the majority never appear in the assessment - the only one that ever came up was digoxin (in just one multiple choice question), which was the drug we covered in the most detail. I'd suggest learning the main drugs (e.g. digoxin, d-tubocurarine and aspirin) but not worrying too much about the rest. Instead, they tend to make up drugs, give you a set of properties about them and then ask you a series of questions. To be honest, I thought it was a pretty effective way of gauging whether or not a student had understood the key principles.

Two pharmacology SDLs (student directed learning tasks - yes, as you can see a variety of acronyms start to come up even though they mean the same thing 😛) are made available during the semester to support your studies in pharmacology: one relating to pharmacodynamics, and the other to pharmacokinetics. The pharmacodynamics program is extremely helpful, and probably explains pharmacodynamics far better than the lecture material does. It's that good that the lecturer himself uses the program during the lecture to help explain the concepts. The pharmacokinetics one, on the other hand, is slightly less useful, but worth your time nonetheless if you have enough time to do it.

With half the study area taught well, I think it's fitting to give this part of the subject 0.5/1. One of the big drawbacks of the pharmacology component is the lack of practice material - the first time I saw a BIOM20002 pharmacology question was in the mid-semester test which we didn't get feedback for, and then similar questions appeared on the exam. It might be worth seeing if the PHRM20001 students have anything that might be of use, if you're not a PHRM20001 student yourself.

Assessment

In addition to the physiology report, there are two 45 minute mid-semester tests, each worth 10% of your grade. The first test was held in week 6, covering lectures 1-30 (except the pharmacology lectures), and the second test in week 10, examining lectures 31-53 (plus any pharmacology lectures that fell in lectures 1-30). Most people fared alright for these tests, although they weren't as straightforward as they should have been. I initially had a negative and nervous gut feeling towards these tests when I learned in the first lecture this semester that the content and dates of these tests had yet to be decided. In the end this reaction was warranted.

The first mid-semester test is obviously more difficult to study for given the lack of a mid-semester break, but what made it more difficult this year was that the number of lectures examined was suddenly increased from lectures 1-20 for some reason. This test turned out to be really difficult, largely due to the very tight time constraint. Generally speaking assessments at university have marks equal to the number of minutes available - however mid-semester test 1 was out of 55 marks. We were told there were going to be 25 multiple choice questions and two extended matching questions (this appeared in the email just the day before the test) only to find on the day of the test (once we opened it) that there were in fact four extended matching questions. I was really disappointed that the staff weren't on top of this with us beforehand, especially given they had sent an email confirming what would be (or should have been) on the test only the day before. The content itself wasn't overly difficult if you had studied the content effectively, but with people failing to finish many didn't realise their potential on this test. For some reason, a lot of people forgot that normal cell osmolarity is 300mOsm, causing only 16% of students to get a certain series of questions correct. It wasn't discussed in a lot of detail, but it did come up both in lectures and in the pre-reading material, and the questions themselves weren't that demanding, so I was confused as to why so many weren't prepared for them.

Many complained about the lack of clarity about what was to be on the first mid-semester test, so the co-ordinators agreed they'd be more careful and put less questions on the next mid-semester test. However, the second mid-semester test (of the same format as the first mid-semester test) still had 49 marks on offer, making us wonder if they had actually listened to us at all. Due to the reallocation of lectures for the first mid-semester test, the second mid-semester test incorporated some digestive, cardiovascular and respiratory physiology, which had never before appeared on this test. Hence, no mid-semester test practice material was available for physiology. This test was easier than the first mid-semester test (aided by the fact that we had the mid-semester break to study) but again it was disappointing to see supposedly "non-examinable" content appear on the paper (physiology was the culprit this time). Most people did better on the second mid-semester test.

What made these mid-semester tests more confusing was the way in which we had to fill out the answer sheet - we had to use the back of the answer sheet for all questions, including the multiple choice questions. I have a feeling this may have confused some students, possibly adding to the rather poor performances of the cohort. Additionally, the cohort was not split up evenly into two venues like it usually is for these tests - in most cases the majority were placed on one venue with a small number of people then scattered across other venues (this seems to suggest venues were not booked adequately in advance). This was particularly annoying for the individuals placed in lecture theatres, especially those for the first mid-semester test who had to deal with the dimming lights in the Carillo Gantner theatre.

Prior to each mid-semester test was a "formative feedback" workshop class for revision. Before the first test David came in and tested us with a series of PRS questions that turned out to be really helpful. The second class, on the other hand, wasn't anywhere near as helpful. The anatomy lecturers came in to give us their vague feedback on how we performed on the first mid-semester test - I'm confused as to how that was supposed to help us for the second mid-semester test. Rather disappointingly, no physiology or pharmacology was covered in this session at all. This was despite a request for questions to be covered that day. I sent one in and was told that the purpose of the class wasn't to go through questions (highly confusing, I know) and despite the anatomy people finishing their feedback early the lecture was called a day and we did nothing for physiology and pharmacology. Another couple of feedback classes were scheduled on the last day of the semester in preparation for the exam, and these were similarly cancelled on us at the last minute. I wasn't impressed by this.

The anatomy department has a policy of not releasing any revision material (other than a sample question to understand the question style) and the pharmacology department failed to provide any practice questions this year. Physiology provided us with the physiology questions from the 2013 and 2014 mid-semester test 1, but as I said above nothing was available for mid-semester test 2. However, remember that you do have past exams you can work from if you go to the university library exam repository. After the mid-semester tests the physiology department also provided a breakdown of the marks, each individual's responses and the relevant percentages. Sometimes specific feedback on the questions were also provided. It became apparent a couple of physiology questions had been deleted from consideration for some reason.

In the exam period are two 2 hour exams, each worth 35% of your grade. Exam 1 covers only anatomy and contains 30 marks of multiple choice, 30 marks of extended matching questions and 60 marks of short answer written responses. In the end, this exam was not at all difficult. All of the questions were pretty straightforward and timing wasn't an issue. While you obviously needed to know your specifics, this exam had a focus on descriptions and clinical significances, which, in my opinion, are interesting and therefore far easier to remember and answer. The only negative was a question containing a poor quality printout, making the question difficult to answer. I hope this particular question will be reviewed. Other than that, my only other grievance was that supposedly non-examinable content (muscles of the forearm, dermatomes and myotomes) made their way onto this exam, but I think this was something I had semi-anticipated so I wasn't surprised to see it there. For some reason, there was minimal content relating to Peter, Colin and Varsha's lectures. Perhaps this is because they are meant to help you understand the anatomy that follows their lectures, but I think it would be more appropriate to see more of their stuff appear on the exam.

Exam 2 covered both physiology and pharmacology and only consisted of multiple choice/extended matching questions. Hence, much of the exam 2 revision material is no longer of the correct format, although I'd say it's still useful for revision. For some reason, I found the questions on this paper much more representative of what we learnt in lectures compared to what came up on the mid-semester tests, which was nice too see. There was also a (rather difficult) physiology/pharmacology integrated question at the end of the paper. Apparently it was a style of question the PHRM20001 students had been exposed to before, so it was a tad annoying to know that this wasn't extended to everyone in BIOM20002. This final question made the exam a little bit difficult to finish on time, but again it wasn't terribly rushed, and it was nice for them to finally integrate something in this subject assessment-wise.

Just like so many things in this subject, it seems like the assessment was also half way there. The mid-semester tests were a bit of a disaster, but the exams were prepared quite well. And with the exception of having an anatomy-only paper, I felt the physiology/pharmacology paper was starting to reflect the works of an integrated subject. Hence, I have awarded the assessment component of this subject 0.5/1.

General co-ordination, final remarks and tl;dr

As I keep on saying, if I had to sum up this subject, it was a subject that was done by halves - either one department did something right and the other wrong, or one half was taught well, or one half of the assessment was effectively managed. In much the same way, the co-ordination was half way there in getting this subject right.

In the end, BIOM20002 essentially confirmed the negative expectations I had going into this subject. I guess it was fated at our very first lecture, where the staff got the title of the subject wrong (they called it "Human Form and Function" -.-). In all honesty, the content itself is not that bad, but the journey wasn't made especially easy for us with adequate support. Ultimately, I too question the purpose of this subject - at the moment it still stands as a weird mix of ANAT20006, PHYS20008 and PHRM20001. Anatomy, physiology and pharmacology should be able to be combined and integrated effectively, but that just hasn't been achieved here - well, not yet, anyway. The problem is that the staff are coming from Science subjects and they're just trying to bring over as much stuff as possible from their respective courses so that they don't have to completely draw up a new course design, doing a small amount of integration to justify calling it an integrated subject. Biomedicine is set apart from Science in that we get subjects that allow us to get a taste of all the health science disciplines, and therefore keep the majority of majors open. I guess they have met that goal, but at the same time BIOM20002, at this stage, brings very little new stuff to the table, and I'm not convinced that it's enough to justify the unique subject code. It's such a shame, because BIOM20001 is such a unique, wonderful experience - I know Science students sort of don't get it, but truly it's a fantastic subject. On the other hand, I dare say that the Science students, with ANAT20006 and PHYS20008, get the better deal this time around.

With the same problems being reported over and over, I wonder why progress to improve this subject has been so slow. I can only hope that they'll keep edging closer to perfection, and that the journey will improve for the year levels to come. That's all I have to say for now. I wish you the best of luck for this subject. It's not at all difficult in terms of content - it's easier than BIOM20001 - but with the way it's run you'll need some strength to push through.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 16, 2015, 05:41:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20002: Microbes, Infections and Responses

Workload:

Contact Hours: 36 hours of lectures and 6 X 3 hour practical classes and 6 X 1 hour on-line computer aided learning associated with each practical class = 60 hours total.

Total Time Commitment: 170 hours

Assessment: Written practical reports throughout semester (15%); a 45-minute multiple choice question test mid semester (20%); online quizzes (pre-practical class) throughout semester (5%); a 2-hour written exam in the end of the semester examination period (60%).

Attendance at practical classes is compulsory. Students who miss more than 20% of the practical component of this subject will not be eligible for final assessment.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, there are three available on the university library exam repository approximately from the year 2000 - the content is actually still relevant but the format of these exams is not the same as the current exam style. However, multiple choice feedback quizzes are provided each week on the LMS and short answer questions are explored in several review lectures during the semester.

Textbook Recommendation:

Prescribed textbook: "Schaechter's Mechanisms of Microbial Disease" (N C Engleberg, V DiRita and T S Dermody), 5th Edn, 2013
Recommended textbook: "Prescott’s Microbiology", By Willey, Sherwood and Woolverton. Edn 9, 2014

I had both of these textbooks because they weren't difficult to "find" (*cough*) but I never used them during the semester. This was largely due to the fact that the lecturers referenced entire chapters rather than specific page numbers, to "ensure we got the complete picture." I think you can appreciate though that reading five large chapters prior to each lecture just isn't feasible. :P Luckily, only the content presented to us during lectures was examinable.

In addition, references from other textbooks available in the library were also provided.

For the practicals, you will need to purchase the subject's lab book from the bookshop.

Lecturer(s):

Co-ordinators:
- Ms Helen Cain: General bacteriology; tuberculosis (respiratory infections); healthcare associated infections; bacterial causes and epidemiology of sexually transmissible infections (6 lectures)
- Prof Lorena Brown: General virology; influenza (respiratory infections); emerging viral diseases and epidemiology; human papilloma virus (sexually transmissible infections) (5 lectures)
- Dr Odilia Wijburg: General immunology; mucosal immunity; manipulating the immune response; Streptococcus pneumoniae pathogenesis and prevention; the human microbiome (7 lectures)
- Dr Karena Waller: Gastroenteritis (6 lectures)

Other staff:
- Prof Elizabeth Hartland: Legionnaire's disease (1 lecture)
- Prof Cameron Simmons: Dengue and Wolbachia (1 lecture)
- Prof Roy Robins-Browne: Streptococcus pneumoniae treatment (1 lecture)
- Assoc Prof Tim Stinear: Molecular epidemiology of healthcare associated infections (1 lecture)
- Prof Damian Purcell: Herpes; HIV (sexually transmissible infections) (2 lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2015

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Just so you know, I'm being incredibly picky in awarding this subject a 4.5/5 - this is easily the best Science subject I have taken at university so far (in my opinion it was even better than BIOM20001 for the Biomedicine students who have taken it). However, at the same time, it's also the most demanding 12.5 credit point subject I've taken to date. You have the head's up: your work is going to be cut out for you, so you'll need to put in a lot of effort. However, don't let that deter you - with a large number of former BIOM20001 students and many equally hardworking Science students the cohort results for this subject have been exceptional in the past few years, with approximately 40% achieving a H1. I have a feeling the department of microbiology and immunology know just how good their subject is - they were keen to show the near-perfect SES results they have achieved recently. I'm not going to even judge them for that because I agree - I essentially gave them a perfect SES response myself. :P They should be proud of how well they have run this subject, and they put most other departments at the university to shame. My friends and I were joking this semester that the team should get together and run a "how to run your subject" seminar or something for the rest of the university. Finally, a subject has got it so right.

While objectively my views on this subject are absolutely brimming, my personal feelings towards the subject are a bit mixed. As a Biomedicine student I selected to take this subject mainly to keep the microbiology/immunology and genetics majors open, a decision made easier by the highly positive feedback from previous cohorts. In terms of what I was hoping for, I entered this subject mainly to see whether or not I'd enjoy a major in immunology - from BIOM20001 I had started to gather that perhaps microbiology wasn't for me. However, to my disappointment, this subject predominantly deals with microbiology - if I had to quantify it, I'd say that 80% of the course is microbiology and only 20% is immunology. When I checked the handbook for the third year immunology subjects, I realised that this subject wasn't even a prerequisite for the Science students who wanted to major in just immunology. I knew the subject wasn't a prerequisite for the immunology major myself, but I thought there'd be benefit in me taking it anyway. I guess I was wrong, but this is ultimately my fault for not doing my homework properly beforehand (so I'm not criticising this subject at all for that). I just wanted to make everyone aware of this in case there are people in a similar position to that which I was in at the start of the semester. Had I known better, I'm not sure if I would've taken this subject - it is a lot of work, especially if it's in an area you've already established you don't like, but at the same time I have a feeling the amazing reviews would have pulled me over the line anyway. If you have any sort of interest in microbiology or immunology, I'd still highly recommend this subject purely out of its sheer quality. I'd say it's a subject to stay away from if you didn't enjoy the parasite/pathogen life cycles from BIOL10003/BIOL10005 though (which was me, lol).

Despite the difficulty of the content (or rather, the difficulty associated with the volume of content - the content itself is not that difficult) the lectures were of incredibly high quality, with fantastic lecturers and lecture slides. For those who have endured BIOM20001, one of the big positives in this subject is the level of detail on the slides - essentially everything you need to know is actually given to you on the slides, so you don't need to worry about writing down a whole bunch of information (if you do, more often than not it will be to clarify a point on the slides, rather than adding in new information). I never thought I'd say this, but in a sense, the slides were almost a bit too detailed - each one was full of information, which can make the content appear overwhelming. Additionally, the comprehensiveness of the slides means that lecturers don't need to excessively deviate from the notes during lectures, so it can seem like they're reading off the slides in class. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but coupled with the fact that you don't have to write that much down, it's easy to lose focus during lectures. This is one of the reasons I'm not awarding 5/5 - but as you can appreciate, perhaps I'm making a problem out of a non-problem; it's almost like "first world lecture problems" lol. In all honesty, I think that too much on the slides is better than not enough, and I'm probably just being insanely picky here.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this subject was the fact that many lectures ran well overtime - this obviously made things a bit difficult because it forced lecturers to rush at the end or omit slides, and it put students in a bit of an awkward position as the end of the lecture would not be caught in the recording, forcing them to stay behind and potentially be late for a following class. However, to compensate, I don't think these slides were ever examined in great detail. Another, smaller grievance I have has to do with the timetabling of the lectures, although again I have a feeling that this was beyond the control of the co-ordinators. The lectures this year were based in the law building, which is a bit further out from the main university campus. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, but all the Biomedicine students had a core subject lecture timetabled pretty much before each MIIM20002 lecture, and for the most part we arrived at lectures a bit late. I think both the staff and the Science students found the large trail of students entering the lecture theatre 10 minutes late each class a bit disruptive, so I'd encourage to see if anything could be done about that.

The course is roughly divided into seven main sections: revision of general bacterial and viral pathogenesis and immunity (week 1); gastroenteritis and mucosal immunity (weeks 2 and 3), a rather random (but still good) weeks 4 and 5 of manipulating the immune response, Legionnaire's disease and Dengue/Wolbachia; respiratory infections (weeks 6 and 7); healthcare associated infections (weeks 8 and 9); sexually transmissible infections (weeks 10 and 11); and the human microbiome (week 12). In each block you go through several of the bacterial, viral and parasitic pathogens, exploring their general features and classification, symptoms, source and transmission, virulence determinants, pathogenesis (entry, colonisation, invasion, damage, disease, exit etc.), treatment, laboratory diagnosis and the general immune response and epidemiology to the type of infection being explored. As you can see, there's a lot of pathogens and a lot of details about each one to remember, and at times it does seem a bit much. You won't necessarily go into the same level of detail for each pathogen - some are only discussed as part of one lecture, some have their own lecture, and others (e.g. influenza and Streptococcus pneumoniae) have a whole week of lectures dedicated to them. When more time was spent on a particular pathogen, I found it easier to cope. In a sense, this subject isn't like your studies in first semester microbiology/immunology where you explored general principles and then had a very brief look at a list of pathogens that either exemplified or challenged that principle - rather, you explore individual pathogens in much greater detail. This makes it a bit easier to study, because each pathogen sort of becomes a topic itself. Overall, I found gastroenteritis the most overwhelming block because we covered 3-4 different pathogens in quite a lot of detail during each lecture, and while they were strategically grouped together to make things easier to work with, it was still difficult to swallow (pun not intended). However, once gastroenteritis was over I found that I coped with this subject a lot better - it's definitely the most content heavy part, and it's probably a good idea to get it out of the way first.

In terms of learning the content, the lecturers strongly suggest creating summary tables with headings of some of the things I listed above for revision. I definitely vouch for taking this approach, because it makes the information more organised and therefore easier to learn. My advice is to take the key message about the pathogen first - there will be some distinguishing feature about it that makes it stand out from the other pathogens, and work with that before adding in the extra detail. For example, the key message of Clostridium difficile is that it's a part of the normal microbiota but becomes a problem upon the administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics, due to its ability to sporulate (form spores), survive and then increase in number in the gut, resulting in disease.

Generally in my reviews I go a bit more into detail about each lecturer and their lecture series, but given that they were all fantastic and their slides all comprehensive, I almost feel like I'd be wasting my time. For some reason, each lecture had one lecturer (usually Helen) sitting in the audience - I'm not sure why they did this, but I almost feel it was done as a means of quality control. I'll point out a few key lectures that I have some more direct feedback on. Prof Elizabeth Hartland's lecture of Legionnaire's disease has got to be my favourite lecture at university so far. I don't know how, but somehow she made the pathogen extremely interesting and somehow managed to teach us a lot about it without going into a lot of detail. Based on her introduction at the start of the lecture, it also seems like she has her life in order, having achieved so much in a relatively short period of time. XD Assoc Prof Tim Stinear's lecture is actually an "interactive" lecture where we were encouraged to discuss with the people around us a particular healthcare associated infection problem that occurred a few years ago at the Austin Hospital. In reality it wasn't that interactive but it was a nice change nonetheless. Perhaps the only bad lecture in this subject was the one on HIV by Prof Damian Purcell - he recognised that we had probably looked at HIV in a lot of detail before and so tried to shed light on a new perspective, but I don't think he did it that well. I don't think it was him personally though, because his lecture on Herpes was fine.

Interspersed throughout the lecture series are a handful of review lectures, which are extremely helpful in breaking things up a bit, testing your understanding and getting some feedback. There was one prior to the mid-semester test, one towards the end of the semester reviewing the mid-semester test, and two in week 12 in preparation for the exam. In these lectures the staff would generally refer to the results from the weekly feedback quizzes (more on these later) and go over questions correctly answered by less than 60% of students. In addition, extra multiple choice questions were provided before these lectures and were completed during lecture time, facilitated by quickpoll. Feedback from previous cohorts was that there had been insufficient preparation for short answer questions that appear on the final exam, so this year the staff also provided and covered some past short answer questions, the answers and how we should go about them during these lectures. It was really refreshing to see the staff embrace and take on board constructive criticism from the previous cohort. I always felt these lectures were beneficial in helping me understand the expectations, and made me feel much more confident and prepared for the assessments.

What makes this subject especially demanding is the rather extensive practical component. In second year level you start to approach "lecture only" subjects (perhaps supported by one or two practical classes during the semester) and "practical-only" subjects, which might have one lecture/tutorial per week (in addition to a weekly practical) just to help explain the practicals. This subject is a hybrid, with practicals every second week. The theory behind the practicals is tied in extremely well with the content covered during lectures, especially when we're going through laboratory diagnosis. In general, the lecturer will explain the key principles of the technique to be employed in the upcoming practical: these are predominantly PCR, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and the haemagglutination-inhibition test (with revision of serial dilutions). In that sense, practical content can be examinable, although in my experience only the aforementioned techniques came up on the mid-semester test and exam.

This subject has five practicals: an introductory one to get familiar with the laboratory, general protocol and key techniques; two on gastroenteritis; one on respiratory infections and one on sexually transmissible infections. These are often presented as case studies where it is your job (with the help of a partner, your group and the demonstrator) to help identify the pathogen responsible. For those of you that proved to be hopeless at practicals in first year (like myself), fear not - these practicals, just like the rest of this subject, are run extremely comprehensively. These is a lot of guidance in the lab manual and from the staff, and at no point did I feel especially rushed, overwhelmed or unsure of what I was doing. Of course, getting into the swing of things in the lab can take a bit of time (I spilled infected urine on the table in my first practical lol) but by the end of it I felt much more confident and comfortable. The lab manual itself was also of a very high quality, and contained several summaries and appendices of content covered in the course, making it a useful revision tool during the semester. I often found the practicals very beneficial in re-inforcing the content we covered in lectures.

The introductory practical is not assessed and is only used to allow you to complete an LMS questionnaire regarding safety in the laboratory. For the other four practicals, a pre-practical test (each one worth 1% of your grade, so 4% in total) opens up five days before the practical class, and closes an hour before the practical class. These are in place to ensure you have revised the relevant lecture content and have read the lab manual prior to entering the practical; they are much like the pre-practical tests in first year biology with five multiple choice questions to be completed in 30 minutes, and so are not very difficult (perhaps a little more difficult than first year).

At the end of the introductory practical you are invited (i.e. it is not compulsory) to write up a practice report of the case study investigated for feedback prior to writing your first assessed report for the two gastroenteritis practicals (the second practical is mainly data collection of the experiments you did in the first practical). There are only two assessed practical reports in this subject, each worth 6.5% of your grade - one for gastroenteritis, and the other for respiratory infections. The staff spend plenty of time helping and preparing you for these reports, as they realise that most have not had to go home and formally write practical reports at university so far. In fact, Helen runs a whole lecture during the semester on report writing, and she uses examples of the practice reports to highlight what we should and shouldn't do. The proforma you follow is also highly comprehensive and makes explicit exactly what you must and must not include. Note that there is a word limit in the discussion of 700 words (+/- 10%). It took me a little while to get used to it, but eventually I started to gauge what I was supposed to do. If you're unsure, the staff were always more than happy to answer any questions or handle any concerns. For some reason, we only had one week for the gastroenteritis report whereas we had four weeks for the respiratory infections report. :S A small criticism was that there was slightly less (perhaps insufficient) guidance provided for the second report, and consequently most people's marks fell (another reason for the 4.5/5 rating of this subject). The averages for the reports hovered around the 75% mark. Each report was marked twice by the demonstrators to ensure there was no bias, and written personal feedback (in addition to general cohort feedback on the LMS) was provided on each person's report.

For the sexually transmissible infections practical, a 30 minute post-practical quiz was opened on the LMS, worth 3% of the grade. This was more difficult and longer than the pre-practical quizzes, but it still wasn't overly difficult. Instead of a practical, the healthcare associated infections unit had a 90 minute CAL program on the LMS to be completed at home. A 5 question, 30 minute post-CAL quiz was worth 1% of your grade and was also very straightforward. In total, practical assessment contributes 20% to your grade in this subject.

The other key assessment during the semester is the mid-semester test in week 7, worth 20% of your grade. This is quite a lot for a mid-semester test, which was a bit frightening given we had to know quite a lot from lectures 1-18 for it. In the end, the test was extremely fair and didn't quite go into the level of detail that I expected (which was good because in all honesty I felt underprepared). The test was 40 minutes in duration and contained 40 multiple choice questions, much in the style of the feedback questions on the LMS. I thought the feedback quiz questions and the questions we did in the review lectures were more tricky than the questions that came up on this test. I don't recall the test being difficult to complete on time. The average for the cohort was 30/40. As a nice touch (and in true MIIM20002 style), once the tests were marked we all received a personal email indicating a breakdown of our marks for each topic, encouraging us to revise study areas we hadn't performed well on. In addition, the department explained how they used the scanning program to mark our papers and monitor the quality of their questions to ensure the test was valid. As always, the staff were on top of absolutely everything. ^_^

To support your studies during the semester, weekly non-assessed feedback quizzes are provided in the LMS as basic means of revision. These generally contained around 10-15 multiple choice questions relating to the content covered during the course that week and could be completed as you saw fit. These were actually rather tricky but this was good because they exposed misconceptions and the shock factor usually meant you never made the same mistake again. The feedback for the quizzes always contained a lot of detail to make sure you understood the information.

The final exam is two hours in duration and is worth 60% of your grade. It consists of 50 multiple choice questions (each worth one mark), 30 marks of extended matching questions and 30 marks of short answer written questions. I felt the exam was rather difficult (more difficult than the mid-semester test) but still fair, and was a bit tight in completing on time. The multiple choice has increased weighting of content covered in the second half of the course, due to the fact that the first half was assessed on the mid-semester test. The level of detail required for this exam caught me a bit off-guard actually; I wasn't expecting it given what we had for the mid-semester test. I encourage you to try and get your head around as much as possible, but any or all of it could make its way onto the exam. If you have put in the effort and have studied hard, the exam shouldn't be too much of a problem (remember, approximately 40% of the cohort walk away with a H1 in this subject). While there are no practice exams, I felt that the feedback quizzes, multiple choice review questions and the short answer review questions (which had answers, I might add) provided adequate revision.

tl;dr

This subject was run extremely well - it seems like there was nothing the staff hadn't thought of. It's definitely a challenge, but with all the support you receive there is no reason whatsoever for you not to realise your potential. Provided you have some interest in microbiology, I would highly recommend taking this subject, although be warned that you'll probably never be able to tolerate the co-ordination of other departments ever again. :P That's all I've got to say for now, so I wish you the best of luck in your studies. :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: StarWave on November 16, 2015, 08:40:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30004 Auditing and Assurance Services

Workload:  1 x 2 hour lecture per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial (starting in week 2) per week

Assessment: 15% mid-semester test, 15% group assignment, 70% final exam (hurdle requirement)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  2 past exams available. One (2010 exam) had feedback sheets identifying areas where students had the most amount of trouble. The other exam (2014 exam) had no feedback sheet available (had to attend a consult for suggested solutions).

Textbook Recommendation:  Leung, P, Coram, P, Cooper, B, Richardson, P (2015), Modern Auditing & Assurance Services, 6th Ed, John Wiley, Qld. I never bought or read the textbook so I'm not sure how useful it was. I recommend at least getting access to a copy in the library though (and taking pictures) since the weekly tutorial questions came straight from the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Trevor Tonkin

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: This subject was much better than I expected actually. Back in first year I had a terrible feeling that this subject would be similar to the first year accounting subject "Accounting Processes and Analysis", a subject which I found incredibly dry and boring. Luckily Auditing and Assurance Services wasn't as boring as I thought it would be. Trevor is a fantastic engaging lecturer, and I found him to be quite passionate about the subject, and he seemed fairly approachable if any students required extra help understanding some of the concepts we learned in class.

I would recommend that students taking this subject attend lectures because Trevor utilised the blackboard in my lecture theatre quite frequently to draw timelines and other diagrams to assist in his explanations of certain concepts in class. The tutorials for this subject were also quite well run. Each week a list of discussion questions from the textbook were posted on the LMS. I highly advise students to at least read and attempt the questions before the tutorial each week so that you are aware of what was being discussed in class. I found the classes to be rather "full on", meaning that there was very little time for tutors to summarise tutorial questions (which should've been attempted anyway beforehand). I'm not sure how useful the textbook was, but as I've written above, I advise students to get access to a copy of the book in the commerce library and take some photos since preparing for the tutorials is essential to getting a decent mark in the subject (in my opinion). You might also have noticed that this accounting subject doesn't award any marks for tutorial participation, which is a change from the majority of accounting subjects in the major. However I still believe that speaking up in class is a good idea since you can bounce your ideas off your classmates and get a better learning experience in this manner. Tutorial solutions were available after each class but they are of limited usefulness since Trevor and the tutors always emphasised that the process rather than the final answer was the most important thing in the subject.

As for the assessment, the mid-semester test wasn't too difficult. As long as you revise your concepts and the "nitty-gritty stuff" as my tutor put it, it should be fairly straightforward. The mid-semester test only covered weeks 1 to 5, and it had a particular focus upon ethics and the legal liability of the auditor. The group assignment had to be completed in groups of 3 or 4 (no exceptions), so if you don't know anyone else taking the subject, I advise you to make friends in it as soon as possible. The assignment itself seemed harshly marked to me, since the average mark was 10/15. For my assignment we had to prepare an audit assessment report addressing the key areas of concern based off a case study given to us. A lot of referencing is required in relation to the auditing standards for the assignment so it's advisable that you pay attention to the section numbers in classes.

Lastly the final exam was a bit tricky in my opinion. There are 8 short answer questions worth 100 marks in total. All of them are aimed at testing different areas of the course. Each of them had a lot of reading since they were basically mini-case studies, so it's best if you read the question first, and then brainstorm possible answers before actually writing out your final answer in the exam. I adopted that technique during the exam and I finished with a bit of time to spare, so there's no real need to rush yourself if you plan and pace yourself properly.

Overall this subject was better than I was expecting. Coming off the dry Accounting Processes and Analysis subject, I was fairly surprised to see that Auditing as a whole be more applicable and practical.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 17, 2015, 04:50:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20002: Genes and Genomes

Workload:

Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour problem class per week.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 170 hours

Assessment: A written class test held mid-semester (10%); two online assigments of equal value during the semester (15% in total); a 2-hour written examination in the examination period (75%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, the 2006, 2008 and 2010 exams are provided for revision of both the mid-semester test and the final exam.

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

I had it from GENE20001 Principles of Genetics but didn't use it this semester. However, I know that it relates to GENE20002 a lot better than GENE20001. It's not that difficult to "find" (*cough*) so it might be worth having.

For John's lectures there are often short handouts that he likes you to read. I didn't read them. :P

Lecturer(s):

Weeks 1-4, 10: Assoc Prof Meryl Davis - Molecular genetics
Weeks 5-6, 8-9, 11: Dr John Golz - Genomics
Week 12: Prof Phil Batterham (guest lecturer)

Problem-solving class teacher: Stephen Hardy

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2015

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I'm trying not to sound corrupted here, but I swear this is the easiest subject I've done at university to date (and for those who have taken GENE20001 will know, that's saying something). It's so easy I almost feel like it's a cause for concern. The key reason I found it easier than GENE20001 is that there's little maths involved; it's mainly a subject about understanding the theory, so as long as you get it the assessment is largely a matter of recall rather than trying to avoid silly careless mistakes. In addition to those looking for lighter workloads or a boost to their university results, I'd say that this subject is suitable to anyone from a non Science/Biomedicine degree looking to continue with a biology-related breadth. GENE20001 is not a prerequisite (or even recommended, for that matter) and while there is a small degree of overlap, anything relevant from GENE20001 that comes up in GENE20002 is explained again.

I took this subject after having taken BIOM20001 Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine (and GENE20001), having decided that genetics was something I didn't mind and wanting to explore it a little bit more to see if it was something I wanted to major in. BIOM20001 and GENE20001 (along with a biomedical practical subject - I took MIIM20002 Microbes, Infections and Responses) covered me in terms of prerequisites but I thought that GENE20002 would allow me to complete the picture a little bit better. I also had a feeling it would be relatively light (and I can say now that it certainly is) and that I could manage it in place of a breadth subject this semester. There was a notable overlap in content from BIOM20001, although at no point did I feel it was so significant that I felt pointless doing this subject. Often this subject went into more detail, or explained the concept better than it was in BIOM20001 (e.g. Hox genes). However, there were one or two things (e.g. lac operon) that I felt were better explained in BIOM20001. It's taken me a while, but this semester was the stage where I finally found genetics boring (this is something a lot of people realise sooner, so sorry for being late to the party :P ) so I've opted for another major, but I guess I'm glad I did this subject nonetheless.

As a second year Biomedicine student, it was odd for me to take this subject - as far as I was aware there were only three others in the same position taking this subject; their reasons being either the lighter workload or the likely boost to their GPA. Otherwise, the rest of the cohort mainly consisted of second year Science students intending to major in Genetics. The genetics cohort starts to become rather cohesive - almost like the Biomedicine cohort - due to the fact that the major requires three genetics subjects (for Science students, anyway) at second year level, with most also taking the three second year biochemistry subjects on offer.

I'll take a moment to discuss the lectures themselves. Meryl and John are the only lecturers in this subject, and they take exactly half of the lectures each. Meryl's lectures centre around the molecular aspect of genetics, in particular DNA replication, mutation and repair and gene expression. These lectures actually have a strong biochemical focus to them (although the biochemistry is kept very simple) and there is emphasis on contrasting between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Meryl was not a bad lecturer, but there was often little to discuss in each class so it often felt as if the pace was slow (and we still finished most lectures early). For example, the notes were generally short in length and each slide only had a handful of information on them (and you didn't have to write a lot down). I don't think Meryl was particularly computer-savvy, so writing sort of appears rather randomly on the slides lol (in addition to a number of funny computer-related issues this year, which I won't go into now for the sake of trying to keep this brief). Overall, the content in this section of the course is simple and shouldn't be troubling to understand.

On the other hand, I felt John was a better lecturer but his lectures were more confusing - and I have a feeling he made the content sound more confusing than what it really was. John's lectures focus on the genomics side of things, so you'll look at general features of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes, as well as a six lecture block on the approach to characterising a genome (this part of the course was especially confusing). Towards the end of semester, he also discussed the genetics behind development. In a sense, John's lectures were more "proper" but I found the genomics element confusing and boring, so I ended up preferring Meryl largely out of her content (which actually was somewhat interesting).

Prof Phil Batterham from GENE20001 was invited in week 12 to give a small lecture series on whatever he wanted, so we had some rather random (but interesting) lectures on the history of genetics, and the human microbiome (a nice link to MIIM20002 - actually there were a number of links throughout the subject that made things a tad easier). There was a bit of confusion as to whether or not these lectures were examinable given they had little to do with the lecture content covered in this subject - we were told in a fairly typical fashion that everything is examinable but nothing from these lectures came up on the exam. :P Hence, sit back and enjoy these lectures (or don't go to them at all, if you like to live on the dangerous side XD).

One nasty habit the genetics team has is over-teaching the content during lectures and then not reflecting any of its difficulty in the assessment. This subject is no different. In Meryl's lectures, you spend a lot of time going through the details of various biochemical processes relating to genes - which could actually make this subject rather challenging - that never comes up in assessment again. John's lecture content in general was rather complex, but somehow the questions were all very straightforward, almost to the point where it seemed like his detailed lectures were pointless. As someone whose motivation for taking this subject included a lighter workload I wasn't complaining during the semester, but I kind of feel for those who were genuinely interested and passionate in genetics because the assessment kind of cheated them out of being able to show off their knowledge. While the lectures themselves were mostly fine, this is the biggest reason for the score I have awarded for this subject.

As in GENE20001, weekly problem-solving classes were taken by Stephen Hardy. Thankfully this semester the cohort size was much smaller compared to GENE20001, so these classes felt a lot more like tutorials. Due to timetabling I opted for the less popular problem-solving class, which only had about 25 other students in it, so the atmosphere was a lot more conducive to learning than it was last semester. Given the nature of this subject, the term "problem-solving" feels a little bit redundant, although in genetics I like how the focus isn't on pure recall but rather applying your knowledge to various observations. Nonetheless, I found these problem-solving classes useful in supplementing the lectures and guiding my study in terms of what I needed to know. Unlike last semester, I felt like the problem-solving classes complemented the lectures, rather than dominating them, which was a positive. Stephen was a good teacher although he often took too long explaining (relatively basic) things, causing us to often run out of time.

During the semester there are two assignments to be completed, each one worth 7.5% of your grade. The first assignment is an absolute joke. Sorry, but I'm calling it for what it is. It relates to Meryl's block of lectures and involves reading a scientific article and answering ten multiple choice questions via an LMS quiz. The article, questions and options were all provided before the LMS test opened, so all you had to do was read the article and find the answers to the questions, and submit them when you were ready. In total, the assignment took me 45 minutes because I actually read the article (it was only eight pages long) - having discussed it with some others it seems like most instead chose to just ctrl+F their way through (and still did fine). The irony is that the average for this assignment was 6.5/10 - it turns out many couldn't be bothered reading the article and so chose to guess some questions. <_< In addition, some students refused to submit their student declaration for the assessment on the LMS, automatically awarding them a zero. Just don't get me started.

The second assignment, on the other hand, has got to be the most difficult assessment task I have ever done at university. Relating to John's content, it involves using a gene sequencing program on the computers in the genetics laboratory to manipulate provided data and again determine answers to ten multiple choice questions which would later be submitted via the LMS (again, the questions and possible options were provided beforehand). John seemed to assume we were all experts in genetic sequencing programs or something - I spent six hours in the laboratory trying to find my way, and came close a number of times to quitting in frustration. In the end I managed to get ten answers but I was so fed up I had a feeling some of them were wrong (a feeling which turned out to be correct). John was available from time to time for help, so I deliberately went to the lab when he was there, but feedback was vague and rather pointless. My advice is to try and navigate to program before one of the sessions that John is around, so that when he's there you know exactly what help you need and what you need to ask. I think part of the problem was that I didn't want to be annoying and ask him how to do everything every five minutes (and I doubt he would have done that anyway). In some backwards fashion, averages for this assignment were higher compared to the first one. :S

The other key assessment during the mid-semester test, held in week 7. It covered lectures 1-18, contained 40 multiple choice questions and was of 45 minutes duration. The lectures in the same week as the mid-semester test (and the problem-solving class, for that matter) were all review lectures, making this test much easier to study for (although this really wasn't necessary). The lecturers relied on us sending in questions to go through during these review classes, but understandably few had any problems so they were very short in duration. For revision, it is recommended to go through the relevant parts of the past exams available - we were told that the questions asked would mainly be recall rather than application so don't waste time revising the application questions. I didn't study much for this test due to other assessments in other subjects and still did really well largely out of the fact that genetics subjects don't seem to delve into a lot of detail when it comes to their questions. In addition, a very large number of questions were recycled from both the past exams and problem-solving worksheets. The problem-solving class in the next week was used for feedback - on the whole I thought the cohort would do better but the average was 28/40.

The final exam is two hours in duration and is worth 75% of your grade. It is all multiple choice, so in effect the entire subject is assessed via multiple choice. The 2006, 2008 and 2010 exams were obviously slightly out of date, but the exam was still similar enough. It consisted of 40 two-mark questions and 8 five-mark application style questions (i.e. 120 marks in total). Once again, there was a large degree of recycling - even some of the questions you saw on the mid-semester test will appear on the exam. I finished the 2 mark questions in 45 minutes, leaving 75 minutes for just eight multiple choice questions. In the end, I spent a lot of time on these final questions just to make absolutely sure that I wasn't getting anything wrong, but I was still done with 30 minutes left and had the chance to re-check the paper in its entirety. Many people chose to leave the exam early. There were one or two questions involving very basic calculations so a scientific calculator was permitted in the exam. Again, the exam failed to examine in detail the content covered in the lectures and so was relatively easy to complete. A review lecture was held in SWOTVAC in preparation for this exam, and in addition to the available past exams and the problem-solving class worksheets, will adequately prepare you.

tl;dr

This subject wasn't a bad one, but in their approach I feel as if the genetics team have deprived students from a more intellectually challenging and stimulating opportunity. In a sense, they've set the expectation low, which seems to encourage students to try less and so the results are low, despite the fact that nothing is that difficult to complete. With relatively straightforward content, simple and recycled questions and easy assessment only done via multiple choice, I start to understand the notion of people selecting genetics subjects as GPA boosters. It's a bit of a shame really, because the lecture content itself was respectable, and I appreciate how we're encouraged to think as geneticists by applying our knowledge to problems. I echo my sentiments at the start of the review that this subject is suitable for anyone looking for an easy ride. That's all I have to say for now, so I wish you the best of luck in taking this subject (although you probably won't need it if you turn up to lectures and do what's expected of you).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: CossieG on November 17, 2015, 11:19:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: SWEN20003 Object Oriented Software Development 

Workload:  2 x 1-hour lectures, 1 x 2-hour tutorial/lab

Assessment: 


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Just one "sample" exam, with no solutions. I didn't  do it.

Textbook Recommendation: 

I used Absolute Java, Walter Savitch, 3rd edition and found it very useful.

Lecturer(s): Shanika Karunasekera.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

When Civil Engineers design a bridge, they ensure that the chance of it collapsing is as close to zero as possible. But how many times have you had to force-close an application, or have had to restart your OS? If Civil Engineers can design bridges that don't collapse, why can't we design software that doesn't collapse? In a nutshell, this is the problem that "software engineering" tries to address, and this subject will be your first door into the wonderful world of software engineering. Strap in, and be prepared to shift into 2nd gear, because this subject is NOT like your first year COMP subjects. Computing and Software Systems majors are required to complete this subject.

Topics covered

The topics are loosely thrown into the following main topics:


The subject begins by teaching you the Java language with the assumption that you know C. Their syntax is quite similar, but Java is NOTHING like C (there's no pointers, so you can let out a sigh of relief). Java, in all its glory, is a very nice programming language. Java is fun. You will grow to love Java. The amount of included libraries is absolutely phenomenal, and that's only the standard ones. There are also tonnes of third party libraries out there on the internet. I won't say much about this part of the course, it's your basic "lets all hold hands and learn a programming language" that you would be very familiar with from first year.

Next, the subject moves into teaching you about the object oriented design paradigm and it's main features: encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. You will learn about the differences between object oriented and procedural programming languages (such as C).  You will also learn how the features of OOP promote good code design, and how to use them to write well-designed code. In this part of the course you really need to keep an open mind and really think hard about what they're teaching you, some things might (will) not be immediately obvious.

The final part of the course will introduce you to software engineering, where design is king. You are introduced to the concept of design patterns and development frameworks (the latter which you would have already used in the projects), as well as UML modelling. I stress that this is only an introduction, and there are many many more things that are yet to be covered, which you will learn in your final year subjects. This part of the course is pretty chill, and doesn't require much work. But you should think about how the design patterns they introduce could be used in practice, they will appear on the exam, and you don't want to be surprised.

Assessment

Overall, assessment in this subject is pretty fair.

The projects are a huge step up from first year stuff, and you're expected to have a well designed application, rather than an application that merely "does the job". This semester we were required to write a 2D top-down racing game where you race against 3 AI controlled opponents, with the help of the Swing 2D game library. I believe last semester's project was a 2D top-down RPG. I would have preferred to have done the RPG but alas, we can't have it all. The two projects build on each other. In project 1 you write the basic engine, and in project 2 you design and implement the full game using your engine from project 2. The projects are very challenging, but also extremely fun and rewarding.

The exam was very fair. With no surprises or so-called challenge questions. If you kept up during semester and did your best at cramming everything the night before, you should be fine.

Closing thoughts

A very good subject, with fair assessment and good content. If you like programming, you will like this subject. But, you need to work a lot harder than first year, and put more thought into your code design before actually implementing it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: StarWave on November 18, 2015, 01:39:13 am
Subject Code/Name: UNIB30005 Living Longer: A Global Diagnosis 

Workload: 1 x 2 hour lecture per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week (starts in week 2 and ends in week 10, but this might change in future years)

Assessment: Quite a few assessment tasks make up your final mark
15% wiki
20% weekly blog entries
15% tutorial attendance and participation
50% final essay

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but audio only

Past exams available: N/A, no exam in this subject

Textbook Recommendation: James C Riley (2001) Rising Life Expectancy: a global history (Cambridge University Press). Not sure how useful this book was. I never bought it, and I never read a copy from the library.

Lecturer(s): Glenn Trembath, along with weekly guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Overall this subject was a solid choice for students looking for an "easy" breadth. However if you are not confident in your writing skills I don't think this breadth would be the best choice, since 85% of your final mark came from your essay writing skills in one form or another.

There have been a couple of reviews on this subject already so I'll stick to the key points. The tutorial participation (15%) is supposed to be 10% for attending the tutorial (they take attendance) and then 5% from your contributions in class. However in the tutorials I don't think that they really checked who said what, or who contributed the most, so this is an easy 15% straight up provided you attend all the tutorials you are enrolled into (they are really strict about this).

The weekly blogs (20%) were pretty relaxing for me to write. They enforced a strict 300 word limit (don't go over this or they'll immediately dock marks), and each blog was worth 2 marks. There were 10 blogs to write in the semester, and each blog was meant to cover the previous week's material (e.g. Week 3 blog covered Week 2 lectures and the tutorial). As long as you make some connection with the topic discussed in the first half of the lectures (I didn't find the guest lecturers to be very relevant for the course), and you make a few critical comments and come to a conclusion, you can easily get 2/2 for your blogs (and hence 20/20 overall for this piece of assessment).

The wiki summaries (15%) basically consisted of you choosing ONE week only, and then finding and summarising an article relating to that topic on the LMS. The article cannot be from the weekly readings, so some research is required. For me, this exercise was also quite straightforward, since it was basically like writing an extended blog. They enforced a strict 500 word limit on the wikis, so try to keep within this to avoid losing marks for no reason. In the relevant tutorial you were also expected to present your findings. However the presentation isn't formal at all, as you just sit at your spot and basically summarise your summary in 30 seconds or less, so don't get too worried about this.

The last piece of assessment was the massive 50% essay. I found that it takes at least a week to write a good essay to the standards that they expected of you, so plan accordingly for this. For the research topic, you can basically choose whatever you want. The subject coordinators provided a list of topics on the LMS for you to choose from, which was what I did. However, if you choose your own topic you must run it by your tutor first to ensure that it is appropriate. Try to have a large number of references, I recommend at least 10 at the bare minimum, and closer to 15 is ideal. There was a strict 2000 word limit for this essay, and once again, any breaches of the word limit resulted in marks being lost (excluding references).

Overall this subject was a fairly relaxed breadth. I attended all the lectures, but although I found them to be quite interesting, they weren't all that useful in hindsight. Tutorials themselves were fairly laid back, and I found the discussions to be quite interesting, as students from many disciplines took this as their breadth subject, so we got a lot of different viewpoints. I'd recommend this as a breadth subject for anyone who is reasonably confident in their writing skills, due to its relatively low time commitment.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: StarWave on November 18, 2015, 02:00:40 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30007: Derivative Securities 

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

Assessment: 25% mid-semester test, 75% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No past exam, but one sample exam (of sorts) filled with the types of questions you could expect in the final.

Textbook Recommendation: Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (PNIE) 8th ed, Hull. I didn't buy it, nor did I read a copy from the library, so I cannot say how useful it is. I will say that my tutor recommended that you read it for its chapter on "The Greeks", so make of that what you will.

Lecturer(s): Ali Akyol

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments: I realise that I am posting this review a semester late. However the contents of the course are still very fresh in my mind, and I noticed that there is only one other review of this subject so far, so I wanted to share my experiences with it.

This subject is often described as the hardest subject in the finance major, and rightfully so. Right from week 1, you are bombarded with so much information and content that it's very difficult to keep track of it all. Luckily I had a few friends in the year level above me, so I already knew of the subjects reputation. I highly recommend any future students to summarise their class notes each week from lectures and tutorials, as it makes revising for the final exam a (relative) walk in the park.

The mid-semester test for my cohort was fairly simple and straightforward, and the average was 15 or 16 out of 20 from memory. I expected the final exam to be very difficult as a result. sheepgomoo has already summarised the content of the exam, so I'll just offer my views on it. Yes, I found the exam to be fairly difficult. However I didn't think it was as difficult as it could have been, so I was happy with that. To prepare for the exam, doing the practice exam and tutorial questions is required at the bare minimum. Although my exam had a couple of challenging theory questions, the majority of the exam was based off practical application of the concepts that we learned in class. Hence, practice is essential to getting a good mark in this subject. If you bought the textbook, doing the questions in that as well wouldn't be a bad idea.

For the classes themselves, I found them to be very useful in understanding the content. I also agree that your tutor can determine if you will understand the week's concepts or not. Since this subject does not take attendance, you can easily hop around between classes to determine the best tutor for you. I recommend doing this in the early weeks of the course so when it gets to more difficult weeks, you are already attending a class where the tutor teaches in a way which suits you the best.

The lectures were great, and I highly recommend that you make an effort to attend all of them in person. Failing this, Ali released lecture recordings with lecture capture, which was fairly useful during swotvac (I rewatched them to try and understand some of the more complicated concepts we learned in class). I heard that the lecturer in the second semester, Jonathan Dark, doesn't release lecture recordings either, so once again, make of that what you will.

Overall, this was a fairly decent subject. I'm not a particularly strong maths student, so I admit that the thought of doing this subject was terrifying. However I managed to come through with a decent mark, so it's not totally hopeless if you aren't the best at maths like I am. I will say once again though that this subject is very content heavy, and it is NOT an open book exam (unfortunately), so making a good set of notes throughout the semester can really assist you in both learning and retaining the content. The course also builds exponentially on earlier week's material, so be sure to master the early weeks. I recommend taking a day out during the mid-semester break to really master the material in the first few weeks of class (if you're taking it in semester one that is). However this subject really wasn't as terrifying as some people made it out to be. Yes, it definitely was difficult, but with a bit of discipline and hard work you can definitely get a decent mark for this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spectroscopy on November 18, 2015, 06:31:34 am
Subject Code/Name: Principles of Management

Workload: 1 x 2 hour lecture  + 1 x 1 hour tute (no mandatory attendance and lectures are recorded)

Assessment:  One individual assignment (10%), One group assignment (30%), Final exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  yeah

Past exams available:  absolutely 0 and the tutes were a different style to the exam as well

Textbook Recommendation:  Samson, S. & Daft, R.L. (2015). Management (Asia Pacific 5th edition). CENGAGE Learning. - I didn't buy it but i borrowed it at a few points and its a pretty good textbook

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: I mean if you like management and liked business management in vce this is probably a 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: N/A

Comments:

TL:DR if you liked vce business management this subject is literally bus man 2.0. If you are a generally switched on person you shouldn't find the subject too difficult. It's absolutely NOT an easy breadth/commerce subject because although you might think some of the stuff is logical, you actually do need to study for it and there are specific things you have to know and mention to get good marks.


PRO TIP: The lectures were cool and fun in the sense that they lecturers told us awesome stories and had interesting stuff to say (they were interesting people!) but dont underestimate how good the textbook is for this subject LOL the textbook is absolutely mental in terms of how well it can explain things and i definitely recommend getting it if you are serious about doing well in this subject.

There's no past review on this subject so I'll run through the stuff you learn. You start of learning about different theories of management and the different perspectives of it that have evolved over time. Then each week you learn a new management topic from scratch and about the different theories of each topic eg; theories of leadership, what motivates workers, human resource management, how to strategically plan etc. It sounds kind of logical and alot of people stopped going to lectures because they felt like they could deduce what is being taught but in actuality alot of empirical research went into the theories that we studied and alot of quantitative evidence is there to support/debunk theories. Some lad who is just going to write "yea it is good 2 plan bcoz then u can b prepared for the future" is not going to get the same marks as someone who can mention the keywords, relevant studies to back up their idea, draw diagrams, mention and discuss the use of different matrices etc. The content is a little dry for most but if you are interested its definitely cool stuff. Especially if you like psych as well. Basically if you liked psych and bus man in vce and want to mix the two you should do this subject.

It's gonna sound weird but this is the most international subject I've done so far. My tute literally had 2 local students including me with the other 20 being international and I promise you this isn't an exaggeration. Every time the lecturer asked the audience a question the person answering would clearly be an international student. So if you want to meet people on exchange and from different countries this is an absolutely great subject and you can also make pretty decent friends in this subject too. The only problem is sometimes there is a communication barrier in the group work and assignments. If you are a commerce kid however seeing a group of students doing an assignment and speaking to each other in chinese will not be a new occurence.

Lectures:
These were ok. You go through the stuff and learn it but they are very long and the content is kinda dry. They are still mostly worth it though for the anecdotal stories the lecturers tell but dont fret if you miss a lecture, just use the textbook to revise it. Also the lectures were late in the day and I just think overall it was a recipe for people to be tired and sleepy and to not go. If the lectures were in 2 one hour blocks, and werent at like 3 pm or whatever it was (and they gave us practice exams) I would've given the subject a 5. Overall, the lecturers are really good teachers and pretty nice people and the course is quite clear in the content that is taught and examinable.

Tutes:
Tutes were good. Haven't heard many complaints about them. The kids who complained about them stopped going because there is no hurdle requirement. The tutors are all crazy smart and very helpful. They are also very patient with the fobby kids who rock up to the tutorial completely cooked. Mad props to the tutors.
Basically what happens is the tutor will run through the content for the past week, answer any questions, then make the tute complete a task then share their answers. If you do the work and can mention the buzzwords and theories the tutors will be so happy because i swear most of the kids do not know what is going on and answer the questions that the tutor doesnt even ask. Its actually pretty funny when the tutor says to a kid "so how should nestle in the aforementioned scenario act?" and the kid confers with his classmates in a different language for 30 seconds then with a straight face says "i think apple is the good company and google". There were a few occasions like this where the rest of the class would either slam their face into the desk or start losing it and laugh out loud. The tutors were so patient with it all though. If you dont understand the question, apple is the answer.
 
Assignments:
These are pretty fair assignments. You definitely need to know the content, the theories, and the buzzwords to do well. One is a 1000 word assignment on an article about a company and you have to talk about its relation to a management concept or something rather. For alot of people it will be their first experience with legit academic sources and referencing because all the articles had to be peer reviewed. Alot of kids messed up because they used case studies which were not okay as it had to be an article. The second assignment was a group assignment on the GFC. Pretty straight forward with google and with studying, and it is also a good assignment to bring your general knowledge on what really happened in the GFC up to scratch. It was basically just sub prime loans being defaulted on and the subsequent glut of housing dropped the value of homes. Be careful who is in your group in the assignment, I definitely dont recommend having a full 4 because more people means more communication errors. I had 3 and everyone was good so I can't complain but ive definitely heard horror stories.
 
Exam:
There were no practice exams but it was basically what the lecturer said it would be. They just gave you 6 questions about different areas of the course and asked you to answer 4 of the 6 in essay format. Nothing we didn't expect and it was generally pretty fair. Good fair exam overall.


Conculusion:
All said I'm giving it a 4.5/5 for a few reasons;
 - The subject is run very well, with great communication from staff to students
 - The teaching staff were the bees knees
 - Assessment was very fair.
 - All content taught very well.
 - No mandatory attendance
but: - no practice exams and 2 hour lectures in the afternoon with only 1 stream made clashes/being tired inevitable

good subject overall, shoutout to the lecturers who made it very fun and interesting
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on November 20, 2015, 01:28:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30001 Investments

Workload:  1x2hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute
   
Assessment:  20% Mid-sem test, 10% Tutorial work (see below), 70% 3hr Final exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 exam and extra questions.

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Investments, Bodie et al, McGraw Hill Irwin, 2013. Didn’t buy it; don’t know how useful it is. Don’t need it for the weekly tute qs. 
 
Lecturer(s): Juan Sotes-Paladino

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 2

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Comments:

Content:

***Please note, different lecturers take Sem 1 vs Sem 2 Investments, so some of these comments may not be applicable to your experiences :D

This course is an extension of some of the Business Finance topics, mainly regarding the equity and debt decisions individual investors take. Because of this, the first few topics regarding the formation of the CAPM will be familiar.

I personally didn’t particularly like Juan’s way of lecturing. There are a lot of mathematical proofs, and in class he just pointed to them on the slides using the laser pointer to explain them. I would’ve preferred if he wrote them out (like my DS lecturer did). The point is; if you’re not great at maths, you’re going to have to spend a lot more time understanding the proofs, which are indeed important because most of the theory questions are based off of them.

Btw, lecture recordings are sufficient.

Mid-sem Test: As usual for finance subjects, the mid sem is a 1hr test taken during the lecture stream you’re enrolled in. ie. I would suggest picking the Thursday stream over the Tuesday one so you have more time to study :P. The majority of the test itself is relatively straight forward, but there are a few curveballs. My tips are: do the practice questions, understand the theory/proofs (but don’t spend time memorising stuff, because it’s multiple choice… they give you the answers!), and keep an eye on the online tutor if you need help. Redoing the tute work isn’t exceptionally helpful, but you can if you have the time.

Tutorials: The 10% from tutorials comes from handing up attempted “Part B” questions to your tutor every week. Don’t panic because most of these weren’t super hard, nor long (usually 1 or 2 questions, takes around 30mins if you already understand the content, closer to 1hr if not). In addition to these, I suggest doing the questions that aren’t asterisked (*), as the solutions to these are only discussed and given out in tutes. Overall, tutes were really important in consolidating the content (probably more important than lectures…), so make sure you ask questions if you don’t understand anything!

Exam: Consists of Part A: Multiple Choice and Part B: Short Answer. Thankfully the exam focuses more on the second half of the course, but there is still a question or two on the first few topics. Probably close to an overall mix of 30% theory and 70% calculation qs.

Tips? Do the practice questions, the overly easy practice exam (which does not reflect the exam at all, imo ~_~), redo tute qs, and go through the formula sheet to make sure you understand what each formula is and when they’re to be used. Also, something you really need to nail down flat is arbitrage. Annoyingly enough, its not covered that much in lectures or tutes, and I found that I had to rely on my prior DS knowledge, but do your best to understand how to exploit the various arbitrage situations.

Overall: DS is often coined the hardest finance subject, but after doing Investments I honestly think Investments is the hardest, due to the in-depth understanding of the models/proofs that is required.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on November 20, 2015, 01:29:29 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20005 Competition and Strategy

Workload:  2x1hr Lectures, 1x1hr Tute

Assessment:  2x7.5% Assignments, 10% Tutorial participation (homework), 5% Tutorial attendance, 70% 2hr+15mins Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, but from an outdated course.

Textbook Recommendation: None. Readings drawn from multiple textbooks that you’re expected to borrow from the library. 

Lecturer(s): Harry Clarke

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 2

Rating: 1 Out of 5

Comments:

Content:
I, and countless others, fell into the trap that is this subject, after hearing about it being described as a super easy bludge subject from our friends. Honestly it isn’t their fault because the whole course was rewritten by the current lecturer; this sem being the first time he’s taken the subject.

The course covers a large span of topics regarding how businesses should make various strategic decisions to maximise their payoffs. Sound familiar? The first part of the course is all about game theory (as explored in intro micro), so the first three weeks are quite chill. But then it gets super difficult, with lots of theories and models and no more payoff diagrams.

Although Harry’s slides are quite comprehensive, it is a good idea to listen to his lectures because sometimes he emphasises things that I feel tended to pop up on assignments/exam. Lecture recordings are sufficient.

One of the tutors, Daniel, posts up guides to certain topics that are very helpful for understanding (especially the maths).

Assignments: The first assignment mainly focused on application of models, with questions such as explain situations where game theory have applied to you, or apply the co-opetition model to an industry. The second assignment was more really hard mathematical games that I believe were beyond the scope of the course (and what was taught), but don’t fuss too much over it because its worth 7.5% :P.

Tutorials: Tutors did random homework checks that contributed to the 10% participation/homework mark. There was also a 5% tutorial attendance mark. Some weeks had really long and complicated (and again, slightly beyond the course) questions, and some weeks were short and easy, which annoyed me. As to whether it helped understanding the material? Depends on your tutor, but I feel like the tute qs only covered about 20% of the content from the lectures, so not really.

Exam: Due to high request, Harry put up an exhaustive list of things we needed to know for the exam. There were 168 dotpoints – exhaustive indeed! However, it actually did cut down the content by a lot and most of the exam questions were linked to the knowledge required by the list, thankfully. There were some that were quite specific that weren’t on the list, but if you had an overall grasp of the content you were able to at least write a few lines.

The exam format was a little strange… sort of just three sentence questions that were in a seemingly random order, ranging from 3-6 marks each. The course had quite a large mix of quantitative examples and qualitative explanations, but the exam focused more on theory – probably 30% quantitative and 70% qualitative.

To prepare for the exam… study the exhaustive list Harry gives? Understand the main concepts. The online tutor (Harry himself) isn’t very helpful, because Harry flat out refused to answer questions like “will we be required to understand ____ in detail?”, but its still helpful to see the questions people ask and how Harry responds. Practice exams/more extensive calculation practice questions useless.

Overall: For a year 2 subject, the difficulty level considering the number of topics and depth of content was too high. If you’re considering taking this subject, I’d think twice. Honestly I think how well you do depends on how lucky you are… ie. if Harry tests what you
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on November 20, 2015, 01:30:29 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30002 Enterprise Performance Management

Workload:  1x1.5hr Lecture, 1x1.5hr Workshop

Assessment:  8% Tutorial participation, 12% Group assignment, 10% Midsem test, 70% 3hr+30mins Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, 1 exam, and additional practice questions. No solutions apart from a few sample answers to specific qs provided.

Textbook Recommendation: None. Readings not super important, apart from the first Flamholtz article that is discussed in tutorials anyway.

Lecturer(s): Albie Brooks

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 2

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Comments:

Content:
Another management accounting subject. However, this one is different in that it gives us the already completed accounting information and asks what decisions should managers make? In many ways, this subject is like the accounting version of OB.

Albie looks like a mad scientist (amirite?)! He is quite different, not only in looks, but also in teaching style, to the other accounting lecturers (although they’re all great friends; I’ve seen them dining together at books n bites before!). He is engaging to listen to, and isn’t fussed about teaching the formal content slide by slide, telling us to just read it when we’re home; instead focusing on the practical application of the content. This is fine because the content isn’t that hard in the first place.

Mid Sem Test: Two questions based on articles/cases, and one pure calculation question. Focuses on the first 3 topics, which is quite restrictive, so there isn’t that much to study for: memorise the content, and know how to apply it. The articles/cases are released the weekend before the test, so brainstorm questions that may be asked. The tests weren’t marked that harshly, but lots of people lost marks on calculations because there are no consequentials – make sure you know the formulae!

Assignment: In groups of on average 4 that don’t have to be from the same tute. Focuses on the 5th and 6th topic – Balanced scorecards and reward systems. It was a relatively straightforward assignment, but was marked quite harshly. They’re looking for depth of understanding, and how much analysis you’ve put into your scorecard. The word count is a bitch. It really forces you to be succinct.

Workshops: Workshops start in the first week. Theres 8% /participation/ up for grabs, meaning just attending won’t get you marks. Make sure you answer enough questions such that your tutor knows your name.

You’ve got a pick of 3 tutors. Honestly, I don’t think it matters who you get because the content is not hard, but there are definitely some tutors that are better than others. Regardless, show up, engage with the content, contribute to the conversation, and you’ll be fine.

The tute work is mostly practical applications, so expect case studies and articles. Make sure you glance over the questions before the tute, because it’ll help you absorb the most important things people say. Its useless mindlessly writing everything down.

Exam: Yup, 30mins reading time, in which you can annotate as well! Use reading time wisely and think through the structure of your answer. Calculations are not directly tested, but you can use them to bolster your arguments.

In the last lecture, Albie goes through the exam structure, listing the most relevant topics of each question. However, this doesn’t mean you can totally ignore the other topics, because they’re all linked. You’ll write better answers if you link them together. Albie also posts up a practice exam and practice questions, and a few sample answers. From these, you really get a feel for what questions will be asked. Don’t expect solutions from the consults. Instead, go with a prepared answer and the tutors/Albie will give feedback.

All in all, Albie said “there are no surprises”, which was completely true, so the exam isn’t super hard if you apply the theory to the case.

Overall: Very well structured subject. I personally didn’t enjoy it that much because I’m not much of a practical application person, but it’s a very well coordinated subject that is possible to do very well in.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sheepgomoo on November 20, 2015, 01:31:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30004 Auditing and Assurance Services

Workload:  1x2hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute

Assessment:  15% Group Assignment, 15% Midsem Test, 70% 3hr+15mins Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 3 exams, but only one provided with very general tips, ie. no solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: Modern Auditing & Assurance Services, 6th ed. Leung. Required for tute qs, and important for the midsem, but not overly helpful otherwise. If you do end up buying it, the 5th ed is sufficient (only outdated for the last two topics, which are covered very well in lectures/tutes anyway).

Lecturer(s): Trevor Tonkin

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Comments:

Content: The last accounting subject – and rightfully so! Auditing really builds on past accounting subjects, including ARA, IFA1, IFA2, APA (and even a bit of BLAW!). Trevor does suggest brushing up on previous accounting knowledge before the exam, and there are often questions that relate specifically to certain debits and credits (IFA1/2), ratios (ARA) and information systems (APA).

Trevor is aware of these ATARnotes subject reviews, and I don’t know if he’ll ever see this but *waves. You can tell that Trevor is very familiar with auditing, being a veteran auditor himself. However, his lectures are quite dry, as the content isn’t all that hard. That being said though, he does sometimes scribble stuff on the blackboard, which does assist understanding. He also did a mini review lecture to help identify the links between the topics, which is fundamental for the exam. He really sets you up to know the required content, and thus if you need help, he is very willing to assist anyone who cares to ask.

A flaw I think though is that he often uses complicated language (in lectures and exams qs), which is often fundamental to understanding the question, that international students find difficult to understand. If English is a weakness of yours, dictionaries are your friend! There is enough time to use it, don’t worry. 

Midsem Test: I think it was around 40qs for 15%? The average was 30/40. What made it harder than usual was the inclusion of questions testing really specific things that weren’t necessarily mentioned in the lectures. This made reading the textbook essential to getting full marks. Thankfully, you don’t really need the textbook for the rest of the course. Be careful of the wording of the question, and of the answers. Redoing tute qs wasn’t very helpful.

Assignment: Completed in groups of strictly 3 or 4 people, not necessarily from your tute. Make sure you read the questions carefully and use accounting standards to understand what is required. I don’t think the word count was that constraining, but overall the assignments were marked quite harshly, average being 11/15. It is possible to start (and finish) the assignment quite early on, as the content required has all been learnt when its released (I think).

Tutorials: Tute qs are drawn from the newest version (6th ed) of the textbook. If you don’t want to buy it, just borrow from the library and take photos. Although there aren’t any tute marks, attendance is almost essential – if you don’t go, you really won’t know how to answer the questions. Tutes are all about application of the theory learnt in lectures.

I didn’t prepare beforehand for the tutorials, but make sure you read the questions so you understand the key points being raised. The online solutions posted on the LMS are far less detailed than the content you get from going to a tute. Some tutors go indepth into the theory, whilst some focus on the ideal, solid answer, so I’ve known some people to go to two tutes to get a reinforced understanding.

Exam: Through the practice exams, you get a feel for what kind of questions you’ll get. Dare I say that in many ways, I think the exam is easier than the actual lecture content. Lectures cover a lot of specific content, but to answer the exam qs, you really just need bits from each topic. It’s identifying which bits, why, and how they apply to the specific scenario that is the difficult part. Thankfully, Trevor provides tables to help you structure your answer that you’ll get used to when preparing with the practice papers.

To prepare, know the core concepts loosely. I usually write out an overall course summary, but found that it wasn’t that helpful for this subject. Redoing the tute work and discussing the practice exams with friends was way more effective (because Trevor did not give exam solutions, although I think they discussed key points you should address in the exam consults). As discussed above, do brush up on your previous accounting knowledge! I think Trevor enjoys chucking at least one “curveball” question in the exam that requires previous understanding.

Overall: I surprisingly enjoyed auditing more than I expected. Understand the content (the main bits you need), and just be smart at how you apply it.

Well, that’s me signing off on the last subject review I’ll ever do for my undergrad. Hopefully they were helpful, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to PM me! 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on November 21, 2015, 09:26:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC30070: Applying Coaching Science

Workload:  1 x 1hr lecture per week. 1 x 2hr tutorial/practical per week.

Assessment:  30% Case Study: Leadership in sport 1200 words due week 6.
30% Critical review of 3 articles (400 words each) 1200 words total due week 11.
40% Case study 1500 words due end of semester.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture but it might change due to poor attendance.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  I don't think you need a text book, the one that is recommended is Sports coaching: General principles manual is only like $35 so i guess it wouldn't hurt to get it, but you don't really need it.

Lecturer(s): Mel Nash, Maree Ellul, Andrew Slyfield.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, S2.

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 87

Comments:
This subject is an extension of the first year sports coaching subject, which you need to have done as a pre-requisite. The subject is split into 3 four week blocks, with Mel lecturing on Leadership, Team dynamics, and Nutrition. Maree lectures on Physiology, and Andrew lectures on Skill acquisition and some Sports Psychology. We had about 7 practical sessions throughout the semester which ran instead of the tute, and these were without a doubt the most enjoyable part of the subject. Unlike the practicals in the first year subject, there is no assessment where you have to coach a session. They are used to apply the theory that we learn in the lectures. So for Mel's block we played games and tasks that focussed on leadership and team cohesion. For Maree's pracs we participated in some fitness testing and learned some ways to train for different sports at different times of the season training different energy systems which was pretty good. For Andrew's pracs as we were applying skills, tactics and strategies, we played a heap of ball games, so these were really fun.
The other 5 tutorials we went over more theory and talked about the assessments so they were really important to attend, as they cover more of the lecture material in more detail.

I really enjoyed this subject and it was a great way to finish the degree, the workload wasn't too hard at all, and the pracs were so fun. It's a bit like physical education at school. The lecturers are all really good, and great to listen to.

The assessments may seem pretty easy and straightforward, but make sure you ask questions and really understand it before you start it because you can pick up a few good tips from the lecturers, and if you leave it to the last minute you may actually find them confusing. But once you know what you're doing and do some readings its more about getting the right material in the essays more so than writing style and ability.

The first assessment you chose a scenario where there is a team that has lost leadership or team cohesion and you have to apply theory and personal coaching experience to create a solution.
The second assessment asks you to find three articles on nutrition, physiology, and psychology that relate to your particular sport and summarise them and critically review them. It's a little bit tricky as you only have 400 words for each one.
The final assessment you have to choose a scenario where an athlete has either or a combination of a physiological, psychological, or nutritional problem and you have to create a periodised training program and action plan to get them over these issues.

If you enjoyed sports coaching in first year, you are going to really enjoy this subject, however there aren't many that do it, only had about 25-30 in the class, so that makes it a bit more fun too. Again a great subject from the Education faculty. Lecturers are really good, very helpful and approachable to ask questions.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on November 21, 2015, 09:53:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC10051: Sports Coaching: Theory and Practice

Workload:  1 x 1hr Lecture per week, 1 x 2hr practical per week.

Assessment:  3 x online quizzes 25% all up.
1 x Coaching practical (in pairs, 10 minutes each) 25% all up (part of it is assessed on your actual coaching demonstration, but most of it is from your self reflection of how it went).
1 x Case study due end of semester 50%
Hurdle requirements are reading circles and online certificate of Beginning Coaching Principles.

Lectopia Enabled:  Only if you have a clash, pretty strict on attendance at lectures.

Past exams available:  N/A, some samples may be provided e.g. risk assessment for coaching practical.

Textbook Recommendation:  The stuff covered in the reading circles will be the bulk of the stuff you reference in the final essay, and are where you find a lot of the answers to quizzes.

Lecturer(s): Mel Nash, Anna Krohn, Some guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, S1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 91

Comments: Great subject, not too challenging and thats why heaps of people do it. Start off in the first few weeks learning how to run a coaching session, risk assessment, types of drills, coaching philosophy and coaching pedagogy. So some tutes at the start of semester go into this theory and are really good for learning the content of the lectures. Then you have a practical session which is run by one of your tutors to demonstrate to you how to run a session and some tips for what you need to do.
The coaching sessions you run are spread out over 4 weeks, so if you aren't coaching your session you are being coached, most people choose ball sports so its great. And the good part about this coaching is that most of it is basic stuff and for beginners so even if you've never given sport a try before you will be able to do it, and probably really enjoy it.
Tips for the Coaching practical would be to make it simple and do it well, don't make it too complex because many people may not have played the sport you are coaching or might not know it well, so if you do really complex drills it may not work that well.
Sometimes when you pair up you might not get to do your own sport because there might not be enough people, or your sport is too hard to organise. I ended up just running a 10 minutes warm up and that counted as coaching.
Also, even though playing games is really fun, it is hard to teach everyone the skills, and rules and then integrate into a game in 10 or 20 minutes, you are better off just teaching one skill from a sport and then applying it to different drills. e.g. stationary passing, passing on the move, passing to a moving target. You can make drills into games like races repeating the same skill, but trying to make an actual game of your sport is unrealistic.
The final few weeks you go into a bit of sports psychology, motivation, and how to create a Meso plan to set you up for the final assignment. So you end up recapping a lot of the course from the whole semester to integrate into the last assignment, e.g. pedagogy, training methods, meso plans, individual session plans. And then providing evidence to support your Meso plan and the drills and type of coaching styles you are using to address a case study scenario. These final couple of tutes are really helpful and shouldn't be missed.

Quizzes are long and tedious to find the exact answer, but you should be able to get at least 80% on them from just looking or using google, then if you want to get full marks for them you will take ages trying to read through the readings and getting the right answers.

For the coaching practical the bulk of the marks are in the self reflection/SWOT analysis. Just be really critical of yourself and the marker will have no choice but to give you a good mark.

In the final assignment some parts may not have a word count, e.g. the Meso plan, and session plans so you can make them really detailed. you might even be able to find online some plans that match your sport and situation so you will be able to go off them.

Overall a really good subject, good for people who enjoy coaching and playing sport. But also really good for people who want to give it a go. Not too stressful and a bit more of a relaxing subject compared to the rest of your subjects though out the semester.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on November 21, 2015, 10:53:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30016: Techniques in Microbiology 

Workload:  1 x 1hr Lecture your tutorial per week. 1 x 1hr Debrief session per week. 1x 3hr Practical per week.

Assessment:  2 x 5min Oral reports (done in pairs) worth 12.5% each.
2 x 1300 word written reports 12.5% each.
Satisfactory completion of a lab notebook (hurdle requirement).
1 x 2hr End of semester written exam 50%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Only about 3 lectures for the course, and the important ones will be provided for revision.

Past exams available:  No. Some sample questions to show exam style.

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A, you just need to buy the subject manual, everything else is provided to you.

Lecturer(s): Karena Waller

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, S1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 80

Comments: Originally I saw this subject as a chore, I never liked Practical classes that I had had before, they were always assessed, rushed, and were never relaxed and enjoyable. However this subject was nothing I previously thought, and ended up being one of my favourite subjects for the year.
There are 5 practical classes throughout the semester spread over two weeks, with the other two weeks left over for assessment in the oral presentations.

You get split up into prac groups of 8 or 10 and are paired up with your prac partner on the first day and for the rest of the semester depending on where you sit on the first day. Each group rotates through the 5 pracs in different order.
Prac topics covered were; norovirus infection of macrophages, regulation of virulence with Citrobacter rodentium, EPEC effects on the host immune response (big focus in NF-kB pathway), HIV control of envelope expression by regulatory proteins Tat and Rev, and Bioinformatics by analysing the sequence of a mutant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain.

For each prac you start off the week with a 1 hour introduction tutorial, where you are shown the rationale for the prac, and some detail about the bacterium or virus you are studying. You are provided with research articles that you should read to help you understand the molecular detail. Then you will have the first 3 hour prac for that topic, with a 1 hour tutorial session the following day, which also gets you ready for the rest of the prac the following week. Then in the second week of the block you will have a 1 hour session on either the journal club, or research ethics sessions, or sessions to help ask questions and be ready for the upcoming oral presentation or written report. Then you will have another 3 hour prac session, followed by a 1 hour debrief session the following day.

The prac demonstrators and tutors are really great, they help you understand the pracs so well and go into a lot of detail. You can ask a question at any time, and they really want to help you get it. For most things, the demonstrator shows you how to do the practical technique, then you and your partner do it. Whilst you are waiting for experiments to occur, or machines to work, you take down notes on the prac topic, and are given demonstrations for what you do next. It is done very efficiently and most of the time you will finish the practical sessions earlier than the 3 hour time slot. I wasn't sure I would enjoy having to do pracs every week, but I loved them in this subject, you actually got to do everything yourself and were given really good in-depth explanations by your demonstrators.

The note taking hurdle requirement isn't really hard, you only take notes down while you are in the prac sessions or tutorials, but you just have to make sure you stick in any handouts, or results, and show calculations you use. The idea of the prac journal is so that if another person picked it up they could follow your notes and do the prac. Additionally this prac book will be a great asset for you when you are studying for your exams, so try to keep it neat!

You will find that some prac demonstrators are better than others, or you like some more than others, but overall they all do well over enough to ensure you are well prepared for the orals and reports. However a lot of the onus is on you to ask questions and speak up if you don't get something. Because a lot of the people in your prac group are probably thinking the same thing.

The oral presentations are not marked harshly at all, everyone gets good marks, many over 80%. And the great thing is in this subject, is that you have 2 orals, so generally you will improve for your second one with the feedback from the first. In the orals you are paired up, so you might want to meet up with your partner to prepare, they look much better when you do, as opposed to doing it separately or over Facebook. For the oral, one person introduces the theory and experimental procedure for the prac, and the other explains the results and conclusions. Then for another 5 minutes you have question time where both of you are asked to answer questions, then students who are watching can ask questions. These aren't something to stress about, and the demonstrators usually give you good questions. For the next oral you and your partner alternate, and so the person who discussed results will next discuss the intro and vice versa.

The written reports are probably harder to do than the orals. You have to write the whole thing, not like in MIIM20002 where you have a template. But you are given 1300 words which is plenty to get all the relevant stuff down. You are guided through how to write these reports, and you will probably make a few mistakes on the first one, but this will really help you improve for the second one.

In the end you end up being assessed on 4 out of the 5 pracs either through an oral presentation or written report, however which ones may change, for example i didn't have to do an oral or written report on the bioinformatics prac which was lucky because i found that one pretty hard. However others will be assessed on this.

Journal clubs go through a research essay, and it is really picked apart by the lecturer for you to understand. Some of the techniques that we didn't do in our practicals were highlighted in this lecture, and you are expected to know them because they are assessed on the exam.

So when you end up preparing for the end of semester exam, you will usually be in a good position. You would have been assessed on 4 out of the 6 components, and you really do go into a lot of detail with some of the pracs, so you will know it well. There are 6 essay questions on the end of semester exam, one for each prac and a final one for the Journal club. You will already have really good summaries of each practical from your notebook, so this ends up being a great study tool. Also during each practical session you answer questions about each prac, which are really important to know thoroughly. They really set your understanding for the subject, and the ideas of these questions will come up in the exam.
The exam isn't too difficult, and you should be able to smash it out if you covered everything in your study. However for me I struggled a bit with the Bioinformatics question on the exam, which makes sense because i never really got it. So just make sure you never day dream during the semester, and try to understand all of your pracs while you are there doing it.

Much of the pathways that you cover in-depth in this subject actually come up in a lot of the other subjects of a microbiology major, so this subject gives you a bit of an advantage over others who don't do this subject.

Overall i really enjoyed this subject in the end, even though I thought it would be a struggle. It is compulsory for the Microbiology major so you might as well make the most of it. Its not as daunting as you may think, just show up for every class during the semester and really concentrate in them and ask heaps of questions and you should do well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QUADRATUS on November 22, 2015, 10:29:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics 

Workload:
3 1hr lectures per week
1 2hr workshop per weed
total: 5hrs per week
 
Assessment:

2 mid semester tests - 15% (7.5% each)
Weekly Online Quizzes (pre workshop) - 5%
4 Assignments - 30% (7.5% each)
Final Exam - 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, about 2 of them, solutions are not provided but

Textbook Recommendation:  Nope

Lecturer(s):: Dr. David Ackland

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 1

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This is the prerequisite subject for Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering, so chances are that if youre doing any engineering discipline apart from Chemical and Biomedical, you will be doing this subject.
This subject is divided into 2 categories:
1. Statics
2. Dynamics

This subject is seriously heavy on the content, it requires a constant and thorough amount of work just to keep up, so dont expect to be bludging around and getting lucky at all.

Lectures: the lectures only teach us the bare minimum of  the content, the first few weeks are relatively easy and are basically a follow through of the mechanics content in ESD2. But from week 3 onwards, the content starts to get quite difficult and the pacing of the subject gets faster and faster.
Rocking up to lectures isnt really helping you in learning the content and it is strongly advised to look through the content at the end of the week to understand and keep up from whats taught.

Overall, the lectures arent really that helpful, they only involve one or two of the worked examples and they are perhaps  the easiest examples you can ever encounter, which wont really be asked on the exam.The questions in the statics component can vary significantly so again, the lectures were the worst part of the subject.

Workshops: The 2hr workshops are usually divided into 2 parts, the first hour involves going through weekly workshop questions that are given, and the next part is usually an experiment that  is related to the assignments.
The workshops are seriously helpful, because the tutors go through the ridiiculously hard tutorial questions in a detailed manner and gives us a thorough insight of the content.
while the weekly questions have full worked solutions provided, the solutions only give us a small explanation on whats really done and are really vague which is why i really recommend everyone to pay full attention and take down notes on the first part of the tute.

Workshop question sheets are divided into 2 parts, the first part are doable questions and require some sort of understanding of the content but the second part is what really gets you thinking. and are almost impossible to do after week 4.

Workshop prelabs are also recommended to be done before every workshop and they get you ready for  whats coming.

Mid sems:
The first mid sem is on the statics component till week 7. This mid sem was pretty hard, but thankfully they scaled everyones marks up by 8 because of how bad everyone else did.

because of this, the second mid sem on dynamics was made quite easy and with only some amount of work, and basic understanding, it was quite easy to achieve a mark over 80.

Assignments:
They were a big nuisance of this subject. While the practical component was nothing special, and the MATLAB coding was relatively  simple. The assignment questions were really time consuming and a bit of a pain to do.
what made it worse is that each of the assignment were to be done in a report format and with a limit of only 10 pages, which made things even worse.
They are group assignments are you get to form your group of 3 in the first workshop,
Having a good group is very important if you want to do well on assignments

Final Exam:
I was expecting the absolute worse for this exam, and with my average being quite bad before the exams, I had to put in a shit ton of work during SWOTVAC. Expecting the worse helped out, and attempt to work on any of the sample exams, mid sems or workshops questions to get you ready.
The exam itself wasnt too bad, we had to only do 5 questions out of 6 (meaning you can leave out one topic thats not your best,) this helped out, plus the 3 hour time on the exam helped out alot in going through your work and correcting any mistakes that you made.
I  strongly suggest you all to stay all the way till 3 hrs, i know most people who wanted to leave early and because of this, their final mark wasnt anywhere near they expected.


Conclusion:
Overall, this subject is quite interesting and gives a fundamental understanding of mechanical and structural engineering. There is alot of effort required in this subject, and the content can get really difficult but if you go through every single resource that they have provided, then you will recieve a decent enough mark. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: user999 on November 25, 2015, 01:43:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30012 Discrete Mathematics

Workload:  3x1hr Lecture, 1x1hr Tute
   
Assessment: 20% assignments (3 assignments), 80% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Iwan did sometimes write on the board, which wasn't captured. When he did write on the board, I could sometimes guess what he wrote and sometimes I couldn't. Most of the time, what was written on the board wasn't too important. He really only wrote on the board to clarify certain points in the lecture slides.

Past exams available:  Yes, four past exams and their solutions were uploaded to LMS in week 12. 

Textbook Recommendation: Can't remember. Note: you don't need a textbook to do well. The slides provided combined with some googling is definitely sufficient for understanding the material.
 
Lecturer(s): Iwan Jensen

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Sem 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Comments: This subject was really well organised. Each week, partially completed lecture slides were uploaded to LMS. The gaps were to be filled in during lectures. (Iwan lectures with his fully completed slides.) At the end of the week or the week after, completed lecture slides were uploaded to LMS. His slides were very clear, in my opinion. All the tutorial questions were uploaded at the beginning of the semester. In the tutorial I was in, we worked on the tutorial questions at our desk and asked questions if we needed help. Sometimes the tutor would tell everyone to listen so that he could talk about a key point to a tricky question. I expect that the other tutors ran their tutorials the same way. Answers to tutorial questions were uploaded to LMS a week after the tutorial or at the end of the week, my memory is a bit fuzzy on when exactly it was uploaded. The exam was very fair and tested whether you knew the material. Past exams were very helpful for preparing for the exam. While doing past papers, keep in mind that permutation conventions used in the subject can change between lecturers and so it can vary from year to year depending on who's teaching the course. During office hours, Iwan was very helpful and was very patient. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this subject.

Content: Addition principle, multiplication principle, pigeonhole principle, inclusion/exclusion principle, multinomials, dots and walls (a.k.a. stars and bars), Ramsey numbers, parity, Sperner's lemma, Stirling numbers of the second kind, lattice paths, ballot paths, binomial paths, Dyke paths, standard Young tableaux, Catalan numbers and what things they can count (e.g. number of binary trees with exactly n nodes), bijections between things that Catalan numbers count, Motzkin numbers and Motzkin paths, generating functions, functional equations, permutations, 15-puzzle (using permutations as in group theory) to analyse whether a configuration of a 15-puzzle is solvable (i.e. does there exist a sequence of moves such that the puzzle reads "1, 2, 3, ..., 15, no tile"?), designs (includes Steiner triple systems), Hadamard matrices and how they relate to square designs, Rubik's cube. I've probably left out some stuff.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: teexo on November 25, 2015, 07:55:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT20002: Intermediate Financial Accounting 

Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial a week

Assessment: 1hr mid sem test (20%), tutorial participation (10%), 3hr exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: They posted four with solutions on LMS

Textbook Recommendation:  Financial Reporting 1st edition, the ebook is recommended since its way cheaper especially if you buy online from the publisher which is what I did

Lecturer(s): Jagjit Kaur

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, semester 2

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Another semester = another accounting subject review by yours truly. And for the first time on Atarnotes, here’s a review for IFA2 yay.

So where oh where do I even begin with IFA2? I would think the lecturer, who is also the subject coordinator, asked herself the exact same question before teaching the subject. There are so many separate topics in the subject but they all focus on every student’s favourite part about accounting: debits and credits, yep that’s right double entry accounting from IFA1 is back with a bang. If you thought IFA1 was hard, or even if you thought it was easy, IFA2 will make you want to pull your hair out.

IFA2 is a subject that proves you don’t get tested much on how well you understand something, but how well you’ve memorised something. Particularly when you get to deferred tax worksheets and consolidations, you can reach the end of the semester and you’ll only know which entries to do because you’ve done it repeatedly so many times, not because you actually know what you’re doing.

The lecturer Jagjit, she does the best she can with a subject that students don’t tend to enjoy. She clearly is passionate about accounting and also has a sense of humour that makes listening to lectures somewhat bearable. Be sure to listen attentively and take notes when she goes through lecture examples, understanding those examples along with tute questions are essential as exam questions will be similar.

IFA2 is generally accepted as the hardest accounting subject at the undergrad level, and while I cannot accurately confirm that since I haven’t taken any third year accounting subjects yet, my tutor did tell us that IFA2 is normally the subject that decides for students whether accounting is for them or not. Hence I would recommend this subject for anyone seriously considering a career in accounting (especially audit), because the ‘boring’ side of accounting and understanding accounting standards is basically this subject.

I don’t want to make this subject seem like a completely terrible subject because it’s not, it’s just a bit exhausting on the brain with all the entries you need to remember, which I guess is why this review hasn’t been as lively as my past reviews... my brain is still sleepy zzz.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on November 28, 2015, 01:33:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP30026 Models of Computation

This subject is a combination of two discontinued subjects (Discrete Structures and Theory of Computation) and is now part of the Computing and Software Systems major. The first half of the subject covers the logic results from Discrete Structures without the programming aspect, and the second half covered most of Theory of Computation, but we didn't get time to cover complexity theory (P=NP etc).

Workload: 2x 1h lecture, 1x 2h tutorial (a lot like a maths tutorial - you work through problems in groups and the tutor helps out)

Assessment:
10% - Assignment 1
10% - Mid-semester test
10% - Assignment 2
70% - 2h exam in exam period

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep! worked like a charm.

Past exams available:
Since 2015 was the first year this subject was run, there were no past papers for this subject. However, there was 1 Discrete Structures exam available in the archives, and many (like 6+) Theory of Computation exams available.

Textbook Recommendation:
At all points through the material the lectures and slides are more than sufficient content wise.

It's not on the official recommendations list, but I read the first chapter of A Tour Through Mathematical Logic by Robert Wolf before the start of the semester and that really got me into the formal logic mindset needed from day one in this subject.

On Harald's list is for background reading is a small textbook on discrete maths called Sets, Logic and Mathematics for Computing by David Makinson. This covers more than enough for the discrete math part of the course and reading it fully was not required at all, but it really strengthened my foundational discrete maths skills (not really something I had from all the calculus in high school and uni so far -- gave me a good grasp of the basic definitions and ideas)

There is a slightly larger textbook on theory of computation which is pretty much the standard worldwide as far as I can tell, called Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser. This book goes into a lot of detail, is nicely organised, and is good as a reference and for finding proofs. For a more slow paced introduction that really just gets the ideas moving in your head, I read Introduction to Theory of Computation by Michiel Smid, which motivates each idea with some simple examples and is great for starting out. In particular I got a lot from the second chapter on Finite Automata.

Not a textbook but another invaluable resource for the second half of the subject (the theory of computation half) is the Theory of Computation lecture series by Shai Simonson from ADUni. These are basically very example-oriented classes on the kinds of problems you face in this part of the course, and I found them immensely fun to watch and think about the problems as I went.

Lecturer(s): Harald Søndergaard

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 2

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 100

Comments:

Content:

As mentioned, this subject is a combination of Discrete Structures and Theory of Computation.

The first 4 weeks covered formal logic all the way from AND and OR to 'mechanised reasoning' - algorithms for proving results from a set of assumptions. There's a lot to pick up here which is why I recommend checking out some basic textbooks before you go in, to let the ideas settle before you actually need to run with them.
Formal logic can get a little out of hand at times but there's always a logical interpretation of whatever is going on, grounding everything in intuitive terms. If you always search for the intuition underlying a definition or theorem, you'll see how nicely this all fits together. Harald doesn't always present that intuition for you in the lecture, but it's worth searching for it!

Next up is 3ish weeks on some discrete maths topics, from sets to relations and functions to 'orders' and 'well-foundedness'. There are a lot of definitions going on in this part of the course, and they're mostly all framed in formal logic notation, so it's important to keep up or at least spend the time to break things down and find out what they are really saying.

The final 5 weeks are a tour through the theoretical underpinnings of computer science using all of the material covered so far. More than anything previously, these topics are quite conceptually heavy AND the presentation through big symbolic definitions also betrays how natural and intuitive these concepts really are, so it's worth working at them to find the intuition underneath all of that. This may require either preparing extensively beforehand by pre-reading either computing textbook, or spending adequate time afterwards slowly developing understanding of the concepts.
In particular, the lecture series I linked in the textbook section was really really great for developing the intuition behind this part of the course.


Assessment:

Unlike other COMP subjects, there is no programming in this subject [edit: I think that's changing for future semesters! Haskell is being introduced]. Instead, tutorial/assignment/test/exam questions are all maths/logic based problems, with a simple proof thrown in here (but proofs are typically allowed to be more conversational than in maths subjects like MAST20026 Real Analysis). Also, you learn a few 'algorithms' that you need to know how to carry out by hand on simple examples (e.g. mechanically proving simple results from assumptions), but there is zero implementation.

Some assignment questions are quite tough and require real creativity, but others are straightforward applications of an algorithm from lectures/tutorials. Overall, a good spread of difficulty.

The particularly mathematical nature of the content of the assignments made it worth writing up solutions nicely using LaTeX; harald provides source code examples for those willing to try it. This is optional though, and it's fine to scan and submit neat written solutions.


Questions on the actual exam were very similar to questions on the assignments and MST, questions from the tutorials, and to questions on the past exams from the old subjects (though these past exams contain a fair amount of non-assessable content because they were from different subjects). Overall the exam was fair, some questions requiring a bit of creativity and on the spot ingenuity and others straight forward applications like many of the tutorial questions.


Overall:

I've spent most of this review describing the subject content, which I personally found to be incredibly interesting, and the problems challenging and rewarding. However, the way the subject was coordinated was also worthy of praise, Harald has done a fantastic job of presenting the material and conducting the subject. If all university subjects were run this seamlessly I'd never want to leave!

Overall, this was exactly what I came to university for. From before day one I knew exactly what was expected of me and had all the resources available to meet the challenges of this subject. Add to that the engaging and evocative nature of the content, and this has been the best subject I have studied to date.

This subject does a great job of presenting the intersection between maths and computing, and if you're into logic puzzles and testing the limits of computability, you'll find this subject worthwhile. Above all, there's a really satisfying and intuitive idea behind every piece of this puzzle and if you spend the time to search for those little insights I think you'll really get a lot out of this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kingfisher on November 30, 2015, 11:34:56 am
Subject Name/Code: DASC20013 Topics in Animal Health

Workload: Weekly 1 x2 Hour Lecture, 6 x 3 Hour Practicals (4 Separate pracs and an excursion)

Assessment: 2 Practical reports (750 words- 35%), Mid Semester Test (15%), 2 hour Exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past Exams Available: Yes, for the past 4 years. Only answers to multiple choice are given, but a forum is set up for students to discuss answers.

Textbook Recommendations: None

Lecturers: Dr.Peter Cakebread and Dr.Ian Bland do half the course each. Peter takes you for all your pracs.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 80

Comments: I really enjoyed this subject, even though I’m pretty sure not everyone felt the same way!! As a first year who wants to end up in the DVM, I thought this was a really good ‘introductory’ subject into animal health (it may have been a bit different if you were in second year and had already done Foundations in Animal Health).
You start off looking at animal health and disease more generally, then cover topics including immunology, epidemiology, biosecurity, zoonoses, different categories of disease, neonatal immunity, and then you look in more detail at pathogens including bacteria, viruses and parasites.

I found both Peter and Ian to be great lecturers. Ian’s lectures are succinct, but very thorough, and we often finished 20-30 minutes early (which is always a bonus!!). Peter does tend to ramble a bit and would often go slightly overtime, but I still found him very easy to listen to. However, I know a lot of students found this frustrating and weren’t his biggest fans, but as someone who also rambles I thought he was great!!

The pracs themselves were really interesting and apply to ‘real life’ scenarios, but the write ups were pretty stressful. The first prac is spread over 2 sessions and involves using different techniques to determine the type of bacteria causing mastitis in cows. This prac is assessed along with the 3rd prac, which investigates the (mostly uncontrolled) spread of a virus. I think everyone struggled with the word limit for both these pracs (750 words) as we were expected to cover a lot of detail, but it was almost impossible to do this and stick to the limit. The virus spread prac was, for me, by far the most difficult. The prac itself was hectic and required a lot of teamwork and decision making under pressure (which was really the point of the prac- to show what happens when a disease outbreak occurs and no-one’s prepared!!), and the write-up was awful!! You get data from the prac to analyse, but there were heaps of mistakes and even though they set up a forum to discuss the mistakes, not all of them get fixed and it makes life VERY difficult. The pracs are worth 17.5% each, so it’s quite frustrating to do them and know you’re losing marks because you haven’t gone into enough detail, but you can’t really do anything about it.

The other two pracs were assessing passive immunity transfer in foals and doing faecal egg counts on sheep, which were really interesting. Our final prac is a visit to a horse breeding facility where they also prepare horses for export- by far my favourite part of the course!! Each of these pracs have a question about them on the exam, but they’re not too detailed and tend to ask the same things as previous years.

The mid semester test was fair, although it did go into a little bit more detail that a lot of us were expecting (the class average was 74%). The exam was also fair and if you’ve done the previous exams you should be fine. It consists of multiple choice questions, but the bulk is short-answer questions. They tend to stick to the same themes by the looks of things, so there’s not too many surprises.

Overall, I really enjoyed this subject, and the only reason it’s not 5/5 is because of the prac reports (which I felt weren’t an accurate representation of my knowledge/work/understanding, and when they’re worth 35% that’s a bit of an issue!!), but I'm probably just whinging! Given the other subjects most science students take in first year, this subject was refreshing and I’d definitely recommend it for any vet-hopefuls who want to start actually learning about animals and get their hands a bit dirty!! Most people who take the subject seem to be second years, but there were a few first years and I didn’t really find it any more difficult than my level 1 subjects.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kingfisher on November 30, 2015, 01:27:09 pm
Subject Name/Code: DASC10002 Animals in Society 1: Introduction

Workload: Weekly 2 x1 Hour Lecture, Weekly 1 x1 Tutorial, 2 Hour Seminars through the semester.

Assessment: For 2015- x2 short oral presentations (10%), 1 excursion report (15%), 1 Research essay (25%), 2 Hour exam (50%)
For 2016- x1, 5 min oral presentation with 300 word synopsis (25%), 1200 word excursion report (25%), 2 hour exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, seminars are also recorded

Past Exams Available: No, but some short answer and multiple choice questions provided

Textbook Recommendations: None

Lecturers: Bronwyn Stevens takes the majority as well as Rebecca Doyle, Ian Bland, Paul Hemsworth and others.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 88

Comments: This subject focuses on the welfare and ethics behind how we interact with and use animals in many different aspects of society. You start off looking at domestication of animals and the many ways we use animals today (research, agriculture, pets,etc) and how this developed. We then looked at things like animal cognition, behaviour and emotion as well as assessing animal welfare and looking at some welfare/ethical issues in more detail. I found it interesting for the most part, and you consider a lot of interesting topics from many different angles. The lecture sizes weren’t huge, so we also had a bit of a chance to discuss things and ask questions, and there was lots of discussion in the tutes.

As well as the lectures, there are also a number of seminars that focused more closely on specific topics, including laying hen welfare, greyhound racing, conservation and pest control. The speakers are experts and incredibly knowledgeable, and I found them really engaging. There is a chance for questions and discussions at the end of their presentations.

Looking at the handbook, it seems the assessment is changing next year, so I’ll only talk about our assessment briefly! The oral presentations were a fairly easy 10%- you just had to pick an article about animal welfare/ethics that you could discuss for a few minutes. This was done in tutes and really wasn’t that bad, so if you hate oral presentations don’t stress too much!! The excursion report involved going to either the zoo, the aquarium or the children’s farm (where I went) and just writing about the role the animals play and how they look after them. You’re given a choice of 2 questions for the research essay, and Bronwyn (who ran all the tutes) dedicates a whole tute to showing you how to write the essay and what they expect  because she knew a lot of us had never written a proper essay!! Because there were no past exams available, it was hard to tell exactly what would be on the exam and in how much detail, but there weren’t really any surprises and I thought it was extremely fair. The exam had a small number of multiple choice questions, short answer questions and an extended response question. All material is examinable, but most comes from the lectures and seminars (the tutes and readings are as well, but for the most part these just support the lectures and seminars).

I took this subject as a breadth and found it really enjoyable. It’s definitely not an ‘easy’ breadth by any means, but it’s not ridiculously hard and is pretty thought provoking. I think if you have any interest in animals, this subject is worth taking a look at.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Student1702 on November 30, 2015, 03:11:06 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10003 Engineering Systems Design 2

Workload:  Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 3 hour workshop

Assessment:  Digital Systems- three written group assignments, Programming- two individual programming assignments (MATLAB), Mechanics- three written group assignments. In-class multiple choice testing at the end of every module in workshops, pre-lab quiz's that count for attendance marks in workshops. Practice exam that was compulsory and ended up being 5% of that 40%. All of above totalling 40% of final mark. End of Semester Exam- 3 hours - 60% of final grade- EXAM IS HURDLE- which means in order to pass the subject you need to pass the exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, a graded online practice exam was made available, but was all multiple choice. About 5/6 past papers were provided but no answers were given, forcing students to go to consults to work through solutions. However i managed to find a Facebook group of very dedicated people who had written suggested solutions to past exams.

Textbook Recommendation:  The textbook suggested is a university compiled resource from a number of different texts. I did buy it and when i used it, i found it very useful for extra practice questions, however, the lecture material is enough to pass.

Lecturer(s): Dr Gavin Buskes- Digital Systems, Professor Andrew Ooi- Mechanics, Associate Professor Shanika Karunasekera- Programming

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2

Rating:  1/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2

Comments: I did not like this subject at all. Having said that, i do completely understand that this subject just may not have been for me and will suit other people better.

Digital Systems:- The course started off with Digital Systems, a nice and easy introduction into binary numbers, number conversions and Boolean Algebra. I enjoyed this and this section was assisted well by the textbook. Gavin Buskes in my opinion is a fantastic lecturer, his lectures were interesting and informative and easy to understand. The combinational circuit design did go at quite a fast pace, so as long as you keep up with this you should be fine. Workshops in this sections were reasonably straightforward, but the final assignment of making a circuit to program an Altera Board, i would not have had any idea, but thankfully i had some very smart people in my group.

Programming: I have only just finished my first year, but out of the 8 subjects i have completed, this lectures section was by miles the worst i have come across. There is no way, someone who has no previous knowledge of MATLAB, can possibly complete to a high standard the assignments that they set. The assignments are all individual, EXTREMELY time consuming, mostly because programming may look easy, but is not. The lectures only take you through very basic MATLAB operations, and nothing in assignments actually relates to them. You do not learn anything in the lectures that will help your assignment. Having said that i do not want to scare people away from doing this subject as i know it is a pre-requisite for further engineering subjects at the university. If you manage to have some friends or know people or have previous knowledge of MATLAB yourself, you should be fine.

Mechanics: The final module of the course was Mechanics- by far my favourite section. Andrew Ooi is in my opinion a fantastic lecturer. His lectures were always entertaining, filled with jokes and more light hearted, which personally i found made it much easier to learn. My only warning is that if you have not done any high school physics or an sort of computing in your life, you will be set back a little, as the mechanics section doesn't assume previous knowledge but you will find it a lot easier if you have some background knowledge. However, as someone with no physics background at all, i managed to keep up with the set work, by doing a few extra questions here and there. Again in this section the three assignments are group assignments, they are not easy, but with a good group should be fine. The workshops are more entertaining in this section as you are physically measuring things, weights and calculating catapult distances.

The final exam: I was terrified by the thought of this exam. I had done reasonably well throughout the semester on assignments but i had a number of very smart people that i was lucky to be grouped with. However, the exam was very fair, the practice exam questions were very similar to those on the actual exam, one question on the exam was exactly the same as three years before, one programming question was from a previous assignment and the layout was as expected.

Overall the subject was alright. But if you are doing this to fill a gap, i don't recommend it purely because of the amount of time and work and number of group assignments.

Also please keep in mind that this is purely my opinion, but it is my honest opinion and i am sure many people will tell you otherwise.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bacondoesnotcausecancer on December 02, 2015, 06:50:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM30014 Medical Microbiology: Virology 

Workload:  3 x 1hr lectures per week

Assessment: 45 min MSE #1 (20%), 45 min MSE #2 (20%), 2hr Final Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No. No sample exam. Some sample exam style questions, minimal (2) sample questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended Flint Principles of Virology textbook. Not essential but would be really helpful, I wish i had it at times, but didn't need it.

Lecturer(s): Damian Purcell, Jason MacKenzie, Lorena Brown, Some guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, S2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 80

Comments: Enjoyed this subject way more than Bacteriology, but others may be different. Really well coordinated, and really interesting, but it is still hard and there is a lot of work you need to do if you want to go well.
Subject covers all the medically relevant virus families (18 of them) which you are expected to know plus some important examples within some of these families.
The first part of the course covers the principles of virology, including adhesion, attachment, entry, replication, processing, maturation, assembly, exit. This first part of the course covers in a lot of detail the replication strategies, and control of translation of dsDNA, ssDNA, dsRNA, (+)ssRNA, (-)ssRNA viruses. The lecturers really stress to you to knuckle down and really know this part of the course well, because if you can memorise all 18 families of viruses and their replication strategies the rest of the course is smooth sailing. Interestingly though however, the class performed better on MSE #1 compared to MSE #2. Just do whatever you can to memorise the name, genome size, and structural characteristics of the 18 families of viruses, its not that hard as you are given a good summary table with all the viruses on it. Once you know these names, a lot of the replication strategies are shared between these families, so you don't need to know specifically all 18 replication cycles, just a couple for dsDNA, (+)ssRNA, (-)ssRNA, and one for dsRNA and ssDNA.

MSE #1 has 45 questions and 45 minutes to complete them, personally i needed all the time that was available, however the lecturers said most of us would finish really early with heaps of time. you have about 30 questions of your usual multiple choice style with 5 options, only one correct - they call this Type I style questions. Then you have 15 Type II style questions, where you are given 4 statements; A, B, C, D. Then you are asked to answer on the exam sheet (A) if statements A, B, C are correct, or (B) if A and C are correct, or (C) if B and D are correct, or (D) if only D is correct. This may be a bit confusing, but basically you have to think harder than Type I questions, which is why a lot of students don't like them or perform a little poorer in them. Personally I didn't mind them because they can sometimes really help during a process of elimination, some statement just can't pair up so you are left with only one or two alternatives anyway. We are given practice style questions in a revision tutorial before both MSE's so make sure you attend those.

After MSE #1 the course moves into principles of pathogenesis and innate and adaptive immune evasion by viruses which forms the bulk of the content for MSE #2 along with HIV, Herpes, and Hepatitis specific lectures plus viral vectors and vaccines. Students performed poorer in MSE #2 compared to the first one, and i think its because it was actually harder, you not only have to know principles, but you have to know lots of specific examples, and many specific proteins that have similar names. So i would recommend not to gloss over important proteins that are stressed in lectures, because they came up in the mid sen exam. Knowing the first part of the course well helps with these topics because it is where it is brought together and incorporated. You will come across many specific examples and it would be a good idea at this stage to start remembering those examples and comparing different viruses to each other in terms of their methods of pathogenesis. When lecturers do a lecture on a certain principle of pathogenesis, they will usually use a specific virus as an example, so its not like you will have to know this detail for all 18 families, just one.

After MSE #2 most of the lecturers are delivered by guest speakers, and focus on one specific virus from a certain family. These lecturers are often quite interesting, and they are assessed on the final exam in the multiple choice section and in some short answer questions. If you prepared well for the first 2 mid semester exams, this part of the course is a nice way to finish, however if you haven't been keeping up, you might struggle to really appreciate them. In these lectures you won't need to know every lecture in as much detail as the first part of the course, but in certain lectures you will really need to learn it.

Throughout the course we have 2 flip classes, where the lecture turns into a seminar, where we are provided with articles and reading materials before the class, and are then asked to address some key issues relating to drug treatment of HIV and Hepatitis. there are about 3 or 4 experts in the fields of HIV and Hepatitis at these classes and the class gets to chat to them and asks questions. These 2 classes are absolutely examinable and a specific question will come up in the exam. However you ail be well equipped to deal with the question if you show up to this class and actually participate. Personally I would have preferred a lecturer to just deliver the content in a lecture, but it looks like these classes are here to stay.

I personally felt they marked pretty hard on the final exam, but the actual end of semester exam was really good, every question could be answered. It had some Type I and Type II multiple choice questions to address the last series of lecture, with 4 short answer questions worth 15 marks split up into sub parts. With a third fill in the blanks section, which is pretty hard to prepare for because it is usually pretty hard. The short answer questions are the bulk of the course, so make sure you manage your time to answer those well, maybe get the fill in the blanks and some multiple choice questions worked out in the reading time to gain some extra time, but make sure to read all the short answer questions first thing in your reading time.

It may seem hard or a lot of work, but regardless it is a great subject, and isn't that bad if you commit to your study and get a lot of it done early in the semester, rather than cramming at the end. I loved the lecture content, it was really stimulating, and was usually explained really well.
Off the top of my head some viruses to know would be; HIV, HBV, HCV, HAV, HEV, Poliovirus, SV40 virus, HSV, CMV, VZV, Rhinovirus, Rotavirus, Norovirus, Rabies virus, HPV, EBV, WNV, Influenza, SARS-CoV, Poxvirus, Ebola, Measles, Mumps, Vaccinia, Dengue. There are more, but basically, once you know the 18 families of viruses, and the replication cycles that many of these share, and 5 or 6 viruses in detail that are stressed in the lectures, all you are really doing is remembering names of specific viruses and grouping these into their families.

Don't get thrown off if all this seems hard or complicated, it is an awesome subject, and the satisfaction you will get by keeping up and doing all the work is definitely worth it!! The subject does have principles in it, so you get taught principles of viruses and apply them, at the end of the course things really do make sense and the lecturers really do a good job at helping you understand it. If you are doing the microbiology major this subject is compulsory, however other people in different majors can do it as a selective, in my opinion there may be easier ones to do, but this would be the more interesting one by far!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Whynot123 on December 03, 2015, 04:02:56 am
Subject Code/Name: PHRM20001 Pharmacology: How Drugs Work  

Workload:  Contact Hours:
-Lectures, 3x weekly;
-Tutorials / workshops (1 hr) 6 / semester;
-Practicals (3hr) 2 / semester
(total contact hours: 48)
Total Time Commitment:
170 hours

Assessment: 
-Continuing assessment of practical and computer-aided learning work during the semester (20%).
-Mid-semester assessment (20%).
-A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).

This subject has a practical component. Completion of 80% of the practicals, and practical-related exercises, is a hurdle requirement.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, Lots. No answers though (except one).

Textbook Recommendation: 

-Harvey: Pharmacology, 4th edition. Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins
-Rang, Dale, Ritter, Flower and Henderson, Pharmacology, 7th edition. Churchill Livingstone
-Katzung, Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, 12th edition. Lange
-Golan, Principles of Pharmacology, (3rd edition). Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins.
-Neal, Medical Pharmacology at a Glance (7th edition). Blackwell. (revision purposes)

Never opened them, so they're not required.

Lecturer(s): Lots. Too many to name.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2.

Rating: 4.0 Out of 5


Comments: Okay, so there's a few reviews on here so I won't repeat the same info again.
This was a good subject, would highly recommend.

The reason I gave it a 4 out of 5 is because I found the pracs to be very long and boring. Lots of sitting around and writing down numbers. I feel like the pharmacology department could do more to engage the students. Nonetheless, the pracs were extremely well run and taught, just really boring, so be prepared. I also thought that the exam MCQs were significantly harder than the tute questions that were provided to us. The tute questions were supposed to give us an indication of how the questions were supposed to be in the exam. Barring a few questions, it did not unfortunately. The SAQ questions on the tute sheets though were harder compared to the exam, so I guess you could say it balances out?

Okay, to do well in this subject. Firstly, to science students, I would highly recommend doing this with PHYS20008, lots of overlap. If you've done it last sem than it should be fine. But if you haven't done phys than this subject will be more difficult, you may have to put in more hours on this subject. For biomed students, you have to do HSF in sem 2 lol which has PHYS in it, so nws for you guys.

Review stuff often, don't leave things to the last minute (like me lol). Study for the MST (worth 20% m8), its pretty straightforward if you review your stuff, no trick questions.

For the drugs, highly recommend flashcards and reviewing them often (as stated in previous reviews), don't leave the flashcards till SWOTVAC, start ASAP, it'll mean less stress during SWOTVAC so you can focus on your other subjects as well. Whenever a new drug comes up in the lecture, make a flashcard for it. Some of my friends also made my a table and found it effective. Depends on what you like. (I've still got my flashcards, if you want em, shoot me a PM and I'll hand em over, but highly recommend making your own lol).

Aiight, that's all, everything else is pretty much the same as written in previous reviews. If you have questions, feel free to PM me m8.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Azsy14 on December 04, 2015, 04:29:26 am
Subject Code/Name: PSYC30022 Trends in Personality & Social Psychology

Workload: 1 X 2 hours of lectures each week and 6 X 2 hours of tutorials (as a hurdle requirement, you can only miss one) across the semester.

Assessment: 15% short paper, 35% lab report and 50% exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope, but sample short answer and MCQ questions provided closer to exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  None.

Lecturer(s): Nick Haslam, Luke Smillie, Jennifer Boldero, Elise Holland and IIona McNeill

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2

Rating:  5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments: I'd say this is the second most difficult subject I've done in completing my psych major. Nick Haslam (coordinator) mentioned how he's changed the name of the subject before in a bid to increase the number of students signing up for it but still, it remains the least popular 3rd year psych elective (approx. 50 students!). Not sure if it has anything to do with the perceived difficulty, but I know someone who swapped to Applications of Psychology after failing to understand the first two lectures. That said, it's a highly enjoyable subject that covers very interesting (and downright odd) concepts. I'd definitely not recommend it for those after a relaxing breadth though. Applications in Psychology is an easier alternative.  ;)

Nick Haslam takes the first three lectures. He covers personality disorders and their various conceptions as mapped onto different sorts of models (categorical vs dimensional vs prototypical), psychological essentialism and its implications for prejudice in various domains, and dehumanization, as captured in various forms (animalistic vs mechanistic, experience vs agency denial etc). I found his part easily the most interesting, especially since I've long recognized the validity of having animal/robot forms of dehumanization and it's nice that his research provides an empirical basis for my rather absurd theory.  :P

Elise Holland takes the fourth lecture. She does research on objectification, and her lecture covers what is meant and denied by objectifying women. It's a fairly new area that's informed by work done in other aspects of social psychology.

For the fifth lecture, we had IIona McNeill, who covered human decision making as involving cognitive biases/processes and emotions. She also went on to describe unconscious thought theory, the idea that thinking without attention on the decision at hand results in more satisfactory outcomes. So yeah, cool stuff.

Jennifer Boldero takes the sixth lecture. You learn about how standards and goals govern self-regulation and also, get a more in-depth understanding of regulatory focus/mode that builds on the second year social/personality psych stuff.

Finally, Luke Smillie is in charge of all the personality part of the subject, thus, the last six lectures. He has an excellent sense of humour and you'll soon forgive the 4.15-6.15pm lecture timing. In general, you'll learn all about the Big 5 trait model in describing personality, its various forms of stability (ipsative, individual, mean-level and rank order), the neurobiological substrates/mechanisms of these traits and how motivation and emotions work together in determining goal progress through feedback loops. His lectures definitely require quite a bit of effort to 'get' the cohesive big picture, so I'd recommend attending and understanding every segment well.

Our 750 words short paper was on comparing and contrasting two approaches in conceptualizing personality disorders. This was due quite early in the semester and quite manageable overall. There's a slight challenge of having to use (a maximum of) five references, which requires you to suss out only the good stuff for referencing.

The 1750 words lab report was extremely challenging, nightmarish even. Very little guidance was provided, even though the method and results section were already written up for us (thank god!). We were required to understand 8 ethnic/racial group stereotypes in terms of a list of descriptors and their relationships as mapped onto the Stereotype Content Model and to see if the animalistic and mechanistic forms of dehumanization offered incremental validity beyond the SCM. Also, there was an Ascent scale measure of blatant dehumanization that we were required to interpret in tandem with our findings. The real challenge was in making sense of the (very puzzling) correlation and multiple regression statistics and then deriving suitable hypotheses from them! If not for the fact we didn't have to do the typical method/results sections, I'd say this is too challenging as a third year assignment.

The 2 hours exam consisted of 48 MCQs (4 from each week) and 2 compulsory short answer questions (set by Nick and Luke). As if to make up for the difficult subject matter and atrocious lab report, the exam questions were reasonably straightforward. There were much worse that could have come up but did not, and I'm thankful for that. Know the major concepts/theories well and do the practice questions and you should have no problem here.

Overall, a very interesting but difficult subject, and definitely worth it if you're after learning some pretty novel/cool stuff that expands on what's covered in 2nd year personality/social psych. Steer clear if you're after an easy breadth or easy elective as a psych major!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Azsy14 on December 04, 2015, 07:08:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC30017 Perception, Memory and Cognition


Workload:  1 X 2 hours of lectures each week and 6 X 2 hours of tutorials (as a hurdle requirement, you can only miss one) across the semester.

Assessment:  25% essay, 25% lab report and 50% exam. Three hurdle MCQ quizzes (ungraded) for each of the lecturers' section.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope, but practice short answer questions released closer to the exam. Also, there were 2 mock exam sessions held during tutorials (do not miss either!).

Textbook Recommendation: None.

Lecturer(s): Piers Howe, Daniel Little and Philip Smith

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (99)

Comments: Ah yes, PMC, my favourite subject in uni. No idea why I didn't review it right after semester 1, but here it's anyway. I've mentioned how Trends in Personality & Social Psychology was the second most difficult subject I've done, well, PMC claims the title for being the most difficult! It's a highly rigorous subject, with fast paced lectures and plenty of abstract concepts introduced at times, and also requires an interest in mathematical and theoretical models underpinning the human cognitive processes. Don't get me wrong, I love every bit of this subject (it's also when I discovered Unimelb 'curves' grades for sure), but that's because I'm planning to complete a PhD in this area of psychology. I strongly recommend not to take this subject as either a psych elective or a breadth unless you're highly interested in more in-depth understanding of concepts related to second year cognitive psychology. I've had to help a few people extensively throughout the semester owing to the complex nature of the subject. The SES feedback for PMC year after year is that it's too challenging for a 3rd year subject. Again, know what you're getting into.

"When two aligned contours undergo a discontinuous change in the magnitude of contrast, but preserve contrast polarity, the lower contrast region is decomposed into two layers."
If you don't mind reading statements like these all the time, and also wish to gain renewed insight towards simple everyday human cognitive processes, then this subject's for you!  :D

The first four lectures are taken by Piers Howe. Right from the beginning, the pace is extremely fast, with almost 100/more than 100 slides being quite common. Lecture 1 is on how we perceive lightness as a function of illumination and reflectance, with the anchoring theory of lightness perception and scission theory explored thoroughly in terms of their pros and cons of being an exhaustive explanation for luminance phenomena like transparency, shadows and light-related illusions. Things like the weighting of global/local frameworks and the role of T-junctions can become very confusing very fast, no surprise then that many people leave the first lecture with a puzzled look on their faces. Lecture 2 explores how we track multiple moving objects, with serial, parallel, resource-limited and grouping models being introduced. As you'll soon find out, part of what makes this subject difficult is the necessary capability of holding multiple disjunctive explanations for a single phenomenon, and the flexibility to call to mind what's relevant at the time in point. Lecture 3 introduces the interplay of attention and visual awareness in the visual search for targets among distractors. Stuff like illusory conjuctions, Feature Integration Theory and the serial/parallel mechanisms come up a lot. Finally, Piers concludes with a hefty 125 slides on the three types of visual memory: iconic, short term and long term. You'll learn things like if object memory can be differentiated into select features, memory capacity and how it's estimated, perceptual vs conceptual similarities etc.

Daniel Little takes the middle four lectures. The concepts he introduces are the most complex and will likely take up a lot of your time in understanding them thoroughly. Lecture 5 is on how various theoretical accounts could be used to understand Sternberg's information processing paradigm. Multiple serial/parallel/strength-based models are reviewed in terms of their suitability with respect to graphs and their slopes and the consistency of findings. Lecture 6 covers the multiple forms of memory and if they're simply artefacts of methodological confounds (i.e. single memory system only). It goes back and forth between the two positions like a debate unfolding and becomes quite difficult to follow. Signal detection theory (you'll get a lot more of this later in the semester) is briefly explored as the basis for various experimental conditions (remembering vs knowing, categorization vs recognition) and their dissociative outcomes. Lecture 7 is all about the differences between experts and novices in acquiring knowledge and learning, with explanations like ACT* and Instance Theory of Automatization offered, and also, exploring the composite face effect. Finally, lecture 8 contrasts rule-based and information integration categorization of objects. Again, it takes the form of a 'debate', with functional dissociations provided through experiments in the first half of the lecture revisited in the second half, except they disappear when various methodological confounds are controlled for.

Philip Smith is in charge of the last four lectures, and his slides are anywhere from one-third to half of those of previous lectures. Don't be fooled though, the subject matter he covers is quite mathematical in nature and can be very dry if you're not interested in the more abstract mechanisms underlying the various phenomena. You learn about Fechner's law, speed-accuracy trade-off, the basis of the phi-gamma hypothesis in understanding psychometric functions etc with regard to decision making. Lecture 10 explores the delightful signal detection theory in depth, with yes/no decision tasks providing a suitable platform for the understanding of response criterion, and how false alarms/hits/misses/correct rejections are derived. The receiver operating characteristic curve is introduced as well as an alternative to yes/no decisions, with confidence ratings used instead. Lecture 11 covers diffusion models and random walk models in terms of reaction time in decision making. These are understood in relation to various experimental findings and their graphical outputs. Finally, the semester concludes with a lecture that's more theoretical in nature. Various cognitive biases/heuristics and subjective utility in terms of probability and value are explored with regard to decisions and choices.

The 1500 words essay was on exploring either the Anchoring Theory of Lightness Perception or scission theory in depth and explaining how it provides an advantage over the other. It was quite straightforward and so long as you understood what the authors of the theories were trying to convey, you shouldn't struggle here.

The 1500 words lab report was on a modified Sternberg's paradigm, which used inverted faces instead of numbers. You're then required to cover the three theoretical accounts (serial/parallel/strength-based) and derive hypotheses according to the suitability of the models. This was an extremely difficult assignment that might require a more 'sciencey' background. The word count was insanely limiting, and since the experimental conditions we employed were novel, coupled with a need to also define lag functions as suggested by the linear ballistic accumulator model, it could appear as if you're writing gibberish at times in order to make sense of the assignment.

The exam consisted entirely of short answer questions and can be daunting if you're used to pure MCQ or mixed exams. You do a total of 9 questions, selecting 3 of 5 from each lecturer's pool of questions. You do get rewarded for getting citations right, which only makes it worse, since there's already so much to remember. Fortunately, there were two tutorial sessions dedicated to completing a mini mock exam under timed condition, and these do help you get a sense of what's expected. The actual exam asked fair questions with comprehensive coverage, so technically you could get away with skipping a lecture or two during revision. I'd advise that you understand the broader concepts thoroughly instead of dedicating every last bit of detail to memory, since there will be too much to memorize. Also, I'm not sure how many tutors there were, but mine (Maggie) was really nice and funny and helped me a lot in deciding and preparing for my future studies pathway, so yeah, pick her classes if possible.  :)

In summary, a really difficult but engaging subject for those interested in cognitive psychology, and definitely worth picking if you're up for a challenge. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on December 10, 2015, 05:08:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90016 Concrete Design and Technology

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture and 1x two-hour swing class (used for tutes, workshops, lectures)

Assessment:
Group Assignment (10%)
Prac Attendance (2%)
MST (8%)
Individual Assignment (10%)
3-hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Yes, with numerical solutions

Textbook Recommendation: Ol' mate AS3600. There's also a few recommended texts but I got by without them.

Lecturer(s): Mainly Helen Goldsworthy

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: 2/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: It’s a subject called Concrete Design and Technology, but Helen doesn’t subscribe to the technology part – one of the more needlessly archaic subjects I’ve done.

Comments:
This is an elective subject with maybe 80-100 students enrolled, mostly Structural Eng majors. It’s one of two electives that are “highly recommended” if you’re doing Structural, and I guess I can kind of see why.

I’ll go into more detail below, but this is a subject that really should be better than it is and could be with a few slight adjustments to make it more amendable to students in the context of 2015.

Going into this, students will already have a good grasp on the basics of concrete design through subjects like Eng Materials, and Structural Theory and Design 1 and 2. This subject introduces prestressed concrete, which acts as it’s main focus. For interests sake (on the off chance you’re interested in concrete), prestressed concrete is concrete made stronger by applying some kind of axial force below the middle of the concrete cross-section, causing a beam to camber up. This then opposes the tendency for the concrete to deflect downwards due to normal loading. You’ll find prestressed concrete in pretty much every major concrete-based structure; bridges, high rise buildings etc. Hence the subject’s importance for structural majors.

Lectures and Tutes
I don’t want to have a go at Helen Goldsworthy because she’s a nice and enthusiastic lady, but she’s a bit of a frump and I don’t think she’s a good lecturer. Her slides literally have the ugliest colour scheme ever, and, for some reason, none of the lectures are titled. This means that the lectures have the tendency to blend into each other, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out her reasoning behind when and why she’s introducing certain concepts.

Helen tends to use the document camera sparingly, and often her explanations leave you more confused than enlightened. She also relies on the textbook quite a bit, especially when giving examples. Unlike ST&D, where Elisa will generally go through at least a few of the examples by hand, Helen tends to just scroll through horribly scanned textbook excerpts and hopes you somehow soak up the content through osmosis or something.

You also get some lectures from Massoud Sofi, who pretty much everyone should be familiar with from some other subject in their 3+ years of uni to this point. His lectures are mainly on the chemistry of concrete, which students coming from Bachelor’s at the UoM would’ve already covered back in Eng Materials. Massoud is as clear and concise as ever so these are some of the better lectures of the subject.

Nelson Lam also chips in with a few lectures on deformation modelling towards the end of semester. He’s a hell of a guy but I’ll get to why these weren’t that valuable in the assessment section.

There was also a pretty poorly delivered lecture on strut and tie models with Priyan Mendis of High Rise Structures fame. Luckily, this is only given about 15/180 marks on the final exam and the questions don’t get too complicated.

But probably the best thing about the lectures of this subject is when they get some people from the industry in. You have Shan Kumar run you through some design stuff, Simon Hughes give you some info on precast concrete and floor plans, and Will Ferrell lookalike and top bloke Martin Hewitt go through a section design exercise.

As for tutes, they run on a fairly irregular schedule. My tutor Anita Amirsardari was really good and the tutes materials themselves were fine. However, the answers are handwritten on the school of eng computation sheets; these sheets are gridded and – when scanned in black and white – they can be quite hard to read.

Assessment and Exam
The assignments in this subject are somewhat pointless to be honest.

The first one is a prac report of sorts, except that the prac is in the form of a video from 1998. In 1998 I was in grade prep. So yeah.

Overall it’s a decent assignment, but you can answer it quite easily by following the cues and clues that Helen gives in the notes. So you can pretty much just plug, chug, and end up with a pretty good result. Most people I know got over 90%.

This assignment is done in staff-allocated groups of 2-4, and to allocate groups, Helen literally writes down a sequence of numbers on a printed out list of the students enrolled in the subject in week 1. This is dumb for quite a few reasons, but mainly because having people drop out or enrolled late into a subject is not uncommon and this weird method of group allocation doesn’t account for that at all. This unnecessarily caused issues in terms of non-existent group members and uneven groups. I mean, it’s masters: most students are in either their third-last or final semester by this point – I think we can sort out our own groups.

This assignment was originally given a due date that largely overlapped with the ST&D3 Steel Design Week. Most students doing one of those subjects will be doing the other concurrently, so it’s lucky that Helen allowed some extra time after realising this. However, I think the ST&D folks are more to blame for this as Steel Week was a week later than usual.

The second assignment is on the deformation modelling component taught by Nelson Lam. This assignment also has big issues; it basically involves designing a concrete section and using moment-curvature relationships to calculate it’s capacity. That sounds like a bit of a challenge, right, and it would be if you weren’t given a spreadsheet that pretty much does it for you. Again, you can just plug in the numbers, rearrange some formulas, press enter, and get a good result despite having no idea what you’re doing.

Both of the assignments needlessly require physical submission.

But the worst part of this subject was the exam. It’s a hurdle, worth 70%, and a three-hour concrete marathon. It’s one of those exams where you can never really be sure how many marks you’re going to get for a question. A lot of it is derivative, and you’re given past exams with numerical answers, but I prepared for it like a maniac and still came out of it feeling somewhat defeated. Weirdly, I must’ve gone a lot better than I thought I did to end up with a H1. Flashbacks to Eng Mech.

Other
This subject had the most labyrinthine LMS page I have ever encountered. Say I want to find a supplementary note for one of the lectures, here what I’d have to do:
→Log on to LMS
→Click on Concrete Design and Technology
→Click on “Documents” link
→Try to remember what specific week these notes were from (made more difficult by the “content blending together” issue I spoke about earlier)
→Click “week x”
→Click on “Supplemental Notes”
→Realise this is the wrong week, press back twice
→Click “week y”
→Click on “Supplemental Notes”
→Try to find which of the several documents you are actually looking for
→Yay right week!

Yeah, it’s an iterative process, and it’s pretty much the Bermuda triangle of LMSes.

Overall
The content and ideas behind this subject aren’t too bad. And with a top notch lecturer, some more thought behind the assessment, an update in the subject materials and a more streamlined student experience, it could be really good. Let’s hope they make some changes, because I mentioned all of these issues in the SES (except the exam, because for some reason SESes seem to be oblivious to the most crucial part of a subject) and I’m sure others did too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on December 11, 2015, 02:28:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90016 Structural Theory and Design 3

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture, 1 x one-hour lecture per week, irregular tutorials/computer labs, 1x life consuming steel design week

Assessment:
Steel Design Week (30%)
Bridge Design Assignment (10%)
3-hour Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Yes, with fully worked solutions for numerical questions

Textbook Recommendation: You’ll need the copy of HB48 that you would’ve had for ST&D2, and you’ll probably have to print out some pages from the Timber standard for the exam, but AS3600 stays on the shelf.

Lecturer(s): Elisa Lumantarna, Massoud Sofi, Emad Gad, plus a couple of industry guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: Other than the conspicuous lack of tutorials, this subject is much like it’s predecessors, and Steel Design Week acts as good capstone to the three ST&D subjects.

Comments:
Well, well, well, another Structural Theory and Design review. I’m going to keep it pretty short, because – in most facets – there’s little difference to ST&D 1 and 2. Major difference is that if you’re a civil major, you don’t need to do it; though its a core subject for structural majors, it’s just an elective for civil swivels like me.

Elisa Lumantarna is at the helm again, but takes a smaller proportion of the lectures compared to the previous subjects. As a coordinator, she’s as good as ever – plenty of consultation hours, creepily quick to answer emails, and also pretty quick to fix any issues that may crop up.

The content of the subject really just expands on ST&D 2, and you’re expected to bring your knowledge from that subject into this one – though it’s not taught specifically in this course, there will be times where you’ll have to know things like calculating steel section and connection capacities. You’ll go into further detail on the direct stiffness stuff (learning how to account for deflection within your models and dealing with trusses and frames), you’ll learn some stuff about the fundamentals of finite element modelling, you’ll have some Eng Materials flashbacks as Emad Gad covers cold-form steel (in a little more detail this time), and you’ll also have some lectures on more practical stuff like conceptual design and composite members. Oh, and timber design – which featured in ST&D1 but was left out of ST&D2 – is back, and you’ll go into some detail on modification factors and the like.

Like the other Structural subjects, most of the content is relatively easy once you get your head around it. But as always, there’s plenty to remember.

Lectures
Basically, you can refer to previous reviews – the lectures are given by the same people and aren’t much different.

However, I found the set of lectures on Finite Element stuff given by Massoud Sofi to be pretty poor. There was about 6 hours or so of them, and they just kind of ran around in circles, and I don’t know exactly what we are meant to take out of them or what was assessable. Hopefully they’ll fix this up and make it a bit more concise and provide proper examples, because it did end up on the exam.

Steel Design Week
Steel Design Week is the selling point of the subject and probably the thing you’re meant to take out of it.

The assignment itself is split into two phases, and is completed in self-formed groups of 6. You’re expected to work in your group pretty much all day every day for the week, and you’ll have Phase A of the assignment due mid-week and Phase B due the Monday after.

The week starts with a reveal of what structure is to be designed. This year it was a steel VMS gantry (in layman’s terms, a thing that holds up road signs over a highway or the like), but in the past it’s been things like a steel platform, catwalk, basically any framed or trussed steel structure.

Phase A of the assignment is a conceptual design. You have to work out gravity, wind and earthquake loading for the structure, provide a few approximate calculations for member forces, and assess the required member sizes to ensure that it will stand up (we hope). You’re given about a day and a half to do this – it’s a rush, but you should be fine if you can live with a multitude of typos and niggly errors within your report (proofreading be damned).

Phase B is a detailed design. For this, you’re actually given the dimensions of the structure (i.e. its height and width (but not that of the members)) and once again you’ll have to come up with appropriate section sizes for the members as well as connections for them.

This doesn’t sound too bad, but your also going to have to create a direct stiffness model using excel to solve for the forces in the members. And if your structure is anything like our one was, your going to end up with a matrix that would be at home in Brobdingnag (killer literary reference right there that a good 0.01% of those reading are going to get). So, yeah, this can be a bit of a fiddly and frustrating process.

Phase A is worth 6% of your final mark for the subject whilst Phase B is worth 24%.

So though it can be a little overbearing and life consuming at times, steel week was the best thing about the subject and one of the best parts of any subject I’ve done in masters so far, but it helps that I was part of a really good group.

Exam
During the Student-Staff Liaison Committee meeting run by the infrastructure eng department, me and a couple of others brought up the issue I mentioned back in my review of ST&D2: the exam was way, way too long. This feedback was obviously listened to, because this semester’s exam was far more reasonable. Well, it was actually possible to finish it within the allotted time anyway. So yeah, really nice to see that the staff are receptive to the concerns of students.

The exam itself was exactly what you’d expect – it followed the format of past exams pretty closely, and Elisa pretty much told us what to expect and how many marks each section would be allocated in the subject’s final lecture. Putting the FEM stuff on there was a little rough though; as I mentioned, this section wasn’t particularly well taught, and it was the first year that it was part of this subject so it wasn’t to be found in past exams. Luckily, the lone FEM question was pretty easy.

It’s also nice that the exam for ST&D3 is only worth 60%, far less than for the previous subjects. This takes a bit of pressure off, and – as most groups tend to do pretty well on the assignments and the exam isn’t a hurdle – you shouldn’t need to do all that much for a pass.

Other
ST&D 3 pretty much does away with tutes. While you do have some computer lab classes, the traditional weekly tutes don’t feature in the subject. This is a bit of a let down in some ways, as it would be nice to go through some questions for some of the numerical stuff, but – for the most part – the lectures themselves provide ample examples (#rhymez) that should give you a pretty good idea of how to answer questions and what you’re expected to be able to do in an exam (the FEM section being the noticeable exception for this).

Overall
This review has ended up longer than I intended so I’ll keep this as short as my natural tendency towards verbosity allows me. ST&D 3 is a quality subject that is well taught, well coordinated, and well conceived. Like its sister subjects, there’s plenty to learn and plenty to remember, but – other than the FEM stuff – it never gets overly complex or obfuscated. Doors plus, no fuss.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on December 20, 2015, 01:57:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL20022: Modernism and Avant Garde

Workload: 1 x 90 minute lecture; 1 x 1 hour tute each week

Assessment: 1x1500 essay (worth 40%) and 1x2000 word essay (worth 60%) and 80% tute attendence is a hurdle

Lectopia enabled: Yes, but quality was iffy and were always slow to upload.

Past exams available: No exam for this subject

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook; texts studied were mainly anthologies or collections which means purchasing the exact copies was usually impossible unless you got them from the co-op, but everything in this course is in public domain and pretty well-known, so you could easily get by with online resources

Lecturer(s): Sarah Balkin et al. Full disclosure- I stopped attending after about Week 4 :/

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 1.3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Where my review of Modern and Contemporary Literature from first year was mixed but optimistic, I really don't have many positive comments to make about this subject. I'll break this up like I did with ModCon:

Lectures:
I have this theory: half of the people in the English Department wish they were in Art History. I'd estimate that around 60% of lectures all up was spent analysing paintings. I wouldn't mind if this was for the sake of contextualising the time period, or if the art was a little more directly related to the texts we were studying, but in reality the lectures were a mix of sociology and art analysis masquerading as a Literature subject.

Perhaps some of this muddling can be attributed to how ill-defined 'Modernism' is. Admittedly when studying a whole movement, I also find it useful to look at surrounding culture, events, people, works, etc. But dear lord was there a lot of freakin painting analysis in this subject. In one of the Ulysses lectures - a text which I love and was half the reason why I chose this subject - about 5 minutes in the lecturer said words to the effect of 'Ulysses was written in 1922, and here is a painting from that same year.' That was the only substantial reference to the text for the whole 90 minutes; everything from that point onwards was about various sketches and prints from Dublin circa 1920's -.-

By Week 4 I was skipping parts of, if not whole lectures and just x2ing them online. By the midsem break I'd even given up on that. I was told by a friend in my tute that lecture attendance dwindled significantly, though this is a natural decline that's happened in most of my subjects over the course of each semester, so make of that what you will. At some point around Week 10 I went back to see what I was missing, and weirdly the lecturer kept asking really close-ended questions (eg. What year did ____ happen? Where was ____ born?) and no one was answering... because it's a lecture... because we're there to sit and listen as opposed to the tutes where we all participate. Then we were all told to stand up, and couldn't sit down until we'd each answered a question or volunteered a comment, and at that point I just left and went home. Maybe this is a common occurrence in smaller cohorts where 'lectures' are more like seminars where participation is encouraged, but in that context it just felt so puerile and pointless that I realised I wasn't just noticing small gripes and grievances anymore; I was simply not enjoying any part of the subject.

Tutorials:
Fortunately, there were a bunch of intelligent people in my tutorial who had some really interesting things to say about some of the texts we were studying. Unfortunately, most of the discussions ended up coming back to 'wow this text is really complicated and hard to read,' especially Ulysses - which again, I was so looking forward to discussing. We did that text for two or three weeks, and yet there was never any substantial conversation beyond the fact that the text was really long and difficult to get through. Granted, that's something that can be interesting to talk about with books like that, but it seemed like we were only ever dancing around the texts without ever addressing their core.

It was pretty much a standard English tutorial with most weeks being taken up by group discussions facilitated by the tutor and generally the same four or five people offering their contributions. Occasionally we'd be split into groups of two or three to talk about things and then report back, but I never found it particularly beneficial beyond some of the interesting tangents we'd go down when given the chance. Studying the same text over the course of two or three weeks could've been an opportunity for some carry-over discussions, but it ended up just making things seem all the more disjointed. For all the time we spent talking about superfluous stuff surrounding the texts, I don't recall anything substantial that linked the texts together, and certainly nothing that aided our understanding of what 'Modernism' and 'Avant Garde' were.

I'm also really not a fan of an attitude I've noticed crop up in more and more English subjects, and that is what I like to call the 'for those who read the book' caveat. You'd think that at a tertiary level, it's assumed (nay, required!?) that you read the texts that you're studying. And I know some of them were hard to get through, and that there were people doing this subject who had substantial amounts of reading to deal with in other courses, AND that there were some people who weren't even majoring in English that took this on a whim, but even so... for a fair amount of the tutorial discussions to begin with the tutor asking 'who read ____ for this week?' or 'how many of you managed to read the whole thing?' was kind of disheartening.

Assessment/ Feedback:
*aggressively rolls up sleeves*
At this point I think I should admit that if I had done this review at the end of Semester 1 after finishing the subject and not after Semester 2, my review would probably be more favourable. However, having done an English subject in this most recent semester that was really well run and interesting, I'm now inclined to look back on this one and be a tad harsher since I now know how good things could've been. So whilst I'll try and make this as objective as I can, I'm well aware that my opinions have been somewhat tainted by my having put this off and that this part of the review is going to be much more critical than it would have otherwise been.

There are only two essays for this subject, which I gather is the norm for 2nd and 3rd Year English subjects (give or take a tute presentation/ group exercise, etc.) and that means there's usually a 40/60 split in assessment weightings. Personally I think more frequent, less weighted assignments would be a better idea, especially because the word limits are kind of frustrating. Your whole grade comes down to 3500 words, the first 1500 of which are spent on a single text and a hugely broad essay question, most of which were about Modernism as a whole. *Note: I've since learned that you're better off writing your own essay topics in English subjects. Your writing will be more interesting and original, and it's way easier to showcase your knowledge when you pave your own focus.* The second 2000 words comprise a comparative piece which is also based on a generic 'Discuss >some concept< in relation to Modernism using two texts' kind of prompt. Unfortunately, the minimal assessment makes it really difficult to do well because for the first one, you have no way of knowing what kind of writing your tutor wants from you. To date, I've done six subjects in the English department, and every tutor I've had has told me at least one thing that has been contradicted by something another tutor has told me. Some of this advice has included:
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on December 20, 2015, 04:44:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING20005: Phonetics

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures with one repeat each (ie. one lecture at 11:00, one at 4:15 on both Tuesday and Thursday for our cohort) + 1 x 1 hour practical session - explained below.

Assessment: 2 x transcription assignments - one using a foreign language dataset, the other using foreign words + English sentences; 1 x oral production test; 1 x listening test; 1 x two hour exam

Lectopia enabled: Yes, but lecturer would occasionally draw on the board & more importantly, would often do physical demonstrations of sound production, so attending the lectures is a good idea.

Past exams available: Yes, one, and it was easier than the actual exam but still gave a good general overview of the subject matter.

Textbook Recommendation: The Ladefoged & Johnson textbook was surprisingly expensive for relatively little content (~I think it was under 200 pages but over $100 :/ though according to the lecturers it's the best, most concise summation of all of Phonetics, and admittedly was pretty great if you wanted to learn beyond the overviews given in the lectures.) Baillieu has some old editions in the high use section, so I'd recommend just reading through that over an afternoon or two and make notes. It's not a necessity, but it does aid in theoretical understanding.
There were also a few groups (one of which I joined) who pitched $15-$20 each and got a shared copy that they passed throughout the Semester around depending on whoever needed it - most would just borrow it for a week, photocopy or take notes on whatever they needed, and handed it on to the next person - then sold it at the end of semester and gave whatever they got back to a relevant charity so that's a really good option as well.

Lecturer(s): Mainly Janet Fletcher, but there was someone else who came in to talk about the physics and physiognomy of speech sound in Week 10 or so.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
I'll start with what is most likely to put people off this subject: by the end of this course, you will (or should :P) be able to produce every single sound and combination of sounds on this chart from memory:
(https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/sites/default/files/IPA2005_1000px.png)
To me, that is incredibly exciting and challenging, but when this was made clear in the first or second lecture, there was a noticeable drop in attendees. However, this subject is very well-paced, and it rarely felt overwhelming.

The fact that I'm really interested in this subject matter is going to prejudice this review a smidge, so I'll focus on the details surrounding assessment first and talk about general pros and cons afterwards. The two major assignments throughout the semester are listening or transcription exercises whereby you're given a series of audio files with three second sound bites of someone saying 'mfarnglchth' in another language, and then you have to write down that sound using the appropriate symbols from the above IPA chart (which incidentally, would be [ɱɐŋɬθ].) Luckily, we were given a fairly simply language (Korean) and told to just focus on the consonants, since by that point in the semester we hadn't yet explored vowels in full. It was fairly straightforward, and you were told which possible symbols might come up. Plus, because this was a take-home exercise, you could play the sounds as many times as you wanted to... and there was a slight cheat to working things out (hint: don't listen to the files in order ;) ) This was probably the easiest exercise, and there was a pretty high average according to the lecturers.

The second assessment involved transcribing 20 Burmese words, which was a little trickier since you had to get the vowels right this time too, but like the first assignment, we were given a table of ~40 relevant symbols from that language. There were also two English sentences that we had to transcribe using the Australian English symbols ( -a real struggle for the two American girls in our tute who were constantly getting vowels 'wrong' since they were going by their accents instead of ours.) You also had to describe the tone targets which I'll talk more about later.

Then, towards the end of semester, you had to pick an allocated time slot for the oral production test, which consisted of a 5 minute mini-exam where you're given six random IPA symbols and you have to state their full name (eg. voiced post-alveolar fricative; open mid-front unrounded vowel; dental ejective, etc.) then produce the sound, plus three 'nonsense words' like [nøʔɶɮ] that you're given about five minutes before the test. You're given heaps of practice with this in all the practical session, and it's really easy to test yourself just be going through the chart. I ended up taking a whole stack of sticky notes and making a wall size IPA chart at home with symbols on the front and names on the back, and I saw a lot of other people practicing with cue cards or online flash card programs in lectures too. There's no way of knowing which symbols or combinations of symbols (eg. devoiced alveolar nasal, lowered close back vowel, etc.) though just through conferring with the people I knew, it seemed like everyone got at least two vowels and one non-pulmonic consonant. The tutors were really good about providing ample opportunity to hone your skills though, and apparently you could even seek them out in their office hours and they'd do a practice run-through with you. They're also really good in the actual assessment if you stuff up one of the symbols and then realise five seconds later... I got the stupid freaking velar approximant mixed up with the stupid freaking palatal lateral approximant... it's not my fault that whole class of phonemes sound the same... but they let me correct myself which was super nice of them :'D

The final bit of assessment before the exam was the listening test where Janet would produce a bunch of sounds (from memory it was 20 IPA symbols + a full symbol and tonal transcription of two English sentences, but I could be wrong) and we'd do the notations. This is going to sound like an odd compliment, but Janet is very good at... making sounds. As in, her articulation was really unambiguous if you knew your stuff, and she even stressed certain features both visually and aurally to help people who were struggling. The whole thing only took about twenty minutes, and you get to choose one of three sessions across three days to do it. I'd highly recommend sitting close to the front though, since you've got a slight advantage if you get a chance to observe Janet's facial movements and enunciation. She also had to do a bilabial trill (like blowing a raspberry, basically) for the session I was in, and we were giggling like a pack of three year olds  ;D

Finally the exam... which I don't remember much about. There was a fair bit of 'this is a symbol, write what it is' and vice versa, as well as a few multi-choice and short answer questions about sound production and airstream mechanics (eg. describe the various process involved in the production of the phoneme [ð] or whatever) There were also some tricky diagram sections like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/n9dSwzJ.png)
but you will have seen these in lectures and possible pracs, plus the readings for those who bother to do them :P

There was also some spectrogram analysis which I really struggled with since physics is not my forte, but more on that later.

In general the exam seemed like a pretty apt condensed version of everything that had been covered in the lectures. There were no 'omg what the hell is this' moments, nor were there any 'damn, I memorised everything to do with ___ and it wasn't even on there' thoughts that I had afterwards, so it seemed well organised overall.

General good things about this subject:
The lectures and pracs line up nicely so that you'll learn about a sound production mechanism on Tuesday and then practice producing it yourself on Wednesday. They worked in tandem up until about Week 8 when things started to shift around a bit for assessment, but in general there was a lot of synergy between the different classes which is the sign of good subject coordination, in my book.

Also, you get to be part of a cohort that goes from shyly not wanting to make silly noises in week one to a group of nerds with wildly gesticulating tongues that shamelessly practiced their uvular implosives on the train and made others think they were choking to death. Janet warned us in the first week that she took one step into the world of phonetics and before she knew it she was practicing tongue root movements and laryngeal lowering in the car while waiting for traffic lights to change, and occasionally someone next to her would look over and see this crazy lady with a spasmodic jaw and be like, wow, that crazy lady sure does have a spasmodic jaw.

The pracs really were immensely useful once we all got over the collective weirdness of being in a room of people humming or buzzing or trying to roll their 'r's. There was one especially great class where we were learning about all the different sibilant sounds, and the tutor told us to all produce an 's' which we'd then turn into a ʃ or whatever, and some poor construction worker came in to tell us to leave via the side door, only to discover twenty young adults hissing at the tutor like it was the most normal thing in the world.

On a more serious note, this subject was also really considerate when it came to second language, or even just non-Australian English speaking students. A lot of us were worried that the assessment would be very AusE heavy, especially the two phonetics friends I had, one of whom was Polish and the other Tamil. There were also certain symbols (like [ʀ]) which were near impossible for certain speakers to pronounce just because of their physical oral tract shape, but not only did the tutors work closely with students that didn't have native intuitions or accents, but they also took off various really-really-hard-to-produce sounds from the oral exam, which was lovely of them.

The LMS was well stocked with readings, resources, and links to helpful things like this and this, as well as recordings and lecture slides that were always uploaded promptly.

I'm starting to really value well-coordinated subjects even more so than interesting content matter, so the efficiency and clear communication was a real strength.

General bad things:
I was really really confused by the acoustic phonetics and more physics-y elements of the course that got brought in at around Week 9 or 10, and as such found it tough to wrap my head around things like tone contours and tone targets in Week 11. The secondary readings were a little too far removed from the purview of the subject, and it was really tough to get a basic, working definition of what 'pitch' and 'formants' were. I kind of got there by the exam, but I ended up operating on a need-to-know basic rote learned understanding of how to handle the exam style questions, and I much prefer having a stable conceptual understanding regardless of what I'm studying.

I know I wasn't the only one that struggled with this either; the guest lecturer that came in to talk to us about spectrograms and such was pretty interesting, but it felt kind of divorced from the stuff we'd been focusing on so by the time Janet came back the week after, she was using a lot of terminology that I guess she assumed we had gone through the previous week, which let to a lot of us taking our confusion out on our tutors. They still did their best to clarify the basics, but almost all the new content from the last three weeks of semester was pretty challenging and I still don't think I fully understand it.

It might have also been valuable to provide more sample data sets for us to practice with in the lead up to assessment. There were a few on the LMS, and when it came to the English sentence transcription you could just refer to anything you heard around you, but in terms of the foreign language exercises, the resources were a little sparse.

I'm really struggling to think of anything else though, which is a good thing considering this is a core unit for a Linguistics major. It's not the sort of thing I'd recommend to an outside elective-seeker (unlike Secret Life or Grammar of English which are much more accessible to the non-Linguistics lot) unless you're especially interested in speech and noise pronunciation. There were a couple of people who weren't there for the major - like one lady who was a professional opera singer and wanted to beef up her knowledge of sound production. As fun as it was, I can't see it being wholly relevant unless you want to go into a field like phonetics or speech pathology, so it's certainly a lot narrower than the other Linguistics units I've done. Nevertheless, it was really well-run and had a great combination of engaging staff and interesting content, and this was definitely one of the more enjoyable subjects I took this year.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on December 20, 2015, 05:40:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20076: Auslan and Visual Communication

Workload: 5 days, 9:00-4:30 with a lecture in the morning, workshops till 3:30, and then a tutorial in the afternoon that reflected on everything from that day.

Assessment: 1 x 'Practical Project' equivalent to 1500 words + a 500 word written explanation; 1 x Essay (2000 words) based on one of three topics

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, just audio which was unfortunate because you missed out on the live interpreting that accompanied each lecture, but was still a useful resource when prepping for assessment.

Past exams available:  No exam for this subject.

Textbook Recommendation: None, officially, but Johnston & Schembri's book is worth a read, and the LMS had a bunch of pdfs that were useful for the second essay. You'll also be using this a lot :)

Lecturer(s): Various.

Year & Semester of completion: July 2015

Rating: 4.1 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: First of all, this is a winter intensive that runs over the course of one week with the two assessment pieces due (two weeks and seven weeks, respectively) after the end of that week. It was kind of a pain to come in five days a week when you live as far away as I do, and I was totally exhausted by the end for reason's I'll go into later, but it was still very enjoyable.

I'd also like to note that this is only the second time this subject has been run, so most of my major gripes can be chalked up to teething problems regarding assessment and coordination. Also, just based off an earlier review as well as what I heard from the tutors, this subject has already changed substantially for the better, and they really value student input. Aside from the regular SES feedback, we were also encouraged to fill in other surveys and written evaluations, and a lot of the tutors were very open about receiving constructive criticism for future cohorts. Given how much they've already improved, I have no doubt it'll only get better since there's a team of highly intelligent and highly committed, interesting people behind this subject.

On to details... I'll explain the days' schedule first, and then go into assessment later.

The first day we had two lectures in the morning, though the first was mostly admin and outlining what the week would entail, so the second was where we learned about the basics of signed communication. A huge plus in the lectures was that, because most of the workshop leaders and staff were deaf and only a few could lip read, every lecture was interpreted live by a signer at the front of the room, so we all got to watch the process of interpretation unfold. This went in both directions too; sometimes the lecturer would be deaf and would sign to an interpreter sitting in the front row, and the interpreter would have a mic that'd be broadcast throughout the room. Other times the lecturer would speak, and the interpreter would face the audience while signing.

Spoiler: I find translation to be incredibly fascinating, so my enjoyment of this subject was significantly bolstered by being submerged in all this interpretation  ;D

After that we would be split into our tute groups for the rest of the day. The whole cohort was made up of 175 people with about 25 people in each tute. Most of the afternoon would comprise of 'workshops' where one person would come in and go through a concept like 'deaf culture' or 'deaf protocols.' There were a heap of interesting things that took a while to get used to, like if someone is signing to you through an interpreter, you are supposed to look at the person who's signing to be polite, not the actual interpreter. The same goes for questions, so if I'm communicating with a deaf person via an interpreter, I would just say aloud 'what would you like for dinner' instead of directing my speech at the interpreter like: 'can you ask him what he wants for dinner?' Even simple things like using the word 'deaf' instead of 'hearing impaired;' a lot of us thought the latter was more respectful, but apparently 'deaf' is a lot more inclusive than the negative connotations of the word 'impaired.'

Anyway, we'd have three workshops per day, but they'd alternate between the different tute groups so although everyone would have completed the same tasks by the end of each day, you wouldn't have done them in the same order as everyone else. The most interesting thing about the workshops though was that they were almost all run by a deaf person, and there's only occasionally be an interpreter in the room. This wasn't explained to us at all really, so our first session was super confusing, but a seriously effective way of teaching.

One of the things you'll learn quite quickly about deaf communication is that it's not about memorising hundreds of hand signs and just spelling everything out - much of it comes from contextual clues, facial expressions, and body language (which is why, if you've ever seen an interpreter on TV during an emergency broadcast or anything, they're always highly expressive and gestural. Simply making the hand signal for 'there is a fire nearby' with no other bodily movement whatsoever would actually be really confusing for a deaf person, since things like emotion, urgency, and necessity are most effectively communicated through the whole face and upper body.) Going into the subject, I didn't know many signs beyond some basic Makaton, and most of the people in our course had little to no experience interacting with deaf people either. But you'd be surprised how much can be communicated without sound.

Our first workshop was about politeness protocols, which was mainly based on the different ways of attracting the attention of a deaf person. We'd all just wandered into the class and our workshop leader waved and invited us all to stand in a circle. Then, he wrote the word 'sports equipment' on the board, turned to us, and pretended to mould an invisible ball of clay into a golf club, then mimed hitting a golf ball. He then moulded the club back into an invisible ball, and handed it on to the next person in the circle. They had to follow suit (which took us a few moments to work out) by presenting their own gesture (eg. stretching out the clay to form a long, thin rope, then pretending to skip, or flattening the thing into a discus and pretending to toss it to someone on the other side of the circle.) By the time it went all the way around, the topic changed to something like 'children's toys' or 'kitchen utensils' and the game carried on. All of this occurred in total silence, and the only way we worked out what was happening was through purely visual means. There were a few kids who didn't get it, and admittedly there were a few drop outs after that morning who just found the whole experience too weird, but I was completely fascinated by how it all unfolded.

So we soon worked out that the whole workshop would be delivered in a combination of gesturing and signing, since many signs in Auslan are fairly intuitive (eg. bus looks like someone turning a bus' steering wheel; forget is like taking an idea from your mind and throwing it away, etc.) If there was anything particularly difficult to get across, the workshop leader would signal for one of the interpreters to come in and help us out for five minutes, but aside from that, we had to make do on our own. For instance, we had another activity where we had to silently converse with others on our table and find out their names (we had finger-spelling guides like this one) ages, majors, and interests all without any spoken communication. Our workshop leader for that activity happened to only be partially deaf, so he could make out a low murmur when people spoke even though he couldn't hear exact words, meaning we couldn't get away with just muttering to one another :P

Other workshops included a 'useful phrases' seminar where we got a crash course in about 50 key expressions; modifying signs to express adjectives (eg. if you make the sign for 'apple' while wrinkling your nose, it means the apple is disgusting, whereas if you make the sign with exaggerated hand gestures and blown up cheeks, it means it's really big;) and considering what barriers there are for deaf people in society, the workforce, relationships etc. A highlight here was that at some time in each workshop, an interpreter would come in and the workshop leader would spend about ten minutes telling us about their lives, so we got to hear about the experiences of people who had become deaf in late childhood but were surrounded by hearing friends and family, so often felt isolated and alone, as well as others who were deaf from birth and born to deaf parents, so felt at home in deaf culture but often found it difficult to communicate with new people. There were also quite a few interesting and rather tragic stories of discrimination and bullying; the one that surprised me most was in relation to hearing aids and how deaf children who don't want to learn to speak or have their hearing partially restored are considered failures by mainstream education systems. We spent a lot of time hearing about and later discussing how deaf children are raised and how technology can aid deaf people.

We also had the chance to ask questions through an interpreter, which was a bizarre experience because you're not just communicating automatically like you would with anyone else, but instead start to try and reconfigure your speech so it's as logical as possible and so that the interpreter can communicate it as easily and unambiguously as possible.

The personal experiences really do open your eyes to just how reliant our world is on sounds though. Like, one of our workshop leaders told us about being on the London Underground when there was a terrorist incident, and because he was alone and didn't have anyone to sign/explain what was happening, all he could do was watch people listening to the intercom and then freaking out or running away.

This was made all the more apparent in a later workshop that simulated what it was like to be deaf in a hearing world by placing us in situations where complex signing was taking place and we had no idea how to react. For instance, one of the exercises involved a group of five of us being ushered to various stations around a room with actors playing different roles, one of which was a man sitting at a table who promptly launched into rapid signing, then looked to us for a response. We all just kind of sat there perplexed, shrugging, or trying to make the sign for 'could you repeat that please?' which we'd only learnt the previous day. Then another one of the workshop leaders would come around and start conversing with the man, and we could infer from the gestures that he was frustrated with us and telling her that we were dumb. She nodded, and then signed something to us which was too quick for us to interpret, so we all just sat there wanting to understand and yet being so unable to.

Other stations involved us trying to take out a bank loan, trying to book a table and order food and drinks, and being called into what I think was a principal's office where we were being disciplined for doing... something wrong. Then at one or two random intervals all the leaders would stand up and start freaking the hell out, wildly gesturing in different directions standing at different corners of the room and signing things with panicked expressions. Some of them would occasionally make a sign that seemed like a beckoning gesture, so some people would hesitantly move towards them while the rest of us just stood around dumbfounded.

It was later explained that this was the equivalent of a fire drill, so on one side of the room, people would be making signs like 'fire,' 'danger,' and 'run away; don't come here' while the others would be signing 'safety,' 'escape,' 'clean air' and 'firetruck,' but in our confusion, a couple of people meandered into the 'fire' zone since none of us knew what was going on  ::)

Obviously this was all for the purposes of demonstrating the isolation and confusion that many deaf people face, and most of us worked out quite quickly that we weren't meant to understand what they were saying. But after all this was over and we got to communicate with the leaders through interpreters, it was clear that this really affected some people. There was a guy in our group who said words to the effect of 'it really scared me to be so confused and have no way of knowing how to ask for help.'

For me, the immersion was amazing, though I could understand how it would put some people off the subject, so don't be fooled! You won't just sit around learning signs in a hearing environment for a week - there's a whole lot of content crammed into this subject and it's presented in heaps of different and creative ways.

Finally, at the end of each day there'd be a one hour session with your groups tutor that would be a regular vocal discussion (to the relief of many!) where you'd talk about everything that had happened that day and get a chance to clear up any uncertainties or questions that we had. Maybe it was just because we had a great tutor, but I always found this to be a valuable conclusion after all the activities since almost every workshop would leave me with a list of several questions that we wouldn't have the time or the ability to ask in those sessions, but could bring up at the end of the day. This led to some really interesting conversations about what deaf people do when they need to call 000 (see below,) whether deaf people have words to describe non-binary genders and sexualities, and whether they can comprehend the idea of rhyming and poetry. (~that last one ended up being the basis of an essay I wrote in another subject, and is a really interesting debate if you're curious.)

Some of the workshops involved incursions and guest speakers too, like a deaf contestant from a reality TV dance show who talked about the performing arts and how deaf people can enjoy music and theatre. There was also a spokesperson from the National Relay Service (which is a really cool organisation that allow for communication between deaf and mute people via phone) who spoke to us about technological advancements like deaf-friendly smoke alarms and doorbells.

The point I'm getting at is that this subject really isn't restricted to Auslan as a language tool, but rather looks at deafness from a broader perspective and incorporates many modes of visual communication.

The best part, for me, was the second lecture delivered by Adam Schembri who's an Auslan expert and part of La Trobe's Linguistics Department. He went through a whole bunch of misapprehensions people have about deaf languages (like the fact that they're mutually intelligible, or that they were invented by hearing people - neither of which are true) and took us through things from a slightly more analytic perspective. Linguistics isn't a prereq for this course, so he obviously couldn't go into much detail with the terminology, but having spoken to him afterwards and read some of his stuff, there are a heap of really interesting questions surrounding Auslan that he's looked into. I'm quite partial to this kind of thing, so I'd continued to research the analytic side of things more than the socio-cultural stuff, but the assessment allowed you to focus on whatever you preferred which was pretty generous.

I think the sheer breadth of the course is probably the most attractive thing though. It felt hectic, but not disorganised, though thinking back on that week now, I have no idea how they crammed in so much learning so efficiently, and again, given this is such a new subject with people coming at it from so many different degrees and levels of ability, the staff really do deserve all the commendation in the world for being able to pull this off.

Downsides: I'm going to talk about the assessment here even though it wasn't all bad, but I believe that's the main area that would need improvement before I give this subject my wholehearted recommendation.

The first task is due two weeks after the intensive week - a big improvement over having it due at the end of the intensive week like it was last year, apparently - and was by far the most vague thing we had to do. It was described as a 'Record of Learning' where we had to document the things we'd learned in a form that suited our learning style, and then write a rationale as to why we did so (??) I gathered they wanted us to make a poster or ten minute video or something, but after three or four days of fielding questions in the afternoon tute, our tutor just basically said we could write an essay if we wanted to, and to my knowledge, that's what everyone in our class did.

I figured this would be a fairly reflective piece, though we were advised to avoid the first person as a formality, but the feedback I got from that essay was mainly about how I needed more citations to strengthen my piece, especially in the written explanation where we were apparently meant to make references to 'learning theories' to justify ourselves (eg. 'Professor Soandso argues that verbal learners understand concepts best when they have to articulate them in written form; I am a verbal learner, hence I have written an essay.') This wasn't made too clear, but the marking was fairly lenient provided you expressed the points clearly and accurately. Try to incorporate as much as you can from your week's experiences though, since those who just picked a narrow focus were apparently penalised a bit.

The second essay was strictly academic with a BIG emphasis on referencing. It ended up being the most citation-heavy piece I've ever written, and I was still told to use more sources and go into more detail (despite already being over the word count ::)) but all things considered, it was much more straightforward than the previous one. Topics we got were:
1) Discuss some of the different ways meaning is created in Auslan including at least one area of sign linguistics in your discussion.
2) Discuss the cultural perspective of deafness and how this relates to the community and its language.
3) Compare spoken and signed languages, describing the similarities and differences.
I went with the third one since that offered the most by way of linguistic-y discussion, but as you can see they're all pretty flexible. It wasn't due until seven weeks after the week had finished though, which ended up being the fourth week of Semester 2 or so, meaning that it's best to finish this early while you still remember things than try and come back to it while you're busy with the first major round of assessment with your other subjects.

Finally, there was a hurdle requirement that wasn't marked, but was due at the end of the week, and that was a performative exercise. Now, I've always hated drama classes and being forced to "act" in front of people, but even I didn't mind this activity. Basically we got into groups and were given a fairytale (eg. ours was Cinderella) and between the ~5 of us, we had to find a way to tell this story visually. There's a whole list of things we had to try to include, like an example of a deaf character struggling to communicate, or an example of technology helping/hindering the communication process, and we had a lot of freedom in our staging. Some groups assigned each person a role and then acted out the story using occasional signing, others (like us) took it in turns to tell a fifth of the story before handing over to the next person. You don't really get credit for dramatic ability, and they advised against just getting up and signing a memorised speech; instead you have to 'establish' characters visually and doing what's called 'role switching.' For instance, my chunk of the story involved Cinderella meeting the Prince at the ball, so I'd first make the sign for 'dress' and 'pretty' and then mime walking in a really dainty way, and then have to 'switch' to the prince by altering my body language, signing 'crown' and then doing a manly-walk. Another person in my group had to portray the ugly step sisters in her part, so she'd put on a really horrific facial expression and a hunchback while making signs like 'mean' and 'big nose.' Creativity was encouraged, but so was clarity, and the idea was that we'd be performing this to some of the deaf workshop leaders as well as the rest of our class, so we had to strike a balance between incorporating the requisite amount of signing and other aspects, and the general understanding of the audience.

I got a special mention for my depiction of the pumpkin growing into a carriage, which takes me back to my primary school days of being cast as the hay in the manger for the nativity play. If I, with my hay-like acting ability can get a special mention for a performance, that tells you they're sure as hell not favouring the dramatically gifted :P

Also, there were a bunch of shy science/arts kids in my group who weren't super keen on either group work or drama, but you're given about two hours of class time (which comes out of the afternoon tutes) as well as optional time during the lunch break to sort out your performance, and everyone was willing to do their bit. We ended up making a google doc and trading email addresses so we could just assign bits of the story and then work on our stuff separately for time's sake, and that worked pretty well for us. The groups that were doing one big simultaneous performance had a tougher time, but everyone in our class did surprisingly well for a bunch of non-actors/non-fluent-signers/people-who'd-only-known-each-other-for-four-days.

The only other downside for me was that the final day was mostly taken up with sports exercises. This was interesting to a lot of people, especially when we were hearing from deaf athletes who told us about how sports like swimming and basketball are modified to suit the Deaf, but my feelings towards sport in general are lukewarm at best. (See: this) I think by that time the winter chill and long days + commute had just worn me down to the point of just wanting to nap... so much so that when I looked over all the notes I had for this subject review, I realise I'd given it a 2 overall which really wasn't fair in hindsight. Just be warned that this is a deceptively demanding subject and you will be hella tired once it's over.

I never realised how exhausting it is to just be watching all day. You'd think, because you're always looking at something that it wouldn't be that tiring, but when your auditory input is just cut off for most of the workshop hours, suddenly your brain has to compensate through other senses, so you're gaze has to transition from intently watching a lecturer or interpreter to one another or to something they're gesturing to and back again. That, coupled with the fact that you're essentially immersed in a foreign language environment albeit with a bit of English input means you'll probably be mentally zonked even if you've experienced learning second or third languages before.

All in all though, this was one of the most interesting subjects I've done so far, and aside from a few issues with the clarity surrounding assessment, I'd still say it's worth it if you've got a free week in mid-July, and the intelligence and competency of everyone involved leaves me in no doubt that they'll continue to improve this for future cohorts.

Bonus
it's ASL not Auslan but cool nonetheless.
Also someone pointed out that this girl looks a lot like me; now I can't unsee it and it kinda freaks me out O.o

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on January 26, 2016, 08:16:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING20011: Grammar of English

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures and 1 x 1 hour tute

Assessment:  10 tutorial exercises (10% total, 1% each); 2 assignments with short answer questions and sentence mapping (50% total, 25% each); Open-book exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but Lesley would write on the board occasionally and that wouldn't be picked up, so you're better off attending unless you want to miss valuable demonstrations

Past exams available:  Yes, one. Much shorter and quite a bit easier than the real exam, but still touched on all the basic concepts that came up.

Textbook Recommendation:  Student's Introduction to Grammar by Huddleston & Pullum - really beneficial but don't buy it, it's expensive :s
Options:
The Google Books versions here and here are kida dodgy quality but should suffice. There's also a bunch of other totally legal pdf versions if you google hard enough. This was the one I used, but that was only after another copy was taken down mid-semester, so you may have to find a backup at some stage.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Lesley Stirling, World's Cuddliest Linguist. I believe this is changing in 2016 though.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: 5/5 is starting to be my default for Linguistics subjects... GofE was definitely worth it though.
A few quick notes on background knowledge and prerequisites: Secret Life (1st year core unit) is not assumed knowledge, and unlike other Linguistics subjects, this one could be picked up with no prior exposure. The first two weeks are a crash course in the absolute basics (how do you know a word is a noun? And how do you know a word is a word, for that matter?) so that people are pretty much on equal playing field by week 3 when the tutorial exercises start. Lesley also tended to hang around after lectures for questions, so that was good for anyone who was struggling. There were a few kids in our cohort from non-English-speaking backgrounds too, and while I can't speak for all of them, the ones I knew in my tute group seemed like they could handle it. In fact, some of them had a bit of an advantage over the kids who only knew English  :P If you can come at this subject with at least a second language under your belt, you should be fine, and anyone who's done Secret Life, Syntax, or any other theory-heavy Linguistics grammar subject will find it pretty relaxing.

GofE is a lot more descriptive than I thought it'd be. Where other subjects will be more application-based with (mostly foreign) data sets and problem solving exercises, a great deal of the tute exercises and assignments just involved describing how language behaves. For instance, you'd be given a sentence like 'The mechanic was certainly knowledgeable.' and told to analyse the adjectival phrase, which you have to identify [certainly knowledgeable enough] and then dissect ['certainly' = pre-head modifier, 'knowledgeable' = head adjective]. Other key components involved having to argue for something being what it was, ie. 'What tests could be conducted to suggest that 'student' is a noun in the sentence 'The student went to the beach'?' coupled with the ol' 'here is a sentence, describe its bits' exercises.

eg.
'We all had breakfast in a cafe'     = copulative sentence type
'we all' = Subject & Noun Phrase
'had' = Predicate & Verbal Element
'breakfast' = Subject Predicate Complement & Noun Phrase
'in a cafe' = Adjunct & Prepositional Phrase

^That was the standard we were at by about Week 5, but it never felt overwhelming because we always had the comfort of plenty of examples to use as reference material. Rarely were we given anything that hadn't already been shown in some form in the lectures or readings, and most weeks the tute exercises could be completed just by looking over the most recent lecture slides and applying that knowledge to the given questions. Towards the end of semester, things got a bit more problem-solvey for the last few tute exercises and the exam, but again, this was all very manageable given the fact that we'd been through both theoretical explanations and practical demonstrations before, and that there was never a time when you couldn't open up to look at these (even in the exam).

I've never actually sat an open-book exam before - we were allowed to take in any number of books and pages so long as nothing was electronic (obvs) so a bunch of people printed off all the lecture slides and took them in along with the textbook and everything else. I found it way more helpful to compile everything into a couple of pages and then just bring in my lecture notes in case, but I rarely referred to it anyway. It was nice not to have to cram/ rote-learn a bunch of definition questions like 'What is a preposition?' as most of the exam was just an extension of the tute exercises anyway.

Lectures were really helpful for succinctly and effectively covering the content, though the first few weeks were basically revision for those who had done Secret Life. There were some key differences in terminology though (eg. determiners vs. determinatives... shut up, it's an important distinction -.-) and a lot of the phrase structure tree drawing rules were quite new to me.

Tutorials tended to just involve running through the tutorial exercises from that week (ie. they'd be due on Monday and marked by the tutes on Tuesday or Wednesday so we could go through any difficult questions together) but I believe there was talk of extending it to two tutes per week for future years. One hour didn't leave much time for questions, and I think it'd be great if they had one tute dedicated to the exercises and then one based on concepts in the lectures and readings. Then again, I do tend to geek out over this stuff and wouldn't complain if my entire timetable involved discussing amusing ambiguities and general silliness.

Lesley was what took this subject from good to great, though. She's an amazing lecturer, was always readily available in office hours or via email, and has done really interesting work on switch reference (which admittedly I could only really understand after having done Syntax in second semester.) Plus her semantic-y way of explaining things gave rise to interesting moments, like that time she said 'In this sentence, I am faced with the evidence of a disappointing lack of cabbages' or 'We're not talking about degrees of train-ness here' which I swear made perfect sense at the time. I believe she actually takes Semantics as a 3rd year subject, so I might come back to this later and edit in any relevant info, but suffice it to say I'm definitely doing Semantics because of her.
I've heard conflicting information, but I was lead to believe Peter Hurst was taking Grammar of English from 2016 onwards - the handbook page has got both he and Lesley listed now - but that's like being told you'll either get one amazing person or another; they're on par for excellent teaching ability, so you can't go wrong either way.

By way of advice for anyone picking this subject up: it's all about justifyability! A lot of answers, even in the exam, relied heavily on your ability to argue your case. So whilst you might get one mark for correctly identifying which prepositional phrase was a complement and which was an adjunct, the other three marks in a four mark question would be devoted to how convincingly you were able to justify your analysis. Know all of the different characteristics and tests, and you should be fine.

For those doing a Linguistics major/minor, this is a good subject to do before the core 2nd year Syntax unit if you want to make that one easier. Alternatively, you can do it afterwards and be assured of an easy H1 since Syntax is significantly harder, but be careful with the variations in terminology and tree drawing. I'll talk more about the specific differences in my Syntax review though.

For those with no Linguistics background whatsoever, if you don't understand something, clarify it instantly, or it will spiral into a hellish vortex of un-knowledge in a couple of weeks time. Everything in this subject builds on what comes before, so if you're not entirely sure what the hell the 'mood' of verbs refers to, or how the different types of predicate complements work, ASK!
The tutorial exercises were also very good ways of keeping up to date and practising for assignments and the exam. They're only 1% each, and you'll get a mark out of 3 based on effort, not accuracy, but they're worth doing nonetheless.

If you need any more convincing, just know that studying English grammar will make you super romantic...
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alphabet.png)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on January 26, 2016, 09:05:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL20023: American Classics 

Workload: 1 x 90 minute lecture and 1 x 1 hour tute per week

Assessment: 1 x 1500 word essay (40%) and 1 x 2000 word essay (60%) *apparently that last essay was worth 50% and the left over 10% went to a class presentation, but I can't find any record of this - we were never told our scores and the LMS was a ghosttown... more on that below.

Lectopia Enabled: No -.- see rant below

Past exams available: No exam for this subject

Textbook Recommendation: Subject reader is an expensive slab of barely useful information and unless your tutor makes you bring it to class, I'd actually just recommend taking a photo of the table of contents and then looking up that week's readings on Discovery when you can be bothered.

Lecturer(s): umm... fairly certain there was a guy with brown hair at one stage. Elizabeth Maxwell took a couple of lectures and Joe Hughes was there at least once, but they rotated frequently and I was not the most... diligent... of attendees.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2

Rating: 1 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Oh English. We've had a good run, but you just keep pushing me and I don't think it's healthy for me to stay in this love-hate relationship.

My experiences with tertiary Lit subjects have been the equivalent of being slowly paper-cut-to-death with an occasional respite where I get to put some bandages on myself before those bandages are then ripped off and the paper-cutting starts again. Or, like, trying to crawl up a downwards moving escalator and trying to grip onto the sides for support but realising those sides are covered in scorpions and now I'm going to die of scorpion poison curled up at the bottom of an escalator. Or, like, being on a rollercoaster that descends underground and then keeps descending, and you tell yourself 'it'll have to go up eventually' but it doesn't, it just sends you straight through the earth's crust into layers of magma and disappointment. Or, like, being made to touch an electric fence again and again because someone promised you that at some stage, you'll touch it and it won't electrify you, but until then you just have to keep putting up with the mild electrocution. Or, like, being in a tutorial full of people who nod sagely when your tutor says 'well obviously The Scarlet Letter can't be a feminist text because it was written by a man.'

Oh wait, that last one wasn't a simile; that's actually what happened. Well, I hope you liked the other similes because I found writing them to be a more enjoyable and intellectually valuable experience than taking this subject.

Let's start with the lectures. THEY AREN'T RECORDED. As someone who's timetable was nothing but clashes this semester, that was kind of frustrating. We were never given a valid explanation aside from the fact that it's "how things are done" with this lecturer (though I remember hearing that lectures were recorded last year, and have been for all my other English subjects...) I have a sneaking suspicion this is to combat dwindling lecture attendance, but when I did ditch my other class and go to this one, the numbers were far from overwhelming. Just purely as a matter of principle, I was already predisposed to dislike this subject when we were told about the lack of recordings, but from a more pragmatic standpoint, this really doesn't make sense given the nature of English assessment - you study around 12 texts per subject, often one per week though sometimes they double-up, and then you get a choice when it comes to essay topics. So, for the first essay due mid-semester, we could cover any of the ~5 texts studied thus far, and then the final essay had to compare any two that we hadn't already written on. I'm starting to realise that it's much smarter if you just choose those texts ahead of time and just do the relevant readings or attend the relevant lectures for those weeks, and ignore everything else. Otherwise, if you don't decide early enough, you end up having to sit around in Week 12 wondering what the hell was covered in Week 3 and with no ability to go back and check. Lecture slides were uploaded sporadically but they were often just visual aids or slides full of slabs of texts. Also, many of the links were for the wrong texts, so it wasn't very dependable. This subject also occasionally did what I'm now assuming is a default English department thing and spent significant portions of lectures analysing paintings, lending further credence to the theory I've been developing since Modernism & Avant Garde last semester. Not all lectures were guilty of this, but it was still frequent enough to be frustrating.

So as much as I'm bemoaning the absence of recordings, I must admit that when I did manage to attend, I realised I wasn't missing much. There was a lot of reading from slides, and way too much unsubstantiated interpretational commentary for my liking.

Content-wise, most of it was geared towards some pretty reductive world views, and it didn't help that half the texts being about slavery seemed to make some lecturers think they had free reign to shoehorn in their own assessments of contemporary political and social issues at the expense of, you know, the texts we were meant to be studying. For me, some of that stuff was interesting, but much like the discussions in Mod & Av. it fell into the chasm of 'yeah-that's-nice-but-I'm-here-for-the-books-so-could-we-please-get-back-on-track-now.' No one else in the lectures seemed remotely frustrated though, so I guess if you're the kind of person who enjoys approaching literature from a sociological perspective, this subject will suit you well. I'm more at home in the realms of close analysis and discussions about style and semantics though, so this just got on my nerves after a while.

Now... onto assessment... it's said that you can characterise an insane person by their tendency to repeat the same action expecting a different result. Well I guess I'm just crazy-town-banana-pants then because I figured that if I asked my tutor about the task requirements and tried to clarify all the contradicting advice I'd compiled thus far, maybe I'd see a noticeable change in my marks. After triple-checking that my tutor wasn't fussed about formal essay structure and cared more about the quality of arguments and analysis, I wrote the first essay and handed it in, only to be told that the only things wrong with my piece were that the introduction and conclusion were too short. This apparently warranted a 78/100, which I pulled up to a H1 average after the second essay, I guess, but I have no way of knowing.

Perhaps in an attempt to keep some consistency with the outdated refusal to record lectures, this subject also requires hardcopy submissions of essays. Again, as someone who isn't at uni everyday, works a lot, and lives pretty far out, this was really not ideal. We still had to submit a copy of our work through a digital portal (not turnitin, for some reason, which incidentally didn't give us the regular confirmation email that turnitin provides, so that was fun -.-) on the LMS, but the feedback for the first essay was just a few sentences printed on a sheet of paper and handed out in tutes. Because the second essay's due date was after the last class, we never got anything back, not even a score. I can't even extrapolate one based on my overall result because I have no idea what the third assessment (discussed below) was based on, or whether it existed at all. Someone in my tute mentioned that they overheard someone else in this subject mention that we could attach an envelope with our home address along with our essays when we handed it in (???) if we wanted to get it back, but none of us knew whether that'd include feedback or not. I spoke to my tutor, who also didn't know, and never got back to me. You were lucky to get an email response within a week, but because I'm apparently an abused puppy who keeps going back to its owner to get kicked in the face, I emailed people at the end of semester to try and establish some semblance of contact but that didn't work either.

For the remaining 10% of the assessment, we each had to do a brief presentation on a text at some stage - you got to nominate which text if you were there at the first tute, and there were two spots available each week. Quality varied drastically with some people just reading out a mini-analysis they'd written (including one highlight where a kid was reading out words and ideas far beyond the level of understanding he'd demonstrated in previous tutes, and a quick google of what he was saying turned up an online resource for us to read along with :'D ) but there were others who put real effort in. Part of the task required us to come up with a few key questions pertaining to the text, and some of the ones I heard were really intriguing... not that we ever got to answering them in a meaningful way. This wasn't helped by the fact that every single person's presentation was concluded by the tutor saying 'that was really good' over and over again to the point where it was no longer encouraging and just became hollow and disingenuous. Never anything constructive, and never anything that lead to a more expansive discussion. Maybe it's because that only gave us around 40 minutes each week to discuss each text, but it always felt rather superficial - almost as though each week was a succession of finding the major talking points related to each book, mentioning them, and moving on. But even in other text-per-week English subjects I've done, this hasn't been such an overt issue.

Another quick note on subject coordination, I've posted this elsewhere on the forums, but this is a screenshot of the LMS page:

(http://i.imgur.com/ijiCiTi.png)

'Subject home' and 'Subject Information' just took you to a totally different page that just restated info from the handbook and had links to the lecture slides. 'Announcements' was blank. 'Assessment' had that aforementioned weird not-turnitin submissions thing. And there was a link to the SES.
I know there's not a whole lot you can add for a subject that mainly just involves a lot of reading, but I suppose I'm using that mostly blank LMS page as a token of the wider, more inimical problems with the subject's communication as a whole.

In a weird way, I'm almost glad I got such a high score in this subject because it means my qualms with it can't be misattributed as vitriol over a perceived undeserved numerical outcome. I'm still unsatisfied with the result, don't get me wrong, but I'm aware that these comments would be viewed in a vastly different context if I'd been bumped down a few grade points.

The trouble is that I've come away from this subject knowing a few odd facts about the colonial period of American history and some of the people alive at the time, but I've gained nothing in terms of literary criticism or essay writing ability, which is kind of upsetting to acknowledge.

I try to keep a running tally of things throughout the semester that I want to include in the reviews, but for this one, all I've got is that the lecturer we had for the Melville texts - whose name I don't remember and can't check because NO RECORDINGS - in around Week 3 was pretty decent... and that this subject was just 'Art-History-in-disguise continued.' I might come back and add things after having done some more English subjects, but my only general advice is that you shouldn't expect too much in terms of communication and prepare for more peripheral discussions about where Emily Dickinson went to school, or what became of the house Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in.

As stated, if you're interested in studying the historical and social context of the texts in this subject, then you'll probably find it enjoyable. And if you're doing a lot of units that look at issues of race and gender, this'll fit right in, but it's somewhat mendacious in its claims to be an English subject as you'll spend far more time talking about things other than the texts.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: literally lauren on January 26, 2016, 11:35:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL30013: Gothic Fictions

Workload: 1 x 90 minute lecture; 1 x 1 hour tute + 2 x optional screenings in weeks 9 and 12 for film studies

Assessment: 1 x 1500 word essay (40%); 1 x 2500 word essay (60%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, though because it was a 90 minute session there would occasionally be problems with the recordings, especially on weeks where there were screenings.
For our year, lectures were on Thursdays 1:00 - 2:30, and then the screenings for Nosferatu and Picnic at Hanging Rock were scheduled from 3:00 to 4:30. However, we all (lecturer included) thought it made more sense to do the screenings for those films first and then talk about them second, so we were free to leave if we'd seen the films already and then come back at around 3 for the actual lecture. Other weeks, we'd have a totally optional screening of additional texts like Hitchcock's Rebecca and a Dracula adaptation or two, but there were only a few people who stayed behind for them.

Past exams available: No exam for this subject.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook; the subject reader was made up of certain set texts (see astrisked ones in the list below) instead of secondary readings. All the critical stuff was linked on the LMS, which makes infintely more sense to me than having a 400 page printed monolith to lug around...
here's looking at you, basically every other English subject ever -.-

TEXTS STUDIED:
1:  On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist*
    The Right Sort by David Mitchell
2:  The Monk by Matthew Lewis
3:  Christabel & The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge*
    The Thorn & Lucy poems by Wordsworth*
    Lamia & La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats*
4:  The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
5:  Eliza, or the Unhappy Nun*
    Fatal Jealousy, or, Blood Will Have Blood!*
    The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud*
6:  Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
7:  Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
8:  Dracula by Bram Stoker
9:  Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror [film]
10: Selected Writings by Edgar Allan Poe <3
11: Beloved by Toni Morrison
12: Picnic at Hanging Rock [film]

Lecturer(s): Tom Ford
Note: a huge part of my enjoyment of this subject (...like, 95% of it, tbh) was down to the fact that Tom Ford was the lecturer/ tutor/ coordinator, and that won't be the case in 2016. He might take the odd lecture or tute group, but I believe Peter Otto is taking over, and I doubt my review would be the same had I not taken this subject in 2015, so just keep that in mind.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, Semester 2

Rating: 6 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This is the second enjoyable English subject I've stumbled upon so far (the first being David McInnis' Shakespeare in Performance) and much like that one, almost all the credit I will give this subject is for the way it was run.

The lectures had direction in that by the time we'd gotten to the end, Tom had made a valid and interesting point about the text, calling upon both close readings and secondary criticism. Each week would manage to weave together some really spectacular arguments with just the right amount of supporting evidence and ancillary discussion (+ a few amusing tidbits like this thing) without ever compromising the focus or feeling too hurried. So we'd walk out of each lecture having been exposed to a really comprehensive interpretation of the text and -best part ever, get hyped- IT WAS ACKNOWLEDGED AS JUST AN INTERPRETATION!!!

Allow me to go on a brief tangent and I'll work back around to that last point. After submitting the first essay for this subject, I received some of the best feedback I've ever gotten from a university subject, not only because it was highly specific to my actual essay and commented on certain parts of it that were decent and others that needed work, but because the gist of it was basically: 'I disagree with your interpretation, but you've argued your points effectively and justified your reasoning, so H1.' It even offered specific advice regarding what I needed to do to improve for next time - something I don't think I've ever been given. Safe to say I was so taken aback that I didn't even care what my mark I'd got; I was just utterly stunned to receive the first bit of actually constructive advice from an English subject ever. Up until that point, I'd consoled myself with the fact that even other good units I'd come across weren't the best with providing essay commentary and had become kind of complacent in barely reading the generic copy+paste stuff that I got... but I fear this subject has now raised my expectations waaay too much :P

As someone who loves the 'there's no right answer, it's all about your reasoning' side of literary studies, the open-endedness of discussions and the fact that lectures were punctuated with the occasional diversion to acknowledge that 'you could also argue that...' just made me ever so happy. And I think I've finally got some idea of the difference between just mindlessly citing sources and 'critically engaging with the theory' thanks to this subject. Most other English lectures (with the exception of the Shakespeare in Performance ones, plus one or two in ModCon) would simply rattle of a quote from an academic, present it as though it's an unequivocal fact, then proceed to restate that point as though it's some new or impressive interpretation, this subject actively challenged a lot of the stuff that has been written about these texts to the point where I know have a clear idea of what characterises different critics' views on what Gothic means. The readings and secondary sources from lectures actually stuck in my head and contributed to my interpretations, as opposed to feeling like unnecessary distractions where the lecturers tried to either show off, or would cite others as a stand-in to camouflage their own lack of original thought. Here, it coalesced with the content beautifully, and made the assessment much easier and more enjoyable as a result.

Another plus: we were studying a whole bunch of creepy texts and eerie secondary texts, and Tom would usually turn the lights off in lectures, meaning the electronic lectern would shine upwards resulting in this totally macabre up-lit effect that I found very amusing

(http://i.imgur.com/CYBXQ9r.jpg)


Then there were the tutorials, which were just as well-run. Tom had this rather unique approach whereby we'd all have to come to each tute with some talking point for that week's text that we wanted to go through, (e.g. 'whether or not we could view Dr. Frankenstein as an antihero' or 'what the importance of the many voices in Wordsworth's poems was') and he'd note them all down. Then in about twenty seconds, he'd devise a rough schism of a lesson plan for the group discussion that would touch on as many of those areas as possible. There were a few we never got to, but those classes had way more depth and purpose than any other English tute I've had. Plus it got through a lot of the awkward 'who's going to be the first person to say something' barriers - everyone had to say something in the first five minute round up of talking points, which meant we were all more inclined to contribute later.

This was probably helped by the fact that I was in a class with some really bright people with awesome stuff to contribute, but I think it was also the product of Tom's attitude, which he made clear in the first week when he said 'if you haven't read the books or have nothing interesting to say, I don't want you in my class'... or words to that effect. Because some of the texts were quite lengthy, I'd definitely advise reading ahead for the longer novels and not transferring into this class two days into semester on a whim because of timetable clashes (...like I maybe did...)

And in spite of this quasi-checklist approach to conducting discussions, it never felt like we were just rushing through point by point and trying to come to a definitive conclusion about what each component of the text meant. Instead, it was like each lesson was a pair of tangled headphones where we'd try and unravel one section and then move on to another bit, and at the end it'd all be disentangled... mostly, and we could see how all the ideas were part of this overall thing. It actually made it kind of tricky to choose texts to write on for assessment tasks because I'd come away from each tute with a tonne of new perspectives and interesting avenues to explore based on whatever we were studying that week.

That's not to say we were all working towards the same interpretations though; some weeks there were proper intellectual debates (the kind I used to dream of when I was but a humble high schooler!) between people who disagreed about some issue in the text. But something else Tom made clear in the first week was that he never wanted discussion to begin with or boil down to sentiments like 'I like this text' or 'I don't like this text.' In fact, I believe we were told never to use the words 'like' or 'dislike' in that context because it stilted discussion and wasn't a very valuable contribution. That said, we still had some scuffles over who was pro-Austen and anti-Austen later in semester. But whenever we'd deal with such ideas, we were required to back our points up with specific evidence and a lot of logic. There were times where Tom would interrupt us to explain our reasoning or ask where we'd gotten a certain interpretation from - though never in an aggressive or confrontational way - in an effort to make sure the focus stayed on how we were getting these readings from the text. I even remember a few moments where he'd stop someone who was using a bit too much artsy jargon à la 'I think this text is a bit too imperialistic and it's got more do to with atavistic feudality than modernity' to say something like 'well, what do you mean by that' or 'care to elaborate?' which I FREAKIN WISH I could say in other subjects where students (and lecturers) were clearly just using big words to obfuscate discussion.

In terms of assessment, this was one of the few times I didn't find it necessary to take the 'Write your own essay topic' option provided in English subjects because the prompts we were given were genuinely interesting with enough scope for wherever your interests lay. This meant that the people who wanted to tackle the notion of what 'Gothic' was as a genre had plenty of opportunity to do so, but others (like me) who were partial to the more narrow discussions of particular structural features also had questions like 'How literal is the supernatural in Gothic fiction? And if it is allegorical or figurative, what is it an allegory of or figure for?' or 'What is the function—linguistic, social, interpretative—of doubles and doubling in Gothic fiction?'

I'm tempted to dock a point because of the requisite hard copy submissions, which I've already harangued in my American Classics review, but at least this subject gave us a clear answer as to why this was the case. Also, we actually received feedback via email for our final essays even though the semester had technically concluded by that point, which, even though it was a small gesture, seems to me indicative of a subject that actually cares about its students' development outside of the Week 1-12 window. That, coupled with the quality of the feedback was more than enough to push this subject into the esteemed territory of 'ones-I-won't-shut-up-about-and-recommend-to-everyone,' and the high calibre of both lectures and tutorials just further cemented its position there.

As mentioned, I believe there is to be a staff change with Peter Otto taking up the main coordination and lecturing role, so some of these comments may no longer be relevant, but provided the same level of quality is maintained, this is one of the few subjects I would actively encourage people to consider if they're interested in analysing literature. The standards expected were a lot higher than the other English subjects I've done, though perhaps this was because it was a third year subject (might come back and edit this once I've experienced a few more) so be prepared for some harsher marking and more ruthless demands to substantiate your arguments, but it's all for the greater good of actually learning something worthwhile.

I think this subject has ruined me for other English subjects. 10/10 would laugh at Tom's puns again.

My personal favourite was during the week we were studying some of Coleridge and Wordsworth's poetry when he said 'so this is an example of High Romanticism... or in Coleridge's case, very high Romanticism.'

See, it's funny because Coleridge was addicted to opium.

LAUGH! IT'S FUNNY!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on January 31, 2016, 01:17:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90045 Engineering Project Implementation

Workload:  2x50 minute lectures + 1x50 minute tutorial per week

Assessment:  Qualitative Assignment 15%, Quantitative Assignment 15%, Tutorial Attendance 10%, Exam 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Lihai Zhang, Peter Bishop and friends

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2 2015

Rating:  2.75 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

TL;DR: Just read my Risk Analysis review. It’s shorter and pretty much the same thing.

Comments:
This subject is pretty much Risk Analysis 2.0. Same people, same style. In my initial review of that I gave it a 3.5/5. Yeah, I think I must’ve been spellbound by the sultry sounds of Lihai Zhang’s Chinese accent and his generally jolly disposition because I’ve since realised that that subject was actually not that great and maybe not as easy as I thought. There’s literally nothing conceptually complicated in these subjects, so it’s easy if you put in the work come exam time to memorise the key content word-for-word. If you don’t, the specificity of the exam questions is going to be mega frustrating and there’ll be at least a couple of questions where you’ll get no more than 2/10 marks. Back in Risk Analysis, I did put in that work. For EPI, I really didn’t.

Lectures and Tutorials
Just like Risk Analysis, EPI starts off with some of the theoretical/practical kinda stuff about project implementation, and it’ll be Peter Bishop introducing the concepts again and hammering them in to the point of tedium for 5 weeks. Content covered includes project governance roles and structures, project management strategies, client/stakeholder relationships, work-breakdown structures, and cost management. This stuff will actually be super, super important if you end up working as a professional engineer, but there’s only so much you can learn by reading definitions and I feel like I’ll learn more in one day of actually doing it than I did in this entire course, provided I somehow manage to land a grad job, which are apparently more scarce than a spare seat in the Baillieu come SWOTVAC. Anyway, Peter’s a decent lecturer and a really nice guy, but his lectures are a bit dull and full of text, most of which can be derived from common sense anyway.

You’ll also have some people from the industry come in to give a few guest lecturers. These aren't important for the assessment, but if you turn up, it’d probably be worth introducing yourself and maybe getting their deets on Linkedin. This is one of those hindsight realisations because I recently set up a linkedin and haven’t added anyone as yet.

After that – and again, just like Risk Analysis – Lihai takes over and runs you through some of the more quantitative aspects of project implementation. This includes stuff like network diagrams and critical paths, time-cost optimisation, resource planning, earned values and productivity. Again, it’s all highly relevant to the field, but it’s also a little dull and never really gets much more complicated than the stuff you’d see in further maths, which I did but despised (and was a massive dipshit in class). Lihai’s lecturing is fine and he’ll run you through more examples than you probably need, and this is also covered pretty well in tutes.

I’m not going to write much about tutes, but as long as your signature ends up on the attendance form each week you’ll get a free 10% (don’t worry, I was a good boy and showed up). They’re all in the computer labs in Alice Hoy, and they’re pretty much what you’ve come to expect from a computer-based engineering tutorial I’d say: tutor speaks for 15 minutes, runs you through an example, you do a similar exercise by yourself in 10 minutes, and then waste the remaining time chatting with group members or being a recluse on your social media platform of choice. Both of those are fine options, but ideally you’d use that time to do some work on the…

Assessment
Again, like Risk Analysis, you have two main assignments and they’re completed in groups of 4. These groups are self-chosen but limited to the 30 or so people in your tutorial, so it’s a good idea to have some correspondence with the people you’d like (or not like) to work with when you’re setting up your timetable.

Again, like Risk Analysis (I copied and pasted that this time), the first one is qualitatively-based and involves mapping out some project governance structures, defining roles and relationships, and figuring out which tasks would be allocated to who(m). That doesn’t sound too hard (and it’s not really) but it can be tricky to work out who does what and you’ll find yourself doing a lot of googling (it’s also worth checking out the FAQ section on the LMS). It’s nice that the assignment’s set up such that it’s easy to divide between four people, so you shouldn’t need to put too many of the group management skills you're being taught into practice. The instructions are also pretty clear and I think most groups ended up with solid marks.

There’s also an informal presentation you have to give as part of this during a tute, but it’s unmarked and it’s pretty much just involves shining a laser pointer at your diagram and speaking about it for 5 minutes. Unless you go first, it’s safe to assume that no one will be listening anyway, and I’m pretty sure the only reason this happens is that they had to fill in a tute for one of the weeks that didn’t introduce any new content.

The second assignment mainly focuses on using Microsoft Project to create a schedule of a project. You’re given the tasks which need to be done and a time limit for the overarching project, but you have to define the time for each individual task and the sequence in which they're completed. Unless you’re a maverick, this is probably best done together as a group. Then you do some of the probabilistic and resource allocation/optimisation stuff that Lihai ran you through in the lectures. It’s not a difficult assignment, but the software itself is a true bitch. It’s made by Microsoft and is windows only. Therefore, it's extremely fiddly, full of convoluted options, and features an undo button that only works when you don't need it.

Exam
So like I hinted at earlier, the exam for EPI was pretty frustrating. Lihai has the tendency to ask extremely specific questions that want word-for-word answers from obscure slides from the course, which is dumb because you could know 99.9% of the content super well and very possibly get asked a qualitative question that is relevant only to that other 0.1%. If you want to put masses of time into study then that’s good and you’ll probably cruise home in first class as there’s nothing in here that should give you a headache. But, if you have 3 other exams to do – all of which are more complex – you’ll probably bludge a bit on EPI and settle for second class like I did. Goodbye project management jobs.

The quantitative stuff on the exam is all pretty easy, but for some reason they make you copy out the network diagrams and fill them in in a script book rather than just on the question sheet, which takes some time and means your answers will look a mess if you rush and have as little sympathy for exam markers as I do.

These make up the two sections of the exam and are weighted equally, but I got through the quantitative stuff a little quicker.

Overall
EPI is just okay. Like I said, the course content is pretty essential to anyone who ends up working on any kind of infrastructure project. Same can’t be said of subjects like ST&D, Concrete, Hydraulics and the like, which include a lot of complicated stuff that many students will never see again. But again, project management doesn’t translate all that well to academia, so the subject can definitely be tedious, and the specificity of the exam questions is both annoying and ineffective, much like this extremely long review.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hernandes on February 06, 2016, 04:57:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: BOTA30001 Marine Botany
Workload:  18 x one hour lectures, 9 x three hour practicals (in laboratory), 4 x three hour practicals (in field)

Assessment:  (One 20-minute mid-subject progression test, taken mid-way through the teaching period (5%);
One 15-minute group research project presentation due on the last day of class (15%);
Collection and preservation of 6 to 10 seaweed specimen throughout the teaching period (10%);
One 2-hour laboratory examination, taken at the end of the teaching period (30%); and
One 2-hour written examination, taken at the end of the teaching period (40%))

Lectopia Enabled:  No.

Past exams available:  None available

Textbook Recommendation:  None. Although they recommended to borrow some books from the library at Uni.

Lecturer(s):  Heroen Verbruggen,

Year & Semester of completion: 2015, November Intensive

Rating:  4 out of 5

Comments:
I thought this was a great, interesting subject, definitely one of my favourite so far. And I'm not a botany nut or anything, I did this one as a breadth. You learn about the different types of algae: green, red and brown and their features and reproductive cycles. You later go on to learn about phytoplankton, so stuff like diatoms, oomycetes, ciliates. And you then learn about problems affecting marine plant life. You have to print out the lecture slides yourself, and unfortunately there is no lecture capture, as that would've been a great help. You could probably voice record it on your phone, as the lectures are held in classrooms

Field Trips

You have some field trips, where you go on to the various beaches around Queenscliff, Port Lonsdale and Barwon Heads and pick up various algae, and the demonstrators will tell you stories, or various things about them. Try be in Heroen or Jack's group, as they're very knowledgable and have good stories. Some of these samples are later used in the lab.

Labs

Speaking of the lab, these were alright initially, however they were 3 hours long and dragged on for ages. Initially you're looking at various algae they bring in, and use these answer key sheets to identify what species an algae is, which follows a list of steps that go through the characteristics. It may sound simple, but believe me they were very difficult! Even some of the demonstrators took a while using those. And you needed to know how to use these answer keys in the Lab exam, so try get the hang of it if you can. Later on we would look at tiny little organisms under microscopes, and they would all look so similar, like golden-green circular organisms. Ughh it got really tiring eventually, and hurt my eyes.

Algae Collection

Also one of the assessments, is your algae collection, do NOT neglect this. Marks can be deducted for small things, so just make sure you stay within the guidelines and you should be fine, and take your photographs of your samples in clear light, and clear water. These should be easy marks, but can be easily mucked up if you're careless. Also there are a lot of no-go algae collecting zones around Queenscliff/Point Lonsdale, so you need to know where to go. Also the Algae Collection is due on the day of the exam, back in Melbourne. So even if you don't get everything at Queenscliff, you can still go to Altona or Williamstown  or someplace to get algae after your return.

Group Presentation

The Group Presentation was alright, we got to look at a specific topic, and then went out and did research on them out in the field. We also got given a Demonstrator, young people who were doing research in these areas, and they were good. However, they made us use some complex programming, for statistical analysis, which I felt was beyond our course. But your demonstrator should be well versed in this program, so shouldn't be too bad. But still it was a very tiring exercise, we spent many hours getting the project done.

MST

Also you have a mid-sem test, worth 5% about halfway through. Ideally you should try hard on this, but you really don't have much time to study on this. A lot of people in my cohort scored poorly on it, but you can definitely redeem yourself from a poor score on it.

Accommodation

Another Important thing is, you need to find accommodation when you're staying there, you can use various websites like Stayz, or AirBnb. Some people had family and friends living there, but you most likely will have to bunk with a bunch of other people, and preferable you should be near the conservatorium. You don't want to be driving/cycling from Ocean Grove every day lol. Staff put up a discussion board on the LMS which you can use to discuss living arrangments and renting a house, get on it and don't leave it to the week before the subject starts. But all in all Queenscliff is great, beautiful place. And you do get a dayoff on the weekend, where you can go visit the Ozone Wreck at Port Arlington, its super cool! Definitely check it out, lots of marine life and ruins there.

Exams

You have two exams, theory and Lab. These occur about a week or so after you come back from Queenscliff. For the Lab, you really need to study and know your algae and your phytoplankton and know their defining features. Cannot stress this enough. I know a lot of the phytoplankton look pretty much the same under a microscope, but you really got to find the defining features like the extra flagella, or haptonema, or armour-like protection.
Theory Exam was much easier in my opinion, there isn't a whole tonne of stuff that needs to be learnt for the subject, and as long as you've been reading up and studying for this exam, you should be fine. And there are no pictures, which I was happy about, since distinguishing between different micro-organisms or algae on a picture is what caused me trouble.

Although I have listed some gripes with the subject, I still give it a 4 out of 5. I think its my favourite subject I've done at uni so far. You definitely get enthusiastic about this subject even if you're not someone super into plants and botany and stuff. I definitely recommend this subject, it only has a quota of 30 people, so don't leave enrolment to the last minute. It is very interesting, and you get to go to Queenscliff for 10 Days, which is good as. Its not too hard to score well, provided you don't make many careless errors. Having said that you still need to work for it though, just that there aren't difficult concepts to remember or anything.  Anyway I hope this is helpful to all you prospective Marine Botany Students!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cassiecate on February 12, 2016, 10:50:10 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10010 Data Analysis 1

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

Assessment:  10 Weekly online quizzes each contributes 1% to your final grade (totally 10%), 2 written assignments each contributes 5%, 1 lab test held in your week 12 computer lab class (10%) and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 5 past exam papers from 04 to 06 and additional 3 pages of revision questions, all with answers provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed Texts are Mind on Statistics (4th/5th edition) by Utts and Heckard or Into Stats (3rd or 4th edition) by DeVeaux, Velleman & Bock, bought the first one but never opened it, so not really required, there are several copies held by the Uni library if you need to read them. There is a tutorial/lab problem booklet handed out in the first two lectures (pdf version available on LMS).

Lecturer(s):  Ms Sharon Gunn

Year & Semester of completion:  2015, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1 (93)

Comments:  

This is a subject that mostly taken by Biomedicine students or Science students who tends to do bio/chem related majors, the mathematical pre-knowledge required is not intense, if you were doing ok in VCE Math Method it should be fine. If you find it hard to remember about these it's also not a big problem, there will be an assumed knowledge page on LMS with both videos and practical questions sheets(with answers) on topics like probability, random variables, normal distributions for you to review necessary math concepts at the start of the semester. As an (intended) math major, I chose this subject to fulfill the "at least 5 level 1 science subjects" requirements, it was actually the one I put least time in last semester yet the highest in results.

Lectures

The subject starts with how to evaluate/design a study, Sharon will go through the methodology (how to design a study to get meaningful and reliable data, how to avoid possible bias.etc, how to randomize a study by MiniTab), then it goes into analysing the data gained from study by using MiniTab to draw different graphical displays (boxplot, dotplot, bar chart and so on...). Then we will look into discrete and continuous random variables, their distributions, expectation (mean), variance, standard deviation; also normal distribution and normal approximation of binomial distribution, this part is basically the same/slight extension of the same knowledge in high school. After that you will use 2-3 weeks to learn how to modelling the data by MiniTab, determine the sample distribution, estimate sample/population mean, variance, sd with certain confidence level. Then you will use another 2-3 weeks on hypothesis testing - determine whether a hypothetical value for the sample mean or proportion is reasonable, also how to compare two means or two proportions. The remaining topics include different models (single mean/separate mean/regression), their assumptions and how to choose between them, there is also a small topic on Chi-Square Test at the end for comparing several means (>2). There will be 1 or 2 revision lectures in Week 12 depending on teaching schedule of the subject, Sharon will discuss some most asked topics & questions students sent to her and some of the revision questions as well.

The contents in the first few weeks of this subject are quite light and can be a bit boring (though Sharon is definitely an enthusiastic lecturer), but please do pay attention as it goes into estimating and hypothesis testing, you will need actually put some work in order to fully understand the topics. There are exercises after each topic's lecture slide, Sharon will discuss some in the class, for those she does not I strongly recommend you try finishing them after class. The question booklet also contains several of questions on each topic, if you have time, try them before attending your practice class next week as well.

Practice Classes/Computer Labs

There will be a tutorial question sheet available each weekend for next week's practice class, the first hour is just normal math tutorials where you sit with 3 or 4 students together and work on these problems, some tutors will go through all the questions on the whiteboard at the end of the class, some will just response to your questions during the class and let you work out the answers by yourself. There's no answer sheet given in the class (like in Calculus 2 or Linear Algebra). In the second hour you will be in the computer lab with another class, one of the tutors will give demonstration on contents in this week's lab, then you'll need to work on the lab sheet , you can ask your friends or the tutors if you get stuck, some of the lab sheets may seems too long to complete in class but I highly recommend completing them in your spare time -- leave them all until before the lab test in week 12 would be painful, though not practically difficult, they are quite time consuming and irritating.

The software mainly used in this subject is MiniTab (which can be downloaded freely from math department's software page), there will be two week's lab using StatPlay but nothing is under examination. Throughout the semester both the computer lab and sometimes in lecture you will be taught how to use it and read the output from it, it's very important to get on top of this whole MiniTab thing since most of assignment questions & lab test & final exam are based on using it or interpret its output.

Also I don't suggest take the practice class on Monday, since usually Sharon would not be able to finish the lecture slides from last week on time, taking practice class early in the week may possibly result in doing problems that you have not learn yet.

Assessments

The weekly online quiz shouldn't be a problem, you will be given three attempts and only the highest one will be counted. The questions are mostly MCQs and one or two calculation & filling in numbers questions.  There will be 11 quizzes in total and only your best 10 grades will be counted.

Two assignments are handed out in week 5 and week 8, the first one due in one week, the other due after the midsemester break. They both need to be completed as a word document and all the graphs need to be produced by MiniTab, there's a five-page maximum length but it depends on the tutor to decide whether or not to take mark off for overly long assignments -- from my experience most are quite lenient. Both assignments are not hard in the terms of contents but they do need you to put in some time, the first one has more short answer questions (including design a study) and the second one has more calculations.

The lab test is basically testing how much you know about how to use MiniTab in this subject, you are allowed to bring any written material (including the lab sheets) into the test, but no calculators or electronic devices. There are 3-4 pages of questions asking you to either use MiniTab to analyse the data and draw conclusions or explain the output from it. It's kinda hard to prepare at the last minutes, but even if you didn't do well in the test, it's just 10%, just bring yourself up to speed before the final exam.

The final exam allowed you to bring in 2 double sided A4 cheat sheets, please start making them as early as possible (Sharon recommended to start from midsemester break) and cram all the things you think you will need into them. The final exam itself is quite straight forward, if you are comfortable with all the tutorial questions and past year exam papers, you should be fine. However, the amount of questions is quite huge, last semester's booklet had about 30 pages including answer space and there were a lot of short answer questions, I merely finished at last 2 or 3 minutes while some of my friends still had questions left.


Overall I think this subject is a simplified version of second year version statistics subject MAST20005 Statistics, it falls under the math category yet doesn't need much heavily quantative/proof based math stuff, it is more on the practical (applied) side. Surely it's not a no-brainer WAM booster, but if you put in time and some hard work, you will do well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nhmn0301 on February 19, 2016, 10:37:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics  summer course
Workload:  2 x two hours lecture per week + 2 x one hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  one 1 hour online MST (10%), two written assignment (each contributes 10%, total 20%), tutorial attendance (10%), 2 hour written examination (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. Around 6 past exams are available. However, the majority was written by the old lecturer of this subject, Andrew Clarke. His material is still relevant to the course to some extent but further details about which part is still on the course will be specified on LMS under these papers file.

Textbook Recommendation:  Microeconomics (Eight Edition) by Robert S. Pindyck, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Lecturer(s): Svetlana Danilkina (awesome awesome lecturer!)

Year & Semester of completion: Summer 2016. Summer course only takes up 6 weeks instead of 12 weeks like a normal subject during the year so you would be expected to learn the content at double the pace, but it is fairly manageable for this subject (see review below)

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: First of all, just to put it out there, this is an amazing subject! If you are interested in economics and math (especially calculus for further study in economics field), I would definitely recommend this subject.
A. Here are the list of topics that we go through in order:
1. Consumer theory:
_all about consumer's preferences, their utility (satisfaction) and how to choose bundles that can maximise their utility
_imo, this is a basic but very important topic. If you have a good understanding of this topic, you will have a solid ground to later build up the knowledge of further topics since they link to each other!
2. Producer theory:
_as mentioned above, this links closely to Consumer theory but with some different definitions etc.
3. Markets:
_good old Perfect competition will appear again. Basically just some intro micro stuff but a bit harder. Knowing how to derive your AVC, MC, ATC, graph them and solving some practical problems are what focused on throughout this topic.
_then we moved on to Monopoly with the application of price discrimination. Remember the kink total demand from Intro Micro? It is still definitely relevant here :D.
4. General equilibrium:
_this is considered as one of the hardest topic of the entire course and I probably have to agree. I did have some troubles understanding this topic at first but by doing questions and consulting my tutors paid off in the end.
_General equilibrium involves trading between 2 consumers or producers etc. Instead of the x-y axis that we usually see, they introduce an "up-side-down" x-y axis, by putting these 2 axis together, you construct something called the Edgeworth box.
_After getting used to seeing graphs in an up side down manner, you will quickly pick up your pace in solving questions.
5. Game theory:
_Back to the topic of Prisoner's dilemma from Intro micro but with further extensions. Now we introduce how game theory can be applied to firms which make decisions about the quantity to produce or price to set. This extends our market structure from Monopoly to Oligopoly (with Cournot, Stackelberg, Bertrand model). The math in this topic is a bit longer (thus a bit tedious) compared to others since we usually have to find profit maximising output for 2 firms and not just one.
6. Choice under uncertainty:
_this topic involves a bit of probability, like calculating Expected value and Variance etc and its application in buying Insurance.
_overall this type of behavioural economics can be a bit difficult to get your head around at first according to some people I talked to but you should be fine with more practices.
7. Information in economics:
_this topic is included in the very last lecture and only takes up a few slides. Its short and easy to understand (imo mainly because the Lemon model in this topic is not examinable).
B. Subject review:
1. Lecturer: As mentioned above, Svetlana is an amazing lecturer, her notes are very easy to follow and the tutorial questions she set provide excellent practice for problem solving skill. She does not trick students with big surprise questions on the exam and if you know your stuff well, able to do the tutorial questions, you should be fine! Sometimes we had some in class quiz (did not count towards your mark thou) but that was a great opportunity to revise and know where you stand in the cohort. Svetlana also writes very detailed subject outline that tells us specifically what is important for the exam, so you should definitely have a read and tick of that list during swotvac.
2. Tutorial: i actually very enjoy the tutorial for this subject. Some tute questions can be very demanding and require loads of math derivation but at the end of the day, if you understand the concept, the math should be second nature and no rote learning is required. My tutor, Daniel, is very helpful and explains stuff in great details. Since the amount of questions we have to go through in tute can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, it is very easy to fall behind so I recommend going through the questions again at your own pace and read through Svetlana's solutions (btw her tute's solution is extremely detailed again).
3. MST: though there are a few tricky questions, it is not something that you cannot do well in if you know your stuff. The majority of the cohort did very well.
4. Written examination: just as Svetlana's describes her style of writing exam questions: there will be no big surprise. The things in the exam are pretty much have been seen before with modifications. Some are harder and takes a bit of thinking but the rest is pretty manageable. I managed to finish the exam on time with around 10 mins to check.
That's it from me for now, if you have any further questions, please dont hesitate to pm me :)! Good luck guys!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Inside Out on February 20, 2016, 10:51:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10001 Finance 1 
Workload:  one 2 hour lecture, one 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  2 assignments worth 10% each and one 3 hour exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, heaps. Solutions up for one of them.

Textbook Recommendation:  Financial Institutions and Markets (B Hunt and C Terry), (7th edn), Thomson, Australia, 2015. Not sure why no one recommended this, it is an excellent book and will explain any concepts better than the lecturer. Better buying it at the start to resell in future, than relying on books in the library (2 hour loans).
Lecturer(s): David Robinsons whom apparently drinks bear and plays golf all day.

Year & Semester of completion: Summer 2016

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:tba

Comments: This subject was better than i expected. Coming into finance, i knew nothing and whenever the business news came up i was like huh?  Now i can actually understand it.

If you have an underlying interest in finance.. this subject will be good.
If not, then you will find it a struggle and will need to force yourself somehow to handle all the googling. Investopedia was also my go to site. The concepts in finance are not easy to understand with all sorts of words you've never come across before. I have also realised how linked finance and economics are,s you will probably come out of this subject wiht a bit of economics knowledge. You will be using simple and compound interest from start to finish.
Main topics were:
Bonds, money market, share market, derivatives (FRAS), types of banks (ADIs), differences between markets, foreign exchange, annuities, perpetuities. You'll also learn about mortgage backed securities. Some interesting stuff there.

I found the assignments interesting but difficult, so i can understand why the (easier) exam is worth more. The first one was about loans and calculating yields and valuing stock prices, the second was about a managed fund that followed the asx200 and required a bit of excel and graphs. The 700 word limit was difficult to go under. You also had to do some research and describe the biggest factors influencing the stock market.

The lecturer wasn't that great to be honest, explaining hard concepts isn't really his strong point, but he did have some interesting scandals to share (i didn't understand any he told us, but after googling, i found them interesting LOL). The tutorials were set out nicely, although, because i did them in the summer, all was too rushed, and i ended up doing 5% of tute questions, but honestly, going over the slides a couple of times is enough for you to ride through the exam without much stress.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Inside Out on February 20, 2016, 11:11:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20143 WORLD MUSIC CHOIR 1 

Workload:  1X2 HOUR REHEARSAL, 1X 1 HOUR LECTURE
Assessment:  2 short answer tests, 1 40 minute listening test and points for contribution/participation

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes w/ screen capture

Past exams available:  Nope

Textbook Recommendation:  1x red display folder to hold all the music sheets (if you don't have it he'll ask you for your role no. and jot it down)

Lecturer(s): Jordan something

Year & Semester of completion: Summer 2016

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: tba

Comments: This subject is worth it, if you are looking for a laid back one to boost your wam. First two listening tests are basically free points (remembering 10 music definitions and learning how to build some chords, which you can really just go through the morning of the test). The listening test is harder, which will require you to listen to two songs, and identify whether one of them is rock/pop and whether the other one is african/georgian. Then you will have to explain why you think it belongs to that group, and give some info about it. Use info from lectures, notes on the lms and some extra research to come up what to write with, rememberise and use for the test. Not sure how the lecturer assesses participation (unless you volunteer for a solo of course). The classes are quite big and the end performance is made up of all classes. The songs are quite boring. Sometimes i fell asleep wishing i got to sing a song that was more catchy, especially with 3x2 hour rehearsals a week (i did it in the summer).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spectroscopy on February 23, 2016, 07:36:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE20001 Business Finance

Workload: i did it in summer so, 2 x 1 hour lectures & 2 x 2 hour lectures + 2 x 1.5 hour tutes per WEEK

WARNING: in summer this subject goes at TRIPLE the pace of a normal semester NOT DOUBLE. most other subjects have 6 weeks of tuition in summer but this class has 4 weeks of class (you get a midsem break and a swotvac week LMAO)

Assessment:  A midsemester exam (20%), end of semester exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  not recorded. lecture slides are quite jam packed and he tends to read off them but his elaborations on ideas and storys and examples etc. are CRUCIAL if you are not already familiar with the ideas very very well. ie; go to lectures

Past exams available:  Heaps of them.
They are a pretty good guide of the exam. the subject has gotten more theoretical and less maths-applicationy over the years, with WAY more proofs these days. the answer keys for the past exams were riddled with grammatical errors and shit lmao for some questions, B would be the correct answer, but the answer key would accidentally refer to it as answer A lol it gave me a headache and i stopped using them

Textbook Recommendation: dunno lol read the handbook i didnt buy the textbook. lecture slides are really really well detailed, and the lectures are comprehensive. when in doubt investopedia is your friend.

Lecturer(s): The legend himself professor Rob Brown

Year & Semester of completion: Summer, 2016

Rating: 5/5 if you like finance. 1/5 if you dont (although why would you continue on with finance if you didnt like finance 1 :P )
this subject is finance 1 2.0 it should just be called finance 2

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
Summary: Business Finance was a great subject. As time passes I get more and more happy with the finance faculty as they haven't let me down yet. Doing Finance 1 is a great help to doing this subject and is a good indicator of whether you'll like this or not. All the assessment is very fair, and things build up on each other nicely.
I highly recommend doing it in summer because the teaching in summer is awesome and because the topics build on each other more heavily than in any other subject I've done, so its great to just be in the finance zone for a few weeks.

PRO TIP: Please think twice before doing this subject and read this review. If you didn't like finance 1, you will HATE this subject so just turn around and walk away right now. just stop. alot of people want the high flying finance jobs but dont really have a passion for the content and they get screwed over big time. the other big warning is the teachers in this subject assume alot of knowledge from first year commerce subjects.
Ideas from intro micro, intro macro, and qm1 (NEVER DO THIS SUBJECT WITHOUT DOING QM1 BTW WILL DISCUSS THIS LATER) get thrown around like they are nothing and are used to justify proofs and things in business finance. One kid in my class asked a question about why something acts a certain way and the guy just said "ahh its just a side effect of diminishing marginal utility" but the dude didnt do commerce and he was looking around like "what the fk" HAHAHA
this tutor was actually really good and went on to explain it in detail for everyone but idk if all the tutors are that nice (they probs are tbh finance tutors are the best ones ive ever had)

OK, so i personally LOVED this subject bc as you can probably tell, i really like finance. ive heard terms and words been thrown around in internships and online for so many years and last year I would learn about things and wonder where they came from etc. and in business finance the whole finance world REALLY starts to open up to you and become understood. The subject is split into 3 parts with each part being an introduction to the 3 core 3rd year finance subjects derivatives, investments and corporate finance

To tell you what you learn, it starts with investments. this makes up half the course and the entire mid sem exam. you learn about how to price securities like bonds, and equities etc. with much more advanced techniques than in finance 1 for the first week (which is the first 3 weeks of a normal semester, from now on i will use summer school time). towards the end of the first week they started to throw in some very VERY qm-styled math in there like covariances and standard deviations and shit. and basically you learn from the start how to price a security, then how to construct a portfolio with two securities, to basically learning the optimal(mathematically) way to structure an investment portfolio with a range of assets. pretty cool stuff although you end up with lots of formulas that look scary (theyre ok though in reality, SUPER simple to use) and you get a formula sheet which is grouse.
So you have a midsemester exam on this stuff and then you get a week off (woo)
you come back and its corporate finance for 1 week, which basically applies the same basic ideas you've just learnt into decision making for businesses. so in investments you figure out "what are the optimal assets to buy and how much should i invest in them" and in corporate finance you discover "what are the best projects to invest in for the company". really cool stuff. you do questions like should you invest in a coal mine in one region or should you decide to open up a shipbuilding yard etc.
basically you learn how to use net present value and internal rate of return to determine if you should undertake a project/which project to undertake.

after a week of that you get into derivatives. you wont have to use as much math as before, but the ideas become increasingly difficult to understand if you arent logically/mathematically minded. i already knew all of this stuff from reading around on the internet and shit (im a nerd) LOL but alot of people and i mean HEAPS got super confused by this stuff and had no clue whats going on. tbh if you just google around someone on the internet is bound to have written an explanation in terms that would make it understandable to you. you learn shit like put/call options, swaps, futures, forward contracts etc.
you also learn about the tax system but that is sprinkled in towards the end of corporate finance and the start of derivatives. lots of history on the tax system too

The subject is run very, very well. Don't do it if you didnt like Finance 1. I would highly recommend reconsidering if you didnt do QM1.
If you just think it will look good on your resume/want a "real" breadth/need another subject to do/your friends are doing it/you heard its easy, you will have a bad time.

Lectures:
Prof Rob Brown is a legend. His lectures were absolutely extraordinary. great explanations, great examples, he treated everyone really well, really down to earth guy but has also been there and done alot of the stuff we learn about. hes an absolute legend of the faculty and a great teacher. can not find a complaint anywhere. hes just so jolly and really enjoys the subject. i used to love asking him questions because he would spend heaps of time after class to explain, replied to emails really quickly, and did it all with a smile like he really wanted to help out and enjoyed what he teached. hes even met the nobel laureates whose theories we learn about!!

TL;DR lecturer is great

Tutes:
Tutes were also awesome like all finance tutes. Haven't heard a single complaint about them. Tutes arent mandatory but srsly if youre doing this subject in summer at triple the pace of the normal semester you may as well just do the homework and go to the tutes i mean its a productive 1.5 hours.
I had the head tutor mr carey who was an absolute beast and went through everything SO well and he was pretty funny too tbh.
this subjects tutes are the same as finance 1 lol basically what happens is a bunch of questions get put up each week and in the tute's they walk you through the answers. pretty simple really but its a good time to ask questions and they will generally tell you about variations of questions and how to approach them. if you are behind in the work you won't know whats going on in the tutes but if you are up to date they are great. tute questions are the best exam revision you'll get other than the practice exams because they have solutions. the solutions they put up arent as detailed as what you get irl so just go to the tutes
 
Mid-semester exam:
all i have to say about the mid-sem was that it was a very fair multiple choice only mid-sem with nothing dirty. there were some really difficult questions and some easy ones.

if you've been doing the tute work and going to the tutes this midsem exam should be sooooo easy for you.
alot of people do not do the work though and as a result walk in there and say "brah i studied for 4 hours last night and i didnt know like 1/3 of the questions" and ive gotta say to them "dude they tested 2 weeks of content which is 6 weeks of a regular semester you cant just study for 4 hours the night before if you've been wagging tutes and lectures lol"
 
Exam:
If you do the work you shouldnt worry about not passing. If you do ALL the work you will almost definitely get a h1 and maybe even full marks.
the multi choice was mostly testing the investments area of the course and the rest was 40% derivatives and 40% corporate finance. there was a taxation question in there that i thought was a bit sleezy bc we had to do tax calculations on assets bought ages ago which have different formulas to use on them. but it was all there in the course and the lecturer emphasised that EVERYTHING is assessable so i'm not really mad and i still think hes a good bloke. it was my fault for thinking "well its not applicable now so unless he starts the question with "imagine in 1992..." " which ended up happening lmfao

moral of the story. if you wanna get a h1, just learn everything lol it sounds so silly and obvious but really its not hard to learn everything. if you do the work it should be fine especially if you do the subject in summer. unless youre doing 2 summer subjects and working like i did you really dont have an excuse to say "stuff it im not gonna learn that proof lol"

the exam is fair. the teaching staff are excellent and tough but fair. no complaints
if you get this far and you are struggling with anything then run away bc they test everything on the exam


Conculusion:
All said I'm giving it a 5/5 for a few reasons which are applicable to finance subjects across the board in my experience;
 - The subject is run very well, with great communication from staff to students
 - The teaching staff are all AWESOME, VERY KNOWLEDGABLE and VERY WILLING TO HELP
 - All the assessment was very fair.
 - All content taught very well.
 - No mandatory attendance


really after business finance you'll know if you wanna work in finance or not or if it interests you or not

TL;DR good subject 10/10. think twice if you havent done QM1, dont do it if you didnt like finance 1.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: chysim on March 21, 2016, 01:50:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90051 Civil Hydraulics

Workload:
2-hour tute each week
That’s it!

Assessment:
Assignment/prac report for each of the 3 components (10% each)
30 minute test for each component (10% each)
2-hour exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled: N/A (YouTube lectures)

Past exams available: Yes

Textbook Recommendation: None required

Lecturer(s): Mike Stewardson

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2015

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

TL;DR: After the clusterfuck that was the hydraulics component of Systems Modelling and Design, the far higher quality of teaching here was a godsend. But unfortunately an exam question blunder got the better of Mike/Alex. Ooh intrigue…

Comments:
I currently have an amazing amount of work to do. Also, I just found a half-written but extremely long subject review that I must’ve done SWOTVAC and left in my notes app. Rather than doing actual work, I finished it off, so here you go…

Hydraulics taught well?

Hydraulics?

Taught well?

Wow.

So my review of the hydraulics component of Systems Modelling and Design wasn’t the most glowing I’ve ever written. Roger Hughes was a spud lecturer, the exam prep material was a joke, and the admin/student relations of the entire subject would’ve been better run by a Russell Hobbs toaster (they’re known for their excellent communication skills btw).

This subject takes quite a turn for the better. It starts with a clearly codified structure (which was completely absent in SMD), and it’s assisted by the concise and cogent video lectures from Mike Stewardson.

The subject has three components: channel hydraulics (basically a review of SMD), natural channels (i.e. rivers and streams) and coastal hydraulics (waves brah). These are given 4 weeks each, and each of them have their own assignment, prac report (except for coastal) and mid-semester test. Each component is given equal weighting on the exam so it’d be wise to pay attention all year, though we all know them late semester strugs.

Lectures
This is a subject where you won’t attend a lecture all semester, and not just cos you’re lazy or because the lectures are scheduled before 11am.

Nah, Mike goes all PewDiePie on us and delivers his lectures via YouTube. The lectures he gives are really concise and pithy (about 15-25 minutes a week), somewhat following the old 80-20 rule – you’ll get about 80% of the content from them in about 20% of the time it’d take for a normal, full-on lecture.

If you’re keen, you can pick up the remaining 20% from the prescribed readings. This is really how they want you to learn the subject and you’re probably going to need to do it if you want a H1. But you could probably do alright just relying on the YouTube lectures tbh.

The video lectures seem to have quite a low production budget (so much so that Mike wore the same red fleece in all of them), but they cover all the main points from the readings and direct you where to go to find out more. It also makes it easier to illustrate stuff via video than a traditional lecture would – editing exists and serves to cut out any fiddling around with technology that goes along with the process of middle-aged academics venturing beyond words on a slide.

And as a lecturer, Mike’s pretty good at getting his point across and explains things clearly and with reference to real life examples.

Tutorials/MSTs
Tutes act as the main platform to reify concepts from the lectures and readings. Lone tutor Alex McCluskey has been involved in this subject for yonks and has it pretty down pat.

The tutes are pretty uniform in structure. Before each week’s tutorial, you’ll be expected to have watched the lectures, done the readings (again, if you’re keen), and worked your way through the little unassessed quiz they put out.

The tutes then start off with Alex running you through a recap of the quiz and some of the week’s key concepts, then doing some questions from the week’s ‘learning guide’, then perhaps a chance for some chat about assignments and the like.

These are run pretty well and I found them a lot more valuable than the tutes run in the Structural Theory and Design subjects, where you’ll just have a tutor doing questions on the board while everyone watches. They seem a bit more collaborative than your average eng tute, give you plenty of time to work on the questions, plus Alex is pretty diligent in coming around to everyone and trying to explain any problems you might be having. It’s a little like an old MAST style tute actually, and I’d say they were some of my favourite tutes at uni, which is a pretty big call when you realise that they involved doing maths.

But the learning guides could use a bit of a polish up. While they’re generally fine and actually give a really good (and, again, quite pithy, which I appreciate) summary of what you’re going to learn each week and the sections of the readings to focus on, a couple of them were quite typo-laden and some of the questions are a little buh.

For some reason, the tutorials were scheduled for three hours but none ran over two.

I’ve grouped the MSTs in with the tutorials because they’re not MSTs of the usual sort. After you finish each of the three modules, you’ll have an assessed test at the start of the next tutorial. So rather than mini-exam style MSTs, they’re just in-class tests, as you probably would’ve done at school. The questions are all multiple choice and there’s 15 or so to do in half an hour. They’re built from a database of about 40 or so questions, so you probably won’t be able to cheat off the presumably smarter person next to you – their test will be a little different.

These tests aren’t too hard, but some of the questions are based on content from the readings you probably didn’t read and you might meet a couple numerical questions that are tricky to work out within the allotted timeframe.

Each of the three tests (three modules, three tests) are worth 10%, same as the yet to be mentioned assignments. I did fine on the first two tests, but my mark on the last one was actually my worst mark so far in 4 years of university. 4.8/10. I think it’s the only thing I’ve ever failed. Golden boy no more.

Assignments
The assignments of this subject were all pretty good. You’re given one at the start of each component, but you’re expected to work on them progressively and they’re designed to follow along with your pace of learning the content.

Each of them try to take on some real world scenarios and generally use real world data. With the first one – on channel hydraulics – you’ll go through some basic Manning’s equation calculations (which are made a bit harder by some irregular geometry for the channels), plus some stuff on hydraulic jumps, weirs and sluices that should be somewhat familiar if you managed to decipher what Roger was trying to say back in SMD. For the second – on natural channels – you’ll have to answer some stuff on sediment distributions, sediment transport and erosion mitigation. For the third and final one – on coastal hydraulics – you’ll be concentrating on the Port Phillip heads and looking into gnarly items such as waves, rips, tides and storm surges.

As far as hydraulics goes, the assignments are all pretty interesting and not too difficult. Some questions were a little confusing at times, and I would’ve appreciated a few hints or clearer explanations as to what they were looking for, but they’re not too bad for the most part. They published the class averages for each of them and they were about 68-72% from memory. And although they were all individual assignments, they encouraged some collaboration and discussion with peers.

And I’m not totally sure if they realised but they published some overly specific rubrics for the first two assignments that kinda gave away some of the answers, which I guess was a bit of a pre-cursor of the exam blunder I mentioned in the TL;DR. But before I get to that you’re going to have to read about…

Pracs
This subject has a prac for each of the first two components. Both are done in the wet lab below eng blocks C/D and are run by Danusia Kucharske (which is an anagram of ‘Sauna Shark Duckie’, in case you were wondering). Danusia is really good at explaining what you need to do with the prac. She’ll give you some examples and directions and let you know what you’ll need to pay attention to for the prac reports, each of which account for some proportion of the assessment for these components.

The first prac is on weirs and the hydraulics jump, and it’s pretty similar to what you would’ve done in SMD. It’s actually pretty fun cos Danusia’s a bit of a legend and let’s you play around with the apparatus a little. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed but hydraulic jumps are pretty damn cool – me and physics aren’t the best of friends but Conservation of Momentum might be my second favourite natural law (my first – thanks for asking – is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which basically says that, in the long term, we’re all fucked).

The second one is on sediment transport and incipient motion and I have far less to write about it. It was fine.

These pracs follow the old rule of experimental data: your results are never going to look as nice as you’d hope. Danusia has a pretty keen eye, so I’d be cautious about chopping and changing data to make it look like you knew what you were doing. Variance is expected and can usually be put done to a few factors, the discussion of which is appreciated by the markers.

Exam
So the review’s been pretty positive so far. Now we get to the awkward part.

Okay, so in the exam, Alex/Mike made a pretty massive mistake. Twice.

As you often see on the exams of mathsy-type subjects, they had a ‘show’ question. Basically “show that the volume of flow down a channel is 20.20 m/s” (I’m just making that figure up btw – this was like five months ago). Problem is, they left out the Manning’s n, a crucial figure you needed to end up at that value.

Panic-stricken, Alex rushed around about 15 minutes into the exam and told everyone the mistake and what the value of the Manning’s n should’ve been. By this time, I’d already had a go at the question, got stuck and moved on. So, when Alex gave us the figure, I went back and did it again. I still didn’t end up with the value we were meant to show.

As it turns out, the value that Alex gave us was wrong. Oof.

Then Mike hurriedly came around and gave us a different value. I did the question again and got the answer I expected, but I’d probably wasted at least 10-15 minutes faffing about throughout the process. If you had kept trying to find your mistake, having made the assumption that the staff of the subject had actually done their job and provided the correct info, you probably could’ve wasted a good 30 minutes.

So yeah, pretty bad form. And apparently a similar thing happened back in 2013. Double oof.

To account for this, they did a bit of a boost job on the exam results – rather than marking them out of the full 120, they cut it down to 90, which accounted for that 30 minutes lost within a 2 hour exam. This was a pretty good compromise in the end (and it probably got me a higher mark that I would’ve otherwise gotten tbh), and it’s why I haven’t doffed anything off my rating for the subject despite this massive, double-tiered effup.

Proofreadibg, amirite.

Stuffups aside, it's nice that the exam is only worth 40% and isn't a hurdle. With ~70% being the average mark for the assignments, it should mean that the average student will only need about 20% on the exam to pass the subject. If you've stuck with this super-long review to this point, I'd say you're probably capable of that.

Overall
Hydro was pretty good I guess, and this is way too long already.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: c15080907 on April 12, 2016, 11:58:49 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANCW10005 Ancient Near Eastern Language: Egyptian

Workload:  1 x 1 hour lecture and 2 x 1.5 hour tutorials a week. (Tutorials will be scheduled on the same day.)

Assessment: 10 x assessment exercises (50%), take home exam (50%).

Lectopia Enabled: No.

Past exams available:  No past or sample exams (not needed in my opinion).

Textbook Recommendation: 
- James P. Allen. Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Definitely buy this textbook; all of your assignments (worth 50%) will mimic the exercises given in relevant chapters. The book also contains answers to all of these exercises.
- Raymond O. Faulkner. A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian is also suggested, but it's not really needed; the lecturer sent us a scanned copy of it anyway.

Lecturer(s): Dr Brent Davis

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2015.

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 (H1)

Comments:
An absolutely brilliant subject. The subject is taught in a very structured and well thought-out way, the lecturer is knowledgeable and the assessments are very fair. This is probably my favourite subject to date.

Lecturer/Lectures:
There is one, 1-hour lecture a week which is unfortunately not recorded due to the examples that need to be shown on a whiteboard. Whilst this subject has minimal contact hours and work, if you want to do well you must attend all the lectures.

The subject begins with a brief history of Egypt and its language, and then moves onto the hieroglyphic alphabet. As the subject progresses, you move through various sentence structures, grammatical rules, different ways of writing various things (e.g. dates/seasons) and etc.; the subject concentrates on Middle Egyptian specifically. Having always been interested in Ancient Egypt, this subject is a wonderful combination of language, history and culture.

The lecturer is brilliant. He goes through the particular sentence structure or grammar that you are learning about that week in detail and then gives numerous examples. The tutorials then reinforce the content you have learnt in the lecture. Having said that, be prepared to take a lot of notes and remember to take down all the examples he gives you in the lectures. This will be crucial to doing well in the assessments.

Admittedly, the lectures contain a lot of content. Sometimes, the lecturer would run out of time and use one of the two tutorials as an extra space for lecturing.

Tutorials:
Now if you're wondering why I didn't give this subject 5/5, the tutorials would be why. You attend two, 1.5 hour tutorials which will be scheduled on the same day (probably 45 mins apart from each other to give you a lunch break). These require a 75% attendance rate.

In my opinion, the 3 hours was unnecessary. In the first tutorial, you go through extra content the lecturer didn't quite cover in the lecture and the assignment from last week (you will get 1 of these each week). This was quite helpful, as common mistakes were analysed and the explanations for trickier questions were given. In the second tutorial, the lecturer went through the textbook exercises completed for homework the week before by asking each person in the room to come up to the whiteboard and write their answer. I felt that this was pointless as all the answers were at the back of the book; by week 3, I had started just writing the answers into an exercise book 30 minutes before the tutorial, so I could answer any questions directed at me. Whilst it is beneficial to do the these textbook exercises as practice, it isn't necessary and I certainly didn't do all of them. They are however, excellent as a reference for doing the assignments each week.

Assessment:
Each week you are given one A4 sheet with about 15 - 20 questions to complete; these are worth 5% each. These questions range from rewording sentences to translating to transliterating. They mimic the textbook exercises you are told to do for homework each week, so it shouldn't be too tricky. Admittedly, the syntax and grammar for Middle Egyptian is so precise that it is incredibly easy to make small mistakes. Do not expect to receive full marks on any of these assignments (except maybe the first); my average was anywhere between 85 - 95% on each of them. The assignment for the first week is different. You are told to memorise the hieroglyphic alphabet, and this will be tested in the second week tutorial. The assignments for the first three weeks are incredibly easy compared to the later ones, so do try to get 95 - 100%.

There is also a bonus assignment in one week, where you have the chance to earn a couple of extra marks from finding the mistake in the textbook. Definitely put in the work to do this, as the question really isn't too hard (it was something to do with counting and tables).

Exam:
The exam is a take home one. You are given 24 hours to complete it. It is a translation and transliteration of a simplified ancient Egyptian story, incorporating all the structures/grammar you have learnt in the past 12 weeks. We were told, most people spent approximately 3 hours on it. I spent 5 - 6 hours; take that how you will. The exam wasn't too difficult overall though and it is done week 12, rather than in the exam period.

Overall:
A brilliant subject which is both interesting and a relatively easy breadth, if that's what you're looking for. High 90s is definitely achievable, especially if you have friends doing the subject as well and can work together (even though you're not really supposed to); I didn't know anyone else, so that was a bit of a disadvantage for me.

The subject took the SES into account, and has since changed to having 3 levels instead of 1 (as someone complained there was too much content; I disagreed). I'm not sure how different it is now, but the assessments still look the same. I suspect, the level 1 will be even easier than when I did it.

TLDR: Interesting subject with relatively easy assessment and minimal contact hours. It is possible to achieve high 90s, and the take home exam done in week 12, definitely reduces workload come exam time.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spectroscopy on June 12, 2016, 08:51:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: MKTG20006 Brand Management

Workload: 1 x 2 hour lecture + 1 x 1 hour tute per week

Assessment:  Two individual assignments (which are that weeks tute questions) (20%), One group assignment (30%), One end of semester exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled: The lectures ARE recorded but the lecture slides look like a booklet of "fill in the blanks" puzzles and he writes what is meant to be in the blank on the whiteboard, so if you plan on ACTUALLY watching the lecture at some point, you are much better off going to the real thing and not watching at home.

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation: dunno lol read the handbook i didnt buy the textbook. There isn't too much content and lecture slides aren't that helpful. If you want to do really well you will most likely need the textbook, they ask some very specific detailed questions in the exam that you mightn't be able to answer 10 marks long if you dont have the textbook/researched it yourself

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: uhhhh i still dont know how i feel. All the teachers and students were cool, assignments were very fair and not too difficult, but the exam for me was probably one of the most difficult exams i've done in my life. id probably give the subject a 4/5 for most people, and a 5/5 if you are a person that studies hard and is going to go to the lectures live.


Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
Summary: Brand Management is a pretty cool subject.The marketing faculty subjects all seem pretty similiar in terms of how they run it and quality. If you liked principals of marketing and you like the brand stuff you learn, this subject would be great for you. It basically just expanding on all the brand equity stuff you do in principals and how to build brand equity. pretty neato.

OK, so i personally did this subject because I just needed another level 2 commerce subject and I liked marketing LOL and my friend was doing it so i thought 'stuff it ill give it a crack'. Also a person doing a lecture on the marketing major who works in that area now said one of the tute questions she was given in this subject was asked to her in an interview! and she knew how to answer it bc of this subject, so i thought id give it a shot.

Overall, its a pretty do-able subject. It's a good subject to do if you will have a busy time during the semester, and maybe not so much during exams. the assignments are an easy H2 but a hard(but achievable) H1, The exam was actually kinda hard. i dare say it is the hardest exam ive ever done. I'll get into that in the exam section. But you learn very interesting stuff, its pretty useful, and classes are really fun! its something to look forward to in your week. Definitely do this subject if you are going to have lots of boring subjects in the semester and want something cool but useful to split up your time, and the study for it is pretty chill as well. lots of fun case studies

To tell you what you learn, it starts with some basic brand recap stuff. whats a brand, why theyre useful etc. and then you spend the rest of the course on the different ways to build, utilise, and protect your brand equity, and develop a strategy regarding the different brands in your organisations portfolio. pretty cool stuff if its your thing.


The subject is run pretty well. All the info and assignment questions are in the subject guide so you could do the lot in week 1 if you really wanted LOL. It's not super easy to smash it but you can get a solid 70+ while having a good time studying and not killing yourself

Lectures:
These were okay. The lecturer had a bit of an indian accent but he was a good bloke, pretty good lectures. The only annoying thing is there is like no information on the slides! all the information comes out of his mouth LOL. so basically if you arent going to google and research topics by yourself, you have to be there to listen and write notes from what he says, because the slides are seriously empty. they are more of a checklist of things to learn rather than a means of teaching. Also i hate 2 hour lectures (and these were at 9am) so i never went lol. but other than that, they are are really fun lectures. you hear good case studies to explain topics and he always has nifty analogies. 

TL;DR lecture slides no good but lectures are ok

Tutes:
Tutes were basically just splitting up into groups and doing the tute questions which would usually be 1 question and you have to answer that question for a few different brands. pretty collaborative and very chill. all the tutors are really good, i had experienced 2 of them and i think there were only 3 so yeah. just pay attention in the tutorials and write lots of notes so if you do that weeks tutorial questions for your assignment, you have lots of input and answers!
 
Individual assignments:
These are literally just tute questions. basically you choose 2/12 weeks tutorials and you do that weeks tutorial questions at home. you have 1000 words and its basically like any 10% of your total mark 1000 words commerce assignment. shouldnt be too bad

Group Assignment:
Same as any 30% group assignment for a marketing or management subject really. principles of marketing is a pre-req and it is literally the same thing just with different questions but the format and marking etc is the same.

Exam:
wow ok so this is a pretty small review because there is nothing much to say but the exam was a bit of a talking point. The assignments are all very do-able and very fair, but the exam was VERY HARD. just to point out how hard it was, each week, lets say we learn about one method/framework to grow/protect/strategise about brand equity. each method/framework will average about 7 theories/methods/steps/things to do, and each of those 7 will have maybe 2-3 ways to measure or quantify or measure it. In general, in these sorts of subjects, exams are like big case study questions. you might get something like "how will an organisation do X" and you can pick 1 or 2 of those 7 that you know well, and talk about using those, and a measure or 2 for them that you know well.
This exam went HAM. one quarter of the marks was about 2 of those 2-3 methods for one of those 7 theories in one of the 12 lectures. LOL if you chose not to specialise in that theory/step/method for that particular lectures topic, it was absolutely GG for you. by FLUKE I had memorised these 2 (i only learnt 4 LOL) of the possible 7*3=21 methods of measuring/quantifying for that weeks lecture/topic. in short. you really have to know about heaps and HEAPS of the stuff in very great detail to do really well on the exam, just to cover all bases and make sure you cant get surprised on the exam. the rest of the marks were fair like a normal exam a bit hard but do-able, but yeah.
learn everything to cover all bases


Conclusion:
All said I'm not giving it a 5/5 for me a few reasons;
 - lecture slides were too empty
 - i thought the exam was alot harder than really necessary but thats just me. i know alot of people who were taken aback, especially because there were no practice exams
- thats it really tbh everything else was really good


TL;DR good subject. great fun. light work during the semester, but you have to learn alot of stuff in alot of detail to do remotely well on the exam. definitely do it if you are interested in marketing. is pretty much a core marketing subject
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on June 17, 2016, 03:09:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20003 Quantitative Methods 2 

Workload:  Two one-hour lectures and one one-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  3 assignments weighted 5% each, a mid-semester online test weighted 5%, tutorial participation worth 10%, final exam worth 70%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yeah, we were given a 25 page file completely decked out with past exam questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  That SSK textbook from QM1. Not needed at all.

Lecturer(s): Reza Hajargasht

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating: 4.9 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: So instead of studying for my next exams I’ve decided I’ll review QM2. Some of you may recognise my username from my favourable review of QM1 and Jonathon Thong (maybe if I was in this years cohort for QM1 it might’ve been different…) so it’s not like its unexpected when I say that QM2 was good.

Firstly the old argument of introductory econometrics (IE) versus QM2. We were shown a slide at the start of the semester saying how IE is primarily regression based and involves a more depth of knowledge whereas QM2 focuses on regression for only part of the course and involves a more breadth of knowledge. As the semester progressed I was pretty happy I did QM2, honestly the regression in IE looked scary (from peers showing me), whereas QM2 really didn’t provide anything ridiculous. I can’t really provide much more information on the choice between IE and QM2 but honestly I personally am glad I chose QM2. I have been told by friends that IE isn’t hard if you put the effort in, whereas I categorise QM2 as one of the easiest subjects I’ve done and definitely the easiest in my semester (other subjects were corp law, cost management, and ob)

Ok so I’ll start with the lecturer. Reza! The main man. Honestly my opinion of him is pretty good, he’s pretty chill. Coming into the first lecture everyone was a bit disappointed as Reza speaks in a very quiet tone with not much expression. There isn’t much to say about him but I probably did go to 20 out of 23 lectures and he did get the content across effectively (in most circumstances). Don’t be too put down that you have some boring lecturer – the best thing I did was listen to lectures at 2x speed, which was pretty effective actually. The lectures themselves don’t pile on the content crazy quick, so they’re pretty good. Reza will generally just read out the lectures in most cases, however sometimes he didn’t – but you could easily get by without going to any lectures and just reading the slides (I do commend him for very good slides).

Next, the tutors. I had James as a tutor and honestly if you can, choose him. He also was our online tutor for the semester so it didn’t provide too much of a boon to have him as your tutor but he really gets the content across well. He definitely knows his stuff and will help you if you get stuck on an assignment if you ask. I can’t speak for any other tutors but James was and currently is the best tutor I’ve had at Melbourne uni. The tutorials themselves are quite easy; a set of questions to be answered before class and a set of questions that are answered during class. The homework set (to be answered before class) is collected during class, and THIS IS THE ONLY TUTORIAL MARK. Unlike other subjects where you are required to contribute, QM2 only requires you to hand in the pre-set work. Answers to both sets of questions are posted at the end of the semester (I think the first half answers are put up at the end of each week) and these questions really help for exam revision.

The content itself is probably a little bit dry (its QM2 like what do you expect) but I enjoyed it. The first 3 (or 4?) weeks are simply constructing hypothesis tests. That’s it. Don’t slack off in these weeks though, I found it pretty helpful to remind myself of the knowledge I gained in QM1 to make sure I had a strong foundation going into future weeks – but honestly, not much is required of you in these weeks. Come exam time all you need to do is memorise the types of tests (i.e what type of data you need, is it normally distributed) and you’ll be set. After these weeks, regression starts with Ordinary Least Squares. About 60% of the marks on the exam are dedicated to regression, with 20% dedicated to the hypothesis tests and 20% on time series. The main problem I found with regression probably just had to interpret different types of variables. It isn’t really required at all in QM2 to do any outside research or anything, just constantly reminding yourself to do it the same way the lectures do it is all that’s required. Reza also gave us a support lecture slides which helped us develop that skill pretty well. I don’t have too much to say about regression honestly. It’s pretty cool I guess, and I was glad we didn’t have to learn any proofs. In SWOTVAC I found most of my time on regression dedicated to just miniscule things (like ensuring you get 100% in a question rather than 98%) because I find it’s the small things that add up, like using percentage point instead of unit in your interpretation.  Lastly, time series is introduced in the last 2 weeks of the course which proves to probably, in my opinion anyway, be the hardest part of the course. Time series is pretty cool itself, and the lectures were well structured until the last lecture of the subject. In this lecture Reza introduced random walks and non-stationary time-series which really require more than a lecture to understand. I found my self in a continuous exchange of emails with my tutor, and constant youtubing to develop some sort of comprehension of non-stationary time series. This didn’t really help and sort of just left me with more questions than answers. Anyhow though, few marks on the exam are dedicated to this and the rest of time series is a walk in the part. Overall the content is relatively straightforward provided you maintain concentration during the semester.

QM2 marking is pretty good. There are 3 assignments during the semester each weighted 5%, combined with a 5% mid-semester online test, and 10% for tutorial participation (handing in your work), with 70% for the exam. The assignments are pretty extensive for only 5% but I found them really useful for my understanding. It’s pretty easy to get full marks for the assignments if you put the effort in, and go to consults if you find problems! The tutors will help. The mid-semester test I believe was 15 online questions in 30minutes, which again, wasn’t too hard as it was only conducted in week 4 or 5, where the only real content we had learnt was hypothesis tests. Again, the tutorial participation should really be a free 10%! The tutors don’t care if you get the questions wrong, only if you show an effort, so just do them. It was quite common to go into the exam with 25/30% of the marks available or higher. Oh and the assignments are to be done in pairs or alone.

Lastly, the exam. Honestly it was just a general rehash of the assignments. If you were familiar with the assignments then you would recognise the exam. The only problem I faced was that the random walk/non-stationary time series crap I yapped on about earlier, constituted 7 marks of the 70 available on the exam. So it was quite rough considering it was on one lecture and probably the hardest concept overall in the subject. Other than that the other 63 marks should have been easily attainable (I think…haven’t got my mark back yet).

Overall, QM2 was a lot better than QM1 hah.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yacoubb on June 17, 2016, 06:14:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: CCDP20001: Street Art 

Workload:  x1 2-hour lecture/tutorial per week

Assessment:

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Not Applicable

Textbook Recommendation:  Not applicable

Lecturer(s): Dr. Christopher Honig

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments:

This breadth subject was a breath of fresh air. I can safely say that I enjoyed every minute of it, and as cheesy as it sounds, I can safely say that my view on Street Art has completely changed. It is a subject that focuses less on a plethora of assessments, and more on an open discussion about Street Art as a practice. Dr. Christopher Honig has a vast knowledge of the world of Street Art, and really strives to make the environment a great learning experience where all ideas are open. Discussions arise regarding the practice of Street Art, and how Street Art is depicted in the media. It is very interesting to sit in an environment where everyone is willing to throw in ideas.

The contact hours only consist of one, two-hour tutorial/lecture. I say this because it is not just two hours of being fed information, but rather, open to discussion and debate. Furthermore, you learn to appreciate Street Art not just as vandalism or graffiti, but truly as an expression of art in a form society doesn't necessarily accept.

In regards to assessments, they are honestly very accessible and very easy to do well in if you just tick the key points specified. The first assignment involves taking five photographs of street art, and developing a coherent essay drawing on some of the concepts explored in class. Each photograph is accompanied by a small caption (around 100-150 words). The second assignment takes a bit more work, but is still accessible. You essentially choose five locations of street art, and you develop a thesis that you base your walking tour on. Each photograph you take of one location, is accompanied by a small piece of writing (no more than 200 words), that explores and elaborates on your ideas.

As a bonus, you get to do fun activities like actually practising street art (outside of contact hours). You are taken to various locations and taught techniques of street artistry. Throughout the semester, there are also walking tours in different locations such as Hosier Lane and lane ways in Fitzroy, where you can discuss topics previously explored whilst indulging in street art.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this subject. It is very below the radar and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to do a very interesting subject, which in my opinion is relatively easy to do well in if you adhere to the guidelines of the assessment!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on June 17, 2016, 06:29:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10005/Quantitative Methods 1 

Workload: 2 x 1hr lecture, 1 x 1hr tute per week

Assessment:  3 x 10% group assignments worth 30% total; 1 x 70% end of semester exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: There are a few in the library, but many of these are obsolete. Jon releases a few sets of short answer questions, but there weren’t any full exams when I prepared.

Textbook Recommendation:  Business Statistics: Australia and New Zealand, 6th Edition, by E. A. Selvanathan, S. Selvanathan and G. Keller (published by Cengage Learning Australia, 2014).

I didn’t get it, neither did most of my friends. I’ve heard there were a few decent practice questions in there, but you can learn the content easily enough without it.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Jonathan Thong

Year & Semester of Completion: 2016, Sem 1

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Lectures:

Throughout most of the semester, me and my friends were floored when we went to these. The first few weeks are easy enough, a basic introduction to statistics and looking at the four descriptive statistics that will be the foundation of most of your studies in this subject.

However, after the first few weeks, things got difficult.

Jon talks in a very sophisticated tone and his expression is very verbose. This is not a criticism, but just be prepared for some head-scratching and trying to figure out what he just said. The content moves from relatively easy things to derivations involving the summation operator. Me (and most people in the theatre) were completely lost in these, and this happened for most of the semester up until the end where it started to click.

Jon covers things at a very fast pace, so be prepared to go home and review what you’ve learnt in the lectures or else you will fall behind.

The course covers probability theory, statistical analysis, regression and then basic inference at the end (which really brings everything together). The course may seem confusing and disjointed at first, but by the end you will have a good grasp of basic statistical theory, and you’ll see how everything is linked together which helps your understanding.
This is not to mention his sometimes peculiar fashion choices, but I’ll leave that for future students to discover ;).

Tutes:

Tbh I didn’t do much work at all for these (which is probably why I had no idea what was going on most of the time LOL). Jon gives you a sheet of questions that you are supposed to do, then the tutor goes through them in class and gives you an opportunity to ask questions. They are done pretty quickly, most tutes only lasted for 40 minutes or so. Pretty standard stuff really.

There isn’t the blue/pink sheet system used in other subjects such as micro, which I feel could be better in aiding the applying of concepts.

Assignments:

You could choose to either work in a group or by yourself, so to share the workload I’d recommend you find some people in your tute to work with. It’s also a decent way to make friends.

Anyways, assignments were not too tricky. They mostly comprise of a set of extended response questions – some data presentation/analysis, some probability theory and some inference/hypothesis testing. They’re a relatively easy way to get a firewall before you head into the exam, but make sure to start early. Finishing it at 3am the day before it’s due is not conducive for good marks.

Assignments also help build the foundations for exam preparation. The questions aren’t really similar, but they are effective at teaching you the content (I learnt most of the course doing research for assignments rather than lectures themselves). Make sure you do you fair share. It may seem like a blessing to have your group do most of the work, but believe me I was glad I did the lion’s share of some assignments as it really helped my understanding of content.

Regarding the controversy;

This semester, QM1 was mired in controversy and allegations of cheating. What had happened was that students had got their hands on previous assignment solutions, and since assignments don’t tend to change too much some students therefore had the answers to this semesters assignment.

Some students were so lazy that they directly copied the numbers from last years. The question was the same, but apparently the numbers in the question were different, so some groups had the exact same wrong answer that was exactly the same as last year’s solutions.

This got alarm bells ringing.

Jon sent us a number of emails, informing us of the situation above. Those groups will/were forced to go to a faculty meeting to discuss their position at the university. Additionally, Jon offered an amnesty to students who may have cheated and allowed them to apologize and receive a 0 for the questions under investigation. If they were caught out and didn’t come forward, they’d receive a 0 for the entire assignment and an academic reprimand – something you don’t want employers to see.

Then, it was discovered that for another assignment someone had posted the questions on a website that does that work for you. Jon was furious, promising that the full weight of the universities legal and IT teams would bear down on us.

Understandably, most of the cohort was scared shitless, and developed a hostility towards Jon (which I feel was uncalled for).

Personally, I never did anything untoward but I found his incessant emails (seriously, he sent like 6000 words in total) about the scandal annoying. They were somewhat threatening – he said innocent people such as myself would be inevitably punished for the actions of the cheating few, which I found an unwanted distraction leading into the exam period.

In any case, I’ve not heard anything about the matter as of now so I assume that the cheaters have been punished/faced their proceedings.

For what it’s worth, I heard of some person in our cohort set up an apology with Jon, where he/she was told to “not do it again”.

I don’t mean to paint a bad picture of Jon. He’s a nice bloke and he’s more than happy to answer questions after lectures. Hell, he even had a good laugh about our antics on Facebook by personally messaging a few of my friends. He’s extremely knowledgeable and well qualified, so if you pay attention and do the work you will have a good time with him as your lecturer. Plus he seems like a chill dude from his demeanor etc.

So yeah, don't think I'm having a go at him here. He's a nice guy and he got justifiably upset at people cheating on his assignments.

Exam:

As mentioned above, I had no idea what was going on throughout most of this course. I was completely lost, and seriously worrying about failing and having to do this subject again in Semester 2.

However, going through the tutorial sheets and cramming his lecture notes, this subject actually started to become enjoyable and I managed to understand most of it. My message to people doing QM1: Don’t be concerned if you’re lost – just try to keep up in the Semester and eventually everything will click in SWOTVAC.

The exam itself I found was pretty easy. It’s 15 multiple choice questions (worth 2 each) and 5 short answer questions worth 40 total, so the exam was out of 70 (corresponding to its weighting of the overall grade).

The MC was relatively difficult; it was mostly a testing of understanding of statistical/probability concepts rather than manual computation.

The short answer was better, there was more calculation and required a less in-depth knowledge to answer the questions.
If you can do the tutorial sheets, you can get through this exam without much stress. As I mentioned above Jon also releases a few sets of short answer questions which were similar in style to those on the exam.

Do not use the exams from the library as an indication of what exams are like - they aren't similar to the new course at all.

TL;DR-
-   Tough subject at first, but stick at it and it will click eventually
-   Exam wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be
-   Became somewhat enjoyable at the end
-   Jon is a nice bloke and a good lecturer
-   Not as bad a subject as its reputation suggests, but could do with more questions/work for application of content throughout the semester

With the turbulent semester and lack of consistent practice problems to consolidate knowledge, I give it a 3.5/5.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: teexo on June 17, 2016, 11:50:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30001: Financial Accounting Theory

Workload: 2 x 1hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial a week

Assessment: 1.5hr mid sem test (20%), group assignment (10%), 3hr exam (70%). The handbook says the 10% component is tute participation, but it's actually a group assignment (but a pretty straightforward one – hence worth 10%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: None because the content changed this semester, but the first half of the subject had practice qs which were of a similar style to the exam qs.

Textbook Recommendation: For the first half, it was Business Analysis & Valuation: Using Financial Statements, lecture slides pretty much rephrase the content in the textbook. For the second half, the readings were from various textbooks but photocopies of the relevant chapters were posted on LMS, lecture slides along with tute qs cover the content in the chapters. All tute qs are on LMS so it's up to you, if you’re a textbook kinda student then read it, if not you’ll be fine without it.

Lecturer(s): Bo Qin, Matt Pinnuck

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, semester 1

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Here’s to my 5th accounting subject review. I would like to say my reviews get better and better but that would arguably be a lie. Anyway.

This subject felt like two different subjects. Bo took the first half which was more quantitative and focused on identifying issues in financial statements, ratios and valuation, but note that no formula sheet is provided in the mid sem and exam (this is where Business Finance comes into play – if you still remember those formulas), I still remember the outrage when Bo announced in the lecture there would be no formula sheet haha poor guy (to be fair, there were < 10 formulas). During Bo’s half, you will feel overwhelmed with info because his lectures and tute qs are ridiculously long and convoluted, but when you take a step back at the end of it all, you’ll realise a lot of the content is repetitive and linked, so there’s actually not that much to understand/memorise.

Matt took the second half of the subject and his half puts the ‘theory’ in Financial Accounting Theory. Matt’s half is very qualitative and focuses on addressing info asymmetry through producing financial statements. There is actually a fair bit of content in Matt’s half, which is why it really feels like a separate subject altogether. Matt actually gets through all his lecture slides (unlike Bo) although he talks quite fast so you have to be reasonably switched on, and he's also very funny/enthusiastic which is hilariously great.

I’m not sure how I feel about this subject, my emotions may become clearer once I get my result… The first half felt like Business Finance mixed with IFA/IFA2, the second half felt like ARA minus calculations/journal entries? I know, it's a bit of a poor attempt on my behalf at describing this subject, but it doesn’t really matter how I feel in the scheme of things, the subject is what it is and you have to do it to major in accounting. Here’s a smiley face to end this review on a light note :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yacoubb on June 18, 2016, 11:16:09 am
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20001: Principles of Microbiology and Immunology  

Workload:  x3 one hour lectures, x2 one and a half-hour practicals (held weeks 11 and 12)

Assessment: 
- x12 Weekly Quizzes (10%)
- Mid-Semester Test (20%)
- Post-Practical Quiz Online (2%)
- End of Semester Examination (68%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past examinations were available. The last lecture was a revision/integration lecture that had sample question types.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbooks are Prescott's Microbiology by Willey J, Sherwood L, Woolverton C and Molecular Biology of the Cell, Alberts et al, 6th edn, 2014.

** Personally, I didn't find the textbooks really necessary. The lecture content is sufficient. However, if I were in need of a textbook, Prescott's Microbiology was a great resource.

Lecturer(s): Dr Karena Waller, Associate Professor Jason Mackenzie, Dr Sacha Pidot, Professor Andrew Brooks, Dr Catherine Kennedy and Dr Laura Mackay

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:

From year 12 I have been very passionate about all things Immunology and Microbiology. My chosen major is Human Structures and Functions, but I wanted to dabble in a little bit of Immunology because I thought it would be an opening experience to something I was quite passionate about. This subject made me realise why I thoroughly enjoyed Immunology and Microbiology.

Lectures:
There are three lectures every week in one-hour time slots. The lectures cover a variety of topics, including:
* History of Immunology and Microbiology
* The secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells.
* Immunology (innate immune response, acquired immune response)
* The Microbial World - Bacteria, Parasites and Fungi
* Mobile DNA elements - nature of microbial DNA, use of mobile DNA elements for horizontal gene transfer, etc.
* Bacteria - Pathogenesis, Toxicity and Antibiotics
* Viruses and Prions
* Recombinant DNA Technology
* Vaccines

Associate Professor Jason Mackenzie - he takes the lectures on the secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells, as well as viruses & prions. Prepare for many examples. The theoretical aspect of viruses is extremely interesting, however, he does digress quite a lot and discuss his own personal accomplishments. There are a lot of examples he expects you to memorise for the purposes of the exam/mid-semester test. My biggest piece of advice would be to learn examples that have been repeated on a regular basis. Otherwise, the content on viruses, prions and the secretory pathway were thoroughly enjoyable.

Dr Laura Mackay: FAVOURITE lecturer! Not only does Dr Laura have a vast knowledge of all things Immunology-related, she also understood we were second year Immunology students and thus made sure every detail was explained thoroughly. Furthermore, her lecture content was the most interesting and relatable to what I know Immunology encompassed. Her lecture content was straightforward, and exam questions were a lot more theoretical based than necessarily just rote learning examples. This made it an enjoyable part of the course to review. Content-wise, the lectures were just extensions from VCE Biology Immunology, where those specific answers you couldn't get to your questions in year 12 are finally going to be answered.

Dr Karena Waller - what I loved about her lectures is that she listed everything in the exact amount of detail we needed to learn about it for the exam. She covered the lecture on the history of Microbiology/Immunology, as well as the introductory lectures into Bacteria, Parasites and Fungi. It was a great way of paving the path for our knowledge of how each of the aforementioned microorganisms function, and in some cases cause disease. Expect to know approximately seven different diseases in detail (e.g. Malaria, Giardiasis, etc.). Once again, the notes she provides for these diseases are more than sufficient for you to know how to answer questions on the exam and mid-semester test.

Dr Sacha Pidot - Dr Sacha covered the content on DNA and genetics/genomics of microorganisms, as well as how mobile DNA elements such as bacteriophages, plasmids and transposons can all be used to transfer DNA between different bacteria. I personally found this to be the least interesting part of the course; however, in saying that, I think the content on mobile DNA elements was quite interesting. Dr Sacha puts up questions during the lectures to sort of test your knowledge. Although these are good to test your knowledge, they're quite easy and majority of the students get the answers right. Dr Sacha is always shocked that we knew the answers to the quizzes. Okay Sacha.. okay.

Dr Catherine Kennedy - Dr Catherine Kennedy took us through an extension of Bacteria, focusing particularly on pathogenesis, toxicity and antibiotics against bacteria. The content on bacteria was thoroughly enjoyable. There is quite a lot to remember for Dr Catherine's lectures, particularly about the different toxins produced by bacteria for pathogenesis, as well as antibiotics that are used against bacteria. Nonetheless, if you prepare for it adequately, it is relatively straightforward.

Associate Prof. Andrew Brooks - he took the lecture on vaccines. I thought the content he gave was quite straightforward, and he elaborates on the fundamentals of vaccines, the different types of vaccines available, etc.

Assessments:

1. Weekly Quizzes: the weekly quizzes are completed online, and often involve completing 6-9 questions (approximately 3 questions per lecture). The questions are usually quite straightforward and the answers can often be derived straight from the lecture notes, so it can be completed open book. You have a time-limit of two hours. An important thing to consider though is that in this quiz, you cannot go back to fix your answers. Once you submit an answer to a question, you cannot go back and change it, so make sure you have properly answered it.

2. Mid-Semester Test: personally, I found the mid-semester test very accessible. I scored 36/40 for it. As long as you revise the lecture content thoroughly, you will be prepared for the examination as it is essentially a lot of rote learning. It is carried out around week 6/7, and there are 40 multiple choice questions to complete.

3. Examination: okay, so the one thing about this subject which for many people is the deal-breaker is the amount of content. I am not going to sugar coat it, there is a LOT. As long as you can keep up to date, and understand the theoretical concepts + specific examples, the examination shouldn't be too difficult. Overall, I didn't find the exam to be too difficult, however, it was important that I remembered specific examples if I wanted to do well.

The exam has three sections: section A (multiple choice), section B (fill-in-the-blanks) and section C (short-answer).

Overall, I found this subject to be very enjoyable. I think if you want to dabble in a bit of Microbiology and Immunology, this is the perfect subject to take. I will be doing MIIM20002, purely because of how much I enjoyed this subject. Definitely worth doing! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: royhw7 on June 23, 2016, 05:17:58 am
Subject Code/Name: MGMT30015 Managing Work and Your Career  

Workload:  1 x 2 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorial each week

Assessment:  30% case analysis (in pairs), 20% career plan (15% marked by tutor, 5% peer assessment), 50% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  2013, 2015 final can be found in library

Textbook Recommendation:  No prescribed textbook, 2-3 readings assigned each week

Lecturer(s): Stephanie Flanagan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I highly recommend this subject for students who have no clue as to what they want to do for a career, or even those who need better clarity in their career paths. I actually found the best part of the subject to be the weekly personality tests (e.g Big Five, FIRO-B, Holland's, tolerance of ambiguity, political skills, networking). I felt that they were really helpful in painting a bigger picture of the type of person I am and how I can manage myself in my career. The best part is that you get to meet others in the tutorials with completely different career aspirations and see how everyone views career success. Lecture content can get fluffy at times (like most management subjects), and mostly requires common sense, nonetheless the material covered was definitely practical and relevant before going into the working world.

The subject only had one lecturer and one tutor throughout. My cohort was about 70 people and lectures were quite interactive. Stephanie graduated from uni not too long ago. She made sure the lectures were dynamic and engaging, which I had to get used to at first but appreciated later on. We had a guest speaker from SEEK who came to speak about recruitment and selection, but I missed the lecture. The tutor, Kris, was really nice as well. Tutorials were very easy to sit through and interesting at most times. Most of the weeks we did personality tests during the tutorials so it was relaxed.

The assessments were due at week 10 and 12 and it could be quite a pain if left for last minute. The first assessment was a 30% case study analysis done in pairs. We had an ice breaker and other opportunities to speak with each other in tutorial, so get to know your classmates well and find a suitable partner. I had a good partner and we scored an 87. The second assessment was a 20% comprehensive career plan done individually, and it required no referencing whatsoever, just your own opinion. We had to present our draft to our table in the week 11 tutorial (which was mainly to get feedback), and usually three to four others in your table would give you a mark out of a 100 based on a set criteria. An average would be taken from it and that would make up 5% out of the 20. Get good mates you already get along with to be at your table so they won't be too harsh. I got helpful feedback from my table which I took on board for writing my career plan and managed to get a 93 for it (partially thanks to them!).

The 50% final exam was 2 hours and had 3 sections. First section we had to choose 4 out of 7 short answer questions (20 marks). Second section is an essay about career success (15 marks). Third section was a case study with short questions (15 marks). The test was pretty straightforward. I didn't have time to study every theory or concept (I had 3 papers in that week) so I selected specific parts of each lecture to study and it worked for me. Also, you could plan the second section beforehand about career success. This subject had 30 minutes of reading time and you could also annotate, which is plenty of time to read the case and think about every question.

Overall, I think this subject could be really helpful or a waste of time depending on what you make of it. Clearly i wanted to make the most out of it as I pay a bomb as an international student, but yea, one of the most helpful subjects in my degree B.Com (Finance & Management).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on June 23, 2016, 12:46:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW20001 Corporate Law 
Workload:  (specify how many lectures, pracs, tutes ect. and their duration)

Assessment:  Tutorial participation 10%, assignment 15%, exam 75%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep

Past exams available:  We were given 2, but many more can be found on unimelb library site.

Textbook Recommendation: Hanrahan, Ramsay, and Stapledon, Commercial Applications of Company Law (CCH, latest edition). I definitely recommend it, pretty helpful.

Lecturer(s): Helen Anderson

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Corp law was a pretty interesting subject. Coming into it, I pretty much had no idea what to expect. Blaw really doesn’t provide a foundation of law and the tutors in corp law acknowledged that and pretty much introduced the subject as if it was most students first law subject. A very very high percentage of students doing corp law are obviously commerce students, as the accounting breadth track requires corp law. So in tutes be prepared to deal with a lot of silence from everyone. Anyway I’ll break up my review into lectures, tutorials, assignments, and exam.

So Helen is the lecturer and honestly she’s pretty good. She does quite well for such a dry subject and uses a really good wide range of analogies to help students understand weird concepts and why they are in the legislation. The lectures themselves consist of key points that Helen talks about and provides a greater understanding. For example the lecture might say “Section 198A”, and Helen will then go into the detail about that section and why it’s important. So it’s pretty useful to go to lectures, and not just read slides. I highly recommend writing notes during lectures as these generally are the main points that are examinable. In addition, a lot of the content is found in the textbook. So it’s pretty helpful to either use the textbook readings to reinforce the lecture knowledge, or vice versa. I highly recommend though going through the textbook readings even if they’re a bit time consuming, I found they really help (and especially for getting good marks on the first assignment). Anyway overall the lectures are pretty good, they have the usual 10minute break in the middle as it’s a 2 hour lecture so people often go ask Helen questions or grab a coffee.

Coming into tutorials I was pretty lost. The questions are hard – they usually are past exam questions that have been changed a tiny bit. So don’t been demotivated or anything, just give it shot. The first thing to note is that for every tutorial there is a few set law questions (cases) that require you to provide/structure a response. However require is loosely termed because the tutors do not check your work. Tutorial participation is based solely off of participation in class like raising your hand and answering questions. Therefore while it may not be necessary to do the physical writing, it probably will help you get the tutorial participation marks cause you know your stuff and can answer tutor’s questions. As I said before, this subject is heavily dominated by accounting majors, so I heard that tutorials were often met with dead silence. In that case, it’s pretty easy to get tutorial participation but don’t assume you can just pick it up in week 9-10 and get full marks. Make sure you at least put a little effort to contribute in the early weeks ☺ Tutorials themselves are pretty good. The answers to questions are never posted on LMS or anything, so it’s up to you to take notes that you can reflect on in swotvac for the exam. I had David ‘the babovinator’ Babovic as my tutor and he was pretty damn good. He definitely knew his material and would cite legislation off the top of his head, which stunned the majority of the class. I would definitely recommend him as a tutor, one of the best tutors I’ve had and he generally marks your assignment in a good way and isn’t too harsh. Top bloke is all I have to say about him.

Assignments: So the assignment is a no more than 1500 word response to a proposed case, worth 15% (? Iirc) and due somewhere around week 4-5. As it’s due so early in the semester, it’s pretty easy to gauge what key points are in it as there isn’t really that much content. This is where I would definitely suggest reading the textbook because the textbook kind of links sections together where otherwise you would have had no idea. Helen is also pretty useful as she told us a few things would be present on the assignment in the lectures. Getting good marks on the assignment is a lot about just mentioning the particulars so be pretty exact in what you’re saying.

Exam was pretty well done. It’s an open book exam so you can take in whatever you want. I had a 30page binded book I made full of notes and a table of contents. It was super helpful, much more than the textbook itself could be. As Helen says, “the questions change but the answers pretty much stay the same”. We were provided with 2 recent past exams, and plenty more are available on the unimelb library site so there should be no shortage of exam questions. In addition, a lot of the past exam questions become tutorial questions so if you took notes through those tutes then you’re sitting pretty. During SWOTVAC, there was exam consultation sessions and revision lectures. The revision lectures were just a tutor in a lecture theatre who would answer questions by students so you can’t just rely to go to one of these to revise the whole course. I would suggest going to these even if you don’t have any questions (but make sure you have already done some revision otherwise it will go over your head). Helen answered a past exam question about a day before the actual exam and touched on something I would have never thought of and luck has it something similar appeared on the actual exam. The exam itself was alright…I don’t know lol, I haven’t got my mark back but I felt it went okay.

Anyway that’s it. Corp law was a good subject and I definitely enjoyed it – it is more difficult than blaw that’s for sure but it’s also more interesting. If you can, stay up to date with content because I don’t know how easy it would be to cram this subject.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Snorlax on June 24, 2016, 04:31:47 pm
Subject Code/Name: FOOD20003 Food Chemistry, Biology and Nutrition

Workload:  1x2hr lecture, 1x1hr lecture, 1x1hr tutorial

Assessment:  1hr Mid semester exam in week6 (20%), 1000 word research research assignment due at the end of semester before SWOTVAC (20%), 2hr final exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  None - No practice questions either

Textbook Recommendation:  Understanding Nutrition: Australian and New Zealand edition (2014)  - Encouraged to purchase (One of our lecturers was involved in reviewing the literature), and quite useful coming final exam time. There's like 10 copies in the library, so probably best not to buy it.

Lecturer(s): Dr Ken Ng, Professor(retired) Neil Mann

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Anniejoy sums up the subject here. It is indeed very basic Biology and Chemistry, very interesting and extremely applicable! :)

Each week you would have a 2hr lecture with Neil, and a 1hr lecture with Ken, with each of them covering a different topic (a topic usually took 2-3 weeks because of the rotating lectures).
(I personally never went to Ken's lectures because they were at 8am..)

Lectures:

An overview of Nutrition (Lectures 1&3)
Carbohydrates (Lectures 2,4,6)
Digestion&absorption (L3,5)
Protein (you get the point...)
Lipids
Water soluble vitamins
Metabolism
Water and minerals
Fat soluble vitamins
Energy balance and body composition
Weight management
Sugars&Health
Diet planning
Dietary fibres

Overall, the lectures were quite easy to go over, and very interesting! The first half of the semester was quite easy to grasp, and the second half a bit more rote learning required (such as all the vitamins/minerals). Overall quite relaxing content wise. If you're planning on studying Human Physiology or Biochemistry, I probably recommend taking them along side this to make it even easier  for you (I personally didn't take Biochem, but I heard it helps).
A reason why I gave it a 4.5/5 was the fact one lecture was 2hours long (I know many subjects have these..but it is quite draining..), and the other lecture being at 8am..
You could tell both lecturers were quite passionate about what they were teaching and very knowledgeable.
Ken's heavy (Malaysian?) accent was sometimes difficult to understand through Lecture capture.
Neil is a retired professor at RMIT who is very concise and exceptionally knowledgeable - he's up there being one of my favourite lecturers.

Tutorials:
Personally only went to the very first couple and a few weeks leading up to the end of semester. In these tutorials you would go over pretty cool programs that can help with diet planning etc and also very simple questions from the textbook. Definitely not required to go to these, but it's just a good bonus (lol).

Mid semester exam:
No practice questions for this, and was recommended to do end of chapter review questions in the textbook. These questions were pretty similar to the MST so it wouldn't hurt to do them.
By far the easiest MST i've ever probably taken. It was 1hr long held (4weeks) after the break. It consisted of 60 MC and wasn't too difficult. I believe the average was 80+? and definitely quite manageable to get 90/95% - Saying this only one person did get full marks.
We didn't receive the MST back, but you were able to book an appointment with Ken to see the answers.
Ken mentioned that he would have liked the average to be around 60 and so I am quite certain they will be changing it up in the subsequent years.

Research assignment:
This was a 1000 word assignment about 1 of 4 topics you were able to choose from. You get told briefly about the assignment very early in the year, with actual details coming out around mid sem. It was originally due in week11 however it was pushed back to week12.
One of Ken's lecture slots was also replaced with a guest librarian who would go over how to do literature searches/navigate through the library website and all that good jazz which was very helpful. Overall, this assignment wasn't too bad because of the fact you could only cover so much in 1000 words. They (Neil in particular) reassured us that we wouldn't be able to cover a lot of things in detail with the word limit so you could do really well without getting that in depth with the topic you choose.

Exam:
The exam was 2hrs and consisted of Section A (45MC) and Section B (8 SA questions) - both sections 60 marks each.
Now because the MST was pretty easy, Ken told us the MC would be more demanding rather than being straight recall questions, and it definitely was - they really required you to know the details quite thoroughly...Some I thought were pretty damn picky, but overall quite fair.
SA questions weren't too difficult and quite simple questions. Questions like 'list', 'define', 'explain', so you do really need to know your stuff to do well.
Down side was I do think the questions could have been worded better. Some seemed very vague and open to interpretation.
Overall, quite a fair exam - more on the easy side.
In preparation for this exam, you weren't given much resources. Only thing you could rely on was the textbook.

Thoughts:
Both lecturers were very approachable and helpful when I had questions. Because Neil wasn't like an 'official' unimelb lecturer, he didn't know much about the administrative stuff, so If you have questions about MST, exam and all that good stuff, then Ken was the go-to man. It wasn't the most organised subject ever, but a simple email could solve your worries.
This subject has been one of my favourite so far, and I encourage you consider it if you're interested in health/nutrition.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Orb on June 24, 2016, 08:42:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: EDUC10057 Wellbeing, Motivation and Performance

Workload:  1 x two hour lecture and 1 x one hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 1500 word midterm assignment (35%), 2500 word final assignment (65%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Positive Psychology: The Science and Happiness of Flourishing, 2nd edition (2013)

Lecturer(s): Dr Gavin Slemp

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Going to split my review into two parts:
1- Thoughts on the subject in and of itself
2- Thoughts on the grading system

Wellbeing, Motivation and Performance is, hands down, the most enjoyable subject i've taken in the past 5 years. Yes, it deserves that sort of praise. So why did I give it a 4.5/5 then? The grading system. This, in my opinion, leaves a bit to be desired (but still pretty fair in all honesty).

The subject is based on a new and emerging branch of psychology called positive psychology. It focuses on improving your mental well being through a series of lectures as well as neatly designed assignments to complement your learning. Around halfway through this semester, it was the only subject where I would continue attending lectures, simply because there was so much to get out of them. The practicality of this subject makes it incredibly desirable, as I could feel my own wellbeing levels increasing on a very tangible level every week. It sounds too good to be true, but at the end of completing the subject, I could feel myself adopting a happier and more enthusiastic stance to general events.

Lectures
Gavin was incredibly knowledgeable and highly recommended as a lecturer. Not only did he know his stuff, but he's also the kind of lecturer that I'd happily sit in a lecture theater for two hours to listen to, not the same can be said for some of the lecturers in my other subjects. Content was discussed very nicely and most were presented with a lot of real-world examples, allowing us to see real-world applications of these theoretical concepts.

Tutorials
The tutorials adopted a more hands-on approach, allowing us to practice what we've learned during the lectures in person. It was a very welcoming atmosphere and definitely did not need the compulsory attendance for me to turn up.

Assignments
Here lies my sole complaint (which i guess isn't even a fault of the subject co-ordinators themselves, but rather my own fault). I found the grading on the assignments to be highly subjective (as expected), not very rewarding of effort (probably should be expected) and a very tough criteria for a high H1 (and again, probably could've foreseen this). Despite spending more time on this subject than any other subject (again, quality > quantity I guess), I felt grades didn't quite reflect effort here (which is, I guess, something i've taken for granted throughout high school).

In short, if you're doing this subject for a WAM boost, don't take it. If you're thinking of taking this for all the amazing things that you can learn, then definitely do so. You only get out how much you put in :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 25, 2016, 02:52:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002: Biomedicine: Molecule to Malady

Workload:
- Contact hours: three 1-hour lectures per week plus two 1-hour tutorials per semester.
- Total time commitment: 170 hours

A word on the tutorials: the handbook is a bit misleading. Essentially, this subject relies on having six lectures for each of the six modules, so the tutorial timeslot has been timetabled in to account for any loss of lessons, whether that be due to a public holiday or in allowance of a lecturer going overtime. Most weeks, the tutorial timeslot seemed to run for one reason or another: there was one non-examinable tutorial, but otherwise these were used for module summaries, mid-semester test reviews or sometimes a patient interview. Note that the tutorial time may actually be assigned to deliver a lecture with another one of the timetabled lecture timeslots being designated for tutorial purposes.

In any case, you will have 36 lectures for this subject.

Assessment: 2 x 45min intra-semester tests (20% each) around weeks 6 and 10; 3 hr written examination in the final examination period (60%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No. However, questions are available for revision. At the end of each week feedback quizzes are released, delivering some fairly basic but important questions to review the week's content. Prior to the mid-semester tests and the exam, multiple choice quizzes containing previous year's questions are provided. This year for the first time a handful of short answer questions were also released in order to prepare for the exam. You should get adequate practice through these.

Textbook Recommendation: None. It is anticipated that students will access standard reference texts on anatomy, physiology, pathology, biochemistry & molecular biology, microbiology & immunology, pharmacology and clinical medicine. Key references and review articles will be provided via the LMS.

The review articles are provided due to the fact that there is no textbook for this subject. I never read them, so they are not directly examinable.

To supplement any areas of uncertainty, a frequently asked questions page is put up on the LMS with lecturers providing detailed responses to student questions. I often found these contained superfluous information that was beyond the scope of the course, so use them as you see fit.

Lecturer(s):

Co-ordinators (do not provide lectures but are responsible for the co-ordination of the subject):
- Mrs Helen Cain
- Assoc Prof Fred Hollande
- Prof Dick Strugnell

I think we saw Fred and Dick at the very first lecture and that was it, so I'm pretty sure they do a lot of work behind the scenes. You'll see Helen every lecture though; she sits through each lecture to ensure all the guest lecturers know what they're doing and also as a means of quality control. She's probably the person to contact if you have any problems.

Lecturers:

Module 1: Pandemics
- Prof Sharon Lewin: HIV (3 lectures)
- Prof James Beeson: malaria pathogenesis (2 lectures)
- Dr Rick Ataide: malaria treatment (1 lecture)
- Dr Justin Denholm: ethics in pandemics (non-examinable tutorial)

Module 2: Muscular dystrophy
- Prof Monique Ryan: review of muscle physiology (1 lecture)
- Dr Eppie Yiu: muscular dystrophy (5 lectures)

Module 3: B cells and associated diseases
- Prof David Tarlinton (6 lectures)

Module 4: Cystic fibrosis
- Prof Sylvia Metcalfe: clinical genetics of cystic fibrosis (3 lectures)
- Dr Joanne Harrison: clinical presentation and management of cystic fibrosis (3 lectures)

Module 5: Neurodegeneration
- Prof Malcolm Horne: introduction to neurodegeneration (1 lecture)
- Prof Roberto Cappai: Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease (5 lectures)

Module 6: Rheumatoid arthritis
- Dr John Moi: clinical presentation and management of rheumatoid arthritis (4 lectures)
- Dr Nicole Walsh: molecular basis of synovial and bone pathology in rheumatoid arthritis (2 lectures)

Some of these are clinicians while others are researchers. Regardless, you will be exposed to a variety of very interesting and unique insights to each of these topics throughout the semester.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This is probably my favourite Biomedicine core subject to date (and most likely for the entire degree, given how the reviews for BIOM30001 Frontiers in Biomedicine read). It's the first subject where you start to get a bit of a clinical feel to the world of biomedicine. This is achieved through the patient interviews (a highlight of the subject) but also in the nature of the content, which spends a lot of time on clinical presentation and management. Given that many in the course are aspiring for clinical pathways, I think a lot of people really enjoyed it.

A lot of people like to draw comparisons with this subject and BIOM20001 Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine; personally, I preferred this subject because as a 12.5 credit point subject the workload felt a lot more manageable. I'd also say the general concepts are much easier in this subject; this is supported by the fact that this subject had lower fail rates than BIOM20001 for both mid-semester tests (only about 4% of people failed in each case, compared to about 10% for our cohort in BIOM20001). However, doing well is a lot more difficult. Personally, based on my performance in assessments, my marks fell and I'm not confident on the H1, and the proportion of students attaining H1 in this subject is much lower compared to other second and third year biomedical science subjects (it hovers around 30% compared to 40%+). This is because the assessment is of an incredibly high quality (i.e. a lot of effort is put in to creating good distractors in the multiple choice assessments), but also, due to the nature of the content. In BIOM20001 the concepts are, in my opinion, more involved and difficult, and you have to put more work into understanding them, but once you know it, there are no surprises. In comparison, in this subject it's really easy for the concepts to just make sense (for example is easy to generalise that the proximal limb muscles are implicated in Duchenne muscular dystrophy) so you kind of accept them as having been memorised, only to realise in the assessment that they're really trying to focus on the small details (like the exact progression of specific muscles and comparing and contrasting which muscles are involved in different diseases). It's difficult to say how to manage this other than to review regularly. I think most people's marks fell in one way or another.

With co-ordination by Helen, this subject was always going to be extremely well run. The deduction of half a point in my score is simply me being picky about a couple of bumps along the way in regards to timetabling, clashes and one particular module which didn't exactly go to plan this year (I won't say it out of respect for the staff involved). Assessments had to be moved to early morning timeslots because many of the third year biomedical subjects (stupidly, in my opinion) clashed their assessments at the same time, making things rather difficult for us. I kind of wish subject timetabling would be better run at the university's end, because my timetable was pretty horrendous this semester. This subject had a lot of early morning and late afternoon lectures for us; it was frustrating but at the same time when you have doctors working in the field I guess you have to allow for their day jobs. Otherwise, despite the fact that so many new and different lecturers come in, the subject felt really cohesive and well-organised.

The patient interviews were definitely the best part of this subject. They were either run in tutorial timeslots or were designated time in one of the six core lectures for each module. Every module except B cell diseases had a patient interview. These were generally non-examinable although sometimes they clarified your understanding in one way or another. I found it to be a really good reminder of why I was sitting in the lecture theatre working through my degree. I commend the co-ordinators for bringing this initiative into this subject.

I'll spend a bit of time talking about some of the details of each module so that you get a bit of a feel for what they're like. From what I can gather, these six modules have been the same for the entire life of the subject, although their order and the content that is covered changes from year to year (evident in previous subject reviews which seem to describe a different order and also different topics or focus points and from different staff). In all cases, the six lectures are really spent going through the "molecule to malady" concept - understanding why the patient presents the way they do through the underlying molecular pathology, and then using this to guide management principles and devise possible future therapies. The focus this year seemed to be a lot more on the treatment side of things compared to last year, where the subject appeared to deal more with the molecular pathology. For this reason, just be careful if you have any old resources (I mention this because with the lecture capture problems this year we had some old recordings put up, but a lot of them came across as irrelevant to 2016). However, it should be noted that some modules are more "clinical" than others (pandemics, muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis) while others have a stronger research focus (B cell diseases and neurodegeneration), with rheumatoid arthritis probably sitting somewhere in the middle, in my opinion.

There's a fair amount of discussion as to whether any majors will assist in studies of BIOM30002 due to overlap of subject content. There seems to be a general consensus that microbiology/immunology and pathology students had a particularly advantageous background; the postulate about pathology makes sense to me (although I hear the core subject isn't so great), but I'm not so sure about microbiology/immunology. A lot of the diseases dealt with do involve inflammation, so there may be a slight advantage, but otherwise I felt that different majors lent themselves to different modules. As a neuroscience major, there was overlap between my major subjects and neurodegeneration, which, for me, made that module a lot easier (many others thought it was the worst module or the most difficult). I also felt I understood muscular dystrophy a bit better, although the physiology students were probably even more familiar than I would've been. Pandemics and B cell diseases obviously lend themselves well to microbiology/immunology students; rheumatoid arthritis would as well although this had a lot of anatomy in it so I think anatomy students would have liked it as well. Cystic fibrosis did have a genetics basis to it but in my eyes it was a bit of an all-rounder. None of this is obviously important; you shouldn't go basing your major and subject selection around trying to complement this subject but I just include it as food for thought.

In terms of how the modules are assessed, the first mid-semester test assesses modules 1 and 2 and the second mid-semester test assesses modules 3 and 4. Each mid-semester test was 45 minutes plus 5 minutes reading time; they had 40 marks from multiple choice questions (20 per module) and were worth 20% of your grade each. As I said earlier, these tests were very high quality and therefore frustratingly difficult. Make sure you know your content well, review regularly and consult the resources for practice. Just as an aside, Helen was an absolute boss this semester, having the results for the first mid-semester test uploaded the very same day we sat it. She will also take you through the general cohort performance in a review lecture, although the subject refrains from discussing the specifics of each question. To help you out, you will receive an email with a breakdown of your marks, which can help guide your study afterwards.

The exam is worth 60% of your grade - it is a 3 hour exam this time (a contrast to most of your exams these days) and has two sections. Section A is essentially the equivalent of a third mid-semester test - 20 multiple choice questions for module 5 and 20 for module 6. Section B is the dreaded short answer section. Here, you pick four modules out of the six to respond to a group of questions in specially-prepared script books. The total marks for one module is 20, so this section is worth 80 marks overall. The 20 marks are split in half such that there is a 'part A' and 'part B' to each module, and within each part there will be a handful of questions to make up the 10 marks total for each part. Unlike BIOM20001, these are proper short answer questions in that they were more open and less targeted (i.e. many of the questions came across as quite general - perhaps a good example would be "describe how you would manage a boy with muscular dystrophy in the clinic" (6 marks)) and I felt you had to write a lot more in response. I guess that means there's also more onus on you to know your detail so that you can show off to the examiners what you know, although it's easy to forget things given the lack of guidance. This style of question exposes my weakness and probably explains why the number of students attaining H1 is a bit lower than usual. I personally aimed to write a well-rounded complete response, incorporating any relevant details I knew in order to try and gain as many marks as possible. The exam is 120 marks total, so in terms of time per mark the assessment is theoretically less time-pressured than the mid-semester tests, but short answer questions do eat up your time. In the end, I only just finished and that involved me completing the multiple choice questions in only 30 minutes. A fair number of people didn't complete the exam on time. I hope I explained the format well - I have a feeling I haven't, but don't stress because it will be explained to you sometime in a lecture. To sum up, the multiple choice component of the exam is worth 20% of your grade, while the short answer section is worth 40%.

If you're thinking strategically, you might notice that you may not have to study each module for the exam, and that is indeed correct. In any case, you must learn the last two modules as they will be assessed in the multiple choice section. Otherwise, you can choose how you feel like tackling section B of the exam. In all honesty, it really depends on the person and also how your exam timetable falls. I had a week between my previous exam and this one, so I chose to study for five modules. I personally didn't enjoy B cell diseases at all, so after the mid-semester test I had immediately decided to let it go by the wayside. My favourite modules were muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and neurodegeneration, so I was definitely going to do those (and I did) but I was a bit torn between pandemics and rheumatoid arthritis. I had to study rheumatoid arthritis anyway, but as I'll discuss later I'd say objectively it was the most difficult module; hence I thought studying pandemics might be a good idea as a backup (and it indeed was, as I thought the questions were especially accessible for this module this year). I would probably not recommend only studying four modules as this leaves you with no backup in case you don't like the set of questions; and for me studying for all six modules didn't seem like the most effective use of my time. In the end it's all up to you.

Since I was too lazy to actually write out responses in preparation for this exam, instead I came up with a question bank of about 10-15 questions per module as I was working through them, and then brainstormed and planned out my answers to them during SWOTVAC. I personally felt this worked quite well as I was able to test my recall and make corrections and fill in any gaps in my answer, but it also allowed me to pull various concepts together in the highly likely chance that the questions that I had made were different to the ones on the exam. In any case, you will need to work on recall as recognition of a correct response is a technique that probably only works for multiple choice questions (maybe a smaller and more guided short answer question).

Now a brief discussion on the content of each module. Our first module this year was pandemics - HIV and malaria. I really enjoyed Sharon's HIV lectures and I thought she was a good lecturer. There's a lot of content to work through but I felt she did a good job of getting us through it and giving us a different perspective to the HIV pandemic (as you'd know you inevitably come across HIV in one way or another but I felt the perspective in BIOM30002 was unique). I was less keen on malaria but I think it was easier conceptually. In both cases there was a really big focus on the treatment side of things.

Muscular dystrophy has to take it out as being my favourite module largely out of the lecturing by Eppie. The opening lecture by Monique is simply revising your understanding and is not worth exploring in much detail as Eppie's content is the crux of this module. As a clinical neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital, I absolutely loved her approach the the module. She does speak rather quickly but I thought the slides were thorough and comprehensive, and she explains the content very well.

As I said earlier, I did not enjoy B cell diseases. I think I've started to realise that perhaps immunology just isn't my thing - this module obviously had a lot of immunology in it. My microbiology/immunology friends thought this module was the easiest, but I just found it dry and very difficult to get on top of. I think I found it a bit difficult to figure out what to know. This was exacerbated by the strong research side to this module rather than a clinical focus in the other modules. In the end it's not impossible but after the mid-semester test I was happy to let this module go.

Cystic fibrosis was my second favourite module and in my opinion it was run in a very similar light to muscular dystrophy, with clinical physicians spending a lot of time on the clinical aspect of the disease. Having had Sylvia from UNIB20007 Genetics, Health and Society I knew that when she told us a particular slide was important, she was going to examine it, and this turned out to be the exact case in both the mid-semester test and the exam. Both lecturers worked through their content thoroughly and at an appropriate pace, and again I thought the slides were sufficiently comprehensive.

I was already familiar with some of the neurodegeneration content as a student taking the neuroscience major, although this subject delved into a lot more detail. Rather fortuitously, I happened to be learning about Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease (albeit much more briefly) in NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience and NEUR30002 Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits at the same time this module began. I'm not sure if that had been organised deliberately or not, but it was definitely a help in all three subjects. Like much of neuroscience, much still needs to be learnt in this area, making it frustrating for students when there are so many grey areas. I was personally used to it, and I also don't mind working with uncertainty in biomedical science, so this didn't phase me, but I know a lot of people didn't enjoy it for that reason. There's not much point talking about Malcolm's introductory lecture other than to say that it provides a bit of a structural framework for tackling the other five lectures given by Roberto. Otherwise, I thought Roberto handled the topics very well, in spite of the lack of concrete understanding. Note that this module includes an "interactive" lecture on treatment for Alzheimer's disease in which you are asked to read a journal article and then propose, using your knowledge of the molecular basis of the disease, some ways that scientists could target a therapeutic. I personally thought this lecture "failed" in its intent, although other people like it, so go figure. The slides were made available after the lecture so my recommendation would be to wait until that point and then watch the lecture as per usual.

Rheumatoid arthritis, in my most objective opinion, had the most difficult content, but I have to say that I didn't mind it (which I guess is something, given it's a mix of immunology and also anatomy - two weaker points for me). John speaks very fast and almost sounds like he's memorised the slides, and given they are a bit brief, you may have to re-watch parts to make sure you can write down everything he says. Nicole worked much slower and her slides were far more comprehensive, although there was a lot more content and conceptual difficulty that needed to be worked through. I'd probably say this module had the greatest workload associated with it compared to the others.

To summarise, I'd say that this is the sort of subject that could really make you stressed and get the better of you if you really focus on trying to score that perfect H1. I think the best way to approach it is to appreciate the journey, because this subject is incredibly unique in it's approach and it's very well-organised. I know that's easier said than done with applications for other pathways looming. Most people seem to experience a slump in their marks, so I'm not sure if accepting that as a likely outcome is a good idea. I feel I gained a really interesting perspective on the world of biomedical science as a result of this subject; it reminded me why I was here and it's started to confirm in me that this is indeed the path I want to go down. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me. Enjoy the subject for what it's worth, and good luck with the assessment! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 26, 2016, 04:42:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30003: Principles of Neuroscience

Workload:
- Contact hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week (total contact hours: 36)
- Total time commitment: 170hrs

Assessment: A 50 minute mid-semester examination (30%), and a 2 hour examination (70%) in the examination period.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No. However, two sample tests are provided during the semester - one for the mid-semester test and one for the exam (although the sample exam is smaller than the actual one). At the end of each week, a set of 'study group questions' are released for consolidation of content, and these can be used for revision.

Textbook Recommendation: Purves et al. Neuroscience 5th edition, 2012 Sinauer.

It's a textbook used for many of the neuroscience subjects so it may come in handy (and it's not too difficult to find *cough*). I didn't really use it much though.

Lecturer(s):
- Dr Jenny Gunnersen: development of the nervous system (1 lecture)
- Prof Joel Bornstein: gustation and olfaction; neural control of digestion; learning and memory (4 lectures)
- Prof Erica Fletcher: visual system (2 lectures)
- Prof Janet Keast: autonomic nervous system; sex, steroids and the nervous system (3 lectures)
- Dr Jason Ivanusic: pain (1 lecture)
- Dr Elisa Hill: autism (1 lecture)
- Dr Peter Kitchener (co-ordinator): everything else - too much to list (21 lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

In this case, I better start off my review by saying that my rating of this subject may be a bit misleading. When I rate subjects, I try to do so objectively, largely by evaluating the staff, co-ordination and assessment. In this respect, this subject could use some work, although I have a feeling these problems are borne out of the fact that Peter is left to manage this subject largely on his own - quite demanding given enrolments are typically over 700 students. However, on a more subjective level, I really enjoyed this subject and its content, so in all honesty I didn't think taking it was indeed that painful.

This subject is a core for the neuroscience major, but can also be taken to fulfil the anatomy and physiology majors. It also attracts a number of students from other disciplines who have decided to take NEUR30003 as a selective or breadth, which is quite feasible given the only official prerequisite is first year studies in biology. Hence, this is a subject that endeavours to cater for a variety of abilities and interests, and while I feel it does a pretty good job at is, some (probably those from a science/biomedicine background) may be left feeling that the subject failed to properly delve into the detail that they would have liked. Personally, I wasn't bothered by this at all - in fact, I think I appreciated that in many respects this subject felt a bit lighter and less "biomedical" than my other subjects and I liked how it delved into a number of interesting areas that I don't think I would otherwise have been exposed to. In all honesty though, I have a feeling some of the non-biomedical science students would have struggled initially. I would recommend at least having studies in second year physiology under your belt (otherwise you won't fully appreciate how the action potential works - it's kind of assumed that you understand it in this subject, because we then go on applying it in various cases), and second year anatomy would probably be useful as well (in terms of being able to understand how the nervous system is organised - again, it seems to be assumed that you know this).

Before proceeding, it might be worth addressing that this subject (as well as the neuroscience major in general) isn't for everyone. I think the subjects suit a very particular type of student: someone who prefers understanding broad and complex concepts over memorising slabs of (small) details, and is willing to explore and entertain concepts that aren't yet fully elucidated or are quite grey. Many find themselves frustrated or disenfranchised because it can be difficult to know what is expected of you, and probably regret taking this subject by the end of it all. In some respects, it is a bit unusual that this subject is one that can be used to complete the anatomy major, because it's essentially the polar opposite to a typical anatomy subject (and I think the true anatomy students who were looking for subjects similar to their core subjects are the ones who feel the least positive about this subject). If you're looking for something a bit different, then this subject is for you. Physiologists shouldn't encounter too many problems with NEUR30003, although I'd pre-warn that the concepts to be understood in this subject are more abstract than those found in a typical physiology subject.

In terms of approaching this subject, it can be difficult at times. Personally, I think Peter lectured better in this subject than he did in second year anatomy. His slides were a bit more comprehensive (although you may still wish to write quite a bit of what he says down) and he was somehow able to guide us in a fairly structured way through some very "unstructured" topics. Ultimately, he's in his element here. However, you probably have to study for NEUR30003 a little differently. I don't think acting like a scribe is the solution to being able to answer everything. For much of the subject, I'd actually recommend sitting back and just listening to what he has to say about the topics (especially the more abstract ones). When you approach it in this more relaxed way, this is when the subject really comes into its own. I almost felt like each lecture was a small documentary on the mind, how it worked and what we still have to discover.

For the most part, the lecturing team (mainly Peter, but also a few others) did their job well. Perhaps a few lecturers could improve (I won't name them); on the whole, the teaching was adequate but it was nothing exceptional. Lectures were generally framed not with key ideas but rather a bit of a timeline of where we going to go into the lecture - in general, we started off with the introductory concepts and delved into those before exploring the more abstract parts and the parts we didn't yet know for sure. The first half of the subject (prior to the mid-semester test) deals predominantly with sensory and motor processes, although there's a bunch of more introductory type lectures at the start (this subject is a bit slow to get off its feet). This is the part the majority of the more pure science/biomedicine students enjoyed the most, as it's not terribly different from any other sort of biomedical subject (albeit with a strong physiology flavour). After the mid-semester test, the subject almost becomes psychological, dealing with topics such as learning, memory and emotions, as well as very abstract concepts such as how social interactions affect our cognition, how we are yet to fully understand consciousness, and even how we have the ability to think in abstract terms (lol, you can see how complex this subject gets in its thinking :P ). I found these topics fascinating, but a number of students seemed to prefer the first part of the course simply because the content is more concrete and therefore easier to learn and revise. This is the part where it's probably more important to sit back, listen and think than it is to be a mindless scribe for 50 minutes. A rather unusual aside - the LMS page for this subject has a weird layout and I didn't like it. lol.

The resources provided to support your learning are really important to your success in this subject. At the end of each week, a set of 'study group questions' are released containing multiple choice questions (of a style similar to those found in the formal assessments), conceptual short answer questions and non-examinable discussion questions. Given there are so many students in this subject, organising formal tutorials or workshops is simply too difficult, so Peter's aim is for us to get ourselves into small groups and work through these materials ourselves (and we could contact him if we wanted something clarified, although no official solutions were released). While I didn't mind this, for someone looking for extra support this could be a bit of a downfall in this subject. The multiple choice questions were extremely helpful, as were the conceptual short answer questions for revision (although all of the assessments are multiple choice - yay for me lol). The non-examinable discussion questions were also very interesting, but could be a distraction for those who purely want to focus on practicing for assessments. Additionally, Peter provides on the LMS a set of key point summaries for each of his lectures. I forgot about these until prior to the mid-semester test, but my advice is to make sure you look and take note of these (and I'll explain why a bit later). The study group questions are probably the best way to consolidate the week's knowledge and gauge the expectations on you, but unfortunately for us this semester Peter was running behind on getting these questions ready for us, so they were often late and/or poorly written. You can also book in a time to consult with Peter if you are very stuck, although I'm not too sure how many people did this.

In preparation for the mid-semester test and the exam, Peter prepared a short mock-test which we could complete and then he would go through it in a review lecture. These were fairly similar to the study group questions in terms of style and difficulty, although the conceptual short answer questions and non-examinable discussion questions were replaced with extended matching questions. You'll come to realise that Peter is not out to trick you (e.g. he never asks you to pick the incorrect response) but otherwise he spends a lot of time writing very high quality questions (and this applies to the formal assessments as well). Due to the nature of this subject, options which are complete nonsense can sound viable if you don't know your stuff well enough. Overall, these sessions were very helpful.

The mid-semester test assesses the first half of the lectures and is worth a massive 30% of your grade. It consists of about 40 multiple choice/extended matching questions. For a strong result overall, you are essentially obliged to perform well in both the mid-semester test and the exam. While I thought the test was pretty fair, the cohort results aren't exactly exceptional; a strong bell curve is the outcome, and in the past three years only about 20% of students earn a H1. I think this reflects that many students fail to approach this subject properly more than it reflects any sort of difficulty. While there are some details to be recalled, recognition of a correct response should be more than sufficient; otherwise, it's really important to actually understand the material. Somewhat annoyingly, there is no official 'revision period' for this mid-semester test - even the lecture before the mid-semester test is examinable, although Peter does try to make it a bit lighter. Additionally, there was a small amount of content which I'm not convinced we covered during the lectures - in fact, I'm sure of it because Peter was surprised when some people got a question on multiple sclerosis wrong as he thought it was common knowledge (in all fairness the question would've been very basic for a science/biomedicine student but perhaps a student from outside the discipline wouldn't have known it). Obviously there's not much you can do about this, but it's part of the reason why I recommend having some background studies in physiology or anatomy. My biggest piece of advice would be to consult Peter's key point summaries - I found that they consolidated very well some of the more abstract concepts in this subject, and gave the exact specifics that you needed to know.

In comparison, the general consensus was that the exam was more fair, although I feel this may be the result of people finally figuring out what was expected of them. While it is worth 70% of your grade and two hours in duration, there are only 80 marks of multiple choice/extended matching questions on offer, so this assessment should in no way be pressured for time. There is a slightly greater weighting to content not assessed in the first mid-semester test.

In summary, this is the type of subject that you'll probably either love or hate. I loved it, but I'm the type of person that prefers to understand concepts than memorise details (although there is some of the latter too). Hence, for me anyway, this subject was a bit lighter, in contact hours (yay) but also workload. If you prefer working with concrete facts and not so much with application, this probably isn't the subject for you. I think Peter needs to be given more support to run this subject by the department of Anatomy and Neuroscience; Peter is a very busy person and while he does get by, I feel like the students needlessly suffer a bit as a consequence of some loose co-ordination and assessment. An added bonus: this subject deliberately overlaps with NEUR30002 Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits (although you look at the same topics - and in the same order - from different perspectives) so revision becomes a lot easier, especially when the assessments are timetabled together (like this year). If you have any further questions or queries, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy this subject for what it is, and good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: squidgee123 on June 26, 2016, 06:33:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM20001: Introductory Econometrics 

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

Assessment:
- Tutorial Attendance and participation (doing the pre-tutes), 5%
- Two assignments due approx. week 8 and week 12, 20% (10% each)
- Optional mid-semester test, 10% or 0%
- End of semester exam, 65% or 75%

If you decide not to do the mid-sem, the final exam is worth 75%. If you complete the mid-semester test, the mid-sem and final exam are worth 10% and 65%, or 0% and 75% respectively, whichever gives the higher mark.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2012 onwards with past exam solutions

Textbook Recommendation: 
- Principles of Econometrics, fourth edition, by Hill, Griffiths and Lim.
- Using EViews for Principles of Econometrics, fourth edition, by Griffiths, Hill and Lim.

Textbook not really needed. Require access to Eviews software to complete assignments, though all FBE computers already have it installed.

Lecturer(s): Joe Hirschberg

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: I was initially reluctant to take a 2nd year commerce subject as breadth since I feared it would be a bit too much outside my comfort zone, but in the end I thought it was a fairly interesting subject for the most part, and was a great way to further my own statistical reasoning skills. Joe is a good lecturer who clearly knows his stuff and delivers the content well. The subject is also supplemented with a whole bunch of useful resources, including past exams and review questions, Eviews tutorial videos and the online tutor. If I did have to complain about something, it's that the assignments took a looooong time to get marked.

The subject is almost entirely about regression with a short snippet on time series towards the end of the subject. Here's a general overview off the top of my head:
- Lectures 1-8: Revision of some stats and calculus, introduction to simple linear regression, properties of the OLS estimators, interval estimation, prediction, hypothesis testing.
- Lectures 10-16: Extensions and modifications to the simple linear regression model, including changes in functional form, multiple regression and dummy variables.
- Lectures 17-21: Issues that arise when OLS assumptions aren't satisfied or when an inadequate model specification is used. Goes over stuff like multicollinearity, heteroskedasticity etc. including how to test for these and possible solutions to eliminate bias and maximise efficiency of estimators.
- Lecture 22-23: Introduction to time series, touching on autoregressive models, stationarity and nonstationarity, and cointegration.

Keep in mind that you will be required to understand a bunch of derivations and do mathematical proofs. You should be familiar with summation notation and good at algebraic manipulation, but the calculus is otherwise fairly basic, think year 11 math methods level.

Also, even though the mid-sem is optional, it is absolutely in your best interests to do it. Doing the mid-sem can never make your final grade lower, but it can act as a small buffer if you don't do all that well in the exam, which in my opinion tends to be harder than the mid-sem and assignments. This year's mid-sem was fully multiple choice and assessed only 6 lectures so it was fairly easy to do well in.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 27, 2016, 05:01:29 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30002: Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits

Workload:
- Contact hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week (total contact hours: 36)
- Total time commitment: 170 hours

Assessment: 2 x mid-semester assessments (25% each); 1 x two hour end of semester exam (50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No. However, a sample mid-semester test was provided for the first mid-semester test.

Textbook Recommendation: Purves etc al., Neuroscience, 5 th edition, 2012: Sinauer Associates

It's a textbook used for many of the neuroscience subjects so it may come in handy (and it's not too difficult to find *cough*). I didn't really use it much though.

Lecturer(s):
- Prof Andrew Allen: action potential; autonomic nervous system (12 lectures)
- Prof Joel Bornstein: sensation; measurement of neuronal activity; the post-synaptic density; enteric nervous system (10 lectures)
- Assoc Prof Graham Barrett: metabotropic receptors; presynaptic processes and maintenance of neurons; neural plasticity (8 lectures)
- Prof Ann Turnley: injury to and repair of the nervous system (3 lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Again, like my review for NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience, I'll preface this review by saying that my rating for this subject could be a bit misleading. I enjoyed taking this subject for its content, but some of the teaching/co-ordination and assessment approaches need to be looked at because they could use some improvement.

Compared to NEUR30003, NEUR30002 is a more true of a physiology subject in that we study physiology within the context of neuroscience. It is a core subject of the neuroscience major and can also be completed to supplement the requirements for the physiology major (and perhaps anatomy too... I can't remember). The content in this subject, while analogous to NEUR30003, is definitely more concrete and specific, so it tends to be the preferred subject content-wise out of the two neuroscience core subjects (my preference was for NEUR30003 though). Whereas NEUR30003 keeps the investigation of the nervous system at a more systems level (and above), this subject investigates neuroscience at the cellular, synaptic and biochemical level. In a sense, this subject seems to encompass a variety of biomedical disciplines - while not overwhelming, there is a fair amount of biochemistry involved as well as some other disciplines. As a physiology subject, doing well means that you have to understand the content, although in NEUR30002 you need to be on top of your details as well (it's one of those subjects where knowing the details goes on to facilitate building your understanding). Once you get to that point, you'll see that the assessment is primarily concerned with testing your understanding. Overall, NEUR30003 and NEUR30002 complement each other nicely, and I recommend taking them both together: not only does it make revision easier, but sometimes you'll prefer the explanation given in one subject over the other, which is a bonus.

I noticed when checking the handbook that this subject has no formal prerequisites, but I'd say that you should definitely have one of the recommended subjects completed. NEUR30002 is even less forgiving than NEUR30003, especially given the level of detail we delve into. Things like the physiology of the action potential are assumed knowledge and we spend a fair bit of time investigating further detail than the content covered in second year.

Some general thoughts about the teaching: it was good - adequate but not outstanding. Some work could definitely be done in this area - a very common problem this year was lecturers taking too long to go through their lectures, running so far overtime that lecture recordings cut off. We even had a couple of lectures cut because some lecturers fell so far behind. Otherwise, the notes and explanations were generally adequate. A common theme in this subject is investigating scientific data in order to obtain some sort of physiological key message; this means that some slides simply have unusual-looking graphs on them. You can either write down everything the lecturer says, or listen and try to understand the graph (afterwards the graph can be self-explanatory). I did a combination of the two - learning the key message alone is probably insufficient as it doesn't really show any understanding, so I did my best to at least understand the rationale behind the experimental data. In a sense I'm glad we did this given that there are no practicals in neuroscience.

Supporting resources are a bit scarce for this subject, with no tutorials or workshops, and minimal practice questions offered throughout the semester. We got some practice tests for the first mid-semester test (with solutions) but not the second one for the some reason, nor did we get anything in preparation for the exam. In the end I didn't think it was a very big deal, although I'd say that having the resources prior to the first mid-semester test was particularly useful in terms of gauging what the expectation was. In general, I'd say that assessments could have delved into more detail than they did, which I guess is a beneficial thing (for me anyway) and shows that the focus really is on understanding rather than recall.

All the assessments in NEUR30002 (like in NEUR30003) are multiple choice/extended matching questions (yay lol). The two mid-semester tests are each worth 25% of your grade and are about 40 minutes in duration. Annoyingly, in this subject reading time is 'built in' to the assessment time, meaning that whatever time is printed on the front of the booklet is the total amount of time that you get (i.e. our assessments were actually 35 minutes + 5 minutes reading time). This isn't explained very well, and a lot of people were caught off-guard in the first mid-semester test. We were similarly told that our exam was 2 hours including reading time (i.e. 1 hour and 45 minutes + 15 minutes reading time) - I thought this was unusual because it'd be difficult to enforce in the exam hall when every other exam works to 2 hours + 15 minutes reading time, and of course I was right (so students were confused even more). The co-ordinators of NEUR30002 need to bring their reading time protocols in line with the rest of the university. While I didn't think the first mid-semester test was at all difficult, the residual uncertainty of the expectations along with the strong time pressure to get the assessment done on time meant that the cohort as a whole did very poorly. Additionally, this year the computer system marked the tests incorrectly. This subject has a habit of allowing for multiple options to be selected for a given extended matching question, or sometimes they want you to pick them all out and the order in which you fill it in is up to you (this happened in both tests and in the exam). However, I'm pretty sure the computer system was programmed with only one combination of answers, and marked other correct combinations as incorrect. This was only picked up on after students requested to see their answers for feedback purposes. In all honesty, it's a bit concerning and you have to wonder if this is something that perhaps happens more often than we think. In contrast, the second mid-semester test was particularly straightforward, despite the content perhaps being slightly less concrete. The first mid-semester test was held in week 5 and assessed lectures 1-9 on the action potential, sensation and measurement of neuronal activity, while the second mid-semester test was held in week 9 and assessed lectures 10-21 on metabotropic receptors, presynaptic processes and neuronal maintenance, the post-synaptic density and some of the autonomic nervous system lectures. Given their high weighting, a strong result overall requires good performance in both tests.

The final exam is worth 50% of your grade and is of the same format as the two mid-semester tests (albeit longer). There was no extra weighting towards content not assessed in the two mid-semester tests. Overall, I thought the exam was fair and did its job at testing understanding as well as recognition of some important details. If you do particularly well on your mid-semester tests you won't need an exceptional result in order to net the H1.

Overall, the content in this subject is very interesting but it's all let down by rather poor co-ordination. The content was taught well but it could be improved. Assessments were generally fair and did their job but were not of a particularly high quality. While I was able to manage with relatively few resources, some extra support for struggling students wouldn't go astray either. In the end, I think most students do very well in this subject but it doesn't necessarily feel like it's an easy journey to get there. Personally, I found myself using knowledge from NEUR30003 to supplement what was going on in NEUR30002, not the other way around. While this review perhaps doesn't read as well as it could, if you enjoyed your studies in second year neurophysiology, you will probably enjoy this subject due to the content and the way that it is assessed. That's all I have to say for now, but please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Otherwise, good luck!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Mieow on June 27, 2016, 10:43:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: JAPN10003/20013/30007 - Japanese 5

Workload:  one x 1 hour lecture, two x 1.5 hour tutorials

Assessment: 
• Written work in Japanese, 600 words due throughout semester (15%)
• Oral assessment due mid-semester (10%)
• A cultural discovery project/reflective essay due towards the end of semester (15%)
• An oral presentation due end of semester (10% )
• A 2 hour written examination due during examination period (50%)

80% compulsory attendance

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation:
Oka, Mayumi et al. (2009) Tobira: Gateway to advanced Japanese learning (Prescribed)

Lecturer(s): Dr Jun Ohashi

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating: 2/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not Yet Received

Comments:
So if you are fresh out of VCE 3/4 Japanese and thinking about continuing Japanese at a tertiary level then this is likely where the placement test is going to put you.

Overall, I didn't exactly hate the subject but it leaves MUCH to be desired. My biggest gripe is that Japanese 5 is way too dependent on reading, which I heard from others seems to be a complaint across the board for most languages at UoM at this level. I don't know if this is how Japanese is run at levels 1-4 but I find this unacceptable and impractical. 80% of the work you do in this subject simply revolves around reading a text from the Tobira textbook and then trying to understand what it is saying. It gets ridiculously repetitive and boring when this is all you do in the 1.5 hour tutorials - it was common to see just about all the students starting to zone out and playing on their phones while other students were reading out the text or when the tutor was trying to go over reading comprehension sentences. I get that reading skills are important but I would have preferred an approach akin to VCE i.e. a balance of listening/speaking/reading/writing. In the whole semester I feel like there were only about 5 sessions where students could engage in spontaneous Japanese speaking practice in class. So yeah, if you're not a big fan of reading practice then you probably won't enjoy Japanese at this level lol.

Kanji is a huge step up as well. You learn the Kanji that is given to you by Tobira, and you'll be expected to learn about 30-40 new Kanji every fortnight. There's no test or anything to force you to learn this so if you procrastinate Kanji until swotvac you're pretty f***ed. Thankfully, the faculty upload Kanji practice sheets, exercise sheets, grammar sheets and answers to aid you in your studies so I guess this is where the subject earned one of its points out of 2. The second point comes from the staff. They are absolutely brilliant, very enthusiastic and are only too happy to help you with Japanese.

Lectures aren't all that interesting imo. You spend the hour listening to Dr. Ohashi discuss some cultural stuff relevant to the chapter you are studying from the textbook (this semester they were speech styles, technology, food, sport, religion and pop culture). It is conducted 95% in Japanese so it's nice exposure and immersion to natural Japanese speech but a lot of the stuff flew past me during the lectures (maybe that was my fault). In the final 10 minutes or so he'll play a video from the Tobira website and you'll have a very short 4 T/F question sheet to fill out as you watch the video. This also serves as attendance so you'll have to attend at least 80% of these lectures.

Assessment was not too bad. It's pretty clear what is expected of you and you have enough resources available to do well. I just wish that we had more opportunity to write more pieces throughout the semester rather than literally only doing it twice and only for the sake of assessment. This brings me back to the earlier point about how Japanese at this level should still push us to practice reading AND writing/speaking/listening skills in class.


Exam is very straightforward and nothing like the VCE exam. There are T/F questions, MCQ questions, fill-in-the-blanks, writing the furigana to select Kanji and vice versa, and a short ~150-200 ji piece in response to a prompt. Annoyingly, there was LOTS of Kanji in the exam this year that were not prescribed in the textbook so expect to see Kanji that you have never learnt/seen before in the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Rod on June 28, 2016, 09:02:39 am
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20149 MUSIC PSYCHOLOGY 

Workload:  One 2 hour lecture per week, that is all (24 contact hours).

Assessment: Ten weekly quizzes (40%) and an end of semester assignment (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No sample assignments given

Textbook Recommendation: There is a textbook Rickard, N. & McFerran, K. (2011). Lifelong Engagement with Music: Benefits for Mental Health and Well-Being. Melbourne: Nova Publishers. But it is seriously not needed, readings are suffice

Lecturer(s): Dr Grace Thompson is the head coordinator and gives some of the key lectures, apart from that you have several different guest lecturers across the 12 weeks

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Your Average Mark: H1

Comments:

Are you looking for that ‘’easy H1 subject’’ with light workload that seems to be a bludge for the whole semester? Well music psychology offers you each of these aspects so do it now!

This was by far the easiest and most relaxed subject I have done in my entire degree so far. My last review for another breadth subject (critical thinking) I spoke about how that subject had rather difficult content, a massive workload and was very stressful throughout the year – music psychology was the complete opposite.

Lectures:

As chickenchowmien said in his review some of the lectures are very interesting whilst some are extremely boring. I do not think any of the content I had learnt throughout the semester will help me for the future but some of the content is extremely interesting (e.g. how music impacts identity and development, how music can change the brain, how music impacts mood and music’s overall function and purpose in our society). I think you will especially enjoy this subject if you are both a listener to music with good taste in a specific genre and also play an instrument.

Coordinator

Dr Grace Thompson is AMAZING. I emailed her once during the semester and about three times during exam period (for the assignment) and she seriously replies within one day and writes you ESSAYS in an attempt to help out. She will spoon feed you in order to help out on your assignment and other queries. She is probably the nicest, most informative coordinator I have ever had. She is a very nice person as well and is one of those coordinators who are really motivated and determined to make sure their students do well in the subject.

Quizzes:

You have ten quizzes. You need to get 100% in at least eight of them to get the full 40% of the subject. There are four questions, no time limit, about 1.5 days to complete the quiz by.

The first quiz I scored ¾ and it took me two hours to complete (lol). I panicked bad but then the next 8 quizzes took me less than 30 minutes (some took like 5 minutes to do) and all the answers were directly from either the lecture slides or readings. I did not bother to do the last quiz (got 0/0) because I had already gotten 4/4 for at least 8 of them.

Note: I had initially written another paragraph on how I completed these quizzes but I have deleted it. I’ll just say that cross checking the answers to the quizzes may be of help as everyone gets the same questions ;).

Thus far four people have told me their final marks for this subject and we all got the 40% for the quizzes.

Assignment:

I found the assignment rather chilled and laid back (mostly because I started very early and had done several readings prior to my preparation). I started about 2.5 weeks early (I was lucky to have all my exams very late in the exam period, hence was able to start the assignment early).

Our topic was not too complicated – how music impacts emotions and cognitions. For the first week it was very light work, just reading and planning and the last 1.5 weeks is where I did most of my work, finished my drafts, finished all my readings and research, wrote up a good copy etc).

All you really have to do is intertwine the literature taught in this subject with your own reflections (personal experiences) and produce a coherent 2000 word essay. You don’t even have to cover all the lectures from the course! If I recall correctly I used literature from five of the twelve lectures presented. ALSO, make sure most of your literature is from readings outside to what they have taught. I had about twelve references in my essay and to be honest this was not that hard because there is HEAPS of academic information regarding these topics and I found the content really interesting so read through the readings very quickly.

I also found it helpful to brainstorm some ideas with a friend during the assignment and also proof read each other’s work to give feedback on each other’s structure, content, expression etc. So group work for this subject can be beneficial.

With scores, I received a 79 in the assignment. Out of the four people who have told me their scores the lowest was 84 so we all got at least H2A for the assignment.

Just some tips for the assignment:
- Make sure you have MORE literature than reflections. The reflection bit is easy, to distinguish students you will need to have better literature
- Follow the criteria carefully. Grace gives out very clear and specific details to what she wants
- Email Grace if help is needed, if she is like how she was this semester she will literally write you essays to help out. In other subjects I’ve seriously had coordinators responding to me with one sentence answers – Grace is rare and so helpful
- Doing the readings throughout the semester rather than cramming during SWOTVAC is very helpful

PM me for more information! ☺
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on June 28, 2016, 04:30:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING20011: Grammar of English

Workload:
- Contact hours: 34 hours - 2 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. There are no tutorials in the first and last weeks of semester.
- Total time commitment: 170 hours

Assessment: Tutorial exercises ( 8 ) throughout semester [10%]; problem sets ( 2 ) mid-semester and end of semester [50%]; final exam [40%].

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes. One is made available on the LMS (with solutions) but there were an additional eight on the university library website (with no solutions). Most of these could be used effectively for revision.

Textbook Recommendation: Student's Introduction to English Grammar, Huddleston & Pullum, 2005 Cambridge University Press

I bought it knowing this subject had an open book exam and read it out of obligation due to the fact that I had never studied linguistics before. Overall, I'm not convinced this textbook is necessary. I'd recommend purchasing a hard copy second hand. You may also be able to get the textbook online *cough*.

Lecturer(s):
- Dr Peter Hurst (he also took some of the tutorials)
- Tutor: Dr Hyejeong Kim

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

I've taken a number of subjects which I've really enjoyed at university, many of which have been run to an extremely high standard. However, even with the top subjects I've taken, I've always been picky and managed to find some fault or point of improvement. I leave my breadth reviews for last and in the time since finishing my exams and getting around to writing this, I've honestly been wracking my brain trying to think of something that possibly detracted from my experience in this subject. In the end, I could come up with nothing - hence this is the first subject I'll be awarding a perfect rating of 5/5.

I've always been interested in languages but had never had much exposure to linguistics before, and it was my hope that I would be able to study something linguistics-related for breadth before the completion of my undergraduate degree. Unfortunately I hadn't had the chance to do it any sooner, and it was unlikely that I was going to be able to work the foundation subject LING10001 The Secret Life of Language into my study plan. I was therefore delighted when I stumbled across this subject and saw that it did not have any prerequisites or any recommended background knowledge (most of the second year linguistics subjects have no prerequisites but recommend having taken LING10001, and having spoken with people who have done these subjects without LING10001 they are usually very difficult to complete without having that foundation knowledge). I would say that LING20011 is a suitable level 2 entry point into linguistics for those who may have missed the first boat such as myself, although it's predominantly an introduction to syntax and is not terribly useful if you intend to study other areas of linguistics. However, I think it was a little bit more difficult (not too difficult) for myself with no prior linguistics knowledge compared to someone who had done LING10001. Luckily, I have two languages under my belt, and with one being a Romance language and the other a Germanic language, they both turned out to be extremely helpful and somewhat made up for any disadvantage I may have had. I'd probably recommend having some background into language or linguistics prior to entering this subject. For anyone whose first language is not English, fear not: overall the subject does not advantage native speakers over non-native speakers. To clarify, native speakers may be advantaged by having native speaker intuition, but otherwise non-native speakers came across as stronger at actually understanding the grammar, something many of us native speakers wouldn't have studied with English before.

I have to say, going into this subject, I thought that we would be learning the ins and outs of formal English grammar in the stereotypical way one hears about it (what would be referred to as a "prescriptive" approach by anyone in the field). However, I couldn't have been more wrong. Instead, most of the course seems to challenge our notions of "rules" for a language, and instead focuses on how different parts of speech can function in different but defined ways depending on the context (i.e. a "descriptive" approach). I would tell anyone who may think this subject sounds boring to think again, because by the end of it I have a newly found appreciation for the complexity and sophistication of the English language. I should point out that this subject is rather unique so consulting resources on the internet for help is a bad idea because you will probably be told the wrong information (or in many cases, complete nonsense).

Despite this, the subject is predominantly application and problem-solving, although not quite to the extent of, say, LING20006 Syntax, would be. We don't really deal with foreign data sets or anything of that nature, but rather we learn how to properly describe the mechanics behind the English language. For anyone concerned about whether this subject is a bit too "open" for them, I'd say a solid 80% of the questions had only one possible answer to them. However, there is that 20% where there could be some ambiguity and it would be up to you to decide on an answer and then justify it. For anyone in Biomedicine, I'd have to say that this subject felt a lot like MAST10016 Mathematics for Biomedicine, in terms of content, approach and assessment. As an aside, it would probably be worth me mentioning that you should take LING20011 before LING20006, because LING20011 is essentially "baby syntax".

The lectures were taken by Peter this year, who stepped into the role very well. He delivered his lectures with confidence and his notes were comprehensive. I found myself writing anything he said that wasn't on the slides down out of habit for what Biomedicine subjects are like, but eventually I figured out (with the stares of other students wondering what on earth I was doing) that this wasn't really necessary. Most of the time, if you need to write something down, it will be for clarification purposes, or an example sentence Peter wishes to analyse. I should probably note that there are some times Peter writes a sentence on the whiteboard for analysis, which won't show up on the lecture recording, although he always read the sentence out and would explain what he was doing so a lot of the time you could figure out what was going on if you didn't actually attend the lecture. Nonetheless, I think this is the subject where it's better to attend the lectures (and I have to say, the timetable for this subject was extremely friendly). Hyejeong used to sit in on the lectures predominantly as a means of quality control.

This subject initially moves a bit slowly but really ramps up in terms of difficulty by about weeks 3 and 4. Initially you do a bit of a crash course of the foundations in case you didn't do LING10001 (although you only cover the relevant bits). My advice beyond then is to stick it out because in weeks 5-7 you delve deeper into these topics and eventually they start to make sense. Once you get over that, the rest of the subject is manageable. The key message is that you really need to get used to distinguishing form from function. Adjectives are an example of a form (or part of speech) and you may have learnt these as words that describe nouns, but in reality that's not all they do (and other parts of speech are capable of describing nouns). Hence, meshing "adjective" with "words that describe a noun" in your mind is a really bad idea, so do your best to undo what you thought to be common truths and really try to grasp the distinction between form and function. Once you understand this, the subject becomes incredibly easier, particularly at the end when you're looking at the role of subordinate clauses. Generally, this subject is predominantly associated with syntax, although morphology at the level of the word is also considered. Peter tries to avoid semantics but there are some topics where it inevitably comes into play (e.g. clause types or thematic variants) - where necessary do try to avoid it yourself because it's not very powerful in this subject. Thankfully, weeks 7 and 12 were dedicated to review lectures, reducing the workload. Having only two lectures a week, the workload is a tad lighter but for me it wasn't really that much lighter than my core Biomedicine/Science subjects (although this may be due to the fact that I had never studied linguistics before). Having chosen languages as a breadth (or sometimes not doing a breadth but instead another science subject) this didn't bother me because I generally don't choose subjects based on their workload, but I appreciate that this may be a consideration for some of you. I made sure I spent a lot of time ensuring that I was on top of the content - linguistics is a discipline where you're constantly building on your knowledge, so if you don't understand something and just move on, it only gets worse.

Peter happened to be my tutorial class' tutor so I never actually had Hyejeong myself and I can't comment on what she's like (other than the fact that she sometimes put together some explanatory slideshows for the tutorials). Peter was a great lecturer but arguably an even better tutor. He was always very helpful and was willing to assist anyone having trouble, no matter how much difficulty that person would be facing. The tutorials were used predominantly to review the tutorial exercises released after the second lecture each week. We were called upon to share answers, which can be a bit daunting but it's the best way for everyone to get feedback from their progress and learn from others. The exercises themselves were great at helping us consolidate the theory and get a glimpse into the types of questions we would be asked on an assessment. Initially most people found these difficult but eventually with Peter's guidance and extra practice you'll find the ropes. There are no tutorials in the first and last week of the semester, and for two of the weeks the tutorial exercises were not assessed (we just had to turn up to the tutorial class with the questions completed so that we could go through them together). From memory, these weeks were week 2 (i.e. the first tutorial - this obviously made sense as it ensured everyone got a chance to figure out what we had to do) and week 7, the week Peter and Hyejeong had to mark the first assignment. Once the tutorial exercises are released, you have just shy of a week to complete them and submit them into the subject's assignment box (the deadline is generally a couple of hours before the first lecture of the week). The tutors check them but don't correct them (you do this together in the tutorials) and you are marked not on how well they are completed but rather your attempt. Making an attempt at all of the questions gave you full marks, regardless of how much of it was correct or not. If you didn't understand a question, you were expected to explain what was confusing you and hence why you were unable to tackle the question. If you don't understand something, my advice would be to make an attempt anyway and then follow up any questions you have with your tutor, rather than trying to explain why you couldn't answer a question. I thought this type of assessment was a great way to get students to consolidate content without undue pressure and also figure out where their weaknesses are so that they could be addressed, and additionally made for a good proxy of attendance and participation (I think you needed to attend at least 75% of the tutorial classes). In general, the tutorial exercises could take anywhere from half an hour to several hours to complete, depending on how difficult the concepts were. There are some weeks where the tutorial exercises are longer than others. It is easy to get full marks for this part of the assessment and indeed most people do - sometimes people lost marks for obviously rushing their work. A set of formal solutions were released after all the tutorial classes had been completed. These tasks total up to make 10% of your grade.

My biggest concern taking this subject with Peter taking over would be that the assessment would become really difficult and perhaps jeopardise my overall mark (anyone who took LING20006 in 2015 would know that this indeed happened when Peter took over). The two assignments, worth 25% of your grade each, were indeed tricky. While similar in style, they were obviously more difficult than the tutorial exercises and seemed to pick out little intricacies of the course to really see who was on top of the material. Thankfully, you get two weeks to work on them before submitting them online and you are able to make as many resubmissions as you like. Additionally, you didn't have to wait to start the assignments because they always covered content which we had finished learning. My advice would be to make a first attempt as soon as possible so that you can figure out where the tricky bits are, and then give yourself time over the rest of the two weeks to keep thinking about the assignment and fix up any mistakes you may have made (and it will surprise you how often you realise you may have done something wrong - it used to happen to me at the weirdest times lol). I found that this allowed me to submit the assignments with confidence. Thankfully, the staff were very helpful with the assignments if we were stuck: they often answered direct questions for us; I preferred to construct similar (but simpler) sentences and ask Peter for help in order to make sure I was understanding the concept correctly. Remember to justify your answers where possible - there were a few times in both assignments where I came to the wrong answer but my justification meant that I was able to retain most of the marks. After the assignments were marked a formal set of solutions were released. Given that these were assessments that didn't have to be completed in exam conditions I tried really hard on these assignments in order to do well. If you submit all your tutorial exercises and do well on your assignments, you don't have to do very well on your exam in order to get a H1.

The final exam is two hours in duration and is worth 40% of your grade. Compared to the assignments, I found the exam much easier - maybe only a little bit more difficult than the tutorial work. In my opinion, there weren't too many surprises either, and I thought the exam could be completed comfortably on time (personally, I probably would've finished much earlier than I did if I hadn't sustained a minor injury to my writing arm on the day of the exam). A lot of the questions involve the analysis of a provided text, which Peter released for us 24 hours in advance. I would recommend being familiar with the text just so that you don't have to read it for the first time during reading time. There are plenty of resources available in this subject in order to prepare for the exam, so there is no reason why one couldn't do well. Linguistics subjects tend to hold their exams late in the exam period; this was true for this semester and gave me more than a week between my previous exam and this one to revise the material. Additionally, the exam is open book - you are allowed to take in whatever you want in this exam as long as it's on paper (yes, that means you are allowed more than one book if you wish). You will absolutely need to take in a dictionary (a must for this subject in general - native speakers, get used to using it more often) and most people opt to take the textbook in as well. I typed my notes for this semester and had them bound, so I took those in too. I also took in a thesaurus because I sometimes found it useful to substitute synonyms in order to figure out an answer. Having the tutorial exercises, assignments and past exams, with their solutions, can also be helpful in case a similar question comes up on the exam (and there was one question which had been used in a previous exam). This subject is not about memorising details, although there are some things you would want to know or at least have ready for consultation (I had an appendix of important tables in the last few pages of my notes). Having a whole slab of material is not going to save you if you don't know your stuff, but I did find myself consulting my things from time to time in the exam just to make sure I knew what a term meant or to ensure I was answering a question as I should.

To summarise, while the subject's workload wasn't particularly light for a breadth, it's a good entry point into linguistics. I really enjoyed my time taking this subject and it has confirmed that languages and linguistics (particularly the grammar/syntax side of things) is something I still have an interest in. Peter and I really got along out of the fact that he also studied Science (physics major) as an undergraduate student and worked as a software engineer before realising his passion for linguistics. There's a part of me that's not sure whether or not I'm a linguistics person too, although I'd say my focus in biomedical science is justified out of the fact that I found myself a bit more out of my comfort zone in linguistics. In terms of the staff, co-ordination, supporting resources and assessment, there really is nothing I can fault. Enrolments for this subject exceeded 100 for the first time this year and if the subject continues in the same way I don't see why even more students wouldn't enrol. A quick shout out to literally lauren who wooed me over in taking this subject and helping me out from time to time when I was stuck - I certainly did not regret it. That's all I have to say for now, but if there's anything you'd like to ask me feel free to send me a message. Otherwise, good luck! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: zsteve on June 28, 2016, 08:29:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20009 Vector Calculus

Workload: 3x1 hour lectures per week, 1x1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 4 assignments throughout semester (5% each), end of semester exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but the lecturer alternates between using two document cameras AND occasionally using the blackboard, so if you watch lecture recordings you'll only see 50% of the actual lecture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2013-2015, both semesters so a total of 6, with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Required: Partial lecture notes (only available in print) Recommended: Marsden and Tromba - Vector Calculus. To be honest, the lecture notes and prescribed exercises are more than sufficient to ensure coverage of the course content. As for the textbook, that's useful for proofs of theorems/formulae (sadly omitted at large from the subject), but you can definitely use any other vector calculus book such as Paul's Math Notes or other ones available free online (ask Google)

Lecturer(s): A/Prof. Andrei Ratiu (such a nice lecturer)

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Sem 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)

Comments: As I've seen in other reviews, this subject is commonly seen as the 'maths methods' of university maths at Melbourne, and rightly so. Whilst the concepts and mathematical tools introduced are a lot of fun (basically generalising all of single variable calculus to multiple variables and then some), I felt like I was having a whole bunch of formulas, methods and definitions stuffed down my throat, with minimal justification. And when there was 'justification', it was usually geometric/visual/intuitive and not rigorous.

This subject nicely relates to physics (a very high proportion of the students taking this subject are intending physics majors, presumably with the rest being mathematics majors), and many of the concepts introduced (such as line integrals, surface integrals) are related to physics concepts (work, flux). Hence, having some physics background (say VCE Physics) is nice to have, and makes lectures a little more lively and interesting. Then again, if you're doing this subject, you're likely doing some physics too.

In my case, I took this subject in my first semester of first year (having done UMEP Maths with my VCE). However, as I've heard, the UMEP course is different in 2016 which means students don't have to 'jump' AM2, so I won't say much about the gap (I think stolenclay's review does sufficient justice)

What was different this year from previous years was the lecturer - A/Prof. Andrei Ratiu, lecturing this subject for the first time. From the outset, Andrei was an excellent lecturer, and made the lectures worth attending, despite the course being at-times dry in terms of content. Andrei explained and demonstrated the concepts very well (albeit visually, but then I happen to be a proof pedant so don't mind me :P), often using computer demonstrations to help us visualise things.

edit: I forgot to mention, Andrei's sense of humour is at times nothing short of charming ;)

The prescribed materials comprise of partial lecture notes and a problem booklet. The partial lecture notes are quite essential for the lectures, as the lecturer usually doesn't do any writing - he just covers solutions with a piece of paper initially and gradually uncovers the solutions step-by-step with explanation. Students seem to have developed two approaches to doing the example problems that we went through in lectures:

Usually, the latter is the more beneficial method. However, the former is suitable when you have become lost and just want to get down the solution for later study (as was the case when we did Taylor polynomials!)

The problems sheet comprehensively covers the types of questions which can be asked on the exam and on assignments, and I'd say doing all the questions is a must for every student. The vast majority (if not all) of the questions are not hard in the problem-solving sense, although they can get very computationally involved. For those who have a good grasp of the concepts, the main source of mistakes are simple algebra and arithmetic errors.

The assignments were very well set and fairly marked, and I believe that, putting in the requisite amount of time and attention, you can get a fairly good contribution to your mark without too much difficulty.

The exam itself was a bit of a wet blanket, definitely harder than 2015 and 2013 in my opinion. Conceptually, there was nothing difficult with the exam, most of the questions were the routine type. What was hard (and what consequently tripped me up on the exam) was that the questions were computationally difficult. Having been lulled into a false sense of security (by the 2015 sem 2 exam that most students (including myself) had left till the night before the exam), my anticipation of a similar 2016 exam were likely the cause of some below-expected performance on the exam.

Overall, I definitely did enjoy this subject, although I do lament the lack of proof and rigour (and have bad memories of the exam haha)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Rod on June 29, 2016, 12:29:49 am
Subject Code/Name: ZOOLS20004 Australian Wildlife Biology

Workload:  24 lectures in total (1 hour each), a couple of films, about six 3 hour practicals.

Assessment:  Mid-semester test worth 10%, two reports; one worth 15% and the other 10%, practical book/log book worth 15% and finally the end of semester exam worth 50%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Several OLD past exams with no answers (but were helpful – see exam for reasons why).

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s): Kath Handasyde and various lectures and guest lecturers. Kath takes about half of them.

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  3.9/5

Your mark/grade: H1

Comments:

I chose to do this subject after doing Flora and Fauna during first year. This was partly revision of flora and fauna and also an extension to it, so it is advantageous if you do FF during first year before you do animal wildlife. Overall I really enjoyed this subject (content wise) but it is probably the last zoology/botany subject that I will do as I hear it ramps up a bit after this.

Lectures:

There are 24 lectures in total and a couple of films. All of them are fairly straightforward and not too difficult to understand. It isn’t content overload nor is it conceptually difficult.

The only lectures that were bad were; lecture 2 (Kimberly lecture), lecture 18 (rodents) … in these lectures it was pretty much information overload. A couple of inexperienced student/guest lecturers presented them and they were really not that good. The rodent lecturer just blabbered out heaps and heaps and heaps of rodents while the Kimberly lecturer kept going on about his trip to the Kimberly and what they did. Luckily, there wasn’t a single rodent or Kimberly question in the exam (yay) so I think Kathy realized that we suffered during these lectures. However, there was one MCQ in the mid-sem about the Kimberly although it was very straightforward.

The other lectures were amazing, if you are a FF student the first couple about reptiles and amphibians will bore you (as it is merely revision) but once you pass about lecture 9-10 it’s all an extension to FF. I personally loved the lectures based on ecophysiology (e.g. koalas, platypus),  I LOVED everything about birds (from the different mating systems to why the white winged choughs steal babies for cooperative breeding), and my favorite lecture in the entire series was the macropod lecture where we got to learn about embryonic diapause and also the energy saving hopping motion kangaroos have which defies the laws of physics :D.

Ultimately, there is a fair bit of rote learning but if you find the subject as interesting as I did it should not be hard to rote it all.

Mid-semester test:

I received 8/10 and the average was about 7-7.5/10, so it was relatively straightforward. I got this shifty monophyletic/paraphyletic question wrong as well as this question about the history of birds or something (which we did not learn about!). I think it was there just to separate us. Apart from that some of the questions are seriously 5-second questions and the rest are not too bad if you have revised well. The first 12 lectures are tested in the mid-semester test.

Report 1:

You will have to do a report comparing the bird fauna diversity in The Royal Botanic Gardens and Studley Park. I did terribly – 9/15 RAW scaled to 10/15, so really I have nothing to say and no tips. The only comment is that this was HARD, after this report all my confidence for this subject went down the drain. The highest mark was 12/15 RAW iirc scaled to 13/15 (yeah she scaled all our reports by 1 mark because it was so harshly marked). I don’t know what I did wrong but maybe should have spent more time on it. Just know that THIS assessment is the hardest in the entire subject and this is the ‘’seperator’’ that will separate the best students from the rest.

Report 2:

After getting shattered by the first report I managed to get 8/10 for the second, which was much easier than the first. Rather than writing a full academic report all you have to do in this one is answer a couple of questions using data gathered in one of your practicals (black swan practical – swan census). Once you have all the data sorted out (there are heaps, make sure you are familiar with excel) the questions should all be a breeze. Despite this, I still managed to lose two marks, and once again I think this was because it was harshly marked. I lost one mark for not showing the male to female sex ratio in the ‘’correct notation’’ and another mark for making my graph scales too large, I mean, seriously?

Practical book:

This was our savior IMO, I got 15/15 for the practical book and so many other people did as well. I think a lot of people complained especially after the first report so Kathy was kind of entitled to mark them easily. Or maybe everyone just did really well!

So tips for smashing the practical book;
- Make sure you are UP TO DATE, after every workshop you will need to have annotated drawings of some of the animals you see and also attach a worksheet onto your prac folder. The questions in the worksheets are simple. As for the drawings, how good do they have to be? I’ll be serious now but I was crapping myself when I heard that we had to draw animals in this subject because I cannot draw. If I still had my prac book I would have probably uploaded some of the images but unfortunately Kathy still has my prac book. My birds look like triangles, my seals look like large bananas and I somehow managed to make cute penguins look like ugly monsters. Point is, you do not have to be an artist to get full marks in the prac book. I am the worst drawer ever and I still got 15/15. As long as it kind of looks like the animal you should be fine.
- The annotations of the drawing are very important. Make sure you indicate several physical features of the animal and functions of those features, common name, scientific name, make the drawing big. Underneath the drawing I would have about 5-6 dot points about some facts about the animal, habitat, what it was doing (behavior), interactions with other animals, etc.
- Make sure at the start of each prac you have the date, location, weather, time period

As well as the practical book you will need to do four hours of your own observations
Tips:
- Do it separately on a notepad, you can buy this from coop
- Write your name, department, address, mobile number on the front cover. Write all the abbreviations you will use in the note pad in the back cover (e.g. ‘’WH = water habitat’’
- For every single observation of an animal make sure you write the date, location, time, weather, animal common and scientific name
- I barely did any drawings just dot point notes
- Notes were similar to the practical book, dot points about observations of the animal – what are they doing? Why do you think they are doing this? Breeding systems, habitat, interactions with other animals etc.

Exam:

The exam was worth 50%. 15 minutes reading time, 120 minutes writing time, 13 questions, 50 marks. Heck yea! What does this mean? TAKE YOUR TIME. You have an ETERNITY of time to complete this exam!

I think I got about 45/50 for the exam. Unlike all the other averages I have put up this one is going to be a complete guess - but I reckon the average exam mark would have been at least in the high 30s or maybe even 40. After taking my time writing fully fleshed out, detailed coherent paragraphed answers to each of the questions, I finished about 40 minutes early. Once I walked out of the exam I felt as if there was not a single question I had answered incorrectly, and most people I spoke to after the exam felt the same way. The exam was very, very fair. If you look at it this way – its just 24 lectures worth of content, 13 questions worth 50 marks in 135 minutes (including reading time) – it really does not look too hard. You are not pressured for time at all and there are no trick questions or ‘’dog’’ questions, everything on the exam was covered extensively in the lectures. There were some repeat questions from previous past exams and the rest were new, but even though these questions were unseen as mentioned we covered them inside out throughout the lectures. Some examples of the questions in the exam were some stuff on bioacoustics, comparing ecophysiology of a couple of mammals, zoonoses, lots of stuff about koalas, threatening processes to freshwater fishes, treaties of Antartica and so on. The only dodgy question in the exam was probably this monophyletic/paraphyletic one because this was covered poorly in the lectures. But really if you get through a textbook or something its relatively simple; monophyletic is where a common ancestor includes ALL of its descendants and paraphyletic is where the common ancestor does not include all of its descendants. The lecturer gives exactly THREE examples of a paraphyletic group and you needed to know them all AND understand why they were paraphyletic to answer the question. Bit dodgy because was not covered well but again not an impossible question.

I’m sorry this review was so long, usually mine are all short. Hope it is of good use and PM me for more information.

MODERATOR ACTION: fixed formatting :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: RKTR on June 30, 2016, 07:48:51 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20001 Molecular and Cellular Biomedicine 

Workload: 7 lectures every week (some are used as workshops), 5 CALs(one of them has a prac over 2 weeks)

Assessment: 5 CAL tests(10%), 2 MSTs(10% each), 2 exams (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  3. 2010,2011 and 2013

Textbook Recommendation:  not needed

Lecturer(s): Dr Terry Mulhern (topic 1)
                            Dr Michael Murrary, Dr Trent Perry, Dr Marnie Blewitt (topic 2)
                            Associate Professor Robb de Iongh, Associate Profesor Gary Hime (topic 3)
                            Professor Roy Robins-Browne, Professor Lorena Brown, Dr Odilia Wijburg (topic 4)
                            Dr Vicki Lawson (topic 5)

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  2 Out of 5 (Unpopular opinion I know)

Your Mark/Grade: H3(67)

Comments: Even after my seniors told me 1st year bio was nothing compared to MCB, I still did not expect MCB to be such a difficult subject.

Lectures
Unlike 1st year bio where you can catch up during the weekends if you are one week behind, there are 6-7 lectures every week for MCB. Not only the number of lectures is doubled, the amount of content in one lecture is also increased. There are so many details to remember across 5 different topics. This subject focuses on rote-memorising, nothing can be done by understanding. Most of the time I walked out from the lecture hall not understanding anything.

MSTs
You have to prepare for 30 lectures for each MST. Some of the lecturers only finish going through the final lectures needed few days before the MST. If you think you can be ready by preparing 2 weeks before the MST, you are wrong. (I know this because that was what I did). You actually have to go through every lecture right after it is finished to remember all the details.

CAL tests
Everyone should be aiming for 10% for this. Many people "collaborate" to get full marks on these. The first two CALs did not help with understanding the content but the rest are pretty useful. The test for CAL 3 is only open for 10 minutes and we have to answer 10 questions, which is really ridiculous.

Exam
Paper A is made up of MCQs. It was reasonable for most of it but some question tested really little details which were overlooked by many.
Paper B is made up of short answer questions. They say short answer questions but actually it's just many short essays. Some questions were allocated too many marks, e.g two autoimmunity questions for 8 marks each. Really? There are only like two main points on this subtopic. I also did not know what many of the questions want us to write, even if I spent more time preparing I don't think I can answer them. I totally do not understand how some people manage to do well on this paper.


This is a terrible subject which does not require understanding. It's like forcing yourself to eat a lot until you feel like puking then vomiting everything during the exams. MCB is the worst subject I've taken so far, even worse than EDDA(boring stats subject). I'm very disappointed with the mark I got but I'm also just glad that it's now over.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Alter on July 01, 2016, 12:42:28 am
Subject Code/Name: GERM10006/GERM20007/GERM30005 German 5 

Workload:  1 x 1-hour lecture, 1 x 1-hour tutorial (based on the lecture), 1 x 2-hour language seminar

Assessment:  If you take this as a level 2 or 3 subject, it might vary a bit.
One hour written language exam during the exam period [25%]
One hour written lecture exam during the exam period [12.5%]
One essay of 500 words for the language seminar component during semester [12.5%]
Two essays of 500 words each for the cultural studies component due in weeks 8 and 12 [25%]
10 minute oral presentation for the language seminar component during semester [10%]
Listening comprehension test for the language seminar component during semester [5%]
Mid-semester test for the language seminar component in week 7 [10%]

Lectopia Enabled: Yep.

Past exams available:  Nope.

Textbook Recommendation:  "B Grammatik" is the prescribed text. I honestly think you could do well in the subject without the book, depending on how good your grammar skills are going into the subject.

Lecturer(s): A bunch of different lecturers from the German faculty. This changes every week.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: The best part about this subject is the 2-hour language seminar. The usefulness and enjoyability of the lecture and respective tutorial absolutely pale in comparison to the seminar, which is the perfect blend of language skills and cultural knowledge.

My biggest gripe with this subject was the tutorials/lectures. The readings typically fluctuated in difficulty, and basically nobody completed the readings anyway, so there was little class discussion. At the end of the semester, I was calculating the number of tutorials I could miss and still pass on attendance because there was typically little to gain from them. The idea of the tutorials is that you come in with a translated, read text and written responses to the corresponding questions, but these were normally quite boring and there felt little reason to do them.

The previous review of this subject mentions how the subject is great if you want to learn about tiny bits of German literature, and I think this really hit the nail on the head. Imo this subject could function very well with just 2, 2-hour seminars separate from any kind of lectures. The lectures and tutorials felt more like the department was trying to cram archaic German novels and cultural fun facts down your throat and little learning actually came out of them. The best way to learn a language is in a classroom.

Moreover, one other thing I wasn't fond of in the subject was that it didn't really test the effort you put in, but rather gauged how good you were at the language coming into it. While there is definitely room to improve, it is easy to fly through this subject if you already have decent German skills. If you show up to the lectures and seminars and do some broad readings of the texts, you'll be able to get a pretty good mark. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, I don't think the subject actually challenged me to do well or improve from where I was in German. I feel as competent in the language as I was in preparation for my exams in year 12. To give an example, you go through and are assessed multiple times on adjectival endings, an area of grammar that is typically handled much earlier. This leads to some pretty easy marks.

You are given some vocab lists throughout the semester, but these aren't assessed at all, to my knowledge. That being said, putting in the effort to at least learn some of the words will obviously help your language skills holistically. I personally gave up on them, so it's just extra work that's up to you. If you have other weaknesses, focus on them first.

I'll briefly go over each piece of assessment and add my thoughts. The 500 word essay for the language seminar should be a good way to understand where you're at in the subject as it's the first essay you'll get marked. The same applies to all essays, but the earlier the start, the better off you'll be. Make sure you get all of the referencing stuff correct or you'll lose easy marks. Similarly, it's crucial to avoid silly mistakes in your essays, because these will undermine your piece the most. Throw in many "new" grammar rules you've learned in the seminar into this piece.

The MST rewards you if you're good with the language side of things. If you want to succeed in this, just spam questions from B Grammatik and work on your general writing/grammar skills. The activities you do in class are sufficient to prepare you for the reading task and everything else, so that's no stress.

The 10 minute oral isn't as intimidating as it sounds when you realise you only really have to speak for 5 minutes (you get a partner), and you can bring in cue cards to read off. This assessment honestly separated those who had done VCE German before and those who hadn't, so make sure you're prepared as it's literally the only speaking you do for the entire semester. If you want to do well, prepare early and get someone you trust to help go over your oral and iron out mistakes.

For first year students, you do a listening task that is assessed. In our semester, this was super easy and the average was somewhere above 90%. What separated people was simply silly mistakes. I thought this was a fair piece of assessment with correct weighting.

The lecture/tute essays require a fair chunk of work. However, you do get to pick a single topic of many, so playing to your strengths should let you pull through. If you want to do well in these, don't do as I did and start them a few days before the deadline. The best scores will come from a carefully planned out essay that isn't trying to be too complex for itself. Realise that 500 words does not give you a large space for complexity of ideas, so be succinct and smart in how you write.

One weakness of this subject was that it had no past exams that I could find. No sample questions are given, either However, Daniela was really nice and tells you exactly what every section will cover. The best way to prepare for the exam is to:
1) understand the grammar rules (and the language behind the grammar -- different types of conjunctions, prepositions, etc.)
2) go through lectures/readings (it's hard to bs your way through the 2nd part of the exam, because it tests specific, random trivia, such as 'what is the text type of this text you read?')

At the end of the day, it felt more like I was taking a German cultural studies or literature class instead of a language one when I was in the lectures. The true problem of this subject is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. It's like it's fighting itself as to whether it wants to teach the language, or teach tidbits of information about German history and culture, depending on whether or not you were in one type of class or the other. And it that sense, it lacks clear direction.

The above paragraph is a bit harsh, considering I actually enjoyed this subject a fair bit. I actually really liked the language seminars and thought they were engaging, not to mention the teaching staff are super nice and helpful. If you did German in VCE, you should not struggle with the content at all (apart from the readings, but these just take time). Sorry for the length.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sterobo on July 01, 2016, 02:35:04 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2

Workload:  3 lectures and one practice class a week.

Assessment:  Four assignments which make up 20% of your grade. The remaining 80% comes from your exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, there were six available with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  None. The lecture notes (a green booklet) are more than enough.

Lecturer(s): John Sader, Christine Mangelsdorf, John Banks, Iwan Jensen

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, semester 1.

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments:

I enjoyed studying Specialist Maths in Year 12 and even though I didn't achieve anything flashy in terms of marks there, I was eager to make sure I studied some kind of maths at university. Calc 2 is a difficult subject and like many of the difficult subjects before it, it tends to get hyped up to the point of exaggeration. Despite this, the exam is incredibly tough as it is three hours long and covers the entire course. It's also worth 80% of your final mark which is a point that only fully sunk in as I looked at my mark for the subject.

The course is really fun to study in my opinion. It begins with a week or two on limits and continuity which most people seemed to feel uneasy about but that goes away once you get the hang of it. At the time, it felt a little more abstract than what I'd have imagined they would teach in a course called 'Calculus 2'. You then get into hyperbolic functions which ultimately felt like discovering more trignometric functions (like sin, cos and tan) - it's not super enjoyable but I wouldn't call it challenging either.

And then finally you hit the biggest part of the course, which is all about calculus (it starts off by building upon the diff/int you learned in Spesh) and differential equations. Personally, I found the Calculus sections of the Spesh course to be really enjoyable so I loved this part of the course. Beware that some of the problems can get long and hard here.

After you cover partial derivatives and and briefly study the mathematical side of how a spring oscillates (so simple harmonic motion and then varying levels of air resistance), you get into functions of two variables which is where I felt most people ended up getting lost. I don't think it's because there's anything particularly difficult in that section of the course but rather that it's the final section of what is undoubtedly a pretty long course that feels overbearing at times.

So the course is long and the exam is quite tough (there's a stat about the subject's fail rate that gets paraded around every now and then). How could I have possibly enjoyed it?

The lectures and practice classes were absolutely phenomenal. Christine Mangelsdorf is an incredible lecturer who is very clear and thorough. She always provides her run down of the theory that's being covered or provides systematic strategies to approaching the more difficult questions. It might get a little annoying when she's being extra precise with something you understand easily but her willingness to cover everything diligently is something you'll feel extremely grateful for several times during the course when you're struggling to understand a concept or a question. I don't know about any of the other lecturers but I'd suggest doing your best to make sure you attend her stream in future semesters.

The practice classes were really worthwhile. I scheduled mine to be with a friend so I always had company but you break up into small groups of about 2-4 and tackle a question sheet on a whiteboard. You're encouraged to collaborate with your group for different approaches and your tutor hovers between groups, correcting questions and providing explanations when they are required (or maybe an easier way to solve a problem). They worked really well to soak up everything that had been taught to you during the lectures during the week beforehand.

I thought the assignments provided a fantastic balance between a natural extension of what's covered in lectures/tutes and a challenge. They explain that they encourage you to talk about approaches to problems with your friends and that definitely helps if you're struggling on some of the hairier questions. You get them on Mondays (and 7 days to do it), so if you start working on it during the week you'll be fine. Leaving them for Sunday night is just asking for a horrible time because the questions are meant to be a little challenging - so doing them under the pressure of short time limit is quite frustrating. In terms of marks on the assignments, I did really well on them throughout. My advice is to be especially thorough during your assignments, no matter how tedious that may be. Persevere with that tiny sub-question for three pages if it means you cover all your bases. I recommend doing a draft copy or working out each question individually and then neatly rewriting your assignment as a final copy before submitting it. With how long and annoying some things can get, the last thing you want is for your tutor to take marks off because they can't read your handwriting.

There's a problem booklet you get at the start of the semester. It's worth doing to solidify any parts of the course you struggle with but I stopped doing the assigned problems after a few weeks. Pay attention and annotate during the lectures, take your practice classes seriously and start your assignments early and honestly you won't need that booklet for much.

The exam is a nightmare to put it lightly. It's brutal and they're not afraid of throwing something ugly that'll eat up your precious time on there. You need a mark of 50 to pass the subject. If you get do great on all your assignments, that'll lock up about 20% of your total mark and a bit of maths says that if you get about 40% on your exam, you'll pass. Problem is, that's much easier said than done. Calc was on the 3rd day of exams and I had two the day before. Even though I put those two almost completely to the side for the week and a half before to prepare for Calc, I still didn't even scrape 70% on the exam. Don't lose out on those assignment marks because they become vital very quickly if you're not sure this a subject you'll pass. Hinging entirely on the exam to pass the subject is not a good idea (as I walked out, having done some back of the envelope questions, I thought I'd get around about 80%).

Overall, I found this subject to be challenging in all the right ways. I'm still a little bit disappointed with my final exam score but otherwise I had a great time and genuinely would recommend it to anyone who enjoys maths. It's no stroll in the park but the effort you put in feels rewarded throughout the semester (just don't be on the optimistic side of your exam score).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Student1702 on July 01, 2016, 05:28:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT20006: Principles of Human Structure

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week and 4 x 2 hour practicals over the semester

Assessment: 8 x ADSL online quizzes (10%); 2 x mid-semester exams (15% each); 2 hour end of semester examination (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: No. There were some practice questions provided but with no answers. However many students found the anatomy equivalent paper from the biomed subject BIOM20002 to contain very similar practice questions. These could be found online under the library past exams.

Textbook Recommendation:  The recommended text is, Eizenberg N, Briggs C et al: General Anatomy: Principles & Applications, McGraw-Hill 2007. This is a useful textbook but doesn't cover some of the lecture content and is not essential to do well.

Lecturer(s):
Dr Dagmar Wilhelm (3 lectures), Dr Peter Kitchener (2 lectures), Dr Varsha Pilbrow (6 lectures), Dr Simon Murray (7 lectures), Dr Jason Ivanusic (4 lectures), Dr Junhua Xiao (7 lectures), Assoc. Prof Jenny Hayes (1 lecture)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This is a fantastic subject!! The topics covered in my opinion are very interesting, and the large number of lecturers means that each specific topic is covered by a lecturer who specialises in that area of the body. Overall, the lecturers are fantastic and they clearly outline in lectures what is needed to know, there is no extended knowledge other than lecture materials and ADSLs. Probably my only complaint is the overall lack of practice material which can make preparing for exams and MST's a bit tricky. Even though i loved this subject it is NOT easy. It is very much a memory based subject and the majority requires a very large amount of rote learning. For me, the fact that i found it fascinating very much helped in tackling the very large amount of content.

Mid-Semester Exams: There are 2 mid semester exams in approximately weeks 7 and 11 and they are each worth 15% of the final grade. These are a step up from first year assessments as they are actually sat under exam conditions in Wilson and University Halls. Whilst this may seem daunting, it is common for most second and third year science subjects and personally i actually found it forced me to continually revise the content as we learnt it. There are some very specific, finer detail questions in these tests, but all fair.

ADSL quizzes: ADSL's are online tutorials posted almost every week accompanies by a test which counts towards the final mark. They are an easy 10% overall as you can attempt the quiz as many times as you like until you get 100%. The tutorial/worksheet that accompanied the test was very detailed and often extended knowledge taught in the lectures. I completed every worksheet, however they were very time consuming, and probably not essential for doing well. I found they really helped my understanding of the topics, and even though they tell you the ADSL content is examinable, there wasn't really any questions directly relating to extended content in the ADSLs.

Prices: There were 4 practicals in total over the semester. I found these very interesting and not as daunting as i expected them to be. Second year anatomy doesn't involve any dissection (thats third year...). They were very interesting as it helped to see the actual structures rather than just learn the theory. However, they do go for two hours and you stand for the entire time so your legs can get sore. They do mark attendance, I'm not sure if attendance is actually required for marks but i definitely recommend attending.

Exam: The end of semester exam consists of 20 multiple choice questions (section A), 4 fill in the blanks (section B) and 4 short answer (section C). The multiple choice (section A) followed the format of the mid-semester exams and only examined the content of the last 1/3 of the course, that hadn't been examined in the two MST's. This was pretty much only the last 3 weeks of semester. These were pretty straightforward, and you could even answer the majority in reading time. Section B consisted of 4 images accompanied by paragraphs where you had to fill in the blanks from a very large work bank. This section can be tricky because it examines the fine detail. Section C was short answer only requiring about 3/4 lines max response for each question. This section can also by tricky as they examine understanding of concepts and also some clinical significance. Overall i thought this semester has some strangely worded questions but overall was a fair examination.

I very highly recommend this subject. I found it fascinating and probably the most enjoyable subject i have completed so far at the university. It is not easy so i definitely recommend study groups, but the content is definitely enjoyable! It is a prerequisite subject for most of the health science/med pathway majors and for third year anatomy subjects.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: RKTR on July 01, 2016, 05:49:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE20001 Business Finance 

Workload:  2x 1 hour lecture and 1x 1 hour tutorial every week

Assessment:  2 assignments with 15 MCQs each (7.5% each), 1 MST(25%), 2 hour examination(60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  2014 semester 2 exam and one sample exam

Textbook Recommendation:  not needed.

Lecturer(s): Vincent Gregoire

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1(89)

Comments: After doing finance 1 during semester two last year with my friends, I'm the only one that decided to continue with business finance. I'm glad I made the right choice!

Lectures
The lecture slides are really good. They contain enough information for you to understand the concepts. All of the lecture slides are uploaded on LMS at the start of the semester so you can have a good idea of what you are going to learn. Sometimes the lecturer has a French? accent when speaking but what he says can still be really well understood. The content was not too hard until the final three weeks where I found taxes, capital structures and derivative securities more difficult than the rest.

Tutorials
Tutorials are not compulsory. The tutors do not mark your attendance. However, I really encourage you to attend all the tutorials even if you are able to do all the tute questions as the tutors will give their explanation for most of the questions. Maybe there is a better way of doing a question or wording your explanation. You do not need to complete the tutorial questions before the tutes but I did except for the final two weeks. I encourage you to complete the questions first and not just waiting for the tutors to spoonfeed you answers. It really helped with my understanding and you will know what questions to ask the tutor if you have any problems. There is no marks for participation but you should try to answer when the tutor asks something. My tutorial was very quiet. Only the same few people answer my tutor's questions.

Assignments
These are free marks! Everyone should aim for full marks here. You get 1-2 weeks to do the questions then you have one hour to submit online where you just click your preworked answers. Of course you can just do it together with your friends but I think it is better to do it on your own first before discussing and checking answers.

MST
2 past MSTs (2014 sem 2 and 2015 sem 2) and 3 practice MSTs were provided. I did not have time to do all of them so I did some and had a look at the rest. Answers and explanations were also provided. If you have any more questions, you can ask the online tutor. The MST tested on the first 9 lectures and I got full marks on it. I'm surprised the average was only 11.18/15 as I expected the cohort average to be higher than 12/15.

Exam
After getting full marks on the assignments and MST, I was aiming for mid 90s. Unfortunately the exam was a lot harder than the assignments and the MST. I think the exam was still reasonable except for a few questions which I had no idea how to do and they were probably harder than the stuff we learned. You also get 2014 sem 2 exam and 1 more sample exam to have an idea of the difficulty of the paper. Try to get full marks for multiple choice. This semester we had 15 MCQs which made up 30% of the exam mark.


This subject made me want to do more finance breadths but sadly the lv3 finance subjects need BusFi and QM2/Intro Econometrics as prerequisites and I probably won't be doing it as I did not enjoy my 1st year stats subject. I definitely recommend this subject as a elective/ breadth! Feel free to ask me questions if I did not include something you want to know.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on July 01, 2016, 09:21:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10005/Calculus 1 

Workload:  3 x 1 hr lectures, 1 x 1 hr tute (per week)

Assessment:  10 assignments worth 2% each (20% total)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, loads. They give answers for 6 exams and there are many more in the library. More than enough exam preparation available.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is a prescribed textbook for this subject, but I don’t know of anyone in the entire cohort who bought it. I’ll talk about this in the comments.

Lecturer(s): I had Alex Ghitza, but there are two other streams you could’ve gone too

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, semester 1

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments:

I know there’s a few calc 1 reviews up here already, but the most recent one was from 3 years ago so I’d thought I’d give a little bit of an update.

Overview

You learn content in this subject in a “follow-as-I-do” manner. You buy a bound book of lecture slides with missing spaces, and you fill it in as the lecturer covers different topics. There are a few practise questions in there along with theory, and you can either do these questions at home or with the lecturer as he/she does it. Up to you really.

As others have said, this subject is for those who didn’t have the chance (or were too scared LOL) to do spesh in year 12 and wanted to try their hand at university mathematics. I did modestly well in year 12 math (43 in methods) and I didn’t find this subject to be too difficult when I applied consistent work.

Don’t be intimidated by the word “calculus”. Ironically enough, there’s hardly any of it in the subject. You start off doing trig functions, inverses etc. You move onto vectors, then an introduction to complex numbers. After this, you’ll spend the rest on calculus itself – basic differentiation, integration then differential equations.

The subject is very well taught. I had Alex Ghitza, and he was an excellent lecturer. Very funny guy and managed to explain things in easy to understand ways. He was the 11:00 stream, so try and get his if you can.

My one gripe with this subject is the time allocation to each topic. Not intending to come off as pretentious, but I sat through the first 3 weeks of this subject extremely bored. We did stuff that really should have been glossed over (trig functions, SOHCAHTOA, basic vectors etc). Then, we had to rush through integration and differential equations extremely quickly. I guess they want us to get the fundamentals right first, but still we spent the same amount of time revising SOHCAHTOA/those triangles as we did learning differential equations.

However, if you apply consistent work then you’ll be alright. If you did alright in Methods you’d recognise most of the stuff in the course anyways.

You can also buy a problem book with loads of questions. These are really helpful in consolidating knowledge, as with math subjects I’ve found the best way to learn is keep doing questions.

Tutes

My favourite part of this subject. Basically, you form groups with classmates and work through a question sheet together on the white board. It’s a great way of making friends and consolidating knowledge. Attendance is not compulsory, but it’s the only way to get assignments back so you’d want to go regardless. 

Assignment

Calling these “assignments” is a bit of a stretch. Basically, they’re just one or two short answer questions. If you keep up with the work, you’ll have no problems whatsoever.

I’d recommend you make a group with your friends so you can check answers. You should be aiming for 10/10’s in these assignments.

One note - they can be very pedantic with their marking. Make sure you clearly state all working and assumptions so they don’t have an excuse to take marks off.

Exam

The exam’s usually have the same format – read through a couple and you’ll see the pattern. There are no tricks here, and no exceedingly difficult left-field questions like you saw in Methods. If you understood the concepts in class, did the homework and kept up to date, you will have no issues with the exam.

The hardest part is dealing with all the arithmetic. There are no calculators whatsoever in the exam, so you need to be able to perform manual calculations without the aid of any technology. It may seem easy, but in the pressure of the exam room it’s very easy not to include a minus sign or forget to divide etc.

You are given 3 hours, which I feel is plenty of time so there’s heaps of opportunity to check your answers.

TL;DR -
-   Good introduction to uni maths
-   If you’re looking for a science subject or a breadth (and liked math in high school) then choose this
-   You WILL be rewarded, but make sure you do the work
-   Very well taught and run
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Nightwing on July 01, 2016, 11:09:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: MCEN30017 Mechanics & Materials

Workload:
                3 x One Hour Lectures Weekly
                1 x One Hour Tute Weekly
                2 x Three Hour Materials Pracs sometime during semester
                4 x Two Hour FEA Workshops (from Week 7-10)

Assessment:    
                2 x 7.5% Materials Practical Reports
                5% FEA Mid Semester Test
                20% FEA Assignment Due at the end of sem
                60% Final Exam (Only On Materials & Mechanics modules)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but Kenong always uses a laser pointer and often writes stuff on the board that isn’t on the slides but comes up in the exam, and the Mechanics lectures are really hard to understand with just lecture recordings as Jason uses both document cameras to explain. Which means in both cases you're missing out on something or the other, so I’d strongly recommend going to the lectures.

Past exams available:  Yes, no answers provided, but crowd sourced for the Materials module at least is available on Facebook.

Textbook Recommendation: Materials Science & Engineering - An Introduction is strongly recommended by Kenong for the Materials part and he tells you to read certain parts after every lecture, but personally reckon it’s a waste as it only really helps for a few marks in the first Materials Practical. Maybe just download the PDF for this part.

Lecturer(s):
                  Dr. Kenong Xia (Materials)
                  Dr. Mohsen Talei (FEA)
                  Associate Professor Jason Monty (Mechanics)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87 [H1]

Comments: It’s tough to know where to begin with this subject as there is so much to talk about, and I wish I’d known much of this before I started it. So I’ll try starting with a short summary of my experience with the subject as a whole, and break it up in detail for each module at the bottom.

Ok here goes. While this is probably not the worst subject ever, it is without a doubt the worst taught subject have ever done at uni so far, and the experience was pretty much the same for a lot of others that did it. Some of the teaching staff are perhaps the most useless that I have come across to date, with some of them at times not caring whether you have even been taught what is required properly, let alone whether you pass or fail. With them often taking their teaching duties as simply something they have to do, rather than actually want to do. This makes it incredibly difficult at times to not only understand the content, but also to understand what is even being taught, and what it is that we even need to know. (There were shortcuts and methods to solve things in Materials in particular that weren’t covered in the lectures or tutorials at all, but came up in the exam, and which we only learnt about whilst doing the past exams when my friend and I searched online for help). This is further compounded by the subject being totally fragmented; with it being horribly organized and teaching staff not having any conversation whatsoever with those from within their own module itself, let alone the others. So often you’re left with a predicament where the lecturer teaches you one thing, and says this is how it should be done, only for a tutor or demonstrator in the tute/workshop to totally contradict them, leaving you scratching your head.
It however is not a very tough subject to do well in as certain content, and the exam in particular is fairly repetitive with at least half the questions in my exam occurring in past years word for word. Which means that if you put in the effort and actually understand the content during semester as well as do all the past exams, you can know the answers to many of the questions before you even start solving them. It’s a subject that you will need to teach yourself a fair bit at times, so the key is to constantly be up to date, and across all the concepts that are being covered, else it’s easy to turn up in SWOTVAC struggling to pass it. The key is to not fall behind, ensuring you understand everything, and you can have a calm build up to the exam.

The subject is split into three parts, Materials, FEA & Mechanics. With Materials Lectures running from Week 1-5, FEA Week 6-7, and Mechanics Week 8-12. The Materials part is fairly dry, with Kenong taking a read straight off the slides and explain every tiny thing in painstaking detail approach for the majority of the module, and his slides have a lot of information on them. He however I think purposely gives exam clues which he explains on the whiteboard rather than have it on the slides and thus doesn’t get recorded on Lectopia as perhaps a reward to those who turn up. This is kinda infuriating and unfair for those like me who had a clash for one of the lectures each week, let alone people who go over lecture recordings again to revise, so I’d recommend you go to his lectures and do what ever you can to ensure you pay attention in them even if they do get really boring at times. Also, Kenong can at times be tough to reach and kind of rude over email, often refusing to answer questions or indirectly telling you to work it out yourself so I’d recommend getting a hold of him after lectures if you have any questions as he’s much nicer then.
The 2 practicals for materials are weighted 7.5% each, and are on Tensile and Impact Testing respectively. They are run by Farzan who explains the prac and what he expects of you in the report very well, and whilst the Reports require some time and effort, it can be easy marks for those who paid attention to him when he was talking. The tutorials are fairly boring with the Eng standard of a tutor at the front working out problems on the board without thorough explanation whilst everyone just sits there and copies it whether they understand or not, so it is at times a waste as attendance isn’t marked, but I’d say its best to go and get an idea of what sort of questions might turn up in the exam if nothing else. There are tonnes of questions per tute however, and the tutor never goes through all of them, so you should expect to go over the rest of them at home.

The FEA part is taught in a “flipped classroom” approach, where you are given the links to 12 lectures of around 12-15 minutes on Youtube beforehand, and you got to listen to 3/4 usually before going to the in-class lecture. Personally, the in-class lectures are a total and utter waste of your time, and I stopped going after the first one. From what I heard from my friends, they got pretty horrible, with the lecturer once spending 30 minutes on a calculation only to find out he’d made a mistake on the first page, and chose to end the lecture there and tell everyone to work it out themselves at home. The content in FEA is fairly straightforward, but they manage to complicate it rather unnecessarily, so I’d say its best to just use the online lectures as a guide and teach it yourself, as the Midsem is only on FEA and it occurs only a couple of days after the last in-class lecture.
The workshops for FEA are barely related to the content in the lectures or the midsem which struct me as odd initially, but I soon forgot about it as we started using Solidworks to create loading situations of beams, running simulations of that, and though only an introduction, learning how things are actually done in industry. The workshops and using Solidworks was possibly the saving grace for the subject and my favourite part of it as it was incredibly fun, with it being for many people the first time they were doing something like this. The assignment that is the end aim of the workshops however can be incredibly infuriating as it is horribly worded, and incredibly vague, with any one of 5 things at times being a possible answer. This along with very little guidance from the tutors who initially refused to provide any substantial help on something that is worth 20% of the subject, before they realised nearly everyone was absolutely screwed for the assignment and started helping like mad on Discussion Board with 2-3 days before the assignment was due. This led many to work together in groups of 5-6 and bounce ideas off each other, as well as compare with other groups which is basically what got us through it.

The Mechanics module is likely the best of the three, but coming from Engineering Mechanics the semester before; the direct precursor to this which though it was incredibly difficult, was also the best organised and managed subject I’ve done so far, (likely because I was lucky enough to have Hancock as my tutor) will take a bit of a learning curve. Mechanics is generally the module that most students struggle with as a result as the lectures comprising mostly of derivations of equations by Jason off the top of his head in the lecture itself with no specific lecture notes or slides for students to refer to, but rather just a general book on the topics that Jason had put together around 5 years back, and of which around 30-40% he no longer teaches. Much of the rest of the book being stuff that he now teaches differently as students have struggled with it in the past. Lectures therefore can get incredibly messy and confusing leaving you wondering what is even going on. The tutorials therefore become incredibly important and both tutors are luckily very good at what they do, so the key is to ask as many questions as you can of them, and perhaps follow up with questions to Jason after lectures (Jason can also be tough to reach over email, at times choosing to just ignore you, so it’s best to get a hold of him after lectures again), ensuring that you totally understand everything as when it comes to the mechanics module in the exam, its almost a case of all or nothing for marks. You either know what to do in the question in which case you will get around 8 or more out of 10, or you don’t and you will at best get 1 or 2 marks. Furthermore, there is a significant divide between methods, standards, naming conventions etc that are used between the tutors and Jason, so thats something that you will need to take account of when answering questions in the exam as end of the day, Jason is the one marking, so comply with that as much as possible, but also use certain methods the tutor has taught whilst conforming to the naming conventions and standards of Jason as it is easier at times.

Just a final note on the exam, whilst the Materials and Mechanics modules are weighted evenly (50-50), the actual marks for each are horribly skewed. With Materials being out of 100, whilst Mechanics is only out of 30. (Just another quirk of this subject you got to put up with I guess). So as a result, every mark for Mechanics you get in the exam is basically another mark for the subject. Therefore, it’s good to ensure that you’re on top of it, even if you’re not totally 100% with Materials, which most people don’t realise until the last minute by which point they have basically given up on Mechanics. Materials is the section that has a few questions repeated word for word every year, with at least 4 or so others being very slight deviations with changes in values and nothing else. It is therefore fairly easy to get marks in it if you do the past exams.

In summary, for those of you doing a Mechanical Major, this subject is a core and you have to do it. Though the subject is incredibly annoying, and you often just want to give up with everything you face, just put up with everything the subject throws at you for a semester and get through it is my advice.  From what I’ve heard, things get much better in Masters. For those of you from Mechatronics or other Engineering Majors who are perhaps looking at taking this as an elective (there were a few in my semester who did this and ended up seriously regretting it), I’d strongly advise you not to, as it’s not worth the time or effort, not to mention the money. I just hope that something changes with this subject as the content itself is pretty good, just that the lazy teaching staff make it really unbearable.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Student1702 on July 02, 2016, 04:34:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: GENE20001: Principles of Genetics

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures p/week and 1 x 1 hour problem class p/week

Assessment: 3 x MST's (10 % each), 2 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture for lectures but the problem classes are NOT recorded

Past exams available:  Yes, more than 10 years worth but NO answers

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended is; A J Griffiths et al, Introduction to Genetic Analysis, 10th Ed. W H Freeman and Co., i had a pdf version but didn't find it very useful, its extremely detailed. Alex, who is the subject coordinator said you can do well with just lecture content.

Lecturer(s): Alex Andrianopoulos (Bacteriophage genetics-12 lecturers), Hayley Bugeja (Mendelian Genetics-10 lectures), Phil Batterman (Population genetics-12 lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments: I have mixed feelings regarding this subject. If i had of done the review before the exam i may have given it a 4.5/5, but the exam was one of the worst i have ever sat. Having said that i actually found the content of the subject very interesting. Alex, the subject coordinator stressed at the beginning of the course that this is very much a problem based subject, which is very true, however, one of the issues i had was there were NO answers to past exams. This is also a subject available for credit for both Biomedicine and Science students.

Bacteriophage genetics: This first section of the course was a new concept, not covered in first year genetics. I found it a bit difficult at times to grasp but once i did it was very interesting and overall well taught. We were given and shown step by step how to complete questions in the style that matched those found on the MST. Alex lectures this section of the course and some people didn't like his lecture style because they said he was very slow, but personally i found this good because he explained everything step by step and i found made sure everyone understood what he was saying before he moved on. Very interesting and not too hard once you understand the underlying concepts.

Mendelian Genetics: The second section of the course was lectured by Hayley. Personally i didn't like her lecture style and found that she focussed heavily on theory content and student involvement in lectures through 'socrative' polls rather than teaching and going through styles of questions properly that would be found in MST and exams. I also thought the lectures didn't flow through topics. In my opinion this is the most difficult part of the course anyway because of the unpredictability in question styles. Walking out of any of these lectures i actually didn't feel like i understood the content in relation to a question until i had gone over it again or done a similar question in the problem class. Mendelian genetics does extend on knowledge from first year, so a good understanding of basic principles does help (three factor crosses, epistasis etc.). The MST for this section i found quite hard and didn't do nearly as well as the other two, again i thought this was because it examined styles of questions we had never before come across. Too much Drosophila and since when were Dragons a thing...?

Population Genetics: The third and final section of the course was lectured by Phil. He is probably one of the most entertaining lecturers i have come across so far. Population genetics is by far the easiest section of the course as you just need to memorise question styles and which equations to use as you are given a formula sheet on the exam. They don't actually teach you have to derive any of the equations which i didn't really mind. Even though this section involves mostly maths and calculations, make sure you understand all of the principles of population genetics, as the theory is asked on the exam. The MST was very, very, very easy for this section, all questions we had actually done in lectures or problem classes, just the numbers had been changed and it was only 5 short questions.

Problem Classes: As these were NOT recorded you should attend them all as i found them very, very useful in understanding lecture content properly. The problem classes were lecture style in a lecture theatre and my only complaint would be, the class sizes were too big. Stephen Hardy was the tutor for all of the problem classes and he was fantastic. He made sure every time he went through something that he explained every detail and made sure people understood before he moved on. The problem classes were fantastic as you actually applied the concepts that you had learnt in lectures and Stephen often brought in past exam questions or questions he has written himself to practice. He was also willing to stay after classes to help people understand concepts/problems.

The exam... The exam was entirely MCQ which many people like, however i find it extremely unfair because if you understand the majority of a question and miss the final step you get 0 marks and therefore cannot demonstrate your understanding. Also the questions were often worth 4-6 marks, which again, was unfair. You could have no idea how to do the question, guess and get full marks.

Now keep it mind, i actually really enjoyed the subject overall prior to the exam. I was sitting on a H1 average for the MST's and i had done about 8-9 past exams as practice and all of the practice questions on the LMS and problem classes many times. There were no answers provided for past exams BUT there were some legendary people on the subject Facebook group who decided to create google docs for each past exam for about 5/6 years and all share answers which was a fantastic way of checking working out and asking questions.

Genetics was my first exam and i was actually feeling really confident that i knew all of the styles of questions that had been asked in previous years. This exam was NOTHING like i had ever come across before. Even some questions in Alex's section were of a strange format that we hadn't seen which took time to actually try and work out what the question was asking. Phil's section has some strangely worded section but overall was definitely the reason i passed the exam.

Hayley's section contained a particular 4 part question (30-33) which had a mistake in the wording for question 30-31 which contradicted what the instructions for questions 32-33. This meant that many students (including myself) spent too much time actually trying to understand the question wasting time that could have been used for the remainder of the exam. Also in total questions 30-33 were worth about 18 marks...

Compared to the majority of previous past exams, this was a very challenging exam. Everything on there was taught, so it was fair, but some sections very strangely worded.

So i definitely recommend the subject if you are interested in genetics, BUT make sure you completely and totally understand all of the underlying concepts including the finer detail...


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Student1702 on July 03, 2016, 11:01:50 am
Subject Code/Name: EDUC20068: Sport, Education and the Media

Workload: 1 x 1 hour lecture p/week, 1 x 2 hour tutorial p/week

Assessment:
- 8 Reading Circle entries (summaries of readings)- not marked but completion worth 10%
- 1600 word case study due mid semester (40%)
- 2000 word media analysis on a current sport issue due beginning of exam period (50%)
- also 80% attendance requirement for tutorials
- 2 compulsory field trips- attendance marked
- 2 x 400 word reflections (not graded)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but sometimes the slides weren't recorded.

Past exams available:  N/A, sample essays were given for both the case study and media analysis

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook. Readings were available on the LMS.

Lecturer(s): Anna Krohn, 3 or 4 guest lecturers
Tutors: Anna Krohn and Karen Lyon

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: This is by far the best subject i have taken so far at the university. As a science student i wanted a breadth that was interesting but did not have a heavy workload and this is exactly what i was looking for.

Overall, it is not a large subject so lectures were in a small lecture theatre and often poorly attended, they were recorded and many people did not attend. The lectures were definitely useful though as you needed references in your case study and media analysis to course material. The various guest lecturers were also very interesting. The tutorials are 2-hours every week but often finished early. Karen Lyon was my tutor and she is fantastic. As an ex sports journalist she is extremely knowledgable on sport and the media within sport and many tutorials were spent having in-depth discussions around current issues within sport.

Throughout the semester, you have reading circles to complete (10%). You are assigned reading circle groups in the first tutorial where you each complete a reading each week and then post a 400 word summary of the reading for the group to see. These are used as references in assignments. My only complaint would be that these readings can be quite long, some 20 pages. Creating a Facebook group or a Google Docs is a great way of sharing the reading circles.

In the first past of semester, we focus on sport and how it has developed, sport and children, women in sport, etc. These form the topics you can choose from for your case study. You are provided with scenarios based on each topic and you have to perform a case study in response to the scenario. For example, choosing children and sport you got a topic saying friends of yours had young children 5 and 11 who wanted to start sport. Drawing on everything you looked at in tutorials, readings and lectures you have to advise them what sports to play and what the right age to start playing sport is.

Then you move onto social aspects of sport. The first compulsory field trip was to the Ian Potter Museum on campus. This is done with your tutorial group. We split up into small groups and had to look through all the exhibitions in the gallery. We then had to choose a piece of sport-related art and write a 400 word reflection on what it meant to us. This was not graded, simply a hurdle task. The second compulsory field trip was to the MCG. We were given a free guided tour of the MCG which was very interesting and then taken down to the sports museum. After playing in the interactive area, we had to again choose a piece from one of the exhibitions to write a 400 word reflection, again a hurdle requirement.

The final part of the course covers sport in the media and is probably the most difficult to understand coming from a science background. The media aspect covers issues with sport and the media, how women are portrayed, media power within sport, etc. I found this section to be extremely interesting. The most important lectures and tutorials to attend are covering the 5 social theories and how to relate them to sport. This is critical to understand well as the final essay is centred on social theories.

The final essay is due in the first week of the examination period, so it is a good idea to start it before the semester finishes so it doesn't get in the way of studying for other exams. This essay is 2000 words (+/- 10%) and is split into two separate topics. In the first part of the essay you have to take two newspapers (example- the age and the Australian) and analyse their readership, target audience, articles, images and sporting section and compare the two. This section should be about 40% of the essay, not the major mark. The analysis of the sporting sections should be in detail. The second and major part of the essay is where you choose one or two articles on a current sporting issue and analyse them, like a language analysis and then relate at least 2 social theories to the sporting issue chosen. For example, Russian doping saga. Functionalist and conflict theories are probably the easiest to write on and interactionist is probably the hardest.

If you like sport and are interested in the role the media plays within sport i definitely recommend this subject. I love sport and i loved this subject. I thought the tutorials were fantastic and often consisted of group discussions about current sport issues, which were often very interesting. If you put in the hard work it is a pretty easy and enjoyable subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QUADRATUS on July 03, 2016, 10:39:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: MCEN30017: Mechanics & Materials 

Workload: 
3 1hr lectures each week
1 1hr tutorial each week
3 2hr FEA (Finite Element Analysis) workshops in the semester
2 2hr Practicals in the semester

Assessment: 
Exam: 60%
2 Practicals: 15% (7.5% each)
FEA mid semester test: 5%
FEA assignment: 20%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, but no solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Yes, a Prescribed textbook
Callister WD Jr, Materials Science and Engineering. 

Lecturer(s):
Dr Xia for Materials
Jason Monty for Mechanics
Dr Mohsen for FEA


Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Sem 1

Rating:2.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

TL;DR Subject has A LOT of content, that is poorly taught and poorly coordinated. Lectures were terrible, and the tutorials were seriously rushed. The materials content can be easily learned through the textbook, whilst the mechanics component requires alot of practise and self study to learn.
The written reports were tedious but are a good opportunity to learn the content. FEA report was seriously tough and annoying, but thank heavens the exam was fair.  Subject requires constant amount of work but the content was interesting enough for me to give it an average rating. 

Overall this was an interesting subject but it was undermined by the terrible lectures and lack of resources

Lectures:
The lectures were horrrible, and terribly coordinated, its what made the subject annoying and made me lose interest in the subject.

For the materials component, you cant even understand the guy, and he just repeats on whats written on the slides, which are a carbon cut copy of the textbook that only tell half the story.
Honestly,youre better off reading the lecture slides and reading the textbook, and you will be set in learning the materials component. The content begins with material chemistry that was taught in Engineering Materials (they teach it from scratch since its not a pre req) and then builds on things like material strengthening, softening, fracture, fatigue and crystallographic orientations. The concepts are not too bad, and the lecture slides were good enough to understand what type of questions will be asked

The mechanics lectures were terrible. Not only is the content like Engineering Mechanics on drugs, but the lecturer is never organised and constantly makes mistakes, which only makes it even harder to learn the content, since the only source of information to refer to, has mistakes. Lack of examples and constant derivation of complex formulas in the lectures only made things worse

Lastly there is the FEA component, which is taught during week 7, for the mid sem. There are about 12 online 15min lectures that you are required to watch, and the lectures in that week are just a summary of those online lectures. The content can be abit dry and tedious but luckily there are enough resources and practice questions to master this.

Tutorials:
they are really helpful but there is no requirement to rock up to them.  I for myself always attend tutorials since they serve as a good guideline by attempting exam style questions with explanations on how to do them. Unfortunately, the tutors were just rushing on the questions which for a slow poke like me, meant that I had to review the tutorial questions with the worked solutions again,
I would however recommend it for everyone since theyre really helpful in actually learning the component. Especially for the mechanics component that had disastrous lectures and lack of lecture examples.

Practicals:
there were 2 practicals that were held,
1. Tensile testing
2. impact testing

the pracs themselves were chill and having small prac sessions were helpful since the tutors literally did the whole thing, which made it easier to avoid mistakes.
The reports were really long and tedious, and required alot of graphs and research for the discussion questions.
The textbook was really helpful and paraphrasing the theoretical concepts meant that anyone can do well on these reports.

FEA:
this component is really helpful for both Mechanical and Civil, since it actually introduces the concept of CAD through SolidWorks that was taught really well in the Workshops.
The assignment was about designing a beam and bracket, and optimising its properties to reduce the total stresses applied in the material. It involves using your engineering knowledge to pick the best material and dimensions to improve the beam and the assignment was just about doing questions, it was more like a written assessment
The due  date was right at the end of week 12, which made it annoying, and i would recommend it to not leave it at the last  minute like I did.

The midsem of FEA was held during week 7,  and the questions can get abit annoying, but its not too bad. There were a set of practice questions with fully worked solutions provided as a resource and going through them was sufficient enough to learn the content.

Exam:
was fair, but I could have done better. The materials component is alot like the past exams, and doing the tute and textbook questions were helpful.
There was NO FEA IN THE EXAM, since all of it was assessed in the assignment and midsem.

the mechanics component was tough and varied in each exam. Lack of content and terrible lectures made it harder than it should be. Another thing to note is that there is no formula sheet on the exam. They want you to understand the content or derive these formulas that youer better off just memorising.
Obviously this made it harder since there were atleast 20 formulas to know.
I guess this was done to limit the amount of H1s in the batch, since the exam could have been far worse than what everyone expected
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: makeevolution on July 05, 2016, 02:38:53 am
Subject Code/Name: MCEN30017 Mechanics and Materials 

Workload:  3 lectures a week for 12 weeks (1 hr lectures)
1 1hr tutorials in weeks 1-6, 9-12: 5 for materials, 4 for mechanics
3 2hr FEA (Finite Element Analysis) workshops in the semester
2 2hr Practicals (both for materials) in the semester

Assessment:
2 Lab reports for the practicals, each 7.5%
FEA (finite element analysis) report 20%
1 hr mid sem test for FEA in week 6 5%
3 hrs end of sem exam (only assess mechanics and materials no FEA) 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, about 3 in library some more was given in LMS

Textbook Recommendation:  Callister WD Jr, Materials Science and Engineering 9th ed, Mechanics of Materials James M. Gere 8th edition, A first course in Finite Element by Jacob Fish any edition

Lecturer(s): Dr Xia for Materials
Jason Monty for Mechanics
Dr Mohsen for FEA

Year & Semester of completion: sem 1 2016

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 94

Comments:
-Materials: We learn about atomic bonding from scratch, building up to crystal structures and on to dislocations, elastic and plastic deformations, stregthening and softening methods, fracture, fatigue, and creep. Many dislike the lectures while I find it actually pretty interesting. Granted the lecture slides are just copy paste from the textbook, and the way he lectures (points to the lecture slides and talks for an hour) may put you to sleep. However he actually shows us some videos about the implementation of the ideas we learn in class (like creep effects on airplane turbine) which is cool. Kenong assesses more stuff than just whatever is in the textbook (i.e. mechanism of plastic deformation) and this is not in his lecture slides but rather he explains it on the board so go to the lectures. He replies to my emails fast and doesnt really want to answer questions through email i.e. you have to make appointments with him. I did this and although granted he was your typical grumpy guy, he actually teaches me about how to answer the past exam questions that I attempted better and more coherent and gave me some study tips which really helped me to do well in the exam. So don't take his grumpiness personally when answering your emails and just go make consultations with him ;make sure you have attempted the question first. To pass the exam my advice is to read the book and do the suggested problems that he gives in the LMS as well as redo the prac questions (which is actually some of the suggested problems from the textbook which sucks). Also do the concept check questions in the Callister book they are very good in testing your understanding. On top of that Google and practuce some more questions from other unis; I did mine from MIT opencourse thing. My exam was very similar to the past exam (some question were just blatant copy paste) but then that might well change with your exam.
When you do your labs make sure you have read the textbook before you go do the lab so that you can ask questions to the demonstrator before its too late; especially read about polymer deformation stuff because it is not taught in lectures but you have to understand it in order to be able to do the lab reports. The demonstrators were good; they replied to my emails fast and didn't withheld information. The lab reports are long and tedious (generating a lot of graphs on excel and whatnot) so do it early.

FEA: You have to watch 12 15 mins lectures on youtube; that's the assessed content. The in class lectures are just explaining the importance of checking your FEA work and some stories about how FEA was used to create blablabla so not assessed. Nevertheless the lecturer also did some worked examples in the lectures. I didn't go to the in class lectures cause assignments are more important to do rather than listening to non assessed stuff. These stuff are assessed in the mid test only; nothing on FEA in the final exam. The mid test was easy; make sure you read the book and understand it to be able to do the mid test. Practice problems with solutions (problems copy pasted from the book) were available in LMS.
The other part of FEA is the workshops. It involves using CAD software Solidworks to do FEA using a computer rather than by hand. The demonstrators were excellent in both helping in class as well as clarifying questions about the assignment. The assignment was a pain in the neck; so many simulations to do and if you dont have Windows and have to use the uni computer you might have to wait for 2 hours for the FEA results to arise. The wordings were also a bit vague but the demonstrators were great in answering us; they answer through the discussion board. Do this assignment early on; there is a ton of questions to answer and you will not get it right the first time.

Mechanics: The lectures were alright I guess. Granted the lecturer sometimes make mistakes and whatnot but still the way he proves the theorems and his explanations were helpful for me. His lecture style (writes on the document camera) was excellent because his lecture pace is then the same with my note taking pace.The tutes are very important go to the tutes the tutors are great they explain things very well and answers ur questions thoroughly. You might be tempted to skip them because the lecturer will give out worked solutions but then again those solutions were sometimes wrong and the tutors will warn you about this in the tutes so go to the tutes! Get the book for mechanics and do the back of the book practice problems. Consult Hibbeler or some other textbooks for some topics that are not covered in the recommended textbook (e.g. virtual work). There is a ton of stuff that you need to remember and able to do for mechanics and my advice is to do as many problems as you can; even the ones that you think are too hard and won't likely be in the exam. Also consult other universities for practice problems (access the lecturer's web index) because more likely you're gonna get worked solutions that way compared to just doing problems from the book. You'll have to book consultations with Jason by email in Swotvac. The tutor also helps you during swotvac about any questions provided you email them first about it; they didnt mention their availability in class.

Overall this subject requires every single bit of your time; so many things jammed in so little time. Do everything early because you'll make mistakes and you'll need time to correct them. Teaching staff doesnt publish constulation times; gotta be proactive and email them about it. Don't take the rudeness of some of the teaching staff personally and just ask to meet them in person if you have any questions; they actually helped me more than I asked them for even though with a bit of a grumpiness. Rudeness doesn't mean apathy.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: VCEANON on July 05, 2016, 07:09:06 am
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30009 Drugs in Biomedical Experiments 

Workload:  There are two (1 hr) workshops and a practical (3 hrs) per week. The first workshop includes all students in the subject and is run in a theatre, whereas the second workshop precedes your particular practical class and is generally run in the lab.

Assessment:  A 20% mid-semester test, 40% exam, 40% continued assessment of pracs

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture for the workshops in a lecture theatre only.

Past exams available:  Two practice mid-semester tests with no solutions provided, one past exam with thoroughly worked solutions provided and a couple of practice questions with no solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  A laboratory manual is provided for free, but you need to purchase a laboratory notebook for about $20.

Lecturer(s): Michael Lew, Christine Keenan, Rosa McCarty, James Ziogas, Alastair Stewart, Tony Hughes, probably more

Year & Semester of Completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: I scraped an H1

Comments:
I'm reviewing this subject because the previous one is quite old and brief.

You don't need to have done any prior pharmacology to choose this subject, but it helps. Most students completing this subject are majoring in pharmacology or medicinal chemistry (since it is compulsory for them), but I included it as a part of a biochemistry/molecular biology major.

The best part of this subject is that there are no lectures, hence barely any content to "memorise". The workshops are just used for a bit of admin, to go through theory for the pracs (generally too detailed to actually be assessed but helps you understand what you are doing and why), or to go through the class results in detail (quite important).

All pracs are done in pairs or groups of three, and if you haven't done much pharmacology someone in your group will have so you can learn off each other. The pracs aren't very stressful compared to other prac subjects because you aren't really assessed on your performance in the prac. There are a few demonstrators that roam around the lab, beware that some of them are more helpful than others. If you stuff up a prac, it isn't a big deal because the assessment mainly uses class results and gives you room to suggest possible causes of errors, just ensure that you write what happened in your notebook.

The subject is broken into five distinct blocks/sets of experiments. The continued assessment of practicals that is worth 40% comprises:
----- A laboratory notebook entry each week (10%): I found this the worst part of assessment for the subject, not because it was particularly difficult, but rather the expectations were poorly outlined. I tended to get into a lot of detail at the beginning of semester but realised that it took too much time for what it was worth after a few weeks. This is assessed once at the end of semester, which I thought didn't really provide us with an opportunity to improve our entries throughout the semester. I would have preferred them to check it twice, once earlier on in the semester so that we could get feedback and fix our mistakes in later pracs. During the final prac class, a mark is put in your book to indicate where you are up to so you can keep it for revision purposes. I personally didn't use it much for exam revision, and would have preferred them to grade it so we could get our marks before the final exam.
----- Block 1 (about responses to capsaicin) was only assessed in the MST and exam: I think this block of pracs was just included to warm us up into prac work and help us practice our pipetting skills.
----- Block 2 (about drug effects and receptors) required some graphical analysis and answering a few questions (5%): The pracs for this block were just doing a bunch of organ bath experiments and making a lot a concentration response curves. Then, you get to spend two weeks designing your own experiment/hypothesis and then testing it (rather than follow a protocol in the lab manual) which is something I believe is unique to this prac subject. Again, I felt that they didn't provide us with clear expectations for the assessment of this block. I would have liked an assessment rubric, but I think they mark it by comparing your work to others in the cohort rather than looking for specific expected details in your answers. Anyway, you need to go into a lot of detail for the questions section to achieve a good mark. The average was 19/28, pretty low compared to assessments later on.
----- Block 3 (about toxicity of prednisolone) required you to analyse the class results (7.5%) and peer-assessment (2.5%): The single prac for this block involved a mouse dissection which was pretty fun. It was run by Rosa, who I reckon was one of the better lecturers who made an effort to integrate the five blocks. There is a bit of focus on immunology in this block, as you will be removing and analysing the spleen and thymus, and need to be able to in identify a few cell types using microscopy. The assignment for this block is marked by your peers, and the median mark they give ends up being your mark out of 7.5%, but you also get a free 2.5% on top of that for marking five of your peers.
----- Block 4 (about drug discovery and high-throughput screening) is assessed by a group assignment (7.5%): This block is run by Alastair Stewart, and you go through how a pharmaceutical company would go about finding new drugs. For the assessment, you are provided with around five Standard Operating Procedures that you need to mark as a group of 4-6. The mark you get is determined by how closely the marks your group gives correlates to the official marks for that SOP. There are also some general questions you need to do and a few calculations for the cost of a hypothetical high-throughput screen. The average was 82/100. There was also a molecular modelling prac in this block which was done entirely on the computers and run by Tony Hughes. You looked at X-ray crystallography structures for human beta-adrenoceptors, aquaporin and ubiquitin.
----- Block 5 (about beta-blockers and clinical trials) is assessed by a written abstract (7.5%): This prac was sort of like a mock (single-blind) clinical trial, in that you are given (if you are healthy and wanted to) either atenolol, pindolol or a placebo after taking baseline cardiovascular measurements, and you observe their effects. You use stationary exercise bikes, and measure parameters like heart rate, blood pressure, facial temperature and peak expiratory flow rate. I found this prac really fun. The abstract is restricted to 1 A4 page, and the average was 18/20.

There was a general consensus on my prac bench that the feedback was sub-par. You aren't clearly told why you lost marks for these assignments, but are just given a generic document about the overall performance of the class. Given that there were only 80 students, I think they definitely could have given slightly more individualised feedback, especially for the group assignment. For the MST, you are just given a mark and they don't go through common errors or the correct answers. It wasn't difficult and didn't require you to memorise any theory, but the average was 24/34 probably due to how different it was to the practice material they provided. The exam was in a similar format to the MST, but I found it a bit harder. There is no multiple choice on either MST or exam, it's mainly either calculations/match the graph to a statement or short answer questions where you explain a set of provided results. I liked that the concepts are more important than fine details that would be rote learned in other subjects.

The workshop slides aren't put up on the LMS, which I found really annoying. And the workshops run in the lab aren't recorded which was a shame since it was quite hard to get everything down if you zone out during the 4 hours. This doesn't end up being a big issue since you aren't assessed in that way in the exam. The laboratory manual provided wasn't very detailed (compared to other prac subjects). I think it would have been better if they included some specific background knowledge/theory rather than links to other resources/papers, but it's all explained in the workshop preceding the prac anyway.

Overall, the subject is definitely on the easier side with interesting content but the coordination/feedback could be improved.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tshh on July 05, 2016, 12:25:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE20003 Introductory Personal Finance

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

Assessment:  "App challenge" assignment worth 10%, 1 hour MST worth 20%, 2 hour end of semester exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Semester 1 2015 past MST available. Semester 1 2014 past exam available, and practice questions. These were released on the LMS before each of their corresponding assessments.

Textbook Recommendation:  "Recommended" textbook: Taylor, S. and Juchau, R. Financial Planning in Australia. 2015 Essentials Edition. LexisNexis, Chatswood. 2015.

Not needed, although I probably would have done better had I completed the readings at least once.

Lecturer: Carsten Murawski

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 81% - H1

Comments:

Introductory Personal Finance (IPF) is an entry point into becoming a financial advisor. I believe it contributes to some sort of certification for financial advisors, but I am unfamiliar with the industry.

It is worth noting I took this subject as a breadth, and do not have any experience with commerce with the exception of Finance 1. Thus those doing a B-COM may have a different experience with the subject.

Each lecture briefly covers one topic. The topics are:

This has been my only subject with 2 hour lectures, which I found extremely tedious. Generally, the 1st hour Murawski uses describing various statistics. Often this hour is rather depressing, as he highlights various problems that the financial industry faces. The 2nd hour is largely focused on describing the various financial decisions within each topic, e.g. different types of shares, different types of insurance, different types of superannuation contributions etc.

I found that most of the learning occurred in the tutorials.

Overall, I have found the content of this subject to be fairly practical - it pertains to decisions we will all likely make in the future. However, much of the time the content is also common sense. I also found it to be fairly dry, but no more so than Finance 1.

The assignment was very frustrating. It was a group assignment that involved designing an app that is intended to aid people with their finances. The assignment included describing the function of the app; who would use the app and why, including an estimate of the number of users; how the app would function, sufficient for a programmer to develop the app; an estimate of the timeline; and an estimate of the financial plan for development of the app.
This assignment was only introduced last semester. I am unaware if it will continue to be used.

The MST comprised 34 MCQs, most of which were taken from the past MST. The MST was very easy, and most people would have finished at around 34 minutes, when we had an hour to complete the MST.

The final exam comprised 9 long-answer questions. There was a mix of calculation questions and extended response questions.
Given that questions on the MST were largely taken from the past MST, I assumed that this would also be the case with the final exam, and decided just to memorise the questions/answers on the past exam. However, this was not the case. ~7 of the 9 questions were not on the past exam nor on the practice questions. In retrospect, I would have been better off reviewing each of the lectures - the questions were fairly evenly spread across each of the topics.

The subject was fairly easy; for the most part, I didn't do any study for it during the semester, and crammed my revision for the final exam into the 5 days after all my other exams.

Whilst the result was somewhat disappointing, I do not regret taking this subject. The skills and knowledge taught in the subject outweigh the cost of one mediocre result. However, I am unsure as to if this knowledge is new to those undertaking a B-COM, but it was definitely valuable for someone with limited prior financial knowledge.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 05, 2016, 08:16:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90043 Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering 

Workload:  1 x 2 hour lecture, 1 x 2 hour workshops

Assessment:  2 hour exam (35% - hurdle requirement), workshop attendance (10% - hurdle requirement), 6 executive summaries (25% - hurdle requirement), 10 minute group presentation (10%) and a major group assignment (20%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with/without screen capture

Past exams available: No. Four sample multiple choice questions were provided, and outline of case study was provided.   

Textbook Recommendation:  No required textbooks

Lecturer(s): Prof Anne Steinemann along with different guest lecturers each week

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  2/5

Your Mark/Grade: N/A

Comments:

Where do I start with this subject? The guest lecturers are interesting, but this is overshadowed by administration issues that plagued this subject throughout the semester. Firstly, this subject has a HUGE workload. In the first week, you're put into a group, and then you choose a case study to research over the semester.

Each fortnight you're also assigned a smaller case study to write an executive summary on, along with using a sustainability model to analyse the case study. These case studies will constantly interfere with the major case study, and technical glitches with TurnItIn meant sometimes waiting 1 month+ for feedback on the executive summary. There was also a huge amount of inconsistency in grading and advice often conflicted (i.e. being told to reference material, and then being told not to). The last executive summary was done in an exam-style setting, where a 398 document was given to students 4 days before earliest sitting of the case-study.

The 2 hour workshops would be conducted in a small-medium-sized lecture theatre that would sit roughly 50 students. Students would be expected to engage in active discussion (in order to be ticked off for one week) in such a large room, to the point that you'd probably only be talking for roughly 90s in the 2 hour session. These workshops are WAY TOO BIG for what they're trying to accomplish.

The exam was a 2 hour exam where you would have to answer 30 multiple choice questions, write an executive summary and use an appropriate model to analyse a question asked.

Bottomline, yes, the lectures were interesting. The subject is useful for anyone studying to become an engineer, but it was run terribly.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 05, 2016, 08:59:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR30002 Fluid Mechanics 

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lecture per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week, 1 x 2 hour laboratory work per semester

Assessment:  1 lab report (10%), 2 assignments (20%) and a 3 hour exam (70% - hurdle requirement)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with or without screen capture

Past exams available:  No. But there were 10 sample questions

Textbook Recommendation:  No prescribed or required textbooks, lectures are self-contained

Lecturer(s): Dr Daniel Heath, Dr Marco Ghisalberti

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: P

Comments:

Despite my low score in this subject (exam marking must've been harsh), I really enjoyed it. The subject started off with Marco introducing the basic laws such as: conservation of mass, momentum and energy. The next topic was dimensional analysis to get relationships between fluid properties. Here we were also introduced to the Reynolds number, Bond number, Weber number and Froude number. The next topic was looking at pipe flow before Daniel took over to discuss pumps, compressible flow (flow of gases - toughest topic), and stirred tanks. Then Marco took over to finish off with open channel flow, the Navier-Stokes equation in a reasonably simplistic form, and then hydrostatics.

The two lecturers differed in how they taught. Marco would write on partially completed pages, work on problems in class and provide summary sheets of material after each topic was concluded. Daniel opted for slides which would be harder to digest (I learn through writing).

I would've preferred assignments to be a little more spread out, as the two assignments were handed out in the second half of the semester during crunch time. One thing that irritated me, was the fact that the exam contributed to 70% of your grade. An exam that's worth that much, should be split into two exams (one during the middle of the semester, and one at the end)

Anyway, it was a really enjoyable, technical subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 05, 2016, 09:29:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics 

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 2 hour workshops

Assessment:  2 mid-semester tests (15%), weekly online quizzes (5%), 4 group assignments (30%), 3 hour exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with/without screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, two. There's also practice problems

Textbook Recommendation:  No prescribed texts, but workshops take questions from: Meriam JL and Kraige LG, Engineering Mechanics : Dynamics 7th Edition, HGibbeler RC, Statistics and Mechanics of Materials 3rd Edition

Lecturer(s): Professor Joe Klewicki, Dr David Ackland, Prof Ivan Marusic

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments:

Firstly, this subject is not going to be a walk in the park. This subject packs a lot of foundational statics and dynamics into one semester. Doing the assignments in a group will either add a level of complexity to the subject, or make things easier. Choose wisely during the first workshop, as that will be your group for the entire semester. I happened to find myself in a group with people who would send me their work right at the end (handwritten of course), so I'd spend many nights trying to type up the work to resemble something professional.

Make sure you go to workshops and jot down the worked solutions the tutors go through. Those solutions to problems will help you learn how to tackle problems. Also, the online quizzes generally tend to be questions from the previous week's tutorial, so make sure you understand those questions so you can ace those quizzes for an easy 5%.

The mid-semester tests aren't too bad, but make sure you check your multiple choice answers, as it's very easy to make a calculation error that yields a similar, but wrong answer.

The dynamics component is probably twice as difficult as the statics component, so make sure you maximise your grades in the statics component. The dynamics component in the exam is rather difficult, so make sure you really know your statics, so you can get some easy marks. Know the difference between method of joints, and method of sections.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: QuantumJG on July 05, 2016, 09:47:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30008 Engineering Risk Analysis 

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorials

Assessment:  A 2 hour exam (60%), 2 group assignments (30%) and tutorial attendance (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with/without screen capture

Past exams available:  No.  Sample quantitative questions provided

Textbook Recommendation:  There are prescribed texts, but I didn't find them necessary.

Lecturer(s): Dr Lihai Zhang along with guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  3/5

Your Mark/Grade: P

Comments:

This subject is useful for anyone wanting to become an engineer, as it makes you think about all the risks present on the worksite and how to mitigate them to safe levels. The subject starts off with qualitative risk analysis, which seems to rely on guesstimating risks through commonsense. It's irritating for someone like me who likes numbers and dealing with quantitative results.

For this component of the subject, we had an assignment where we had to come up with a risk analysis of a project. It seemed quite overwhelming, but tutors were lenient.

The next component dealt with quantitative risk analysis, which was basically learning about applying probability theory. We looked over normal, binomial, Poisson and t-distributions. We then looked at things such as confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, and linear regression.

We then had an assignment where we applied this to a mine, to determine how to minimise excavation costs and maximise safety.

The exam is equally split among the qualitative component and quantitative component. The quantitative component is really easy to prepare for, however the qualitative part is harder, as it's not covered that much in tutorials. This is what caused me to haemorrhage marks in the exam. I'd argue rote-learning the lectures (especially the points in AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009 risk standard).   
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on July 06, 2016, 11:57:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: BMEN20001 Biomechanical Physics and Computation

This is a relatively new subject, 2016 semester 1 marked its second offering. The intended audience is biomed students looking to master the physics foundations necessary for studying biomechanics.

The subject's aim is to serve as a combination of ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics and COMP20005 Engineering Computation, embedded in a biomechanics context. That is, we studied the same topics but where engineering students might focus on steel bars supporting loads we'll look at human limbs holding weights. We also spent some time considering the complications that arise when analysing organic materials such as bone and skin.

I wasn't a member of the intended audience, as a Physics and Computing student interested in extending and applying what I already know into a new context. For someone like me, this subject wasn't that bad. It acted as an interesting extension of VCE Physics topics (the 'mechanics' core AoS and the 'structures and materials' detailed study), plus an introduction to yet another programming language (MATLAB).

However, as a subject aimed at introducing biomed students to physics and computation, BMEN20001 has a fair way to go. The assignments needed to be more properly thought-out, and they needed to provide all necessary information at release time. The demonstrators were shocking, and the workshops were possibly worse than useless --- the MATLAB learning experience was liable to scare anyone new to computing away from the field for good! The pacing of the content was out of step with the impression given by the handbook entry; more attention could have been paid to the foundational concepts (or even just more careful attention; it's just very important to avoid introducing confusion at that level because it underlies the rest of the entire subject and indeed all of Classical Mechanics!).

That's the reasoning behind the score I have awarded this subject. However, I have confidence that the coordination team will be able to improve the subject in future iterations by responding to student feedback.

Workload:
Three 1h lectures (less on average, however; see comments!)
One 2h workshop (sometimes a tutorial, sometimes a MATLAB class)

Assessment:

5% - Assignment 1
10% - Assignment 2
10% - Assignment 3
15% - Assignment 4, groups of 4

10% - Mid-semester test
50% - 3h exam in exam period

Lecture Capture: Yep

Past exams available:
There were no past exams available because all of the previous exam questions had been included as tutorial questions (only one previous exam this time round).

Lecturer:

The content lectures were presented by Vijay Rajagopal.

Additionally, there was a guest lecture from one of the tutors, a series of three guest lectures on head injury by Andrew Short, and a series of three further guest lectures from various biomechanics researchers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95

Technologies:

This subject served as an (admittedly poor) introduction to programming using MATLAB. Learning MATLAB was the focus of most of the workshops, and the first three assignments were mostly programming.

Textbook Recommendation:

There were four recommended textbooks, from which the course material was drawn. These were:
- Humphrey JD, and Delange SL, An Introduction to Biomechanics
- Nihat O. Nordin M, Goldsheyder D, and Leger D, Fundamentals of Biomechanics, 3rd Edition
- Meriam Jl and Kraige LG, Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics, 7th Edition
- Hibbeler RC, Statics and Mechanics of Materials, 3rd Edition

I personally used a very old edition of Hibbeler (like 1991 or something, I think it's technically not even the same book as it was just called 'Mechanics of Materials') and I found it absolutely fantastic, but that's coming from a strong maths and physics background and with a preference for comprehensive textbooks that leave no ambiguity and don't shy away from complexity. It was also a regular engineering text, with no biomechanical context. Nevertheless, it was an enlightening read; one of those textbooks that answers all of your questions as soon as they form, and also really gives you a big-picture view of the material.

Some of the other texts might serve as a better introduction to these physics concepts, but they seemed to also assume a bit of a background in biology, of which I had none. Therefore, I recommend the Hibbeler option for anyone with my background.

Comments:

The rest of this review is pretty long. I've included a lot of detail about the topics we covered, the class experience, and the assessments. I hope it aids people in their decisions about this subject, and helps people taking it / required to take it know what kind of experience to expect. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you have any further questions about this subject.

Content

The 'physics' in 'biomechanical physics and computation' stands for statics (the study of materials undergoing forces but not moving), and dynamics (the study of objects in motion). These topics were the focus of the lectures. The 'computation' represents an approach to these problems that utilises computers, which can do the grunt work of crunching numbers, repeating calculations and plotting graphs. This was the focus of the workshops. Of course, everything was looked at through a biomechanics perspective.

In terms of statics, we quickly whizzed through the basics of forces and moments (a.k.a. torques, shout out to VCE Physics students) and then looked at the much more confusing topic of internal forces and moments (like within bones or at joints). After that was a look at the concepts of stress and strain (normal and shear), extending to applications of forces in 3D, as well as other material properties (especially those relevant to biological materials like skin). We were going to discuss beams but skipped that topic and went straight to axial loading, and finally looked at thin-walled spherical and cylindrical pressure vessels (with examples including arteries and aneurysms!).

For dynamics, again we quickly touched on the basics of motion and relative motion of particles - position, velocity, and acceleration. We also looked quickly at work and energy. We then spent some time on linear momentum (for collision analysis, feat. concepts like the coefficient of restitution), and then on rotational motion and angular momentum. Finally, we had a brief look at rigid bodies (bodies larger than a particle, where rotation matters) and some more powerful and general equations of motion that can be used to analyse rigid body systems.

Despite the appearances from the handbook entry, I think this subject was pitched a little too fast as an introduction to these physics concepts. I think for someone completely new to mechanics (statics and dynamics), a bit much was assumed and the basics/foundational points were skimmed over. I would recommend that someone in this position try very hard to master the basics before tackling the later topics, and I think resources such as khanacademy's high school motion playlists would be perfect for this purpose.


The 'computation' part spanned everything from variables and data types to control structures (branching and looping) and functions. Despite the presence in the handbook, numerical methods for solving differential equations were not explored. Numerical simulations were carried out, but they were for simple projectile motion situations. This was the domain of the majority of the workshops, which I'll talk more about later.


Lectures

Vijay's lectures weren't bad, but I'd say as a relatively new lecturer he's definitely got some improvement to do in terms of presenting these concepts. This semester, there were a few topics that seemed to be lost on students. One was a matrix method for converting between 3D stresses and strains, but this was identified and I think Vijay is going to use a much more intuitive approach next time. Another (this wasn't so much the feeling of the cohort but just from me) tricky point that was neglected was the difference between 'tensorial shear strain' and 'engineering shear strain'. It turns out that tensorial shear strain (ε - used in the matrix equations), actually has twice the value of engineering shear strain (γ - used in other formulas). This subtle point was hidden in the definitions of the matrix equations on the slides and I feel like more attention could have been drawn to it, and a very clear distinction made between the shear strains.

Apart from a few tricky points like this, it's easy to see why Vijay always looks so happy and cheerful when he's lecturing - you can tell he loves sharing his passion for biomechanics with people and teaching the concepts too. He was very kind, friendly, and approachable. His priority was everyone's understanding, which is why he always went out of his way to give the best explanations possible (e.g. repeating a lecture or two in response to student questions). Because his heart is demonstrably in the right place, I have no doubt that he'll continually improve his teaching quality in semesters to come.

Vijay also adopted the unconventional (but effective, IMO) strategy of offering lectures dedicated to working through problems, as a demonstration of how to apply the equations and laws we were learning. This was good because, particularly in physics, getting into the process of using theory to solve problems is just as important as getting your head around the theory in the first place. I am glad that this importance was reflected in the lecture schedule.

The other thing about these problem classes, along with the large number of guest lectures (7 in total) and the mid-sem test, was that it left a reduced number of content-lectures. From 3 lectures a week, there ended up being 18 assessable content lectures, making for a fairly light revision load.


Workshops

Unfortunately, the workshops for this subject were quite a let down. Since I came with prior knowledge in computing, I was able to ignore the explanations of the foundational programming concepts. I fear, however, that other students were not so lucky. Nothing that was presented in the workshops was useful beyond what a short online MATLAB (or any other programming language) tutorial would offer, and some of the explanations were outright incorrect and potentially damaging to students' basic understanding of programming concepts.

I don't have faith that the tutors will improve in future semesters (unless they are replaced). If I'm right, then for anyone new to computing and interested in taking this subject, I recommend treating everything presented in the workshops as suspect. Then, I'd advise taking the list of content presented and seeking alternate resources for learning those things. I didn't get a chance to explore it, but I'd be willing to bet that this online course from MIT (the small part of it that is relevant) runs rings around these guys. Short of that, you can PM me on ATAR Notes to help explain a piece of MATLAB code. You can search on Google. Anything other than trusting the demonstrators with your impressions about computing - it's such a wonderful area of study and it really hurt me to see it presented like it was.

A few of the workshops were not allocated to MATLAB, but instead to worked examples, kinda like in the lectures. Due to the general incompetence of the demonstrators, this was equivalent to working through the problems alone or with peers. This does bring me to a small point of confusion, though. Each week, topical 'tutorial' questions were uploaded. Sometimes, a selection of these questions were covered in an example-lecture. Other weeks, the workshop was dedicated to working through them. Either way, the tutorial sheets were just a source of application questions (with accompanying solutions, of varying correctness) even though there was no official 'tutorial'.


Assignments

The first three assignments involved a mechanics problem followed by a short MATLAB scripting task. The problem was that the instructions weren't clear, and often the information given was not really enough to complete the tasks. In several cases, LMS announcements came out afterwards clearing up some ambiguous or missing points, but I think it's really important to minimise this kind of thing - obviously assignment tasks should be as complete as possible upon release so that students are not disadvantaged in the time they have to complete them waiting for things to be cleared up. Also, any assumptions made due to missing information should not later by invalidated by LMS announcements. These issues generally didn't affect me, but they made the assignments come across as incredibly unpolished overall. I hope that in the future these little glitches can be ironed out before assignment release, as much as possible.


Then came the fourth assignment. In about week 7 it was announced that the final assignment would involve group work, which was the first we had heard of it. During week 9, a set of three guest lectures on head impact and head injury was presented by guest-lecturer Andrew Short. That week, the workshop was replaced with a fake-head-dropping experiment, after which we were ushered into groups of 4 students and vaguely told that the final assignment would be a four-part practical report based on these experiments.

Later, more detailed information (almost in the form of an assignment specification!) surfaced. The report was to have four parts:
- a literature review on impact testing,
- a report on the experimental procedure and equipment,
- and analysis of the results,
- and a discussion of the findings and any compliance issues with respect to an impact testing standards document we were given.
Most of the expectations were ambiguous. Some of the specification was incomprehensible. I'm pretty sure the mark allocations didn't even total to 40 (which they were supposed to).

Within my group, I took primary responsibility for the analysis section since nobody else really wanted to use MATLAB. This section, in particular, was a shambles. Part of the task was to analyse the motion of a fake head as it fell and then bounced on different materials. This was meant to be conducted by manually tracking some dots attached to the head form in video recordings of the drop tests. This frame-by-frame tracking (as demonstrated in the week 10 workshop) was quite a lengthy and tedious process, and we were looking for a way to automate it. In the week 11 workshop, we were provided with some MATLAB scripts that attempted to track the dots for us. However, these scripts were very fragile, and even after repeated updates released by Andrew, failed to analyse most of the videos without crashing. I ended up making my own steamlined version of the manual tracking script and using that instead.

In the final week (much to my frustration, for the same reasons as above), Andrew took the LMS discussion forums to construct an FAQ list, detailing assignment advice (mostly things that should have been in the initial specification). At this point, it was far too late to perform our analysis again and so we just had to stick with our manually-acquired data. We did manage to incorporate some advice into the other sections. However, it just shouldn't have been expected that we would be completing the majority of our work in the final week!

Worst of all, one night before the due date, another (apparently, finally working) version of the analysis script was released. Other required scripts were still broken and I never had a chance to try the new analysis script but I have a hunch that it wouldn't actually have been free of bugs. Either way, attempting to release the required material for the assignment the night before the due date when it should have worked from the beginning really frustrated and upset me.

I think the entire cohort felt miserable about the impossibly frustrating final assignment. I can't imagine it will survive the SES reviews unchecked, and I sincerely hope that it is improved for future iterations of the subject.


The assessment was plagued by other small administrative issues such as the due-dates not being announced with the assignments, and LMS resubmissions before the due-date being accidentally disallowed on 3/4 of the assignments (those administered by the demonstrators, ha) just caused a lot of unnecessary stress.


MST and Exam

Though tutorial and lecture examples were a mix of typical engineering examples and simplified biomechanical examples, the questions on the MST and final exam were largely drawn from a biomechanical context. Both papers were  well-balanced in terms of time and difficulty, with the majority of questions being similar to those found in lecture examples or tutorial sheets.

I made an effort to work through every tutorial question before the exam and was rewarded for that this preparation by an exam with no surprises. However, the difficulty of the final exam questions was a little greater than that of most tutorial questions. I'm certainly glad we had three hours because I needed all of it to complete the paper!

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on July 07, 2016, 12:27:53 am
Subject Code/Name: COMP30024 Artificial Intelligence

This subject is core to the OLD Computing and Software Systems Major. Unless you enrolled a year or two ago, you'll be in the new one which doesn't have this as a core subject (but of course you can still take it as an elective). It runs in semester 1.

COMP30024 was basically an introduction to the very broad field of artificial intelligence. We learned a whole heap of generic approaches but didn't really go super deep into any of the more specific areas like machine learning or natural language processing. There are lots of masters subjects for those purposes, though, and we did get to spend some time on robotics which was cool!

The first half felt a lot like the good days of COMP20007 Design of Algorithms, learning clever algorithms for AI problems. The second half felt like a nice extension of high-school probability, with some other interesting topics thrown in (decision-making and robotics) according to the lecturer's research interests.

Overall, I can't really fault this subject on anything, and compared to subjects I have scored 5/5 in the past, it's at least as good (maybe I should try to be a little harder to impress!). COMP30024 was seamlessly coordinated, with very clear expectations. The assignments were challenging but very engaging and rewarding, and the exam was similarly challenging but not unfair.

Highly recommended as a third year elective for anyone with a love for algorithms (and/or probability) and any interest in the field of AI. You'll come away suitably grounded in the field with a firm grasp of which way is up, ready and excited to continue studying AI at masters level.

Workload:
Two 1h lectures
One 1h tutorial (it was a 2hr tutorial on the timetable, but we only used the first hour - the second was offered for project work)

Assessment:
8% - Project Part A (groups of 2)
22% - Project Part B (same groups)
0% - Unmarked 'feedback quiz' in-lecture (instead of a MST)
70% - 2h exam in exam period

Lecture Capture: Y

Past exams available:
There were no past exams available, but one sample exam with solutions was released.

Lecturer:

The first half (symbolic AI) was presented by Sarah Erfani

The second half (AI under uncertainty) was presented by Chris Leckie

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 98

Technologies:

There wasn't a huge focus on implementation, except in the project, which had to be written in Java. Java was assumed knowledge, and putting together a workable solution required a decent level of proficiency within the team (but nothing more than what you'd pick up from, say, SWEN20003 Object-Oriented Software Design).

Textbook Recommendation:

The recommended textbook is Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russel and Norvig. It's quite good! I actually bought a copy (albeit a cheap international edition from abebooks) and I really got a lot out of it. It's quite well written and goes into a very satisfying amount of detail.

Comments:

The rest of this review goes into a lot of detail about the subject experience -- content, classes and assessment. Hopefully it helps you know what kind of thing to expect if you decide to take this subject.

Content

Artificial Intelligence can be defined as the process of responding to perceptions in a rational manner. That is, to maximise the expected result according to some performance measure. The first week was spent formalising these kinds of ideas, with a few definitions to base our study on.

From there, the subject was split into two stages. First, we talked about acting rationally in the world where everything is visible, predictable, and discrete (symbolic AI). Topics in this area included
- tree/graph search - from depth first search to A* (but not necessarily on a finite, known graph as you might be familiar with from prerequisites - instead, often on an infinite search space that you generate on the fly)
- adversarial search - includes strategies for searching when you don't get to control all of the moves, so you have to consider all of the possibilities the opponents might select.
- learning (for game playing) - this was a very light taste of machine learning, aimed at inspiring people to have a go with their projects. We looked at different learning methodologies and their effective use in building a game-playing AI.
- constraint satisfaction - searching for solutions in a complex state space and using really powerful general-purpose techniques to improve our search strategies. We looked at backtracking search with a host of improvements, as well as gradient descent search and a few important special cases.

Then, when Chris Leckie took over the lectures, we moved on to reasoning and acting rationally in environments where there is uncertainty in your perceptions and uncertainty in the results of your actions, or in an environment where there are multiple other agents with competing goals and they are acting on hidden information. We covered
- a short introduction to uncertainty, which was basically VCE Methods probability but with slightly different notation
- Bayesian inference - representing complex probability distributions with many factors using a Bayesian network to save space, and performing calculations within this representation
- auctions - we discussed a few considerations that come up when trying to design a fair auctioning system, which is an example of a multi-agent environment where ideally you want everyone's interests to be satisfied but you can only rely on people following their own self-interest
- robotics - we discussed a few more considerations that come up when you're dealing with uncertain inputs and uncertain outputs: 'there are only two sources of uncertainty in robotics: everything your robot senses, and everything your robot does'. We also looked at a few other interesting robotics concepts as well.

There was also a non-examinable deep learning guest lecture to finish it all off!


Lectures

I believe it was Sarah's first time lecturing a subject. I have seen some very poor lecturers over the past few years and to Sarah's credit she did fairly well and I think she'll be able to continually improve and become a great lecturer - she's clearly very intelligent (able to accurately interpret and articulately answer student questions) and knowledgeable (able to clearly explain points and stress important subtleties). The only thing her lectures lacked was student engagement, to the point where I found the lectures a great guide for what to focus on but spent my study time with the textbook instead (which happens to be very well written and approachable). I do think that as Sarah gains experience she will build confidence and become a lot more engaging!

Lectures with Chris Leckie were also very clear and insightful, but were a lot more engaging. Chris is a very articulate speaker (I said during his introduction in the first lecture 'this guy's voice is so clear, I will be able to break 3.0x speed when I watch his recordings', and I was right). He also injects a healthy level of sarcastic humour into his lectures and that's my kind of humour.

The lectures themselves were structured nicely. Even if sometimes the individual slides weren't arranged so logically, it was always easy to tell what topics were important and considered 'part of the course', and equally easy to find more information in the textbook (for all topics except TD-Leaf(λ), a machine learning algorithm, which is not in the textbook and for which I recommend checking out the original paper, referenced from the slides --- though it's a bit of a tough read). It was made very clear to us what level of understanding was expected, and there was a slide at the end of each topic's lecture material that described what the key points were, with examples of how they could be examined. After taking the exam, I can say that at least this year these summary slides were fairly accurate (though by all other accounts, that doesn't mean the exam questions were actually easy to complete!).

Another cool feature of the slides was that often there were frame-by-frame animations of the execution of certain algorithms, and I've always been a big fan of that kind of visualisation technique for presenting a tricky algorithm, so that was great.


Tutorials

Well, let me start by saying that the tutorials for this subject saved my semester. Drowning due to the excessive workload of SWEN30006 (see that review) and just generally overloaded due to other commitments I fell drastically behind in this subject. After mastering the first 4 weeks over the mid semester break (which was after week 4 this year), I didn't touch the remaining lectures until swotvac. The assignment and the tutorials were all the AI I participated in until then. And, well, the tutorials with the head tutor Lida were just fantastic!

I was able to come in, listen to Lida's quick but comprehensive review of the subject matter (the first time I was hearing about these concepts), and engage with it right away; answering and asking questions and really getting a feel for the ideas. It was only one hour each week but it really kept me above the surface in this subject. I didn't have time to properly study the topics until swotvac but it all came together very nicely at that point because of the amazing introductions I had received at the tutorials.

I missed out on two of the tutorials, and I really regret doing so. One time, I caught it up by going to another tutor's class, but it just didn't compare to Lida's classes. If you are taking this subject, my advice is to figure out which tutorials she is taking, and make yourself available at that time. Bonus if you can go to a late one that has a small number of students because that's what we had, and it was more personal. I really wish I had been able to keep up with this subject during the semester because I would have been able to get so much more than an introduction out of these tutorials, it really could have been great.


Assignments

The project (part A and B) for this subject was to make an AI to play a game called 'hexifence', in groups of two. Hexifence is a board game identical to dots and boxes (a.k.a. paddocks), except with a hexagonal grid. Part A was a simple primer project, it involved reading, storing and analysing a board state. In part B, the reigns were off and we were tasked with implementing a full AI to play this game from start to finish using whatever strategies or AI techniques we wanted. Beyond marks for code quality and correctness, the majority of the marks were allocated to the 'competitiveness' of our AI (as tested against several other agents of varying prowess) and the 'creativity' of our approach (to encourage independent research and experimentation). A H1 score, we were told, required far more than the basic adversarial search strategy from lectures.

The options were nearly endless. There were a whole lot of suggested paths we didn't bother to go down, such as using machine learning to fine tune our AI's move evaluation abilities. There were entire branches of promising theory not studied that we didn't have time to explore (Monte-Carlo tree search, negamax and other improved adversarial search algorithms). It was just a matter of pouring over AI papers about how this algorithm or that adjustment had performed amazingly in chess or go AI programs, and seeing if we understood it enough to try to implement it ourselves.

We ended up having more ambition than time, and put together a street-fighting AI that cut corners in its move searches by using a myriad of game-specific knowledge to eliminate unlikely possibilities (perhaps closer to how a human plays a board game, than the traditional brute-force AI approach). We were rewarded for our host of hacks and heuristics with full marks in all categories! You can view our submission on GitHub (beware of academic honesty if you are thinking of taking inspiration for your own AI project).

One thing that the assignments lacked was satisfying closure in the form of a student v student tournament. To rectify this lack of bloodshed, I'm currently writing a networked multi-player hexifence server and client-programs that I plan to distribute so that my peers can plug in their AIs and face them off against each other like some sick animal fight but with computers. Its kind of a mix between everything I've learned this semester in COMP30024, COMP30023, and SWEN30006. I'll definitely keep this post updated with how it all goes, including results if we manage to run a tournament.


Exam

There was no MST for this subject, but instead a mid-semester 'feedback quiz' in one of the lectures, which was optional and did not contribute to our marks. I planned to go but ended up studying in the systems garden instead, but from the recording it was basically a few short questions of an introductory calibre, followed by a discussion of the solutions as a class. The questions were said to be typical of about the difficulty of half of the questions on the final exam, and that there were also another 30% of questions that would be a little harder, and the remaining questions 'quite challenging'.

The final exam ended up being pretty fair, though I've heard others found it  challenging. The questions were essentially what we were told to expect on the summary slides of each topic, though whether that meant they were easy to complete correctly or not was another matter. There was a mix of multiple choice, short answer and extended response questions, and also one or two 'carry out this algorithm' style problems. Basically, the summary slides were a really good guide, and there were no real surprises.

At least one exam question came from the textbook chapter questions. I know because I happened to complete that chapter question in the day or two before the exam. Therefore, I think it might be a good idea to at least give some thought to these questions throughout the semester (hopefully worked solutions wouldn't be too hard to find for your edition).

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on July 07, 2016, 11:26:05 am
Subject Code/Name: COMP30023 Computer Systems

This subject is core to the Computing and Software Systems Major of the BSci. It runs in semester 1. It could have been called COMP30023 Operating Systems and Networks, because that's basically what it's about (plus some Security topics).

There's a big step up in expectations from even second year computing subjects like COMP20007 Design of Algorithms in how dirty you have to get your hands in the practical computing stuff. There's certainly no hand-holding; it was really our responsibility to play around with and explore every new concept, and at times the lectures were more of a preview than an educational resource.

Due to the shear amount of highly-detailed content covered, and the inherent complexity of the concepts studied, this subject was pretty difficult! Embracing the ever-steep learning curves of technological topics was really the focus of this subject. In fact, a lot of my study was finding a rabbit hole and then jumping straight down. I personally found this exploration very rewarding, and I guess that's why I'm still here in a computing degree in third year. Being in a cohort of people who mostly felt the same way made for a really interesting subject.

So the 4.5 score comes from a minor gripe I had about the slightly 'confused' purpose of the lectures. Other than that, this subject was an absolute blast and I really wish I had more of a chance to appreciate the projects and topics we were doing - it all ended up a little rushed because of my workload this semester, and this subject suffered.

Otherwise, it was incredibly well coordinated, with super engaging content, labs and assignments (which make you feel like you can do anything!), and a very friendly and passionate lecturer. Hopefully you will have more time to engage with this subject if you decide to take it.

Workload:
Two 1h lectures (this year they were both on Friday morning!)
One 1h tutorial
One 1h computer lab

Assessment:
15% - Assignment 1
10% - Mid semester test
15% - Assignment 2
60% - 2h exam in exam period

Lecture Capture: Y

Past exams available:
There were no past exams available, but one sample exam (with no solutions) was released. Same for the MST.

Lecturer: Michael Kirley (more later)

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 98

Technologies:

A very technical subject; a host of different technologies were utilised and explored.

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You'll want access to a unix machine, as it was the operating system of study. A Linux install would be best for a seamless experience. I haven't jumped down that rabbit hole yet; I got through fine with OSX with only a few minor road bumps that were easily overcome in most cases (brew install ...). Windows users can use MinGW as they probably have in previous subjects. Also, Windows 10 is going to have native linux integration soon (look up 'windows subsystem for linux') and so that would probably get you through.

It's important to have access to a unix environment because you will need to explore and know about the workings of several command-line utilities (also, the assignments  need to run on the university servers, which run linux). A fantastic tutorial which I nearly made it through can be found here.

There's plenty of programming, almost all of it in C. You'll learn to use a lot of new functions, but you'll want to brush up on your multi-file C programs and Makefiles for the assignments.

Version control (and submission) for the assignments was done using SVN (Subversion). This may change to git in the future, but either way version control is very easy to pick up by following an online tutorial or two. I love doing it all on the command line but my friend recommends TortoiseSVN for those who need a GUI.

Python was used in a few labs for exploring some security concepts such as buffer overflow and cryptography. All the information needed was provided, but you'll want to have some way to use python (even a browser-based python IDE will do, though).


Textbook Recommendation:

There were lots of recommended textbooks, due to the split nature of the course between operating systems topics and and networking topics. I've also described personal recommendations along with the official recommendations.

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For operating systems, the lecturer often referenced two popular textbooks: Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum, and Operating Systems Concepts by Silberschatz et al. (a.k.a. the 'Dinosaur textbook'). I didn't check out Tanenbaum but I read a few chapters from Silberschatz and I found it pretty good, but maybe a little bit lacking in detail.

As with most computing topics, the Internet is a great resource. I'd like to thank Wikipedia in particular for always having a page on the OS concept I was trying to grapple with. You'll never be hungry for details while you have an internet connection!


For the networking component, the two reference textbooks were Computer Networks, by Tanenbaum once again, and Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by Kurose. I didn't try either of these myself but Tanenbaum had a lot of nice diagrams that made it into the slides.

Instead, I relied instead on the internet again. Wikipedia is pretty good with its networking articles but they can sometimes skip details or focus on things that aren't really relevant to this subject. I managed to find a pretty great resource that was as comprehensive as I'd ever need in The TCP/IP Guide, a nasty-looking little web-book that you can probably find a free pdf for (not that I would know). It's quite a tome but it spared no detail and left very few questions unanswered. I recommend picking it up before swotvac. Well, I recommend reading it alongside the lectures on those topics! Let's not get into why I was watching those lectures for the first time during swotvac.


Another focus of the subject is on exploring real live operating systems, specifically unix operating systems like linux and OSX. This exploration took place in two ways: exploring command-line utilities (like 'ls'), and implementing programs in C that talk directly to the operating system (instead of talking to it through standard libraries). For command-line utilities, your unix machine has a built in manual for all of the programs it can run, and this is the recommended text for exploring them (type 'man ls' to see what I mean. Type 'man man' to learn how to use the manual!). For implementation in C, sometimes there are also helpful manual pages for the functions you're practising with. Other times, you'll need to search on Google and find a good Stack Overflow thread because, well, someone has asked your question already and people have answered it already. Otherwise, you can look through the rest of the search results and find a tutorial (or a web-hosted man page).

One particularly helpful tutorial for me was Beej's Guide to Network Programming Using Internet Sockets. This was linked from the slides but goes into a lot more detail than required, and really helped with the second assignment which involved network programming (along with multi-threading and other things, but this helped with the network part!). In this area, the man pages are particularly dense, and Beej has a very approachable explaining style that made the details not so devilish.

There was one final official reference text, and that was Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. It's meant to cover all the programming stuff in a lot of detail but I never went there. Might be good to check out as a reference if internet searching doesn't solve your problem.


Comments:

The rest of this review is pretty extensive, I've included a lot of detail about the whole experience. I hope it helps you know what to expect if you're taking this subject.

Content

I want to give an brief overview of the content, in the hopes that it will help people reading this to know what to expect and to piece it all together as it's happening. As is often the case, I feel like it's a lot easier to see how the topics relate looking back from the end of the course compared to what it was like looking forward from the beginning.

We can start with operating systems. Operating systems comprised the first half (or so) of the course. Our study of operating systems could have been broken down into the following topics:

- process management: the concept of executing a program; getting the processor to follow its instructions. We also paid a lot of attention to the idea of the kernel, the part of the operating systems that provides a lot of functionality to programs who want to access hardware (network interfaces, input devices, storage devices, etc) (and does a lot more)

- process scheduling: answering questions like 'how does the operating system switch between running programs to make it look multiple programs are running at the same time, given that a processor can only do one thing at a time?' and 'how does the operating systems decide how much time processes should get running on the processor?'

- memory management: how do we allocate RAM to running programs? this topic dealt with strategies for making sure every program has enough memory to do its thing, and how to make sure it can't access anyone else's memory. We looked at solutions like 'a paging based virtual-memory system' which will make sense after you do some research on it

- file systems: how does an operating system make use of permanent storage? usually, by collecting certain disk bytes into 'files'. It turns out that in unix, a file is JUST data, and you put all the metadata (size, location, etc) in a separate structure called an 'inode'. This topic was all about that, and about what you do next, like how you store and use directories. We also touched on other file systems and the idea of a virtual file system which hides this all behind a consistent layer of abstraction

- synchronization: when you have multiple programs running at once and the OS could decide to switch between them at any point in time, you need to be very careful in what your programs assume. e.g. 'this value wont change between the time I read from it and the time that I write to it when I'm writing i++ in my C-program' might not actually be the case if another process is also reading/writing that variable. More accurately, you're in danger when you have multiple threads which are just multiple paths of execution through the same program, which can all possibly alter global variables and interfere with each other. This topic was about ways of dealing with these issues; making sure your threads execute safely in a 'synchronized' manner. We learned about all sorts of approaches to concurrency control including mutual exclusion (which is hard to get right!) and these things called semaphores which let us do more complex synchronization tasks.


Then, the course branched off into networks-land. Basically we spent a lot of time talking about the different layers of protocols and functions that make the internet work. This was broken down into the following topics:

- network fundamentals: this was the introduction to the networking portion of the course. We got a broad overview of the networks topic, and there was a lot to talk about but the main takeaway was the idea of a conceptual networking model like the OSI model some might be familiar with from VCE IT: Software Development, which is an idea for how to structure network components to promote flexibility and compatibility. In practice people use the TCP/IP model (most notably as the underlying structure of the internet).

- security: kind of a miscellaneous topic, and always a background focus throughout the study of operating systems, we then took some time to focus on more traditional security topics: symmetric and asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, and digital certificates. The emphasis was on understanding the structure of the schemes and not so much on the details of the various encryption and hashing algorithms in use.

- network/internet layer: we then dove into the first TCP/IP layer of our study; the internet layer. We looked in detail at the structure of an IP packet, the process of fragmenting packets to send them over small transmission lines, the concepts underlying the various historical IP addressing schemes, and also the mechanics of routing packets about a network.

- transport layer: built on the internet layer (which probably uses IP, but doesn't need to) are two common transport-layer protocols; UDP and TCP. Both involve addressing mechanisms to make sure you know which program you're talking to at the target IP address (using ports), but TCP builds on this by adding a few helpful features. One is delivery guarantees, through a system of sending acknowledgements when you receive TCP segments, and resending segments if you don't get an acknowledgement before a certain time limit (in case they didn't make it the previous time(s)). It also adds congestion control, which is where TCP hosts dynamically adjust the size of their outgoing data segments in response to the rate at which they miss acknowledgements. That was the kind of stuff studied in this topic.

- application layer: finally was the application layer. Built atop of TCP (or UDP, depending on your needs) are a bunch of useful application protocols such as HTTP for requesting and sending web pages, DNS for translating domain names into IP addresses, and Mail protocols, well, for email. These were studied in some depth in this final section.



In each of the topics studied, there were roughly three separate focuses.

First, the conceptual understanding of the topic; think short-answer questions about explaining various processes or comparing various strategies.

Then, there was the specific knowledge of certain strategies, tested by small worked examples like 'here's a set of processes that need to be scheduled, what would happen if we used a round-robin scheduling algorithm?' - We were humans simulating and OS.

Finally, we were always looking to our computers to try these things out and see what was going on. We built programs in C (and Python for the security stuff) and played around with bash utilities to explore the things we were learning about in action.


Lectures

The lectures were perhaps the only downside of this subject, and they weren't that bad I just think they could have been a little better.

At the lectures we really felt the whole 'no hand-holding; I'm telling you about this stuff but I'm not really helping you to understand how it works'. I'm not sure that Michael Kirley was aware of this, because he seemed to think he was explaining things, but often he just glossed over things and finished sentences with 'what's happening' and 'what's going on' as a substitute for what was actually happening. Thus, instead of a learning resource, lectures were often more of a topic outline, and it was left to us to go and read the textbook sections and browse the internet and play with our computers to really understand what was happening.

To be fair, there was so much content in this subject that with 2 lectures a week (and 2 lectures lost to Good Friday) it really would have been impossible to teach all this content in the lectures, I just think that they shouldn't be marketed as a learning resource and that way the lecturer could have been a lot more clear about what was expected, if that was the established purpose of the lecture.

One quirk that I think everyone enjoyed was how often he gave away exam questions, literally saying 'I can guarantee you that this question will be on your final exam. I cannot be more explicit than that' or one of a thousand variations of that. I wrote all of the things he said down, and there was far too much for one exam and mid semester test. However, most of what was on the exam was something that he had said, and so listening paid off.


Tutorials

Pretty standard - we sat in a room and discuss topical questions based on the material from the previous week's lectures. I would recommend having seen the previous week's lectures at that point for the purpose of the tutorial. I only managed to be that up-to-date for one tutorial, and it was awesome.

Tutorial questions were a pretty good judge of whether you were doing enough reading outside of lectures. Watching the lectures themselves wasn't quite enough to answer all the questions, which was a subtle indication that more was expected from us. These trends didn't really follow as much into the MST and exam, but I guess the tutorials were there to really engage those students who wanted a little more knowledge out of the subject. I found them pretty interesting overall.

I actually found it helpful to go to two tutorials back to back, to get both tutors' perspectives and to hear everything twice, because sometimes in the first tutorial there wasn't enough time to really get everything. This way, I had one less hour between classes, but I got a second chance to take notes and ask questions (also, felt like a boss answering the difficult questions in the second tutorial after discussing the answers in the first ;)).


Labs

My computer labs were a bit of a shambles because the lab demonstrator basically quit the job two weeks in and so we didn't have any help. It wasn't a big problem, because the demonstrators were there only for emergencies anyway. No hand-holding, remember? I couldn't go to any other time and so The Friday 5.15 session (which was officially cancelled, but we still went along) became a mix between a weekly chill sesh in EDS6, and a small group of us actually trying to work on the lab tasks for the week (which usually took us more than the one hour).

In reality, I ended up finding time a few weeks after each lab to nut them out. I didn't get around to all of them. The labs were quite challenging, and quite fun! They demonstrated the kind of technical exploration that we were expected to be doing in our own time alongside the study of more conceptual operating systems concepts.


Assignments

The assignments in this subject were challenging but great fun. They required a lot of work, and an ability to brave the dark corners of C, but they were immensely rewarding. After making a process scheduling simulator and a multi-threaded, networked game server in C, I can say that I feel powerful! I can't wait to continue building cool things, and I have a small list of projects starting with a mail server and working my way up to an entire operating system. When I find the time, I am going to have a lot of fun building these things.

The marking for the assignments was very pedantic in that you were dramatically punished in your grades if you did not follow all instructions. Some people's code compiled fine on the lab machines but not on the school of engineering servers due to different compiler settings, and they lost almost all of their marks even though their project worked. This year, for assignment one, Michael went to the effort to help a lot of these students out by fixing these small compatibility issues and assessing them on the merits of their otherwise working solution, minus only a few penalty points. But he really shouldn't have had to do that, and he was not so kind about assignment two; it was very clear that it was our responsibility to make sure things worked. I imagine this will be very clear in future years also, so test your code!


MST and Exam

The mid semester test was pretty brutal. The cohort's highest mark was 18/20. I thought I had done fairly well, but I got a 14.5. A lot of my friends then said they went to consultation and they had been very strict marking the short-answer questions. Luckily I went to consultation and found they had mis-totalled my paper and I actually got 17.5, which was more like what I expected: I lost one mark on an explanation I fluffed my way through, one mark for a silly mistake in multiple choice, and half a mark for not knowing exactly what the -F flag on the bash ls command does! That's another point about how brutal the MST was: It hadn't been clear how much we were meant to play around with bash commands like ls, and reading their man pages to see the different options, so this obscure question was a bit of a surprise. My advice is to play around with all the commands you see in labs and lectures, and not to rote learn their options, but to have a play and try to figure out and be able to explain how they work.

The exam was pretty fair. Michael was very clear about its structure, outlining the topics covered in each of the 5 sections and the mark-breakdown of questions. There were some questions that went into quite a lot of detail about a particular topic, so my strategy of doing a lot of external research after paying a lot of attention to the concepts mentioned on the lectures slides and in the lectures really paid off. I stuffed up a question on synchronization, and my hope is that all who read this and take this subject will come back to this review before their exam and remember: 'while(a==b);' is a loop that will spin around doing nothing until a is NOT equal to b, not the other way around!

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on July 07, 2016, 12:17:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: SWEN30006 Software Modelling and Design

This subject is core to the Computing and Software Systems Major of the BSci. It runs in semester 1 and 2 but is a prerequisite for COMP30022 IT Project. The Informatics diploma also gives you the choice between this and I think INFO30005 Web Information Technologies with Mitchell Harrop. Additionally, computing and software engineering masters students may have to take this subject early on in their degree if they didn't complete it in their undergrad.

This subject has been around for a while, but this semester saw the introduction of a few major structural changes. A new lecturer, a new textbook (prescribed and followed quite closely) and a new programming language (Java, instead of Ruby + Rails) were introduced. All of the lectures, workshops and projects were designed from the ground up in light of these changes. So much so that any old resources probably don't apply.

I think overall after these changes the subject has come on a little too strong, setting the bar too high for the time commitment expected from students. The projects crossed the line in intensity, and even the workshops were taxing (depending on your tutor). Hopefully the balance will be improved in future iterations. In addition, the new prescribed textbook was a complete mess and I am amazed that people in the industry look to it as a good example of an introduction to this stuff.

However, SWEN30006 scores a point for its top quality lecturer Philip Dart, who really shone through as a beacon of clarity in such an inherently vague subject. Also, the exam could have been so terrible, but it was fair and well-balanced, and so it gets a point for that!

Finally, after everything they put us through, I do feel like I came out the other side knowing a whole lot more about Software Modelling and Design (which wasn't even completely uninteresting, just too intense), and so I guess it can have one last point for enabling / forcing me to improve my modelling and design skills!

Workload:
Two 1h lectures
A compulsory 2h workshop
A significant amount of contribution to group projects (most of the second half of semester)

Assessment:
5% - Project Part A, individual
10% - Project Part B, group of 3
15% - Project Part C, same group of 3
10% - 10 x 1% for workshop exercise completion (or attendance, depending on your tutor)
60% - 2h exam in exam period

I'll describe the projects in more detail in the comments section

Lecture Capture: Y

Past exams available:
Since the dramatic changes for 2016, past exam problems were mostly unrelated. However, a practice exam was made available with solutions during the exam period, and in the final lecture the actual exam was previewed (without any of the text - just the mark breakdown / structure). Additional past exams should be made available for future semesters.

Textbook Recommendation:

The prescribed textbook Applying UML and Patterns by Craig Larman was followed quite closely, and most chapters were covered, to varying depths. I wasn't particularly fond of this text, but more about that later! Hopefully the 'content' section of this guide gives you a rough first overview of the course, and you can have fun piecing the structure together yourself when you study it.

UML (2.5 or something) is used extensively in the subject, and the short-but-sweet UML Distilled by Martin Fowler served as some nice light reading in the exam period. I imagine reading it earlier would have been a good idea too, haha!

Lecturer:

Philip Dart was the course coordinator and lecturer. He's a very articulate presented and experienced designer. I heard some people found his lectures boring but I think he's exactly the kind of person you want in charge of such inherently subjective content.

Additionally, Mat Blair played a substantial role as head tutor. However, this was his last semester at the university as he's off to work for Google (which suits me just fine; not a Mat Blair fan myself ;)).

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 94 (legit my 5th 94 so far wtf) EDIT: 95 (they forgot to include part of the grade :o)

Comments:

The rest of this review goes into a LOT of detail about the classes, content and assessment structure as it was in 2016 semester 1, plus occasional advice for how to approach the subject. I hope that it helps you prepare for this subject if you decide to take it.

Content

So this subject was about learning to model real world domains, and, based on those models, design object-oriented systems. There was also a small focus on implementation of these designs. Underlying these topics was a discussion of a development process, in this case 'iterative and evolutionary development'.

The basic tasks of domain modelling are analysis of requirements and building of a domain model. We discussed Use Cases and UML Use Case Diagrams, Operation Contracts, System Sequence Diagrams (UML Sequence Diagrams that emphasise interactions at the border of the system), Domain Class Diagrams (UML Class Diagrams that present the concepts and relationships in that really exist in the domain being modelled, with no added software concepts) and UML State Machine Diagrams.

Object-oriented design is all about taking inspiration from a domain model to construct a system of objects who collaborate to fulfil requirements. The hard part is making decisions about which classes of objects to assign particular responsibilities, and this subject covers some general principles for making those decisions (see: GRASP). In addition, a small number of GoF Design Patterns (established solutions to common design problems) are studied. Designs are expressed using UML Class Diagrams, UML Sequence Diagrams, UML Communication Diagrams, and UML Component Diagrams (for emphasising large scale, architectural design decisions).

A design must be implementable, and implementation plays a small role in this subject. It's not really a focus of lectures, as Java was studied in prerequisite subject SWEN20003 Object-Oriented Software Development, but it was required for completion of some workshops and all of the projects.

All of this is introduced in the context of 'iterative and evolutionary development', which can be summarised in the following lessons/ideas:
- don't do UML (or any) modelling for the purposes of 'documenting', do it only as much as it aids understanding between clients and developers, or helps to handle a tricky design challenge
- embrace changing requirements as inevitable, and don't attempt to complete requirements analysis before designing, or design before implementing (or implementation before testing) like the so-called 'waterfall' methodology
- instead, control change by tackling high-risk requirements early, developing 'by feature' rather than 'by development stage' so that you can quickly incorporate feedback from clients and testing into subsequent features
We heard much more about iterative and evolutionary development in the subject because the textbook doesn't shut up about it! It literally floods every chapter with anti-waterfall-pro-iterative propaganda to the point where the few really good lessons on design are completely obscured by a steaming sea of shit. I wish anyone taking the subject enough patiece to find these hidden gems. Chapter 18 (3rd edition - it's chapter 17 in 2nd edition) is one of the less clouded examples; it contains explicit details about using GRASP Principles and would be a huge help for the second two projects.

Anyway, these four broad topics are the focus of the prescribed textbook, and lectures follow the textbook content closely. I think these topics were pretty well presented individually, however the textbook (and consequently the lectures, to a certain extent) was all over the place in terms of the order in which it presented ideas -- Larman unfortunately adopts an 'iterative and evolutionary' approach to teaching modelling and design, and the result is concepts introduced in early chapters but not completed until distant, unrelated sections.

Moreover, the lectures relating to modelling and requirements analysis were sprinkled throughout the lecture series, and likewise for object-oriented design and for iterative and evolutionary development topics. For these reasons, it really takes the whole semester to be able to look back and see where different ideas fit in. I know it would have been possible to provide a more helpful outline in the beginning, and approach the topics in a logical progression, even if the textbook jumps all over the place. Hopefully this will improve in future semesters based on student feedback.


Workshops

The workshops mainly consisted of collaborative design exercises, spanning the different types of UML diagrams we were studying across the semester. Basically we'd sit down and work on the exercises while the tutor walked around the room discussing people's solutions one at a time. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to be the most efficient structure, as it meant that you were quite clueless about your progress through the exercises until the tutor got to your area of the room. Most of the time, I got more out of overhearing the tutor's discussions with other groups than I was able to get by the time they got to us.

I guess this means the workshop experience was strongly influenced by the tutor's opinions on certain design issues. Well, since the tutor had so little time to talk with each group, it also would have been really helpful to be part of a stronger group of students, to trade ideas and work together.

The decision to assign a 1% grade for participation in each workshops was meant to incentivise attendance and engagement. However while some students from other workshops were awarded these marks based on active participation for the entire two-hour sessions, my tutor was quite strict, demanding every exercise be completed by the following week if we wanted to get the mark.

I'm sure lots of subjects have attendance and participation grades, however much I might despise them as a student who lives an arduous PTV journey away from campus. But given that it was pretty much impossible to complete each week's tasks in the allocated time, this was effectively homework, and it made me feel like I was back in year 11. I'd hope this requirement is relaxed in future semesters.


Projects

There were three projects throughout the semester,

Project Part A (5%); an individual project that was essentially a Java revision exercise, but involved working within a large and complicated provided framework.

Project Part B (10%); the first of the group assignments. In groups of 3, we had to take an existing (poor) design for a train network simulation and make improvements (justifying these in terms of the principles we were learning). We also had to implement these changes and submit an improved simulation system, with a few additional features.

Project Part C (15%); in our groups, we had to design and implement (from scratch) one of three different subsystems (part of a simple self-driving car simulation system in our case). In addition, we had to team up with groups that had worked on the remaining subsystems and put together a working self-driving car system and write a short report about how that went.
The submission for this final assignment had three parts:
- (1/15) design draft submission (free mark for submitting a complete draft)
- (9/15) final design submission
- (5/15) implementation and report submission

The idea was that we'd submit a first copy of our design two weeks after the specification was released, get feedback in the workshop the following week, and then make any adjustments necessary to improve the design from there before making the final design submission at the end of that week. At that point there were then two weeks to finish implementation and integration with other teams.

Unfortunately, this year, the projects were very intense in terms of what was required just to complete them on time. I think even the tutoring team felt the pressure, for example for Project C there were meant to be additional self-driving car maps and subsystem testing tools released so that we didn't need to rely too much on other groups to make sure our subsystems worked, but these were never released.

There were a few other little issues, such as the choices of subsystems not being finalised until about a week after the spec was released, leaving only a single week to create the initial design. Also, the feedback workshop was really rushed (and I can't imagine what it would have been like for students who had their workshops late in the week, leaving only a few days until the Sunday night final submission deadline).

According to the tutors, the vast majority of students were destroyed by even the first project, which wasn't intended to be challenging at all (and it wasn't, for someone who was on top of the prerequisite skills). The final project was apparently going to be a lot more complicated but ended up getting scaled back due to the cohort's performance in this first project. I think it still crossed the line, and even with a strong team we struggled to get something together with the incredibly constrained time line. We ended up with great marks (1.45/15, with 5/5 for implementation, after marks eventually came out), so perhaps this difficulty was taken into account.


Exam

On a lighter note, the exam was pretty much the greatest thing that it could have been. There was a lot of fear surrounding the idea of an intense modelling exam that was going to require some very fast project-scale design work (not really suited for a two hour exam) because of the practice paper.

These fears turned out not being realised, and the actual exam was very well balanced overall. It was mostly made up of smaller modelling exercises and also questions that emphasised evaluating a model rather than constructing one from scratch. There were also questions that involved factual recall from random parts of the lecture notes / textbook, so re-watching the lectures and re-reading the text over the few days leading up to the exam turned out to be rewarded.

The expectations behind each question were quite clear, and this was really appreciated in a subject where at times it can seem like there's no clear correct response. Everyone that I spoke with afterwards said they didn't quite finish, and I only just managed to get everything down in time, so perhaps it was a little long, but overall I don't think I could have asked for a better exam than the one we got!

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kingfisher on July 07, 2016, 08:04:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: DASC20011: Companion Animal Biology

Workload: x2 2 hour lectures per week

Assessment: Written assignment (50%), end of semester exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past Exams Available: Yes (via library)

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturers: Ian Bland, Peter Cakebread, Sally Haynes, Sonja Needs

Year & Semester of Completion: Semester 1 2016

Rating: 5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 81

Comments: This subject has been one of the most enjoyable and relevant subjects I have taken to date. While there is a biological focus, there also seemed to be plenty of people taking this as breadth so it’s not too ‘sciency’ and covers more topics is less depth. Topics covered include general healthcare of companion animals, feeding, behaviour, genetics and ethics. You also look at how to care for more exotic pets like reptiles and fish. I thought all the topics were really interesting and anyone with pets should get a lot of usable info out of them.

The assessment was really fair. It involved an initial assignment on a specific topic (animal product/healthcare plan/other topics I can’t remember) that was worth 30%. The remaining 20% comes from a summary of your assignment (almost a poster format) and then peer assessment of these summaries. The peer assessment is really well done- all the summaries are uploaded (anonymously) and you’re given 5 summaries to rank from best to worst including your own. You’re then marked on how accurate you are with these rankings. You’re given stacks of time to do all these and they’re weeks apart so they’re not too stressful, and because you can choose your own topic it should also be interesting and fairly easy to do well in. The exam was also very fair and pretty similar to past exams, so there weren’t really any surprises.

There are also legit puppies and ponies towards the end of the course, and I would recommend taking the subject for this alone. A lovely bunch of owners bring their dogs into the System Gardens and Sonia runs a workshop in dog training (mostly scent training) which is heaps of fun!! And we also go on an excursion to assess the weight of some horses, which was really nice as well.
Overall, if you have any interest in animals this is a great subject to take. If you’re interested in animal science (and are subsequently taking other DASC/animal units) then I found there was a fair bit of overlap, but definitely not enough to feel like it wasn’t worth doing. If you’re looking for an interesting and reasonably relaxed breadth then I would definitely consider this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cassiecate on July 08, 2016, 05:36:37 pm
Subject Code/Name:  MAST20026 Real Analysis

Workload:  3 x one hour lectures per week; 2 x one hour practice classes per week.

Assessment:  6 written assignments due every fortnight during semester contributed to total 20%, a 3-hour written examination (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 7 past exams from 12 to 15, some with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture notes and problem booklet can be purchased as a bundle from co-op (10-20 bucks if I remember correctly), there's also a pdf version on lms.

Lecturer(s):  A/Professor Deborah King

Year & Semester of completion:  2016, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (82)

Comments:

Coming from Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra, Real Analysis may be the most students' first brush with pure math. Unlike first year subjects and Vector Calculus which mostly concentrated on how to solve problems/calculations, it focused more on "Why" i.e. proofs behind basic mathematical theorems & precise definitions & axioms.

Lectures

The subject starts with introducing mathematical symbols, logic operations and common quantifiers, as well as how to construct truth tables. Then we'll learn the most important part of this subject (imo), techniques of conducting proof/disproof, there are several ways, like axiomatic/direct/contrapositive/contradiction proof and proof by induction/cases. Deborah will go through each meticulously and demonstrate on a few examples, there are also a lot more similar questions on problem booklet if you're looking for more practice. After this we will methodically learn about bounds and sequences, then how to prove sequence convergence/divergence by epsilon-M definition, sequence limits and some special sequences and their proof (mainly Cauchy). Then we move to function which is basically a more "general" version of sequence (from R to R instead of from N to R), after introducing the knowledge about (deleted) neighbourhood, we again learn about function convergence and limits, then we'll goes to continuity and differentiability, learning both definitions and theorems like intermediate value theorem, mean value theorem and Rolle's theorem. Next topic is Riemann integration, Deborah will starts with Riemann sums, then refinements and finally Riemann integrable & improper integrals (all with plenty examples). The last part of this subject is series, we'll again learn about how to determine series convergence by appropriate tests, much like in Calculus 2 and we will specifically learn about power series and thus extends to using Taylor series/polynomial to approximate functions, then Fourier series as well, though we won't go too deep into these last two. There will be plenty of definitions and theorems in this subject and all of them are very important and will be examined in assignments and/or final exam, so please make sure you know them and know them well.

Deborah is a very responsible lecturer, always prepared well for class, explained definitions/theorems pretty clear and she's very keen to listen and answer questions from students both in lecture and afterwards. She also puts out a youtube channel for solving problems that were left in lectures. Though she tends to speak really fast and write excessive amount of notes at the same time (amazing ability tbh), so it's possible you cannot keep up with all the contents in class and have to watch recordings afterwards for a better understanding. And it's also normal for the lecture to go overti\me (usually 5 mins or more) so prepare for this if you got a back-to-back class at the other end of the campus.

Practice Classes/Tutorials

There are two tutorials each week which are not streamed, one on Monday/Tuesday, the other on Thursday/Friday with different tutors. Each is typical math tute, three or four people form a group and solve a question sheet on whiteboard, tutor walks between each group and answer questions. The first tutorial will focus on more theoretical side of last week's contents, while the second one will focus on practical questions of this week's contents. Since this semester's lectures were on Tue & Wed & Thur, there would be almost not enough time to watch the lectures before you went to the second tutorial if you've missed class. So better not leave a week's lectures to the weekend unless you're planning on showing up to the tutorials knowing nothing. Some tutors will also do pop quizzes about definitions before the actual tutorial starts. The solution for both tutorials' worksheets will be given at the end of the second tutorial, and the second tutor will also be the one who marks your assignments.

Assessments

The six fortnightly assignments are not particularly difficult, they are rather focused on checking if you could write a rigorous mathematical proof with all the necessary reasonings and justifications and correct two-column format, just put some time in it and check really carefully. The last assignment has an essay question which will reviewed by Deborah and it's actually interesting, let you think about how your understanding about math change through this semester.

There's really not much to say about the final exam, it has quite a routine style, much like the exams from previous years, there will be one or two tricky sub-questions but the most parts's difficulty is consistent with tutorial & exercise questions. Make sure you go through all the notes and definitions in SWOTVAC as there will be a few questions ask for writing down precise definitions and theorems which should be easy marks.


Overall I think it's a really nice second year subject to try even if you are not intending on major in math (as for math majors this is almost a must-have subject no matter which specialization).  I must admit I've always considered intelligence is the most significant factor in doing math and underestimated the importance of hard-working and commitment, after this semester I wouldn't ever say so. Like Deborah said in class, this subject has the highest passing rate in all second year math subjects, if you put in effort you'll definitely get a rather satisfying result.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on July 10, 2016, 06:02:29 pm
Subject code/name: MAST30020 Probability for Inference

Workload: Weekly: 3 x 1-hour lectures, 1 x 1-hour problem-solving class

Assessment:
10 individual assignments20%
3-hour end-of-semester exam80%

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: In 2016 Semester 1, two past exams were available with solutions. More were available on the library website without solutions.

Textbook recommendation: Karr, A. F. (1993). Probability. New York, US: Springer-Verlag New York.

The lecture slides and problem sheets contain references to this book. It is available as a digital copy for free as long as you are a student at the university, though it is not really needed; the lecture notes are self-sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Professor Konstantin (Kostya) Borovkov

Year and semester of completion: 2016 Semester 1

Rating: 4.9 out of 5 (10 assignments kill the student)

Comments: (NB: I did Accelerated Mathematics 2 instead of Calculus 2 and Real Analysis, but I think most of what I say about AM2 is still relevant to Calculus 2 and Real Analysis. I also did Probability instead of Probability for Statistics, but that also shouldn't make much of a difference.)

MAST30020 Probability for Inference will open your eyes to how hard undergraduate studies in probability can be.

This is a demanding subject in every possible way. The theory is dense and the workload immense. Neither breadth nor depth are sacrificed in the delivery of this subject. Probability for Inference is a rigorous treatment of probability theory within the limitations of an undergraduate course, and it approaches the field from the perspective of measure theory, which is an area only taught at a graduate level at this university. There is reasonable discussion on an unexpectedly wide variety of aspects, even though a perfect understanding would require tools beyond those of an undergraduate.

Fortunately you have the perfect lecturer for this subject: Kostya (which he is called instead of Konstantin) is a lively and humorous lecturer who is able to balance the very rigorous topics with accessible explanations. He is always prepared to help the students who help themselves. That is, he will not mollycoddle you, but he is certainly very willing to guide and prompt you, and I find that approach to be optimal in this subject.

In many respects, Probability for Inference resembles MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2. Both reconstruct an area of mathematics of which you have a rudimentary knowledge prior to taking the subject. AM2 guides you through the rigour that was sorely missing in your high school calculus studies, while Probability for Inference revisits the content in MAST20004 Probability far more meticulously. Indeed, just like AM2, you will probably struggle heavily for the earlier parts of the course, and it is these earlier topics that will support your understanding and star in some vital arguments for other problems and topics occurring later in the semester.

This subject is an elective for the Statistics and Stochastic Processes specialisation of the Mathematics and Statistics major in the Bachelor of Science. Naturally, most of the cohort for Probability for Inference are students intending to specialise in Statistics and Stochastic Processes. However, you will quickly find that many of the students are those from other specialisations who have returned for a second taste of probability after a pleasant experience in MAST20004 Probability or MAST20006 Probability for Statistics. There are also some Master of Science students taking this for their secondary area of mathematical study.

As fickle students you are probably aware that subject choices often come down to the quality of the lecturer (or, more precisely, a vicarious judgement thereof). The rather high enrolment in this third-year subject (59 students in 2016 Semester 1) despite its notoriety for being so difficult and its status as merely an elective is only a testament to just how fantastic of a lecturer Kostya is.

Subject content
Probability for Inference ties together many of the loose threads in Probability and Statistics while introducing some new tools and techniques. Overall I would label Probability for Inference as a subject in both probability theory and mathematical statistics (mathematical statistics referring to the mechanics behind various statistical tools and frameworks). The course (as well as Kostya himself) places heavy emphasis on rigour and proof, and the content is heavily abstract and conceptual but is delivered exceptionally well in an accessible manner by Kostya.

Probability for Inference begins with the same few definitions that you probably glossed over at the beginning of Probability. However, it introduces the concept of sigma-algebras, which may have been tersely mentioned in Probability as the set of events which are "nice". One of the most fascinating aspects of sigma-algebras to me is that it can be seen as the mathematical manifestation of information or, more strictly, information "potential" from observations of a random quantities. This particular way of viewing information as a sigma-algebra is precisely the motivation behind the use of martingales in higher level financial mathematics if you study any (ACTL40004 Advanced Financial Mathematics I and beyond, although to some extent ACTL30005 Models for Insurance and Finance also).

A few properties of probabilities (i.e. the function that assigns fractional values to events, often with the familiar notation P) are discussed. The probability axioms are, of course, part of this. Most of the other properties relate to sequences of events, which is something you will not have seen in Probability. Following this are the familiar faces of distribution functions, probability mass functions, and density functions, but they are of course introduced in the context of our newer framework.

Random variables and expectations are the next point of discussion. Again these are rebuilt from a more rigorous perspective than in Probability, and again some unfamiliar properties of and results regarding expectation are discussed (yes, there is more to expectation than just linearity). The concept of conditional expectation is the next topic; it is probably the first hurdle in this subject if you have found the content manageable so far, as conditional expectation is no longer the tame computational beast that it may have been in Probability. In my opinion, conceptualising expectations and conditional expectations as the "best guess" of some random quantity (possibly given some information beforehand for conditional expectations) is the way to navigate through this topic and further uses of expectation. In fact, thinking about conditional expectations in this way corresponds very naturally to the Bayesian estimator under the quadratic loss function, which you may recall from MAST20005 Statistics.

With so much content falling under the field of probability theory, you may doubt the relevance of "Inference" in this subject's name. Fear not, for the weeks you have spent learning mind-numbing probability theory is about to find some use in statistics right within this subject! The discussion on statistics in this subject takes place in two parts, with the interlude dedicated to two areas of probability theory, one of which is the unequivocal cornerstone of (frequentist) statistics, and the other of which is indispensable in the study of further probability theory.

The first part of discussion on statistics covers and extends some of the theoretical topics encountered in MAST20005 Statistics: maximum likelihood estimation and sufficiency. The prominent theorems in this section are none other than the Neyman–Fisher factorisation theorem and the Rao–Blackwell theorem. This section is entirely taught from first principles, as Statistics is not actually a prerequisite for Probability for Inference. I enjoyed the treatment of these two topics far better than I did in Statistics, although that likely comes down to a personal appreciation for more theoretical discussion.

The two sections of probability theory that follow this opening discussion on statistics are limit theorems and characteristic functions. From Probability you should already be familiar with the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem; these are the main limit theorems, and in this section the mechanics behind these two theorems and other related phenomena will be examined. There is a slight resemblance to limits as taught in AM2, in that you should be prepared to maintain an epsilon–N-level of rigour in your solutions.

The section on characteristic functions was, to me, the most eye-opening of this subject. Characteristic functions may have been mentioned in passing in Probability, around the time that moment-generating functions and probability-generating functions were introduced. Characteristic functions retain many properties of moment-generating functions (uniqueness, can be used to circumvent convolution integrals, can be used to compute moments through differentiation), but are (subjectively) better. One of the ways in which it is superior is that the characteristic function of a random variable is always well-defined; the same cannot be said for moment-generating functions. The characteristic function of a random variable is the Fourier transform of its density (with respect to an appropriate measure), and indeed a perfect inspection of some of its properties will mandate some results from complex analysis; however, the lectures will be manageable without having studied complex analysis. As a consequence, the density function and the characteristic function of a random variable (or rather, its distribution) are intimately connected. I gather that many of the properties discussed in this subject likely follow from corresponding results in Fourier analysis; in any case, the expectations of the cohort for characteristic functions will not require experience with complex analysis.

Characteristic functions are mainly used to revisit and establish some of the limit theorems. This is done with the assistance of Taylor polynomials. In Probability for Inference, you must be[come] very comfortable with single-variable Taylor polynomials (and be willing to accept that Taylor's theorem holds in the complex case if you have not studied complex analysis). In particular, whereas in AM2 you may have used Taylor's theorem with Lagrange's form of the remainder, in Probability for Inference, the use of Taylor's theorem is accompanied by Peano's form of the remainder, which simply uses Landau's Little-O notation to express the remainder term in Taylor expansion. For the purposes of this subject, Peano's form is probably more concise and suitable than Lagrange's form is.

The return to statistics is signified by an excursion into the validity of the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test. In Statistics, it is not immediately clear how the claimed null distribution of the test statistic is a valid approximation. With the results on limit theorems and characteristic functions, you are now able to conclusively establish the rationale behind the null distribution used in this goodness-of-fit test.

The subject concludes with the discussion of empirical distribution functions and asymptotic behaviour of maximum likelihood estimators. The discussion on empirical distribution functions culminates in the fantastic Kolmogorov–Smirnov goodness-of-fit test, and like the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, the null distribution is derived rigorously (with the quotation of some intermediate results which would probably take too much time to discuss). The discussion on maximum likelihood estimators shows how they are asymptotically normal and unbiased and establishes the relevance of Fisher information (remember the Rao–Cramér lower bound from Statistics?) in the mean-squared error (variance).

Lectures
From the very beginning of the subject (actually, even before), the lecture slides for the entire subject are available online. They can be found on the LMS or on a page where Kostya makes available to the public the main resources in the subject (the link is http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~s620323/). The set of slides is an excellent resource, and of course Kostya's lectures follow the slides perfectly (but he will add a bit more). There are usually some references to problems on problem sheets, so Kostya will update the slides every now and then if the problem sheets have changed since the last iteration of the subject.

Kostya delivers his lectures with the document camera switched on, and in the Russell Love Theatre (where most third-year maths subjects are held), the document camera occupies one of the projector screens, while the current slide occupies the other. In my semester of completion, the lecture recording consisted only of the activity on the document camera, so you would not be able to see what slide Kostya was currently discussing in the lecture recording.

The lectures are interactive, entertaining, and of course very educational. Kostya delivers lectures in his characteristic exuberant manner without sacrificing the care needed in rigorous arguments. As I have mentioned, I found that Kostya has the uncanny ability of translating the "burly" and intangible rigour of probability theory into very accessible intuitive arguments. Of course, what is intuition to one can easily be an absolute mystery to another; some of these pieces of intuition are not completely obvious, so to say, but with experience from lower level maths subjects (and particularly the variety of mathematical problems therein), what Kostya delivers as intuition should be mostly regarded as such by the cohort. For example, geometric properties of projections and convex sets are mentioned throughout the discussion of conditional expectations. This is perhaps not the best example of intuition (being a consequence of considering the set of random variables with 0 mean as a Hilbert space), but it highlights Kostya's resourcefulness in using analogies from other areas of mathematics to which most students will have had exposure. Another example is Kostya's explanation of Lebesgue integrals, which he summarises as partitioning the integrand by range rather than by domain as in the Riemann integral (with a strange example of counting money spread on the floor).

Kostya is always ready to ask the audience questions: some just to see if knowledge in the recent few lectures has been retained; others a prologue into the topic of discussion for the day; and occasionally a "Can I put this on the exam?" to make us ask ourselves whether we really know the content. Kostya's questions almost created an atmosphere of discussion, which I feel in the university study of mathematics is very necessary. Of course, the "discussion" was usually dominated by Kostya, but his questions were rarely unanswered, and the interaction between student(s) and teacher in the lecture hall created a sense of engagement which I have rarely found in a university subject.

The actual structure of a lecture naturally varies according to what's on the lecture slides. A lecture could contain
  • an explanation of a difficult proof;
  • outlines of proofs when they are beyond an undergraduate student;
  • explanations of multiple smaller proofs (particularly when exploring properties); or
  • intuition for or demonstrations of the more abstract concepts.
None of these are particularly surprising in a maths subject, but it is of course the higher proportion of proofs in this subject which gives Probability for Inference its overall theoretical orientation. Now, Kostya's (unspoken) expectation is that any proof which is given completely in lectures (i.e. not those which are clearly stated as beyond the undergraduate student) is fair game in an exam, and it is rather daunting that this refers to probably half of the slides. Kostya's aim is certainly not to encourage rote-learning. In fact, Kostya encourages the cohort to form the good habit of retaining the key ideas of a mathematical proof, which, when combined with the mathematical tools at hand, are sufficient in reproducing the proof. I would strongly recommend highlighting and remembering the key ideas or techniques in all the proofs in the lecture slides. It develops your mathematical maturity and is also quite fulfilling when you realise that you are able to reproduce proofs without further assistance by just noting these key ideas. Of course, it is even more fulfilling to find these key ideas yourself; unfortunately that is rather difficult and thankfully not an expectation.

For a few weeks during the semester, Kostya also conducted in-class quizzes (not contributing to the final grade). This was done on the Socrative web platform, and students took part using their mobile phones. The questions were all true–false or multiple-choice questions and generally tested knowledge in the last few lectures or so. This was opt-in, but there was nothing to lose since the performance did not contribute to the final grade, so it was a good revision tool to check your understanding of the recent lectures. Not all the questions were as straightforward as you would expect of multiple questions, especially since there was an unofficial time constraint of however much time Kostya decided was necessary. Most questions seemed to set up some random variables and ask if certain statements regarding the random variables were true, which ranges from simple to quite puzzling given the scope of Probability for Inference.

In the final week, if there is time Kostya will spend some lectures doing a past exam. In my semester of completion the discussed exam was not a past exam to which solutions were available online (that would have been slightly redundant), so it is ideal to be present for these lectures.

Problem-solving classes
When you look at the university timetable entries for Probability for Inference, one of the most striking things is that there is only one time slot for the practical class. Unlike practical classes in other maths subjects, in Probability for Inference, these resemble lectures more than they do tutorials. In fact, they take place in the same place as the lectures (at least this was the case in my semester of completion).

Kostya calls these classes "problem-solving classes", and the entire class will consist of Kostya solving problems on the weekly problem sheet, which Kostya will print and bring to the classes as well as post online. These problems are not straightforward; even though Kostya readily encourages students to present solutions in problem-solving classes, there is hardly ever any student brave enough to do so. Even so, Kostya maintains interaction with the cohort as he does in lectures. Some of the problems in these classes are simple applications of the theory learnt in the lectures in the week before. However, by and large these problems require new techniques or arguments not seen in lectures. Kostya will also sometimes offer extra insight into the theory during these problem-solving classes, although this is the natural thing to do when completing problems which require new methods.

I think the benefit of attending problem-solving classes is clear. Any passionate student should want to see how the content in lectures can be used or extended in various problems. I think it is fair for problems resembling those on problem sheets to appear on exams, so you assume some risk by missing these classes (they are not recorded like the lectures). Kostya will also tell you that it should not be surprising if the exam contains similar questions; I do not recall that happening in my end-of-semester exam, however, so perhaps he was feeling generous in my semester of completion.

Problems listed on problem sheets are quite often referenced in lecture slides, and this creates a strong sense of coherence between the material in problem-solving classes and lectures. Often the situation will be that the significance of a certain problem on a problem sheet is highlighted in a later lecture (usually in the form of some small phenomenon). This reserves time in lectures for the more important aspects, but ensures students have a robust knowledge of everything that is happening.

It is regrettable that there is often not enough time for Kostya to go through all the problems on the problem sheet. Kostya often resorts to skipping computational steps or claiming some steps are obvious in order to save time; he will more readily claim that something is obvious in these problem-solving classes than in lectures. Solutions are posted online after the class, but I still personally believe greater value is gained from hearing Kostya's explanations for some of the more difficult problems rather than reading solutions on paper. Nevertheless, for the problems not covered in the problem-solving class, it is your responsibility to be familiar with the solutions posted online.

Assignments
This is quite possibly the single aspect of Probability for Inference that will leave students with somewhat bitter memories.

You have ten assignments for this subject in total. In 2016 Semester 1, each was due at 5pm on Mondays from Weeks 3 to 12. These are all standard-length maths assignments — the length of these assignments does not compensate in any way for how many there are (the length of those in MAST20004 Probability are a good indication). This is simply an enormous time commitment for a single subject, and while I think the assignment workload is somewhat warranted due to the difficult theoretical nature of the subject, for me, ten assignments still falls on the extreme side.

The assignments problems are on the same sheet as the problem sheet (usually on the next page), and they are of a similar difficulty. The trouble is that to do well on the assignments requires (in my opinion) an excruciating amount of effort, not to mention how many of them there are to begin with. Kostya expects the rigour and detail which he himself displays in lectures, and for a first exposure to rigorous probability theory, sometimes it can be difficult to identify the areas that necessitate more rigour. The level of detail Kostya presents in problem-solving classes is a bad indication of what is expected of you; as I have said, Kostya is under time constraints during those problem-solving classes. However, a good indication, outside of the lecture slides, is probably the solutions to the problem sheets which Kostya posts online. One example of the level of detail required is that Kostya expects "by linearity" to be written somewhere when you use the linearity property of expectation or conditional expectation.

The scoring system for assignments is as follows: For each assignment, Kostya (or someone to whom he has delegated the marking) will select a question to mark for the entire cohort. This gives a mark for each assignment (or really, just the respective question selected for the assignment) that is usually out of 5 marks (but sometimes more). The average percentage over all ten assignments (equal weighting among all ten) then receives a 20% weighting in the calculation of the final grade, with the percentage on the exam receiving the remaining 80% weighting.

This also means that a mark on one assignment may have more effect on your final grade than that on another assignment (very marginally), but you will not know which assignments these are, as you are not told beforehand the maximum mark of any assignment. For example, if there were 3 assignments marked out of 2, 10, and 50 (just an example — the maximum marks are more consistent in reality), and your scores were 1, 10, and 50 respectively, then the percentages earned on your assignments would be 50%, 100%, and 100% respectively, and your average percentage would be 83% (rounded down). Notice that if the single mark you had lost was on the third assignment rather than the first, your average percentage would have been 99% instead (rounded down).

Kostya published assignments marks twice throughout the semester: once after the fifth assignment, and once after all ten assignments. Students were listed by student number (no names). For brevity, here were the summary statistics after all ten assignments in my semester of completion, the data in consideration being the the average percentages multiplied by 20. (The minimum of 0 is not a mistake.)
Min.1st Qu.MedianMean3rd Qu.Max.
0.0010.2912.6512.3316.2319.20

As mentioned, the questions on assignments are of similar difficulty to those on the problem sheets, though probably slightly easier. The questions are usually either computations or applications of the theory to prove some properties. Not all assignment questions are straightforward; some will require some thinking as to the optimal method of approach, although for the computational questions this is usually not the case. For some questions Kostya will provide hints; sometimes I found these somewhat unnecessary or a slight giveaway, but other times they offered the right amount of guidance.

As it was for problems on the problem sheet, the lectures slides will sometimes reference problems on the assignments. The reverse also happens; sometimes an assignment question will be the investigation of a property that was merely quoted but not established fully in lectures. All in all, the assignments and problem sheets are very coherent aspects of the subject which aim to give a more holistic understanding of probability theory.

End-of-semester exam
This is a 3-hour exam that is probably on the long side due to the nature of the content in Probability for Inference. No cheat sheet is allowed. A scientific calculator is allowed but will not be of much use.

I think that the level of difficulty of the exam is very consistent with the subject as a whole. The exam is more computational than the assignments, but theoretical questions still have decent representation.

Kostya expects a high degree of familiarity with the lecture slides (and possibly more, but you will perform decently with just being familiar with the lecture slides, although that is no small task anyway). As mentioned earlier, the proofs on these lecture slides will almost surely (but not certainly!) make an appearance on the exam. I mean this literally; there will be subquestions which effectively amount to reproducing some portion of the slides. You would, however, be a fool to rote-learn the proofs on the slides. That is not recommended, optimal, nor, in my opinion, acceptable for a student of third-year mathematics. In 2016 Semester 1, there were also some subquestions which had featured almost identically on assignments.

I believe the way to approach exam preparation for such a theoretical subject is no different to the preparation for the general theoretical mathematical subject. Familiarity with all the results of key theorems and properties is absolutely essential, but the next step varies in difficulty from student to student. Perfect preparation for the exam will involve, more specifically, familiarity with the techniques used to establish the key theorems and properties, and also some of the content outside the lecture slides. It is not possible to form an exhaustive list of areas with which you should be familiar, as this is nevertheless a third-year mathematics subject, and creativity and critical thinking, as well a good memory, will underpin any level of success in the subject. For example, something as simple as the square of any real number being nonnegative is a well-known fact to most students, but would you be able to recognise its utility for a question asking you to provide a proof (of something else)? Would you be able to recognise that an expression was in the form of the Taylor series for the exponential function if it wasn't explicitly provided in that form? These are the kinds of questions that you need to ask yourself if you are aiming for the highest levels of achievement in this subject and further mathematical studies (particularly if they are heavy on theory).

In terms of topic coverage in the exam, elements of all topics will be present, although this is only to be expected if you have personally experienced the twelve weeks of teaching by Kostya in Probability for Inference. Due to this, the structure of exams seems to remain somewhat invariant, in that there will be generally be
  • one or two questions on the probability (P) definition, axioms, and properties;
  • one or two questions on the sigma-algebra definition and properties;
  • a question requiring the plot of a distribution or density function as well as the computation of other quantities relevant to the distribution;
  • questions involving computations with or properties of expectations and conditional expectations;
  • questions involving sufficient statistics and maximum likelihood estimation; and
  • questions involving the convergence modes and characteristic functions.
Again, this is not an exhaustive list. There are most likely other more specific topics which make appearances on the exam less frequently, such as empirical distribution functions or multivariate (normal) distributions. However, the above list should contain the topics common in all exams for Probability for Inference. There will generally be proof-style questions for most of the topics present on the exam, but I believe more of the exam is computations rather than proofs.

Also of note is a true–false question (with multiple subquestions). These are not pure true–false questions, however; you still need to provide justification for your answer. These questions resemble those in the in-class quizzes, and the justifications will be mostly very short. Why is there a true–false question on the exam? Kostya admits that they are easy to mark — very honest answer.

Kostya is hesitant to make available the solutions to too many past exams, as he prefers students to learn content rather than "learn exams" (i.e. prepare specifically for the sorts of questions on previous exams). In my semester of completion there were just two past exams with solutions provided. More past exams were available on the library website, but Kostya refused to provide solutions to those.

MAST30020 Probability for Inference is a well-administered and rewarding subject, but certainly not for the light-hearted. It is an excellent foundation to have for further studies in probability theory and (mathematical) statistics. If you are prepared to dedicate effort into this subject and you are interested in the intricate mechanics of probability theory, then I highly recommend this subject.

An interesting fact: Kostya's father was a student of the great Kolmogorov himself! I was also told that Kostya's father was in fact Kolmogorov's best student, although I was unable to verify that myself. In fact, Kostya publishes research with his father, who is by now somewhere in his eighties.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cassiecate on July 11, 2016, 08:37:40 pm
Subject Code/Name:  MAST20004 Probability

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

Assessment:  4 written assignments due every three week during semester each contributed to 5% (total 20%), a 3-hour written examination (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, both streams with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 6 past exams from 09 to 15, all with solutions and all assignments from 14 & 15 with answers.

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture notes can be purchased from co-op, there's also a pdf version on lms. Recommended textbook is Fundamentals of Probability with Stochastic Processes, 3rd Edition by S Ghahramani (Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005). There are a few copies at ERC, you could also find pdf version (with solutions) on google (if anyone need it feel free to pm me).

Lecturer(s):  Dr Nathan Ross for stream 1, Dr Mark Fackrell for stream 2.

Year & Semester of completion:  2016, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (79)

Comments:

Probability and Statistics from semester 2 are compulsory for actuarial students, so there are fair share of commerce students in this subject, I was in Dr Fackrell's stream (stream 2) and rarely listened to Dr Ross's recording since they have rather different teaching & approaching styles imo. It's actually kinda interesting that some of my friends in stream 1 believed Dr Fackrell is better at teaching and friends in stream 2 thought exactly the opposite, so in the last few weeks of the semester there were quite a lot students choosing to go to the other stream.

The prerequisites for this subject are just Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra, but I think it needs at least some knowledge from vector calculus as well as real analysis. Have done vector calculus last semester and been doing real analysis concurrently this semester, I went through ok with all the proofs and definitions. However, my friend who did probability last year without any knowledge from these two had found herself having difficulties a lot of times.

Lectures

The first few weeks of this subject is quite relaxing, just like doing probability questions from high school. We also learnt about both discrete and continuous variables, their distribution function (cdf)  and probability mass/density function (pmf/pdf). Then coming into some special distributions like binomial, geometric, negative binomial, normal, exponential and gamma, a large proportion of class will be used in proving/deriving these distributions' pmf/pdf as well as their expected values and variances, which can seem boring at the time. There were far too less examples in this part and many students I know (and myself as well) find it quite hard to put theorem into application. Then we'll learn bivariate random variable and their joint/marginal/conditional pmf/pdf. We'll study the transformation i.e. functions of single random variable and bivariate random variable. One very important topic is about condition on RV and how to derive expected values, variance and probability under this circumstance, there will be a great proportion of final exam focusing on this and using any of the distributions that were previously learnt. Then we'll learn about probability generating function and moment generating function, which extending to the last topic of branching process.

The lecture is heavily based on proof like I mentioned before and can be really hard to keep up as Dr Fackrell usually went quickly between steps and rarely gave enough justification, I usually needed one more hour after each class to understand how each step of his proof worked. The order of topics is also a bit confusing at the time since Dr Fackrell actually taught each of them quite separately and never really engaged in explaining how to connect them, it's not until SWOTVAC when I was revising the whole subject and finally came up with an (not so clear) understanding of how each topic connects with each other.

Practice Classes & Computer Labs

The first hour of tutorial is just typical math tutorial where you do questions with a table of other students on whiteboard and the tutor hovering around to help you if you got stuck. The tutorial questions can be very good and much needed exercises for better understanding of all the definitions, since there aren't many examples given in the lectures. The second hour is joining by another tutorial and doing tasks related to lecture contents in a computer lab, there's no lab test in this subject so not many people pay a lot attention to the computer lab, but there will be a question in final exam entirely relied on contents from lab (though not a lot marks), this year it's the second last question with 6 marks out of 100.

Assignments

The first assignment is quite easy while the other three are much more difficult. There are at least 4 (usually 5 or 6) questions in each assignment, only two of them will be selected to mark. It's a good idea to redo the similar tutorial questions and discuss with your friend. From this year's feedback I think the relatively easy ones are more likely to be marked (or at least they will leave the most difficult one out). Hence despite the rather time-consuming process of doing the assignments (roughly two nights each for me and similar for my friends) most people seems to get good overall marks from them.

Exam

If we've been allowed to describe the exam in one word I believe a lot of people will choose HARD. I've never felt completely lost in a exam like this, at last I even started calculating if I could pass. The exam allowed you to bring in a double sided A4 cheat sheet and it had the similar difficulty level as the assignments with a few harder parts for last several questions. I think it's really aiming to test if you actually understand all the concepts taught in the semester instead of just knowing how to applying the method. So it's really important to know how each distribution behaves, how to determine which one to use and how to manipulate them under certain circumstances. Simply cram all the formulas into cheat sheet won't help you in doing these exam questions maybe except the first three points:) Anyway I believe the only possible way to do well in this exam is to study every single page of the lecture note over and over again until you could understand each proof well, then try to make a mind map for the whole subject and do as much as questions as possible.


All in all I think this is a much more theoretical subject than I expected and the contents are rather intelligently demanding comparing to other second year math subjects I've done so far, it certainly needs a lot of self learning, maybe as well as a much more understandable teaching style.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hernandes on July 12, 2016, 11:47:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30007: Human Locomotor Systems
Workload:  72 hours (3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three hour practical per week)

Assessment:  2 quizzes on theory and practical work throughout the semester, each worth 10% (20%);
2-hour written theory examination at the end of semester (40%);
2-hour written practical examination at the end of semester (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:   No. Although Varsha did put up a few sample questions.

Textbook Recommendation: 

Moore KL et al: Clinically Oriented Anatomy, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 2014
OR

Drake et al Gray's Anatomy for Students, Elsevier 2015

I didn't use either of these. And I think you get Grays Anatomy for free online, via the LMS. Dont quote me on that though.

Lecturer(s):
-Varsha Pilbrow (every thing thats not covered by the other lecturers, which is a lot)
- Peter Kitchener (Neuro stuff + Locomotion)
- Jenny Hayes (nerves/vessels of Upper limb and lower limb)
- Kylie Pickles (Spine)
- Various clinical lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion:
 2016, Semester 1
Rating:  3.9 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (scraped it)

Comments:

Ok, like one of the previous reviewers for this subject I also have a love/hate relationship for this subject. Mainly since the content you learn is so interesting, and I did love the content. But you are simply given too much content, that it makes assessment so much more difficult. And believe me I loved second year anatomy, and thought I would love this too by default, but this subject goes into crazy detail, with some very fast talking lecturers!

Now I know this subject already has quite a few reviews, but I thought a few of them made it seem like this subject was no biggie. This subject most definitely IS a biggie! Perhaps the course has changed since those reviews were posted, but I feel people need to be aware of what they're getting themselves into with this subject, with the most current info available.

Lectures:

Ok its mainly broken up into 5 bits:
-Neuroscience and Locomotion
-Spine
-Upper Limb
-Lower Limb
- Evolution
And these are interspersed with lectures by clinical lecturers, in the fields of biomechanics, radiology and surgery that I can recall.

If you've done or are doing neuroscience subjects, doing the neuroscience+locomotion lectures you'll have a slight advantage.
The spine, upper limb, and lower limb have HEAPS of info, and their lecturers I found can talk quite fast. And everything they say is examinable, so I found myself having to rewatch all these lectures in their entirety, to just make sure I didn't miss something they said. Also the lecture notes aren't very detailed, so you need to rewatch the lectures (at least I had to).

Also there's Jenny Hayes in this subject! She teaches nerves and vessels of both upper and lower limb. She's a fantastic lecturer, really helps you learn her content, she'll repeat important points, have some slides that kind've summarise the paths/innervations of nerves and vessels. Her questions on the MST were quite easy too which was good.

Evolution I thought was relatively the easiest, and the most enjoyable topic. I always liked learning about how we differ to early hominin species, as well as from the apes and monkeys. Quite Enjoyable. We also have associated practicals, where we look at skulls, and ape and monkey skeletons. Cool stuff!

The clinical lectures. A big concern for many students, was what to take from the clinical lectures, since often times they'll have heaps of lecture slides (One of them went above 100 slides!). I always tried to look for a few things, that were emphasised, and take a few key points out of the lecture, rather than write down everything said (which I felt had to be done in the non-clinical lectures). Really enjoyed these lectures too, and some of the clinicians would even invite students to come watch them in action at their hospitals. Great people!

Assessment:

MST 1. Median was roughly 21
MST 2 : Median was roughly 22

I thought the MSTs were quite fair, and are what you'd expect. You really need to put a lot of time and effort into studying them though, but unlike with the final exams, you will definitely get a payoff from all that hard work.

Practicals:

These were quite interesting, as you'd find yourself chopping into a region of a cadaver each week (except for the last few weeks), with a partner. You'd generally have about 12 people around 1 demonstrator, who'd have 2 cadavers, then you'd go off into pairs and work on a specific region on one of the cadavers. I found these quite enjoyable, as you would find things like shoulder or knee replacements in the cadavers, which were really cool to find and look at.

Exams:

Oh god, these exams. Just wow.

Okay. Well you have a practical and a theory exam, and my god with the huge amount of content you have to revise, it is so difficult to know what comes up on the exam. They seemed to focus on post MST 2 a lot with the theory exam, and the prac exam was much more evenly spread out. Boy do I wish I knew that beforehand

Prac exam was all multi choice, that were based off a series of pictures. Unsure how I went with this one. You should use anatomedia, or some atlas if you can get your hands on one for this exam. And hope that anatomedia doesn't crash the day before your prac exam, like it did with us! =[

The theory exam had 4 sections. 1st section was all Multi-choice, 2nd section was fill in the blanks, 3rd section was short answer, 4th was long answer.
I found the 1st and 4th sections quite good, but the 2nd and 3rd sections were tough. There are some questions and topics in those 2 sections that may trip you up. Felt like things that were barely emphasised, and some odd terms that weren't explained well, were assessed too greatly in these 2 sections. Sections 1 and 4 were great though.

Somehow managed to scrape an H1 in this subject, but a lot of people I knew weren't so lucky despite a lot of study.

Recommendation:

This subject certainly had a lot of interesting content, and the access they give you to cadavers is great and really helps supplement your learning. I know that's something you don't get at a lot of other universities, as unimelb has that body donor program. I feel like I have a great understanding of the human body (of course theres always so much more to learn about the body), and I really enjoyed it.
But as I said before, there is just so much information in this subject, that once you get to the final exams you'll have no idea if what areas/topics that you put the most time into, are even going to pop up. There was a lot of luck in this subject, that determined whether you'd go well in the final exams and get the coveted H1. Either need luck, or you'd better have an eidetic memory!

If you're someone thats concerned about your grades, and you're not doing a major that requires this subject, i would probably not do this subject. You can put so much time and effort into this subject, and its not going to guarantee you a high mark. This subject could distract you from other subjects, and negatively affect your performance in them.

But if you're doing the HSF Major, well you don't really have a choice. And I wish you luck :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on July 13, 2016, 10:42:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: INFO20003 Database Systems

Workload:
Two 1h lectures
One 2h workshop

Assessment:

The projects were a little different than described in the 2015 handbook, apparently we were unable to do team projects due to some technical difficulties. We had this instead:

10% Mid-Semester Test (week 7)*
2% Assessed Workshop (creating a simple database-driven website with PHP, week 7)
14% Assignment 1 (creating a large-scale data model, due week 10)
14% Assignment 2 (building a bunch of SQL queries of varying complexity, due week 12)
60% Exam in exam period

From the looks of the 2016 handbook entry, there are still no team projects, but the assessment structure has been altered somewhat.

* The in-lecture MST was aborted because Mitchell didn't bring enough test papers for everyone. It was replaced with a take-home test due about one week later.

Lecture Capture:

Yep, with screen capture. Slides were also provided on LMS. Some whiteboard work was carried out during lectures and Mitchell swore you were missing out by not being there in person, but you really weren't.

Past exams available:

No past exams or practice exams were available.

We were only given a small list of incomplete exam style questions, aimed to give us a vague idea of what kind of questions to expect.

There was also a large set of SQL query practice questions with sample solutions (kind of like a problem booklet in a maths subject, with about 45 questions total, which was okay since SQL was only a small part of the course).

We were also referred to 'everything in the lecture slides and workshops'. However, the questions on the exam mostly demanded more than what had been presented in lectures or required in workshops, and rewarded independent study.

Textbook Recommendation:

We didn't really stick to one textbook but there were a few official recommended texts: Modern Database Management (Hoffer) and Database Systems Concepts (Silberschatz). Mitchell told us that one of the changes planned for future semesters was to standardise more to the Hoffer textbook, so in future years that one might be a bigger deal.

Another notable textbook was Data Modelling Essentials (Simsion), authored by an ex-UoM Database Systems lecturer who quit his job as a high-profile academic to study screenwriting at RMIT and is the author of The Rosie Project and its sequel The Rosie Effect; books which are being made into movies soon! Anyway this textbook was relevant to a small section of the course on evaluating the quality of data models.


Unfortunately there seems to be a trend of verbosity in Database Systems textbooks, which can contain a lot of text (700-1000+ pages) but not say very much at all. I personally found there was no need to waste so much time to communicate such an inherently logical topic. So I've listed some alternative recommendations here that might end up being preferable!


First up, I found a much more concise resource in Database Fundamentals, a free book from IBM. It talks about a different Database Management System than the one studied (DB2 instead of MySQL) but the first few sections cover the essentials of relational databases really nicely, and without wasting your time with pages of useless fluff. Worth reading carefully!

I found the Wikipedia articles on database systems concepts comprehensive and insightful, probably because it's such a well-established field. Generally, though, searching the web proved a good way to answer any questions that came up during study.

I'll also take this opportunity to plug my own set of notes, available on StudentVIP for $19 (I get $14.25 ;)). I put these together in the lead up to the exam; they're are the result of my efforts to piece together the subject into a coherent whole. I'm also open to responding to PMs if anyone is really struggling.

Lecturers:

The majority of lectures were delivered by the course coordinator Mitchell Harrop (the first 7 weeks, and also week 12 for revision). Mitchell's topics included introductory concepts, 3 weeks on data modelling, and also SQL, data model quality, and using databases with websites. Mitchell is a relatively new lecturer and his inexperience really showed.

Then there were 4 lectures on miscellaneous topics by Greg Wadley, including normalisation, transactions, and select database administration topics. These lectures were put together really nicely.

There was a guest lecture on Data Warehousing (a.k.a. big databases) from Sean Maynard, the previous lecturer for this subject. I was glad he was not still the lecturer for the subject.

And finally, 3 lectures on relational algebra and query processing by Linda Stern, however this was Linda's last semester lecturing before retirement and I believe these topics are being removed from the course for future semesters. Linda's lectures were organised nicely but her explanations sometimes missed points and weren't always so satisfying.

Year & Semester of completion: 2015 Semester 2

Rating: 1/5

Your Mark/Grade: 94

Comments:

Database Systems is on the road for the Computing and Software Systems major, as it is a prerequisite for the capstone subject COMP30022 IT Project. It might also be considered by anyone interested in information systems. However, based on my experience in 2015, I would recommend avoiding this subject for a few years if possible, until the coordinators figure out how to run a subject coherently.

For the most part, there was less than zero structure in this subject's delivery. Expectations were poorly communicated, and constantly changing. Lectures and workshops were a waste of time. This meant that it was almost impossible to study independently, because nobody knew what we were meant to be studying. Projects were deliberately ambiguous (to 'simulate the real world', despite how in the real world you get to ask for clarification from clients; they don't say 'I can't tell you how to do the project' and force you to make assumptions about what they want), and the MST (the one that was cancelled) and exam were incredibly unbalanced (requiring highly specific knowledge and also containing large modelling tasks better assessed through a longer-term assignment).

Above all, INFO20003 was utterly intellectually dissatisfying; a real shame considering the potential of databases as a genuinely interesting topic of study. The theory of relational databases is inherently mathematically precise and completely logical. The systems that implement that theory are filled with clever algorithms and data structures worth studying. Data modelling in itself may not be a black-and-white problem-solving discipline, but there are logical approaches and sound principles that can be used to construct and evaluate quality data models. Instead, INFO20003 abandoned this rich content in favour of a shallow 'learn by example' approach that skipped almost all of the interesting theory underying the topic of database systems.

I'm not sure if it would have been possible, but I wish I had looked into taking INFO90002 Database Systems & Information Modelling in its place. The coordinator for this graduate-level version is Greg Wadley, who also gave 4 of the INFO20003 lectures. His lectures stood out as a shining example of how good this subject could have been.

If you're stuck taking this subject, and it hasn't had its deep fundamental issues addressed by the time you take it, my advice is to attempt to take your learning into your own hands as much as possible.
- For data modelling, focus on nailing the underlying principles of the relational model. These principles were never mentioned (whether the lecturer was aware they existed or not I don't know) but they were the basis for everything that we learned and did, and once you understand them, data modelling is only as hard as learning the notation and applying your common sense to interpret case studies.
- For learning SQL, there's no shortage of online tutorials, from W3Schools to Codecademy's short course and I'm sure there are plenty of MOOCs and other resources I never tried.
- For the rest of the subject (the conceptual stuff), use your usual strategies (making notes, flashcards, or practice problems, whatever) and try to dig a little deeper than what's mentioned in lectures because the exams sure tested beyond the level discussed.
In short, find a good learning resource (see textbook section), because if you're not relying on lectures, it should be entirely possible to survive this subject's endless frustrations.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Gentoo on July 14, 2016, 12:44:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20001 Organisational Behaviour

Workload: One 1-hour lecture (most are in-person, but 3 are online-only lectures), one online tutorial (takes approx. 1 hour), one 1-hour in-person tute

Assessment: 10% individual assignment, 30% group assignment, 10% tutorial participation, 50% 2-hour Exam

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: No, but one sample exam (which involved theory that was not taught in the course and a case study which was also not taught in the course i.e. not particularly helpful)

Textbook Recommendation: University compiled textbook “Organisational Behaviour” – relatively useful and had some interesting case studies in it, although it occasionally taught the material in a different way to the lectures which can be a cause of confusion

Lecturers: Angela McCabe (in-person & online), Dr Joeri Mol (in-person & online), Graham Sewell (online)

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating: 2.75/5

Comments:
OB is, both in a literal and euphemistic sense, an interesting subject. On the one hand, the content itself is intrinsically interesting and regularly feels applicable to real life. As such, it’s easy to see why this is a compulsory commerce subject; it teaches you perspectives that are relevant wherever you end up. In addition, the subject is expertly coordinated (the LMS is well resourced and the ‘OB team’ regularly e-mails students with updates and reminders on what has to be done at any given point in time) and generally well taught.  Unfortunately, the assessment is deeply flawed and sours the overall experience of the subject somewhat.

The content:
OB goes into the factors that affect how groups and organisations perform. The course is split into two parts: the ‘micro’ part which zeroes in on individual and group processes and has more of a psychological perspective (perception, teams & leadership, group processes etc.), and the ‘macro’ part which takes a broader view of organisations as a whole and has a more sociological/business perspective (change, communication, culture, strategy/structure).

In the macro part of the course, each topic was taught alongside (in the tutorials and occasionally the lectures too) a particular case study that demonstrated how the concepts taught can affect organisational performance. The case studies are entirely true to real life and always interesting; you learn about the spectacular downfall of Enron, the tumultuous history of Apple, etc. The theory + case study combination works very well for the subject.

The theory is usually interesting, although it can get mired in using jargon to describe really obvious, simple stuff (e.g. most of the steps in a ‘change plan’ are just common sense) which can become a little tedious given that you have to memorise it.

Lectures:
While I can’t speak for Joeri (the other in-person lecturer), Angela was an engaging lecturer who communicated the material clearly. She made a genuine effort to connect with the audience, which was nice, especially in the dryer bits of the course.

As for the 3 online-only lectures, these were a mixed bag. The first one was taken by Graham Sewell, which was pretty much down-the-line in terms of how the content was taught and had an interesting interview with a high-ranking police officer to go along with the theory. The latter two ones were in part presented by Angela and Joeri and in part by a hand-drawn animated comic-type presentation narrated by someone else. These were… weird. Angela and Joeri seemed oddly stilted in front of the camera during their sections, and the animated sections involved these whimsical stories that tried to demonstrate the week’s theory; think an alien from outer space coming to earth and observing penguins in their natural habitat to learn about ‘culture’, or some ancient Greek mythology character who did… something in an effort to learn about ‘communication’ (I don’t quite remember, but it was weird). The animation was actually pretty neat, but the lectures as a whole were disorienting and at the end of watching them, it felt like I had stumbled out of some bizarre, strangely educational dream of which I had little memory. Fortunately they also release a plain-English script of the lectures, which come revision time for exams is probably more helpful.

Online tutes:
The online tutes ask you questions about the week’s lecture material and are effective at testing you on your knowledge. You’re meant to complete them some time before your in-person tutorial each week and I think you need to satisfactorily complete them to get tute participation marks (your tutor can see whether you’ve completed it or not); regardless, they’re worth doing anyway.

In-person tutes:
In your tutes, you work in groups to apply the week’s theory to the corresponding case study and your answers are presented to the class. The tutor also recaps the week’s lecture. How much you get out of these is a function of whether you learnt the material properly before coming (including reading the case study) as well how switched-on the other people in your tutorial are and how engaging your tutor is.

Assessment:
The assessment can be frustrating and stressful. It often feels like a good chunk of your grade is out of your control and that there isn’t a strong enough relationship between how much work you put in and your result at the end of the day (something which is particularly concerning for a subject that they’re forcing everyone to do).

Individual assignment:
It’s just a typical 1000 word research assignment, but completing it was about as interesting as watching paint dry. They managed to pick out the one topic from the entire course that was really boring (contrasting ‘management styles’, which was oversimplified to the point where it basically lost all meaning) and as such, doing it was a real chore. What was a positive is that the OB faculty ran workshops to help students with details such as APA referencing, formatting etc. which again speaks to the fact that the subject is well organised.

Group assignment:
At least watching paint dry isn’t stressful. I’ll leave the unpleasant simile of choice up to the reader (I can think of a few), but this was an ordeal. The sheer enormity of the task (5000 words is a lot, especially when the theory that you’ll be analyzing the case study with is only 1 lecture’s worth), combined with the fact so much of your mark (30% of your overall grade!) is determined by other people’s work is just… eugh.

Ostensibly, results on a pseudo-psychometric test questionnaire thing are the basis of how your tutor splits up the people in your tutorial into groups of 4/5, but I’m pretty sure our tutor just allocated people into groups arbitrarily. Either way, it’s going to be tough to self-select yourself into a group of friends, even if they’re in your tutorial. For all intents and purposes, you have no control over the people who will have a large impact on your mark.

What made this assignment bearable was the fact that the content itself was genuinely interesting: the assignment required you to apply psychological theories and perspectives to analyse what could be going wrong with the candidate selection/retention/HR process at a particular firm, and asked you to provide recommendations on how to fix these issues. The process of applying the theory to the case study was interesting, which again demonstrates the contradictory of the subject: good content, bad assessment.

Exam:
The exam consisted of 4 essay questions: 1 on a micro topic which asked you to relate one of the micro theories to your experience working in the team assignment, and 3 questions on how a given macro topic related to one of the case studies.
Prior to the exam, we were given a list of the possible combinations of macro topics and case studies that could be tested (there ended up being about 12), which made the process of studying for the exam a little easier, but the fact still remains that you’re forced to learn 4 macro topics and 4 case studies, yet you’ll only be tested on one of each. Essentially, every time you sit down and study, there’s a 75% chance that what you’re learning will be useless in determining how well you do; not exactly the most motivating thought come SWOTVAC. It also increases the luck/variance involved; if you happen to get tested with a topic that you like, you’ll likely do better than if you’re tested on a topic which you didn’t really engage with as well.

Overall:
If you’re a commerce student, this review isn’t particularly instructive; you’ve gotta do it anyway. What I would stress is to approach it with a positive attitude whenever possible; the mere mention of OB is usually enough to elicit groans from students and I think this negativity is contagious and self-perpetuating to some extent. I do genuinely think the subject has interesting, useful material, so try and enjoy it for what it is while not letting the issues with the assessment consume you.

If you’re looking to do OB as breadth I wouldn’t really recommend strongly for or against doing it. If you’ve got a relatively high tolerance for slightly open-ended essay-based assessment, group work and exams that test you on a fraction of the course, then you might enjoy and get something out of it. If you don’t, then you probably won’t have a great time, but it could still be useful.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Maths Forever on July 20, 2016, 01:55:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM20018: Chemistry: Reactions and Synthesis

Workload: 3 x One Hour Lectures (all at 8am this semester) and 1 Tutorial per Week

Assessment: Online Continuous Assessment Tests (20%) and 3 Hour Written Examination (80%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, but no solutions are provided. You can access 2009 to 2015 semester one papers on the Baillieu Library site.

Textbook Recommendation:   There are no prescribed texts, but there are 3 recommended texts listed in the handbook which cover Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry. If you are planning to go on to third year chemistry or CHEM20020: Chemistry: Structure and Properties in semester two, it is worthwhile buying these.

Lecturer(s): Week 1 to 3 (Prof. J. White), Week 4 to 5 (Prof. K. Ghiggino), Week 6 to 7 (A/Prof B. Abrahams), Week 8 to 9 (A/Prof. P. Donnelly).

In Week 10 to 12 there is an option. Option I: Prof P. Mulvaney. Option II: A/Prof S. Williams.

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Rating: 5/5

Comments: Overall, I found this subject to be very enjoyable and there were some topics which were extremely engaging and made me feel extremely motivated to learn the content. I will discuss the course in sections (since it has changed somewhat since the last two reviews).

It should be noted in particular that the online tests now only allow for 1 ATTEMPT. Although, you get more than enough time to complete each online test (1 hour and 30 minutes) and they each consist of only about ten to twelve questions (most of which are multiple choice). These tests contribute for 20% of your overall mark but only your best 4 out of 5 tests will be averaged and counted (so you can afford for one bad day :)). Be aware however that some of the questions require a numerical answer, which means you need to get within a tolerance range that is set by the lecturer. If you take these tests seriously, you will set yourself up well going into the exam if you earn almost the full 20% for the tests. There is one test for every topic in CHEM20018 (so five in total).

Since there are no answers to practice exams, I recommend setting up a Facebook page for this subject. In 2016 there were so many contributors and by the time of the exam, we pretty much had solutions to the 2013, 2014 and 2015 exams. It is a great way to learn from each other and I highly recommend it!

Week 1 to 3: Organic Compounds (Lecturer: Prof. J. White)

Professor White was a fantastic lecturer. The whole three weeks are devoted to enol/keto tautomerism chemistry. If you get plenty of chances to practice on this section it will be an easy part of the exam (and one you can knock out quickly!). All seven past exams have almost exactly the same format. All that varies is the compounds. So you pretty much know exactly what to expect when walking into the exam. Although you don’t need to draw these in the exam, it is very helpful to understand the mechanisms for each of the sub-topics. These sub-topics include drawing enol forms, electrophilicity and nucleophilicity of enol/keto forms of carbonyl compounds, stereochemical considerations, halogenation, alkylation, Aldol reactions (including the formation of cyclic compounds and mixed Aldol reactions), Claisen reactions, Malonate and Acetoacetate chemistry and Michael Chemistry. Once again, I cannot emphasise the value of practice exams (despite there being no answers).

Week 4 to 5: Thermodynamics (Lecturer: Prof. K. Ghiggino)

Seeing as I also study Physics, I didn’t find this section to be too difficult. About half of the time you are just reviewing some of the content covered from first year chemistry in CHEM10003. As Ken mentioned, a lot of this content is setting you up for the topics which are to follow in this subject and later years. The sub-topics include Heat, Work, Internal Energy, Enthalpy, Irreversible and Reversible Processes, Isothermal Processes, Adiabatic Processes, Free Expansions, Heat Capacity (including Constant Pressure and Volume Heat Capacity), Hess’ Law, Entropy (including Phase Changes and that of Isothermal Processes), Gibbs free energy, the Carnot cycle. We missed out on one of the lectures due to Good Friday. However, Ken still covered all of the material in 4 lectures, which left the final lecture to go over the Thermodynamics section from the 2015 exam. Again, if you know what you are doing this should not be a very difficult part of the exam.

Week 6 to 7: Thermodynamics of Inorganic Reactions (Lecturer: A/Prof B. Abrahams)

This was A/Prof Abrahams’ first time taking this part of the course. It was previously taken by Dr S. Best. Dr Best takes seven lectures of the CHEM20020 course. So I will know what he’s like after next semester. However, I feel that A/Prof Abrahams did an amazing job at teaching this section and personally this was my favourite part of the course. Brendan made a point of simplifying things compared to previous years (in which it used to be quite difficult and generally not a popular part of the subject). The sub-topics included a review of crystal lattice types from first year (which Brendan also teaches), the Born-Harber cycle, Lattice Enthalpies (calculated experimentally using the Born-Harber cycle and estimated using the Born-Lande, Borm-Mayer and Kapustinskii equations), Thermal Decomposition Stability, Trends in Oxidation State, Solubility of Ionic Compounds, Metal Oxides, Ellingham Diagrams, Latimer Diagrams, Disproportionation and Comproportionation Reactions, Frost Diagrams, Field of Stability of Water, Pourbaix Diagrams and Effect of Complexation on E° values. There is a lot of content, but Brendan has a way of making it seem interesting. I also felt that I could follow what Brendan was saying quite easily, which isn’t always the case with some lecturers.

Week 8 to 9: Coordination Chemistry (Lecturer: A/Prof. P. Donnelly)

Paul’s part of the course gives you a real taste for how coordination compounds can be used in both inorganic synthesis and biological applications. It puts into practise all that you have learned at the end of first year. We start by learning about the stability of metal ions (Irving-Williams series) and of ligands (chelate effect and macrocyclic effects). You also apply this briefly to thermodynamics. Other topics include Hard-Soft Acid-Base Theory (and its applications to Mercury Poisoning), Kinetic Lability of Coordination Complexes (including pathway types in synthesis), the world’s leading anti-cancer treating agent ‘cisplatin’, the ‘template’ effect (i.e. using a metal ion to carry out the organic synthesis of large cyclic molecules) and the use of Carbonic anhydrase to effectively maintain carbon dioxide levels in the bloodstream. There is a lot to remember in these two weeks of the course, but the content is interesting and Paul makes the content of his lectures highly engaging (including the use of some practical demonstrations).

Like I mentioned above, in Weeks 10 to 12 there is a choice. I choice Option I: Chemistry of Materials (Prof P. Mulvaney) so I will discuss this option. The other choice is Option II: Biological Organic Chemistry (A/Prof S. Williams).

This was the first time ‘Chemistry of Materials’ was taught in this course. It used to be called ‘Theory of Advanced Materials’ (taught by Dr. A. Gray-Weale). However, Angus took a more thermodynamic approach to these three weeks (since he was a statistical chemist). Paul took a very different approach and because of this there were no past exam sections that were of any use for his section. However, he did provide plenty of tutorial questions and additional questions during SWOTVAC. He also made it very clear what he expected everyone to understand after his three weeks of the course. The first week was spent on chemical bonding. We reviewed unit conversion, Ionic Bonding (somewhat similar to what Brendan went over in week 6), Covalent Bonding, Metallic Bonding and Van Der Waal’s Interactions (i.e. secondary bonding). In the second and third week we learnt about band structure and its applications. This included band gaps of intrinsic materials, doping to change the properties of materials, the similar relationships between band gaps and redox potentials, conductivity calculations and how solar cells work and are developed. Just also be aware that the tutorial questions and solutions are NOT posted on the LMS. To receive the questions you must attend the tutorial.

Overall, I think option I is designed for more ‘physics/engineering’ orientated students whilst option II is designed for more ‘biological’ orientated students. Both sets of lectures are recorded (which is useful since they run at the same time – 8am).

I found my experience in CHEM20018 to be very enjoyable and I would highly recommend the subject if you enjoyed first-year chemistry.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Nightwing on July 22, 2016, 02:17:34 am
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics 

Workload:  3 x 1 hour Lectures (Weekly)
                   1 x 2 hour Workshop (Weekly)
(If done over Summer Sem, double the workload a week)

Assessment:  4 x 7.5% Assignments (2 each on Statics & Dynamics)
                        2 x 7.5% Tests in Week 6 & 12
                        5% Weekly Online Quizzes
                        50% Exam (Hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  4 Past exams available on library database, however, since the lecturers are vastly different each semester, only 2 or so would generally be entirely relevant to you. The others can be used as extra practice if you want. (No solutions though). 

Textbook Recommendation:  None officially. But Statics & Mechanics of Materials – Hibbeler (3rd Edition) as well as Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics – Meriam & Kraige (6th Edition) can be used as extra practice. Personally found the Statics textbook fairly helpful, but not the Dynamics as much. 

Lecturer(s): Dr. Cheng Chin (Both Statics & Dynamics)

Year & Semester of completion: Summer Semester 2016

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 79  :'( [H2A]

Comments:
Simply put. This subject is tough. For most of you doing this as a core (perhaps not the Mechanical Majors), this will likely be the hardest subject in your undergrad, and is also coincidentally a pre-req for most of your third year subjects. Generally speaking, around 1/3 people will end up having to redo this subject. Many of the people in my class were those who had failed in Sem 2 2015, so as Hancock said in his review which I'd recommend checking out (Hancock's Review), it’s not a class to screw around in, and definitely not one you should consider winging. Please don’t. One consolation that you can take from Hancock's review is that the subject has been made a fair bit easier since his time, with parts of certain topics like Vibrations in Dynamics, and Eccentric Loading in Statics becoming much more simplified.
One thing I will add though is that unlike some other subjects, Eng Mech is possibly the fairest subjects I’ve done so far. What I mean by that is the mark you get at the end will be a direct representation of the effort and time you put in throughout the entire semester, unlike some others where you can get away with being a tad lazy, or where you can put in tonnes of work and still end up with a meh score (ahem, looking at you Calc 2). Due to the frantic pace at which it is taught, falling behind in this class is not something that I’d advise in the slightest, or SWOTVAC will be a nightmare.

The subject is split into two topics; Statics, and Dynamics. Both of which are 6 weeks long. Statics effectively starts off where the Mechanics module in ESD2 left off, with methods of joints and the like with trusses.
The new content in Statics begins with:
-   Method of sections: a different way of analyzing reaction forces in trusses
-   Shear Force Diagrams (SFD) and Bending Moment Diagrams (BMD) for differently loaded beams
-   Stress, Strain, Poissons, Hooke’s Law
-   Shear Stress, Shear Strain, ….
-   Axial Loading, Superposition
-   Thermal Stress
-   Torsion
-   Power
-   Flexure
-   Bending
-   Eccentric Loading
-   & finally, Deflection
As you can see, tonnes to learn, and this is only in the first 6 weeks. The content itself though is not too difficult to learn so long as you keep up to date with the lectures, though it does get slightly harder from around Torsion onwards. But I cannot stress this enough. Keep doing questions from whatever resource you can find. Every week, you are given a set of around 15-20 “Tutorial” questions (don’t even ask, made no sense to me either) that you can attempt at home for Statics on top of the Workshop questions. Though a few of the questions are beyond the course expectations, at least attempt every single one, and ones you can’t do or don’t understand, ask one of your tutors the next week. I reckon I bugged my tutor with at least 3-4 questions I was struggling with each workshop. You prepare yourself by doing these questions, you should not have any major issues with anything you do in the subject.

The Dynamics portion builds upon VCE Year 12 Physics for those of you who did it, and Physics 1. Much of the content is stuff that you would have covered in some capacity before, but likely not to a significant difficulty. Eng Mech covers all of it in much more detail, and something I really liked compared to the Statics section is that often you had to first think and figure out how the system you were given was going to work, before you started any calculations, whereas in Statics at times things got a tad monotonous with just plugging values into equations. The topics covered were:
-   Kinematics
-   Relative Motion (Polar, Rectangular, N-T Co-ordinate Systems)
-   Particle Kinetics
-   Work
-   Impulse & Momentum Angular Impulse & Momentum
-   Impact
-   Forced Vibrations
-   Rigid Body Motion, Absolute Motion analysis, Relative Velocity
-   Instantaneous Centres, Relative Acceleration
-   General Planar Motion
Whilst there aren’t as many topics covered in Dynamics, the content is much harder to understand, and I think for most people, it’s the inability to visualise what is going on. Often you’re left sitting there looking at the question thinking where do I even start. Rigid Body Motion onwards in particular can be horribly annoying to try and do at times. Again unfortunately I have to say the only way to get better at it is to do tonnes and tonnes of questions.

Whilst some other people I know who did Eng Mech had issues with the lectures, I really liked them. Lectures were very well organised and thought out. Though perhaps sometimes there was too much content crammed into a single hour. One massive thing I loved about the Eng Mech lectures is the way they are split up. In a normal semester, the first two lectures in the week would be intro lectures where you are taught the concepts, and the theory, whilst the third lecture is doing examples on the concepts taught in the two previous lectures. Though for me doing it over Summer meant it was two weeks crammed into one, and often 3 lectures in a single day, the method of introduction, followed by application and consolidation in that third lecture is something I’m a big fan of, and wish more Engineering subjects adopted this approach, rather than just droan on and on with theory. Also side note, don’t bother with the “Tutorial” 13 questions. Just a waste of time. Stuff is ridiculously hard, and there is no way any of it is going to come up in any assessment.

The workshops too were something that I absolutely loved, with again in particular the way they are set up being one of the best parts. Workshops are officially run across 2 hours, but the minimum recommended time you stay for is the first hour unless there is some experiment work to do for one of the assignments planned for the second half. Workshops usually start off with the head tutor doing a quick run down of the content covered in the lectures for the week again, followed by two generally fairly difficult questions which are explained fairly thoroughly and worked through by the two tutors. All this gets done in the first hour beyond which you are free to leave, or stay behind and get some help from the tutors regarding the questions done in class, or other questions you may have. I strongly, strongly recommend staying back and asking the tutors questions. It is extremely rare that tutors are this approachable, or more so this free to help with any queries, so make full use of them. I reckon I kinda got lucky and had two fairly awesome tutors who knew the content really really well, but especially the revered Engineering God Hancock who more than anything for a subject as tough as Eng Mech was able to basically dumb down and explain the concepts from the point of view of a student. Often explaining the concepts better than the lecturer himself. Though a few other people’s experiences varied, the vast majority of people I talked to always reckon the Eng Mech tutors as a whole are generally some of the best you will have in your course. I can honestly say that a massive reason to me doing half decent in this subject was due to the help Hancock gave me every single Workshop. (Hancock, if you’re reading this, sorry if I bugged you too much).

TL;DR. I absolutely loved the subject. It is by far the hardest I’ve done so far, but the quality of the lecturer, and tutors, as well as the organization of the subject as a whole meant that it was a subject that you actually enjoyed doing the work (at least in hindsight). Just ensure you keep up to date not only rocking up to lectures, but especially doing questions consistently, and ensure you’re on top of everything during semester when you still have the time so that come SWOTVAC, all you need is a quick refresher and you’re good to go for the exam.

Also, on a final note. What I’ve heard from those repeating the subject over Summer is that Semester 2 is kinda suicidal with Daniel Chung being head of the subject. Having done some of his past exams for revision, it’s hard not to agree. His exams don’t even nearly compare to Semester 1 or 2. If you’re willing to give up 2 months of your summer break, do it over summer. Else I’d say do it in Sem 1 if you can. The standard in Summer or Semester 1 is more than enough for your third year subjects where you expand on many of the concepts learnt in Eng Mech, and it's not worth the likely WAM drop.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on July 27, 2016, 05:50:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20011 Business Negotiations 

Workload:  2week winter intensive subject. 3hr 15min per day for 2 weeks (10 days). This includes one 2hr lecture and one 1hr15min tutorial.

Assessment:  20% tutorial prep and participation, 30% reflective essay, 50% take home exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yeah I believe so, some lectures it didn't work though.

Past exams available:  Neg.

Textbook Recommendation:  I believe there is a book recommended for the course but Adam literally said it's not required. I don't know anyone that had the textbook

Lecturer(s): Adam Barsky

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 July

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Comments:

Firstly, this review is overall quite positive and quite different to the previous review (I believe the course has changed quite a bit). I was quite happy with having done this through my winter holidays however note: I'm writing this before receiving my results so I have no idea if the assessment marking is any good.

Business Negotiations extends for 10 days. Each day you attend a 2hour lecture at 9am which isn't mandatory at all. Coming into the first lecture Adam said to do well in this subject, you don't have to do the readings or really even attend lectures. The first few days reiterated the 'experiential' nature of this subject, and to do well you just have to put some effort in. The content on the lectures is actually quite interesting - sort of dissecting different aspects of negotiation aimed at forming this "toolkit" for you in negotiations. It begins going through sort of psychological decision making and identifying different biases that can be capitalised on and that sort of thing. This only goes for 1 lecture so calmmm. After this lecture, it became a lot more relevant - identifying and reiterating the fundamental tension of negotiation; whether to cooperate or compete with the other party. I don't have too much to say about lectures, I suggest you attend and take notes of what Adam says because I found them useful in doing the exam as the slides themselves are just a few keywords that he elaborates on. Granted, this subject was literally at the start of the pokemon go craze, so I don't know how much I missed but the bits I did write down helped.

After the lecture, you attend a 1hr 15min tutorial. I had my tutorial at 11:30 so I was done quite early - that's the good thing about the subject. Anyway, the tutorials are literally so god damn fun. Each day throughout the 2weeks you're given a page or two of information relating to a particular role (seller or buyer usually). The information (except for maybe 2 days) was quite small so it doesn't take too long to read. Anyway, you go home and use this information to prepare a 'negotiation preparation document' which at the first few days is probably about 250 words long, but can get wayyyy longer towards the end of the course. By the last day, my prep doc was over 1000 words (it's kinda easy though, cos you can just copy some of the stuff you put on your previous one anyway). You submit these prep docs each night before 11pm on LMS and these form some of your grade. 20% is assigned to tutorial preparation and participation - i'm not sure how much is assigned to what but you get 4 of your preparation documents marked (randomly) to provide feedback. Ok, so after doing your prep doc, you come to class the next day and negotiate! You get assigned to someone else of a different role in your class and then spend 30-60minutes negotiating. Generally, everyone here is to have fun so negotiating is quite fun and I could hardly keep a straight face in some of them. The general idea of them is to (pretty much) fail, and then the lecture the next day goes through key failures and stuff. You enter your negotiation results online and then Adam puts them in a graph or something similar and goes through it in the lecture, identifying where people often fault in these negotiations. The tutorials are definitely the most important part of the course. The negotiations also change; for the final negotiation, it extends 2 days and involves 5 different parties negotiating for an agreement. This kind of makes it crazy to discuss, especially with people forming alliances and different sort of things. Like honestly, I cannot fathom how fun it was even though I got screwed over.

This final negotiation forms the basis of your individual reflective essay. We had a 1250 word limit, and we were to write a critical essay on our negotiation with references to key negotiation theories that were touched on in class. The word limit makes it quite hard to talk about everything that happened, but honestly it's not too hard to write.

The final assessment is a take-home exam thats worth 50% and is pretty much the same as a negotiation preparation document, except this exam has a 1750 word limit so it requires a bit more thinking. Plus some hypothetical questions are posed that are a bit more interesting. I don't think it was too hard honestly, it just takes a bit of time editing to make sure its under that word limit.

Honestly, I've probably missed so many things to talk about and I'll probably come back to update it later but I just want to say that it was a good break from the regular mundane subjects. All the people I know that took the subject have nothing but praise about it; it was pretty fun. Since the previous review of business negotiations it definitely has gone through a change and most likely will go through another change in future years. However, it is in a good spot now and I imagine the class size (was 300-400 this year) is going to increase exponentially.

AFTER ASSESSMENT: Ok so I'm getting around to editing this quite late and generally I wouldn't edit it after the assessment results come out however this has to be one of the most ridiculous grading schemes I've witnessed. Everyone's grade was scaled DOWN about 10-11 marks (I believe) and this severely reduced the impact of the final take-home exam (as most people would've aced it) and put more weight on the personal reflective essay. In this sense I felt personally impacted by the subjectivity of my tutor as the reviews on my essay conflicted with the instructions given by Adam in the lectures regarding the essay. Nonetheless, I finished with a H2A but take note - I put a ton of effort into this subject to make sure I got a H1 and I didn't.

I just want to reiterate: This subject is NOT an easy H1 and (presuming the subject stays relatively similar) if you want a H1, choose your tutor wisely. This edit comes ~4-5months after results released and you can tell I'm quite salty still. So you have been warned.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yacoubb on July 31, 2016, 07:14:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20001: Principles of Microbiology and Immunology   

Workload:  x3 one hour lectures, x2 one and a half-hour practicals (held weeks 11 and 12)

Assessment: 
- x12 Weekly Quizzes (10%)
- Mid-Semester Test (20%)
- Post-Practical Quiz Online (2%)
- End of Semester Examination (68%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past examinations were available. The last lecture was a revision/integration lecture that had sample question types.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbooks are Prescott's Microbiology by Willey J, Sherwood L, Woolverton C and Molecular Biology of the Cell, Alberts et al, 6th edn, 2014.

** Personally, I didn't find the textbooks really necessary. The lecture content is sufficient. However, if I were in need of a textbook, Prescott's Microbiology was a great resource.

Lecturer(s): Dr Karena Waller, Associate Professor Jason Mackenzie, Dr Sacha Pidot, Professor Andrew Brooks, Dr Catherine Kennedy and Dr Laura Mackay

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:

From year 12 I have been very passionate about all things Immunology and Microbiology. My chosen major is Human Structures and Functions, but I wanted to dabble in a little bit of Immunology because I thought it would be an opening experience to something I was quite passionate about. This subject made me realise why I thoroughly enjoyed Immunology and Microbiology.

Lectures:
There are three lectures every week in one-hour time slots. The lectures cover a variety of topics, including:
* History of Immunology and Microbiology
* The secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells.
* Immunology (innate immune response, acquired immune response)
* The Microbial World - Bacteria, Parasites and Fungi
* Mobile DNA elements - nature of microbial DNA, use of mobile DNA elements for horizontal gene transfer, etc.
* Bacteria - Pathogenesis, Toxicity and Antibiotics
* Viruses and Prions
* Recombinant DNA Technology
* Vaccines

Associate Professor Jason Mackenzie - he takes the lectures on the secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells, as well as viruses & prions. Prepare for many examples. The theoretical aspect of viruses is extremely interesting, however, he does digress quite a lot and discuss his own personal accomplishments. There are a lot of examples he expects you to memorise for the purposes of the exam/mid-semester test. My biggest piece of advice would be to learn examples that have been repeated on a regular basis. Otherwise, the content on viruses, prions and the secretory pathway were thoroughly enjoyable.

Dr Laura Mackay: FAVOURITE lecturer! Not only does Dr Laura have a vast knowledge of all things Immunology-related, she also understood we were second year Immunology students and thus made sure every detail was explained thoroughly. Furthermore, her lecture content was the most interesting and relatable to what I know Immunology encompassed. Her lecture content was straightforward, and exam questions were a lot more theoretical based than necessarily just rote learning examples. This made it an enjoyable part of the course to review. Content-wise, the lectures were just extensions from VCE Biology Immunology, where those specific answers you couldn't get to your questions in year 12 are finally going to be answered.

Dr Karena Waller - what I loved about her lectures is that she listed everything in the exact amount of detail we needed to learn about it for the exam. She covered the lecture on the history of Microbiology/Immunology, as well as the introductory lectures into Bacteria, Parasites and Fungi. It was a great way of paving the path for our knowledge of how each of the aforementioned microorganisms function, and in some cases cause disease. Expect to know approximately seven different diseases in detail (e.g. Malaria, Giardiasis, etc.). Once again, the notes she provides for these diseases are more than sufficient for you to know how to answer questions on the exam and mid-semester test.

Dr Sacha Pidot - Dr Sacha covered the content on DNA and genetics/genomics of microorganisms, as well as how mobile DNA elements such as bacteriophages, plasmids and transposons can all be used to transfer DNA between different bacteria. I personally found this to be the least interesting part of the course; however, in saying that, I think the content on mobile DNA elements was quite interesting. Dr Sacha puts up questions during the lectures to sort of test your knowledge. Although these are good to test your knowledge, they're quite easy and majority of the students get the answers right. Dr Sacha is always shocked that we knew the answers to the quizzes. Okay Sacha.. okay.

Dr Catherine Kennedy - Dr Catherine Kennedy took us through an extension of Bacteria, focusing particularly on pathogenesis, toxicity and antibiotics against bacteria. The content on bacteria was thoroughly enjoyable. There is quite a lot to remember for Dr Catherine's lectures, particularly about the different toxins produced by bacteria for pathogenesis, as well as antibiotics that are used against bacteria. Nonetheless, if you prepare for it adequately, it is relatively straightforward.

Associate Prof. Andrew Brooks - he took the lecture on vaccines. I thought the content he gave was quite straightforward, and he elaborates on the fundamentals of vaccines, the different types of vaccines available, etc.

Assessments:

1. Weekly Quizzes: the weekly quizzes are completed online, and often involve completing 6-9 questions (approximately 3 questions per lecture). The questions are usually quite straightforward and the answers can often be derived straight from the lecture notes, so it can be completed open book. You have a time-limit of two hours. An important thing to consider though is that in this quiz, you cannot go back to fix your answers. Once you submit an answer to a question, you cannot go back and change it, so make sure you have properly answered it.

2. Mid-Semester Test: personally, I found the mid-semester test very accessible. I scored 36/40 for it. As long as you revise the lecture content thoroughly, you will be prepared for the examination as it is essentially a lot of rote learning. It is carried out around week 6/7, and there are 40 multiple choice questions to complete.

3. Examination: okay, so the one thing about this subject which for many people is the deal-breaker is the amount of content. I am not going to sugar coat it, there is a LOT. As long as you can keep up to date, and understand the theoretical concepts + specific examples, the examination shouldn't be too difficult. Overall, I didn't find the exam to be too difficult, however, it was important that I remembered specific examples if I wanted to do well.

The exam has three sections: section A (multiple choice), section B (fill-in-the-blanks) and section C (short-answer).

Overall, I found this subject to be very enjoyable. I think if you want to dabble in a bit of Microbiology and Immunology, this is the perfect subject to take. I will be doing MIIM20002, purely because of how much I enjoyed this subject. Definitely worth doing! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tigerlivie on November 02, 2016, 05:24:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: RUSS10001 – Russian 1

Workload:  2 x 2h Seminars

Seminars are like a tutorial cross lecture format:
1 x 2h grammar class
1 x 2h culture / conversation / verbal class

There is a 75% attendance minimum.

Assessment:  5 written assignments (roughly 6-10 pages depending on the chapter), one per fortnight. Assignments are a hurdle.

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No, but they do give you a “mock” exam which is virtually identical to the real thing.

Textbook Recommendation:  Buy the textbook Тройка: A Communicative Approach to Russian Language, Life and Culture by Marita Nummikoski! I bought the digital version – don't make the same mistake I did.
See why:
Spoiler
It's DRM protected using some copyright encryption (which I can't find a crack for) and the only program that can open it is their VitalSource Bookshelf which SUCKS especially for Russian (no Cyrillic alphabet support for the clipboard.!!!)
You work from the textbook in every seminar, and there are lots of useful examples for your own notes. I have no idea how the previous reviewer made it through the semester without it. The activity manual might not be necessary, it depends what sort of grades you’re after and how quickly you learn material.

Lecturer(s): Robert Lagerberg and Larissa Andreeva

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 (S1)

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Would rather not disclose

Comments:

General:
This subject is highly underrated, particularly as breadth. From what I understand, it is far less overwhelming than other languages at the uni. If you are interested in learning the Russian language (and strictly the Russian language), look no further. By the end of first semester you will have the basic skills to take on further independent learning of the Russian language, or you will fall in love with the language and continue on. Contrary to the previous reviewer, I believe it is necessary for you to have some language learning experience prior to this subject because the grammar lectures routinely contain linguistic terminology which might be inaccessible to first time learners.

I must admit I felt like the subject was a bit disorganised to begin with due to the structure of the textbook. The topics covered in the textbook (which the class follows very closely) are varied and range in difficulty. Perhaps the most difficult thing for you to grasp will be the different situations and constructs which make use of 'cases' (not if you've done German or Latin though). There is only a moderate amount of vocabulary– by no means will you be overwhelmed.

The textbook has many flaws which you will learn of in the first semester – primarily that it jumps between topics randomly and never gives you a complete grammar table under the guise of 'introducing concepts slowly' (i.e. not informing you that the neuter gender exists until well into the first few chapters, and ALWAYS waiting to give you the plural endings to things after you've finished everything else and moved on).

You get used to this though, at least I have now (at the end of S2), and you learn to write your own grammar notes which come in handy in exam time.

Assignments:
The assignments are a bit of a time sink - I am not the brightest crayon in the box, and it took me 2 - 4 hours to complete each depending on the length. They are take home and open book. They are marked generously, but due to their rather large weighting (50% combined) they could bring your mark down significantly if you perform averagely in 2 or 3 of them. I highly doubt the assignments will cause you any pain, just make sure you pay attention to the small details.

Note:
I recommend that you take BOTH Russian 1 and Russian 2 as a block, and don't consider them single subjects. You really on scratch the tip of the iceberg in semester 1.

PS: Google translate is *often* wrong, so I recommend you stick to what you know in the first semester.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tigerlivie on November 02, 2016, 05:38:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: RUSS10002 – Russian 2

Workload:  2 x 2h Seminars, which are like a tutorial cross lecture format. 1 x grammar class, 1 x culture / conversation / verbal class

Assessment:  1 written assignment (roughly 6-10 pages depending on the chapter) per fortnight

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  No, but they do give you a “mock” exam which is virtually identical to the real thing.

Textbook Recommendation:  Same textbook from Semester 1, so you should own it!

Lecturer(s): Robert Lagerberg and Larissa Andreeva

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 (S2)

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Not sure yet

Comments:

Very much the same as semester 1, but with more cases and more interesting topics. It's a bit more fast-paced, which in my opinion is welcomed. You really start to create more meaningful dialogue and the assignments begin to have little mini-prompt sections at the end which is a good place to show off your new Russian skills. By the end of semester 2, you should be able to say "Я говорю по-русски немного"! On a personal note, I really realised and began to appreciate how much breadth and accuracy Dr Lagerberg has when it comes to grammar knowledge in semester 2. Of course, Larissa Andreeva is as knowledgeable, positive and fun as ever as well!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on November 07, 2016, 04:09:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003/Introductory Macroeconomics 

Workload: Two 50 min lectures and One 50 min tute per week

Assessment:  Two online multiple choice tests (5% ea), Two assignments (10% ea), Tutorial participation and attendance (10%), Final exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  There was one available by the current  lecturer, and loads of other ones from previous lecturer’s that were mostly relevant to what we studied. Couldn’t find solutions however.

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Macroeconomics, FOURTH Edition, by B. Bernanke, N. Olekalns and R. Frank.
Didn’t buy it, lecture slides are enough.

Lecturer(s): Professor Robert Dixon

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Sem 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: [H1] - 90

Comments:

This subject gets built up as the mean big brother of introductory microeconomics. However, I found this subject far more enjoyable, interesting and I suspect I’ll end up scoring higher than I did in micro because of this.

I should note that this is the first review with Robert Dixon lecturing the subject, so I assume some of the content covered will be a bit different to previous lecturers.

Lectures

The course starts off with some relatively basic stuff – national accounts, GDP and CPI calculations, unemployment rate and measures of output – before it gets into the heart of the subject: economic models. The three that are broadly covered are the Keynesian model, Aggregate-Demand/Aggregate-Supply model and the Solow-Swan model. There’s also a little bit of stuff on monetary policy and currency exchange, but that in a nutshell is what was covered in the course.

Lectures are absolutely stuffed full of content. Seriously, they’re like 50 slides long full of mostly text and a few graphs interspersed here and there. So if you’re there to take notes, you better be attentive otherwise you’ll have to re-watch them at home because sometimes they really zoom along.

There is a little bit of math involved, but if you managed to pass math methods (which I think is the pre-req for the course) then there shouldn’t be any issues. It’s just rearranging equations and dealing with a few exponents.

The lecturer for this semester was Prof. Robert Dixon. I thought he was great, no complaints here. Very knowledgeable on the content matter and was concise with what he spoke about. He skimmed over the less-important stuff and spent lots of time explaining how the economic models worked, and since they constitute most of the course/exam this helped tremendously.

He is a bit snappy at the start of the lectures, so if you’re going to have a chat with a friend prepare to be singled out to everyone in the room.

Tutorials

The tutorials were like micro in that there are blue sheets and pink sheets to do every week. You get marked on attendance and participation, and that includes doing the blue sheets (which you should be doing regardless because they’re great for consolidating knowledge).

Most tutors will just go through the solutions of the blue sheet with you, then you run through the pink sheet as a class. There are no solutions to the pink sheet provided online, so you must turn up to tutes if you want answers. This is especially important for exam revision (which I’ll discuss below.)

Assessment

There were two 15 question multi-choice tests that you had to do in 30 minutes, both worth 5%. I had been keeping up with the course and doing assignments, so they weren’t too hard. I did know people who struggled with them because they were behind, but since it’s open book you should be aiming to get high marks for these.

There were two assignments worth 10% each.  Coming from micro I was expecting to spend hours on these, but to be honest the assignments were surprisingly easy. They could be done in groups with people form your tutorial, but you could easily do them on your own. They just consisted of three short answer questions, which could be explaining a certain law (Walras’/Okun’s), using an economic model or using algebra to demonstrate a proof. They weren’t tough at all and in fact much easier and shorter than the micro assignments were. Don’t worry about these.

Exam

I haven’t got my result back so I’m a bit hesitant to write this, but I felt that the exam was very straightforward. There were 14 multiple choice questions worth 2 marks each (of your overall SUBJECT score) that were pretty similar to the MCQ’s. Then, there were a few short answer questions basically using and applying the models we’ve learnt. So the exam was weighted 50-50 between multi-choice and short answer.

The best exam revision was the tute sheets, without a doubt. Some of the questions were extremely similar to those found in the tutes and some of them I’m fairly certain were copied word-for-word. In the exam period, just make sure you do all the blue and pink sheets and answer every question.  If you do this and actually understand what you’re writing, I guarantee you will get a H1.

So yeah, don’t stress about the exam – it’s just a rehash of tutorial questions and they weren’t overly difficult so if you can get through those you’ll be set for high marks.

My Thoughts

I gave this subject a 5/5 because:
-   Interesting subject matter (unlike micro, you actually begin to understand how an economy functions/grows and you gain an appreciation for things you see in media)
-   Laid back lecturer who got through the content pretty comfortably and emphasised the important stuff
-   Relatively straightforward assessment that didn’t try to “trick” you, if you know the content then you will be fine

Intro Micro left me a little disappointed to what economics at Melbourne was about, but after Intro Macro I can safely say I’m looking forward to Intermediate Macro next year. This was one of my favourite subjects I studied all year (perhaps my favourite?) so I urge future commerce students to not be intimidated by it – it really isn’t that much of a step up from micro and is in fact a lot more enjoyable.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: spectroscopy on November 12, 2016, 03:38:54 am
Subject Code/Name: MKTG30008 Neuromarketing

Workload: 1 x 2 hour lecture + 1 x 1 hour tute per week

Assessment:  One 1000 word assignment (group or individual) (10%), One group assignment (3000 words) (30%), One end of semester exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled: I had to check the LMS to see if they were because i went to most of the lectures and the ones i didn't go to i just read the slides LOL but they ARE recorded

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation: I didnt use one as the lecture slides were very detailed and the readings were more than enough if you wanted to learn more beyond the lecture.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2016

Rating: prolly a 5/5. cant really complain about the subject. i had a good time, the lecturer was good, tutor was good, everything was marked fairly.
the exam was pretty tough and there weren't any practice exams but i understand why he didnt give them out as they ask similiar questions each year apparently

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
Summary: Very interesting subject. They wanted it to be called consumer neuroscience first because it is very neuroscience heavy (but dont be scared), but that did not happen and neuromarketing is the name. I would recommend this subject (and internet marketing ill write a review on later) to ALL marketing students. If you like marketing subjects and you want to learn something empirical rather than fluffy, definitely do this. the neurology and anatomy you have to learn isn't super complicated and gives you a really solid understanding of what happens. you begin to really understand the neurological & physiological effects of what happens in your brain when you exposed to all sorts of things from marketing to general stimuli. the subject really makes you understand yourself and the world better and i think for any marketing role it will give you a MASSIVE leg up over other people. as you will have a super solid empirical foundation for things as well as knowledge on the brain. alot of marketing subjects are quite fluffy and i feel like in this subject i learnt more than all my previous marketing subjects combined.
also i highly recommend it if you did vce psych and like that, you get similiar vibes from this subject
i personally did this subject because i wanted to learn some concrete ideas and that is definitely what i got out of it

Overall, its a pretty do-able subject. You can definitely get H1's in all the assignments if you put in the work and also get a H1 in the exam if you have studied hard for it, although the exam was harder than most marketing exams. I thought it was a pretty high workload subject in general. The assignments absolutely can not be bullshitted and require alot of effort and time. The good side of this is that marks do tend to correlate with effort for this subject.

Classes were fun though. I always enjoyed having neuro tutes and neuro lectures. ill talk about them more in the relevant sections but this is a very enjoyable and very interesting subject. the content is not super difficult, its just hard to bullshit. its not one of those subjects where you will be pulling out your hair wondering how to get an answer. you will just have to do alot of reading and ask some questions to get your answer, which i think is a good way to run the subject.

To tell you what you learn, it starts with teaching you how each of the 5 senses works in your brain and how they can be used for marketing, as well as some traits of the sense. this was SUPER interesting and what the first assignment is based on. then you start to learn things like emotion, memory, learning, decision making, and some more psychological concepts. pretty interesting stuff in general

The subject is run pretty well. Assessment is fair and the teaching staff were very good. definitely not a bludge subject but if you are a hard worker you will be rewarded. this is a subject to be respected though and treated like a neuroscience subject.

Lectures:
These were AWESOME. I never go to lectures for any subject, but on thursdays all i would have was my  tute for this subject + this lecture so i would just go to it anyway and also i had a friend in there. the lecturer was SO good. he explained concepts REALLY well even if they were quite complex and he would incorporate lots of fun videos into lectures and was pretty chill in general. we also had a guest speaker come in from a food company and talk about how neuromarketing helped her firm. the lecturer is actually involved in his own neuromarketing business (i think he owns it?) and even offered for a few of us to email him after the exam and see about internship possibilities at the firm.

the slides were filled to the brim with info and the lecturer still added more on top of that so overall good lectures 5/5


Tutes:
These were also pretty fun! i had a great tutor who I think she worked in neuromarketing as well. and had her PhD in what im guessing wouldve been psychology or something because she was quite smart and switched on about all the brain stuff. in tutes we did a whole bunch of different things. the uni has software that has a mapping of the brains regions and shit and in one tute we were playing around with the brain simulator. most weeks however involved looking at a marketing campaign or viral video or something and tying in the neuromarketing concepts from that week into the case in the tute. pretty helpful stuff and pretty interesting seeing how what we were learning was being implemented in the real world


First assignment:
An assignment based on how a certain company does sensory marketing (using the 5 senses in its marketing). pretty interesting stuff. you can not bullshit it if you havent done the work. if you havent really listened to the lectures or absorbed the info you probably wont do well. though if you do the work the assignment is pretty straight forward although it can be hard to find information on this stuff and you will have to be fairly proactive in deducing what companies are doing in terms of their sensory branding if the info isnt widely available. this is your typical 1000 word 10% marketing assignment except for the fact you can do it in groups which is nice. if you dont do the work or you are lazy expect a score in the 50's or 60's. if you did the work and have produced a good quality assignment expect a h1. this goes for both assignments really. its kinda hard to get a h1 just because the content is kinda difficult but if you can nail it the marking is quite fair and if anything does punish slackers so dont be lazy in this subject


Second Assignment:
Same as any 30% group assignment for a marketing or management subject really. Although the content is WAY harder. you really need to learn the stuff and understand basically the whole course to do it. its an assignment about how a company that offers a service (not a good) uses neuromarketing in their marketing mix. it can become quite complex to write about and it is also VERY hard to find information on this stuff and really you will have to look at things yourself and say "hmm well we learnt about this and i know this company has X set up like Y" and then you look into that and realise that its actually on purpose and its a neuromarketing technique. if you do the work for the subject and assignment you should do okay for this


Exam:
Some of the questions are quite broad, and some are very specific. Overall i would say its a hard exam and if you want to get a h1 or a good score, you will have to do alot of work and cover alot of ground. overall it was fair though and there were no dirty questions


Conclusion:
All said 5/5 for a few reasons
+ lectures and tutes were super fun and super interesting
+ interesting and useful content that was empirical and not fluffy
+ fair assessment
- no prac exams and exam was kinda hard but shit happens


TL;DR good subject. great fun. fair bit of work but definitely worth it and its easy to study for something that is interesting. i would recommend it to all marketing students and even non marketing students. if you are doing neuroscience or psych in science or arts youd probs love this subject. they should make this a core marketing subject because its very useful. highly recommend. do it in a semester where you have alot of boring , preferrably easier subjects, and do this for something fun to break it up and keep you busy
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on November 12, 2016, 08:01:16 am
Subject Code/Name: Taxation Law 1

Workload:  One 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 30% Assignment due in Week ~4/5, 70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Elaborate on below.

Textbook Recommendation:  The recommended textbook is very relevant and very useful. Make sure you get your years version as I believe they change year to year quite a bit.

Lecturer(s): Sunita Jogarajan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2016

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Tax law...Where do I begin? Firstly, tax law is primarily filled with accounting students because we need it for accreditation. For a lot of accounting students there is a lot of things you would've seen before, depending on classes you've taken, like imputation credits, indexation method and various other random things. I think Tax Law, honestly, is a really good subject. I came in from Corporate Law in the previous semester being scared as $#!% because Corp Law was so difficult and required some serious thinking. Tax Law takes a different approach from Corp Law, and the theory in Tax isn't nearly as conceptual, and often it's quite easy to understand what the questions are asking/what they want you to write. That being said, it is quite content heavy and I believe if you fall behind you not completely catch up - I'd stress going to lectures (even if you don't listen to 100%) because Sunita focuses on some things a tad more than others and you can get a feel for what is important to know in the subject

Ok, so, the lectures. Sunita is a good lecturer, I think being the lecturer for a TAX subject is a difficult proposition but she handles it quite well. She stresses that she is about rewarding students for their hard work throughout the semester (and hence she gave us two topics on the final exam that we had already covered in the assignment, so they were relatively easy for most). I honestly can't praise Sunita enough to be honest, as a result of her I believe I'll be taking Tax Law 2 next semester. It's a welcome refresh when lecturers/teachers don't place a multitude of tricks on the exam. The lectures themselves are similar to Corp Law in the fact that they often just have a sentence or two on the slides and Sunita will elaborate, or like a case name and Sunita will give you the facts. Don't stress if you don't catch any of it, it's quite well covered in the textbook (which should become your best friend throughout this subject).

The content in Tax Law is pretty good. It really gives you an insight into how tax is paid/comprised, such as the difference between offsets, deductions etc. In addition, you are exposed to a bit of company's as taxpayers, and trusts and partnerships (however these are excluded from examinable material and left for tax law 2). The course itself focusses on what comprises assessable income and deductions - so you go through ordinary income (prerequisites etc), statutory income and non-assessable income. When I came into tax law I thought it would be a pretty straight forward course and there would be scripted responses for every question. However, tax law revolves around the students forming their own arguments on recognised tax legislation so often even if there is a correct answer, lots of answers are accepted. The exam will revolve around 'discussion' questions and hence it isn't as useful to bring in a set of responses that you can't tailor.

The tutorials are 1 hour long with no participation marks. The questions themselves come mostly from past exams I believe, so going to tutorials and getting sample answers from your tutors is actually really key and helped me enormously coming into SWOTVAC. As there's no participation marks, the tutorials are met with silence and it's quite annoying when simply having to answer every question otherwise the tutor won't progress - so there needs to be some work on that.

The assignment is worth 30% and due around week 4-5. It's a law assignment so I don't think anyone got full marks. The average was 21/30 or just below that, but I think it's quite easy to do above the average. It must be completed in pairs - and as I had no friends taking the subject, I was assigned a partner (don't count on them being any good, I ended up doing the whole thing). The whole pair thing is designed to replicate a real word experience where, especially is a tax capacity, you are required to work with others. The assignment for our year focussed on GST and Residency. While GST has set answers as its quite prescriptive, residency is a 'legal grey area' and thus a range of answers are generally accepted as long as they provide correct documentation and supporting arguments. Anyway, I don't think it was necessarily too hard, just double triple quadruple check the textbook because there is really a plethora of information in there that will get you marks.

From the assignment to the exam, there is nothing in between. This is really where it requires you to stay up to date so going into SWOTVAC you feel comfortable and can revise small things that will you get 1 mark here and there. Now, the exam is open book so make sure you get a solid set of notes as you really really do need them. The exam itself is 2hours writing time and 30mins reading. Beforehand, Sunita told us that we would be rewarded for our Assignment work in the exam, and she gave us a revision question which she covered the answer for in the final lecture. The revision question gives you a really good example of what one of the questions on the exam is going to be (and it definitely did pop up!). On top of that, Sunita says that the primary resource for exam revision is tutorial questions, so this is where your answers will come in handy. She advises against revising past exams because the course changes each year and topics get dropped/picked up. The exam itself was the most intense 2 hours of writing I've ever endured; even moreso than Corp law. Coming out of the exam, my finger was swollen for 2 days (combined from the fact I write forcefully under pressure and that I didn't stop for the whole 2 hours). You need to know exactly what you're writing in those 30minutes reading, because I found I had very very little time to think at all during the writing time. I think the exam was fair and really tested the particulars of the course - deductions, assessable income, fringe benefits.

Granted I haven't received my mark yet and so I will most likely come back to update this review after to reflect the marking scheme, but at this point in time I really enjoyed Taxation Law 1 as a subject. I think Sunita handles it really well and has honestly intrigued me substantially in the area of Tax.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 16, 2016, 11:30:44 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30001: Frontiers in Biomedicine

Workload:
- Contact hours: three x 1 hour lectures per week; plus six x 1 hour tutorials per semester; plus one x 4 hour practicals per semester.
- Total time commitment: 170 hours.

Assessment:
- Continuing assessment (40%).

Unfortunately the handbook is very vague here, which I found quite frustrating at the start of the semester because I had little idea of what to expect. I'll go into more detail in the review, but the breakdown (roughly in the order in which they are to be completed) is as follows:

- Literature searching and bioinformatics assignment: 7.5%.
- Debate: 5%.
- Mid-semester test (held in week 6): 10%.
- Pre-practical quiz: 3%.
- Peer assessment: 2.5%.
- Respiratory assignment: 12%.

- One practical assessment (10%) - that is, a graphical analysis assignment (basically a report).
- 2 hour written examination in the final examination period (50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, four past exams are made available to practice both for the mid-semester test and exam.

Textbook Recommendation: On-line readings will be provided through the readings on-line site through the LMS.

I don't actually recall anything being put up though... Maybe I didn't pay enough attention lol.

Lecturer(s): There are too many to list here, because this is a subject where a lecturer may only come once or twice to discuss their particular topic. However, I've attached the timetable for the 2016 semester below for your reference.

Co-ordinators:
- Dr Rosa McCarty (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics).
- Dr Terry Mulhern (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology).

We only saw Terry at the very start and end of the semester, so I assume he does some work behind the scenes. Rosa, on the other hand, attends most of the lectures and as the face of the subject is likely to be your first port of call for help. She also takes a couple of lectures herself.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2016.

Rating: 3/5.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Sorry it's taken me a little while to make a start on this... Like a lot to do with this subject, I feel like I lost a lot of motivation and interest. Part of that has to do with the fact that it's the last semester of Biomedicine, but it also has to do with the subject itself. Apologies if my review isn't as long or detailed as my other ones have been (although maybe that will be a good thing haha).

Subjectively, I didn't enjoy this subject very much but objectively, I cannot criticise BIOM30001 as much as I thought I would have been able to. It still needs a number of improvements, but I think the reason why many people are not too fond of this subject has to do with the fact that it's just a very different sort of subject. This is a subject that is primarily concerned with developing graduate attributes and skills that will be of use in further study and employment, with the biomedical content essentially of secondary importance. This subject is not about taking copious notes of details during the lectures - in fact, I'm not convinced that taking notes would even be of benefit. It's more about developing a holistic overview of biomedicine in the community and understanding your position as a budding biomedical scientist. Instead, there is a massive focus on developing skills in the tutorials, the practical and the majority of the assessments.

There's no point me breaking down individual lectures and lecturers one by one, but I will take a moment to discuss the key modules of the lecture course. We started off with a week of largely non-examinable introductory lectures designed to help us understand this subject and what it's all about, and then swiftly moved into the first module: metabolic syndrome. This module spans for about 4-5 weeks and discusses topics including the obesity epidemic, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The second module only spans a week or two and discusses stem cell technology, including tissue engineering and some basic biomechanics. The mid-semester test held in week 6 examines both of these modules. Following these, we moved into respiratory diseases, exploring chronic pulmonary obstructive disease (COPD) and asthma in particular. This particular module also included some more general public health lectures including science communication in the media and public perception of vaccination. The last module, which began after the mid-semester break, is pain and pleasure. About half of the lectures are dedicated to the neurophysiology of pain, while the other half deal with pain treatments and drug addiction. Each module deals with topics beyond biomedical science, such as public health, politics and economics. In most cases, I felt the lectures were delivered to an adequate standard. I didn't think it was amazing, but for the most part it wasn't completely woeful either - ultimately, it varies due to the high turnover of lecturers. Perhaps the last module wasn't dealt with very well: a lot of people found it confusing. As a neuroscience student I found this really disappointing because we often had the same lecturers/lectures in our subjects and things were taught to a far higher standard. I even felt that pain in BIOM30001 was messing up my understanding of pain taught in other subjects. Annoyingly, some of the lectures (particularly a couple relevant to an assessment) were merely recordings from previous years rather than an in-person lecture and were add-ons to the three lectures a week. Another strong criticism from previous years was the lack of continuity or narrative between lectures. This was worked on this year and I thought it wasn't too bad. In fact, I even thought it may have been reasonable to integrate different modules together (i.e. not just integrating subtopics of different disciplines within the same module - despite never being required in the assessments). Nonetheless, we were still told that it was at least partly our job to link the lectures together. Given how we are assessed, it's probably reasonable to expect us to do this.

Unlike other subjects, the tutorials are generally not designed to supplement lecture content and build understanding. Rather, they are like a parallel channel in which most of the assessments and graduate attributes are managed. The lack of strong continuity between lectures and tutorials/assessment is a major criticism of this subject, since it almost feels like students are taking two different subjects under the one subject code. I understand that the staff want us to start thinking independently, and not simply regurgitate content from lecture slides, but for me the disparity was simply far too great. At best I could see weak links between the assessments and the lecture content, but with a little bit of tweaking it could be possible to make them relevant and help consolidate the information provided in lectures. This feedback was taken on board this year, so perhaps this will be changed next year. The tutorial rooms are available for the class each week, but the tutor will only come if an assessment needs to be dealt with (our tutor never came if the tutorial was marked as a "tutor drop-in" though). Otherwise, they were "self-guided" - some questions would be put up on the LMS and we could get together as a class and work on them together. While my tutorial was pretty diligent, and the questions were helpful in consolidating the lectures, in most cases attendance was poor, to the point where people stopped turning up to tutorials where assessments were handled. This was noted this year and is likely to be changed for next year.

Onto the meat of this subject - the assessments. As you can see, there are a lot of assignments to work on in the semester - you'll pretty much always have one to work on. This should be your primary focus in this subject. The first is given at the end of the first week and is a literature searching and bioinformatics assignment. This involves using journal databases and bioinformatics banks to find relevant information regarded a rare disease loosely related to the metabolic syndrome topic (this is an example where the link could be made stronger to make the assignment seem more relevant). Additionally, we were required to write about what we had learnt about this disease in both a scientific and lay form (with word limits) as a means to develop our skills communicating to both audiences. We also had to demonstrate an ability to appropriately reference other scientific research. It's not terribly hard to do well in, but I found it extremely difficult to figure out what to do (some of the instructions were vague) and how to navigate these websites. I felt as if the skills that were required were ones that perhaps should have been better introduced earlier in the degree, rather than tacked right at the end. Nonetheless, I did feel a lot more confident using these things by the end of the assignment. A couple of the lectures were designed to help with some aspects of this assignment, and were helpful to varying extents. One of the tutorials was also dedicated to discussing the skills relevant for this assignment. How useful this was largely depended on your tutor. Most people felt their tutor was hopeless (or didn't turn up) but mine was actually very helpful (and this applies to all the assessments). Perhaps I should've waited for some of these assistance classes before attempting the assignment.

Once we were done with that, we were then provided with the debate assignment. This is a relatively small assignment and required us to research points for and against universal health care (only loosely related to the public health side of the lectures - again somewhere where a slight tweak could improve this assignment significantly). We were given our teams in one tutorial, but not our side - so we had to prepare to argue for both sides until we found out on the day which side we had been assigned to. This assignment is primarily about participation, worth 80% of the marks. The content itself, and the delivery, was a secondary consideration and it was more like a casual round-table discussion than a debate. Given it is only 10 minutes a side (with each side having around five members), it's not terribly demanding either. Most groups do extremely well on this assignment, although our class was marked harshly (this happened to all of our assessments so they were scaled up).

It is probably now worth talking about the practical because most of the other assignment work is related to it. There is only one for the semester, but given the limited resources there are about eight repeats so your decision when timetabling will allocate you to one of these repeats. It is about four hours in duration and examines how the drug atenolol affects homeostatic responses to exercise. Again, this only had a very loose association with the metabolic syndrome and respiratory disease topics - perhaps some more time spent on these aspects in the lectures would have been welcome. After receiving some lectures/tutorials/supplementary information on informed consent (i.e. no one is forced to do or take anything they don't want to), people will get into small groups of which one will randomly take a placebo and another atenolol. The other group members are responsible for taking a variety of cardiovascular and respiratory measures both before and after exercise, and both pre- and post-treatment. I felt there was plenty of staff supervision around and everything was explained really well, so for me it was definitely one of my more positive practical experiences. A pre-practical quiz ensuring you understand the preparatory material and practical notes must be submitted prior to your class, although it is not very difficult.

Once all groups had finished the practical, we were required to write up our findings and present our results in a graphical analysis assignment. This was mainly a series of questions to be completed, although it mimicked writing a scientific report. This also wasn't too bad, although again I found some tasks a bit too vague for my liking - often we only realised what was required once the rubric came out, which was frustrating especially if you understood that information but had left it out. Again, support is provided through the tutorials. However, given we never covered the pharmacology of atenolol, this is something you'll have to learn the basics about yourself (just ask someone who has studied pharmacology - their basic synopsis should be enough). If you use any external sources, they will need to be referenced. Interestingly, this assignment is peer assessed: we were randomly given five people's assignments post-submission and were required to mark them out of 100. As long as students completed the peer assessment and did so with integrity, this was a free 2.5% to our grade. Most people marked reasonably well, generally correlating with our self-mark. The marking rubric was a bit vague though, and perhaps left too much open to interpretation. In some cases, I felt that good answers were marked lower than they should have been as a result.

Following this assignment, we were then required to complete a respiratory assignment that predominantly revolved around comparing our results with a UK Biobank cohort, in addition to tying in some public health knowledge as to what biobanks are and how the data relates to smoking. This assignment was still a little bit too removed from the lecture content for my liking, and was probably the most vague assignment of them all. For most of the assignment many of us felt we did not know what was actually required of us, much like the graphical analysis assignment. It may also be necessary to research some information independently and reference it as appropriate. There was a page limit of six pages for this assignment, including references. Again, one of the tutorials is dedicated to this assignment.

Now I might tackle the mid-semester test and exam together in one lot because their format is exactly the same. The only difference is that the mid-semester test is shorter (40 minutes), with one question on metabolic syndrome and one on stem cells. Conversely, the two hour exam has one compulsory question on each module, and additionally we were required to select two optional questions from a bank of three. Evidently, 20 minutes is given per question. The questions are very open ended and often require you to tie in several lectures within a module in order to synthesise a holistic response. You'll probably need to write more than a page in order to answer sufficiently. The mid-semester test in this format was new this year but it was extremely helpful gauging what was expected of us in the exam. However, despite having plenty of revision material (past exams and enough revision questions from the self-guided tutorials) most people, including myself, did not do very well on the mid-semester test: only 16% of students scored a H1. The staff were happy with the result (median approximately 66%) but I knew this was well below our performance in other core subjects. My advice is to have a look at questions as soon as they are available so you know what to expect and what level of knowledge is required. My mistake was that I was either being far too vague, or very specific but also disorganised in my thinking. The best answers were those that were well synthesised - they had structure such as an introduction and conclusion, and paragraphs that read very much of the TEEL structure drilled in during high school English. Basically, an answer that communicated key information clearly, concisely and effectively, with a structure and organisation that made sense, did better than an answer that had everything in it but was not organised well. To help for the exam, some exemplars of very good answers were provided on the LMS.

Overall, I kind of feel this subject is different to the point where it will be a love it or hate it affair. I didn't enjoy it, but I feel that the holistic picture BIOM30001 tries to create through the graduate attributes and multi-disciplinary lectures is admirable. However, I feel some aspects still require a lot of tweaking and integration. For example, a discussion board was put up for help with the assignments - while people were asking questions there weren't a lot of answers, and the staff only seemed to step in when they could the discussion was going nowhere. In a way, I kind of feel that's a bit of a surrogate for the subject as a whole. Some may question the point of this subject - if the graduate attributes are taught throughout the course, rather than lumped at the end, then the tutorials in BIOM30001 wouldn't be necessary. I didn't mind the lectures, so if it headed in this direction I'd be rather happy. In the end, this subject isn't as easy as it might initially seem. The results are quite comparable to BIOM30002, despite arguably easier content, because the staff are quite scrupulous in marking the assignments and tests. Based on my results, this will probably be the lowest score on my transcript, so I have my fingers crossed I've done just enough to get a H1 (it will be borderline though). Anyway, I know this review is rather sloppy but I just wanted to get it over and done with because now I don't have to worry about this subject again! ;D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 16, 2016, 01:46:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: OPTO30007: Visual Neuroscience

Workload:
- Contact hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week.
- Estimated total time commitment: 170 hours.

Assessment: two written assessments of 30 minutes each, one mid semester (15%) and one late semester (15%); 3-hour written examination (70%) in end of semester exam period.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No.

Textbook Recommendation:
- Prescribed textbook: E R Kandel, J H Schwartz, T M Jessell, Principles of Neural Science, 4th Ed., McGraw-Hill, 2000.
- Recommended textbook: J G Nicolls, A R Martin, B G Wallace & P A Fuchs, From Neuron to Brain, 4th Ed., Sinauer, 2001.

I didn't use them so I can't comment on them. I felt I didn't really need any textbook during the semester.

Lecturer(s):
- Co-ordinator: Prof. Trichur (Sagar) Vidyasagar - basic concepts in systems neuroscience, visual cortex, visual attention, plasticity/learning/development in the visual system and associated disorders (11 lectures).
- Assoc. Prof. Bang Bui - eye anatomy, introduction to electrophysiological diagnosis (1 lecture).
- Prof. Erica Fletcher - the retina (5 lectures).
- Dr. Christine Nguyen - using the eye in systemic disease (1 lecture).
- Dr. Mike Pianta - light and dark adaptation (2 lectures).
- Dr. Andrew Anderson - retinal sampling, visual decision making (2 lectures).
- Assoc. Prof. Larry Abel - eye movements and associated disorders (4 lectures).
- Prof. Allison McKendrick - higher visual functions (3 lectures).
- Prof. Michael Ibbotson - visual perception during saccades, visual prosthesis (3 lectures).

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2016.

Rating: 4.5/5.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This was my favourite subject this semester, and perhaps even my major (although I liked all my neuroscience subjects). It really piqued my interested into visual neuroscience to the point where at this early stage I'm considering ophthalmology as my speciality once I finish medicine (if not, I'd also be happy to fall back on optometry as a career option). I thought it was well run, well taught and had an appropriate workload, and it should not be difficult at all to perform well. I highly recommend it to neuroscience students unsure which subjects to select in semester 2. Unlike the other neuroscience subjects, I also highly recommend it to anatomy students looking for semester 2 electives. It's somewhat more concrete than the other neuroscience subjects - despite the fact so much about visual neuroscience remains unknown, the staff do a very good job at leaving that big picture stuff towards the end of the lecture, meaning you get a better appreciation for what remains to be discovered. Additionally, there is some basic eye anatomy that complements some of the content taught in the second semester core unit of the anatomy major. If you're like me and are not a big fan of anatomy though, don't worry: I found it very manageable.

Like a lot of the semester 2 neuroscience subjects, this subject has a strong research focus, with most of the lecturers teaching material that directly relates to their own work. They are all designed to give you a taste of research in neuroscience and provide opportunities to talk with the academics and even organise placements for honours. Initially I thought I wouldn't like this but in the end I was quite wrong. Additionally, a lot of time and effort is spent relating research to clinical applications, so it regularly felt like my knowledge was really practical and relevant. Some of the concepts are still somewhat abstract, but most of the time these concepts are taught at a suitable pace, giving you enough time to absorb the information.

The lectures themselves were of a very high quality. The standard was definitely above average, with the exception of perhaps a handful that were about average (this is me being picky - it is the only reason I've deducted 0.5 from my rating). Some lectures appear hard at first (e.g. eye movements is especially difficult), but with time and persistence most people managed to work their way through them. The notes were always clear, concise and contained the right amount of information on them. There's no point going through individual lecturers and their styles, but generally there shouldn't be too many problems. It's probably a subject worth attending in person because many optical illusions and diagrams may be displayed to demonstrate a concept, which won't be visible in the recording but are very helpful for building understanding. To go through the lecture course: we first started with some basic concepts in neuroscience, revising some of the key concepts relevant from last semester's prerequisites. After that, we basically started at the front of the visual system (i.e. the eye) and worked our way back: we spent some time looking at some basic eye anatomy and its clinical relevance in systemic disorders, before investigating the retina in detail. We then followed the visual pathway back to the brain and then in turn spent time on the different sorts of functions the brain has to perform in visual processing. In this way, the structure of the course is highly logical and effective, making it incredibly easy to understand how everything works together. OPTO30007 is definitely a cohesive narrative. Interestingly, this subject is really about putting the details into the overviews on the visual system provided in NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience and NEUR30002 Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits, although inevitably some completely new content is introduced as well. There is some overlap with NEUR30004 Sensation, Movement and Complex Functions.

During the semester the main assessments are two mid-semester tests: one covers weeks 1-6 and is in week 7, and the other covers weeks 7-12 and is in week 12. In this way, all of the lectures are examined in the mid-semester tests, which makes SWOTVAC revision a lot easier because you're up to date and pretty familiar with all of the content already. I found having our exam on the first day of the exam period more of a help than a hindrance for this reason. These tests are both multiple choice - 30 questions in 30 minutes. While the other neuroscience subjects resolve ambiguity inherent in the abstract concepts we cover fairly well, I felt OPTO30007 did a particularly good job. I do not recall finding any of the exam questions ambiguous in any way. Practice materials for the tests and exam would have been a bonus but were not provided for us. Alternatively, two revision tutorials were held prior to each mid-semester test where students could clarify questions and lecturers would provide us with some practice. I found both of these quite helpful, especially considering there are no other support classes in this subject (as is the case in most neuroscience subjects). The tests themselves were not difficult at all: the class average was 78% for test 1 and 84% for test 2 - incredibly high. While the questions were perhaps on the easy side, I feel this also reflects strong teaching and good exam writing by the staff. Results were always released promptly.

The final exam is 3 hours in duration and consists of 60 multiple choice questions (1 hour), 2 extended response questions from a selection of 3 (1 hour for the section or 30 minutes per question) and 6 short answer questions from a selection of 10 (1 hour for the section or 10 minutes per question). The exam was more difficult than the mid-semester tests, but it wasn't especially hard. There was a high degree of recycling of mid-semester test questions in the multiple choice section - I think this was done so that students had the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and be rewarded for that, which was nice. We hadn't seen any short answer or extended response questions before, which I guess made those sections a bit more tricky. The extended response questions tend to focus on one large part of the course, so a certain amount of detail is required. You should probably aim to write 2-3 pages per question if possible. This section isn't really about integrating different topics together or anything like that. The short answer section also requires detail, but since it focuses on shorter topics and concepts you will not have to write as much. Remember that the course is called visual neuroscience so the focus is on neurophysiology, not optics (despite covering optics regularly throughout the semester). You may also find that referencing specific research projects is useful when writing your answers.

Given this subject is just lectures, tests and exams there's not a lot more I can really discuss. Once again, I'll re-iterate that this was a fantastic subject and perhaps my favourite out of them all for the neuroscience major. If a H1 is what you're after, this subject certainly wouldn't threaten that from happening. Feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions. Good luck! :D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Kalopsic on November 16, 2016, 03:10:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: PATH20003 Experimental Pathology

Workload:  1 lecture biweekly (elaborated in comments), 1 x 3 hour laboratory or 1 hour workshop session

Assessment:  5 practical reports worth 75%, Participation in practicals and workshop 10% and End of semester multiple choice test 15%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past exams but a sample exam is provided

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Jo Russell

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
TL;DR Very well coordinated subject with a lot of personal feedback that compliments PATH20001 - Exploring Human Disease. Highly recommended

Lectures
All of the lectures are a preface to what you will do in the practicals that week. It covers the theory of the disease explored and it goes into a bit more detail than PATH20001 which will cover the same topics. The lectures run biweekly (except the first week) on the same week as your pracs however there are bonus lectures such as a Scientific report writing lecture and a review lecture. The MCQ will be in this lecture time slot at the end of the semester.

Practicals and workshop
Pracs and workshops run biweekly and are in the same time slot. Thus you will have a prac week and then a workshop week. Rinse and repeat. You will be allocated a 1 hour time slot within your prac time for your workshop. This was the first year that the Lab record book was introduced (you get 2 books that rotate biweekly) which is similar to the lab reports you would've done in Chem 1/2 or in high school. You also will need to do a prac report which is due in your next prac class along with your lab book (every 2 weeks). Each prac report only covers 2-3 sections of a full report to give you practice of each section before report 5 which will be a full report. Jo, the same Jo that lectures, also runs the workshop.Your prac demonstrator will be with you and your group in the workshop. She will run through what you need to include in your lab record book and you prac report even giving you the specifics for each prac. She even gives you key words to include in each section and samples of good and poorly written sections of the lab book/report.

Your participation mark also depends on your contributions in these workshops so don't be shy. If you missed a result during the prac and for some reason didn't chase that up, Jo usually runs through the expected results from the prac. At the end of the workshop, you will get you lab book from the week before with feedback so you can adjust your current weeks prac content in your lab book based on the feedback. Prac report feedback are usually up by the end of your next prac. Don't forget to check the marking rubric which is on the LMS to ensure you cover everything that is required.

MCQ
This is the easiest MCQ I have done in uni so far. You should be able to get the full 15% for your total subject grade if you pay attention to the lectures and workshop and understand the prac material. It will not ask about the method or materials but about how the results relate to the topic investigated. The only questions I can think of that people may find tricky are the microscopic diagrams which want you to identify pathological structures. But if you pay attention during the workshop where Jo goes over the pathological structures (which are night and day) and in the prac, it won't be a problem.

Last thoughts
This is a very content light subject that will give you a taste of how a lab works and allow you to gauge if you will enjoy lab work or not. I really enjoyed the pracs (we even went to a lab in the Royal Children's Hospital for one of the pracs) and is a really organised subject. I can't give it enough praise.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 16, 2016, 03:19:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30004: Sensation, Movement and Complex Functions

Workload:
- Contact hours: 2 x one hour lectures per week, 3 x two hour workshops over the semester and 2 x online workshops.
- Total time commitment: 170 hours.

Assessment: A 30-minute MCQ test held mid-semester (20%); a 2-hour written examination during the examination period (65%); a 1000 word written assignment due mid semester (15%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, two are available on the university library website. However, only about half of the questions are relevant.

Textbook Recommendation:

There was no prescribed textbook. The recommended textbooks are:
- Purves et al. Neuroscience 4th edition, 2008 Sinauer.
- Squire et al. Fundamental Neuroscience 4 edition, 2013, Elsevier.
- Kandel et al. Principles of Neural Science 5 edition, 2014, McGraw-Hill.

I didn't use any textbooks and I'm not sure if a lot of the content would have been in a textbook anyway.

Lecturer(s):
- Co-ordinator: Dr Peter Kitchener - understanding complexity through neural development, knowledge, pain, emotion and placebo (11 lectures).
- Prof. Erica Fletcher - the dorsal and ventral streams of vision, glia (3 lectures).
- Dr James Brock - peripheral mechanisms of pain (1 lecture).
- Dr Jason Ivanusic - spinal mechanisms of pain (1 lecture).
- Dr Peregrine Osbourne - central mechanisms of pain and associated disorders, the role of electroceuticals (3 lectures).
- Dr Emma Burrows - cognition and behaviour (1 lecture).
- Prof. Andy Lawrence - addiction (1 lecture).
- Dr Simon Murray - myelination (1 lecture).
- Prof Janet Keast - the relationship between organs and the brain (1 lecture).
- Assistant: Dr Andrew Tan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2016.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Man, this was one weird subject. But for me, it was weird in a good way and in the end I can say that I am glad that I did it. This subject used to be taken by Assoc. Prof. Colin Anderson from the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, but was taken over by Peter this year because Colin had retired. My understanding is that Peter sat in on all the lectures from last year to help with the transition (I think that this was Colin's pet subject and he had run it for a long time). In all honesty, it didn't feel unstable at all - it really felt like Peter had been taking the course for years himself. While keeping a lot of the course the same, he also made the course his own: for example, he made his own lecture notes and did not simply re-use those from previous years, and he also brought in a block about knowledge, probably removing some stuff about vision (while I like vision, it probably would have meant massive overlap with OPTO30007 Visual Neuroscience, which about half of the NEUR30004 cohort was also taking).

This subject is essentially a continuation of NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience, picking up on all those really abstract concepts we covered towards the end of last semester. If you do not like abstract things, definitely do not take this subject. If you did not like the second half of NEUR30003, do not take this subject. This is probably a bigger consideration for the anatomy students given it's a bit of a juxtaposition of what their core units are like. There were less of them this semester and in general the cohort was smaller (although apparently bigger than it had been in previous years). I'd say Peter ran this subject slightly better than NEUR30003 as a result. That being said, this subject also kind of heads in a different direction to NEUR30003 since we have the workshops and the written assignment. This allowed us more time to delve really deeply into the concepts we covered and discuss them in great detail. With only two lectures a week, I felt the workload of this subject was a bit lighter compared to a normal Biomedicine/Science subject, but it's definitely not a bludge. If you're used to subjects with only two lectures a week, this would be a very heavy subject.

The course is sort of divided into three sections. Firstly, we explore the complexity of the brain's functions via the lens of development, with focuses including language, numerosity and vision. We also investigate what knowledge is (abstract, I know...) and spend a fair amount of time comparing the human brain to a computer. The next section focuses on the neurophysiology of pain, looking at mechanisms that occur both in the peripheral and central nervous system and associated disorders, as well as phenomena such as the role of placebo or emotion on pain. The final section, after the mid-semester break, is predominantly research oriented - this seems to be a common theme in the second semester neuroscience subjects, done to provide students with opportunities to talk with academics and look into research projects for honours. Some of these were about pain, some about vision, some about other things.

In terms of how the lectures were done, I thought they were done reasonably well. By now, you should be familiar with the way neuroscience lectures work - not necessarily a lot of text on the slides, and perhaps more listening and understanding than writing stuff down. During the semester Peter and Andrew were playing with some program that allowed us to interactively answer questions on our electronic devices but they stopped for some reason. To be honest, it felt like a bit of a gimmick, and I'm not sure why we couldn't have just used quickpoll. Since some of the lectures are incredibly abstract, Peter provided a couple of written documents explaining what he had tried to explain during the lectures - sometimes it helps being able to see the words and read it at your pace. Additionally, he provided a document explaining what we needed to understand and know, particularly about the knowledge part of the course. These were very helpful and it was good of him to do that.

In addition to the lectures were workshops this semester. Since enrolments for the subject have become increasingly high, two of the workshops are to be completed at home. These deal with fMRI (revising and formalising knowledge from last semester) and psychosis. It is recommended we complete these early in the semester (it is possible to do them before the first in-person workshop) and before the written assignment, which relates to both topics. These are typical online workshops with a worksheet to answer questions. The three in-person workshops explore split brains, language and reading, and visual processing, respectively. Since there are a large number of students, three streams are made for the workshops, alternating through the weeks. This is independent of the timetabling you do through my.unimelb, so don't be too picky about it there. Instead, an enrolment will be conducted through the LMS. That being said, attendance isn't marked and for some reason a few people opted not to attend the workshops despite covering examinable content, so you could show up to a class that isn't yours if you had to. These workshops go into a lot of detail involving the aforementioned topics. While working through the web pages and filling out the worksheets, there are also videos and other practical demonstrations you can work through with fellow peers. Peter and Andrew ran all of these workshops and made sure they were readily available if you wanted to seek help. While workshop content was examinable, it only appeared briefly.

The mid-semester test was supposed to be held in week 6 or 7, but due to the larger than anticipated cohort and lack of room availability it got pushed back to week 9. In this way, both the complexity and the pain topics were examined in this test, as were the fMRI, psychosis and split brain workshops - essentially two thirds of the whole subject. This test contained 20 multiple choice questions to be completed in 30 minutes (1.5 minutes per mark, each mark essentially contributing 1% to the final grade). It was reasonably difficult given the ambiguity of the content we covered, but the staff did a reasonably good job at trying to make it as clear as possible. The average for this assessment hovered around 70%. Unfortunately no practice material was made available for this test.

The written assignment was made into a group assignment this year, but Peter did a very good job at trying to 'individualise' it as best as he could. We were allocated into random groups of four by the LMS. The assignment was in four parts, and each member of the group was responsible for submitting one of these parts. Two thirds of our final mark was our own mark for our own section, with the final third calculated by taking an average of the scores of the entire group. If a member did not contribute or submit their part, they would receive zero but this would not affect the other team members' marks. This was a good way of facilitating group work while also holding each member accountable. We were simply required to read a scientific article about pain and placebo and answer the questions in our section of the assignment. Each question had strict word limits, and if I recall correctly each part essentially required 500-600 words. While the paper wasn't the easiest to read, the assignment itself wasn't difficult and didn't take a long time to complete. Unfortunately, I managed to get a H1 on my section but got a H2A result overall because of my group members. I probably should have made the effort to work with my group rather than treat the assignment as if it were completely individual. Thankfully, we were given a lot of time to work on this assignment: it was made available at the end of August and was due at the start of October.

The final exam consisted of 30 multiple choice questions (worth 1.5 marks each) and three extended responses (25 marks each, 25 minutes each). For each extended response, there were three topics to choose from. Given the nature of this subject, the extended response felt easier to complete than the multiple choice (which again weren't too bad but had their ambiguity associated with them). Practice with the old exams may help to a limited extent, otherwise there wasn't a lot of guidance on what to expect for this section. Nonetheless, most people felt they were able to complete this well. You should probably aim to write 2-3 pages per extended response.

The reason I have deducted a point from the subject rating is because I felt a fair amount of the content was too difficult or involved and could not reasonably be understood by our cohort. Furthermore, it wasn't absolutely necessary in terms of completing the assessments. A lot of people were really worried about this subject for this reason, but thankfully the staff took care of us in that respect, when it came to the assessments. Additionally, some of the workshops felt like they were dragging on - perhaps they should all be done at home, or a rethink in structure may be required. The same applies to the assignment regarding the structure.

This subject felt like a fitting way to finish the neuroscience major. It was run slightly better than NEUR30003, although contained a lot more abstract content which we had to become comfortable talking about. If you like neuroscience, you will like this subject nonetheless. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. Good luck! :D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 16, 2016, 05:53:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: EURO10002: Eurovisions

Workload:
- Contact hours: 30 hours - 1 x 1.5 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week.
- Total time commitment: 170 hours.

Note: there is no tutorial in week 1 or the week of the mid-semester test.

Assessment: A 10-minute class presentation (equal to 1000 words) during semester [25%]; 1 in-class test (equal to 1000 words), due in week 8 [25%]; 1 research essay (2000 words), due during the exam period [50%].

Hurdle requirement: Students must attend a minimum of 75% of tutorials in order to pass this subject. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject.

Note: Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per working day. In-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Weekly readings are uploaded to the LMS. You need to do these at least until the mid-semester test because their content is examinable. Additionally, you will most likely want them when it comes to the oral presentation and final essay.

Lecturer(s):
- Co-ordinators: Prof. John Hajek & Prof. Alison Lewis (John took the majority of the lectures and Alison took the majority of the tutorials).
- Other staff: Dr Heather Benbow (Turkey), Prof. Alfredo Martinez-Exposito (gender and sexuality, Spain), Meribah Rose, Liam Clark.

In a limited number of cases a substitute tutor was required to fill in for a staff member. When this happened they always did their best to find a person with some relation to the week's topic; for example, one class had one of the Russian language staff during the week on Russia.

Note: This subject falls under European Studies and is run by the Department of Languages and Linguistics. It must be taken in order to complete the European Studies major in Arts if a European language is not being studied.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2016.

Rating:
- Subjectively: 6/5.
- Objectively: 4/5.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Boy oh boy, where do I begin. As a massive Eurovision fan, I am so happy I had the opportunity to take this subject, the first of only two universities so far to offer such a course. I had an amazing time - there was so much fun to be had and I made a number of new Eurovision friends. :3 I really wanted to just give this subject a 6/5 overall but there were a couple of problems I cannot reasonably ignore, hence the proper rating of 4/5. However, given it's only the second time the subject has run, I have a feeling it will improve even more next year.

As the name suggests, this subject is all about the Eurovision Song Contest. In particular, we did the following:


Evidently, there is a lot more than meets the eye in terms of what we explored in this subject. Some people may scoff at how EURO10002 can be a prerequisite for the European Studies major, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense. Eurovision really does encapsulate so many aspects of life in Europe - more than I initially appreciated. I thought that the subject would perhaps explore topics more related to the music and performance aspect of the contest, but really it's about examining how events in Eurovision reflect to a very high extent what is happening in Europe. With this said, this is not a subject to take if you have no idea about Eurovision at all - you need to have a basic idea of what it is (it is not necessary to be an obsessed fanatic like I am) and it's probably best to make sure you watch the most recent contest prior to the subject. We had a couple of people take the subject with no idea what it was all about and I don't think they did very well. Obviously you needn't be an expert - otherwise taking this subject would be pointless - but working knowledge of Eurovision, the European Union and Europe, and associated historical, political and linguistic issues, is recommended.

We had the lovely Forum Theatre in Arts West this year to have our lectures in. It was brilliant: it was round in shape, which was great for a smaller cohort (~80 people) such as ours because it facilitated group discussion. It was also designed with acoustics in mind so playback of footage was very high quality. I thought all of the lecturers did an amazing job at delivering the content this year. Perhaps one point of improvement would be to have a greater focus on the 2016 contest - it felt like 2015 was being discussed a lot more, suggesting the slides hadn't really been updated since last year. My major qualm is that lecture notes were only provided after the lecture. This was apparently done to encourage lecture attendance, but in all honesty I'm not sure if that really achieves anything. My preference is to have the lecture slides before me so that I can annotate them during the lecture.

The tutorials are primarily used for the delivery of the oral presentations. Each week from week 3 onwards (with the exception of the mid-semester test week), one or two students will deliver an oral presentation on a topic related to that week's lecture. These are supposed to go for ten minutes, but they always went over. I signed up for week 3 so that I could talk about Sweden, and despite having rehearsed my speech and it sitting on about 11 minutes, it went for about 45 minutes during class because the tutor and the classmates were so enthusiastic they kept asking me questions! This happened with most of the presentations so I don't think anyone was penalised for it. While a transcript of the speech was not required for submission, we did have to produce a double-sided handout page as supplementary notes for the class and tutor, and it was recommended we have visuals and a couple of clips from Eurovision performances to demonstrate our points (these are not factored into the largely irrelevant ten minute time limit lol). Printing out the lecture slides onto a double-sided page was considered satisfactory, and this was what I and most other students did. Importantly, the presentation must not simply be a summary of the lecture or readings - while you should integrate aspects and refer to covered content as necessary, it is also important you bring in new information to discuss. This might seem daunting, but there is actually a lot more literature related to Eurovision and Europe than you think. I have to say that I really enjoyed learning about what my peers were presenting. For example, we had a student on exchange from Germany who signed up for the oral presentation on Germany in week 4, and provided insights I don't think I ever would have seen had it not been for this subject. In many cases, people signed up to topics they were connected with, and it really came across in their speeches. Feel free to get creative - a couple of people, including myself, dressed up as a particular Eurovision figure. A criticism I have is that because the lecture slides were not provided prior to the lecture, students may have only had a day or two to fix up their oral presentation if it happens to co-incidentally align too closely with the lecture content. Ultimately I think having the lecture slides beforehand is the best solution; otherwise it may be necessary to introduce a week's delay with the tutorials so that this doesn't happen. I was literally editing my own oral presentation during the lecture. I think we were supposed to discuss readings in a round-table sort of fashion once the oral presentations were finished, but we never had time for this. In week 2 we mainly discussed the 2016 contest and also signed up for presentation topics. Again, we were lucky to have the beautiful tutorial rooms on level 1 of the Arts West building.

The other assessment during the semester was the mid-semester test. The consensus from last year was that while this was an Arts subject, we needed to treat this as if it were a Biomedicine mid-semester test. 😂 In the end they were right - you needed to know a lot of specific detail. Thankfully, there were only seven lectures examined on the mid-semester test, with plenty of time to work through each one. However, all the readings are also examinable, as are a set of facts and figures on each of the regularly competing Eurovision countries. These were provided in a sheet uploaded to the LMS in week 1, which contained the following sort of information:


Evidently, this is a lot of information, and something you need to start working on from the very beginning of the semester. Some may feel this sort of information is irrelevant but it does help you start developing that working knowledge of Europe. Importantly it is not only necessary to learn the facts for each country put also in the perspective of the statistic: for example it would be perfectly reasonable to be asked how many countries have won Eurovision three times. All of this information is in addition to specific dates (generally years were sufficient) of specific historical events, and names and titles of specific performances covered (including songwriters/composers). This seems incredibly daunting but given this was made explicitly clear from week 1 we had plenty of time to get on top of this and most people did really well. Personally, I think I had fun working through all these details. :P Unfortunately, a handful of students did really poorly. Hence, while this subject is comparatively light compared to other subjects, it mustn't be taken as a joke. To support your learning, weekly practice quizzes were provided on the LMS of a very similar style and difficulty as those on the actual test. The test itself is allocated the whole 90 minutes of the lecture slot, but generally most people finished after about an hour. One quarter of the test is multiple choice, a quarter is true/false and a half is short answer. The short answer questions asked us to provide a certain amount of dot points providing evidence for a particular point of view on a given topic. Understanding the lectures and readings helps, but you can also have your own ideas and this section was marked really leniently (probably because people may not have done as well on the multiple choice or true/false if they couldn't remember a detail).

The great thing is that after the mid-semester test you needn't worry as much about the readings and lecture notes because that's the end of direct assessment. The week after the the mid-semester test the essay topics became available to work on. There were 11 topics to choose from, often in direct relation to a specific question but also a couple of interesting extra ones. You should definitely find a topic that you like and can essentially tailor your study in the final few weeks by only working through the relevant readings and lectures in preparation. The topic I chose allowed me to work on my essay immediately and I had done all my research, planning, and a final draft done by the end of September, despite the submission date not being until early November. This was my first subject with a final essay instead of an exam and I felt like I had no problems with it whatsoever. I guess it helped that I was really passionate about what I was writing, I had a lot of general knowledge but I also knew where I needed to look in terms of finding academic literature to reference. There is a guide outlining special formatting requirements and the marking rubric that students should follow. Despite being told on the sheet that we could use any referencing format we wanted, we were later told to use MLA or Chicago. I got so caught up writing my essay I am partly afraid that I went off-topic, so I hope that doesn't affect my grade. :x

If the lecture notes could be uploaded prior to the lectures, this subject would've been absolute perfection. Otherwise, this is a must-do subject for anyone with an interest in Eurovision. Nonetheless, be aware that this subject is not a bludge and working knowledge of Europe is absolutely essential. This was an amazing way to finish my degree, and given the number of third year Science students taking this subject I think a lot of people had a similar idea. Some of us were joking on the last class that we were so reluctant to leave we wouldn't submit our essays - that way we had the "burden" of having to take the subject again. :P I really hope a couple of ATARNotes users will take this subject in the coming years so that I can talk about it with them. Enjoy the experience, and good luck! ;D

NB: Since this is a subject unlikely to be reviewed to a large extent, here is another review someone from 2015 wrote on their blog: https://antagonisticasian.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/unimelb-euro10002-eurovisions/. Sometimes it can help having another person's perspective.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Alter on November 16, 2016, 09:49:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10016: Mathematics for Biomedicine 

Workload:
- 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour tute per week

Assessment:
- ten written assignments due at weekly intervals throughout the semester amounting to a total of up to 50 pages of written work (25%);
- an oral presentation due during the semester (5%);
- a 3-hour written examination conducted during the examination period (70%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Nope, but you're given a single sample exam that was the same between Semester 1 and Semester 2.

Textbook Recommendation:  There is no relevant textbook for this subject; all the notes are available on the LMS, but they need to be annotated based on work in the lectures (i.e. they are incomplete).

Lecturer(s): Assoc Prof James Mccaw (Sem 1), Assoc Prof Steven Carnie (Sem 2)

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBD

Comments:
I originally didn't plan to write any subject reviews for the core biomed subjects, as I figured they're compulsory for the people that have to do them, and not available to anyone else. However, it's a good opportunity to give tips and advise on what the subject will be about and provide a fresh perspective of the subject, given it is not the same every single year.

Initially, I had pretty low expectations coming into Maths for Biomed. I had come to hate EDDA in sem 1 and did poorly in it as a result, and wasn't a huge fan on first year cores in biomed as a whole. However, this subject completely surpassed my expectations. I'd really encourage any first year biomed student to look beyond the cohort-wide complaining of Maths for Biomed, because it places maths in a light that feels super applied and complements the biology and chem that you learn extraordinarily well. This is a testament to the fact that the subject has definitely improved over the years. Steve is a decently cool guy, and he takes pride in the fact that he practically built the subject himself. Maths for Biomed will give you a unique experience that you simply don't have access to from the get-go in other degrees.

To clarify some misconceptions: this subject does not require you to be naturally gifted at maths to do well. I always considered myself a fairly below-average maths student throughout high school, so I believed I'd have no hope competing against people around me in a subject I would've perceived to have been really hard coming into it. However, as it was made clear to us, the subject is very unique in the sense that it doesn't really delve into Spec territory, so having completed Spec in high school is of barely any advantage whatsoever.

The material is presented at very well-paced and digestible speed, and the maths that you apply is moreso an extension of stuff you do in methods (e.g. dealing with Markov chains/matrices, binomial distribution, basic probabilities, etc). You also learn a bunch of techniques, such as cobwebbing, phase plane diagrams, etc. that are very tailored towards the content you're doing. Basically, it never feels like you're learning the maths without a purpose, as the subject is broken down into areas of application, rather than techniques.

These areas are population genetics, systems biology, and infectious disease modelling. For many, many questions, you'll be expected to provide an explanation in terms of the biology that's going on in the background. Other times, even if you're completely stuck, you might be able to work out an answer just by thinking of what you know is realistically going on to get an answer and work backwards to do the maths. To give you an idea of what is covered more specifically, you'll look at things such as how certain alleles might die out in a population due to lower fitness or due to sheer chance from random mating. Similarly, you look at how you can mathematically determine whether or not an epidemic will occur, or even determine how many people you should vaccinate to create herd immunity to an infectious disease. Honestly, if you have any interest in biology, you'll find at least a couple of these topics engaging enough to push you through.

Lectures aren't the best way to learn maths; unfortunately, they are a necessary part of the course. As a result, it's prudent that you take advantage of tutorials and exercise sheets as you go. And to make your workload even a bit heavier, there are also assignments. However, the assignments typically force you to go back and review the content. I think I could say that without the assignments, I would've fallen behind a lot more easily, so they're actually super valuable. In terms of getting a decent mark out of the assignments, you've just got to be meticulous and try to avoid silly mistakes, referring to lecture content as you go. The tutors are really big on getting your notation right, and this is something you'll pick up as you go.

On that note, the tutors are super helpful and awesome people. I hadn't heard a bad word about anyone's tutor, and they're all open to helping you out as you do the tute sheets in class. Also-- make sure you go to the tutes, as neither the sheets nor the answers were available for us on the LMS at the end of the semester. If you're a bit disorganised like me, you'll find yourself asking mates for answers to tute 6 in the middle of swotvac. At any rate, the tute sheets are amazing for revision, and you'll need to be referring back to them come exam time as your first port of call next to lecture notes.

There is a 5% oral assignment, but there's not much to say about it. If you're half decent at public speaking and do the necessary preparation, you'll get a 5/5. Piece of advice: get in early and pick a topic you enjoy. You'll be thanking yourself in week 12 that you did yours in week 3. My topic was the very last one done in the class, and although it was for a topic I really liked, I'd recommend getting it out of the way ASAP for your own sanity. Not to mention, it's worth at least trying to pay attention to these, as they're a good way to solidify topics done in class for your own understanding.

People sometimes complain about the fact that there is no textbook for this subject, but this should not dissuade you from studying, and there are plenty of resources out there. The tute sheets generally have easy/medium level questions and are great for refreshing. Next, you can also do exercise sheets. These are amazing revision and practice tools, but some of the questions can be stupidly hard as they cover a derivation that the lecturer didn't have time for in class. My advice would be do do the tute sheets first, then exercise sheet questions, on a topic-by-topic basis. If you find yourself with time leftover, re-doing the non-tech components of the assignments is a decent idea.

I don't want to focus this review too much on the exam. It's fair to say, however, that the exam can be pretty tricky, but that's what's expected out of a 3 hour, biomedical maths exam. That being said, every single question is accessible if you've put in the work, and you'll tend to find exercise sheet questions or their variants of them to pop up on the exam. So while I'd say some of the exercise sheet questions might simply be harder than what you'll see on the exam, they are at least worth understanding. My main piece of advice is to work yourself through the questions slowly and logically. If all else fails, the exam can be forgiving in the sense that you might be able to do part (c) without a/b, because of 'show that'/explain questions. Do the work and get rewarded; simple as that.

The reason I'm giving this subject a 4.5/5 is because I thought the content was well taught and avoided everything that could otherwise go wrong in a maths subject. My tutor was superb, and the subject allowed me to genuinely enjoy maths as it was super easy to see the link between the mathematical techniques and the biology going on in the background. This might be one of the very last times that you explicitly do a maths subject at uni, so I'd advise you to make the most of it, even if you'd rather not be doing it.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a PM and I'll be happy to explain any part in more detail.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Stick on November 16, 2016, 11:17:54 pm
Major: Neuroscience

First Year Subjects: The standard Biomedicine pathway fulfils prerequisites for the neuroscience major.

Second Year Subjects: The standard Biomedicine pathway fulfils prerequisites for the neuroscience major.

Third Year Subjects:

The ones I took were:
- NEUR30003 Principles of Neuroscience
- NEUR30002 Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits
- OPTO30007 Visual Neuroscience
- NEUR30004 Sensation, Movement and Complex Functions

Year of completion: 2016.

Rating: 4/5 (a rounded average of the four subjects I took).

Your Average Mark: H1 achieved in all four neuroscience subjects.

Comments:

It's probably best to read the individual subject reviews if you want a really good idea of what the major is like, but I'm happy to spend a little bit of time exploring the major in general.

At the end of second year I was pretty much tossing up between physiology and neuroscience, and evidently opted for the latter. I was definitely someone who enjoyed the understanding and application of both these disciplines, and my favourite topic was neurophysiology. What won me over initially was the fact that the neuroscience subjects had a structure better suited to my learning: they mainly consisted of lectures, and instead of assignment work the assessments were predominantly mid-semester tests and exams (with a good deal of multiple choice in them). In the end, I liked it for these reasons, but fell in love with neuroscience itself.

While there is plenty of clinical neuroscience to work though in the major, there is also plenty of more abstract material, which is inevitable when learning about the brain. This is probably the most important factor in guiding your decision. If you are willing to work through some big picture questions, then this major should be fine. If not, it's not one you'll enjoy. Be careful if you're an anatomy major looking to supplement your studies with neuroscience - a lot of students are not a fan of it. Otherwise, the courses tend to do quite a good job at resolving ambiguity and making the assessments as clear and fair as possible.

The subjects, for the most part, are co-ordinated and taught well. I don't think anything beats the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, but for all intended purposes it's good enough. A nice extra touch is the focus on research projects at the end of semester 2, which makes finding an honours research project much easier if this is what you are interested in doing.

Overall, I really enjoyed taking this major and am looking forward to its relevance in medicine next year. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Otherwise, enjoy and good luck! :D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: squidgee123 on November 17, 2016, 01:24:45 am
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30010: Advanced Techniques in Molecular Science

Workload:
- 1x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week (optional), 1x 5 hour practical per week (compulsory, can't miss more than 20% of prac)
- There will be a few days where you'll be expected to come in outside of scheduled hours for groupwork and for completing practicals.

Assessment: 
- Laboratory performance, including pre-labs (10%)
- Bioinformatics Tutorial Sheets (4%), consisting of:
        - DNA & Literature Bioinformatics (2%)
        - Mass Spec Bioinformatics (2%)
- Laboratory Notebooks (36%), consisting of:
        - Experiment 1 Notebook (6%)
        - Experiment 2a Notebook (4%)
        - Experiment 2b Notebook (15%)
        - Experiment 3 Notebook (6%)
        - Experiment 4 Notebook (5%)
- Experiment 1 Written Report of approx. 2500 words (15%)
- Student Presentations of a Scientific Paper (15%), consisting of:
        - Question & Answer Sheet (2%)
        - 15 minute group oral presentation (7%)
        - 1000 word summary and critique (6%)
- End of semester exam (2 hours, all short answer) (20%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 of the most recent exams were made available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Keith Wilson and John Walker, Principles and Techniques of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2010, 7th Ed) Cambridge University Press.

Lecturer(s): Leon Helfenbaum (lectures 1-7a, 11-12), Nick Williamson (lectures 8-10)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2016

Rating:  4/5

Comments:

I expanded on each of the assessments since the handbook page doesn't go into the fine details of it. As you can see, there's quite a lot to get through. There never really seems to be a point during the semester where the subject gives you a breather. Even during the mid-semester break, I was heavily occupied with preparing for presentations, meeting up with groups and finishing off notebooks for submission. Leon and the demonstrators will note that the week 5 and 6 pracs are particularly bad (in terms of workload), and I can definitely attest to that statement. The point is that Adv. Techniques is a very demanding subject that requires consistent application throughout the entirety of the semester. Like BCMB20005, this isn't simply a subject you can kind of forget about for a couple weeks and then come back to, especially since the practicals follow the lecture content quite closely and you'll be expected to be familiar with that content during those pracs.

As for the pracs themselves, I thought they were mostly quite well done, if a bit chaotic at times because you're often working on different aspects of different experiments simultaneously. Since mutli-tasking isn't exactly my forte, this occasionally led to some confusion and having to flip back and forth between pages of the Lab Manual to remind myself what I was doing 20 minutes ago. The prescribed time for each prac is 5 hours, however you do get a lunch break in between, and some of that time is dedicated to pre-practical talks by Leon. For the prac group I was part of, everyone was pretty keen on doing well and the demonstrators were happy to help when needed. That being said, some degree of self-reliance in the lab is expected and a lack of this will impact on your lab performance score. There are times where the pracs can feel quite stressful, not necessarily because of the workload but more for the fact that there's not much tolerance for screw-ups. Since each experiment runs for 4 weeks and class results are often used for analysis, this means that a single accident may compromise the entire experiment (not just that one prac) and also the class results. So it's imperative that you know what you're doing and why you're doing something when you're in prac.

The lab notebooks need to be kept up to date each week as they are checked at every prac. The notebooks are anywhere from 10-50 handwritten pages each depending on how large your handwriting is and how in depth you go. Exp1 and Exp2b will require lengthier notebooks (around 40ish pages each for me, I have small handwriting) while the remaining notebooks were substantially shorter (<20 pages long). In these notebooks, you'll be pasting in mainly gel images, fluorescent images, writing explanations and results interpretations as well as a whole lot of flow charts. So long as you answer the required questions and discussion points, these notebooks aren't too hard to do well in. Likewise can be said for the bioinformatics tutorials and the lab performance, these are all relatively easy to get at least a 7 or 8. Where most people tend to falter is in the written report and probably the exam. The average mark across the past few semesters hovered around 70-75, with about a quarter getting H1, and almost half getting H2A/H1

Overall, a lot of the stuff I've written above can seem quite intimidating, and although my subjective experience was that the assessment became quite draining towards the end of semester, I still think Adv. Techniques is something to seriously consider even if you're not pursuing a biochem major. The practical skills and molecular methods you're introduced to are ones that are widely used in research, and the concepts covered are all quite interesting, giving you an insight into just how molecular and cell biology discoveries are made. This is also probably one of the most useful subjects to take with regards to gaining exposure to the lab.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: teexo on November 18, 2016, 10:21:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30004: Auditing and Assurance Services 

Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture and 1 x 1hr tutorial a week

Assessment: 1hr mid sem test (15%), group assignment (15%), 3hr exam (70%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: There were three but one was like from 2005 and not really relevant. Solutions weren't provided; only general comments on how to approach each question were given for one of the past exams.

Textbook Recommendation: The textbook used was Modern Auditing and Assurance Services. In terms of subject content, lectures were sufficient in my opinion. However, tute questions come from the textbook so you’ll probably have to grab a copy from the library and take photos if you don’t buy the book.

Lecturer(s): Trevor Tonkin

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, semester 2

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Hello final subject review. It’s been a ride getting to this 6th accounting review. And how nice of it to end with this subject taking out the highest rating I’ve awarded out of all my reviews. Anywho, let’s get this underway.

Audit is almost like a culmination of everything accounting related that you’ve learnt; you need to know some journal entries from ARA/IFA to know what may have been recorded incorrectly, there’s a couple of those flowchart things from APA, the process of appointing an auditor that was touched on in corp law… but don’t get me wrong, it’s not heavily reliant on past knowledge coz you learn a lot of new stuff too. There are no calculations at all; it is mainly about the audit process, from client acceptance -> audit planning -> audit procedures and evidence -> audit opinion. I mean, that’s a very simplified overview but you can see the subject actually flows and it’s not like a new topic pulled out of thin air each week. I also think it gives you a good idea of what it would actually be like to work as an auditor.

I quite liked audit and a part of that is because Trevor is one of the best lecturers I’ve had and my tutor was one of the best tutors I’ve had, and I’m usually pretty dependent on the lecturer and tutor. Trevor is a good balance of serious and funny, his explanations are clear and he’s approachable. He does sometimes tend to use complicated language, particularly in the mid sem test, but I personally didn’t mind that too much.

A bit about the assessments; mid sem wasn’t too bad if you understand the first few lectures that the test covers, group assignment wasn’t too bad if you understand the tutes related to the topics that the assignment covers however I’ve heard it was marked relatively hard, and the exam is of course a mix of testing your understanding of both lectures and tutorials and you get an idea of the style of exam qs by looking at past exams.

Audit is the final accounting subject for a reason; I mean you can’t exactly audit accounts if you don’t even know how the accounts came about in the first place but to me, the subject was more interesting than I had expected and I ended up quite enjoying it. And on that note, it’s time for me to sign off and say thank you to all those who have taken the time to read my review/s :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AbominableMowman on November 21, 2016, 07:35:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: SCIE20001: Thinking Scientifically

Workload:  N/A (This subject is taught online)

Assessment:  3 Online Quizzes (16.67%), Four Module Assessment Tasks (16.67% each) including one quiz in one assessment task, Take home final exam (16.67%)

Lectopia Enabled:  N/A

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Andrew Drinnan, Sue Finch, Heather Gaunt, Ian Martin

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 2

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86

Comments:

TL;DR: This is probably one of the easiest subjects I've done at uni. In saying that, there is one module that is a little challenging, but if you put in some work this subject is almost always a guaranteed H1. However, I found I learnt very little from this subject and if I had to physically go to the lectures I think I would've stopped going after 1 lecture. The content was just reposted videos from 2014 and it seems like almost no effort has been put towards updating the videos or providing new content. There was a discussion board where the staff regularly posted and were able to give assistance and feedback on assessments and this was quite useful because some assessment requirements were unclear.

Subject content:

Science Communication Module (Week 1-3) : This module involves 7 videos (around 15 minutes each) which explain the different methods through which science can be communicated to the public and the advantages/disadvantages of each method. The assessment for this module is worth 16.67% and involves two blog posts on a particular scientific issue. I found that the videos were quite useless and you could get a very good mark on the assessment by simply watching the video explaining the assessment.

Observation module (Week 4-6): This module involves 5 videos (around 30 mins each) which explain how scientific observations are made and the difference between objective and subjective observations. The assessment task involves making a series of objective observations (20 dot points, 800 words) and a short subjective interpretation (200 words). Similar to the first module, I found the videos quite useless and just watched the assessment video which explains in detail what is required, with an example.

Thinking with Data module (Week 7-9): This module was probably the most challenging part of the course, and the videos for this module were quite detailed. I would recommend watching the videos at least twice before you attempt any of the quizzes or the assignment. The assessment page for this subject is quite misleading as the Three quizzes (16.7%) sounds like they would be equally distributed throughout the semester but infact the three quizzes only examine this part of the subject. Essentially, this module is worth 33% of the whole subject which is almost double the exam, but this is made up by the fact that the exam does not examine this part of the subject. The assessment for this part consists of three quizzes (16.67% total) and an 'assignment' which involves a powerpoint presentation (12%) analysing a particular study's research method followed by a subsequent quiz about the study (4.7%). This is probably the most important part of the subject in terms of marks, and the videos are quite useful. Honestly, almost all of the marks I lost for the subject were from this module (due to a lack of effort on my part) and if you put enough effort into this module a 95+ in the subject is definitely possible.

Science in the media module (Week 10-12): This is probably the easiest part of this course (with the exception of the exam) and it is easy to score highly on the assignment (16.67%) without even watching the videos. Essentially it just involves critiquing a scientific newspaper article from certain major newspapers (e.g. The Age, New York Times, Herald Sun, etc). and showing  how the science in the article was misreported. I'd recommend going for a sub par newspaper from the list as you are likely to find many more mistakes.

General content: There are some videos uploaded throughout the semester which are general content on the philosophy of science, research methods, etc. I found these videos quite useless.

The exam (16.67%) : The exam was just a take home exam of 1000 words in which you are given an article or a series of articles and asked to answer short questions (total of 1000 words). I don't think I used any of the concepts from the course and still scored 99% on the final exam.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: idontknow7 on November 24, 2016, 06:59:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC30013 Research Methods for Human Inquiry 

Workload:  1 x 2-hour lecture and 1 x 1-hour tutorial each week.

Assessment:  Assignment (35%) and Multiple Choice Exam (65%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No, but some practise questions and weekly problem sets were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  No prescribed textbook. They did recommend a standard first year stats textbook for additional readings (Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences by Frederick J. Gravetter), but the detail provided in the lecture material was more than sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Paul Dudgeon (Weeks 1-10), Geoff Saw (Week 11), Stephen Bowden (Weeks 11-12).

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1.

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments: This is one of the two compulsory third year psychology subjects. I know that a lot of people (me included) dread and despise the statistics-based part of psychology, but in the later years you really start to understand how necessary it is in research and is super important if you want to go on and do Honours/Masters. The content from this subject also helps a lot with the major assignment for Psychological Science: Research and Practice, in which you are actually required to apply the principles learnt in this subject. I personally found this subject very challenging (I am not a statsy kind of person at all), I put twice as much work into it as my other subjects and just scraped an H1...it didn't help that the content itself was mostly quite dry. Having said that, the lecturers all did a great job at making statistics somewhat interesting and engaging.

Paul Dudgeon takes most of the lectures for this course - Weeks 1 & 2 were focused on research designs and 'underlying principles' in psychological research. Week 3 focused on research questions for Associations (correlations, chi-squares, odds ratio). Weeks 4 & 5 were about research questions for Predictions (simple regression, multiple regression). Then Weeks 6-10 were all about Group Differences, so mostly ANOVA (Analysis of Variance). I found all the ANOVA stuff the most challenging by far, it was quite complex and there was a lot of terminology that sounded similar but described different concepts. Then in Week 11, the first hour was taken by Geoff Saw, who went over the last bit of ANOVA and gave a brief overview of the whole course (Geoff is a great lecturer, did an awesome job of tying all the content together). The last two weeks were spent on Psychological Assessment, which was quite different from the Research Methods component. This was mostly all about the different types of reliability and validity. I felt like this part of the course was a bit rushed, as it was covered in just 3 hours of lectures but a decent proportion of the exam was focused on it. Also, Stephen's lecture slides were a bit minimal, but the readings provided were really helpful.

The lab classes/tutorials had an 80% attendance hurdle. I found them really useful - it was basically computer work every week, going over how to perform all the analyses that had been covered in the lectures in SPSS. My tutor went through everything really slowly and clearly, and actually doing the analyses and writing them up made it much easier to understand what we were actually measuring than just passively listening in the lectures. Although we didn’t do the analyses for the assignment in class, the labs really helped with the assignment, as we basically just had to do what we did in the labs but with different data.

The assignment was pretty tough, it had two parts: in the first, some information was given on IVs and what was being measured, and then the task was to form research questions, perform some analyses in SPSS and write up a kind of extended response. Everyone was given a different set of data. The hardest part was forming the research questions, the instructions weren't the clearest so I wasn't sure if I was on the right track and most of the questions people asked on the discussion board couldn't be answered as we were expected to take initiative. The second part was easier, it was just short answer questions that were fairly straightforward. The exam consisted of 90 multiple-choice questions, 72 on research methods and 18 on psychological assessment. I found it quite challenging as there was so much content covered and a few of the questions were ambiguous. On the plus side, we were not required to memorise any formulas - a formula sheet was given so that made most of the calculations quite straightforward. But it was really really important to study well and properly understand all the concepts for the exam.

Overall, I gave this subject 4 out of 5 because even though I didn't really enjoy it, statistics is a necessary evil in psychology, and this subject helps build a great foundation for later study. It was also very well-taught - for each week, detailed lecture notes were provided in addition to the slides, as well as a very large amount of feedback questions/revision material (MCQs, short answer questions and problem sets for each lecture). There were also "Terminator Salvation Sessions", I didn't attend them but I think they were basically consultations to help people better understand the content, and there was an additional revision lecture during SWOTVAC (it was even recorded!) which helped a lot.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AbominableMowman on November 24, 2016, 09:37:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: BTCH30002 Trends & Issues in Agrifood Biotech 

Workload:  One 2 hour lecture per week (Only one slot, Monday 2:15-4:15 PM) which is more like 1 hour because the lecturer tends to ramble on and digress a fair bit, One 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  An Oral Presentation about a topic relating to plant biotechnology (10%), 1 hour Mid semester Test consisting of 5 questions from which you must pick 4 to answer (25%), A report on a chosen topic that is different from your oral presentation (15%), 2 hour end-of semester examination consisting of 5 short answer questions from which you must pick 4 to answer (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, one is available on the library website and many practice questions are provided

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Professor Mohan Singh, A. Professor Phil Salisbury

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 82

Comments:

TL;DR: This is one of the core subjects in the Biotechnology major (if you are pursuing a Agri-food Biotech major) and is fairly easy in terms of content. Most people probably complete it in third year, but I recommend you complete it in second year if you have space, as it is has no prerequisites and is very light workload. In terms of content, it can be dry at times (especially around week 6-8 when you learn about different gene editing techniques), but most of the content is very interesting and applicable regardless of what specialisation you are pursuing in Biotech. If you are going to do this subject in third year, I'd recommend to do BTCH20002 your second year, second semester as the content overlaps (almost 50% is the same content). I did this subject first then did BTCH20002 and found that BTCH20002 was extremely easy because I knew almost all of the content (see my BTCH20002 review).

Subject Content
The subject content is broken down into three distinct parts, which are: Agricultural Biotechnology and plant modification techniques (Week 1-4),Gene editing for stress tolerance and biofortification (Week 5-7) and GMO's, including animal biotechnology (8-9,12). I found the part of the subject relating to GMOs particularly interesting. The 10th and 11th weeks have no lectures as this is dedicated to the oral presentations.

The lectures themselves can be quite boring at times because Mohan tends to drone on a little bit and is quite a slow speaker. However, most lectures (except the first few) finished in 1 hour or so. Later on during the semester, there are some guest lecturers who were more interesting to listen to. The tutorials however, have a 75% attendance hurdle and because there are 10 tutorials during the semester (not including one optional exam revision tutorial), you must attend 8/10 tutorials to pass the subject. Each tutorial consists of around 5 questions (based on the week's lectures) which you answer in groups and present to the class. I would recommend going to ALL of the tutorials, as the tutorials are the basis of the MST questions as well as the exam questions. They are also an extremely good summary of the lectures and definitely reinforce the content.

Assessment:
The Mid semester test (25%): This test is probably the easiest way to score marks in the whole subject as it examines the first 4 weeks of content and it is simply 5 of the tutorial questions from which you must answer 4. If you attend the tutorials and use the tutorial questions as practice, you will do very well on it.

The Oral presentation (10%): This assessment involves an oral presentation about a topic that relates to plant modification/genetic improvements and you do it in pairs. I felt like this is quite a subjective assessment and the tutor gave different marks to essentially the exact same presentation..However if you put effort into it you can score a 7/10 easily.

The Essay/Report (15%): This one was a bit more challenging, as it involved a lot of tedious research and graphs/analysis of results, etc. However, I'd recommend going to watch all of the oral presentations as they can help in developing your ideas for the essays.

The exam (50%): The exam was pretty much the exact same format as the Mid-Semester test except it examined all of the lectures . Again, I cannot reiterate how useful it is to attend all tutorials as the exam questions were just tutorial questions combined to form questions that require longer answers. Overall, there isn't much understanding involved in this subject, it involves just memorising pretty basic information and combining them into a coherent answer.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on November 25, 2016, 11:56:07 am
Subject Code/Name: ACCT20002 Intermediate Financial Accounting

Workload:  1 2-hour lecture and 1 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment:  20% midsemester exam, 10% tutorial preparation, participation and attendance, 70% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 4

Textbook Recommendation:  Yeah I'd say get it. It contains all tutorial questions and some of the chapters are actually useful

Lecturer(s): Noel Boys

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Hmmmm, so

Intermediate Financial Accounting (IFA2), at the time of writing, is probably regarded as the hardest subject in the Accounting major. Coming into the subject, I was definitely nervous because so so so many people say its nigh impossible and in comparison to IFA1, it is just in a whole other galaxy.

Now for background, I didn’t take accounting in VCE and so the only background of debits and credits I had was IFA1 – which I didn’t take too seriously and you can probably find my past score somewhere in my posts. IFA2 prides itself on being a ‘true’ accounting subject in that it focuses almost purely on debits and credits in general journal entries and consolidation worksheets. The first few weeks of the course really mind boggled me because I had entirely forgotten what accounting was and it was a harsh reality check. Noel Boys was our lecturer (and I’ll elaborate on him soon) and he said in the opening lecture that he assumes 100% knowledge of IFA and ARA. This is quite daunting, however the first lecture sort of covers what he means – like he presumes we already know the Conceptual Framework (that ‘assets are resources controlled by blah blah past event blah blah future economic benefits’ and all that), in addition to reporting regulations. However, the lecture covers it all and this is where most students lose marks in the mid semester test. The first lecture is huuuuuuge, and it contains a lot of just plain definitions of things like auditor’s report and all this crap – most people pass it over assuming it’s just sort of catch up from ARA/IFA, make sure you learn it!

So to make this review as readable as possible, I’m going to break it up. I’ll start with lectures. As said above, the first lecture was huge. I’d advise studying it pretty heavily, even in comparison to the weeks after that – most people don’t study it because it’s the first week and it contains admin stuff. IFA2 goes through things like cost versus revaluation model for PPE after acquisition, income taxes and foreign currency transactions & translations. This stuff is actually quite full on and takes a fair bit of study each week to keep up to date. At week 7, however, you are met with a whole new beast; consolidations. This topic spans 3 weeks and forms 30% of the final exam. Everyone I knew said consolidations is really the hardest thing in the subject; but I felt as if it would only be difficult if you fell behind. It really takes your understanding and uses it in a completely different way. Note though, I think consolidations has been made easier than previous years and so it’s not as much of a beast as it was. The lectures themselves are decently long. Noel Boys though, is the best lecturer I’ve had at Uni 100%. He is the funniest person and honestly just a whiz. If you have the choice of deciding between Sem 1 and 2, choose the semester with Boys.

The tutorials have set questions from the textbook as practice. These questions are often much harder than the questions in the tutorial and the exam and they often require you to do things that aren’t required in IFA2. The questions for the tutorial are uploaded on LMS but the numbers aren’t filled out so you can’t do them beforehand – so the only option you have for practice beforehand is to do the textbook. That being said, I did all of them and they do create a solid understanding and coming in to the tutorial you can really grasp what the key points your tutor is saying. I think there’s 5% marks dedicated to that whole participation thing – easy to do, do it. There’s another 5% dedicated to assessable tests on WileyPlus throughout the semester – again, easy enough to do so do it.

The mid-semester test I’d say is by far the hardest part of IFA2. The average in our semester was 48% if I remember correctly. I don’t really have any advice to give, but it really packs in the content. It goes for an hour and has 30 questions (again, if I remember correctly) and really requires you to apply knowledge. I’d suggest reviewing EVERY SINGLE SLIDE and make sure you can understand things.

Finally, the exam. We were provided with 4 practice exams which helped consolidate understanding but don’t really reflect the actual exam itself. The exam is a mix of theory and application which is interesting as there isn’t often much theory throughout the semester – it kind of requires your extrapolation. I don’t think the exam was necessarily that hard but it definitely contained some tricks. As an example, I scored 65% on the mid sem, but ~85% on the final exam. That kind of reflects the difference in difficulty.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: nhmn0301 on November 25, 2016, 04:05:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20005 Competition and Strategy

Workload: Weekly 2 x 1 hour lectures,  1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: (a bit interesting)
        max {3 assignments (30% - each worths 10%) and a final exam (70%) ;  final exam (100%)}
       This means that if you do very well on the final exam (>70%), then your final grade will be the score you got on the exam, otherwise, assignment will count towards your final grade.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes. Though Jun tends to use laser pointer and writes on the board some examples so it might be a bit difficult if you watch at home.

Past exams available: No. BUT Jun and our tutor (Daniel) had kindly written 4 practice exams with detailed solution for us and come very handy for exam revision.

Textbook recommendation: Games of Strategy, by Avinash Dixit, Susan Skeath, David H. Reiley, Jr., Third Edition, W.W. Norton and Company (eds.)  - I personally don't use the textbook but sometimes the tutorials can refer to some questions on the textbook and I just borrow it from the library and read through

Lecturer: Jun Xiao (a great lecturer!). He explains things very clearly and also a very friendly lecturer.

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 2

Rating: 5/5

Grades: H1

Comments:
Let me start off by saying this subject was known to be very poorly rated by previous students but everything is completely changed this year!! (in a good way).
The entire course content is divided into 12 topics and they link pretty well with each other. They are also a nice development from the things you have learned in Intro Micro (or even Inter Micro if you have taken them).

        Topic 1: Sequential game
        Topic 2: Simultaneous game
        Topic 3: Continuous game
        Topic 4: Repeated game
The first 4 topics in my personal opinion is relatively easy to understand. However, though Jun only present the basic case in lecture slides, he will require you to think a bit outside the box in assignment and final exams. Prepare yourself to some massive game tree too!! Also, you would need to know how to distinguish between: Assurance, Chicken game etc just by looking at the NE from payoff table.

       Topic 5: Oligopoly 1
       Topic 6: Oligopoly 2
If you have done Inter micro, this should be easy for you (can't recall exactly for Intro Micro sorry). It's essentially just math and Jun tends to cooperate these topics with some of the 4 topics above (e.g: should a firm enter a market given that he encounter a cost of ____, draw a game tree and find the Subgame perfect Nash equilibrium)

       Topic 7: Information
This is where the course becomes more interesting. This topic is essentially about: 1) distinguish between different types of buyers in the market by screening them (say by deciding that they have to buy more than "x" amount of goods to be a valuable member of the store). 2) moral hazard model - this model is used to screen things that you are unable to observe (e.g: 2 types of worker - High effort and Low effort. High effort worker creates larger probability of success, how to create a contract that can induce workers to work at High effort?)

      Topic 8: Collective Action
Mainly about Social Welfare: things like Public good and Private good that you have encountered in Intro Micro. You would definitely need to know how to distinguish between a Prisoner's Dilemma Collective Action game (NE is not as optimal as other non-NE outcome), Assurance collective action game (where people tends to do the same action with each other) and Chicken Collective action game (people tends to do opposite action to each other).

     Topic 9: Auction
     Topic 10: Collusion and Lobbying in Auction
You would definitely need to remember why English auction and Second price auction are similar and how to derive bidding strategy in each of these game. Similarly for Dutch auction and First price auction. Also understand the Winner's Curse phenomenon (basically when a bidder over-valuate the good and win but the quality/actual value of the good is not as high as what he expected) and how to avoid it.

    Topic 11: Holdup
    Topic 12: Price wars
This year, these 2 topics do not appear on any tutorials or final exam but they are not too difficult to understand. Lots of the math I believed have been greatly simplified by Jun since this is still a level 2 course (he simplified math in Auction too, which you will learn a bit more about in Micro 3)
And thats about it  ;D !!

Comments on assessment: Though I've heard some students do complain about the difficulty of the assignment, I personally think it is quite fair with a mix of medium - hard questions. Assignment questions let you know how you are going with the course (with some chances of not even counted in your final grade) and also very good to re-do again for final revision.
The final exam difficulty is around the same as the assignment (maybe just a little bit harder) and quite rush on time so make sure you know your math well and the method of going around specific types of questions to save up some time :) !

Final note: I think this is a great subject to take if you are interested in the game theory component of Intro Micro or just want a relatively manageable commerce subject to take. Jun and our tutor Daniel have made a great effort in providing so many supplementary materials to help students with the math and also understand the concepts in lecture by having extra practice questions. I am impressed at the devotion to teaching of the staff members!
To anyone who is doing Economics major or consider taking ECON30010 Microeconomics, as a past-student of Micro 3, I think Compet Stat will help you quite a lot in understanding some basic concept in Micro 3 since majority of Micro 3 is related to Game theory and Auction.

Let me know if you have any further questions and good luck with the semester :) !!!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: makeevolution on November 25, 2016, 06:28:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: ELEN30011 Electrical Device Modelling

Workload:  3x1 hr lectures per week for 12 weeks
                           1x3 hr workshop per week for 12 weeks

Assessment:  Final exam Open Book 60%
                                Workshop reports 30%
                                Mid semester test Closed Book 10%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but useless because Peter (the lecturer) writes on the board

Past exams available:  Yes from 2010 (7 if you're taking this subject in 2017). Past mid sems were also available with detailed solutions

Textbook Recommendation: 
W.H. Hayt, J.A. Buck, Engineering Electromagnetics. McGraw-Hill, 8th Edition (For week 1-9)
B.G. Streetman, S. Banerjee, Solid State Electronic Devices. Prentice-Hall, 6th Edition (For week 10-12)

Lecturer(s): Peter Dower

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2

Rating:  2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 80

Comments:

This is a very difficult and demanding subject; don't take it unless you have to/you have a very good mathematics background (vector calc) and a good mark for physics 2. I'd say take vector calc before this subject many of my friends benefit from that; eng maths' vector calc is inadequate coz in eng maths vector calc is merely computational; for this subject you need to actually understand what the vec calc concepts mean. If you haven't taken ENED, I also suggest you don't take this subject because many of the examples in lectures talk about transfer functions, op amps, etc. and he just talks about it in lectures assuming you know them already (even transfer functions was in my exam). I took this subject purely out of interest, having only taking eng maths and the pre reqs, which is a fatal mistake (as my master degrees peers also told me way after its too late to withdraw  :'( :'( :'( :'(  )

The subject started off covering a general revision of vector calculus (yes its just revision although eng maths/vec calc is not a pre requisite, revise your vec calc course before going into the subject). It takes 3 weeks including the introduction lectures. The third week was mainly vec calc examples. Then in week 4 to 7 you start Maxwell's equations and device modelling (what is actually a resistor, an inductor etc). In week 8 to 9 you'll start learning about transmission lines (your telephone/fibre optic cable lines) and various models of it. Lastly in week 10 to 12 you talk about semiconductors (which models diodes and transistors that governs your iphones). Pretty cool stuff.

The first few weeks may seem easy, don't be fooled. You need to grasp these vector calc stuff very well because it will be heavily used in the later topics. Peter, the lecturer is very highly mathematical and his tests/exams, although this is a physics subject, requires you to do lots and lots of math. Some of the required vector calc concepts, for example projections of vector fields to a surface, is not even in the lecture notes. Various definitions of conservative fields are not even in the lecture notes. Hence you need to refer to your vector calc notes as well; don't merely rely on his lecture slides. I spoke to him and he said that he expects us to know these things already; he's merely revising.

The next topic (Maxwell eqn, resistor capacitor inductor conductor insulator modelling) expands on your knowledge of physics 2 and applies it to model various electrical devices. He will explain things as if you see them for the first time but he's gonna skip some very important details (e.g. surface of a conductor is an equipotential) because he assumes you know it already from physics 2. Hence also revise physics 2 thoroughly in your studies. I didn't do this and so spent my whole mid sem break revising these topics. Don't do the same mistake.

The transmission lines section were short but most of the stuff that he's gonna ask you on the exam for this topic is not on the lecture notes. He writes them on the board and so you need to keep good records of whatever he writes on the board. Especially termination strategies, it's nowhere in the lecture notes; he writes them on the board. This topic is not as difficult/mathsy as the other topics though but you need a solid understanding of circuit theory.

And the last (and the most difficult) topic is semiconductors. This topic is unlike any other; so many things jumbled around and it's very very confusing. The arguments given for some phenomenon are somehow ad hoc and so require memorisation. Each lecture builds on the previous one directly so attend the lectures. There are many logical explanations for each phenomenon that you might think is plausible but turns out to be wrong, so I highly recommend you don't just swallow what Peter tells you; think of objections and discuss it with him. He's gonna ask you some questions that require critical thinking in exam and so get them basics understood properly. This topic is full of partial differential equations and some Laplace operators so be prepared for those as well.

Lectures:
The lectures are not too bad. They are full of real life examples of the stuff you learn in the subject. However Peter spends wayyyyy too much time in these examples and spends little time in explaining the required concepts. Really he should've used this time to do some worked examples. Oh, and he does everything on the whiteboard, nothing is recorded only his voice which is useless without the board so do attend lectures; as I said many things that are examinable he writes on the board, but are not necessarily on the lecture notes.

Lecturer is very approachable and talkative; he wouldn't mind explaining things to you even to the minutest detail. Very smart and knowledgable guy. Do ask questions to him, he doesn't mind spending an hour after lectures just answering your questions.

Workshops/assessments:
In-semester assessments are only workshop reports and a mid sem test on week 8.

11 workshops in total; 6 workshops sheets some sheets take 2 or 3 workshops to complete. Basically all you have to do with your partner is to complete the sheets within the allocated time for that particular sheet, and then submit a workshop report for that sheet. The first three sheets are purely calculations, the last 3 are combinations of answering questions and hands on work (using oscilloscope etc).
The first 3 workshops should be easy enough provided you catch up with the lectures. The last 3 are the beasts.

The last 3 involves lecture material that haven't been taught yet, for example workshop 4 is due on week 7 although it requires you to understand week 8 lectures, and so if you want to be able to answer the questions look ahead at those lectures. This is the low point of the workshops. Another warning from me is that you're not taught on how to use the lab equipment (i.e oscilloscope etc) the tutors sort of assume you remember from ENED/Foen/DSD and so revise how to use them, otherwise your lab time will be literally hell (like mine) and you wont be able to submit the report on time (no late submissions btw). The tutors were helpful, even if you ask correctly they might accidentally give you the answer to the questions on the sheet so ask cleverly. The equipment were sometimes faulty (especially the workshop 5 ones), so my suggestion is do the experiments during the workshop times and do the questions at home to give you more time to finish off the experiments. The workshops also involve op amps and transfer functions, hence the need to do ENED first although it's not listed as pre req. The tutors mark the reports quite leniently though.

Get a good lab partner; you will have to discuss the concepts with him/her. If your lab partner has difficulty in English (like mine) or doesn't catch up with lecture material, you're in for a bad time.

Mid Sem:
1 hour standard mid sem. Similar to previous years, but it seems to me it gets more difficult as the years pass by (e.g. 2015 and 2016 is much harder than 2010). The first few questions really checks your conceptual understanding of the physics, where the last questions test your mathematical skills. Study hard, because the average mark of mid sem of the class for 2015 and 2016 is ~50%.

Resources:
Peter gives worked problems as well as past mid sems, with fully (and meticulously) worked solutions. However I must emphasize the worked problems are much easier compared to the mid sems and exam.  It's not adequate for exam prep; you need to google around to prep for his exams/mid sems. The worked problems also sometimes merely asks you to derive the theorems/skipped steps in the lecture notes and so is not a good exam mock up.

I found http://www.propagation.gatech.edu/ECE3025/index.html
to be mostly in line with Peter's syllabus and also quite helpful. It also has worked problems which is very nice.
Another resource is ocw.mit.edu , and just type in electromagnetism. It's basically physics 2; so if you lost your notes for physics 2 just refer to that website, lots of worked examples.

Some other resources were the prescribed book; READ IT! I don't recommend buying; just borrow from library. The book by Hayt (which is for weeks 1-9) is much more useful rather than the other book (for weeks 10-12).

For some more good worked problems, borrow Schaum's Electromagnetics from the library. That book is simply king.

He has consultations hours but doesn't advertise it; you have to email him personally. Otherwise he is approachable after lectures and is quite willing to spend an hour after lecture for discussion which is nice!

Final Exam:
My worst nightmare. I thought I have mastered everything, brought all the textbooks and printed all the lecture notes (contact me if you want them rather than printing yourself) but it was just utterly difficult. My advice is to do the easy ones first (the straightforward calculations) and then do the difficult ones, because the difficult ones are both conceptually and mathematically challenging. Even if you have known what the physics is about and know how to do it, you're still faced with mathematical issues e.g. use rectangular or spherical coordinates in the integrals, converting between coordinate systems, actually computing the integrals etc. which chews up your exam time. I personally don't think you can finish the exam in 3 hours; it even takes 10 minutes to read and understand each question! I suggest that you just write down the integrals/equations but don't solve for the final solution; move ahead to other questions and solve for the solution later, because I believe the marks are mostly for understanding and just little is allocated for correct final solution.

Another advice is to practice writing proofs/show that... questions at home by timing yourself, and see how detailed you can be in a given time limit.

All in all, this subject was the most difficult subject I've ever done in uni. Don't do this subject if you're not an electrical eng major, or if you don't have solid vector calc background knowledge. One good news though is I heard gossips that this subject scales the exam/final subject marks, which for me is the only possible explanation as to how I got a H1 ;D ;D ;D ;D. I learnt a lot of cool and useful stuff, however the stress and the confusion was definitely not worth it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yacoubb on November 25, 2016, 07:36:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS20009: Research-based Physiology   

Workload:  one x 1 hour lecture and one x 3 hour practical per week. Total Time Commitment: 48 contact hours with an estimated total time commitment of 170 hours (including non-contact time)

Assessment:
- Written reports of up to 1000 words each due during the semester (20%);
- Class participation during the semester (5%);
- Effective PRS participation and contributions (5%),
- A research-project and written report of up to 2000 words due during semester (30%);
- Ongoing assessment of e-Learning activities(10%);
- A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes - past exams are available on the university library page. However, 2012 semester 2 is the only exam that was written by the current coordinator (Dr. Deanne Skelley). Nonetheless, go through all the exams as many questions are repeated/similar questions are used by Dr. Deanne.

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook is required - lecture notes will suffice.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Deanne Skelley

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)

Comments:

Overall, this subject was a great subject to take. Being a practical/research-based subject, there was a larger emphasis on the application of theory as opposed to mere rote-learning, which coming from my degree oriented towards a Micro/Immuno major, is a breath of fresh air. I'll start off with Dr. Deanne Skelley. Look, I'm not going to lie, she is not the most approachable nor the nicest lecturer. Between her hit-and-miss jokes, and her projections of being too good for everyone, you're left with a rather unpleasant experience with her. Nonetheless, she does the job of a lecturer and coordinator well. As a lecturer, she guides you towards understanding what is required for the assessments, particularly the exam (I will come to this later), and she also provides feedback that is beneficial. Furthermore, she is quite prompt with replying to emails, and is often more than happy to help if the issues are concerning special consideration/technology problems, etc. Overall, she could be nicer, but gets the job done.

Lectures: As mentioned in the workload, the contact hours for this subject are not too demanding. Weekly, there is one, 1-hour lecture that covers the materials relevant for the practical/workshop to come. The lectures are structured in a way where for every practical, you receive a pre-practical lecture and a post-practical lecture. The pre-practical lecture basically covers the fundamentals of the theory concerning the practical (e.g. if the practical is on cardiovascular responses in humans, you will be given the basics of the heart, cardiovascular system and the baroreceptor reflex). The post-practical lecture, which is the week following that of the practical (more on that below), will involve exploration of a few more aspects of the theory, as well as any advice on the write-up of the practical itself. This is really helpful because it ties in anything that was covered in the practical, and basically provides a way to tie up any of those loose ends so that you can polish your practical report (more on that later, too).

PRS: the PRS system is an easy way to get 5%. Attending more than 75% of the lectures will get you a guaranteed 5%. Throughout the lectures, there will be a number of questions that are answered using the PRS clickers. It is a great way to make sure you're on track with any theory, or any queries you may have are settled once she goes through the solution to the particular question. You are not penalised if you don't get the question right. As long as you answer one question, that will basically secure your 'attendance'.

Workshops/Practicals: the slot for practicals is a given 3-hour block during the week. If you have a workshop, it only runs for 2 out of the 3 hours, and a practical runs for the full 3 hours.
(a) Pre-Practical Test: you are required to complete a pre-practical test prior to your practical session. This pre-prac will be made up of some multiple choice questions, as well as some short-answer questions. These tests are usually out of 10 (some are 9, some 11). My biggest piece of advice for these is to make sure that you include every detail you believe is relevant. What do I mean by this? Well, basically if you think 'Should I include this?', include it. This is because I found that for the first pre-practical I completed, the feedback was mainly on including points that I did not think were necessarily imperative in including. E.g. if you're discussing a drug acting on the heart to increase heart rate, make sure you say something like "the drug acts as b1 receptor antagonist, resulting in a decrease in heart rate). This will ensure you leave no room for criticism, and in turn maximise your marks. For a given practical, which is assessed, 5% of your total practical mark is made up of this pre-practical.
(b) Practical: the practical runs over 3 hours. The beginning of this practical involves a briefing session by one of the senior demonstrators, where they go through the contents of the lecture and safety precautions, as well as giving advice on appropriate management. Each practical will have relevant pages that include the method of the practical, a little background info and also questions to be answered - this is provided on the LMS. You are also provided with a sheet onto which your results will be collated. Your practical is done in groups allocated to you from the beginning of the semester, which is great because you can bounce ideas off one another and ensure you're all on the right track. The practicals are relatively straight-forward, and getting through it all is facilitated by demonstrators who are great. Ask them questions!!! They know their stuff and are more than happy to help.
(c) Results/Practical report: once you finish your practical and your results have been collected, the next task is to make sure you get your practical report typed up. This is pretty straightforward - you have to scan your results sheet, and then answer the questions in the lab manual in 500 words. Be clear, concise, to-the-point and make sure you include all the key aspects for the relevant questions. You don't need to include any aims/hypotheses/etc., and it is so helpful and time-saving that you only need to answer the questions directly. These usually take a week to be corrected. Your results make up 25% of the practical report (which is so easy in my opinion to get the 25% of), and the discussion (i.e. answering the questions in the lab manual) is 70%. You have four practical reports to do in total, each of them 5%, making up 20% of your total grade. You only receive a grade with feedback (e.g. H1) - you do not receive any actual mark for your practicals.

The workshops are structured in a way where you need to apply your theory and usually work in your allocated practical groups to come up with hypotheses/learn to use Excel to make spreadsheets and necessary calculations, etc. In these workshops, you need to submit (as a group) an E-learning task (which may involve for example coming up with hypotheses, making calculations of standard errors of mean or even designing an experiment based on theory you're given in the lectures). E-learning contributes to 10% of your grade. Try and work well in your group! My group was awesome - we were not only fun, but we were able to bounce ideas off one another to come up with great work! You also only receive a grade (e.g. H1) and no actual mark for these tasks.

Assignment: trust me when I tell you, thermoregulation will never be more hated by anyone as much as it is by PHYS20009 students. This is a major assignment for which you are required to write an abstract/introduction/methods and materials/results (including graphs)/discussion/conclusion on a practical you do involving thermoregulation. Every semester the nature of the practical varies (e.g. we did a subject immersing his legs into cold water, whilst semester 1 was thermoregulatory responses to heating). However, the nature of the practical is that you will need to use the theory you've collected over the semester to develop this report. A few tips:
1. Drafts: every week from the commencement of the practical, you will be able to submit a draft. SUBMIT THOSE DRAFTS. I submitted one for every section completed, except the results and discussion (because GAMSAT life). For the results, we had to do a copious amount of graphs and follow the same structure for all 23 graphs, so I only submitted around 5 in my draft and so it worked fine because I could just use the feedback from those to emulate for the remainder of my graphs. But the discussion I could no get done in one week, so I submitted a shitty copy and I never even ended up using a bit of it. I got a H1 for all sections in my practical, and H2A for the discussion. This was PURELY because I winged the discussion and had guidance from feedback for all the other sections. All in all, this task is so daunting and makes you want to rip the hair out of your head - however, if you work through it all and follow the criteria and Deanne's advice, it isn't difficult to do well in. Unlike the practicals and other assessments in this subject, you actual get the mark and grade for this (I got 85.5 / H1). This is great because it comes out a few days before the exam, and with a bit of Math, you can calculate the amount you'll need for a H1, in the exam.

Exam: Okay, this is worth 30% of your mark. I promise you, it is NOT a difficult exam, if you approach it correctly. As I mentioned above, do as many exams as you can from the library because many questions are repeated! Furthermore, Dr. Deanne is great in the sense that she tells you a LOT about the exam, so there are usually no real surprises. The exam is out of 60. The first 40 or so marks are fine and usually very doable because she tells a lot about what will make up these 40 marks, and also the questions in practice past papers help enormously. All she tells you about the remaining 20 marks is what types of questions to expect. This is the section with the most application - you're essentially given a case study, and you're asked to write a hypothesis, explain the results and underlying physiological mechanism, anything about the study design, ethics/limitations, etc. Our case study this semester was a little iffy (it was about pregnant women who had exercised 2 years before pregnancy vs. those who hadn't, and it was very bizarre, but doable if you got the point of the extract). The exam overall was very much doable!

Overall, I really enjoyed this subject. My practical group was amazing and we all got along so well that now we are so inexplicably linked. I've made great friends with them all, and without this group, it would have been pretty hard to do well. Moral of this? Try and really work as a team. It'll help you all out. We had a facebook group and we always helped out one another. If you have any questions, let me know! Best of luck :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: makeevolution on November 25, 2016, 08:49:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: ELEN30012 Signals and Systems

Workload:  Lectures: 3x1 hr lectures per week
                  Workshop: 1x2 hr Lectures per week starting week 2

Assessment: Final exam closed book 60%
                   Mid sem test closed book 10%
                   3 assignments assigned in week 7, week 9, week 11 each worth 5%
                   Workshops (assessed inside the workshop) 15%, each workshop worth 1.5%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes 2014 and 2015, previous exams were also available but written by another lecturer

Textbook Recommendation:  None, the lecture notes are more than enough. But I also used Alan Oppenheim's signals and systems book though

Lecturer(s): Robert Schmid

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Sem 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 98

Comments:

content:
Overall, this subject is relatively straightforward. The topics covered were:
-Mathematical foundations of signals and systems
-convolution
-Fourier series and transforms
-Laplace and z transforms
-State space representations
-Transfer Functions

I have to mention; this subject requires you to be able to write mathematical proofs (like pure maths subjects) probably since Robert himself is a mathematician. So before walking into this subject familiarise yourself with writing proofs (contrapositive, contradiction etc.) and try to develop that "flair"/"instinct" when given something to prove (what I mean is that creativity in proving math theorems e.g. given you have to prove something for a set of natural numbers you could instictively come up about breaking the case into proving separately for both odd and even numbers).

Quite a number of people walk into this subject with difficulty in their mathematical background. This subject assumes you're familiar with matrices manipulation (i.e. not just eigenvalues etc. but also for proofs) and complex numbers. Revise them before doing this subject.

The concepts themselves are difficult to understand the first time you see them. Really do spend some time struggling with the concepts; Youtube the particular concept etc. This subject could easily turn into a "plug into the formula" subject; don't let that happen to you, really do understand what's going on and the physical implications of the theorems, because the exam has tricky questions and so if your mentality is "plug into formula" you'll get a bad time in the exam (the exam is hurdle and Robert is a very strict marker; he told us in lectures he doesn't scale up the mark at all/fit to a curve).

Lectures:
The lecturer, Robert, explains things very clearly and succinctly. He has this thing called problem booklet which is full of practice questions for this subject, along with answers at the back as well as a sample exam. He would do some of these problems in the lectures so it's really good for us to know what he expects of us in the exam. He is also approachable; gives chances to ask questions at the end of lectures and have consultation hours as well. The consultation hours tend to get packed though so better ask him stuff at the end of lectures. The low point of the lectures would be that he digresses quite a number of times from the lecture material, breaking your focus. But apart from that lectures are generally good.

Workshops:
11 workshops; each workshop sheet given a week before the workshop and there are pre workshops to do before each workshop. These are generally easy; I suggest do the whole workshop even before the workshop as they are not too hard. In the workshop you finish off the rest of the workshop with your group partners, which are assigned to you at workshop 1. The workshops are all MATLAB implementations of things; you better revise your matlab skills before commencing this subject because the subject assumes you know basic matlab already. You need to finish the workshop sheet before the end of that workshop, at which the tutor will check your answers and give you marks if you get them right.

Assessments:
3 assignments that basically is a tweak of the workshops questions. For example if the workshop is exploring first order diff eqn. then the assignments will explore 2nd order diff eqns. You do the assignments in your workshop groups. They are not hard as long as you keep up with lectures. You can do the assignments by yourself and then compare with your mates; that's what I did.

Mid sems:
Many questions similar/even exactly the same to the problem booklet questions. 1 hr closed book test. Not too difficult given you do the problem booklet questions. No trick questions whatsoever here. Past midsems provided with worked solutions which is nice.

Final exam:
Similar to the mid semester test, except there are trick questions here. The last question of the exam is the most difficult one; don't expect to be able to answer it unless you have a good mathematical flair. Apart from that, just make sure you know how to do each problem in the problem booklet, understand the concepts being examined and you should get a decent score.

The problem booklet questions could, as I said, give you that "ah this problem-use and plug in this formula!" mentality because the problem booklet questions doesn't really test your conceptual understanding. Don't let that happen to you because the exam tests conceptual understanding as well. Use some other books/resources to test your conceptual understanding; I'd advice you consult Schaum's Signals and Systems and Alan Oppenheim on http://www.ocw.mit to come to grips with conceptual understanding

All in all a very straightforward subject. Concepts are difficult to understand the first time you see them but once you get it, it becomes very easy. Topics are connected between each other; understand the connections. If you put in the effort (do the problem booklet regularly, understand the concepts etc.) you will get H1 guaranteed.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: makeevolution on November 25, 2016, 09:50:08 pm
Subject Code/Name: MCEN30014 Mechanical Design 

Workload:  3x1 hr lectures per week (no lectures in week 11 and 12; one exam prep lecture in week 12 though)
                  Optional design drop in sessions (more on this later)

Assessment:     

• One two-hour end-of-semester examination (40%) CLOSED BOOK
• Three assignments (projects) total of 60% -

Assignment 1 (48%) assessed tasks in weeks, 2, 4, 6 8 - approximately 40 hours work per student
Assignment 2 (6%) week 9 - 8 to 10 hours work per student
Assignment 3 (6%) week 10 - 8 to 10 hours work per student

Hurdle requirement: Students must pass all assignments and the end of semester exam in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  6 past exams from 2010 onwards

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Engineering Design, Bruce W. Field
                                          Introduction to Engineering Design, 1st Edition from Andrew Samuel, John Weir.

GET THESE BOOKS; no need to buy, just get it from the library. The Shigley book is useless; you must use these. He follows these books in the lectures; even some of the assignments were based on these books so read them.

Lecturer(s): Colin Burvill

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Sem 2

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 81

Comments:

Content and assessments:
This subject surveys 3 different things:
-Engineering design process (weeks 1-5)
-Engineering drawings (weeks 6-7)
-Structural failures (mainly fatigue and shaft design) (remainder of the weeks)
-WARMAN project

Engineering design process section is just application of common sense. It's like one of these things about "describe the advantage of a car over a motorcycle", which you can just come up by common sense without having to learn anything. Not too difficult, and actually quite interesting. Assignment 1 is all about engineering design process, which I will talk about in more detail later

In engineering drawings you go over into talking about various engineering drawing types and techniques, and you will make your own in assignment 2.

Structural failures is a survey of different failure modes and criteria of failure of a mechanical system, how to properly conduct a failure analysis; all this is applied in the context of shaft design.

Until now, it seems pretty straightforward right? Now let's talk about WARMAN, which is the worst part of this subject.

Colin wants you to get hands on and dirty in terms of engineering design process. So, you and your mates (you pick them yourselves maximum 5 people) are going to be assigned to complete a project called WARMAN, which is a Australasian engineering design competition. Every year the project changes. What you have to do is to design and BUILD a mechanical system that completes a specific required task. Just Youtube WARMAN and check out the previous year's projects.

You will have to use the engineering workshop (The huge big chocolate builiding with big glass doors nearby House of Cards) to build your system. You will have to go through a series of induction sessions, training sessions and answering a lot of online quiz questions before you can work in the workshop. It's much better to get this done before the semester starts because trying to do these sessions during the semester is hectic (the training sessions are also populated with students from masters level subjects, and there is a quota for each training session so its a first in first serve thing). To get enrolled in the workshop training sessions before the semester starts, go to your LMS, go to communities, and then search for: "MSE Workshop Tools Training". Enrol in the community and follow the instructions there.

Get your groups right; the project is not easy at all. It requires a lot of dedication, especially dedication to learn stuff that are not taught in lectures through youtube etc. You are also stuck with the group for all your assignments so get them right; the assignments are worth more than half your subject mark so your group really determines your mark.

Also before the semester starts, try to get aquinted with "Arduino", which is a PLD (like the brain for robots). In the competition, you are not allowed to control your system wirelessly/manually the system has to be able to move by itself. Therefore you need to be able to use this PLD to allow the motors etc. of your system move independently without human aid. Before the semester starts try to get an arduino and learn how to use it; you won't have time learning how to use it in the semester. Also, learn how to use Solidworks/Inventor because the final report for this project requires a CAD model of your system and so you'll need it. There are help for these stuff available from uni (in LMS under Mech eng student communities), but they are mostly just one off seminars and you don't get personalised help; you're supposed to learn about it by yourself through youtube etc.; these stuff are not taught in lectures at all. Also get aquinted with 3D printings in the workshop if you never seen them before.

Assignment 1 basically is divided into 4 parts; each parts assesses and aids your progress in the design phase of your system. The third part of the assignment is the actual test run of your team's device, which occurs in week 8(!). So yeah, you only have 2 months to design a system from scratch without any background knowledge on programming electronics or manufacturing. That's why it's very important to get yourself prepared with these things BEFORE the semester starts. Chew off some of your holiday; it will be worth it.

One more thing with WARMAN; you are expected to provide the materials for your system yourself. The engineering workshop sometimes are able to give you some scrap material but for the wheels of your system or the arduino etc. you have to buy yourself. So if you have problems financially I suggest you don't take this subject; there's a lot of trial and error and so you might spend much more money than you planned (I personally spent 100 bucks).

For assignment 3 (as well as the exam), I suggest that you revise mechanics and materials thoroughly before the semester, especially the mechanics part (Mohr's circle, Von Mises etc). He assumes you know these things already and so did not do any revision on these topics at all in the lectures.

Lectures:
The first few lectures were cool and exciting. I liked seeing the real life implications of engineering design procedures etc. However, as we venture into engineering drawing and structural failure, the lecturer doesn't do worked problems in the lectures; yeah he does it but half heartedly, just pointing stuff on his slides using his pointer and it gets very confusing. Nightmare for exam preparation. Therefore, for the structural failure and engineering drawing sections I suggest you study from the books I recommended above rather from lectures; the lectures exactly follow the books (the lecturer sort of co-wrote the book several years ago so the examples in the lectures are actually taken from those books).

design drop in sessions:
These will be marked as tutorials in your timetable. They are not compulsory; they are rather like consultation hours for you to ask questions about WARMAN or assignment 2 and 3. They are run by post grad students.

Final Exam:
Not too bad. Make sure you understand each examples given in the lectures as well as the books I mentioned. Do the past exams and make sure you know how to correctly do especially the shaft design stuff. There will be a final consultation session 2 days before the exam in which you can ask all these things. The questions are mostly repeating the previous year's exams, with just different devices to be analysed.

All in all, the subject is exciting and fun, provided you do your homework as i said before you walk into the subject. The WARMAN stuff really does give you an insight into teamwork and real engineering design stuff, not just calculations and theory. I don't suggest you take this subject as elective/breadth; the WARMAN project really chews off your time (you might have to sacrifice lectures or workshops for other subjects so that you can do work in the engineering workshop).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: RKTR on November 26, 2016, 11:56:18 am
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law
Workload:  1x 2hour lecture per week, 1 weekly e-tutorial, 3x1hour feedback workshops for the whole semester

Assessment:  Two hour-long multiple-choice tests (10% each) in weeks 4 and 9,
1.5 hour exam (80%) during the examination period.

Lectopia Enabled:  Sadly no

Past exams available:  No past exam but we were given 1 practice exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  First Principles of Business Law (textbook and enclosed e-tutorials) - latest edition.

Lecturer(s): Tanya Josev

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 97

Comments:

Lectures
The lecture theatre is pretty full because of how many people are taking this subject so get there a bit earlier if you want to get a good seat. A 2 hour lecture might sound daunting as most of the lectures for other subjects only last for 1 hour. Luckily Tanya gave us a 5 min break in between. Make sure you pay attention during lectures and write down important stuff the lecturer said as the lectures are not recorded.

E-tutorials
They do not contribute towards your final mark. However, I would encourage you to do them as they will help with your understanding. Try to do them every week and not leave them until it is close to MSTs or the final exam especially if you bought a secondhand book and need to do them in the law libraries because many people will be doing the same.

Workshops
There are 3 workshops during the semester, 1 each the week before each MST and 1 in week 12. Theses workshops are optional and I only went to the first one. They give you the opportunity to ask questions about the practice tests and exams during the workshops. Make sure you go to them if you have any confusion about the practice tests and exams because during consultation hours the consultation tutor is different and he will not be answering those questions.

MST
The 2 MSTs are slightly harder than the practice versions. However, it is still possible to get high marks because it is open book and you can do it online at home. Try to make some summary notes about each lecture and make brief summaries about cases for the MSTs to save you time from flipping through the thick book.

Exam
Prepare a good cheatsheet including the cases and important theories. There is a few really hard questions where more than 1 options might look right at first glance but overall the exam is still not difficult to do well in.

I would recommend this subject if you are trying to find an easy breadth and aiming for an easy H1.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Fleety on November 30, 2016, 12:25:17 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30004: Cell Signalling & Neurochemistry

Workload:  Per week: 3 Lectures (1Hr) & 1 Tutorial (1Hr)

Assessment: 3 hour written exam held in examination period (70%); two 1 hour written examinations held
during semester (7.5% x 2 = 15%); An essay assessment due mid-semester (15%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, last years was on the LMS, and several others (not 100% relevant) on the Exam Repository

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s):
Heung-Chin Cheng (Coordinator) Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Marie Bogoyevitch Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Justine Mintern Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Greg Moseley Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Harshal Nandurkar Department of Medicine, Alfred Hospital, Monash University
Carli Roulston St. Vincent’s Hospital, Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating:  4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89

Comments:
I completed this subject as part of the Neuroscience major.  I know when i read these reviews, i'm not so much looking for a traditional review of the subject, but more of a guide to doing well, so i will try to include tips where possible. I had some qualms with the subject during the semester, but overall found it to be enjoyable and rewarding. Heung-Chin Cheng is the coordinator for this subject, and you truly get the sense that he is passionate about educating the class, and seeks to actively engage the class in ways outside the 'traditional' lecture format of "come, listen, leave".

MSTs: (2x7.5)
Overall, they were pretty fair assessment. The weighting of them was a little strange, but if you know your content, there shouldn't be too much surprise. I didn't do too well in these tests (averaged 67%), but it didn't matter too much as they're only worth 7.5% each. They serve more as a 'checkpoint' for study, forcing you to actively revise the content a bit more through semester, which for someone who generally does better in the final exam, this suited my learning style. Look at the previous exams, tutorial questions and any practice test given, as i found in both tests there was a repeat question.

Assignment: (15)
Initially found the assignment quite confusing. Everyone is given one of 4 topics from 3 of the lecturers, where we were asked to read a scientific paper and write a critical review on it. Whilst the material given is a bit higher than the level of the course, each lecturer will deliver a whole tutorial which goes through the technical parts of the article in detail, giving you guidance and tips on how to direct your review - so make sure you attend that tutorial. The assignment is only 1000 words, is given out in the early stages of the semester, and is usually due after the mid sem break, giving you ample time to complete it. Creating your own diagrams in this assessment will reward you in the grading of the assignment!

Exam (70) - 3 hours
In my year, the format was as follows:
Spoiler
Section A MCQ 60 marks (20 MCQs worth 3 each)
Section B Short Answer Q1 = 20 marks Q2 = 15 marks Q3 = 15 marks (50 marks)
Section C Short Answer Q1 = 25 marks Q2 = 15 marks (40 marks)
Section D Short Answer 15 Marks
Section E Short Answer 15 Marks
TOTAL MARKS AVAILABLE = 180
For the exam, you are required to remember a lot of signalling pathways. Some of which are pretty extensive and complex, but once you've learned them with good detail, it's pretty hard to encounter a question which you will not be familiar with. I would liken this style of assessment to that of second year biochemistry (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) - lots of drawing diagrams, annotating them and explaining what you've drawn. I found that for most of the lecturers, you could get a pretty good idea of what they were going to ask. If you have questions specific to the exam please PM me. My tips would be: know all the big signalling pathways - you can take an educated guess at what each lecturer will be looking for on the exam. When revising, draw, draw and draw some more - you need to be able to draw clear diagrams of the pathways you're expected to learn - it will definitely aid your responses. Doing the practice exams given on the LMS and searching through the repository will definitely give you a good idea of what to expect on the final exam, so i would recommend doing them.

Overall:
Whilst some of the content is a little clunky (some of Cheng's diagrams are a little hard to decipher, but he often goes into more detail on the structural analysis than is required to remember for the exam), the assessment for the subject is reasonably fair. The large weighting of the final exam will reward those who actively revise the subject throughout semester, particularly if you've got a good memory of pathways, diagrams and images. Enjoyed the subject for the most part. Happy to answer questions.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cassiecate on December 03, 2016, 05:25:46 pm
Subject Code/Name:  MAST20022 Group Theory and Linear Algebra

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

Assessment:  3 written assignments due at regular intervals during semester contributed to total 20%, a 3-hour written examination (80%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. In this year Alex wrote on the white board in all Tuesday lectures so the recordings only have audio. He mentioned that he originally planned to write on board instead of using document camera in every lecture, but the board in Baldwin Spencer theatre where the Wednesday/Thursday’s lecture held did not allow him to do so.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 past exams from 14 and 15, both with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture notes are updated throughout the semester and can be accessed on the subject homepage. The subject homepage also listed other references/resources as well as the lecture notes from previous year.

Lecturer(s):  Dr Alexandru Ghitza

Year & Semester of completion:  2016, Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments:

As the prerequisite for third year subject Algebra, GTLA is indeed the more "pure math" one among all these second year subjects offered by math department in semester 2. The contents are no doubt quite intelligently simulating, and even more interesting, in fact I’d say that this is by far the most interesting math subject I ever took in uni.

It also has one of the smallest cohorts in all second year math subjects (if not the smallest), mostly taken by students intended to major in mathematics, physics or computer science.

Lectures

As its title stated, this subject can be mainly divided into two topics: group theory and linear algebra. This year Alex decided to split each of them into two subtopics and teach them alternately, last year from the notes it seemed that he taught all the linear algebra parts altogether at first, then moved to groups.

We first started off from a small topic called modular arithmetic, we learnt about greatest common divisor (gcd), division algorithm, Euclidean algorithm and their applications, then we moved to modular congruences and integers modulo m, the latter will be introduced more throughly in the group topic. At last Alex gave us a glimpse of fields and what means algebraically closed field.

Then started the first part of the linear algebra topic, at first Alex revised some first year linear algebra topics that are relevant to this subject, such as linear transformation, matrix representation and change of basis, but it’s rather quickly (all in one lecture iirc), so I suggest revisit your first year notes if those parts have already become unfamiliar. After this we learnt about eigenspaces, complements of a subspace, direct sum of subspaces, characteristic & minimal polynomial, Cayley-Hamilton theorem and upper triangular form, all these small topics are related to each other and provided motivation & foundation for  the key topic of this part: Jordan normal form. This part is very well-coordinated, I was feeling a bit like walking in the fog the first week into it, but after a few lectures the structure and connections in-between all topics became more and more clear and all things made perfect sense. There are two interludes in this part, special relativity, which is fundamentally a linear transformation and solving the simple epidemic stochastic model, which is an application of Jordan normal form. Alex had interludes structured in all the parts after modular arithmetic and are quite enthusiastic in explaining them in depth, it’s actually really nice to know some practical examples of these rather theoretical theorems & lemmas.

In the next part we would get in touch with the concept of group for the first time, Alex started with definitions and some basic examples, after that we learnt about permutation and symmetric groups, then subgroup that are generated by a set and order of elements in a group/subgroup. At this point it starts to get a lot more abstract so please make sure you don’t get behind and grip a firm understanding on each concept. Then we reached another important topic, group homomorphism and isomorphism, which will be used a lot later. After this Alex introduced direct product of groups, cosets of subgroup in a group, the set of cosets which is called quotient, as well as quotient as groups. We would study about normal subgroups, kernel/image of a group homomorphism, their relationship with the two groups in this homomorphic and the first isomorphic theorem for groups.  Then we arrived at a relatively new topic about free group and group representations, it may seems bizarre the first time you hear about it, but not completely incomprehensible if one spends some time looking into it. Next comes the final topic of this part, conditions on orders of elements and subgroups, with a few theorems given at first, we would reach a popular application of it: public key cryptography aka RSA. There are quite a lot definitions in this part and most of them are totally new to most of us, so I think it’s a good idea to stay on top of everything after each new lecture and continuingly do revisions on previous ones.

Then we went back to the second linear algebra part and learnt about inner product spaces. In first year we dealt with inner product in real inner product space, now we would also do so in complex ones. After introducing definition and properties, Alex elaborated on orthogonal complements, adjoint transformation and how a linear transformation can be defined as self-adjoint/isometry/normal (these are the generic names, there are also different names over real and complex inner product spaces, but Alex said we would stick to the generic ones in this subjects). Then we moved to the relationship of f-invariant subspace and their orthogonal complement which is f adjoint-invariant, where f is a linear transformation, this led to normal form of isometries on real spaces and the orthonormal basis of these spaces. The proof of this one is a bit complicated and takes some time to get a hold with. At last we would learn about spectral theorem, which is again an extremely important topic in this subjects and very convenient to use in many proofs. After this are two optional topics, which Alex just mentioned briefly this semester due to not enough time left.

Now comes the last part of the subject, which is about actions of groups on sets. Alex talked about the concept of a group G acting on a set X (called G-action on X), the orbit and stabiliser of element x in X, which then led to the orbit-stabailiser theorem. Then we studied counting via group actions, one of the most common applications of it is the number of ways to colour the edges of a regular n-gon by finite number of colours. Then we would look through two particular actions, left multiplication action and conjugation action, and briefly examine the existence of elements of prime order. After these Alex taught us the last (examinable) topic of this subjects, Sylow theorem and its application on group of different orders. There’s also another optional topic at the end which we didn’t get time to cover either.

Alex is, by all means, a wonderful lecturer. He explained everything (even those seemingly make nonsense at the first time) really well in lectures, and was extraordinarily helpful during consultation hours. No matter how stupid the question you asked, he would always try to understand your standing and give an appropriate explanation. Also I love his "blackboard & chalks in office" idea, just simply brilliant. Not only could he demonstrate and work on the board, but also students who wanted to give their ideas a go on site. Sometimes if there were a few students in the consultation at the same time, he would let them to ask in turn, I found this is actually a very good way to learn and make me look into the contents in different angles. This semester in GTLA it’s probably the most consultation hours I’ve attended in my entire life, it’s far more enlightening than I could ever describe.

Practice Classes/Tutorials

The tutorial runs once a week, which is your typical math subject tute: 3-4 students each table are given tutorial sheet for the week and work these questions on the white board together. The tutorial questions followed closely to contents in previous week’s lectures with maybe one or two tricky ones marked with stars. Alex would post both the questions and the answers on subject’s homepage after each week, so no answers were given after the tutorials. Our tutor Matthew, tends to do some brief revisions of last week’s contents on the board first then let us do the tutorial questions. If some questions/points confused a few students, he would demonstrate them on the board to the whole room. Each tutorial sheet contains a fair amount of questions and it’s almost impossible to finish them all in a one-hour tutorial. But it’s crucial to try and finish them in your own time and understand all of them clearly, since half of the final exam are questions taken directly from tutorial sheets or modified only very slightly.

Assignments

There were three assignments in this subjects due in week 5, 9, and 12 this year. None of them was particular difficult (the only hard question was made unassessed by Alex at the end), but it still took some time to think about and optimize. Full 20 marks is definitely achievable if you put some effort in them.

Exam

The final exam is divided into two sections, each worth 50 marks. The first section consists of ten short questions which are mostly tutorial questions as mentioned above, these should be 50 marks in the bag if you studied those questions well during semester. The second section consists of four longer questions, each corresponding to one of the four main parts in the lecture notes (except modular arithmetic). These are the harder ones and spilt people who got H1 and those who didn’t. I finished the first section in one hour and gave the remaining two hours to the four questions in second section, with around half hour each which I believe is more than sufficient. So I think it’s appropriate to leave at least twenty minutes for each question in second section. This year’s exam (both the original one and the fire-alarm-induced resitting one) was at a comfortable difficulty level with around 10-15 marks worth trickier parts, similar to the 2014 exam. The one from 2015 is however much harder and requires a lot more effort.


Overall I think GTLA is a wonderful subject to take in semester 2 even if you do not intend to go along the pure math path (if you do then it’s a must). The contents are fascinating and the result will be rewarding if you put in some hard work.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: johz on December 05, 2016, 01:51:10 am
Subject Code/Name: PHIL20030 Meaning, Possibility and Paradox 

Workload:  a 2-hour seminar per week, and weekly online video lectures (about 1 hour) to be watched before the seminar

Assessment:  4 problem set assignments due across the semester worth 50%, and a final exam worth 50%.

Lectopia Enabled: Lectures are all delivered through online vimeo videos. No screen capture for the seminars so it is highly recommended to attend them.

Past exams available:  Yes, for the past 4-5 years I think

Textbook Recommendation:  Graham Priest's "An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic" is used. It is recommended, but I found a pdf version online. Do buy it if you prefer a hard copy.

Lecturer(s): Greg Restall

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 2

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 76 H2A

Comments: This subject was extremely difficult to me. In the unimelb handbook it said that it is recommended for students to have completed 12.5 credits of a philosophy or linguistics subject, and being a linguistics major I thought logic would be an interesting subject that would be manageable for me. If you're a linguistics student thinking of taking this subject, I can tell you that my prior linguistis studies had no benefit whatsoever. The first half of the course was manageable, but I felt lost and confused for most of the second half when the difficulty in subject matter jumped, even though I attended all seminars and did most readings. The 2-hour seminars are extremely important in enabling you to understand as sometimes watching the videos are not enough. Greg is an excellent teacher, he is patient and explains concepts clearly. A lot of time in seminars is spent doing group discussions of questions and problems provided by Greg, and I did not particularly enjoy this (but that may just be me not really liking group work). The exam is an open book exam, so be sure to keep up with the weekly lectures and compile notes. Past exams are available, and the exams are all very similar in terms of difficulty and structure so be sure to practice some of those. I was convinced I was going to fail the exam and this subject, but I think Greg is quite forgiving when it comes to marking so as long as you keep up you won't do too badly I think. This subject was definitely very challenging and I'd recommend you have prior philosphy or logic background before taking this. If you do, this subject is actually very interesting and mind-boggling as you learn many different types of logic, and the discussions of paradoxes in the later half were especially interesting.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverpixeli on December 05, 2016, 11:01:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP30022 IT Project

This subject is the capstone subject of the Computing and Software Systems Major of the BSci. It runs in semester 2 each year. There is no 'content'; the subject is entirely about working in a group to design and develop the biggest project we'd taken on so far. In our case, we built an Android game with Unity. The project is accompanied by guest lectures aimed at giving students a taste of the professional software engineering landscape.


IT Project was a successful capstone subject in that completing the project taught us to use the skills we had learned in other subjects together. The project was a very valuable experience in working on a large, collaborative and extended software project.

There was enough freedom to enjoy the project, but sometimes that was overshadowed by the hoops we had to jump through such as writing gargantuan requirements and design documents with detailed UML diagrams. With the added pressure and uncertainty of the assessment part of the subject, I found the subject a source of stress more often than not.

That stress forced me to pull several all-nighters working furiously to get things done. On the flip side, the enjoyment of building the game also inspired some all-nighters. Also, if I placed less importance in my grades, I wouldn't have felt as stressed. So, that may just be me.

I didn't attend most of the guest lectures because we used the lecture slot to meet as a group, but the few I did attend were valuable and I plan to watch the rest eventually. Special mention to the guest lecture from Aidan from Palantir during SWOTVAC, the morning after the final deadline. Not many people made it but it was well worth it!


Workload:
- One 1h lecture each week
- Compulsory 2h workshop each week; 1hr tute + 1hr lab
- Continuous work on a large-scale group project

Assessment:
100% - Group Project
    50% - Group's work through the semester
    30% - Finished product at the end of week 12
    20% - Individual contribution to project

Lecture Capture: Y

Past exams available: N/A

Textbook Recommendation: N/A

Lecturer:

Egemen Tanin for course announcements, and various guest lecturers from developers at startups to investors to intellectual property specialists.

Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 86

Comments:

Below I've added a description of what was expected in 2016 for those taking the subject in the future who want to know what they might see:

2016 project
The task: build a mobile (Android) app in teams of 4 students.

The project had a lot of room for creativity but there were some key requirements. Something along the lines of:

1. it must be an action game (so, real-time, rather than turn-based)
2. it must involve multiple devices interacting over a network
3. players must be able to chat with each-other
4. players must we able to view a recording of game-play
5. the game must access a server to store and retrieve information

These requirements were also open to interpretation, for example voice chat was an allowed substitute for text chat, recordings could be achieved by taking a video screen recording of game-play rather than recording game state with code.

It was also okay to utilise third-party tools to achieve any of these features. However, there was also a requirement that we contributed about 1000 lines of code per student of our own work. Allegedly, the 1000 line of code requirement included code comments*.

The lecturer recommended we use Unity to build the game, but this wasn't mandatory. My team did, and despite all the things I hated about using it, I don't think we could have managed to build something serious in the time available without it. So, I also recommend using Unity or something like it.

(* By that count, we ended up with a project of about 10,000 lines of code from a group of 5! We were a group of 5 because we accepted a 5th member who had not been able to find a team a few weeks in to the project.)

2016 semester outline
The project was assessed on a continual basis. All our interactions with our tutor were apparently recorded and considered during assessment at the end of the semester. But, there were still periodic deadlines, to give the staff a chance to look at a snapshot of our progress and provide detailed feedback.

The expectation was that the documents created in the first few weeks would be continually kept up to date as the semester progressed, and the deadlines were simply for an initial lot of feedback on our work.

The first deadline was at the end of week 2. At that point, our requirements document was due. This was a document outlining the features we planned to include in our application, and the submission required us to have a solid idea and a shared understanding of what our game was going to be.

The next deadline was at the end of week 4. We needed to submit a workflow document, outlining strategies for communication and collaboration, and how we planned to organise our project's development. We also had to show that we had a bitbucket repository set up that everyone in the team had access to.

Around this point we were expected to really get into beginning to develop our app. We began by familiarising ourselves with Unity by reading docs and completing tutorials.

At the end of week 6 was the next deadline: submission of an initial design document. This was a big collection of UML diagrams (mainly component diagrams, class diagrams, and sequence diagrams) and written descriptions of the different components of our project. The initial submission required us to make some high level architecture decisions about the structure of our solution. Then we had to describe the planned structure of each major component, and also document the interfaces through which those components would interact.

By this point we had some prototype elements of a game but nothing complete. We were making slow progress on a few of the core aspects of our game. I think that's where most groups were up to.

From there, there were no more big deadlines until the final demos in week 12. However at some point around week 8 our tutor checked out all our stuff and gave us some feedback on our progress in different areas.

Over the next few weeks we built, reviewed, and integrated feature after feature, slowly forming our final product, ready for the demos in week 12.

Countless hours of development later, we had our demos in our week 12 workshop. This was a chance to show the final product to Egemen and the tutor, with all its required features, deployed to two android devices.

Afterwards, we had until 9AM on the first Monday of SWOTVAC to finalise our repository and all of our documents. (I think this was an extension, though, the original plan was for it all to finish after the demo).

And that was the end!

Tips from 2016
If you're looking for tips based on my experience in 2016, here's a few things I think were important:

Find yourself a strong team of 4 students before the semester starts, as work begins in week 1. You all need to attend the same workshop each week, which also begins in week 1.

We got a lot out of using Slack for team communication, instad of facebook or skype. We also loved using screenhero for group calls and screen sharing.

You'll have to put in several hours each week for this project if you want to finish. Aside from time spent working on the project from home, my team found it super useful to meet in person a couple of times a week outside our workshop. We found some rooms in John Medley that were usually free during the times we were all free (we shared our timetables using teamup) and met for a few hours on Monday Afternoons and Wednesday Evenings. I think our communication suffered over the weekends and we should have had even a short regular meeting on Friday afternoons.

Based on the feedback we got, the focus of the requirements document is communication of ideas. Your tutor needs to understand exactly what you plan to make and why based on the document. Stick to the template, but make sure what you write is clear and informative, and not too long.

When deciding on features, it's super fun to dream up an extraordinary game. But I think it's a waste of time to document lofty features in great detail for the first submission. Maybe keep them in a separate document and focus on features that satisfy the basic requirements of the project, and add fun stuff later if you have time.

Talk with your tutor regularly to get their feedback and ideas and show them the progress you are making. Even approach them through email outside of weekly workshops.

As soon as you start developing, make use of git branches for developing features. The process goes something like: start a branch, develop a feature to a certain standard, polish up your code and then make a 'pull request'. Group members will review the branch as soon as possible*, and approve it or suggest changes/improvements. Improve it, then merge it into the main branch.

*waiting for code reviews was a source of frustration due to the fact that we were all full time students, not full time software developers.

Some features are really big and will take all semester (e.g. 'multiplayer'). Split these up into stages (e.g. 'connection', 'chat', 'player movement', 'obstacle synchronisation') and regularly review as you go, to avoid one big review when its too late to alter foundational things that may be causing difficulties.

Learn how to build unit tests and integration tests as soon as that comes up in workshops, or before. Write test straight after you code, if not before. Unity actually makes unit testing and integration testing really easy to do, so there are no excuses. I found it tough to get into without having made tests before but I think it's very important assessment-wise so worth putting in the effort as you go. Preferably, you'll include tests with each pull request, so that everything that ends up in the main branch has tests.

One thing we left till the last minute was proper integration of all of the game's features through the menu system. Everything kind of fell apart when we had 4 people putting everything together the day, night and morning before our demo. Things ended up fucking up during the demo because we had hacked it all together right beforehand. There goes 4 or 5 subject marks! So, try to be more considerate and organised when putting your app together.

That's all I cant think about right now but PM me if you have specific questions!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Paulrus on December 22, 2016, 06:25:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20006 - Biological Psychology

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures per week, and 1 x 2 hour tutorial every second week

Assessment: 2000 word lab report split into two evenly weighted sections (each 1000 words and each worth 20%), due in weeks 5 and 9 (40%), 2 hour exam consisting of 120 MCQ (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: No, but practice questions are on the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation: Physiology of Behaviour is the prescribed textbook, but you'll never need it so it's not worth buying. If you really decide you want a copy, it's fairly easy to find a pdf.

Lecturer(s):
Piers Howe - Brain Imaging Techniques (3 weeks) and Statistics (1 week)
Amy Jordan - Sleep and Emotions (2 weeks)
Jacqueline Anderson - Neurobiology of Memory (2 weeks)
Olivia Carter - Psychopharmacology (4 weeks)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
The course and staff have changed a fair bit since the other reviews for this subject were posted, so I figured I'd try give a more recent perspective on it. Content-wise, this is my favourite subject I've done in undergrad so far. There are a few small things that brought down my mark a tiny bit, but overall it's a fantastic subject that I wholly recommend doing.

Lectures:
Piers does a great job of teaching brain imaging techniques, a topic which could easily be fairly dry. Instead, his lecturing style is actively engaging and I actually found his lectures pretty interesting. He covers transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), electroencephalography (EEG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), as well as t-tests in the statistics component. His lectures are extremely content heavy (expect 100+ slides per lecture) and you're expected to know things in a good amount of detail, but understanding is more important than rote-learning. His section can get a bit complicated if you're not particularly scientifically inclined (particularly in that you're expected to understand the physics underlying the different imaging techniques), but it is biological psych after all so that's to be expected.

Amy covers sleep and emotions - more specifically, the biology and structure of sleep, sleep disorders, and the physiology of emotions. Her section is mostly straightforward and there's not a particularly large amount of content, which is nice. She's a really great lecturer (and also a lovely person) and her content is both absorbing and applicable to everyday stuff, which makes her section super enjoyable.

Jacqueline's section on memory is kinda disappointing - a lot of the stuff in her lectures is actually really interesting, but the way she teaches is extremely dull and sounded a bit like a synthesised text-to-speech generator. Her slides were also bland as fuck and had a lot of blurry diagrams filled with extraneous details, which made it hard to know what you needed to know. Despite that, her section is solid if you focus on the content itself, but it's a bit disappointing knowing that it could have been a lot better.

Olivia teaches psychopharmacology and she is FANTASTIC. She's an extremely engaging lecturer and her part of the course is fascinating. She's probably my favourite lecturer I've ever had at university. She generally focuses on a particular hormone/neurotransmitter (or group of them) within a given lecture and discusses their action on the body and nervous systems in detail, as well as their synthesis/breakdown and chemical composition, along with pharmaceutical and experimental applications (e.g. one week focuses on acetylcholine in relation to attention and memory). She also taught us that Calvin Klein (or CK) is a street name for mixing cocaine and ketamine, which is definitely the most applicable thing I've learned at uni so far.

Tutorials:
My gripe in this area is one that's common to the majority of psych subjects: once you finish the lab report, the tutorials are mostly useless. They're invaluable for the lab report, and you'll do all of your SPSS data analysis in the tutorials (which you'll interpret and write up at home). After that, the tutorials are kinda useless and mostly consist of filling time. Some of the stuff was interesting, like running and designing an experiment on caffeine and cognitive performance in the last two tutes - but again, it wasn't examinable, so it just felt like a bit of a time filler.

Assessment:
The topic for the lab report might change depending on the year (not sure), but we looked at the different brain areas involved in spatially-primed and unprimed visual search tasks. For the first part, you're expected to write the introduction and methods sections - for the second, you revise your intro and methods based off tutor feedback, as well as writing up your results, discussion and abstract. We were taught in the tutorials how to write up the lab report in a general sense, but you were kinda left in the dark about exactly what you should include and the instructions were a bit vague. It would have been difficult to do well on the assignment without consulting the coordinators' posts on the discussion board (to their credit, the coordinators did a good job of answering questions). Writing in APA format for lab reports (which is much, much more difficult and anal than writing essays in APA) was also not taught, but was assumed knowledge, which is a bit unfair as this would have been the first proper lab report many students would have written. However, these criticisms were pretty much true of every psych subject in second year, so I think the psych department just expects you to take initiative and work things out for yourself (for better or for worse).

The exam was pretty chill and mostly fair. Amy and Jacqueline's sections were both relatively easy and I think they recycled a small number of questions from the online practice questions. Olivia's section was a bit more challenging, but not as difficult as it could have been given the amount of detail in her lectures. All of her questions were fair and didn't assess anything that was outside of the course, so if you revised well then you should have been fine. Piers's questions were definitely the hardest and a lot of people struggled with them. They featured a few (emphasis on few) slightly dodgy questions where it was a bit unclear what was being asked, and where you could have realistically picked two different answers depending on how you interpreted the question, which is a bit disappointing. For statistics, there's much more of an emphasis on the underlying theory than there is on being able to do calculations, so make sure you know HOW the calculations and formulas work rather than just being able to plug them into a calculator. Overall though, it was a pretty fair exam.

Overall:
Fuck, this is longer than I expected. TL;DR - Super interesting subject with a mostly really great teaching staff, brought down very slightly by small factors, but still would very much recommend.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: stolenclay on January 17, 2017, 03:57:52 am
Subject code/name: MAST20022 Group Theory and Linear Algebra

Workload: Weekly: 3 x 1-hour lectures, 1 x 1-hour tutorial

Assessment:
3 individual assignments20%
3-hour end-of-semester exam80%

Lectopia enabled: Yes, with screen capture, but the document camera may not be used; please see below for more comments.

Past exams available: In 2016 Semester 2, two past exams were available with solutions. More were available on the library website without solutions.

Textbook recommendation: No external texts required. A very comprehensive set of lecture notes is provided and is certainly sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Dr Alexandru (Alex) Ghitza

Year and semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2

Rating: 5 out of 5 (tempted to deduct something for that fire alarm evacuation... HAHA)

Comments:

Just what is group theory? Why am I learning linear algebra again? And why is it that every time I tell someone about this subject they think I'm talking about two subjects?

MAST20022 Group Theory and Linear Algebra is a second-year subject that is a prerequisite for third-year pure maths subjects. Pure maths, being the obscure field it is, is certainly no less obscure as a maths specialisation, which is probably why your general audience always assumes you are talking about two subjects.

Group theory is the study of a mathematical construct called groups (surprise surprise). Groups are best motivated by the observation that in mathematics, there are many types of sets that, when endowed with a certain operation (a rule of combining two elements in the set), satisfy some common properties, namely
A common example would be the integers \(\mathbf{Z}\) under addition: addition is associative, permits an identity element (namely \(0\)), and naturally gives rise to an inverse for every integer (just negate the integer). Such properties seem like fairly simple properties to come about, and, indeed, in GTLA you will come across a variety of groups.

Group theory forms a natural foundation for the field of abstract algebra, which, loosely, is the study of the structure of sets in mathematics. In this sense, GTLA opens students to further studies in algebra at the university. Unfortunately, aside from MAST30005 Algebra, these subjects are taught at the graduate level. The field of algebra enjoys the reputation of being a rather beautiful field of mathematics, and this same sentiment manifests in the university environment: MAST30005 Algebra is widely reputed to be one of the most enjoyable undergraduate maths subjects. Personally I believe its beauty lies in the fact that groups are introduced with only the simple properties mentioned above, but as more structure (read: conditions and properties) is imposed on the groups, the results become increasingly rich and eye-opening (at least that happens to be my take on GTLA). If ever there was anything I would call "mathemagic", this would be it.

So far I have yet to mention linear algebra. Why exactly is this subject a combination of both group theory and linear algebra, and where is the relationship between them? The group theory and linear algebra topics in GTLA happen to be fairly disjoint; one could outright label each topic as either "group theory" or "linear algebra" without hesitation. However, there are a few parallels between the structures of vector spaces and groups, the most obvious of which is that a vector space over a field satisfies all the aforementioned properties of being a group! As you will see, there are more parallels (bases and generating sets, (normal) subgroups and linear subspaces, homomorphisms and linear transformations); some of these are mentioned, so rest assured that, despite the abstract nature of the group theory topics, many phenomena you have in fact encountered in earlier linear algebra studies. The only other connection that was obvious to me was that some of the groups we worked with directly involved matrices and their properties.

Being a pure maths subject, you might expect the content in GTLA (particularly the group theory topics) to be quite separated from "real world" applications. To an extent this is true; however, Alex does present some highly intriguing applications of both group theory and linear algebra, such as in computer cryptography, special relativity, chemistry (brief mention), and even stochastic processes! Some of these have entire lectures dedicated to them (but are not examinable), in case a passing mention of applicability is not convincing enough.

I would say that students studying GTLA tended to be maths students (no surprise here) but also physics students who might be considering further studies in quantum physics. Quantum physics, to my knowledge, relies on the theory of metric spaces and Hilbert spaces (cue MAST30026 Metric and Hilbert Spaces, although it is not a prerequisite for the university subjects on quantum physics), which, in turn, relies on some of the content in GTLA.

The difficulty of GTLA lies in its breadth of content. The lectures are very proof-based, and there are many smaller results and properties presented aside from the main ones, some of which you will need to recall very quickly and use frequently. It is a style of mathematics rarely found outside pure maths and is understandably a struggle for students for which GTLA is a first exposure to pure maths beyond first-year linear algebra and real analysis. Alex takes a very structured approach to this subject (teaching theory and then giving many examples), and consequently it was far easier learning this subject than one might expect from its content.

Subject content
There are five major areas of discussion in the subject, and they are conveniently allocated (usually) one question in Part B of the examination (more on that later). These are:
  • the Jordan normal form;
  • an introductory discussion on groups with a slight focus on normal subgroups;
  • inner product spaces;
  • group actions; and
  • the Sylow theorems (or, more generally, classifying groups).

Introductory topics
Alex begins with a short illustration on what sorts of problems motivate the study of abstract algebra. From this short lecture alone it was quite easy to see that this subject was going to be different from first-year maths subjects. With uses in studying symmetry, geometric properties, and number systems, the main theme was that abstract algebra is quite literally the abstraction of ideas that are present in various mathematical objects.

The first point of call (even before the Jordan normal form) is the discussion of the principle of mathematical induction (which should be familiar from MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1) and something called the well-ordering property, which states that a non-empty subset of the natural numbers \(\mathbf{N}\) always has a smallest element. The principle of mathematical induction and the well-ordering property are shown in lectures to be equivalent.

At a glance it is probably unclear why the well-ordering property is important or even why it is a result on its own (it sounds "obvious"). Perhaps this is more an example of the fragility of mathematical logic: In AM1 you may have used the principle of mathematical induction several times without questioning its validity. It turns out that when setting up the theoretical environment for studying mathematics, either the principle of mathematical induction or the well-ordering property needs to be introduced as an axiom, that is, something accepted as true without proof. Once this is done, the other is immediately true due to their equivalence, and you can use them to your heart's desire.

This delicate and rigorous approach to logic is somewhat characteristic of studies in pure mathematics, and at various points throughout GTLA and further pure maths studies, you will probably come across proofs for things which you deemed intuitive or obvious.

Following this is some basic number theory and definitions of some types of groups. Number theory is the theory surrounding integers and investigates aspects such as divisibility or factorisation. Admittedly it is not a very prominent topic in GTLA; the areas discussed are the Euclidean algorithm (arising from the division algorithm), Bezout's identity, some properties regarding divisibility, some modular arithmetic, and the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. The results here are discussed in the context of the integers, but some generalise (to an extent) to other sets, such as the set of polynomials. In fact, you will encounter Bezout's identity applied to polynomials later on.

The \(\mathbf{Z}/n\mathbf{Z}\) class of groups is carefully defined during the discussion of modular arithmetic (even though you have not been told what a group is). This class of groups reappears frequently in GTLA and is probably the type of group with which you will become most familiar.

Following the number theory topics, some types of groups are defined. Starting with the most general, these are:
  • rings,
  • commutative rings,
  • fields, and
  • algebraically closed fields.
All algebraically closed fields are fields, and all fields are commutative rings, and so on. The purpose of this short section is to define fields and algebraically closed fields, which is necessary to understand the next topic on the Jordan normal form, as they are mentioned in some definitions and results.

Properties specific to these types of groups are not really discussed in GTLA, but it is important to know what the definitions of these types of groups are. Admittedly it might be easier to revisit these definitions once you are taught the definition of a group (which is yet to take place at this point).

The Jordan normal form
The first major topic, the Jordan normal form, essentially occupies the lectures in Weeks 3 to 6. The main result can be stated quite easily, but there is a myriad of intermediate results leading up to it. In fact, you do not even discuss all the intermediate results completely (an important one is left for MAST30005 Algebra).

The motivation behind studying the Jordan normal form is that many square matrices, when interpreted as linear transformations, are actually the "same" linear transformation but expressed with respect to a different basis. Equivalently, a linear transformation interpreted for different bases gives you many different matrix representations, but they are fundamentally really one and the same. Imagine, in \(\mathbf{R}^3\)
  • a dilation by a factor of 2 from the \(x\)–\(y\) plane; and
  • a dilation by a factor of 2 from the \(y\)–\(z\) plane.
These are really quite similar — they are the same linear transformation but for different bases.

The Jordan normal form of a matrix is the simplest square matrix among all those which can be said to be the same linear transformation as the original (the basis will generally be different). Notably, the Jordan normal form is unique up to permutation of the basis vectors, and its simplicity comes in the form of being almost diagonal.

This topic comes under linear algebra, and you will need to be familiar with first-year linear algebra content to understand this topic, as there is very little time for revision, and new ideas are introduced fairly quickly. Make sure you know what these are: subspaces, spans, bases, row reduction, the rank–nullity theorem, linear transformations, change of basis, eigenvalues, and eigenvectors. Alex includes thorough notes for these first-year topics, but they are hardly discussed in lectures.

The number of intermediate results for this topic is quite remarkable, and it will probably be overwhelming to be familiar with all of them. I would recommend being familiar with properties of invariant subspaces (subspaces which are invariant under a linear transformation), as they are most easily examined; there are quite a few tricks involved with the other intermediate results.

Overall this topic is a very involved and instructive exposure to the Jordan normal form; there are numerous defined stages, and the way it is delivered certainly feels like you are stepping through history (the stages are something like: square matrices \(\to\) block diagonal matrices \(\to\) upper triangular block diagonal matrices \(\to\) almost diagonal matrices i.e. the Jordan normal form).

The topic concludes with lectures discussing applications of these results to special relativity and Markov chains.

Introduction to groups
After 6 weeks of lectures, you are finally properly introduced to the foreign half of the namesake of this subject. Several definitions and properties are immediately thrown at you; as a completely new mathematical object, it is bound to be overwhelming at the offset.

My recommendation is to study these new definitions, properties, and concepts in the context of a single group. This is done in many examples in lectures, but if you find this to be insufficient in consolidating these concepts, then isolating a single group (maybe a dihedral group or \(\mathbf{Z}/n\mathbf{Z}\)) and studying all the discussed concepts (subgroups, orders, finding generators, finding homomorphisms to other groups, normal subgroups, applying the first isomorphism theorem, and so on) in the context of that group may help.

In becoming familiar with these concepts, I also found it invaluable linking group concepts with those in vector spaces. There are some very obvious parallels, and your greater familiarity with vector spaces may mean that drawing parallels allows you to grasp the group concepts more quickly.

There are several classes of groups appearing frequently throughout GTLA. You definitely need to know what these are by their symbolic representations, as they may not be defined in the questions that use them. These include
  • \(\mathbf{Z}/n\mathbf{Z}\) for natural \(n\) under addition (for \(n > 1\) but especially prime \(n\));
  • the dihedral group \(D_n\) consisting of symmetries of a regular \(n\)-gon for \(n > 2\);
  • the symmetric group \(S_n\) consisting of permutations of \(n\) distinct elements;
  • the general linear group \(\mathrm{GL}_n(K)\) consisting of invertible \(n \times n\) matrices with entries in a field \(K\) (with the operation being matrix multiplication); and
  • the special linear group \(\mathrm{SL}_n(K)\) consisting of \(n \times n\) matrices with determinant \(1\) with entries in a field \(K\) (with the operation being matrix multiplication).

With algebra being the study of structures of sets, some concepts are introduced in this topic to study the structure of groups. The existence of a homomorphism between two groups means that their structures are similar (in the way that elements interact with each other). The existence of an isomorphism between two groups means that their structures are identical.

The main result in this topic is the first isomorphism theorem, which gives a decomposition of a group's structure if there is a homomorphism with another group. For example, the non-zero complex numbers under multiplication is a group, and, using the first isomorphism theorem, one part of its structure can be identified as the structure of the positive real numbers under multiplication.

Another notion related to the decomposition of group structure is a normal subgroup. Together with the first isomorphism theorem (in which normal subgroups make an appearance anyway), they make up the majority of the methods used to study group structure in GTLA.

One of the other important sections in this topic is the theory on free groups. A free group is a type of group where elements have minimal properties (this is not a rigorous description). By imposing properties on certain elements, a free group assumes more structure. Free groups are introduced to discuss group presentations, which, given a particular group structure, are the ways of changing the structure of a free group to arrive at that particular group structure.

Group presentations are thus bare representations of group structure. They are not used heavily in GTLA, but it is good to know that there is a universal notation for talking about group structures. Sometimes Alex may use a group presentation to denote a group [structure] instead of using its common name, mostly for dihedral groups (the group presentations have the potential to be horrendous). There is also a small section on using group presentations to study homomorphisms between groups.

At the end of this topic is a short example relating group theory to RSA cryptography.

Inner product spaces
After a decent exposure to group theory is a topic on inner product spaces, beginning at around Week 10.

Inner products are no stranger: you have encountered its definition in AM1.

An inner product space is simply a vector space endowed with an inner product. With an inner product, notions like distance, length, orthogonality, and angle come into existence. This topic is (probably) the most important in preparing for future studies in topology (MAST30026 Metric and Hilbert Spaces).

While inner products were largely studied in the context of real numbers in AM1, the treatment in GTLA is more general. This is important if you remember a part of the definition of an inner product as symmetry — this is not true outside the real numbers.

The Gram–Schmidt process makes a reappearance with the appropriate reassurance that it is indeed an algorithm for finite-dimensional inner product spaces.

The most important concept introduced is the adjoint of a linear transformation on an inner product space. Its inclusion seems somewhat arbitrary at first but is necessary in discussing the intermediate results leading up to the major result of this topic. Linear transformations can be classified as certain types if conditions involving itself and its adjoint are satisfied. The different ways of characterising these types of linear transformations is the focus of a few of the results in lectures and problems in the tutorials and exams — sometimes you will be asked to prove that two different characterisations are equivalent. This can be quite difficult because of the numerous characterisations (I certainly do not recommend memorising the proofs), but luckily in exam situations hints are given.

The spectral theorem, the main result of this topic, states the conditions under which matrices can be represented as a diagonal matrix with respect to an orthonormal basis. You may recall in AM1 that this was always possible for real symmetric matrices; that was no coincidence, and the spectral theorem is the more general result.

Group actions
This is a short topic which begins in the middle of Week 11.

A group action is a set of rules dictating how a group interacts with a general set. The set may even be a group itself, which makes for slightly richer results.

There is a bit of terminology to learn, particularly when discussing the conjugation group action (this is a type of group action on a group).

The main result here is the orbit–stabiliser formula, which relates the number of elements in the group involved in a group action to other characteristics of the group action. These characteristics of the group action happen to be relatively easy to determine (at least that is the case in GTLA), so the result is useful when the group is not completely known.

Sylow theorems
This topic is even shorter than the topic on group actions is and only takes one or two lectures — in fact, it is included under the group actions section in the notes, even though the results themselves do not involve group actions. They are, however, a generalisation of Cauchy's theorem, the proof of which relies on group actions.

The Sylow (pronounced sill-low) theorems are results that assert the existence of subgroups of certain sizes in a group. More precisely, there are four results, and you will have to memorise these results, because their proofs are not discussed in GTLA (I gather they are probably far too difficult).

These theorems are the last major tool used to study the structure of groups in GTLA, and the relevant problems in the exam are usually also the harder ones.

The subject ends on a brief note of the massive mathematical work dedicated to classifying group structure. From 1955 to 2004, mathematicians collaborated to classify all finite simple groupsfinite referring to the number of elements in the group and simple referring to the fact that the structure is monolithic and cannot be decomposed further. It was a work that required tens of thousands of pages and is just further proof that group theory, though founded on a novel three-part definition of a group, is certainly no simple matter.

Lectures
Alex produces a ridiculously comprehensive set of lectures notes, on which the lectures are based completely. These are incrementally provided on the subject's website at http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~aghitza@unimelb/teaching/gtla/ (Alex really only used the LMS for some announcement emails). The set of notes is beautifully produced in \(\LaTeX{}\), with numbering and labelling of basically everything (such as Theorem 4.43, Lemma 3.22, or Example 4.9). The notes are even labelled with the dates on which content was discussed in lectures and some estimates of when future content will be covered.

That is not to say that lectures are unnecessary, but it is certainly a relief that basically everything discussed in lectures is written in mathematical prose.

The lectures themselves are of a high quality, and Alex consistently gives clear concise explanations for new concepts. Being an abstract subject, it was brilliant to see so many examples for everything. After introducing new concepts (or sometimes before the introduction, in order to clarify the motivation for studying them), Alex would discuss concrete examples and explain how parts of the definitions were satisfied, how the properties hold, how to apply an algorithm to this case, and so on. It was helpful to see all the theory in action in a lecture, and this made the subject far less intimidating.

Even putting aside the fantastic lecture quality, I would recommend going to lectures simply because Alex makes most of his announcements there. Unless you are stringent in regularly checking the subject website (or watching lecture recordings), it is possible you may be late in finding out important information. Sometimes tutorials also required content from the current week (more on that later), which means even lecture recordings are not timely enough.

Alex does not ask the students many questions during lectures, but keep in mind there is consistently quite a lot of material that needs to be covered, so opportunities for open brainstorming by students are few and far between.

On the note of the amount of content, I would say that in 2016 Semester 2 lectures were slightly behind, given that there was sometimes a bit of rushing at the end of lectures. All content was covered by the end, however.

Alex writes on the whiteboard during lectures, so it is ideal not to sit too far back. Technically both video (for the document camera) and audio are recorded, but the video is inherently not of much use. In 2016 Semester 2, Alex used the document camera for one of the lecturing venues because the students were seated too far from the whiteboard for it to be useful. I assume that this means the whiteboard will always be used unless it is physically infeasible during lectures.

Tutorials
Tutorials follow the traditional format for maths subjects. You are given a tutorial sheet at the start of the tutorial and form groups to solve the problems.

I would say that tutorial problems were generally hard, but this needs qualification: because of the new concepts and definitions that were consistently being introduced in lectures each week, unless you were consistently up to date with a good memory of all the definitions and results, you would not even be able to attempt the more basic problems on the tutorial sheets.

Realistically speaking, there were only ever one or two problems (out of seven or eight) that required innovative ideas or tricks; tutorial problems were by and large computational or simple applications of definitions or results. Sometimes a technique that was used in a proof in lectures would come in use, so it is important not only to know the content delivered in lectures, but also some of the methods and tricks employed in some of the delivered proofs, which Alex may not always explicitly point out. For example, if you are given that an inner product of certain elements in a vector space is always 0, then attempting to make both operands the same expression would mean that the operand has to equal 0 by the definition of an inner product. This is a technique used a few times in the inner product spaces topic.

Tutorial sheets are made available online on the subject's website, and at the end of the week solutions are also made available. The solutions contain fairly comprehensive working, so you should be able to understand solutions to all tutorial problems by the end of the semester.

I am not sure if this was intentional, but sometimes tutorial problems involved content which had only been delivered in lectures occurring in the same week as the tutorial. Older students will know that problem-based tutorials usually only have problems that need content covered up until the end of the previous week. I took this as a further sign that lectures were behind schedule, but even though my own tutorial was in the middle of the week, I never encountered problems in tutorials that needed content that was yet to be covered, so it is possible that the tutorials were deliberately scheduled to make this possible.

Assignments
There are three assignments throughout the semester, all uploaded on the subject's website (not the LMS). These are collectively worth 20% of your final grade; precise information about the breakdown was not provided.

Make sure you know when they are released, because assignment releases were not announced on the LMS; Alex points out in lectures when they are released, although this was sometimes one or two days after it was already available on the website (in case you are very keen).

Assignments are released before the required content has been fully covered, but it is still possible to complete some of it at the time of release. Students are given slightly more than two weeks to submit for each assignment.

Assignments are not very difficult and are fairly short; the difficulty is comparable to those on tutorial sheets, and most assignment problems are also direct computations or simple applications of results. In 2016, there was one question which introduced a new concept, but it was not mentioned again elsewhere.

Be careful to give full justification for everything; rigour is absolutely vital in pure maths.

End-of-semester exam
The exam is 3 hours long and is divided into Parts A and B. As with many maths subjects, it constitutes 80% of your final grade in GTLA. Historically, the exams that Alex has prepared have all been worth 100 marks each, with Parts A and B each worth 50 marks.

Part A is an act of mercy, honestly (given the difficulty of this subject): it consists purely of tutorial questions, many of which are reproduced verbatim, others of which may involve different numbers but otherwise can be dispensed with identically. This is announced by Alex to be the case, so this is not secret information or anything.

The message here is clearly that you should practise and be able to provide solutions to every single tutorial problem. This is not very far from knowing all the definitions and results fairly competently, but as mentioned earlier the more technique-based problems will require more attention. I am not recommending that you memorise solutions to all the tutorial problems; I am, however, advocating in favour of a good knowledge of all the definitions and results (no surprise here) and a reasonable familiarity with the techniques used in some of the harder tutorial problems.

Part A contributes a maximum of 40 to your final grade, so with a reasonable assignment performance, passing GTLA should not be an issue, even if you insist on rote-learning solutions to tutorial problems. Note that this is not a hurdle exam.

Part B is the more involved section of the paper, with a multi-part question dedicated to each of the topics outlined in the subject content above. Group actions and Sylow theorems are treated as one topic, so it is possible that one may not be tested in Part B.

The questions in this section are overall substantially harder than all tutorial problems (even the harder tutorial problems). The difficulty is mitigated in that marks are split between more parts, many of which are clues towards what may be useful in later parts. Sometimes hints are also explicitly included for harder questions.

There is nothing in Part B which requires the reproduction of a proof given in lectures, so there is no need to memorise those proofs. You may be required to prove a simpler version of results in lectures, however. For example, if a proof of the equivalence of statements \(A\), \(B\), and \(C\) was given in lectures by proving \(A \Rightarrow B\), \(B \Rightarrow C\), and \(C \Rightarrow A\), you may be required to prove in Part B of the exam that \(A\) and \(C\) are equivalent, i.e. that \(A \Rightarrow C\) and \(C \Rightarrow A\), noting that \(A \Rightarrow C\) is probably easier to prove than proving both\(A \Rightarrow B\) and \(B \Rightarrow C\).

Some of the question parts in Part B will require original arguments that you may not have encountered before. This is hit-and-miss from student to student, so do not fret about these parts. I found that the hardest question in Part B was usually a question regarding group actions or the Sylow theorems. In particular, classifying group structure with the Sylow theorems was not always very straightforward; Alex does some examples of these in lectures, but it is clear that there is no methodical approach that applies to all groups. (There is also the 50-year classification of finite simple groups in case you are not convinced.)

Occasionally you will be asked in Part B to write down a theorem statement. This is something you should do verbatim, as the wording of mathematical theorems is always very precise, so I recommend memorising all the statements of the major result from each of the topics mentioned earlier. In particular, do not forget smaller details like the requirement for a vector space to be finite-dimensional, a field to be algebraically closed, or whether the existence of something is unique. These are all vital details which taint the accuracy of your statement. Technically, of course, you are simply wrong if you omit anything, because this is maths. On the other hand, do not accidentally add more conditions to restrict the result, because what you state will then not be the required theorem, even though it may still be a true statement.

It helps if you are somewhat familiar with the proofs of these major theorems, because then you may be able to justify the conditions stated in the theorem even if you have not memorised the theorem statement verbatim. For example, the requirement for vector spaces to have finite dimension is because some of the theorems deal with matrices, which are by nature of finite dimension. The requirement for the field to be algebraically closed in the theorem about the Jordan normal form is because we require the minimal polynomial to be factored completely into linear factors, which is not always possible if the field is not algebraically closed.

You should expect to use the major theorem for each topic in Part B for the topics which are assessed, so try and apply the major theorem if you are ever stumped.

GTLA is a long stride away from most other undergraduate maths subjects, but if you are comfortable with abstract theory, then it gives you an insight into a very beautiful area of mathematics. The hard work is there, but so is the satisfaction.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Maths Forever on February 15, 2017, 05:21:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20030: Differential Equations

Workload: 3 x One Hour Lectures and 1 Problem Based Class per Week.

Assessment: Three Assignments (10% each, totalling 30%) and 3 Hour Written Examination (70%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: In 2016, the course had a new lecturer. The content and lecturing style was VERY different to how it ran in previous years (i.e. 2013 to 2015). As a result, the past exams were available (no answers), but were not so useful. The 620-232: Mathematical Methods exams (still no answers) from 1998 to 2007 were more useful. The lecturer made it clear which questions from all past exams were relevant and not so relevant. The lecturer also provided one practice exam for the current course (with no solutions). This was by far the best guide to what was expected. It was proposed in the SES feedback that in 2017, solutions to the practice exam will be made available.

Textbook Recommendation: There are no prescribed textbooks. The lecturer recommended the textbook ‘Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems’ by Boyce and DiPrima if you are looking for a source of questions (since there is no homework problem book prepared like in first year mathematics and Vector Calculus).

Lecturer(s): Dr David Ridout.

Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 2

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Rating: 5/5

Comments: Given that this was David’s first time lecturing the subject, I think he did an amazing job of delivering the course. David wrote the lecture material from scratch for the entire semester. As a result, the lecture slides were continually updated every few days or so. In my opinion, the amount of work that David put into preparing this course was very impressive.

I found that this course had a very good balance. The lectures contained plenty of examples on the theory being covered as well as detailed explanations on the theory behind the main ideas. If you took the effort to understand this theory, you appreciated what you were doing and did not feel like you were ‘blindly’ applying the techniques to solving differential equations. The course was also appropriate to second year level. David’s remodel of the course made it more enjoyable in my opinion. I felt that the content was suitably challenging and motivating throughout the entire semester. It was useful for students in all fields of science whether that be mathematics, chemistry, physics or engineering.

However, you needed to be prepared for the PACE of the subject. We covered a LOT of material in twelve weeks of lectures. David started off the course by reviewing the Calculus 2 content VERY quickly. You also needed to be competent with Linear Algebra concepts, since these ideas were used to motivate the ideas of differential equations.


The course covered five main topics across the twelve weeks of semester:

Linear Ordinary Differential Equations (Week 1 to 3): The first new subject of study was Reduction of Order (in which you learnt how to find a second linearly independent solution to a second order ODE if you already knew the first solution). Other sub-topics included the Wronskian, Higher Order Differential Equations, Systems of First Order Linear ODEs and Series Solutions for Linear ODEs.

Laplace Transforms (Week 3 to 6): This transform was a very useful technique to solve ODEs with constant coefficients, ODEs in which the inhomogeneous term was arbitrary (which introduced the concept of convolution), and solving ODEs in which the inhomogeneous term was piecewise continuous (i.e. had a finite number of discontinuities).

Boundary Value Problems and Fourier Series (Week 6 and 7): This topic covered the basis required for solving partial differential equations (PDEs). You learnt how to solve ODEs in which conditions were specified at the two endpoints of a domain for which the solution was valid (rather than at a single ‘initial’ point as is the case with initial conditions). Fourier series helped to express functions (e.g. x and x^2) in the form of a series solution which involved constant terms, sine terms and cosine terms.

Partial Differential Equations (Week 8 to 10): PDEs are applicable to all sorts of physical situations and, in this course, involve two variables. We studies three types of PDEs in this course; the heat equation, the wave equation and the Laplace equation, subject to suitable boundary and initial conditions. These equations involved differential equations which had partial derivatives (i.e. derivatives concerning only one variable, with the other variable held fixed).

Fourier Transforms (Week 11 to 12): This was the final topic, and probably the most difficult part of the course. You learn how to solve ODEs and PDEs in which there is no boundary on the domain (i.e. the ODE/PDE is unbounded). You explore all the various properties of the transform to help solve such types of differential equations.

PROBLEM BASED CLASSES: These were of the same format as first year Mathematics and Statistics subjects and Vector Calculus. At the start of the tutorial, you receive a series of questions and work on whiteboards in small groups to solve them. These problems are sometimes harder than what you would expect in an exam situation. The tutors are very knowledgeable and the solutions received after the class are detailed.

ASSIGNMENTS: Do not underestimate the amount of time required for each assignment. You certainly have to work hard to get the 10% credit in each of the assignments. They are very long and you are given about three weeks to complete each assignment. You should try to work on the assignment as the material is covered in each lecture. Do not wait until all of the content is covered, since this is typically not until about a week before the due date (and you need more time than that if you want to do well).

EXAM: The exam is pretty fair, and is consistent with the level of difficulty shown in the practice exam. If you have done plenty of practice during the semester and have worked consistently, you should be able to achieve a good final grade.

Even though I am not specialising in applied mathematics, I found this course very enjoyable and engaging. I give the lecturer a huge amount of credit for this. I would highly recommend this subject if you are planning to major in Mathematics and Statistics or are undertaking a major in applied science.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on June 21, 2017, 03:34:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: Introductory Econometrics (ECOM20001)  

Workload: 2 x 1hr lectures per week, 1 x 1hr tute per week

Assessment: 
Optional MST (10%)
2 Assignments worth (10% ea.)
Tutorial attendance and participation (5%)
End of semester exam (65%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 3 were available over the course of the semester. Plenty of review material was also supplied.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don’t know, but you really don’t need it. Lecture slides and tutorial work is sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Joe Hirschberg

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Sem 1

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A [79]  :'(
Comments:

This subject is an introduction into the world of econometric modelling – meaning that the subject is entirely regression based. Don’t let the narrow scope fool you however, as this subject goes far deeper than the brief overview of regression modelling that was taught in QM1.

The first month of the course is easy enough, as it’s mainly an overview of what was taught at the end of QM1. The assumptions underpinning the OLS model, using t-tests, hypothesis testing, constructing confidence intervals etc. After that, it sort of ramps up a bit. You learn all these different types of tests on data, how to model binary independent and dependant variables, the effects of heteroskedasticity and collinearity, and finally you do a little bit of analysis and breaking down of time series data.

Throughout the semester, you’ll be using a program called E-Views which basically runs your regression for you and gives you data on its strength, errors etc. It’s not too hard to get your head around, which is good because it features heavily in assignments and some E-Views output is put on the exam for you to analyse.

Lectures

Lectures are actually alright in some areas. Joe usually introduces the concept, derives the formula/test/distribution, then provides some real world example and intuition using the aforementioned E-views output. Like QM1, they can get a big jargon-y at times, so you have to really pay attention to know what’s happening in each step. Given the nature of the subject, it can get a bit dry at times but it is satisfying to see why stuff works the way it does and how it all clicks together. Joe also does get through some practise questions using the topics you’ve just learnt too, so that was helpful as well.

Tutorials

Tutorials consisted of going through a few questions each week using E-Views. The questions were basically “here’s a regression for this model, analyse it using this technique/test”. As such, questions get repetitive over the course of the semester. I found that the tutor always rushed through the answers so I never really got it while I was in the class itself, but once I went home and reviewed everything it started to make a lot more sense. There’s also 5% in tutorial marks for attendance, so if nothing else go for that extra boost to your score.

Mid-sem test

About three weeks into the semester you do an optional mid-semester test with counts for 10% if your mid-semester test score is greater than your exam score, so you might as well do it. The test itself isn’t too bad, just 12 MC questions on the basic regression models and the assumptions underpinning it. Most people I know got 9+, it wasn’t too challenging at all.

Assignments

The assignments aren’t too bad. They include a question from a past exam that tests your understanding of certain formulas, while the rest of the assignments are running E-views regressions and analyzing the output using different tests. They do take alot of time, as there is alot of graphing and constructing regression equations involved. While the questions aren't too difficult,they are pretty lengthy and time-consuming so don't leave it till the last minute.

Also, there's a section on programming in E-Views, where you've got to write E-Views code for things you already know how to do using the buttons on E-Views itself. The problem here is that they don't actually teach you how to write code in tutorials or lectures, so it's pretty much entirely up to you to learn it. They don't assess it in the exam either, so I found this part pretty frustrating and unnecessary - difficult for the sake of being difficult.

Exam

The exam itself was pretty good I found. 2017 semester 1 was the first semester that all FBE subjects are a hurdle (new policy), so I think the lecturer acknowledged this and made the exam not too difficult. There were a few multi-choice and true/false questions, then some short answer questions where you’ve either got to manually run a regression or analyse some E-Views output and run tests/comment on it.

There were enough easy questions in there to pass quite comfortably, but some questions were pretty tough so getting a high score is quite difficult.
That being said, the short answer questions format is extremely similar to the past exams/review sheets that Joe hands out, so if you can get through those and understand the content you’ll be set for high marks.

Overall

This subject serves as an introduction to econometric modelling and one of the pathways you can take if you want to major in economics. It can get a bit overwhelming at times (sometimes Joe will rush through slides and you’ll have no idea what’s going on), but on reflection the subject was pretty repetitive. If you can nail down the core principles (understanding the basis for a regression model and the tests we use on them) then you’ll be in a good place come exam time. All the tricky stuff at the end of the semester is really just an extension of the basic stuff you learn at the start of the semester, which isn’t too hard to grasp if you managed to get through QM1.

Good luck!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: wobblywobbly on June 23, 2017, 12:06:15 am
Subject Code/Name: ECON10002: Seminar in Economics and Commerce A 

Workload:  2 x 1.5 hour seminars weekly

Assessment:
2 assignments, marked out of 25, weighted 25% each (total of 50%)
1 examination (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No, due to the nature of the subject.

Past exams available: Sample exams were not given, however they are available in the Bailleu Library.

Textbook Recommendation:  "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner, available at the Co-op. Recommended as readings are required for a full understanding of the subject. More readings will be given to you by Robert, as in he will print them for you.

Lecturer(s): Professor Robert Dixon

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2, 2016

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Note: This is a quota subject that accepts approximately ~25 students. You must have completed a maximum of 50 points and one semester when signing up for this subject. For more information on how to apply, see here on how to sign-up.

Summary
The subject is completely different to what you have done so far in university. It is a subject that focuses on the history of economic thought and political economy from Adam Smith to Keynes, Friedman to Marx. There is also a bit of crossover with Introductory Macroeconomics throughout the semester, which you may or may not find useful when you're doing it simultaneously.

You will get a list of things you will study in the first seminar (note this changes throughout the years, so you might not learn exactly the same things we did), but the this list will get reordered around depending on how the class goes with the topics -- there is a large variety of them. We learnt about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Malthus, Say's Law, the Cobb-Douglas production function, the model of the real wage/wage share, Keynesian theories on demand, implications of monopoly power, Walras' Law, Domar's and the Solow-Swan model of growth, and Milton Friedman's explanations on unemployment and inflation.

Seminars
The first thing that's different about this subject is the seminars. Instead of the typical FBE subject structure of 2 x 1 hour lectures and an hour of tutorial, it is 2 x 1.5 hour seminars. At the start of each lesson you'll get a hand-out of what will be covered (which is also posted on LMS), but in a typical seminar what it generally asks with questions about the previous seminar, answering the set questions in the previous seminar, then reading and discussing the reading for that seminar. Sometimes there is additional reading to be done outside of class, either in Heilbroner or again, in the hand-outs. It's best to prepare for the questions because he will go around the class and ask each person to answer a question (although you can refuse to answer if you don't want to, but it's not a good look). Sometimes you'll watch a movie (e.g. about Keynes) instead of the discussions. Robert clearly knows his stuff, is sometimes hilarious, and has been at the university for ages. Of course, because of all of these discussions, it's quite difficult to record, so there is no lecture capture. If you can't go to a seminar, just ask a friend to borrow their notes for the lesson. All of the hand outs are on the LMS anyways, so you're missing out on the answers and the discussion.

Assignments
There are two assignments which can be done in groups of up to four, and both are worth 25%, giving them a 50% weighting. You'll typically receive them a few weeks in advance. You're encouraged to work in groups because these questions require a lot of thinking and discussion to get through. It is compulsory to meet with Robert beforehand in a consulation to discuss the assignment in-person before submission (maybe a week in advance). This means you should complete your assignment ASAP so that you can fine tune it before you bring it in to Robert where he discusses where you may have gone wrong in your reasoning. Just don't write things carelessly because there's been stories of him roasting people :P These discussions are absolutely helpful because he gives hints and tips on how to do well on the assignment, but he won't help you if you haven't written anything down, so do so. Because of this, it shouldn't be too hard to do well: most, if not all of the class got above 90% combined. In the second 'consultation,' he'll also sit with you and talk about what you want to do in UniMelb and give you subject recommendations based on what you tell him.

Exam
The exam is weighted 50%. Robert will tell you which seminars to focus on for the exam, including their associated hand-outs/readings and related assignment questions. One of the questions on the exam which will be worth about a third, will be based on a reading that is given in the very last seminar, and you will also know that exact question in advance as well (i.e. exactly what will be asked). Prepare for this question, but obviously you can't ask Robert to check it for you because that would be unfair. The exam was very fair and there weren't any nasty tricks or anything like that.

To sum up
Definitely give this subject a go if you're given a chance. This is a subject that really pushes your understanding of economics, and helps keep you informed about the different schools of economic thought, (e.g. the Chicago school of economics) something which isn't covered by the normal economics subjects. The content crossover into Introductory Macroeconomics was definitely useful to understanding how those models were arrived and reached at, as well as their criticisms and critiques instead of just learning what they are and how to use them. When I took this subject, Robert was also teaching Macro as well, and I do recall that Seminar helped us with some of the assignment questions in Macro. Robert is an outstanding lecturer too. We liked Robert so much we bought him a few presents in the final seminar.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on July 01, 2017, 05:45:25 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1
Workload:  4×1 hour lecturers per week, 1×2 hour 'tutorial' per week (A prac, followed by a computer lab session - must be in this order, together in a 2 hr block)
Assessment:  3 written assignments (9%), 3 online assignments (6%), 45 minute MATLAB test (5%), 3 hour end of semester exam (80%)
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  Pretty much all the past papers for this subject can be found on the library website. The solutions for the past 4 papers were placed on the LMS near exam time. Also, a sample MATLAB test without answers was provided
Textbook Recommendation:  Elementary Linear Algebra, Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 11th edn, Wiley, 2013, is recommended. IMO it doesn't need to be purchased, the lecture slides and work book that is provided is enough.
Lecturer(s): Craig Hodgson
Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 1
Rating: 4 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H2B (74)
Comments: Overall: As the subject name suggests, this is a fast paced and difficult subject, however if you like maths and you're willing to put in the effort, it's an interesting subject that will teach you many new concepts. Also, a book of practice questions is on LMS at start of year which is an awesome resource.

Lectures: Personally, I found the 4 hour/week load a lot to take on as a new Uni student. In hindsight, if I knew how the AM1 lectures operated, I would have only attended Uni 2 or 3 times/week, and watched the rest at home (Craig records everything, so unless the capture wasn’t working – happened once – you can pretty much get everything at home. However, I’d heard this is not the case for AM2, and you must attend these unless you can self-teach yourself). In terms of the content, be prepared to not understand a t lot that goes on when it’s first presented to you – understanding will usually take you to really look over notes, do practice questions, rewatch lectures ect. I know a lot of people said they had no idea what was going on in lectures. However, if you put in this effort, thinks eventually come together, although you must keep on top of it due to the fast pace.

Tutorials: I would highly recommend going to all tutes, even if you’re not understanding the content yet. You received a sheet (and full worked solutions), and work through it on the board in groups. Obviously it’s not the end of the world if you miss a session as you can get copies of these from a friend, but IMO the tutors input really helps, especially with regards on notation/setting out, which they’re really picky about in assignments and the exam.

MATLAB: I’m not really qualified to say much here as I failed the test, but you have a lab after your tute once a week. MATLAB is basically a big calculator, and the lab teach you the basics, then go into different concepts, some related to lectures and some not. The test will be on concepts learnt in lectures with usually one programming/’create m-file’ question; make sure you’re on top of these for the test - you may have to do extra research. 

Assignments: There are two types of assignments – online and written. IMO, online assignments are the closest thing you get to a participation mark. If you’ve kept up to date and can do the basics, full making them is very possible, as you get unlimited time (up to due date) and three attempts. Written assignments are a lot tricker, and you should be pedantic about notation, and there’s usually at least one very difficult question.  But again, good scores are possible if you’re on top of it.

Exam: Most likely due to the difficulty of the subject, most the questions are just straight up theory based. It is non-calculator, so make sure you can do everything by hand. It’s a big chunk of the subject, but usually they are enough ‘basic’ questions so that if you’ve kept on top of everything, you can put at least a 70, with some very difficult questions to separate the cohort. Personally, I had a bit of time, but made some very silly mistakes, so be careful with your answers!   
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on July 01, 2017, 06:31:04 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10002 Principles of Finance
Workload:  1×2 hour lecturer per week, 1×1 hour tutorial per week
Assessment:  Tutorial participation (10%), Assignment (10%), 1 hour Mid-semester exam (20%), 2 hour end of semester hurdle exam (60%)
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  No, as it is a new subject. However, two sample exams with solutions were provided for both exams, and exam questions from similar subjects are put in tutorial work.
Textbook Recommendation:  Berk, J. and DeMarzo, P., Corporate Finance: The Core, 4th ed is the main one you need. Principles of Corporate Finance, 12 th ed is optional, but not needed.
Lecturer: Asjeet Lamba (Lecture apparently changes for semester 2 though)
Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 1
Rating: 4.5 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)
Comments: Overall: This subject, along with ARA and micro, was a great introduction to commerce for your typical maths/science high school student. I really enjoyed the maths in this subject, as well as the introduction to the stock market. It can get tricky at times, but it’s not an overly hard subject and if you put the effort in good grades are very achievable. The only reason I gave it 4.5 instead of 5 was because sometimes there were exam questions requiring you to remember diagrams/graphs in lectures, however you could usually alternatively figure it out with some understanding. 

Textbook: I would only recommend Corporate Finance: The Core, although you can honestly probably get by without it. The reading gets a bit much every week, and I personally didn’t understand a lot straight away. However, doing the pre-reading can help you get a preview before lectures, and can complement your understanding.

Lectures: Not everything will make sense straight away, but lectures definitely aid your understanding. Asjeet goes through the theory with exams, as well as case studies, showing you how it’s applicable to real life. I’d recommend attending, or watching at home, whichever works best for you.

Tutorials/Tutorial participation: The participation mark for this subject is IMO a lot more objective than others. You need to attempt some questions, and hand it in to your tutor, and you need to hand in 8/10 for full marks – should pretty much be a guaranteed 10% if you’re trying. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes, as long as your tutor thinks it’s an attempt – even if you’re not understanding yet you can just sub some values into a formula and still get full participation marks :) Tutorials involve you discussing questions you’ve been given the week before to work on, and your tutor then taking everyone through the answers. Answers uploaded to the LMS are minimal, so I’d recommend attending, and definitely stay on top of pre-tute work.

Assignment: Pretty much a take home multiple choice exam, but with easier questions. If you’ve got the basics, can easily be full marked (at least the semester I did this subject).

Exams: A formula sheet without descriptions is provided, however it is not just about plugging in numbers – you need to understand what the formula is doing, and well as theory behind the stock market, companies ect. The exams are quite a bit more difficult than the assignment, but once you put everything together it’s not too hard. Ultimately, this subject just requires consistent effort.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Alter on July 01, 2017, 10:57:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC20006 - Biological Psychology

Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures per week, and 1 x 2 hour tutorial every second week

Assessment: 2000 word lab report split into two evenly weighted sections (each 1000 words and each worth 20%), due in weeks 5 and 9 (40%), 2 hour exam consisting of 120 MCQ (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yep

Past exams available: No past exams, but the quizzes on the LMS are very similar to the exam and should be used like past exams

Textbook Recommendation: Physiology of Behaviour is prescribed, but never really mentioned or used. All of the information that you need is in the lecture slides.

Lecturer(s):
Stefan Bode - Brain Imaging Techniques (2 weeks)
Piers Howe - Brain Imaging Techniques (1 week) and Statistics (1 week)
Jacqueline Anderson - Neurobiology of Memory (2 weeks)
Patrick Goodbourn - Neurogenetics (2 weeks)
Olivia Carter - Psychopharmacology (4 weeks)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2016

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
I thought it'd be a good idea to revamp the subject review for this, because a couple of the lecturers have changed with a new topic being introduced since Paulrus did his review, but I'll leave it in the same format. My sentiments mostly echo previous reviews in the sense that this is a really great subject with a manageable workload that I'd recommend to anyone that's capable of fitting it in their study plan. For context, I did this subject as a Biomedicine selective without having done MBB1/2.

Lectures:
Stefan is the new subject coordinator for Biological Psychology and he is a widely-loved and entertaining lecturer. He has a funny and extraordinarily engaging lecture style and really delivers the content in an enthusiastic way. Stefan covers the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation and the EEG with four lectures overall. There's not too much to say here outside of the fact that Stefan is one of the reasons why this subject is so great. He also has a beautiful German accent.

Formerly, Piers was subject coordinator and did Stefan's part of the course as well. It seems like he got the short end of the stick teaching the two areas of the subject that people find particularly dreadful: physics (of the fMRI) and statistics. In all honesty, Piers is a pretty solid lecturer and he does a great job with the content he teaches. It's obvious he knows what he is talking about. I think that it's fair to say that you might need to do an extra bit of work for this part of the course depending on your background. Having done Physics for Biomedicine and EDDA (level 1 stats subject), I was pretty comfortable dealing with the little bit of physics and statistics that is covered; however, I think these areas are totally manageable even without that background. The statistics part of the course is basically just preparing you for the assignment and you need to be able to do t tests and understand the different ones, really not much to worry about.

I think Jacqueline's section is fairly straightforward. It's probably fair to say that as a lecturer, she isn't quite as engaging as the others, but there's nothing particularly bad about her as a lecturer. The content itself is quite simple, and if you've done VCE psychology you'll find that you've already done half of the stuff before, which is a nice bonus. Make sure you understand all the different types of memory and memory systems, because you need a solid foundation of understanding for this part of the course.

Patrick Goodbourn, another new lecturer, is very witty and clearly a huge expert in his field. It's also probably fair to say that his section of Biological Psychology is the hardest one. I was extraordinarily grateful to have come from a Biomed background with genetics subjects, because he really expects you to understand what's going on when he's talking about genetics, and his questions will be impossible if you only have superficial knowledge. Overall, I'd be willing to say that neurogenetics was probably the most interesting topic I've covered at uni, but learning it will not come easily. Be warned that you will need to write down A LOT of information that he doesn't say, because his slides are simply barren. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can make it quite tricky if you're unsure what you actually need to know. If you have no biology background, this will be tricky.

Olivia is another great lecturer and she covers psychopharmacology. You will see based on the number of lectures this topic has that this area will be hugely important for the exam (it's basically 1/3 of the course... so learn it well). Olivia is super engaging and will basically start off with an overview of how psychopharmacology works, and then delve into a bunch of different neurotransmitters that you're expected to know and understand. 

Tutorials:
The tutorials are pretty cool, but are mostly just there to help you with the assignments. One of the tutorials will involve you changing room to go to a computer room where you use SPSS to do data analysis for your lab report, and it's extremely important you pay attention to what's happening here or you'll have issues down the track. My tutor was a really awesome dude who was actually doing work in Stefan's lab, and basically gave us tons of tips on doing psychology because he was in our position doing Biopsych a few years back. If anything, I'd advise you to use your tutor as a resource if you (a) want to do well in the assignments, because they mark it; or (b) want to know more about psychology at Melb uni.

Assessment:
The previous review mentioned the lab report changing, which I believe will be applicable for those doing this subject in 2018, so I'll save the time by not going into the details and instead give some tips. My general advice for the assignments is to make sure you don't neglect the value of strong scientific writing (it's not just about regurgitating sentences) as well as the importance of doing all your referencing properly. Everybody thinks they'll be fine for referencing, but virtually nobody gets full marks for it. Staff have really put a ton of effort into making sure there are resources for the assignments, and the head tutor Annie even took "classes" for questions about each of the assignments. At the end of the day, you are thrown into the deep end a bit if it's your first APA lab report, so take your time and start the assignments ASAP or you'll get destroyed.

Fortunately, the exam is all MCQ, which is one of the greatest parts of this subject. In terms of difficulty, I think the exam was overall pretty fair, but did have a few questions that ended up getting removed, so my advice is not to stress too much if you think there's no correct option and move on to the next. Also: spam the online quizzes over and over, and really make sure you are capable of questions like them, because the exam is almost identical in question style. I think Patrick's section had some really tough questions; if it wasn't obvious already, just because he only takes 3 lectures does not mean his section is a walk in the park.

Great subject. Do it if you're in Arts, Science, Biomed, or whatever. Good luck!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Elizawei on July 14, 2017, 11:03:51 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE 10002-Principles of Finance

Workload:  One weekly 2hr lecture, one weekly 1hr tutorial

Assessment:  One take home assignment (10%), tutorial participation- weeks 2 - 12, (10%), 1 hour closed book mid-semester examination (20%), 2 hour end-of-semester examination (hurdle) (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Nope, new subject as of 2017. However Lecturer provides 2 sample exams both before the mid sem and before the final exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  Berk, J. and DeMarzo, P., Corporate Finance: The Core, 4th ed (Extra readings is provided by lecturer)

Lecturer(s): Asjeet S. Lamba for semester 1, Howard Chan in semester 2

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments:
I am actually a Biomed student taking this as my first breadth subject. Definitely will recommend to other students as breadth if you're interested in a beginner's subject for finance! Due to Finance 1 only being available in Summer term, this subject is pretty much the equivalent of Finance 1 (FNCE10001). I think with enough work it should be an moderately "easy" breadth (no subject is inherently easy!). Workload during semester was minimal (compared to my other subjects) and it's overall not an intense subject.

Lectures: Excellent lecturer (Asjeet), however lectures can be fast paced and difficult to follow (especially after midsem) I did not attend much lectures after midsem and resorted to LecCapture and going slowly with the lecture notes. Asjeet does like to put in lots of case studies relating to current affairs which makes it engaging and interesting.

Tutorials: For me SO IMPORTANT without them I would not have understood. The tutor goes through all the pre-tute questions except for the part you have to hand in. The hand-in component is very small, would only take about 10 minutes (provided you know what to do! :P) Also the marks are for participation, there were so many tutes where I knew it was totally wrong but bsed my way through, they reward you full marks as long as you give it a good shot. You'll have to hand in 8/10 tutorial questions with decent attempts to achieve the full 10%, which is guaranteed imo provided you don't forget. Attendance is taken, however I found them to be extremely useful and recommend you to go to all of them.

Exams: Exams are more or less the same standard as the sample exams prvoided on the LMS. Mid sem exam can be difficult if you were purely preparing for application and not theory, however with adequate preparation you will do well. :) Formula sheets are provided for both exams but without descriptions. The final exam covered content from mid sem onwards, but of course many basics are incorporated in the more complicated calculations. 

TLDR: awesome subject (especially as a lvl 1 breadth for those who like easy maths and finance), 10/10 would recommend.  ;D

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kawfee on July 24, 2017, 07:59:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: ITAL10004 Italian Mid-Year Winter Intensive 

Workload:  4 days (Mon-Thurs) x 3 weeks - 2x 2 hour tutes per day, two different tutors assigned to each class

Assessment:  8x2.5% daily quizzes, 10% listening, x2 assignments (x10% each), Exam (40%) , Participation (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No, only in class tutorials

Past exams available:  No - this doesn't matter because you'll have enough in class practice.

Textbook Recommendation: 

Textbook - Salve 2nd

Some people didn't purchase the book but wrote down notes from class - which I think is suffice because the power points are informative  but this depends if you take good notes. I found the textbook good to note down practice examples and convenient to have instead of sharing in class. The activity book is great - with languages practice really does make perfect!!! So I highly recommend getting photocopies (it's in the library) of the exercises or getting the book/s (they'll put answers up on the LMS! Make sure to make note of your mistakes!)

Lecturer(s): Matteo - coordinator; Tutors: Beatrice, Danielle, Brent, Nick, Riccardo, Antonella

Year & Semester of completion: Winter 2017

Rating:  4.9 Out of 5 (0.1 off bcs well at times I was adfjalsd because of not being able to pick things up quickly but it is an intensive after all, and that's why you have downtime to self study and revise! That's just me.)

Your Mark/Grade: High H1

Comments:

Honestly the best subject I've completed during my undergraduate degree! Whether you love languages or not, I think anyone can pick it up given a reasonable amount of study and of course staying on top of your work because it is an intensive. Don't let the idea of an 'intensive' deter you from choosing this subject!

In class you do learn about grammar and vocab. You get to practise talking in Italian in partners and answer textbook questions. We also had the opportunity to visit an Italian Museum and watch an Italian Movie which was great - kept the intensive exciting!

"Intensive"

I'm not going to lie ...during the first week I was at times disconcerted because of the pace. Well the issue I had was answering questions when being picked on and I was lost or had to look at my notes to answer. Because of this I was seriously going to change breadths - but thankfully I did not! Yes you will be confused at times but once you get the day off you can revise and review everything. Or even better you ask the teacher right then and there 'I don't understand, please explain.'  I'm not a fast learner so to have Friday and the weekend off is great - I connected the dots together and self studied (which works best for me vs understanding things on the spot). So if you're like me bear through the day and revise at night to consolidate everything (learning a language does require patience, this is normal)! Futhermore because this is Level 1, despite it being an intensive there isn't much to cram because you learn things > practise them in class> get tested on content from the day before> so you really will be on top of it - ALSO big bonus everything is fresh for the exam, it was just some light revision and practice for the exam.

Teachers/Tutors
All the teachers are lovely and seem like they love teaching! No kidding! Matteo the coordinator is chill and happy to answer questions or deal with any concerns! He says that last year the cohort was ~40 and this year ~90 and he really wants to promote this subject for future years...probably why a lot of people did well too haha The tutors are really approachable and I think definitely ask for help in class then and there if they're going too quick! Just say 'Una domanda!' :D

Assessment:
8 daily vocab tests
They are easy to do well in. They test what you've learnt from the prior day. Most are one paged, all quizzes are short. There was one with comprehension qs too - it has basic sentences you already know. Advice: Revise all vocab, grammar from the day before

x2 Assignments:
Straightforward. They have two components: Part A is grammar e.g fill in the blank, Part B: Write a short passage (approx 60 words)
By the way they take Academic Integrity seriously (ofc) -make sure you don't google translate stuff.
Hot tip: Use simple, basic sentences you have learned in class. Even if it's "Venice e una citta molto bella" = Venice is a very beautiful city. Simple but enough to get you marks. Believe me!

Listening test

The teacher reads the passages (they are short!) out - clearly and with a decent pace too. The questions are MC true/false. Once again it's pretty easy as long as you got the vocab down. 

Participation:
They mark this fairly IMO but it's not just for attending class. They give you a rubric. Tutors go around the class to ask for answers (don't fret, everyone has to respond and don't worry if you don't know -- because it's an opportunity to learn) - but I think you have to actually give your opinion (e.g about the movie/videos you watch during class) to get H2A or H1. It's seriously ok if you can't form complete Italian sentences ( e.g What was this ad about? How does this ad portray Italians?) - just try in English if you can't!!! They'll help you out and everyone's a beginner.

Exam:
They prep you well for the exam - no kidding! They'll go through writing exercises that will aid you in the actual exam - you get an opportunity to test out your writing, the teacher will come around and correct your mistakes. I think the best advice I can give is: Practice makes perfect or Do the exercises in the Activity Book! The exam questions are really similar to the ones you get in your daily quizzes. From memory it was divided into Comprehension (True/False),  Grammar and Writing.

I could write moreee...but if you have specifics please feel free to inbox me with questions etc :) And please give this breadth a try - you might love it enough to continue on to Italian 2!  ;D



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shadowxo on July 25, 2017, 07:59:46 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10001 Physics 1: Advanced
Workload: 
3x 1 hour lectures
1x 3 hour practical
1x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:
15% - 10 weekly homework assignments (1.5% each)
25% - 8 weekly practicals (5% was prelabs, 20% was the prac and writeup) Hurdle, need to attend 80% of labs and get 50% average.
60% - 3 hour end of semester exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes. Exams from 2011-2016 with numerical answers (not detailed answers or working)

Textbook Recommendation:  Halliday & Resnick, Fundamentals of Physics, 10th ed., Wiley 2014. Not required but the lectures were difficult to follow, so I'd recommend getting a version of this book (9th edition and earlier are much cheaper).

Lecturer(s): David Jamieson for the first half (kinematics, motion) - enthusiastic but goes too fast for the class
Robert Scholton - second half (special relativity, gravitation, waves etc) - similar problems but tends to go a bit slower

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 1

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: High H2A

Comments:
Being brutally honest - this subject was not done well. This subject may change in the future, but when I did it this semester it wasn't taught well, went too fast, and was very disorganised.

Pracs:
These pracs were timetabled in for 3 hours but it was usually 10 minutes or so of explanation, and around 2 hours of doing the prac and writing it up. So, the pracs usually finished around half an hour early (one demonstrator said no writing after 12:30, the other helped us out and let us have extra time).
These pracs were usually where we learned the content. We often learnt the subject material in lectures around 2 weeks after we had a prac on it. There is also pre-lab work, and it can take a while to wrap your head around the pracs and concepts. Usually there were 2-4 sections of the pracs to complete, and you were lucky if you got 2 parts done. Each is like a separate prac and you will be rushing for a lot of it. In my pracs, most of the marks were from the analysis, regardless of how far through you got, so leave plenty of time for this. The amount of content that needed to be completed was ridiculous, the descriptions of the pracs were confusing, and it was often on new content we hadn't been taught. Pracs were a major source of stress for me.
The prelabs, though, are the easiest marks you can get, basically a free 5% for the subject. Takes 5 minutes or longer if you're researching the answer, and it's 3-4 multiple choice questions with some obvious answers.

Tutorials:
Some tutors were better than others. In my class, we did our own work while our tutor walked around, checked up on how people were going and answered questions. When things were explained, they were explained in a very complicated way that was difficult to understand. I found this very unhelpful, but I'm sure other classes were better.

Weekly Assignments:
10-13 online questions. They took 3-10 hours per week but were good marks if you were willing to put in the time relearning content and sticking with it. You were given 3 chances to get the right answer, so that was good. The questions were often confusing and difficult but the assignments did relieve a bit of the pressure off from the exams. The questions are by the textbook manufacturers not the lecturers, so they can end up being difficult.

Lectures:
The lecturers often went through concepts too fast and didn't explain things well. They seemed to like physics, just being a bit lacking in the teaching area. I didn't feel like I learned any more by being in the advanced, if anything I learned less. The lectures were also at inconvenient times - there was only one stream (half full). There was limited time for each topic (think we spent 1.5 lectures on special relativity, around 2-3 lectures for other topics). The demonstrations were enjoyable, the best part of lectures, but again not explained well. The lectures tended to go through things very fast and the lecture notes were difficult to understand, with very few examples. I walked out of many lectures having no idea about what they just taught. They also had a lot of "aside"s, where they talked about things not particularly relevant to the course. While these were interesting, they reduced the time we were taught assessable content.

Exam:
I calculated that I needed 23% in the exam to pass, and I'm not even sure whether I got that. The fact that I received 79% overall shows the massive scaling they had to have done on the exam - I'm doubtful anyone passed. It was difficult even if you studied for hours/days/weeks/months. It covered things we hadn't really been taught and didn't have any standard questions, just lots of hard ones. They had to have a similar / higher mark than the regular physics for this subject though (as there was a higher caliber of students) so they had to scale it, I expect by 50% or more.

Overall
I don't know anyone who's continuing on with advanced this semester - if you're thinking of doing it, wait until they have things organised. I'd recommend doing the regular, it's larger with more support and more understandable classes. Overall, this subject was disorganised, difficult, and not worth it (was my lowest mark by quite a bit). I was expecting this class to give me more insight into physics and how things were derived, but it seemed to be an excuse to not explain things properly.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shadowxo on July 25, 2017, 08:44:07 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2

Workload:
3x 1 hour lectures
1x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:
20% - 4x 5% assignments due on Mondays at regular intervals
80% - 3 hour end of semester exam
There is no hurdle for this subject

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with capture. All streams are recorded.

Past exams available:  Yes, from 2013 onwards, both semester 1 and 2 exams with answers  and short explanations provided.

Textbook Recommendation: Don't worry about a textbook, the lecture slides were well done and I never required a textbook. If you need one though, you could always borrow one from a library.

Lecturer(s):
-Dr Iwan Jensen (subject coordinator) - good pace, completed the lectures on time and covered enough so that we were always where we were supposed to be.
-Dr Daniel Murfet - he went faster than required, and so his stream had a week or two where they learned nothing of relevance later. He was a bit more difficult to understand than the other lecturers.
-Dr Joyce Zhang - I rarely attended her lectures, she was alright, had friends who said she was good though.
-Professor John Sader - enthusiastic, often completes the lectures early but does it in a way that is easy to understand.

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: High H1

Comments:
Lecture Notes + Lectures:
These were amazing. You could purchase them for around $10 from the Co-op, and they were pretty much mandatory to have. They were organised, and easy to understand. They had the content first, in easy to understand format, and formulas clearly displayed. If explaining needed to be done, it was explained (usually through solving equations) in the next pages and were also gone through by lecturers. After the content / relevant formulas / explanations was done, there were (many) examples. Lectures often had the first 20min or so of explanations, then the remainder was examples where they worked through questions (exam questions were very similar) at a good speed, explaining each step and giving you enough time to copy down, at a pace where you could follow the examples. This may sound boring but they didn't overload us with information and helped us understand how the formulas etc were to be used, instead of just throwing information at us. In my opinion, the lecturers were quite good

Tutorials:
We were given a tutorial sheet to work through. We worked in groups of 2-3, answering the questions on the whiteboard. Often you would alternate who was writing / completing the question with the other/s looking and picking up mistakes, giving advice, helping when you got stuck. It was difficult to get through all the questions but I'm not sure they were designed to be completed in time, or to make sure we had enough to work on. The tutor walked around, explaining mistakes, what we needed to include, incorrect notation, or a good job. If something was commonly done wrong, he sometimes got everyone to listen while he did a short explanation of what to do and why. The tutorial questions are very similar to exam questions, so make sure you do go to tutorials and try to better your understanding of the content. If you didn't understand the content after the lectures, you should mostly understand it after tutorials. If you got stuck, you could work with your group to solve it, meaning time wasn't often wasted just staring at it. The tutorials were quite enjoyable and helpful.

Assignments:
The assignments were often semi-long but straightforward. Be warned, they are very pedantic, and you will often lose marks for small mistakes such as not putting in a couple arrows. Some questions can be difficult, so make sure you don't leave it until the day before. I've heard some people just plugged the question into Wolfram Alpha, but this won't allow you to do well in the exam, it's much better to solve it yourself and use a program to check your result if needed. Most of the marks are for working, not the answer. Make every step and all justifications very clear. However, if you put in the work you should be able to do well. I recommend writing a rough draft of your answers during the week to make sure you know how to solve each question, and writing out a proper copy on the weekend (earlier if you have time) with the proper notation and justification.

Exam:
The exam was relatively straightforward and similar to past exams. There weren't really any "super tough" or "shock" questions, some were more difficult than others but the exam was there to test your knowledge not to trick you. If you properly prepare beforehand, you should complete the exam in time (I had about half an hour left, but many others didn't). The structure of the exam is often similar to past ones - it's worth it to do a couple past exams before your exam. Usually around 10 questions, pretty much one on each topic with 3-6 parts each, worth around 120-150 marks total. This exam is worth most of your mark, so study hard for it. If you worked hard on the assignments though, you don't have to do as well to pass the subject.

I've heard this subject has a high fail rate (40% or so) but if you put the time in, you should be able to pass without too much trouble. Make sure you don't miss lectures, or if you do then catch up straight away. Never get into a situation where you're skipping classes to catch up on a previous one. The people who are stronger in maths will find this subject relatively straightforward but with enough to keep them interested, and the ones not strong in maths will find it difficult but taught at a pace that they can keep up with. I quite enjoyed this subject, it was taught well, well organised, and interesting without being overly difficult.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shadowxo on July 25, 2017, 09:26:54 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10002 Principles Of Finance

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

Assessment:
10% - Individual homework assignment / test. It was basically 14 multiple choice questions we could do in our own time, and later submit online.
10% - Weekly tutorial participation. Tutorial questions were due each week, you needed to make a reasonable attempt on at least 8 out of 10 in order to get the full 10% (don't have to get them right)
20% - 1 hour mid-semester exam, mid-semester (20%)
60% - 2 hour end-of-semester exam Hurdle, have to pass this exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, 2 sample exams were provided

Textbook Recommendation: 
"Required text"
Berk, J. and DeMarzo, P., Corporate Finance: The Core, 4th ed., Pearson Global Edition, 2017.
I bought it but rarely used it. There are pre readings but the lectures are usually enough to get by

Lecturer(s):
Asjeet Lamba

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: High H1

Comments:
This subject was good overall. It was a very common breadth, especially for the science students (like me). It didn't assume any knowledge and was an interesting and useful breadth

Lectures:
There was a 2 hour lecture every week. The first hour was good, there was a short 5 minute break halfway through (not long enough) and then the second hour commenced. The second hour was often confusing as you were often tired and had only just learned the relevant content without enough time to go over it or understand it. Asjeet was a good lecturer, and showed us relevant (and interesting) examples of actual companies and how their share value changed, etc. He did sometimes go through the content a bit fast, but this was likely due to the time constraints and the fact that the second lecture was immediately after the first. I believe if the lecture times were further apart, it would have been a good pace.
The lecture slides were well organised, with a summary at the end and the relevant formulas (both really useful). The examples / case studies had "Case study 1: Name" written at the top of the slide, and the content had titles at the top of slides, making it easy to go through notes. The lectures were good but could have been improved by being further apart. I know lots of people stopped attending partway through semester, and this could be a good solution so that you can have a break between the lectures, but make sure you don't fall behind.

Tutorials:
My tutorial wasn't the best, although I'm sure other tutors were far better. We got into groups of 3-4 at the start to talk about one of the true/false questions for about 10min. The rest was our tutor solving the questions, sometimes trying to get an answer from us. He wasn't very engaging and I didn't learn much from the tutes, which contributed to how I found it difficult to understand some concepts, having to spend time going over concepts right before exams (I didn't have much time during the semester).

The Online Assignment:
The online assignment worth 10% was basically a take home MC test. If you put in the extra time to check your work, it was easy-ish to full-mark, just make sure you submit it on time! It covered content from weeks 1-4 and was fairly straightforward.

The Mid Semester Exam:
This covered weeks 1-5 of the subject, and was worth 20%. It had 14 multiple choice questions and was done in an hour. Most of the questions were straightforward but a couple relied on you remembering what they talked about in lectures, not necessarily just the application of formulas etc (one question in particular). If you study it should be pretty easy to do reasonably well. The time is more than enough to do most questions, with the extra time for those questions where you're struggling to get the answer out.

Final Exam:
This is a hurdle and worth 60% of your final mark. The questions often tested multiple concepts at once (eg finding a NPV of something where you're given the nominal cost, inflation rate and required rate of return or WACC). One question (10 out of 100 marks) required you to remember a graph and the names of the labels etc which I think everyone struggled with which is why they increased the exam mark by 6 marks. The multiple choice section is easy / straightforward, but to do well in the SA section you need to know the content quite well, as not knowing all aspects will cause great difficulty as most questions assess multiple things at once. There was enough time to do the exam, and it was pretty fair.

Overall
Overall this subject was a good introduction to finance. The time commitment wasn't very large (something I was grateful for) but did require time outside of lectures and tutes to understand concepts and complete the relevant tutorial questions. The 4 instead of 5 /5 was due to the long lectures and difficulty absorbing so much information at once, and the not-so-great tutes. The rest of this subject was, however, interesting and useful. I would recommend doing this subject, especially if you want to learn something practical and that you can apply to regular (financial) life.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shadowxo on July 25, 2017, 12:34:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10004 Engineering Systems Design 1

Workload:
3x 1 hour lectures (two streams)
1x 3 hour workshop

Assessment:
*5% - Mid Semester Test
*5% - Reflective journal weekly submission and marking (full marks if you do it)
*10% - Reflective journal final submission
5% - Team contract (at start)
10% - In-workshop presentation (based on final report / big project but this is done partway through)
5% - Draft report for big project
35% - Final report for big project
*25% - Final exam, 2 hours

* The individual assessments (indicated by *) form a combined hurdle

Basically, a lot of assessments

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  2 Past exams, only part B on the exam is provided, no solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook required

Lecturer(s):
Gavin Buskes (first half, aerospace engineering, tanks/pipes)
Ray Dagastine (second half, chemical engineering)

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 1

Rating: 3-4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: High H1

Comments:
This subject heavily relied on group work, the group work making up 55% of your final mark! I rate this subject as 4 due to being lucky enough to have a dedicated group, but could easily have been 3 without them. There were very few requirements to get into this subject and so there were a lot of different kinds of people.

Content / Lectures:
The first half of the subject was usually straightforward but boring. It had some difficult application-style questions (engineering bernoulli equation was annoying). I'd call this half of the subject confusing rather than difficult, and it felt like a lot of it was spent not learning anything
The second half of this subject was taught by Ray, and it felt like a lot of things were just thrown at us, and he assumed we knew more than we did. We had integrals and a lot of various equations thrown at us without enough time to understand them. This area was particularly difficult for those not strong in maths, and even for those strong in maths it was difficult to keep up. For this half, you really need to put in the extra time to understand what's going on

Individual Assessments:
The weekly submission of the reflective journal took time (1-2 hours per week or so, depending on effort you put in and how fast you are at writing) but was an easy 5%.
The final submission of the reflective journal shouldn't take too long (maybe 3 hours or so to do referencing and looking over it), provided you've done the weekly submissions. This is worth 10% and it should be relatively easy to get 80%+ if you put in the time.
The mid sem test was short (25m) and not worth much, but was also confusing and tested a lot of random things that you don't use much, eg a MATLAB function we used once. You should be able to pass this but it's hard getting 80%+ as it really just chooses questions from random parts of the course without much of a focus on using concepts you've been taught. It's only worth 5% though so it's alright.
Having these individual assessments was a hassle but put a lot of the pressure off the exam, as it's a combined hurdle. If you put in the work throughout the semester, you shouldn't have to do too well to pass the subject and hurdle.

Group Assessments:
55% of your final mark is made up from group work, so it's essential to find a good group. There are a few "peer assessments" throughout the semester so, while your assignments are graded as a whole, your individual marks can be adjusted depending on how your peers rate you. While this system is flawed, it does encourage everyone to put in effort.
The big final report and associated assessments require a lot of time and work. My group had a 2 hour meeting and a 4 hour meeting weekly on top of the 3 hour workshops, we worked hard and got ~87%. You need a good team that's willing to put in the work and if they aren't, you'll struggle with the assessments and getting the marks your want.

Exam:
While past exams are provided, only part of them are and no solutions are given which makes it really hard to prepare. However, the past exams are very similar to the actual exam so it's understandable, just annoying. The final exam is much better than the mid semester test. The multiple choice questions are pretty straightforward , and the SA questions usually test content you've learned so do some practice questions and you should be alright (the MATLAB question/s is annoying though as you have to write out code when they don't clearly specify what they want). The exam is only worth 25% so it means you don't have to stress over this exam as much as the others and it's not the end of the world if you don't do well.

This subject wasn't amazing and relied a lot on who your team members were. The workload was very high (14 hours per week excluding travel time and  study time for me) however, the continual assessments took a lot of the pressure off the final exam which allowed me to focus on other subjects during that time period. Ultimately, I feel like I didn't learn too much but it did give me some minor skills that I expect will help in ESD 2 (eg MATLAB skills). It's a pretty mediocre subject, taught alright, not great, lots of time but not too difficult. If you're interested in engineering it's probably best you do both this subject (ESD1) and ESD2 but other subjects will probably be more interesting.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on November 05, 2017, 05:44:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: Investments - FNCE30001 

Workload:  1 x 2hr lecture per week, 1 x 1hr tute per week

Assessment: 
Weekly “assignments”: 10%
Mid-semester test: 20%
Exam: 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: 2 exams from 2009 – beyond that nothing useful.

Textbook Recommendation:  I dunno, didn’t bother to buy it. Lecture slides will suffice

Lecturer: Rob Brown

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Sem 2

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Content:

The subject is split into two halves: equity and debt.

You start off with measures of return and risk, constructing optimal portfolios, the CAPM, Single Index and APT models and finally evaluating equity portfolio performance. I can see why second year statistics is a pre-req for this subject, as there is a lot of calculations involving standard-deviations, variances, covariances and correlation measures between assets. However, if you managed to get through Intro Econometrics or QM2 then the stats here shouldn’t be too bad. Nothing here was mathematically too hard, but the difficulty comes from the theory behind the models. If you’re aiming for a h1, then I’d probably advise you to be attentive in lectures and understand the derivations of the formulas/theories, but if you’re just looking to scrape through then roughly knowing your way around the formula sheet should be enough for equity.

After equity, the subject moves into debt securities – zero-coupon bonds, coupon bonds, term-structure of interest rates, portfolio performance and floating rate notes. There wasn’t as much statistics here, just seemed to be a lot of computation. Basically, this half of the course was about calculating present values of future cashflows and rates of return over a bonds life-time.

You don’t need to be a math whiz in this half of the course, in fact they take most of the math out on purpose. For example, one lecture they showed us a Taylor Expansion as part of a proof for 20 minutes, but then said “don’t worry about it” and pointed us to a derivative formula on the formula sheet and told us to not worry about where it came from.

tldr; don’t worry about the maths. It’s computational instead of being conceptually hard.

Rob Brown is a decent lecturer, but he speaks veeerrrrryyyy slowly. I stopped attending after about week 4 and listened to the lectures on 1.5x speed so it sounded normal. Some of the lectures can be a bit dry at times, but what was very useful is that he goes through worked examples of questions in the lecture itself so that was invaluable come exam time.

Mid-Semester Test:

Oh boy, this was tough - the average was 55% and no one in an enormous cohort (enough to fill 2 Copland Theatres) managed to full mark it. A friend also said that his tutor said that it was the hardest Mid-Sem he'd ever seen.
My tutor also did mention that Rob was renowned for hard exams at the start of the semester, and she was spot on. The mid-semester honestly felt like it should have been from a stats subject. There was so much manual computation of variances and covariances and correlations, everyone was shocked by it. There were no free mark questions, everything was either a long and arduous computation or specific theory questions. There was also a tonne of those “which of the following statements are true” questions, but you could go through the formula sheet and knock a few of the obvious ones out. I think people were fooled by the deceptively easy lecture slides and tutorial questions, because the Mid-Sem was a clear step up from what was covered in class. A lack of revision material didn’t help things either.

Assignments:

These just consisted of handing a few part B tutorial questions up. Calling them “assignments” is insulting to actual assignments, as these could be smashed out in 30 minutes easily. You don’t even have to get them right – just showing an attempt at trying to get the answer is enough to get 10/10 for the semester.

Exam:

The exam was somewhat tricky I found. 9 MCQs worth 3 marks each, then a bunch of short answer questions. The exam focuses more on the second half of the course, which was good. However, there weren’t any free marks asking you to do simple stuff like identifying which formula to use and just subbing numbers in there. There were many long, arduous computational questions (Treynor-Black Method is a pain in the ass) and a lot of theory – I’d say about a 50/50 split between theory and maths.

My advice for the exam?

-   Know your way around the formula sheet. This is super helpful for MCQ where you can just plug numbers in and return one of the options on provided even if you don’t know what you’re doing. This happened to me a number of times – just trial and error with the formula sheet can go a long way with MCQ.
-   Try to develop an intuitive understanding of the theory, instead of just rote learning. For example, it’s easy to write down in your book “Yield curve for upward sloping zero rates is below the zero rate curve”, but if you know the ins-and-outs of why the yield curve is the way it is then you’ll nail any question on the exam. Developing a mathematical intuition behind all the theory makes it super easy to apply come exam time.
-   Learn how to take advantage of arbitrage situations. This isn’t really “taught” well in the course, you must develop your own method of doing it. But if you forget everything else – go long on the under-priced asset, short the other stuff. There is usually a ~10 marker on arbitrage so if you learn it you’ll be put in a good place for high marks.

Overall Investments wasn’t really too hard a subject for a level 3 finance, the mathematical rigor is pretty basic – its just looking and seeing which formula from the sheet you need to apply and which methodical/computational process you have to churn through. The difficulty comes from the theory, but if you make an effort to understand why things are the way they are instead of just accepting them at face value, you’ll be in a good place come exam time. The subject content is pretty dry as well, although I suppose if you're interested in finance enough to major in it then you'll find it somewhat interesting.

Good luck :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 07, 2017, 10:43:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

Workload:  1 x 2hr lecture per week, 1 x 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment: 
Assignment 1 (Individual) 10%
Assignment 2 (Groups of 3-4) 10%
Online tutorial participant quizzes 5 x 1%
Tutorial attendance and participation 5%
End of Semester 3hr exam 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (However, only released after the last lecture of the week)

Past exams available:  From memory 3, all with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended book is Accounting: Business Reporting for Decision Making which provides a pretty good overview, but tends to drone on, but provides great practice questions which answers are supplied for on LMS.

Lecturer: Noel Boys

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: Originally wasn't going to post another ARA review, but I feel it deserves a fresh review given the change in course design and lecturer.

General:
After hearing horror stories about accounting in high school and having never done it before, I was expecting this to be a boring/drag subject. However I was pleasantly surprised :) This was a very well organised subject, and with a consistent effort good grades are definitely possible. Overall, I'd say it gives you a nice introduction and basic understanding of accounting reports and commerce/business in general, plus some of the problem solving/working backwards type questions could be fun. As stated above, there are weekly questions to work through, which really help reinforce understanding and keep your knowledge up to date.

Lectures:
Could be watched at home at the end of the week, but probably best to attend to keep up to date. I think most people would agree Noel Boys was an entertaining lecturer who explained things well and kept it interesting. Just don't take a photo of the slides, lol. Lecture slides were fantastic, providing pretty much everything you needed to know, and were placed on LMS prior to lecture. I actually looked back at the ARA lecture slides this semester in ACCT10002 / IFA

Tutorials:
Usually contained both group work and tutor/classroom discussions, which was a good opportunity to both meet new people and to pick up participation marks. Only con was some of the tutorial questions were a little weird/vague, and didn't seem examinable or like they really added anything (E.g. Estimating what the uni uses as the useful depreciation life for various assets).

Quizzes:
Technically part of participation mark, and pretty much asked basic questions, most of which were pretty easy to answer by reviewing lecture slides. There were 5  assessable quizzes for 1% of final grade each, which you could only attempt once. There were also practice quizzes, which you just needed to attempt to score participant marks (score didn't matter on these), which you could attempt as many times as you wanted.

Assignments:
Assignment 1 was pretty straight forward, and pretty much just required you to complete some exercises similar to ones done in the lectures and tutorials. However, there were a lot of issues with the grading, due to computer generated marking - make sure you read all the instructions carefully.

Assignment 2 was probably the most difficult aspect of the course. You could chose your own groups from anyone in the subject which helped (knowing you have someone you can rely on), and there was an online forum on LMS to help others find group members (I paired with a friend and found 2 others on there, which worked pretty well for me), otherwise you're randomly assigned a group. For part 1, your group will have to perform many calculations/graphs/detailed workings, which seemed a bit over the top (probably would have been better if we only had to do a select few, as this would have been enough to ensure we could calculate them). After this, for part 2 you'll need to really think about the ratios/changes in ratios, and use this to compare two companies and write a 1200 word memo ( memo format important, my group lost a few marks for addressing memo to/from wrong person :( ), which also needs to sound like it's written by the same person. Marking was also kind of subjective, as there's no real right or wrong answer, it's about how deep your analysis is.

Exam:
Was a pretty fair exam in my opinion, where lecture slides and practice questions (from the textbook and past exams) were probably the most helpful to prepare for it. From memory, I think ~60% was calculation/report preparing, and the rest theory questions. I found 3hrs to be more than enough, despite being a little intimidated at the start by some of the long preparing type questions. However, to get the top marks (like in any subject) you really need to understand everything behind it.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on November 10, 2017, 08:33:13 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30002 - Corporate Finance 

Workload:  1x2 Hour Lecture and 1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment:  20% Mid-Semester Test, 10% Tutorial Participation, 70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Same textbook that is used for Business Finance. If you want to be at the very high end of the bell curve you will need it for the readings, but the tutorial questions are also in the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Sean Pinder

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
Man, where do I start with Corporate Finance. I think among Finance students that, generally, this is regarded as the easiest 3rd year finance subject. Personally I found corporate finance to be slightly harder than investments (however that may just be due to the people I took it under). Corp fi piles on a lot of content - and while it isn't conceptually difficult, there is a lot of it. The first 4 weeks and final 3 are the major weeks in the subject, and Sean is pretty cool that he calms down the content during the middle of the semester because (well I assume) that everyone is up to their eyeballs in assessments and tests and stuff.

So, for the overall lectures and content. Sean is actually a beast lecturer. He does these 'TAPPS' things in the lecture that he puts up a question and asks you to solve it with the person next to you - 'Think Aloud Pair Problem Solving'. So not only do you get forced to meet a new person, but these questions actually are pretty crucial. They popped up in the exam and potentially the midsem (can't quite remember). The subject itself covers a range of topics from IPO's, Seasoned Equity Offerings, Capital Structure, Payout Policy to some more advanced capital budgeting techniques (i.e. think Constant Chain of Replacement for project evaluation) which extends into some quite conceptual real options analysis and the subject concludes with a few weeks on Takeovers, Corporate Restructuring and Risk Management. A lot of the content early in the course I recognised from Business Finance, there was quite a big focus on the implications of the MM propositions so it helped that I remembered, even just slightly, what they were. However, they don't really get tested and mainly just set the scene for the analysis done in class. Sean does lectures quite well because he also includes empirical evidence to support all of the content. And while to the dismay of some students, this was examinable (and was definitely examined), I thought it added another perspective and really helped me grasp what we're learning. I also do think it's cool that you get to see that managers/management themselves will answer surveys about their job in ways that prove either agency problems (empire building etc) or that they think proven techniques are too complex. Overall the lectures and content I really enjoyed. I'm quite biased towards finance in general so I enjoy most of the subjects, but learning about these things brought a smile to my face. Oh and Sean brings in guest lecturers for 3 weeks for half the lecture. I believe our guest lecturers were from Citi, JP and somewhere else? What they say isn't examinable but, again, it's cool and adds another dimension.

Tutorials were alright. I had Vee as my tutor and I swear if you have the opportunity to get her, do it. God damn she did fantastic mind maps of the whole course and told you what you need to know and didn't mess around, it was awesome. Tutorial participation is worth 10% and just involves handing up a reasonable attempt at the questions - easy enough and most people would have gotten 10/10. The content, unlike some other subjects, and questions covered in tutorials are very similar to the type of questions you'll see on the mid semester and exam so it's definitely worth writing down notes etc to make sure you understand. There's not really much else to say with tutorials, they were actually quite helpful which was refreshing.

Assessment! The mid-semester test was 23 questions held in week 5 or 6 and covered the first 4 topics. Unfortunately these were the really heavy content weeks so it did take a fair bit of studying to make sure you knew everything in and out. I'm not sure what the average was except that it was 1 mark higher in one of the streams so the other stream got their whole mid-sem marked up by 1 - fair enough I suppose, just spewing that I was in the wrong one. There were a few tricky questions simply because a lack of specification but overall I don't think it was crazy and the average would've been quite high. I would say, know your tax systems and implications of the imputation tax system and know in depth of when/why firms may use Private Placements or Rights Issue and what this means for shareholder wealth.

The exam...The exam...I'm not sure how I feel about the exam (mainly because I performed poorly) - it consists of 20 MCQ, 10 T/F with explanations and 4 Short-Answer questions. I thought it was very fair, and the MCQ weren't designed to trick people (or maybe I just didn't realise any of the tricks). One complication that people may have stuffed up on is that Sean writes all his MCQ with a 'More than one option is correct' or 'No option is correct' option - so you have to read the whole question and all the answers to make sure you get it right. The True and False, again, were generally fair. I don't think there was too much there that if you had studied all the lecture slides you wouldn't know. The key is being able to explain your reasoning clearly (and also note the TAPPS popped up here). The short answer I think is where they tried to separate students - we had a quite long question on a real options analysis which was confusing to say the least. While we did have a lecture on real options analysis, I think we covered the bare basics and you would need to do some additional research (Sean put up an article for that week's reading which substantially helped) to make sure you fully understand it.We also had a long question on Takeovers and share bids; although that wasn't too bad if you knew the takeovers lecture. For the exam, I would definitely say know the intricacies of the takeovers financial evaluation formulas (e.g. what does Net Cost actually signify -> amount paid over the value of the target operating as an independent entity -> which is another word for control premium!) and potentially how real options analysis can be used in different ways. We only received 1 practice exam from Sean but it did give a good insight in to what the exam might look like and it definitely helped. As, I suppose, a reward for the mid-sem only 16 marks of 100 are allocated to the first 4 topics - 4 marks each topic. I think it's a good thing to reward students but it meant that you did have to go back and revise the entire first 4 weeks cause who knows what part those marks will be on. But generally speaking I would just go back and learn the key points (Rights issue v Private Placement, What assets are likely to be leased, Non-tax impacts on capital structure etc etc - all those sort of minor but key points).

Overall I really enjoyed the subject and it has to go down in my books as one of my favourites. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable teaching staff made sure that I understood the content which goes along way to helping your learning.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sweetcheeks on November 10, 2017, 06:59:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003: Chemistry 1

Workload: 3x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week (weeks 2-12), 6x 3 hour practicals throughout the semester

Assessment: Exam 74%, 3x 2% Mid Semester Tests, 20% practicals, 3 Independent Learning Tasks (not worth anything but are a hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  Yes, previous 5 years, with answers (except previous year, where students provide their own answers)

Textbook Recommendation:  Chemistry 3 (not necessary, lecturers actually recommend other textbooks anyway)

Lecturer(s): Mark Rizzacasa, Uta Wille, Muthupandian Ashokumar (Ashok), Paul Mulvaney, Brendan Abrahams

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2017

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) H1 92

Comments: I loved this subject. It was extremely stimulating and the content was taught extremely well. The administration side was also run fantastically, with clear communication of what was required of us (such as assessments opening).

I found that lecturers responded extremely quickly (sometimes less than an hour).



Assessments the mid semester tests consisted of approx. 10 multiple choice questions that were aimed at seeing how well you understood the content from the lectures.

Practicals: These were not terrible, however they didn’t really interact too much with the lectures and some of the pracs involved listening and copying what the demonstrator said, rather than learning anything. Overall, they are not difficult, just follow what the lab manual says as well as the demonstrator (as they mark your work) and you will be fine

Exam: A 74% exam can be quite daunting, however if you consistently prepare and study for the subject, you should be able to have a sound knowledge of the content by exam time. You will have to remember the atomic numbers the first 30 or so elements, however the lecturers did give tips on what they expected us to know (it was mainly Brendan, who more wanted us to know the groups so that we could apply trends)



Lecturers

All lecturers were extremely professional in their teaching, and the content was delivered to an exemplary standard.

Mark: Mark took the first two weeks of organic. The content is covered very thoroughly, however he does talk very fast and it was quite a shock during my first chemistry lecture.

Uta: Uta finished the organic topic. Her lectures were quite engaging and humorous. She did make mistakes throughout the two weeks but they were quickly corrected.

Ashok: Ashok took us for gases and equilibrium. Most of his lecture content was for interest only (not examinable). He did an excellent job showing us how different equations were derived (such as ideal gas law). This allowed a much better understanding of these formulas, especially the units. However, he was extremely hard to understand at times due to his quiet voice.

Paul: Paul gave the lectures on thermodynamics. They were easily the worst of the lost. He spoke in a monotone for the entire 5 lectures and was not very engaging (but I feel that anyone who tried to teach the topic would be the same). He was very thorough in his lectures, but at times it felt that he didn’t cover the basics, instead jumping straight into the more complex stuff. It also didn’t help that we only had 5 lectures instead of 6 so some content had to be cut down. His lecture notes did have thorough examples, complete with working out (he doesn’t explain them in his lectures). Although I say that they were the worst, they were still quite good, this just shows the quality of the chemistry department in their teaching standards.

Brendan: Brendan took the entire 4 weeks of inorganic chemistry and did a really great job. He was very visual in the lectures. The content was delivered at a nice pace. The structure of solids, the last section taught, can be quite challenging, however tutorials should take care of any problems. His expectations of the cohort were quite reasonable.

Other
Tutorials: I found the tutorials to be extremely helpful throughout the entire semester, especially for the physical (thermodynamics) and structure of solids. For the organic section I had Chris Donner, who did a really good job, especially with the visualisation aspect. For the rest of the semester I had Sonia (the coordinator) who was absolutely amazing, by far the best tutor I have seen across any subject. She just has this ability to explain difficult concepts in minimal words, I highly recommend attending her tutorials (or Penny) if you can.

Extra help: There are extra help sessions available throughout the semester, usually a couple hours a week. These are great if you want to sit down with a tutor (or a lecturer if you’re lucky) and discuss a specific question or concept. Sometimes Sonia (and Penny) can be found in there, which is brilliant to be able to get one on one help from either of these two.

Molecular model kit: You are allowed to bring this into the exam. In my opinion it is a must for most people. I was able to visualise a lot of the organic content but it is much better to be able to physically model it (especially in a stressful exam).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverfox on November 10, 2017, 07:14:15 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2

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

Assessment: Four assignments worth 20%, final exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes (5 with full solutions)

Textbook Recommendation:  None required - the lecture notes were sufficient

Lecturer(s): Antoinette Tordesillas, Thomas Quella, Christine Mangelsdorf, Daniel Murfet

Year & Semester of Completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 93 (H1)

Comments:
Calculus 2 is certainly not for the light hearted, however this subject was truly incredible that I had to write a review about it. Christine, the subject co-ordinator, is impeccable in terms of her organisation of the subject and lecturing ability. She made each and every lecture so engaging, and was one of those subjects that I just did not want to miss out on! Just a summary of parts of the subject:

Subject Content
Topic 1 - Limits, Sequences and Series
This topic seems a tad haphazard at first, particularly its relation to Calculus, but not to fear! All will be revealed later on in the course... Anyways, this topic dealt with limit laws, calculating simple limits to indeterminate forms (0/0 or limits approaching infinity), knowing how and when to apply the various theorems and rules such as L'Hopital's Rule, Sandwich Theorem and using continuity. Then the subject delves into sequences and series, where you learn whether they converge or diverge using multiple tests and theorems (Ratio Test, Divergence Test, Comparison Test, geometric series, harmonic p-series and so on).

Topic 2 - Hyperbolic Functions
This was simply an introduction to hyperbolic functions (cosh, sinh and tanh) and how to manipulate these definitions and solve various problems for them. There is also a study of their reciprocal functions (sech, cosech and coth) as well as their respective inverses. No nasty surprises here.

Topic 3 - Complex Numbers
Basically a follow-up from the Calculus 1 study of complex numbers (i.e. De Moivre's Theorem), as well as introducing topics such as using complex numbers to integrate more difficult integrals (instead of using integration by parts) as well as being able to differentiate functions (such as how to calculate the 128th derivative of a function, except without having to calculate each derivative 128 times and just in one go!). I found this section pretty cool and neat. In summary, just know how to manipulate the complex exponential here.

Topic 4 - Integral Calculus
This is also another review of Calc 1 integration (so integrating by substitution methods, partial fractions) and also introduces integration by parts.

Topic 5 - First Order Differential Equations
Now the real stuff begins! This topic focussed on ordinary first order differential equations, how to solve separable and linear O.D.E.'s, using substitution methods (eg for Bernoulli's equation). The next part of this topic is on population models; how to construct phase plots, types of equilibrium solutions, Malthus-Doomsday model, Logistic model (with and without harvesting) and identifying the transient and steady state solutions of an O.D.E. The other application for first order O.D.E.'s is electric circuits, which deals with using Kirchhoff's Voltage Law to create a first order O.D.E for R-C and L-R circuits.

Topic 6 - Second Order Differential Equations
This topic focuses on solving second order O.D.E.'s for homogeneous and inhomogeneous equations, how to find the homogeneous and particular solutions and hence the general solution of the O.D.E. This section was pretty neat, I was blown away by the fact that complex solutions to an O.D.E. can have real solutions (when real conditions are imposed)! This is followed by an application in springs (free vibrations, Hooke's Law) as well as LRC electric circuits.

Topic 7 - Functions of Two Variables
This topic introduced functions of two variables, that is, z = f(x, y). You learn how to sketch surfaces in three-dimensions by identifying their level curves and cross-sections, then you move on to defining limits for three dimensions. This gives rise to calculating first order and second order partial derivatives of functions of two variables, determining tangent planes, linear approximations, directional derivatives (i.e. what is the gradient in a particular direction of the surface?), how to calculate stationary points using the gradient vector and determine the type using the Hessian function (i.e. is it a local maximum, local minimum or a saddle point) then you finish the topic off with double integrals, partial integrals and calculating double integrals over rectangular domains (volumes of surfaces). A lot of plug and chug here, but you can see where it is useful and how it can be applied to real life situations.

Assignments
There are 4 assignments, each worth 20%. These are quite challenging and the tutors are very pedantic about working out, so please be sure to be thorough and show complete justification of your answers (i.e. 'by L'Hopital's Rule'). Nonetheless, if you put in a decent amount of effort in these, they should be an easy-ish 20%.

Exam
Okay so, I don't know about anyone else, but this semester's exam for Calculus was more on the difficult side. Most of the questions were doable, but Christine decided to throw a few unseen questions in that threw a few of us off (i.e. using the chain rule to calculate partial derivatives in terms of polar coordinates and a weird continuity question). Anyways, I'd say about 80% of the marks should be easily achievable if you do enough past papers, the problem set booklet and constantly revise lecture material. It was long and arduous, but you should finish just within the set time frame.

Other:
The problem set booklet was incredibly useful - I definitely recommend anyone to do as many questions as possible in the following week after you learn about the content. Christine, as I said before, was amazing and I also recommend anyone in the future to attend her lectures as it'll make your Calc 2 journey much more pleasant and easier! I loved learning about all the applications relevant to the subject material, which really made me feel like I was learning something with purpose I suppose? Overall, an amazing subject that would be useful for most science/commerce disciplines!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on November 12, 2017, 03:10:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30007 Derivative Securities 

Workload:  1x2 Hour Lecture, 1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment:  25% Mid-Semester Test, 75% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (or whatever it's called) by Hull. You can use the previous 3 versions as readings were prescribed for all of them.

Lecturer(s): Neal Galpin for the first three weeks, John Handley for the remainder of the course.

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Derivative Securities is definitely the most conceptual and theoretical subject in the Finance major. It (obviously) relies on the mechanics of options and forwards which you may have experienced in your prior subject studies but not to this degree. I think Business Finance taught the payoff of an option at maturity? Yeah that's definitely assumed knowledge (it’s revised a tiny bit), but this subject takes that so much further. Looking back, I actually found it pretty fun. Derivatives interest me in a number of ways but particularly because while we model the probability and payoffs and stuff, it's sort of interesting to think about the micro component. For a derivative on a stock, that stock still represents part of a company. So we're like two levels higher than the company being the equity component (stock) and then being the derivative on the stock. Anyway that may have been gibberish but I think DS is a fun subject lol.

I think the main reason why DS is coined the hardest subject is because, like I said, it relies a lot on theory and conceptual type understanding. For our semester (and this changes each semester) we begun with options and basic characteristics of options (payoffs at maturity, bounds, arbitrage opportunities on those bounds and some option trading strategies like straddles and strangles) then onto pricing models. Firstly the binomial model is taught which is pretty generally easy and I think most people understand how it works. This model is quite diagram based (i.e. drawing binomial payoff trees) and can be examined in a lot of different ways (currencies, options on forwards, dollar dividends, proportional dividends) so it’s pretty crucial you know it inside out. The second model is the black Scholes model - perhaps the most revered model in finance. This model is more conceptual and less diagrammatic but for our semester there was not much in particular to know (just some certain variations of the typical formulas). After which, we were introduced to forwards and futures, then currencies and hedging. Options are obviously the main component of DS (again, this changes every semester) taking up 6 or 7 weeks in total, but your understanding of options does extend to help with other topics in the class. You also cover some minor theory points like implied volatilities, hedging errors, risk neutral valuation and a tiny bit about the Greeks. Last semester I believe they covered the Greeks in detail instead of currencies – so again, beware it changes. The semester concludes with a lecture on the GFC and how credit derivatives work (which is not examinable, but so many people were keen on it).

So, for the lectures. Neal Galpin took our first 3 or 4 lectures and he was boss. He spoke in that he hated using theory to prove things and preferred diagrams etc - I think that definitely helped my understanding and a lot of my peers understanding. John Handley took the remainder of the course and I thought there couldn't be someone as good as Neal but damn he was boss too. Both of them speak perfectly, at a leisurely pace, with interesting tidbits of information sprinkled in here and there. You could honestly tell they were passionate about what they do and that's awesome. The lectures weren't necessarily jam packed of information but I think it was assumed you revise everything. Generally it is easy to work through the lectures as they are presented - sometimes there's questions in there that can help solidify your understanding. I finished the subject only a couple of days ago, but thinking back about lectures, they were so bland (no formatting, black and white pdf) but it goes to show you that it legit is the lecturer that keeps your attention. I do believe it was important to show up to lectures rather than watching them online, because sometimes John would jot down how the theory works or a little diagram to help understanding (these were boss too).

There were no tutorial marks, so it really was upon yourself to show up and attempt the questions. The questions were legit so much harder than the exam, but it was good to understand how for example put-call parity can be expanded in situations with forwards, or in situations with dividends. Some questions involved algebra and like year 10-12 maths to solve it lol, this irked me to no end because I haven't had to know logarithm transposition rules since high school. I think, if not just for DS, it was actually kind of interesting to remember all this maths stuff that I had forgotten over the course of my degree - these types of questions were never explicitly said to be un-examinable but they weren't examined in our semester. Other things in tutorials just revolve around some easy concepts (matter of fact these questions popped up in the exam....). I had Yudong as my tutor, and he was awesome. He is also the online tutor and definitely knows everything in the course and more. If you ask him a question, he’ll explain it in a couple different ways to help your understanding and even show you how things like this can be applied in practice which was cool. I believe a lot of tutors in the subject were really good though, and I definitely recommend using OLT if you're struggling. It's easy to get side tracked in derivatives when you think what else there could be (e.g. how could we extend binomial approach to american options with dividends) but I would say if it's not in the lecture then its probably not going to be examined.

As for assessment, we had a really easy semester. Firstly the mid semester test was 25% of the grade and for that reason, we were only tested on the first 3 weeks (25% of the course). There was a lot of content in these weeks and especially if you read the book because in the assigned readings there were a lot more trading strategies that weren’t mentioned in the lecture and it was never clarified whether these were examinable or not. However the test itself comprised of 12 questions, most of them being relatively easy. I think the average was about 73% or so, which seems low considering the difficulty. It’s very easy to stuff up on questions if you don’t read it carefully – for example payoff versus profit, or short versus long. There was maybe one or two tricks to do with dividend timing, but that’s it. John said quite early on that he doesn’t like exams and would rather just teach people – I think that was reflected in the difficulty of the assessment.

Now, for the exam, it tested Lecture 4 to Lecture 10 (i.e. content after the mid sem up to the second last lecture) which wasn’t too much content. It made studying pretty easy. I highly suggest re doing tutorial work because some tutorial questions showed up word for word on the exam. We weren’t given a practice exam too. I don’t know my feelings about the exam – it was 6 short answer questions each work 10 marks to be done in 3 hours. People were leaving after 1 hour; it was that short. The first 5 questions were more or less the same as tutorial questions and the final question was a conceptual approach to using risk neutral valuation on the GBM process. I think this question was the one that was supposed to separate students but it seemed frustrating for me. Firstly because sooo much of the course went untested and all studying went unrewarded. Secondly because we hadn’t seen anything like this in the semester. I’m just hoping I got some marks for it lol, I know I didn’t get it right.

I suppose my overall review of this subject is really high. The 4.5 rating is only because I would’ve liked to see my studying go rewarded – but can I really complain?
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: narn on November 12, 2017, 04:31:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: MKTG10001 Principles of Marketing

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

Assessment:
Assignment 1 (1000 word individual essay) - 10%
Assignment 2 (3000 word group report) - 25%
Research Studies - 5%
Exam (hurdle exam) - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:
2 previous exams available on the library website, no answers were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:
Marketing Principles (2nd edition). The textbook readings weren't 100% crucial for being able to pass the course, but they were good for expanding on the content brought up in lectures (and provided some good examples to help illustrate key points). You can borrow copies from the library though.

Lecturer:
Nicole Mead

Year & Semester of completion:
2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Content / Lectures
The course was structured quite well, which made it easier come exams when you had to start linking all of the concepts together. The lecture slides were usually available a day or 2 before the lecture each week, however the lecture slides were mostly pictures with just minimal writing about the main concept that Nicole would then expand on. This means that you can’t just use the lecture slides for revision, so make sure you take detailed notes throughout the semester! Each lecture was split into 2 parts - the second part may or may not relate to the first. There was a 10 - 15 minute lecture between each part, so the 2 hour lectures were definitely manageable.

Tutorials
The tutes were basically going over case study that related to the aspect of marketing covered in the lecture the week prior. There were 1 - 2 articles on the LMS each week you needed to read over, and then in class we’d work in groups of 4 - 5 to go through some questions related to the articles. Whilst there is no tutorial participation marks, I found the tutes really helpful for applying the theory to real world applications (again, helpful for the exam), so I would definitely recommend going to them.

Assignments
The first assignment was relatively straight forward. We had to find an article on a company’s marketing initiative that was related to one of the marketing concepts that had been studied in the first 4 weeks of the course. The essay was 1000 words, and basically highlighted why they needed to implement the initiative and if it was successful. Picking an article with a good depth of information about your marketing concept is definitely helpful, as it gives you far more to write about. Would also recommend getting your tutor to have a look over your article - it helps to make sure you’re on the right track before you start writing!

Research Study Participation
The easiest 5% of the course to get - just need to go to 4 research study sessions (and lots of them are online too). Most took barely any time at all, and they make lots of times available which helps when trying to fit it in around uni timetables.

Assignment 2 was a 3000 word group assignment worth 25% (so again, definitely recommend going to your tutes so you know who you want to work with!). We had to write a marketing report on the introduction of Coke Life to Australia. As a group of 4, we split up the sections we needed to write about (so we only had to cover max of 2 sections each), which definitely made it much more manageable.

Exam
The exam really tests your understanding of the course in its entirety. You need to write 3 essays out of a choice of 7 topics. However, each topic links 2 - 4 aspects of the course (some of which may appear to have quite abstract links). To access the higher marks on the exam, you need to be able to link all of the concepts together. Then, if you want to get a really good mark, you need to tie in an example from the course (which there is plenty to choose from if you look back over lectures and tutorials). This is where having really good notes (and then being able to link the notes together) comes in handy!

Overall View
Overall, I enjoyed the subject. I believe it gives you a really solid base of marketing knowledge as you move into 2nd year marketing subjects, but also would be a great elective for Commerce students or a breadth subject!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on November 12, 2017, 04:46:13 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20001 Intermediate Macroeconomics 

Workload:  2 x 1hr lectures per week, 1 x 1hr tute per week

Assessment: 
One Online MCT: 5%
Two assignments: 2 x 12.5% = 25%
Tutorial attendance and participation: 10%
Exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yep, from the past three years (with worked solutions!!!)

Textbook Recommendation:  I dunno, didn’t bother to buy it. Lecture slides will suffice.

Lecturer: Mei Dong

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Sem 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Content:

Like its introductory predecessor, I found this subject immensely enjoyable and interesting. There are three main models that you’ll spend the majority of the time using:

-   IS-LM model: A set of curves that describe the equilibrium values of output and interest rate in both the goods and financial markets.
-   DAD-DAS model: Basically similar to the static AD-AS model but much harder, this was the hardest portion of the course in my opinion. You have to get your head around a tonne of “building blocks” that go into constructing this model, then conceptually grasp the role of expectations. Almost everyone struggles to get this the first time around.
-   Solow-Swan model: An extension of the one you learnt before, nothing that new here.

You also touch on a few minor topics, including labour market flows, how “growth” is determined and finally a bit of open-economy macro.
Lectures were very useful and paced quite well. Mei takes her time to explain difficult concepts, and often tries to see things from the students perspective, in that she clearly sees what students would find difficult and attempts to clarify. Unlike some other lecturers I’ve had where they would blast through content with little regard for whether the student understood or not, Mei makes explicit the common pitfalls students fall into which I really appreciated.

The math itself isn’t hard at all: the most advanced you’ll get is taking a first derivative and setting equal to 0, the rest is just rearranging algebra and exponents.

A way to make this subject very easy for you is to develop intuition behind what the algebra says (this is something that Mei and the tute sheets harp on about). After you complete a question or as you derive an equation, ask yourself things like:  should y increase as x increases? Why does a change in x not affect y? Why does this change in x increase y more than this change in another input variable?

If you master the intuition in this subject (which is really just applying common sense) then you’ll find that everything falls into place.

Tutorials:

Standard fare: Blue sheet, pink sheets etc.

Lots of the times I found that the pink sheet was too full of material so we’d often not get enough time to finish, and answers to pink sheet questions don’t get put up on the LMS so it was a pain at times.

However, tutorials were absolutely vital at clearing up questions from the lectures and clarifying confusing concepts. I learnt so much from the tutor walking us through the problem and explaining the pitfalls that students fall into, and since exam questions were similar to pink sheet questions the tutorials were an excellent way to develop exam technique (and also a free 10%!).

Assignments:

Assignments were quite difficult. Although most people scored highly (I think), they required a lot of time and a lot of excel number-crunching. Namely, they were all about calculating the “time path” of variables relative to their long-run/steady-state values when conditions in the economy changed. Nothing exciting and lots of it was just arduous excel manipulation that didn’t really aid in developing understanding of the content. The questions weren’t like the exam questions at all, so it wasn’t good for preparation purposes either.
Probably the only disappointing aspect of this subject.

Exam:

Exam follows the same format every semester. 20 marks worth of multi-choice, 20 marks worth of relatively easy short-answer (B), 20 marks worth of harder short-answer (C). A cool thing here is that there are 3 questions in sections B and C, so you only choose 2 out of the 3 to answer. This means you can skip a topic you’re not comfortable with which is always a plus.

As far as difficulty goes, I found that just going through the past papers and pink tute sheets is enough to get you through Multi-choice and section B comfortably. Part C is quite tricky however – it’s an extension of what you’ve learnt in class and you won’t have seen lots of it before. Most people in my semester I’ve talked to barely answered any of one of the section C questions, so you’ve really got to know the course inside and out to conquer these questions.

The saving grace is that if you scored highly in assignments and multi-choice/section B, you won’t need that many marks from C to get a high score.

Conclusion:

Inter Macro is a challenging yet interesting subject that extends on what you learnt in first year. The tutorials and the quality of the lecturer made it an enjoyable subject, but it was let down a bit in my opinion by the arduous  and unnecessarily difficult assignments which is why I didn’t give it 5/5. The exam is always fair – there is enough easy stuff to make sure everyone passes but scoring very highly is a challenge. Probably my favourite subject I’ve taken throughout my time so far at uni.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: narn on November 12, 2017, 04:53:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20206 The Business of Music

Workload:
1 x 2 hour 'seminar' per week (basically a lecture)

Assessment:
10 x online quizzes (4% each, 40% total)
Final Essay (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:
No, don't need them though.

Textbook Recommendation:
No recommended texts

Lecturer(s):
Andrew Watt

Year & Semester of completion:
2017, Semester 2

Rating:
3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Content / Lectures
The course covered a wide range of topics, from the basics of copyright law through to entrepreneurism. The content could get a little dry and boring, but Andrew tried to make it interesting by adding in quotes and examples from the real world. Barely any of the lectures went for the full 2 hours, and they could easily be done from home.

Quizzes
The quizzes were a very straightforward component of the course. Each quiz was comprised of 4 questions, all of which were usually taken directly from the lecture slides (and occasionally from something the lecturer had said). For me, each quiz took less than 5 minutes, which I found was plenty of time (especially given the tests were untimed so you could really take as long as you wanted). It is very easy to score highly on these quizzes, assuming you do the lecture and can get a basic understanding of the material.

Final Assessment
The final assessment was a 2000 word essay. You could pick any topic, as long as it was somehow related to relationships within the music industry and some aspect of the course. I personally found this a little challenging, as there was such a broad scope of things you could talk about (and so knowing if you were on the right track got a bit tricky). I did quite a bit of research to help find the connections to both my topic and the course, which I found helped as my essay started to come together.

Overall View
This subject was enjoyable, and could almost be treated as an online subject as you didn't need to attend the lectures and all of the in-semester assessment was done through the LMS. The only reasons I didn't rate it higher was the slightly boring nature of some of the lectures, combined with a very broad end of semester assessment task! I did it as a breadth subject, and would recommend it as a breadth for people interested in gaining some understanding of how the music industry operates.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: myanacondadont on November 14, 2017, 07:22:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30001 Financial Accounting Theory

Workload: 
1x2 Hour Lecture
1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment: 
20% Midsem;
10% Group Assignment; and
70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1

Textbook Recommendation:  No

Lecturer(s): Bo Qin

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Uhmmm jeez. I’ll start out by saying that I’m generally quite biased against accounting subjects. Not too sure why I chose to major in accounting but too late now. Surprisingly however, the content in FAT is actually half decent.

FAT is much less application based than previous accounting studies. It’s accounting theory (obvious, yes I know) and takes it to another level. It separates the subject into two predominant accounting objectives. Essentially; is the purpose of financial accounting information to reduce moral hazard (by aligning incentives of managers to shareholders and debtholders) or to reduce adverse selection (provide the most relevant information to investors so they assess the true fundamental value of the firm)? That is the whole subject in a slightly long sentence.

The semester begins by understanding what actually is information asymmetry and looks towards value relevant accounting information. This answers more of the valuation objective (reducing adverse selection) as it looks at what information the market responds too. This covers a few weeks and you look at the benefits and limitations of Historical Cost, Fair Value, and Current Cost Accounting (CCA you would never of heard of, it’s a purely theoretical standpoint). I wouldn’t say these are too complicated but the lectures are quite disorganized in my opinion and it made it much more difficult for my own learning. This trend, unfortunately, continued all semester. In the next 4 weeks, you cover the basics of valuation of a company based on accounting numbers. This involves reducing accounting distortions of earnings management, condensing financial statements and looking at discounted dividend models including abnormal earnings and NOPAT. These 4 weeks are calculation based and the main application bits of the semester and being quite number-orientated I enjoyed. However, they require essentially a lot of memorization because you are not taught the reasoning behind them – rather just “make sure you can add these numbers in the exam” type of thing. The final 4 weeks focus on the moral hazard problem and how can you use debt contracts and managerial compensation contracts to align manager incentives and reduce contracting costs. I have to say here the lectures, for me anyway, were so disorganized I had to keep asking friends what the hell was the lecture even about. This involves things like non-recognition of internally generated intangibles (goodwill) and conservative accounting. The final lecture contains a bunch of info on economics of voluntary disclosure (this for me was the hardest lecture of the lot to follow, I had no fing idea how things linked together).

Now, for the lecturer; Bo. I think this is his 2nd semester taking the subject. I also had him as a tutor. I don’t necessarily recommend it – his teaching style did not resonate with me and I felt I was sitting through just purely reading off slides. I would recommend for him to at least try to look at it from the students perspective because I believe he’s a very very intellectual person and just takes it for granted that we are making connections. There were also a few things that disgruntled me with this subject. One of them was that word-for-word we ‘should probably not used words that are not in the lecture’ because he doesn’t know how other markers will mark. Fair enough, I suppose, but I never thought that I would attend university to be told to limit my reasoning to memorization. The tutorial questions were quite long and arduous. Bo will put up answers after each week – there are no tutorial marks so its not necessary to do all of them before the tutorial. It DOES help your understanding, but I’d focus on revisiting the uploaded answers early in the semester because at the start you honestly don’t even realize that they’re drawing in different parts of the course before you’ve even learnt it – I definitely liked this because I knew some of the content by the end weeks before even going to the lecture.

Sorry for this review dragging on lol, now for assessment. The midsem comprises 25 questions (9 true/false and 16 multi choice). It wasn’t hard, generally required common sense (how does this random situation link to something we learnt in class) and the average was 72%. It was one of the weirder midsems though just because those random situations really were random lol. I don’t think it required too much study but definitely know what’s going on and being able to understand and contextualize what actually adverse selection or moral hazard is. That was worth 20%. We also had an assignment worth 10% focusing on that valuation before – this involved a valuation task similar to one you’ll face in the exam, and then one on a company of your choosing. This was pretty extensive, required to be done in excel and creating our own assumptions. Again, not too hard but requiring a lot of time. At the end of each lecture we were given an example exam question. This was from either an exam he uploaded from 2016 when he didn’t take the subject or ones from last semester. Now, guess what the exam was. Word for word these questions. They were heavily theory based, required a lot of time but very little brain power because we had seen them before. I have very little words for what I thought of the exam (here’s a hint – it was crap) but it was easy and I can’t complain.

So overall, while the content in this subject has the potential to be interesting, due to the inexperience of the staff it was very disorganised. The assessment was, on the overall, very easy and this means – potentially – there may be an abundant of high scores and thus downward scaling (I’ll try to remember to update after scores come out). I imagine the subject won't stay in this current form very long so take what you will from this review.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 15, 2017, 09:37:59 am
Subject Code/Name: Principles of Clinical Practise 2 (MD2)

Workload: Will outline in further detail.

Assessment:
35% end of year OSCEs (5 stations)
20% SAQ Written Exam
15% MCQ Written Exam
20% x3 Long Case Assessments
10% x6 Mini-CEXs

Lectopia Enabled:  Depends on which clinical school you go to, but generally, assume that you don't.

Past exams available:  Recalls from UMMSS are available from previous years.

Textbook Recommendation: 
Talley and O'Connors is a must have for learning clinical medicine. Learn all your examinations from here. Not everything in the book is required for OSCEs and sometimes they dwell into more physician level exams.
Examination Medicine by Talley and O'Connor is also useful for long cases - it's again aimed at BPT level but gives some good pointers on what you need to focus on in your history and examinations.
ECG Made Easy and other ECG textbooks are great for getting a basic handle on ECGs, but I never used them more than once.
UpToDate and BMJ are probably the best resources you have for learning about Core Conditions. UpToDate is quite dense and full of word-vomit. BMJ, in my opinion, has an easier and neater format to scroll through. However, you should be aware that UpToDate is an American source, while BMJ is British, so use Therapeutic Guidelines when learning about management in Australia.
BMJ onExamination (free subscription) and PassMedicine (requires fee) were question banks I used to fill out holes in my knowledge. Use the final-year medical student resources because you need to be exposed to a wide variety of conditions anyway.

Lecturer(s): Varies by clinical school.

Year & Semester of completion:
2017

Rating:
5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments:
MD2 is far better than MD1, It's much more interactive, practical, and relevant, but it's also far more challenging because not only do you realise the overwhelming amount of information you don't know, you also have to use your clinical reasoning, rather than just regurgitate facts. Learning is no longer restricted to lectures, but you will need to go out of your way to find things to look up out of curiosity, to speak to patients, and actually discussing cases with other students or doctors.

The year is split into four rotations. Foundation lasts for 4 weeks and is basically an introduction to learning in a clinical environment. Depending on your clinical school, you may be front-loaded with lectures during this time (my school had done 40% by the time we were finished). The next three rotations are Medicine, Surgery and Emergency/Ambulatory. You'll spend 8 weeks in each, and 1 week in each rotation is dedicated to reviewing and debriefing how the rotation went.

Medicine is the most content heavy rotation. People will be allocated to different wards, but generally you'll get a dip into Cardiology, Respiratory, Renal, Endocrinology, Rheumatology, Gastrointestinal, and Neurology. Surgery term is a bit lighter, while Emergency/Ambulatory is the most chill.

So how do you actually learn in your clinical year, aside from the lectures you're given (a significant number of which are case-based discussions)? The faculty gives you a whole pile of Core Conditions, Presentations and Drugs you need to know by the end of the year, and you're expected to learn about these conditions (on your own, or by seeing patients). It's pretty freaking daunting. I think there needs to be a balance from learning on the wards and also studying out of textbooks.

Going on Ward Rounds is a hit or miss. I went to as many ward rounds as I could in Medicine rotation and my attendance slowly slid off and I think the last ward round I went to was a surgical one in my second term. It really depends on the team - if you strike a good team, you'll be able to get involved and the doctors will actually bring up some critical points for you to know, and sometimes they'll suggest for you to see certain patients if you want to see some signs or take a history. Otherwise, you might feel like you're doing nothing and you're in the way. Don't feel discouraged, it's a natural part of being a medical student. Don't bother going to surgical ward rounds because they go through their whole list in 30 mins at 7am, unless you want to go to theatre. I found them pretty low yield because they usually spend 1-2 mins with each patient. I found theatre to be incredibly boring - hours and hours of standing on your feet not really knowing what's going on, but there's always a chance that you can scrub up and be involved. If you can, get there 45 mins before schedule so you can meet the anaesthetics team and watch them intubate the patient.

The same can be said with clinics. Some were incredibly good, others were notoriously boring. Try and sit in with a consultant if you can because generally they will always teach you a lot. One of the fellows encouraged some of us to see patients by ourselves and present back, so while you might freak out a little and not really know what to do (because you know nothing), it's good experience anyway.

During your ED rotations you'll be rostered onto a few ED shifts and again they are hit or miss. Try and find a registrar or consultant to buddy up with and ask if you can follow them around, see their next patient and present back to them before seeing the patient together later. Generally most doctors will be happy with this arrangement and it's valuable seeing what further information you missed. You'll also have the opportunity to do lots of procedures - suturing, plastering, and lots of cannulations/venepunctures. You'll also get 4x weekly GP visits during the rotation. Luckily I got to see a wide variety of conditions as well as see my own patients and do procedures, but it really depends on what practise you get yet again - some people just sat in with a doctor the whole day and observed.

To get the most out of rotations, you are going to need to take initiative and ask for opportunities. Sometimes there is an extent of luck involved, but you are not going to get to do much unless you ask for it. Ask nurses if you can practise a cannulation. Ask if you can suture the next patient. Ask if you can scrub up and help out in theatre. Don't expect everything in a giant platter - it's up to you to make as many learning opportunities for yourself. That being said, you do not need to go all out because you will burn yourself out if you end up staying in hospital until from 7am-10pm each night. You'll hear stories of some gunners being that crazy but you really don't need to be in hospital for that long! A lot of medical students also get freaked out hearing about what other people do on their rotations but try not let that get to you - run your own race, as long as you're satisfied with what you've learnt, then you should be ok!

Long cases and Case Presentations are great learning tools, and you should ideally practise at least one a week. Basically, you need to take an appropriate history and examination of the patient, then present the patient back and synthesise everything together to form several management issues and perhaps some differential diagnoses as well. This is usually followed by a barrage of questions by your examiner, and often each case raises great learning points. You'll have three assessed long cases, one in each rotation. You're allowed unlimited time with the patient and access to their notes in Rotation 1, only 24 hours in Rotation 2, and then only 60 mins with no access to notes in Rotation 3, Your first few will be terrible - use them as an opportunity to experiment with your format. By Rotation 3, you should really be practising what you'll do in terms of timing and organisation of your manilla folder before your final assessment. Practise is critical. After each patient, try look up their condition so that you'll become familiar with it - the biggest challenge is when you don't really know what's going on. In the final long case, patients are recruited by the hospital so they may have extremely complicated histories - which is why it's critical that you read widely and see many patients before then.

MiniCEXs are basically an OSCE station done in hospital. Find a patient beforehand, consent them, then undertake a supervised 6 minute examination or history of the patient. You'll get some useful feedback after!

During the year there will also be 3 optional Progress Tests that you can sit. They're essentially a NAPLAN for medical students. The university pools questions from USLME papers (aka final-year medical student level) and you're able to see where you stand in the cohort. I recommend sitting them to see if your study technique is working or not. I got a huge wakeup call when I realised I was in the 30th percentile for my first one (because I had no idea how to study), then began to actually write notes and there was a pretty dramatic difference. So while they're difficult, it's definitely useful to gauge how effective your study is.

Now, onto OSCEs. You don't really need to practise for these until maybe halfway through Rotation 2. They're worth a big chunk of your grade so don't forget about them! In MD2, the main aim is to not only have a working diagnoses by the end of your history/examination, but to also rule out other diagnoses you cannot miss. It's different from ticking off a checklist of things to ask, as was the case in MD1. Again, practise a wide range of conditions and presentations regularly. It's a good idea to form an OSCE study group and meet up on the weekend and go through some stations. There are also some combined stations where you will need to first take a history from the patient, and then perform the appropriate examination. You should be actively synthesising during each OSCE station you're in - you need to not only practise automating your questions and examination technique, but also interpreting what you are actually seeing and going out of your way to look for red flags. You'll generally be asked a few questions about what further investigations you'd like to perform (and perhaps need to interpret them as well). Just remember the golden rule of not just rattling off a whole bunch of investigations for the sake of it, but to say why you'd like to perform each one and to say what you're actually looking for.

The written exams are a huge pain in the butt and can pretty much test anything. Even things that are not on your Core Conditions. Some questions are repeated from recalls but the vast majority are usually new. These test your clinical reasoning as well as your steps in management. Always read the question carefully because there are usually multiple answers that would generally be ok, but you're usually asked "what is the NEXT step you'd do" or "what's the BEST investigation to do". So read the question damn carefully!

Wrapping up, MD2 was probably the most challenging year of university so far, but I've learnt so much. It was amazing seeing how much me and my peers had progressed in just a year's time, even though we still don't know much at all! You realise that there's so much to learn in medicine in the clinical years and it's such a great thing to actually see things you're taught be applied in the real world. That being said, it is also a very overwhelming year. It's vital that you have a good support network of other medical students to lean on, and to remember to have a life. Gunners usually come out in the clinical years, but don't get too psyched by them. Worry about your marks less - as long as you know what is going to make you a safe and competent doctor, you'll be on the right track. It's infinitely better than the preclinical years!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 22, 2017, 03:25:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

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

Assessment:
Group (4-5) 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, 2 past exams and 1 sample, all with solutions. There was also 1 sample with solutions for the mid sem exam

Textbook Recommendation:  An Introduction to Actuarial Studies, Second Edition, 2011 Atkinson and Dickson.
Probably not 100% vital (especially if you're doing this subject as a breadth), but provides very clear explanations of the theory, and many more questions with worked solutions, which are set in addition to weekly tutorial questions.

Lecturer: Shuanming Li

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments: Overall, I really enjoyed the content in this subject, and felt it definitely confirmed for me that I chose the right major (although I'm sure the later ACTL subjects will be much harder  :P ). Apart from a few admin type issues, I felt it was a well taught subject, and would recommend to anyone intending on or contemplating doing the actuarial studies major, or anyone who likes maths and needs a breadth.
Started out with the very basics of simple interest/discount and compound interest. Then annuities were introduced, which felt like a much more complicated and difficult extension of the stuff learnt in FNCE10002/Principles of Finance, with actuarial notation. Next major topic was demography, which was relatively straightforward once you took the time to get your head around everything, and included some (in my opinion) pretty interesting probability type stuff. This then lead into contingencies, along with some theory on insurance. The maths in contingencies was initially intimidating, but once you really took the time to understand the formula, wasn't too bad.   
Also, it's important to note you're expected to memorize almost all the formulae presented for the exams, but this becomes much easier to do once you understand it.

Lectures:
I'm just gonna be straight up honest here and say due to the lectures being timetabled in the afternoon, and on the one day accelerated maths 2 didn't have a lecture, I attended exactly 1 lecture in person. Luckily, I found there was virtually no difference, and in some regards actually found watching at home to be a better method due to the ability to pause/try questions myself, rewind ect. This years lecturer was new to teaching this subject. It was obvious he knew his stuff and I found his explanations pretty good, only complaint was that he didn't really time it well (some content had to be skipped), and focused too much on reviewing weekly expectations which I found a bit "spoonfeedy".

Tutorials:
As many of the other reviews have said, the tutorials seemed pretty pointless, as you get the full worked solutions, and the tutorials themselves aren't really interactive (expect the tutorial you get your mid sem exam to inspect, definitely attend this one). To my tutor's credit, she added a few extension type questions in, however after around the midway point of semester, I stopped going (it was pretty much a case of MC>MB hahaha). That being said, I still worked through every weekly problem set, and I felt this was a very important component of my learning.
Something in particular I'd like to point out was that the week 0 set had many "proofy" type results, which it said you were expected to know. However coming from the VCE spesh/methods -> accelerated maths pathway, I had never seen it before, and found this quite discouraging. Looking back, while it helps to know the proofs, what's most important is that you know the standard results, especially the geometric sum.

Group assignments:
Groups could be chosen, otherwise you'd be placed in a group. Since assignments basically took the some of hardest aspect of actuarial exams out (formula memorization, time pressure), average scores were very high (Almost 100% for assignment 1, and 85% for assignment 2), and as long as you/your group know the very basics of excel (e.g. creating graphs, set up recursive formula with copy & paste), they're not too difficult, and also provide a good illustration of how the concepts/formula work. However, personally I found group of 4-5 to be a little too big, as it became a bit difficult to get a time that suited everyone.

Mid Semester Exam:
45 minutes with no reading time meant you had to go fast, and didn't have much time to check answers, making this exam more difficult that final exam. I personally did worse than expected (70%, somewhere in between median and top quartile), and was quite disappointed, but based on my mark I'd say it's more than possible to come back if you're disappointed with your mid semester exam score, so just do your best on this one and don't let it get you down :)

Final Exam:
As mentioned above, this one felt easier than the mid sem exam, despite having all taught content. I personally found my cohorts exam easier than the practice papers, and due to hurdle requirement, first few questions were pretty much basic PV calculations (think principles of finance standard). Ultimately, if you learn and understand all content and formulae, doing well on the final exam is very possible. There may be a proof type question, but the proofs in this subject were much easier than say, the accelerated maths 2 proofs.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Orb on November 22, 2017, 06:48:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30002  Corporate Finance

Workload:  1x2 Hour Lecture and 1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment:  20% Mid-Semester Test, 10% Tutorial Participation, 70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Same textbook that is used for Business Finance.

Lecturer(s): Sean Pinder

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Having had results for Corp Fi released pretty early, was pretty delighted to see Pinder giving us a solid scale-up of the subject by 10 marks. Incredible.
This is often regarded as the easiest subject in your finance major, and i'd highly recommend students to give it a crack in your second year. You finish a 3rd year subject, and hopefully it'll be a bit of a WAM boost for future years.

Starting off, the lectures were pretty informative and I felt Pinder gave a pretty good overview of what Corporate Finance is. It extends on the theory we've learned in Business Finance and is a good toe-in-the-water subject of what investment bankers do on a daily basis. We had three guest lecturers from well respected bulge bracket banks (although I only turned up to one) I found it gave a pretty good insight on the banking industry. Definitely can watch the lectures at home, although if you turn up in person you'll be able to take part in the TAPPS (think aloud paired problem solving) exercise, where Pinder helps you go through an application question (or two) involving what you're learning. I found them quite useful, although fell behind at times throughout the semester which didn't help.

Tutorials were phenomenal, I had a very chill tutor. Basically you just need to do all the pre-tutorial work (even if you get them wrong) and submit it before the tutorial starts every week. This implies forced turning up to class, unless if you want to lose the 1%, which sucks a bit.

Mid-sem was very standard, but they're structured in the sort of very tricky multi-choice question style, where there are three statements A,B,C and D asks you whether "one or more of A,B,C are wrong" and E asks you whether none of them are wrong, or something like that. Basically eliminating the possibility of fully using process of elimination to get the answer. I found that understanding the content (which was, in a lot of parts, rote-learning) helped the most in terms of preparation.

Final exam was a bit hard, hence the scaling up of everyone's score by 10, which was the biggest blessing and completely unexpected.

All in all, it was a great subject and definitely did not regret learning it :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 22, 2017, 07:33:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 

Workload: 
4 × 1hr lectures per week
1 × 1hr practical per week

Assessment: 
Written assignments 2 × 5%
Mid Semester Test 10% (45 minutes)
End of semester exam 80% (3 hours)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture of slides, but without screen capture of blackboard where examples were written

Past exams available:  10, without solutions (2 were discussed in last lectures)

Textbook Recommendation:  MAST10009 Lecture notes from Coop, written by the lecturer - a must, contains notes of all theorems, definitions, explanations, background and some examples

Lecturer: Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (79)

Comments:
I had a love-hate relationship with this subject, or more accurately hate that turned into love. Initially, I struggled with this subject more than I have ever struggled with anything academic before, but with a lot of effort and persistence, this subject has taken me from someone who hated anything to do with mathematical proofs to applying to do the concurrent maths diploma with complex analysis in my plan (although finding out about HECS exemptions may have helped that too :P ). If you immerse yourself, you’ll see how truly fascinating and beautiful maths is.
It seemed harder than AM1 for most of the semester, but I ended up with a higher grade than I got in AM1, so good grades in this subject are definitely possible with a lot of hard work and understanding.
Content is essentially most of real analysis (a second year subject) and calculus 2 (minus some stuff done in AM1), meaning it's meant to be hard for first year students, but that taking it will give you more options for the rest of your degree. You cover sequences, functions, many theorems and definitions associated with these, Riemann integrals, integration, differential equations and infinite series. You’re expected to be able to remember and reproduce any formula or definition in lecture slides/notes, so aim to understand as much as possible to achieve this.
I think Barry was the primary coordinator who ran this subject, and he did a fantastic job at it. It was pretty clear he truly cared about what people got out of his subject, rather than just seeing it as a box people have to tick.

Lectures:
Involved Barry talking through slides and writing examples on the blackboard, meaning you pretty much had to be there to copy them. While this was quite a pain, the purpose was so that students could absorb as much as possible. I personally only missed a few towards the end of semester and don’t think that really impacted my score, but if I didn’t attend most I think I would have scored much lower. In all honesty, most of the written examples are much harder than the standard expected, but the more you understand, the better position you’ll be in to do as well as possible. Lectures seemed intimidatingly difficult at the start (you’d notice the number of empty seats increasing), but looking back it really just takes a while to get your head around, so don’t give up if you’re feeling this way at the start of semester :)

Practicals:
Involved working with groups of usually 3-4 on lecture note questions on whiteboards (unfortunately unlike AM1, no extra questions or worked solutions). However, attendance was still very important, as tutors provide what will be for most, much needed assistance. Most people including myself had pretty much no idea in the first couple of weeks, so again, don’t be too discouraged if you’re initially feeling this way. I had mixed feeling about different tutorials based on how much I felt I learnt, so I’d recommend making sure you’re with people who want to discuss and work through questions, otherwise it can feel like a waste of time.

Assignments:
The first is on sequences, and will most likely feel much more difficult than second on calculus 2. But both will probably require a substantial amount of effort (recommendation is 8 hrs each). For the first, you must really read over and understand the definitions and proofs. The second will mainly focus on mechanical calculations.

Mid Semester Test:
For most including myself, this was the lowest mark received in the subject, but looking back wasn’t insanely difficult or unreasonable. Requires a thorough understanding of all theorems/definitions covers so far, and the ability to apply them to simple proofs as well as application type questions (ect. Find limit). Many marks in this one for being able to correctly state definitions and theorems.

Final Exam:
Required what was mentioned for test, as well as knowledge of all the calculus techniques/applications (you’re also not supplied a formula sheet, in a sense making this section harder than it would be through doing calc2) and series. I found it to be a pretty fair and reasonable exam – nothing overly difficult or tricky, meaning through working hard to get the basics of what has been taught, good(or better) grades are more than possible.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 22, 2017, 10:23:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics 

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

Assessment:
Tutorial Participation 10%
Online Quizzes 2 × 5%
Group Assignments 2 × 10%
End of semester exam (2hrs) 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Macroeconomics, 4th edition, Bernanke, Frank & Olekalns - provided a good overview but I think lecture slides would have sufficed

Lecturers: Lawrence Uren (9am, 11am) and Nahid Khan (2:15pm, 4:15pm)

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments:
Quite a few people said that this subject was harder than its predecessor ECON10004, so I was a little worried due to finding the micro exam very difficult. However, I personally thought that the content difficultly was comparable, and actually found taking this subject to be a more pleasant experience, due to the use of lecture capture and not being terrified by the end of semester exam.
Major topics/concepts are the GDP, inflation/real interest rates, labour market/unemployment, Keynesian models of GDP, fiscal and monetary policy,  AD/AS curve models of output and inflation, growth/Solow-Swan model, international trade, exchange rate and accounts.
Ultimately, it was an enjoyable subject, that felt more relevant to real life than micro. As Lawrence pointed out, most of the concepts are relatively straightforward, hence with a consistent effort to kept on top, good grades in this subject are easily achievable.

Lectures:
Unlike in micro, the lecture capture recorded everything, so it wasn’t a problem if you missed a lecture, and the capture could be effectively used for revision. I had Lawrence, and found him excellent – he explained and illustrated things really well and seemed genuinely interested in the subject. While I can’t really talk about Nahid as I didn’t attend or watch her lectures, I’d say based on what everyone said, Lawrence was the clear favourite.

Tutorials:
Pretty similar to micro in that you’d attempt a pre-tute sheet before class (which you’d later get solutions for), then attempt and discuss another sheet in the tute, which your tutor will take everyone through. Personally, I found some questions to be a lot more helpful than others. While I don’t know my participation mark, I’d say as long as you attend most classes and contribute something you should be pretty much guaranteed that 10%.

Assignments:
Could be done individually, or in groups up to 3 within your tutorial class. They pretty much tested the very basics, and most people scored very highly on them. They were also a lot shorter than the micro ones, despite being worth the same amount.
Quizzes:
Again, tested mainly the basic concepts, and should be fine if you’re on top of everything. I personally didn’t do too well on the second as I skipped over some of the earlier stuff when reviewing for it.

The median score for assignments and quizzes was over 80%, so apparently there was some scaling of final results.

Exam:
Due to the exam hurdle, exam literally just tested the basics. While it was good not to be stressed by an overly difficult exam, I felt it needed at least some challenge questions so that one could pass if they knew the basics, but nothing had to be scaled down due to high assignment scores.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sweetcheeks on November 23, 2017, 03:08:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: HPSC10001: From Plato to Einstein

Workload: 2x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 3x analysis tasks making up 50% and a final essay worth 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Subject reader

Lecturer(s): Kristian Camilleri

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2017

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) 66 H3

Comments: I picked this subject as a breadth (BSc student).

The subject looks at famous philosophers throughout history, starting with the Ancient Greeks and progressing to individuals that we now refer to as scientists (Maxwell, Faraday etc.). The historical shifts in views on physical concepts (light, gravity etc.) was thoroughly discussed. I found it very interesting to learn about theories that different individuals proposed about the concepts, especially when comparing them to what we know today

The lecturer showed great enthusiasm about the subject and was very well researched. Students were given plenty of opportunities to ask questions, especially after he discussed concepts that were tricky. If he didn’t know the answer he wasn’t afraid to say so, and would go and research the answer.

In the tutorials we would read and discuss both primary and secondary sources related to the current lectures. There is a compulsory 75% attendance, however they don’t seem too worried if you miss more than that. The lecturer would occasionally join in tutorials, allowing questions to be asked. Usually this happened just before the assessments.

The semester assessments consisted of looking at 3-4 paragraphs and analysing them (200 words each). Both the meaning and the historical significance needed to be looked at. Often the information was covered in the tutorials. Examples were posted on the LMS to give a rough idea of how an analysis should be written. They went out at 5:15PM on the Wednesday and were due 11:59PM Sunday. This was a reasonable timeframe.

The final essay topics were released at the start of the semester. There was the option to pick one of the first five topics (related to the first half of the semester) and submit it before the exam period or opt to complete the essay on a later topic and submit it during the exam period. The topics were fair and reasonable (10 in total) and there is at least one topic for everyone. The lecturer spent a lecture explaining what he wanted from us in the essay and gave us a comprehensive list of books that the library had access to .

Overall I found this subject to be intellectually stimulating and would definitely recommend it as a breadth for BSc students, especially those who are knowledgeable on physics.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: K3NUpdate on November 23, 2017, 04:14:11 pm
Subject Code/Name: INTS10001 International Politics

Workload:
•   2x 1 hour lectures (two sessions per lecture) per week
•   1x 1 hour tutorial per week (11 tutorials throughout the semester, with the first tutorial beginning in week 2)

Assessment:
•   750-word essay due mid-semester (20%)
•   1750-word essay due towards the end of semester (roughly week 9) (45%)
•   1500-word take-home exam during the examination period (35%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Not sure, maybe?

Textbook Recommendation: John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). To make your life a little easier for this subject, I do recommend buying this textbook, mainly because most – if not all – of your required readings are from this book. The textbook also costs around $60-70 brand new, so I think it’s rather affordable compared to other uni textbook costs. Better yet, you can also get it second-hand for even cheaper!

Lecturer(s): Daniel McCarthy and Robyn Eckersley.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments:

Subject:
   As someone who has some interest in politics and needed an interesting breadth subject to do, I chose to do INTS10001 with the expectation that it would give me a well-rounded understanding of what International Relations is. That is, understanding the development of the field, the political theories, schools of thought and…well, all things politics.

I wasn’t disappointed.

   This subject would probably be best described as being an introduction to the field of International Relations. For those who have done VCE Global Politics during high school, you’ll likely find that the first half of this subject will be a very different beast. What I mean here is, a lot of the content in INTS10001 places emphasis on appreciating some of the history behind IR and developing a thorough understanding of the main competing political theories. While this may seem pointless at first, you’ll realise throughout the course of the semester that these theories are important frameworks to analyse the rationale and decision-making of state/non-state actors in contemporary IR, which is necessary for the second half of the subject.

   So, the subject kicks off with a brief overview of IR, where you’ll learn about the Hunter-Gatherer Bands, the feudal system in Europe and the Peace of Westphalia (1648). You’ll find that each event that is covered in INTS has its own significance in the development of our understanding of the modern state, and also the debates that may arise from it. This part of the subject will go on for 1-2 weeks.

   After covering the history, you’ll then start learning about all the main IR theories, such as realism, liberalism, neoliberalism, neoclassical realism, constructivism, Marxism, etc. Before learning the theories, however, you’ll learn about what anarchy is in the IR context (and no, the anarchy you’ll learn is not the anti-establishment firebrand kind!), and then proceed to learn how these theories go about explaining this.  You’ll also touch on ethics and cosmopolitanism. This’ll go on for 3-4ish weeks and may be quite a lot to take in. However, if you keep up-to-date with this part of the subject and understand each theory inside out and know how to compare/contrast them from others, you’ll find that your arguments in your essays will be so much more concise and watertight. Not only that, it’ll mean less work later when you’re doing your 45% essay and take-home exam!

   After learning about IR theories, you’ll (finally) be able to do some of the modern stuff, where you’ll learn about key international political issues like climate change, humanitarian intervention, refugees and so forth (yes VCE Global Politics 3&4 students, this is where your examples and knowledge will come in handy here). By this point it is an expectation that you’ll be able to apply the IR theories to the issues raised in these case studies and form an opinion based on the frameworks you use.

Lectures and Tutorials:
   In short, the lectures were very, very interesting. I found that Daniel was an engaging, thought-provoking lecturer who would interact with the student audience that attend the lectures and encourage questions, some discussion and debate around the concepts/rationale behind the political theories. He’d begin every lecture with a photo/image of an individual/place/object, which he uses as a way to set the scene for the topic he’ll be covering. The way he works in analogies and examples into his lectures in such a subtle manner that is, at the same time, unambiguous is quite something, really.

   Robyn was also a great lecturer who would deliver the content clearly and in a logical manner. At times it may be a little difficult to follow the point she tries to get across, however overall you can see that Robyn is very passionate in her work and in that sense, she also delivers an engaging lecture with a slightly different ‘flavour’ to it.

   As some reviewers may have commented earlier, your tutor will make or break the experience in this subject. However, I’ll also add that the people in your class and yourself also plays a part in that experience. What I mean here is, by starting up a discussion about some of the stuff covered in the lectures, you’ll find by the end of the tutorial there’ll be things you might’ve not thought of! 

   In addition to the above, do make sure you do the required readings, or at least be prepared to discuss the topic in the tutorials. Otherwise, it’ll be super awkward when the tutor asks you a question about your opinion on the topic!

Assessments:
   Overall, the assessments were self-explanatory and straightforward to do: a selection of essay questions where you’ll choose one to discuss/argue on. The exam was actually meant to be a sit-in exam initially, but it was decided it would become a take-home exam to be done in three days during the exam period.

        Now, to do well in the essays in general, the first thing is to be able to understand the IR theories comprehensively (as mentioned earlier). The second thing is to be able to bring your own examples into your discussion, and by using good examples and analysing them with IR theories you’ll find that your argument seems so much more convincing. At the same time, however, also be warned that a bad example or a questionable argument may also prove to be counterproductive and weaken your argument.

One more thing: Tutorial attendance is a hurdle requirement in this subject, where you need to turn up to at least 75% of the tutorials to pass the subject.  That works out to be 9 out of 11 tutorial sessions, so make sure you turn up to them!

Verdict:
   All in all, the subject definitely required a considerable amount of time and effort to do well, although in general I enjoyed International Politics. I wouldn’t recommend this subject for people who want a cruisy breadth subject to boost their WAM or are not interested in politics. It can be mind-boggling, especially when you reach the part in the subject where you tear down the IR theories and scrutinise them. I guess if you’re the sort of person who has a knack for philosophy, history and/or politics and needs an introductory subject into the world of International Relations, this subject might be the one for you.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Rod on November 24, 2017, 12:15:00 am
PHRM30002 Drugs Affecting the Nervous System 

Workload: Three lectures per week – 36 in total. About six of these lectures were used as tutorials.

Assessment: Two online quizzes and a short assignment worth 10%. Mid-semester test worth 20%. Final exam worth 70%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2010, 2011 and 2012 available.

Textbook Recommendation: Lectures should be suffice.

Lecturer(s): James Ziogas, Phil Beart, Peter Crack, Michelle Hansen, Christine Wright, Cathy Laskar and a handful of others.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017.

Rating: 3.9 out of 5.

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Okay, so I did this subject because I enjoyed second year pharmacology and I thought this would a good continuation/extension from last year. Overall, concepts were not overly difficult and the subject was not that content heavy so hard work should entail good grades.

The first twelve lectures were really boring. You learn about the different transmitters: glutamate, GABA, serotonin, catecholamines, neuropeptides etc, their targets, synthesis, breakdown, and mechanism of action, storage and so forth. Lecturers taking this lot were really dull and boring, e.g. James Ziogas and Phil Beart. David Hoyer had one of the most bizarre lecturing styles I’ve ever experienced in university, I did not get anything out of his serotonin lecture.

Good news is after this lot the subject gets amazing! A bunch of amazing and engaging lecturers come through (Crack, Hansen, Wright, Habgood, Laskar etc.). You’ll learn about the blood-brain-barrier, neurotoxins, pain (greatly extended from last year), anxiolytics, hypnotics, anti-depressants. For me, the best part of this lot was when we got to spend each lecture on one specific disease and learn about the disease in detail (like epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s), what drugs work, what the effects are, what the implications are and what we need to do in the future to improve. For me this was the most interesting part of the course.

Study tips:

I made a long drug/transmitter/toxin table covering every single drug mentioned in the course. I would then use the lectures as a guide to how much detail I would need to know each drug. I made notes for each drug and then reviewed every now and then. I thought this was really effective, there were so many different drugs mentioned it would be too hard to cram all of them before the exam.

Despite the practice exams being really old, I would recommend doing one or two of them. The wording and types of exam questions that came up were similar to the past ones so it was good practice doing one past exam – it allowed me to know what to expect in the real thing and also how much I would have to write to get full marks.

Quizzes and assignment (10%):

The two quizzes (worth 2.5% each) are online and timed. The first one had twenty questions whereas the second one had ten. All questions are TRUE or FALSE format. This should be an easy 5%, the questions are not too bad. Get through the lectures before doing the quiz, have your lecture notes beside you, have Google open and try and find some buddies to help you out.

The assignment is just answering a past extended response question. I think Peter gave most people the full 5%. So just answer the question and use the feedback/tutorial as preparation for the exam as you will have to answer four extended response questions similar to this in the exam.

Mid-semester test (20%):

Very fair test, average was about 75%. Most of the questions are straightforward; some of them require some application and thinking that are meant to trip you. Prepare well for it and you should be okay.

Exam (70%):

I thought the exam was really fair – no questions designed to trip you, everything was recall. It rewarded students who have worked hard throughout the semester.

There were 40 multiple-choice questions and five-extended answer questions (20 marks each). You were required to answer only four extended questions. Some of the extended questions were in parts, whereas a couple just had one big question worth the full 20.

Use reading time to get through each of the extended questions and pick the four you want to do.

The multiple-choice questions were all straightforward, nothing to trip you up, similar, if not easier compared to the mid-semester test. However, there were about four questions from the addiction lectures (the last two lectures in the course) that I felt were weird. IDK if it was just me but the addiction lectures in the course were really abstract and I found the MCQ a bit hard to get my head around. Most of the MCQ were post-midsem lectures; there were about 2 repeat questions from the mid-semester test (like pretty much the same questions, but differently worded).

The four extended-response questions integrated different lectures from the course. We were required to recall content from different lectures and then integrate the content within the response. Aim to write concise, fully fleshed out paragraphs with diagrams as well. The diagrams are optional but Peter LOVES diagrams so including them will really help out with getting the full marks. I’m so shit at drawing and stuff yet I still included some diagrams that probably did not make sense lol but just wanted to show Peter I was listening throughout the course.

I aimed to write as much as I can for each of these questions while keeping in mind what the question was asking for. This was my first ‘’written’’ exam this year so I was stressed out a bit, but honestly it wasn’t that bad at all.

Overall:

Was a pretty decent subject! After the twelfth lecture most lecturers were good and the content was interesting. Assessment was fair throughout the course, nothing there to trip you. This is a subject that will reward hard-workers and also give them a good pharmacology background before they go into post-graduate study.

Feel free to send me a PM if you have any further questions, all the best!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 24, 2017, 01:55:18 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10002 Introductory Financial Accounting

Workload: 
1 × 2hr lecture per week
1 × 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
Tutorial Participation (10%), composed of Attendance (2%), Participation (2%) and Tutorial Assignments (2 × 3%)
Assignments 2 × 7%
Online Quiz 6%
End of semester exam (3hr) 70%   

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1 full exam with solutions, plus many other scattered questions with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: Financial Accounting, Reporting, Analysis and Decision Making, 5th ed, Carlon. Not really needed, but did provide a good review of everything. I’d recommend getting a cheap PDF from StudentVIP
 
Lecturer: Warren Mckeown

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: Overall, a pretty good continuation from ARA. The coursework is relatively straightforward once you get the hang of it, and this definitely felt like my easiest subject throughout the semester. That being said, you still need to work consistently to do well.
A lot of the content from the reporting side of ARA is carried over, but you go into more/specific details for some types of accounts on the different GPFS. You’re also introduced to journals and debits/credits in week 2, and these skills are used throughout the rest of the course. This is apparently revision for people who did VCE accounting. When I first read the relevant material this related to this I was very confused, but after doing some questions it became very straightforward. You then cover a bit of ratios/analysis, and finally GST.
Lectures:
Advertised time is 2hrs, but many finished within 1.5hrs :) Slides were a bit all over the place (especially compared to ARA), but contained everything you needed to know. Warren would provide a good explanation of things, and on most occasions worked examples/illustrations, which showed you exactly what/how to do the questions. Best to be there in person for the illustrations, as usually both projectors were used.
Tutorials:
I found all the tutors I met in this subject really dedicated and helpful. Tutorials were very useful. Concepts were first explained/reviewed, and then you’d discuss a worksheet previously given (you’re expected to attempt all questions, but this wasn’t really required, so it probably sufficed to just try all major questions). The full 4% for participation/attendance is easily obtainable if you make an effort to do just that. The assignments were also pretty straightforward, but make sure you read them carefully (I got an absolute shocker mark on the first because I didn’t read it properly).
Assignments:
Assignment 1 was the cause of a lot of annoyance and stress for many students. You had to manually journalise some transactions related to a fictional company, then create the trial balance and GPFS on excel. The actual work was straightforward, but it was a very tedious and time-consuming assignment.
Assignment 2 required you to do the same thing as the first (for the company’s next month), but specifically using accounting software. The Uni labs contain the software, but I was able to do it all at home by downloading an MYOB 30 day free trial (which worked out perfectly as they gave you less time than this to complete the assignment). Once you got the hang of it, it became much more enjoyable than the first.
Quiz:
Some practice quizzes of the same format are given, so best to at least try one before attempting. Pretty much that same thing as tutorial questions, just make sure you’re careful with reading the questions and inputting answers. 
Exam:
Was honestly a lot harder than I was expecting, so I’m glad I still studied for it like normal. There’ll be an approx. 50/50 mix of theory and practical/calculation questions, so make sure you know how to do everything (or as much as possible :P ). Still, there’ll always be a decent amount of stuff you’ve seen before.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Jasmine J on November 24, 2017, 11:58:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10004 Chemistry 2

Workload:
3 × 1hr lecture per week
1 × 1hr tutorial per week
3 hour practical (6 experiments in total)

Assessment:
Practical 20%
Online Quiz (3 mid semester quizzes) 6%
End of semester exam (3hr) 74%   

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes (usually the past 5 years) with solutions.
Textbook Recommendation: Lecture slides are sufficient but Chemistry3 2e by Burrows textbook is recommended
 
Lecturer:
Professor Richard O'Hair - Organic Chem (He's really good!)
Associate Professor Craig Hutton - Organic Chem
Professor Robert Lamb - Kinetics (He's awesome)
Dr Alessandro Soncini - Quantum Mechanics
Associate Professor Guy Jameson - Electrochemistry & Introduction to d-block chemistry
Dr Stephen Best - Coordination Chemistry and Transition-Metal Chemistry

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments
Tips: Do your best for practical as the demonstrator seems to be more lenient in giving full marks for the prac report compared to in semester 1 chem 1.

Go to tutorials and get involved in answering the questions! My tutorial class group were pretty engaging and the tutor seems to like it that way. Plus, you'll learn more.

The extra help classes in Learning Centre are really useful and the tutors are more than happy to help you (Don't wait until swotvac cause there would be a lot of people getting last minute explanations from them)

Organic chemistry:
Prepare and organize your organic chem notes (reaction mechanism, reagents used and the products of the reaction).  It will be an advantage if you know your organic stuff really well since the exam tend to emphasize on this part (Khan academy videos helped me a lot in understanding this stuff although the lecturers were really good as well). Familiarize yourself with the mechanisms etc by doing lots of practices perhaps draw a good mind map for the reactions.

Quantum Mechanic,
Some might find it hard but you'll do alright if you have any background physic knowledge from year 12 etc. though there were a few new topics. Prof Alessandro is good in explaining this but keep in mind that he tend to go over them really fast.
Spoiler
Most of us did pretty bad in quantum mechanic mid semester quiz because we thought it would be quite simple
For kinetics, Prof Robert Lamb is a really cool guy and his lectures are pretty laid back and chill. He makes it easier to understand the concept with extra jokes aside. Content wise, kinetics is probably the easiest among the other topics.

For Electrochemistry, its pretty straightforward with some calculations needed, few of them were quite similar to year 12 chemistry chemical processes and the cells etc. The lectures were not the best of all but they were okay.

Inorganic Chemistry
Now, personally, everything was a rush. We were learning new stuff until the very last day of lecture in week 12. I still remember how some people nearby our seats in lectures sighed in disbelief a few times whenever new (and daunting) stuff being thrown at us. Don't get me wrong, Prof Stephen lectures were good and he made it really clear on what will and will not come out in the exam. I took his advise and re-watched the lecture capture again before finals and he was right; the stuff he emphasized on really did came out for the exam.

Overall, chemistry 2 is not as scary as it turns out to be. The topics we learnt for semester 2 and the way they were structured was coordinated quite well. However, you'll definitely come across a few people stating that chem 2 is one of the subject with relatively high failure rate but I feel like it's just an exaggeration if you set aside a good amount of time to revise everything. Just don't fall too far behind and you'll be fine! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: alanyin1 on November 25, 2017, 01:44:17 am
Subject Code/Name: ENGR10003 Engineering Systems Design 2

Workload:
-3 x 1hr lecture per week
-1 x 3hr workshop/tutorial per week (starts in week 3 - on average, they are ~2.5 hours)

Assessment:
Modules:
-Digital Systems: 3 written group assignments, 1 in-class test and team assessment during workshop (10%)
-Programming: 2 solo assignments, 1 in-class test and team assessment during workshop (10%)
-Mechanics: 3 written group assignments, 2 in-class tests and 2 team assessments during 2 different workshop sessions (10%)
-0.5% attendance mark AND ASSESSED PRE-PRAC for each workshop (total 5%)
-Online MC Practice Exam (5%)
-End of Semester Exam 3 hours long, 40 marks MC, 60 marks SA (60%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture (the actual lectures are projected from iPad presentation to board)

Past exams available:
Yes, online graded practice exam that is fully MC. Also, several past exams were given online but they were only the Short Answer sections (I believe a change was made around 2011 which introduced the MC section). These however had no solutions, so you had to go to tutor sessions during SWOTVAC to obtain the answers. You can also browse the online ESD2-only forum for solutions from your peers.

Textbook Recommendation:
I bought the recommended textbook and used it infrequently. You definitely don't need to buy it. The lecture material is good enough for you to do well.

Lecturers(s):
Dr Gavin Buskes - Digital Systems
Assoc Prof Adrian Pearce - Programming
Professor Andrew Ooi - Mechanics

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments:
I liked this subject, but I get the feeling that many people may also loathe the subejct. I didn't do ESD1 and there is virtually no content that carries over. I think the main reason why people didn't enjoy it is due to the Programming section, where they introduce you to MATLAB. Most people probably did not actively practise coding during the semester and found this component difficult. Coming in from Accelerated Mathematics 1 (MAST10008), where the subject taught MATLAB, I didn't find the MATLAB section too difficult. That being said, this subject teaches MATLAB on a more conceptual and holistic way. Those who enjoy programming/coding will tolerate and enjoy MATLAB.

Spoiler
Digital Systems: The subject started by introducing different number systems, such as binary, hex, octal and others. These were quite enjoyable and are easy marks on the exam. Eventually, we started learning Boolean algebra and logic gates, which form the core backbone of this component. Make sure you learn the logic gates proficiently so that you can construct the required circuit by yourself. During the assignments, you work in teams of 3 so it is easy to slack off a bit. Also, make sure that you remember the stuff you learn in this component or revise it thoroughly during SWOTVAC as it is quite early on and you will likely forget some of the details. Also, make sure you prepare thoroughly for each workshop session as cumulatively they are worth quite a bit. The combinational circuit design was probably the hardest part of the subject for me, as they gave some weird questions in previous exams that I found difficult. This can probably be overcome through more practice and preparation both during the semester and in SWOTVAC. Luckily, the actual drawing/coming up of the circuit was only worth 2 marks in this semester's exam.
TL;DR: Make sure you learn the logic gate and design stuff well enough to carry your team should you be assigned bad team members.

Spoiler
Programming: This section involved Assoc. Prof Pearce teaching us how to use MATLAB and different aspects of coding to consider when approaching programming problems. You are introduced to concepts such as loops (for, while), conditional statements(if-elseif-else), graphing in MATLAB and formatting these graphs etc. If you have any experience in programming whatsoever, you will likely enjoy this more than if you have no experience at all. The assignments were pretty good but some of them were time-consuming, mostly because you have to think of how to solve the problem and ensure that your method works consistently. The workshop quiz and assessment should be fairly do-able, and you just need to make sure that your methods work to obtain the marks. All-in-all, you need to actually practise MATLAB to do well in it. By that, I mean that you should do all the assignments by yourself, critically analyse your methods and compare them with others to see how they differ, and generally be confident enough so that you can write your code down by hand the first time (as in the exam - you are given a problem and you don't have access to MATLAB during the exam). This includes getting familiar with formatting in MATLAB.

Spoiler
Mechanics: Coming into uni from Spesh, Methods and Physics, I didn't find this section too hard. The lecturer Andrew Ooi is funny and engaging, and if you pay attention to the lectures and write good notes, you will do well in both the assignments and the exam. Also, this section requires that you be at least competent in MATLAB, as you use the software to solve problems given to you, generally by producing graphs of force and optimising values, or by using MATLAB as a calculator and to solve matrices. The group assignments during this section were probably the least enjoyable experience for me, as my team was kinda useless and I had to carry (think of 7pm -> 4am solo carrying lol), mostly because they weren't so good at MATLAB. My piece of advice is to learn MATLAB well so that you don't lose marks excessively here.

I didn't really do any 'textbook' questions in this subject during the semester, but I did try to make an effort to do the online MC questions as they were made available. Doing these will help you out in the online MC test worth 5%. All-in-all, I feel that if you write good notes, revise the Digital stuff and get on top of programming, with somewhat of a background into mechanics (i.e. spesh or physics), then you are set to do really well, and is a well-deserved H1 to obtain.

Spoiler
Final Exam: The exam wasn't too bad, 40 MC questions each worth 1 mark, then 3 Short Answer questions based on each major component (Digital, Programming, Mechanics) each worth 20 marks, and comprised of multiple parts (i.e. a) -> f) etc). The MC questions aren't too tricky and should take roughly a minute per question. The Short Answer questions can be tricky, particularly the Digital Systems aspect, but only the last 1 or 2 parts of it. It still asks for stuff like binary to decimal, hex to decimal, Boolean algebra and such. Therefore, the actual combinational circuit design would be worth at most like 3-4 marks. For Programming, you essentially want to be good enough to just freehand write your code and be able to tell whether it will work as you intend it to or not. These questions are relatively easier than the questions you'll tackle during the assignment, so be rest assured that if you know your stuff, you will do well. The Mechanics component isn't too tricky either. Think of it as slightly more complicated spesh stuff. Also, the last question involved differential equations but it wasn't hard - it was to do with exponentials and so on.

Overall, I did this subject as part of my Bio-Engineering major, and it was pretty decent. If you are given a good team, write good notes, prepare for each workshop in-class assessment and do well in the assignments, you will do well. The exam itself shouldn't be too bad as long as you prepare decently during SWOTVAC. That being said, although I enjoyed the subject, I will repeat my opener: many people may found this subject bothersome, especially those who have no background in programming whatsoever.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yi_Liu on November 25, 2017, 07:44:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30009 Structural Theory and Design 1

Workload: 
- 1x 1 hour lecture per week
- 1x 2 hour lecture per week
- 1x 2 hour tutorial per week
- 2 x 1 hour labs per semester

Assessment: 
1 x Home Lab (5%)- Group
2 x Design Assignments (10% and 5%)- Group
1 x GUNT Lab (5%)- Individual
1 x Techno Lab (5%)- Individual
3 hour end of sem exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, all the way from 2010. All had solutions provided except for 2016

Textbook Recommendation:  None that I know of, but having a copy of the standards is useful.

Lecturer(s): Jonathan Tran, Philip Christopher, Ryan Hoult plus a range of guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Probably my favourite subject this semester. ST&D1 may seem like a lot of work (especially if you don't keep up to date) but isn't actually that difficult given you put in enough effort. It is the first of a series of 3 ST&D subjects which continue into the Master of Engineering Civil and Structural streams,so most of the content is quite introductory in terms of complexity.  Much of the content covered aligns with AS 3600-2009 and AS 4100 so I would recommend getting a copy of them (if you haven't already from Materials). Barely any formulae are provided on the exam so there is A LOT to memorise and some of the formulae are extremely long and tedious. I would highly recommend learning how to derive them (derivations are all quite straightforward and definitely vital to grasping a better understanding of the subject) but memorise them as well to save time on the exam.

Lectures:
In total, every week had 3 hours worth of lectures. However, the last lecture was either a guest lecture or an assignment debrief so essentially you only had two lectures of content a week. This did cause the pace of lectures to be slightly rushed during a few weeks, but nothing too bad if you took some time to review them. The content from guest lecturers were assessed in the exam, but only 5 marks out of 120 were allocated to them. The lecture slides covering actual content are fairly complex and messy, so make sure you actually attend/watch the lectures.

The first week was taken by Jonathan and essentially just a review of the statics section from Engineering Mechanics so the content was assumed knowledge covered very quickly. The only minor extension was the introduction of a switch function which was extremely useful.

Weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 11 were taken by Philip who covered the bulk of the design section of the subject. The three major materials covered were timber, steel and reinforced concrete. Most of the content was heavily related to the two design assignments and a large chunk of the exam. However, design philosophy and method (week 5) and design detailing (week 6) weren't really assessed in the exam so you can probably skip over that during revision. Overall,  Philip explained the content very well and clearly. He was also very engaging and interactive, offering rewards such as pens and medals to students for answering questions. Only problem was that he made too many tangents during a few lectures which didn't leave enough time for the actual examinable content to be comprehensively covered.

Ryan took the lecture for the remaining few weeks which covered deflection, indeterminate beams and instability and elastic bending- this mainly related to the GUNT and techno labs.  Personally, I liked his way of teaching the most out of the three lecturers. Very clear and concise in explanations. He wasn't as engaging as Philip, but covered the content at a more comfortable pace.

Tutorials:
I found the tutorials quite useful, especially since the questions on the tute sheets were very similar to those asked in exams. Solutions were released at the end of each week so you didn't necessarily have to attend them. The tutors were also very helpful and willing to answer any questions you had regarding the content and assignments.

Assessment:
Of the 5 assignments, the home lab, GUNT lab and technolab were all easy marks. Practically everyone got the full 15%. The two design assignments required a lot more work (way more that the 15% they were worth) but I personally really enjoyed them. It was nice how they were related to the content and really assisted students in understanding the difficult formulae and concepts presented (unlike some second year subjects such as Earth). The lecturers and tutors were very lenient on the marking so almost everyone got close to full marks (if not more because there were bonus marks).

Now, the 70% exam daunted me initially but after doing all the practice exams, I had felt pretty confident. The questions asked in all 8 past exams didn't change much and they only took me one and a half hours to complete so I walked into my exam thinking I was going to ace this. Gosh I was wrong.  Unfortunately for us poor souls who took the subject in 2017, they decided to change the exam quite drastically and made it a lot more difficult. I hadn't expected some of the content to be assessed- they decided to include a hollow section instead of the I section students were more familiar with. The questions become more heavily worded and design based- it felt like I was doing a design assignment under exam conditions in a tight time frame. The paper was also error-riddled which made things a lot more difficult. I did manage to complete about 95% of the paper in the 3 hours given but was barely confident in my answers. Fortunately, the ST&D1 team scaled the marks so I still ended up doing pretty well. Pretty sure the exam in 2018 will be a lot more straightforward.

Overall:
Solid, well-taught, well constructed and well coordinated subject.You will find this subject rewarding if you enjoyed the statics part of Eng Mech and have an interest in structures. Definitely a good introduction into ST&D2 and ST&D3 and a key subject if you are looking to do Masters of Structural Eng (as well as Civil). Do be aware that this subject can be tough and a lot of content is covered. But you can do well if you keep up to date and put in enough effort (avoid cramming everything during swotvac).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yi_Liu on November 26, 2017, 09:09:19 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR30002 Fluid Mechanics  

Workload:
- 3x 1 hour lectures per week
- 1x 1 hour tutorial per week
- 2x 2 hour labs per semester

Assessment: 
- 2x lab reports (10% each)
- 2x assignments (10% each)
- 3 hr end of year exam (60%)
- Optional quizzes (+1% if you passed them all)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, from library website, without solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Daniel Heath, Marco Ghisalberti

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Straight-forward, technical subject that I found to be easier than Engineering Mechanics (at least assignment wise) and very enjoyable. A small portion of the content in the first few weeks (hydrostatics, flow regimes) was touched upon in ESD1. Daniel and Marco have been teaching the subject since 2015 and have been a pretty good job. They have very different styles of teaching and who you prefer is up to personal preference. 
It is usually recommended for civil students to take the subject in semester 1 and chemical students to take it in semester 2. This is because Marco (who focuses in civil eng) takes the course for 9 week while Daniel (who focuses in chem eng) for 3 weeks in the first semester and this is reversed in semester 2. However, I took the subject as a civil student in semester 2 and didn't feel like I was at an disadvantage.

Lectures:
Daniel took the course for the first six weeks to cover hydrostatics, conservation of laws, pipe flow and pumps before Macro took it for the next three covering dimensionless parameters, open-channel flow and fluid forces on walls. Daniel then came back for the last three weeks to cover tank mixing, compressible flow and multi-dimensional flow (Navier Stokes Equations). As a mentioned, the way the two lecturers taught differed drastically. Daniel usually had very long and detailed lecture notes full of text. Marco's notes were much more concise and  only partially completed. He would complete them with the students during lectures (you would print his notes and bring them to class to write on, similar to calc 2). Personally I preferred Marco's teaching method (it's easier for me to learn by writing). I found Daniel's notes were more difficult to digest and I felt like he put too much attention on detail and missed highlighting key concepts. I would recommend taking more time to review Daniel's lectures. However, both lecturers delivered the content well and provided clear explanations.

One major complaint I had this semester was the pace of the lectures during the last two weeks which covered the topic of multidimensional flow. Being the last topic we covered and riddled with partial differentials, it was definitely one of the more challenging sections of the subject. Daniel's notes for this topic was 200 slides long and we only had about 4 or 5 lectures to cover everything so we literally flew through it and students were forced to do a lot of self learning. The equations which Daniel presented were also more complex than the ones Marco presented in semester 1 (he had them in less simplified forms).

Tutorials:
The tutorials weren't really necessary. You could definitely do well with just the tutorial sheets since solutions were released two week after the tute (or you can find them somewhere floating around online). Some of the tutorial questions were kind of challenging and not really related to content covered in lectures.

Laboratories:
The first lab covered fluid flow in a smooth pipe and second lab covered pumps. Both were very straightforward and you could probably finish up half an hour early. The lab reports were also quite easy and as long as you knew what was going on, could easily get above 18 out of 20.

Assignments:
The assignments were usually questions from past exams or something similar. They weren't very difficult as long as you kept up with the content. Definitely read the questions properly though to avoid losing easy marks.

Quizzes:
The quizzes were introduced as a trial since the fluid mech team want to roll them out as an official assessment component next year. For this semester, they were optional and you would get an extra 1% if you passed them. Unfortunately, they were a bit of a joke. Whoever wrote them seemed to have no idea what was covered in the lectures. The questions made no sense and were error riddled. I gave up wasting my time on them after a few weeks. I really do hope that they improve them for next year, especially if they do become part of the actual assessment.

Exam:
Unfortunately, no solutions were provided to the past exams for Fluid Mechanics.  However, I would definitely recommend doing them, at least the ones from 2015 onwards. Marco wrote 75% of the semester 1 exams and Daniel 25%. This was reversed in semester two. Daniel did let us see the solutions  to past papers during consultation given that we  had actually done them and just wanted to check our solutions. The exam for Fluid Mechanics was probably the one I was most worried about because I didn't really know what to expect. Fortunately, the paper this semester wasn't very difficult if you did your revision properly. It was very fair and written quite well, covering most of the key concepts from the lectures. Daniel mentioned during consultation that the paper wasn't hard but lengthy, but most of the cohort managed to finish up and leave early. Be aware that Daniel like to include theory questions in his exams is you're taking it in semester 2.

Overall:
Well-taught and well-coordinated subject that is very technical and enjoyable. Not too difficult to do well in given you keep up with the content. As with all other subject, I would not recommend cramming everything during swotvac as a large amount of content is covered.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yacoubb on November 27, 2017, 06:34:30 pm
Major: Microbiology and Immunology   

First Year Subjects: 
- BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and Organisms
- BIOL10005 Genetics & the Evolution of Life
- CHEM10003 Chemistry 1
- CHEM10004 Chemistry 2
- PSYC10003 Mind, Brain and Behaviour 1
- PSYC10004 Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2
- UNIB10006 Critical Thinking with Data
- CULS10005 Media, Identity and the Everyday Life
First Year WAM = 83 (H1)

Second Year Subjects:
PHYS20008 Human Physiology
MIIM20001 Principles of Microbiology & Immunology - 90 (H1)
CCDP20001 Street Art
ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure
PHYS20009 Research Based Physiology
MUSI20150 Music and Health
MIIM20002 Microbes, Infections and Responses - 84 (H1)
BCMB20002 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Second Year WAM = 86 (H1)

Third Year Subjects:
CORE SUBJECTS:
MIIM30011 Medical Microbiology: Bacteriology - 82 (H1)
MIIM30014 Medical Microbiology: Virology - 84 (H1)
MIIM30002 Principles of Immunology - 88 (H1)
MIIM30015 Techniques in Immunology - 87 (H1)
NON-CORE SUBJECTS:
MIIM30003 Medical and Applied Immunology
PHYS30005 Muscle and Exercise Physiology
MUSI20203 Peak Performance under Pressure
POPH20001 Genetics, Health and Society
Third Year WAM = 85 (H1)

Year of completion: 2017

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Average Mark: 85 (H1)

Comments:
Let's face it - any time someone tells you they're thinking of a Micro/Immuno major, or as we like to call it, the 'MIIM major', at least one person in the room gasps. Arguably, it is one of the most challenging majors of the Human Biosciences, particularly due to the enormous amount of content and memory involved. In saying that however, if you do enjoy all things related to Microbiology and Immunology, I highly recommend this major, for reasons I will outline below. I thought I'd give a little background to how & why I decided to do a MIIM major (you'll find me referring to this major as MIIM throughout).

At the end of first year of Science, I was deadset on a Human Structures & Functions Major. Why? Because I want to do Med and it seems like the logical major to do. A lot of content covered in this major will reappear in Medicine, so why not get a head start on it all and get that knowledge under your belt? After second year Anatomy (ANAT20006), I was quite sure that although it was a pretty decent subject content/difficulty wise, it wasn't something that I was extremely passionate about. What really consolidated my passion for a MIIM major though, was actually sort of an accident. In second year, semester 1, I had Biochem, Anatomy and my breadth, Street Art, all set. All I needed was one more subject. I was quite unsure of what I wanted to do in my first semester, and ultimately gave in to doing Principles of Immunology and Microbiology (MIIM20001). It was my filler subject, and on my first lecture, I remembered justifying this preference based on the passion I had for the VERY little Immunology and Microbiology I had dabbled in during first year.

Doing this subject opened my eyes up to all things MIIM related, and I loved the subject so much that I prioritised it over all my other subjects. It wasn't all bliss, though - I would have anxiety attacks frequently just thinking about the amount of detail I needed to memorise everything in. I had never been in a situation where I had to memorise so much content, and I literally couldn't fathom how anyone could expect students to memorise so much. Nonetheless, my passion drove me to persevere, and it was my first subject I ever received in the 90s for. So, this led me to doing MIIM20002, the follow-up to MIIM20001, which was definitely a lot more focussed on the Microbiology aspect. By the end of semester 1, I was convinced I wanted to major in Immunology alone, but MIIM20002 changed my mind to doing a Microbiology and Immunology major (more on why I recommend this later).

Some FAQs:
1. Is there a lot of memory involved in a MIIM major?
Yes. Be prepared to memorise a LOT. The majority of this major is not application, but simply rote learning copious amounts of viral life cycles, cytokine functions, components of the complement cascade, the mechanisms of CRISPR, a gazillion different types of antibiotics. This is the point where I recommend that anyone who cannot memorise a lot of information steers away from this major. It can be an extreme turn-off, and extremely daunting having to memorise so much. I know a lot of my friends don't appreciate the MIIM major because they cannot see the relevance of memorising so much information. I would be lying if I didn't feel the same way sometimes. However, the content is so interesting that I believe it definitely outweighs the copious amounts of info you need to remember.

If however, you've got a good memory, the MIIM major is probably the most loyal major. Why? Because a lot of the times, the marks you gain are purely based on knowledge. If you know something, you get the mark. If you don't know it, you don't get the mark.

2. Is it easy to H1 subjects in the MIIM major?
This is a little subjective, and although I did achieve a H1 in all the MIIM major subjects, it was NOT easy. I don't think it is easy to H1 any subject (except for Music and Health and Peak Performance under Pressure - seriously guys these are the best subjects to do with a MIIM major because I don't even think they're legit subjects lol). Anyway, the reason I say it isn't easy to H1 MIIM subjects is because there is a lot of work and effort that needs to be put in to achieving that H1. If you are committed to memorising all the details, knowing many pathways, remembering lots of functions, etc., then you're definitely on your way to achieving a H1. If you aren't, then don't expect a H1.

3. Immunology, or Microbiology/Immunology major?
Okay so I kind of alluded to this above. After doing MIIM20001, I was convinced I wanted to do an Immunology major alone. I didn't really enjoy memorising all the different microbes and features of their life cycle at first. The reason for this was because of what I mentioned earlier - I never needed to do so much memory. However, when I did MIIM20002, I developed my memory skills, and I attribute my memory skills now to doing a MIIM major haha. Once I overcome my fear of memorising, which occurred at the end of semester 2, I considered my options. The best thing about a Micro/Immuno major over an Immuno major, is that it is really great to contextualise the Immunology you learn, to specific details about the different microbes. Personally, I loved Virology and Bacteriology in third year - they were so difficult with the amount I needed to memorise, and I would often be having anxiety attacks the morning of exams convinced I wouldn't remember everything. Nonetheless, I have completed them now and in hindsight, I think I achieved a H1 because they were SO interesting and fun to study. So, I think a MIIM major is so great purely because it allows you to explore the application of Immunology, and then contextualise it to Bacteriology and Virology, which provides you with an insight into the world of all things Bacteria and Viruses (Virology > Bacteriology by the way, just saying).

4. How is the MIIM Department?
Okay the MIIM department is the best department in the whole university. Across the three years of my degree, some of the departments have been so incompetent and I literally cannot fathom how they conduct themselves. Our results for a Muscle and Exercise Physiology MST were released 6 weeks after the test, and it was literally 40 multiple choice questions. Meanwhile, my Principles of Immunology MST results were released 2 days after the MST, and involved multiple choice and short answer. Yes yes, there are more people doing Phys than MIIM subjects. Yes yes, a department isn't good just because it gives results early. SO I'll go into more reasons why the department is great.
-- The MIIM department is always prepared to help. On so many occasions, people have been ill, received difficult information like not getting into Medicine, and the MIIM department does everything they can to help. I had a friend who was literally excused from a practical after finding out some difficult news, and the coordinator of the subject (Dr. Odilia Widjburg) made sure she was okay. They genuinely care for their students, and want them to do their very best.
-- The MIIM department is always prepared to provide feedback. There are consult sessions after all MSTs and they provide you with feedback to review your MSTs. This is something I didn't have access to in any other subjects I've done in my degree, and I found that they provided the opportunity to really engage with the lecturers, and develop a close relationship with them where they weren't so scary.
-- They actually listen to their students. If students find that there was something unclear in the lectures, they make the effort to actually clarify these things.

5. What are good subjects to do in addition to the core subjects?
Easy breadths. When I say easy, I mean easy going breadths with minimal work required. Some people may not necessarily agree with me on this one, but my personal opinion is that because the subjects in MIIM are so full-on, its great to have a reprieve by doing some decent subjects. I did 2 breadth subjects that were quite relaxed, and I found this helped me concentrate on my MIIM subjects to the best of my ability.

6. How do you memorise so much information?
I found that doing diagrams and flow charts definitely helped. The best approach to these subjects is to go over the lectures straight after sitting through them, because usually you consolidate about 70%, and get the overall big picture, and then spend time memorising the finer details. Acronyms are also your best friend - I found these so helpful on so many occasions and these will help you remember all the massive lists of information you can expect to be given for these subjects.

7. Is it a good major to do and follow up with Honours?
This is one of the most compelling reasons I recommend a MIIM major - there is SO much opportunity for Honours. I am going to do an Honours year next year, and I found that I was so in awe of the immense space for development because of the vastness of the space in the MIIM world. From Virology, to Bacteriology, to Immunology and Medical applications of all 3, there is something that is suited to your liking. The lecturers are also so great, and are part of the reason why these honours projects tend to be so compelling.

8. Techniques in Immuno or Micro?
- OKay so I did techniques in Immuno. It was a good subject; however, from what I have heard, and from what I have experienced, there is a lot more interesting content in Techniques in Microbiology. I cannot be the judge of this because I'd have to have done one, but in terms of Techniques in Immunology, this is probably the most application you'll do in the major because of the laboratory-basis of the subject.

All in all, doing a MIIM major has been the best decision I have made in my academic life thus far. It was not only interesting, but also such a great challenge, and although I've had so many moments doubting my capabilities, fearing not being able to remember everything, or just simply not being good enough, I have come out the other end proud of my achievements. The friendships I've formed, and the repertoire with the lecturers in this department, are all so dear to my heart. Highly recommend this major, and if anyone has any questions, please feel free to PM me!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Boobah on November 30, 2017, 12:01:08 am
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law

Workload: 
1 × 2hr lecture per week
1 × Online Tutorial

Assessment:
2X 1 Hour Multi-Choice Test (2X10%=20%),
End of semester exam (3hr) 80%   

Lectopia Enabled:  The first hour only of the Thursday lecture was recorded- I beleive this was the first time the lectures for this subject had been recorded in any capacity.

Past exams available:  1 Practice exam with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: First Principles of Business Law, 10th Edition: You must buy the textbook. Test and Exam questions often directly refer to the text and lecture slides are summarised based on the assumption you have read the text.

Lecturer: Arlen Duke

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments: Business Law is commonly perceived as a 'bludge' or an 'easy' subject. Largely due to the Multiple choice format and lack of tutorials. Whilst I would agree that the average time to be spent on BLAW to do well would be lower than other subjects, to do well requires a very thorough understanding of the course content and consistent work throughout the semester is required.

If English is not your first language, you may get caught out on the wording of the questions and specific legal terms. So unless you have a particular interest in this content, or you have to do it as part of your accounting major- don't do this subject. i.e don't do this subject for the sake that 'its easy and will boost my wam'.

The course is broken down into three key sections.

Section 1 is law making through courts and parliament as well as a general introduction to the legal system. For those who have done VCE Legal Studies, lots of revisited content here and the first test in week 4 can be easily nailed.

Section 2 involves 5 weeks on contract law, this information is very useful for day to day life in thinking about whether or not as an individual you are binding yourself to legal agreements. I found this very applicable to day-to-day life. This section was very dense content wise though so make sure you are on top of this for the second test.

Section 3 looks at Tort Law, the Australian Consumer law and Agency, again lots of new content each week but allows you to learn about a broad range of topics.

Lectures:
Arlen wrote very succinct lecture slides which enabled him to usually have the lectures done in about 1hr- 1hr 20 mins. This was nice however it meant a lot of the key learning had to be done in your own time from the textbook as I found the tests and exams tested the textbook content more than the lecture slides.
Arlen was a very engaging lecturer, his clarity and succinct teaching style was greatly appreciated by students.

Tutorials:
No tutorials in this subject. Just e-tutorials which I personally found useless and unnecessary. Before each test/exam workshops are held to go over the practice test questions. These would be good if you had issues understanding why you were wrong for a question, but I feel like you could have the same benefit by asking a friend.

Tests:
Test 1 focussed on really intricate details of the textbook for chapters 1 to 3. If you study hard possible to do very well.
Test 2 was much more difficult as it covered a very large amount of content and cases. My advice would be to stay on top of the content over these weeks to avoid starting from scratch with your revision a week out like I did.
 
Exam:
Pretty tough, a few obscure questions testing very specific details of the textbook. Definitely worth trying to fit as much on the cheetsheet as possible, because you never know what obscure point may be tested. Having a good set of case summaries is very helpful as well.

In summary, this subject was a very welcome change of pace from a first year of BCom filed with maths maths and more maths. Would happily recommend to other bcom students- but I also recommend doing this in second semester once you have settled into uni so you can really smash this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dddknight on December 15, 2017, 01:07:18 am
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20003: Molecular Analysis of Cell Function  

Workload:  2 x 1 hr lecture per week, 2 x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment:  2 x MSTS (10% each), 1 x online test (10%), final exam (70%!!!!)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes. 1

Textbook Recommendation:  Alberts et al Molecular Biology of the Cell, 6th edition, Garland Science (good for reinforcing concepts)

Lecturer(s): Heather Verkade, Terry Mulhern, Paul Gooley and Marie Bogoyevitch

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Since the previous review of this subject is outdated, I thought I would write a more recent review of this subject. Compared to BCMB20002 and BCMB20005, this was a light subject in terms of the work demanded. The best way to describe this is to think of it as a sequel to BCMB20002. If u understood a majority of what BCMB20002 was saying, you'll find that grasping this subject is not too challenging.

Lectures: Compared to most subjects, this subject is special in that it only has 2 lectures per week. The first lecture of the week dealt mainly with the theory of biochem and molecular biology while the second lecture dealt with the techniques seen in the field. Our lectures were at times hard to understand at first but once you took time to go over them at home, they were pretty straightforward. I liked all of the lecturers and it was clear that all of them were very passionate about the topics they went through. Heather's summary questions are helpful as always and were good steering points when reviewing my notes. 

Tutorials: Perhaps this would have to be the most challenging portion of the subject. The first tutorial of the week dealt with questions that challenged you to think about how to deal with specific situations in the lab. During that one hour, I found myself struggling due to their unfamiliarity and how it was based on conceptual thinking rather than parroting information from your notes. The second tutorial of the week dealt mainly with questions on the assigned scientific paper of the week. These tutorials required you to have conceptual thinking and familiarity with the paper. Terry's tutorials were definitely the hardest to answer because as we all know, he expects us to know things in and out rather than just memorising. What makes these tutorials much harder is the fact that within the classroom, almost no one talks. Word of advice - do talk during these tutorials and with unfamiliar classmates, it makes the tutorials more interesting and less painful to go thru. Occasionally, we get mock tests over a topic that was recently completed and they were extremely helpful when you chose to study for it and do it in test conditions.

Assessment: The 2 msts are your standard BCMB20002 msts and I found them testing mainly slabs of information. They were pretty fair in their assessment. The online activity is an annotation of scientific papers in order to prep u for the tutorial. This assessment had its pros and cons. On one hand, it did try to engage u with the paper so that you weren't completely lost in tutorials and I have to say that this activity did train my analysis of graphs and figures and how to read a scientific paper more efficiently. However, there were times the papers were out of this world and had content I could not understand at all. Perusall makes an appraisal of the annotations to assign a grade out of 3. Problem is sometimes the annotations I felt were intelligent was seen as lacking in perusall's view. Other times, very insignificant comments with regards to the topic were seen as good to perusall. It's a mixed bag of good and bad and I do think it's hard to find that balance. The final exam was what I have to say is... manageable.. The final exam is 70% which is a huge chunk which makes me wonder what's the purpose of working so hard for the 30% assessment. Section A were MCQs while Section B were short answer questions. Within these questions, you had 50% conceptual based questions (tutorials) and the other half tested your theory. If you studied, you most likely will have a bit of time to spare to go thru any errors in your paper. Study thru your notes and the tutorial questions and it should be "manageable". I say this with quotation marks because I was sure I did poorly after the final exam but lo, and behold a miracle struck.

Overall: All I can say is that this is really a nice and chill subject. Things weren't going out of control in this subject and while 2 lectures couldn't be delivered, Heather could give us recordings from the previous years which weren't really big issues because they were uploaded quickly. I would recommend this to students who want to pursue a BCMB major or are just interested in the concepts dealt with in BCMB20002. It felt much lighter when BCMB20005 was completed as well. People interested in improving their scientific paper data analysis skills in science/biomed will find this subject very useful as well. P.S The only reason i put 4.5/5 is mainly because there was no welcome message during the first week :p Made the subject feel a bit strange and unsettling..

PM me if you have any other inquiries.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Yousha on December 19, 2017, 07:24:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: From the Solar System to the Cosmos (PHYC10008) 

Workload:  3 1-hr lectures each week (Mon-Wed-Fri 9 am when I did it). 8 3-hr Workshops/practicals in the semester (marked).

Assessment:  25% Practicals, 15% Weekly Quizzes, 10%  30 min MST, 50% 2-hr Final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes.

Textbook Recommendation:  The Cosmic Perspective

Lecturer(s): Rachel Webster, Michelle, Jack Line

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Marks: 90 (H1) (Study a little more than I did and you'll definitely get around 95)

Science Credit: Yes

Available as a Breadth: Yes for Bachelor of Commerce, Arts, Music, Design and Environment.

Comments: I really liked this subject. The lecturers were great and the content was really interesting. If you have not read about, watched videos on or heard of the size of the universe, it will be a really humbling experience too. This is a very easy subject for both science and non science students, provided that you are good at understanding concepts and rely on that instead of rote learning. I think rote learners might do well in this subject too but I would not recommend that approach. Those who are scared of not having prior knowledge of physics and mathematics should not be worried since there are no complex calculations in this subject and all basic concepts that are required are taught in the lectures.

As the name suggests you will study the objects in the universe, how they formed, evolved and will continue to evolve (theories and evidence supporting these theories). The subject is well organised (unlike my review) and you will usually not feel rushed or lost during the semester.

Assessment
The weekly quizzes (10 in total) are fairly easy and scoring at least 10% (out of 15%) should be a piece of cake for everyone. The mid semester test was very easy too although my peers did not perform that well (median of 16 out of 25). The labs are easy to score in provided you put in the effort, prior reading is not a must to score well but I think that instead of wrapping it up in less than 2 hours each week, giving it the extra half hour will certainly help in both scoring better and understanding things. The final examination was again fairly easy and anyone who has attended the lectures will surely score well. Overall, it is a subject in which a little sincere effort can lead to a score in high 90s.

Note
I do realise that this is not an ideal review but writing reviews has never been my strong suit. Please be forgiving and do not lash out on technical mistakes since this is the first time I am reviewing a subject. If you have any suggestions to help me improve my review please do not hold back and feel free to send a DM if you want to know more about this subject. Thanks!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Knarf on December 19, 2017, 09:44:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10006 Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment 

Workload:  3 x 1-hour lecture per week
                   8 x 2.5-hour practical
                   1-hour problem-sloving session per week

Note: the schedule of practicals is given on the back cover of your lab manual. And I know on the handbook it says pracs last for 3 hours but when we were doing them they only gave us 2.5 hours. It might be different in the future so just be mindful of it.

Assessment:  Practicals (Prelab + Lab report completed during practical) - 25%
                        Ten online weekly assignments - 10% (1% each)
                        One written assignment (Interactive Writing Task) - 5%
                        End-of-semester 3-hour exam - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. Past exams up to 2012 are available but only past three years' papers are provided with solution.

Textbook Recommendation:  The prescribed textbook is Physics for Global Scientists and Engineers, Volume 1 or Physics for the Life Sciences 3E. I 'found' the latter one but only used it once. So they are not really necessary. Aside from textbook you will definitely need to buy the lab manual for pracs and problem-solving sessions and a logbook for writing reports.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof Michelle Livett covers thermal physics, fluid and radiation and imaging. Prof Ann Roberts covers electricity and magnetism.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1(89)

Comments:
Before doing this subject I was really surprised to find out that there wasn't a single review of it here. Considering the relatively large cohort with both biomed students and science students, I didn't know if it was simply a coincidence or people were just so bothered with physics that they just wanted to get it over with. Now that I have finished it, my overall attitude towards this subject is positive. You will be provided with enough resources for learning and assessments. The coordination of this subject is not sublime but they do a decent job. Assuming that you have done physics in high school, you won't find this subject challenging if you keep yourself up to date with the content.

Lectures:
 A/Prof Michelle Livett and Prof Ann Roberts are both good lecturers and they present their content in a very clear fashion. For the majority of lectures you won't need to memorise much. It's not necessary to memorise formulas for they will be provided in the exam. But you must pay attention to any derivation shown on slides or handwritten by lecturers on camera because they can be assessed. In-class demonstrations are also examinable. So make sure you know what happens and why it happens. The only part of course which involves some memorisation is radiation and imaging. But it's really nothing compared to biology.

Problem-solving sessions:
I find myself unqualified to comment on them because I have never been to any one of the sessions. I heard that they didn't take rolls and the only thing you did in class was to solve questions in group on board. So I figured why not just do those questions on my own. Now you can be as lazy as me by not going to the sessions (which is highly not recommended), but you can't go further by not doing questions on problem-solving sheets. Because in my year the examiners decided to put two of those questions directly onto the final exam paper. Even if it won't happen anymore, you will still find many questions in the exam to be variants of those from problem-solving sessions. So be sure to do the questions.

Practicals:
Personally, I never enjoyed any of the eight practicals. And this is predominantly why I gave the rating of 4 out of 5. When I was reading reviews of this subject on studentvip, some student mentioned how 'awesome' the practicals were. So I walked in the lab with some expectations but gosh did it turn out to be disappointing. The time management for pracs was weird. They were 2.5-hour long when they were supposed to be 3-hour long. And for the first prac everyone was rushing in the end. Some students went 20 minutes over time to finish their report. Then for the second prac, most people walked out 30 minutes early. Furthermore, the criteria for lab performance is ridiculously arbitrary. You can lose mark for 'distraction' during pracs even though nobody knows what it means. You can possibly lose mark for asking your demonstrator questions because it shows that you are unprepared for pracs, which leads to my next point that your practical experience and mark hugely depends on your demonstrators and they are nowhere near as good as those in chemistry last semester. I asked my demonstrators quite a few questions each prac and never lost a mark for that. But some people in other labs weren't that lucky. As for the report, it's basically copying stuff from the manual and answering questions. Prelabs are done online. They are mostly multiple choices with few questions where you need to fill an answer. Overall my tip for practical is to write your report as well as you can and hope for the best.

Assignments:
1. Weekly online assignments:
These online assignments come out every Friday and are due next Monday if I'm not mistaken with the schedule. Your best ten results will be picked for the 10% final mark. I think the thing worth noting about these assignments is that some if not most of the questions are harder or even much harder than those you get on the exam. Don't stress too much if you are stuck with some questions or you think you've spent too much time on them. It always took me quite a while to finish one assignment. Moreover, in my year, one question from assignment showed up on the exam paper. Therefore do take your time and work through them.

2. Written assignment:
Somewhere around the middle of semester you will get this IWT (interactive writing task) assignment. The purpose of this assignment is to help you familiarise with essay-style question which will show up in the final exam. You need to choose one of three topics for your piece. Topics include guideline questions so you are basically still answering questions and putting them together fluently. Your first draft is not marked but reviewed by two other students and a tutor. You will also review drafts of two other students who work on different topics. Your reviews are marked so don't just say stuff like 'good job'. Be as constructive and considerate as you can. After receiving the reviews you will develop your draft based on them and submit your final piece which needs to include how you use the reviews. Everything is done online. Your reviews and final piece are what are marked. I don't know what the weighting is but I think I wrote more for reviews than for my final piece. Feedback and sample pieces will be provided later in the semester.

Exam:
You might be thinking that with three questions being given before the exam from problem-solving session and online assignment, the final exam in my year should be easy. But the most challenging part of the exam is the sheer amount of stuff to write. There should be quite a few students who weren't able to finish in my cohort. In fact, if I spent any time thinking of those three questions, I wouldn't be able to finish on time considering I only had few seconds left. There won't be too much time for you to think so try to write as fast as you can. As for difficulty, I think it's fair. It's easy to spot some patterns in the way they write questions from the past exam. For example, thermal physics is usually about someone walking, running or cycling and how heat processes are occurring, electricity is very likely to have a question on a three-point-charge system and radiation and imaging is probable to have an essay-style question. You won't see anything you haven't seen before. Therefore the best preparation is to go through your lecture slides and make sure you know how to solve all the questions you have seen in problem solving sessions and assignments.

Overall, this is a decent subject which is not too hard to do well in. From what I've heard it is better coordinated than Physics for Biomedicine. Therefore for biomed students, if you are eligible for Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment, do pick it. And if you have any inquiry about this subject, feel free to PM me ;).

Edit: Apologies for being misleading here. Students with study score of 25 or more in VCE Physics 3/4 or equivalent have to do Physics 2: Life Sciences & Environment. I thought we had a choice but apparently I was muddled :-X.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sweetcheeks on January 01, 2018, 11:40:10 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10004: Biology of Cells and Organisms 

Workload: 2x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week, 5x 2 hour practical every 2 weeks, 5x 1 hour skills workshop alternating with practical

Assessment: Exam 50% (hurdle), 25% practicals, 20% 4x module tests, 5% assignment

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: One sample exam as well as extra extended response questions

Textbook Recommendation:  Biology: An Australian Focus (provided as an interactive e-book)

Lecturer(s): Alex Johnson, Andrew Drinnan, Lauren Salo, Mark Green, Mark Elgar

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2017

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89 H1

Comments: I really enjoyed this subject and felt that it was taught extremely well.

lecturers
Alex Johnson: Alex gave lectures on cellular biology, which were my personal favourites. His voice was extremely pleasant and he spoke at a perfect pace. The content was quite straight-forward. The lectures covered the different components of cells and how they function together as well as the origin of these components.

Andrew Drinnan: Andrew gave lectures on plants, as well as cellular respiration and photosynthesis. He was more interested in telling us random facts about plants rather than delivering the content he said he would. However, the parts he taught were quite simplistic and he gave quick summaries at the end of each lecture of the important information that we would need to know (and his exam questions reflected this)

Lauren Salo: Lauren’s lectures were on physiology. For the most part she was very thorough in her explanations and the content was delivered exceptionally well. However, she kept running out of time and would carry over content to the next lecture, resulting in her final lecture only being half completed, which was a shame as it was an interesting lecture.

Mark Green: Only gave 2 lectures on reproduction and they were fantastic. He continually applied the content to real life and at the end of the second lecture did a quiz asking questions that most people should know the answer to (about birth control etc.) and gave out razors and condoms to people who got the answers correct.

Mark Elgar: Mark taught the evolution aspect of the course, which consisted mostly of rote-learning. I didn’t find him to be very engaging but the content was quite easy to remember. He would give monologues about an evolutionary scenario, which came up on the exam word for word. His monologues are still embedded in my memory long after the subject, so he did a good job of ensuring that the content was learnt.


Assessments
Exam: 50% hurdle consisting of 3 sections with approx. 180 marks. Section A is multiple choice, some worth one mark others worth two. Section B is a fill in the blank, quite straightforward for the most part. Section C is the only section where answers need to be written and the questions can vary wildly. This year the examinable content was not just that taught in lectures but also on any extra material (skills workshops, practicals, tutorials, videos and textbook readings).

Module Tests: Each module had a test worth 5% (4+5 were combined). Some of the questions could be a little contentious with ambiguity between several answers (admitted by the tutors), however they encompassed the content delivered in lectures and were a good feedback tool, however they weren’t available in feedback mode like chemistry.

Assignment: The assessment unanimously hated by the cohort. We were given some data on the molecules involved in photosynthesis and told to write a lab report on it. Hardly any information was given and the word allocation was extremely low (less than 300 for the entire thing). Don’t have high hopes for getting a good mark with this.

Practicals: The pracs for the subject were quite simple and easy to get full marks on if you followed the demonstrators advice. I personally found most of them to be rushed (much more than chemistry) but easily completed if you keep up with the demonstrators. Unfortunately you are not told what you are being marked on until you get into the lab (or if you have friends who have already completed the lab). Some of the labs I found that I would only complete the tasks we were being assessed on due to time constraints.

Tutorials
The tutorials are quite useful depending on what tutor you have. I had Michelle and she was fantastic, she knew exactly where most students would be having trouble and put a great deal of effort into helping us understand it. There are plenty of worksheets that are completed (depending on the tutor) which make fantastic revision material. The tutor will also tell you what is coming up in the future (assessments, practicals) so that you don’t forget. 

Skills Workshops
These were a new addition this year. The aim was to boost our ‘scientific’ skills (understanding data, writing experiments, hypothesis, written responses etc.). The intention was good but the delivery was not very helpful. I found them to not be very clear in what we supposed to be learning. Often the examples used were obscure and a bit difficult to understand. The content is exam assessable, usually in the form of part of the section 3 content (e.g. write a hypothesis for this experiment, analyse the data).


Advice for the exam
The exam is a real mixed bag. The first section, consisting of multiple choice has questions that require logic and critical thinking and others that are purely memorisation. Some of these questions may be a little bit contentious, where you have to decide which is going to be the best answer.

Section b involves filling in the blanks of a paragraph using a word bank. This section is not too challenging as long as you remember some of the buzzwords from the semester.

Section C is an extended response type question and is where most students do the worst. This is where the skills workshops were meant to help. The questions could be anything (you are told who is writing each questions during the final tutorial) and are more there to test your scientific thinking than simply being able to regurgitate information.

During SWOT VAC the biology department ran a series of lectures to assist with section C. If they run them, I highly recommend that you attend them as they provide extra section C questions and the criteria required to get full marks.

One practice exam is released. Often there will be questions on the practice exam that will also appear on the exam.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sweetcheeks on January 01, 2018, 08:38:41 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005: Genetics and the Evolution of Life 

Workload:  2x 1 hour lectures per week, 5x 2 hour practicals every second week, 5x 2 hour workshops alternating with practicals, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 20% from 4 module tests (3 online, one completed in tutorial), 5% assignment, 25% practical assessment, 50% exam (hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  One sample exam provided, with answers and additional section c questions

Textbook Recommendation:  Biology: An Australian Focus (provided as an interactive e-book)

Lecturer(s): Dawn Gleeson, Hayley Bugeja, Theresa Jones, Lauren Salo (guest), Andrew Drinnan

Year & Semester of completion:

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) 89 (H1)

Comments: Compared to BIOL10004 this subject is badly run. It was disappointing to see the quality slip so much (I will discuss further below)

Dawn Gleeson, the queen of cat pictures, took the first set of lectures looking at genetics. For the most part, she was quite easy to understand but could be a little robotic at times. She provides a general introduction to genetics including the different classifications and genetic linkages and how diversification occurs. Her examples were set out extremely well and easy to follow and she provided us with plenty of extra practice questions. There will be a lot about drosophila.

Hayley Bujega: Her 3 lectures were easily the worst of the lot. It seemed like she was reading the information straight from her computer and there was little engagement with the audience (we had the least amount of people turn up to her 2nd and 3rd lectures). I also felt that there was some content that she didn’t understand so she struggled to explain certain concepts. She was covering gene expression but I didn’t feel like I learnt anything from her lectures, it just seemed to be endless talking without much explanations. She also made continual mistakes during the lectures which she didn’t always correct. I was better off with the tutorials and the textbook.

Theresa Jones: Her lectures started off a little frustrating as there was a video we were required to watch prior to her lecture that we were not informed about. This resulted in the lecture being pretty much a waste. She did apologise for this in her second lecture, as she did not realise we were not informed, and actually went through the content of the video. Overall, her lecture content was delivered with a high level of enthusiasm and very professionally. She taught the zoology section and she had an endless knowledge of cool facts about animals that allowed for a good way to remember them.

Lauren Salo: Although she only filled in for one lecture of Theresas’, Laurens’ lecture was by far my favourite of the semester. She was very engaging and physically demonstrated some of the concepts she was trying to explain, making it much easier to understand.


Andrew Drinnan: Andrew gave lectures on the evolution of the protists, fungi and plants. The lectures were quite interesting but we were required to remember a vast amount of information (such as the different types of chloroplasts in various protists and were in the timeline plant adaptations appeared). He did a good job of showing us the level of content expected so as not to allow us to become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information provided.

Dawn Gleeson (again): Dawn returned to give the final three lectures on population genetics. These lectures were quite straightforward, mostly going through examples of scenarios (which follow the same format each time) and there wasn’t too much that needed to be explained.


tutorials
I found the tutorials to be excellent in helping with revision, as we were shown ways to summaries the different topics into easy to understand ways. There is also content learned delivered that is exam assessable (such as human evolution)

I had Lauren Salo as my tutor. She is absolutely brilliant, an excellent teacher who knew how to explain any concept. Unfortunately, she did have to take about 3 weeks of personal leave and I had to attend other tutorials. The other tutor was great, however he was covering the content in a different order so that resulted in me missing out on some content (such as the human evolution)

Skills Workshops
The Skills workshops were a big let down (as they were last semester). Their purpose is to help build upon the foundations of being a good scientist (research skills, writing skills etc.) but they fall short of being useful. They seemed to be worse than semester 1. I understand what they are trying to do but they need some serious restructuring.

Assessments

Module Tests; Each component of the course has an associated test worth 5%. The first was completed in the tutorials and the rest online. I found some of the questions to be very contentious and there was issues with several of the tests not marking people correctly or some questions not having any correct answers. This was dealt with straight away, however some questions that had incorrect answers were not fixed.

Assignment; like semester 1, the assignment was the worst assessment. It involved looking at two genes associated with drosophila and required an analysis of the genes (linkage, dominance, sex linked etc.). Very little information was provided making it near impossible to understand exactly what was wanted

Practicals: I enjoyed the practicals, my demonstrator (Ian) was extremely helpful in promoting an understanding of what we were meant to be learning and would provide as much help as he could when asked. Again, like BIOL10004, we are not told what we are being assessed on until the day. Assessments were usually a quiz combined with us having to demonstrate satisfactory completion of practical tasks (such as finding cells on microscope). There were 2 post prac tests that required us to have our (fully completed) practical notes. This was a little bit annoying as I had to ensure that I could find the correct pages and also that I had filled in the correct information.


Exam: The exam was really no different than BIOL10004. Each module was weighted depending on how many lectures there were. I liked the exam as I found that the questions asked were well thought out. The section C questions were easier than BIOL10004, much less scientific thinking.

Some of the questions from the sample exam were the same or very similar, which was a great confidence booster.

Unfortunately, there was a mistake with one of the section b questions (one too many to fit onto the sheet) and instead of being told to disregard the last part, we were informed to cross out the entire question. I still completed the question, as I felt that it would be a disadvantage to myself as it was my best section (17 marks out of 45 for plant/protist/fungi section) and Dawn emailed us afterwards informing us that we were meant to complete the question.

Why I rated this subject poorly
You can probably see that I have been very negative with this subject review. I absolutely loved the content that was covered in the subject, however the way it was run was such a let down from BIOL10004. We were expected to do extra readings from the textbook and other sources on the LMS (which is fair), however these were usually not clearly listed and often placed in the wrong section, making it difficult to keep track of what was to be learnt. For example, when it came to Theresa’s lectures, we were expected to watch the set of videos on animal classifications so that we would understand the lectures. Unfortunately, we were not informed of this and the videos were not located under the correct section. The LMS was a complete mess, with mazes of folders, usually located in the wrong sections. I had to show some of the tutors where the human evolution video was located as they couldn’t work out where it was placed.

The reason for so much content to be learned outside of lectures was due to the drop from 3 lectures to 2, resulting in the lecturers not having as much time to deliver all the content required. This would not have been problematic except for the complete lack of organization and structure.

I hope that in the future the subject will be run better, as it is a very interesting subject and essential for many majors.

Advice for the subject
Go into the subject with a positive attitude. Sometimes the content may seem boring but it provides a great baseline for seeing what fields you may want to continue studying in.

Continually revise, as there is a lot of content in the subject and you will need to memorise a lot (names of animal classes, names of protists). I suggest using flashcards (I personally used Anki). Most of you will likely be undertaking Chemistry 2 at the same time and these subjects combined introduce you to a lot of new information and are very demanding so it is essential to stay on top of the workload (otherwise you will have too much to learn during the exam period).


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Maths Forever on January 12, 2018, 04:40:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20005: Statistics

Workload: 3 x One Hour Lectures, 1 x Problem Based Class (Tutorial) and 1 x Computer Laboratory Class per Week.

Assessment: Three Assignments (6.7% each, totalling 20%), Computer Laboratory Test held in the last week of semester (10%) and 3 Hour End of Semester Written Examination (70%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Yes, three past exams and solutions were made available on the LMS for 2014, 2015 and 2016. Please note that there was a new lecturer for 2017. However, the past exams were still an accurate representation of what to expect for the exam (even though there were several errors that students pointed out in some of the exam questions and the solutions to past exams).

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed text is R. Hogg, E. Tanis, and D. Zimmerman, Probability and Statistical Inference. 9th Edition, Pearson, 2015. To be honest, I hardly used the textbook. The assignments, tutorial classes, computer class sheets, lecture examples and past exams gave a sufficient number of questions. However, the lecturer did provide a list of additional questions that students could attempt from the textbook towards the end of semester. I would say that these additional textbook questions just give students extra practice!

Lecturer(s): Dr Damjan Vukcevic.

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Rating: 5/5

Comments: As mentioned above, this was Damjan’s first time taking this course. I believe the previous lecturer was Dr Davide Ferrari. Personally, I really liked Damjan’s teaching style and feel that I learned a lot from this subject! MAST20004: Probability or MAST20006: Probability for Statistics is a prerequisite for this subject. So make sure that you are familiar with the special probability distributions taught in these prerequisite subjects since they will be used frequently throughout the semester. In particular, the Binomial, Poisson, Exponential, Uniform and Normal distributions came up quite frequently. You will also need to be familiar with what a random variable is, expected value, variance, covariance, independence, Law of Large Numbers, Central Limit Theorem and Moment Generating Functions (this last topic is not used very frequently in MAST20005).

Like all mathematics and statistics subjects, the key to success is practice, practice, practice! The more questions you can attempt throughout the semester, the more comfortable you will be with the ideas presented in the course. Statistics is all about applying the concepts taught with real data sets. However, one of the focuses of MAST20005 is also learning the derivations of the formulae presented in lectures. You will often need to prove some result using techniques taught in the course in the final exam.

Please note that the subject MAST90058: Elements of Statistics shares common content with MAST20005. Both subjects have the same lecturer, time and place. The subjects are essentially the same in content. The only difference is that MAST90058 has a slightly different focus on what it teaches students. It focuses more on the practical applications of statistics, whereas MAST20005 assesses students more on the derivation of important formulae. This is reflected in the final exams for each subject. The first six or so questions are the same for both courses, but the last two questions are usually different due to the slight differences in the focus of each subject.

A major focus of this course is using the data collected from a given sample to make inferences about the entire population. We are often interested in trying to estimate a particular parameter concerning the population. For example, we may want to estimate the proportion of the population that support a certain Prime Minister. Clearly, it would be too difficult and expensive to collect data from the entire population (all of Australia) just for a simple news poll. So instead we would collect data from a sample and try to infer the population proportion based on the results of this sample of smaller size. We summarise the data from any sample with statistics (e.g. sample mean, sample standard deviation, sample median, sample proportion) and use these to estimate the desired parameter. Point estimation (including method of moments and maximum likelihood estimation) will be covered as well as interval estimation.

Other topics in this course include regression, hypothesis testing (including distribution free hypothesis tests, goodness of fit tests, analysis of variance and likelihood ratio tests), order statistics, quantiles, resampling, Bayesian methods, asymptotic distributions and optimality. This subject will also introduce you to many new probability distributions that may not have been covered in prerequisite subjects. The most important of these are the chi-squared distribution, t-distribution and F-distribution.

Damjan uses a combination of both lecture slides and handwritten examples (recorded on the document camera) in delivering his lectures. The problem based classes are just like the typical mathematics and statistics tutorials with students collaboratively working around the whiteboards. The computer based classes will allow you to use the programs R and RStudio to both enhance your knowledge of statistical inference as well as learn how to use a computational program to find point estimates, construct interval estimates and undertake hypothesis tests in an efficient manner. The lecture examples will be done both by hand and by the aid of R.

ASSIGNMENTS: There are a total of three equally weighted assignments throughout the semester. I found these to be quite reasonable and fair both in the time they take to complete as well as the consistency with what had been covered in the lectures. Please note that a random subset of questions is chosen for marking (just like in MAST20004). Typically, the assignments contain six questions and three of these will be marked. Complete solutions are released after assignments have been submitted and returned to students.

COMPUTER LABORATORY TEST: The test (50 minutes) is held in the last week of semester. This will test your competency with R and will assess how efficient you can be in applying the concepts taught during the semester. You will be allowed to bring three doubled sided A4 sheets into this test as well as HARD COPIES of all of the tutorial sheets and computer laboratory class notes.

FINAL EXAM: The final examination is 3 hours in length. You are allowed to bring a single double sided sheet of notes into the exam and a hand held scientific calculator (consistent with the approved model from the Faculty of Science). R output will be provided in the final exam, but you need to know when you will need to use that output as well as how to read it. As mentioned above, consistent effort throughout the semester will pay off!

On the whole, I felt this subject was well coordinated and supported with interesting real world examples. This area of mathematics is also very applicable to many industries and fields of science. This subject has definitely motivated me to continue with my studies in probability and statistics! If you’ve liked previous courses from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this subject!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverfox on January 17, 2018, 04:00:21 pm
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!  :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sjayne on January 22, 2018, 10:05:37 pm
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!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Alter on March 01, 2018, 10:59:31 am
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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: BNard on June 18, 2018, 11:28:18 am
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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: junyper on June 19, 2018, 11:13:22 am
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. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on June 23, 2018, 03:42:33 pm
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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on June 23, 2018, 08:28:40 pm
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).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverfox on June 24, 2018, 04:33:50 pm
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!  :)


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jre233002 on June 25, 2018, 06:29:35 pm
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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on June 26, 2018, 05:57:44 pm
***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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on June 26, 2018, 09:21:11 pm
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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on June 28, 2018, 12:45:42 am
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"
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: silverfox on June 28, 2018, 04:39:10 pm
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!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dddknight on June 28, 2018, 06:53:53 pm
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 :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on June 28, 2018, 09:32:48 pm
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.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: wobblywobbly on June 29, 2018, 08:08:12 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30010: Microeconomics

Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week. The lectures were held in the same day this semester, with a 75 minute break in between (to have lunch or whatever). This was also when the lecturer, Georgy, held his consultations.

Assessment:  60% - hurdle exam, 40% - assignments (There are five assignments due fortnightly, each are worth 10%, the worst result is discarded. This also means you can skip out on one assignment)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, and pre-recorded lectures are available before hand if you're into pre-watching lectures before they are actually given.

Past exams available:  Three year's worth of exams and answers are given at the very end of the semester (as some of the exam questions were given to us as assignment questions this year)

Textbook Recommendation:  The three textbooks we were given were: Serrano and Feldman (A short course in intermediate microeconomics with calculus), Mochrie (intermediate microeconomics), and Varian (intermediate microeconomics with calculus: a modern approach). All are not necessary, you are only assessed on content from assignments, tutorials and lecture slides. No reading is necessary, only if you want to further your knowledge/don't really understand Georgy's explanations.

Lecturer(s): Georgy Artemov

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (9X)

Comments:

Lectures
The topics in Microeconomics are : The utility function, constrained optimisation, Slutsky decomposition/Giffen goods, Game theory (sequential and simultaneous games), applications of game theory (congestion games, political competition, Bertrand/Cournot extensions), information cascades and bilateral trade (Myerson-Satterthwaite theorem). Basically, the first half of the semester is dedicated to learning the fundamentals of microeconomics, then the second half is a grab bag of random topics based on applications. In previous years, auctions were covered -- I was a bit sad we didn't cover auctions but oh well. Each topic had pre-recorded lectures so if you were keen, you could watch Georgy give a pre-recorded lecture on Echo which is much longer than the ones given in person (but is given in more detail, e.g. going through calculations slowly). I found them useful, but others didn't. There were also some interactive polling sessions but they seemed to be abandoned in the interests of time towards the end of the course. Some of the lectures were slow, and some were way too fast (the last topic was covered in the last half of the last lecture). Be warned: there is a lot of maths and leaps in thinking, so make sure you're not distracted, otherwise you will find yourself lost after just a few slides.

Assignments
These are full-on. The first assignment was given out in the third week or so? You basically get a fortnight to complete each assignment, and as soon as the midnight deadline passed for one assignment, the next one was posted. Basically, assignments were due every fortnight up until the very last day of the semester. The assignment questions are also very involved, and often you will find that you will need to rewrite your assignments twice, or three times -- talking with your friends is essential, in picking up on errors you may have missed. They are also good exam preparation as some of the questions were taken from previous exams. Some assignment questions you might not know how to do -- they are usually explained in the next lecture, which was not good -- would have preferred if assignments tested on stuff already covered in class. Despite the difficulty, you should do well, the median and means for the assignments were around 80-90%.

Tutorials
The tutorials were a good way to consolidate knowledge, especially if you have a good tutor. Jump around the tutorials to see which tutor you like, attendance is not assessed. The tutors teach techniques to help tackle the problems given, but as solutions for the tutorial were given the week before, you could get away with not doing homework, which I think is a bad thing since I got lazy and often got lost during tutorials. Also, the questions are too tough (i.e. excessively long proofs, or solutions that take pages), and they go into way too much detail. It's something that can be improved.

Exam
Two hours long, you get a ten page cheat sheet (20 sides) which probably won't be useful. Probably the most controversial part of the subject this semester. It had four questions, the first was a standard game theory question, then one was a variation of a proof that we did on an assignment, the final two were on topics that we learnt on the very last week. The last three were pretty controversial. The proof question I thought was alright, since we did see it before, but some people thought it was a bit too creative for the exam. The questions on topics that we learnt in the very last week, in my opinion, shouldn't have been on the exam. We didn't get sufficient practice for one of them, and it was very surprising to see it appear on the exam. Microeconomics is a really hard subject to write questions for because there were so many topics, and people were upset that major topics like Giffen goods or constrained optimisation weren't on the exam, which is a fair criticism.

Summary
This is without a doubt, one of the most conceptually difficult subjects I have ever taken at University. It is a great big leap from Intermediate Microeconomics, and goes into making and deriving proofs, a lot more involved calculus, and mind-bending concepts. Even though it was a difficult subject, I also found it the most rewarding subject to study as well, it's a subject that really teaches you how to think like an economist, even if some of the applications are a little bit abstract. I didn't give it as high as grade as I probably should, considering how glad I am to have done this subject, because of the tutorials and the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: wobblywobbly on June 29, 2018, 08:36:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30020: Mathematical Economics

Workload: 1 x 2 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:  60% - hurdle exam, 40% - assignments (There are five assignments, each are worth 10%, the worst result is discarded. This also means you can skip out on one assignment)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available: Only last year's previous exam and answers were given. The tutor, Daniel, also wrote us some practice questions which were helpful.

Textbook Recommendation: Mathematics for Economics by Hoy, Livernois, McKenna, Rees and Stengos. Basically the lectures follow the textbook closely. You can live off the lecture slides, but some tutorial/assignment questions you might not know how to do might appear in the textbook as an example.

Lecturer(s): Svetlana Danilkina

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (8X)

Comments:

Lectures
The topics in Mathematical Economics follow the first four parts of the textbook: The fundamentals (logic, proofs, set theory), univariate calculus (continuity and epsilon-delta definition, derivatives, differentials, optimisation - minimising and maximising), linear algebra (systems of linear equations, matrices, determinants, inverses, eigenthings, quadratic forms) and multivariate calculus (calculus of n-variables, constrained optimisation, comparative statics, Kuhn-Tucker conditions). Basically look at the handbook. As someone who did no MAST subjects at university, I found the content manageable, but it did take a lot of hard work in trying to remember how to do everything for the first time. Obviously students who did Calculus2/LinAlg/RA had a real advantage, but the subject goes through more economics applications of said subjects, so we all had something to learn. Svetlana's an alright lecturer, sometimes she was just speaking too quickly, or rushed through things without explaining them more throughly. The notes are easy to follow (again, you could use the textbook as a substitute).

Assignments
Not too bad. They were mainly based on questions given in tutorials, or extensions of questions done in tutorials. Obviously the tough stuff were the proofs, but it was still manageable. It made up 40% of the score. Average assignment grade for the top 4 assignments was 80.95%, median was 93.75%. Be warned, the subject operates at nearly the same timetable as Microeconomics, with fortnightly submissions (although offset by a few days). Sometimes assignments were given out late and we didn't get the full two weeks to do them. You can submit them online or in-person by dropping it off at the FBE building.

Tutorials
Daniel is an excellent tutor. He sprinkles his tutorials with puns and memes, and he gives free candy. Tutorials are done on the document camera, answers for the tutorials come out at the end of the week. Some tutorials had summary sheets with the main points of the previous lecture. Some tutorial questions were pretty simple (e.g. find the determinant of this 3x3 matrix!) and some required a bit more thinking, so there was a good variety.

Exam
Svetlana made it clear that she wasn't there to trick us, she was there to test us on how well we understood the content. We were given the topics of the questions that were going to come up on the exam before hand (logic, epsilon-delta definition of continuity and at least two questions on linear algebra and multivariate calculus each). There were a few curveballs, but they could be dealt with if you did the tutorial work. It was two hours long, and you could bring in a two sided cheat sheet.

Summary
If your mathematically minded, then do this subject, especially if you're planning to do Honours.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Meddling on June 30, 2018, 11:21:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10003 Physics 1 

Workload:
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Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Wilsonj on July 02, 2018, 09:10:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: ELEN30009 Electrical Network Analysis and Design

Workload: 36x1 hour lectures (3 a week), 5x3 hour workshops, 5x2.5 hour problem solving sessions

Assessment: 4x Group assignments (10%), 4x Quizzes (8.5%), 5x in workshop assessment (11.5%), 1x midsem (10%), 1x exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, from around 2012 onward. Only the most recent 3 had completely relevant questions, but the older ones were useful to as long as you skipped the questions that were outside of the current subject content.

Textbook Recommendation:  Not really necessary, since you're given plenty of practice questions in the problem solving booklet.

Lecturer(s): Brian Krongold (The same lecturer from Foundations of Electrical Networks)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2018

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments: This subject is pretty much a direct continuation of Foundations of Electrical Networks, so it's pretty crucial to have mastered analysis techniques such as NVA and MCA. Topics covered include RLC series and parallel circuits, overdaming, underdamping and critical damping, Laplace Transforms, Filters, Op Amps, and two port networks.

I feel they're pretty harsh with marking in this subject, if you make a small mistake during the question, you will not get any more marks for the rest of the question, even if the rest of your technique is correct. There are no consequential marks or anything, so having a keen eye for avoiding minor mistakes is pretty important if you want to do well in this subject. I was also told that in the advanced question in the exam, you either get it completely right, or get 0 marks for it, they don't even do partial marks for it, so my advice is to completely skip this question and focus on accuracy in the other questions, unless you're 100% confident you will get it correct.

The workshops were a good way to see how the different concepts apply to actual circuits. There were only 2 demonstrators, so sometimes it could take a while to get help, or have them mark your work, but the labs were always doable within the 3 hours without having to worry about going over time. Quizzes were done at the start of the problem book sessions, and were a good way to force you to stay up to date. They were also multiple choice, so you weren't completely lost if you were a little behind. Unlike Foundations of Electrical Networks, you actually got to choose your group for the group work, so that was nice.

Overall the topics covered subject was very interesting, and if you did well in Foundations of Electrical Networks, you're likely to well in this subject as well.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dddknight on July 03, 2018, 02:32:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: NEUR30002: Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits  

Workload:  3 lectures/week

Assessment:  2 MSTs (25% each), 1 final exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  None. But a sample MST paper was given for both MSTs

Textbook Recommendation:  Purves etc al., Neuroscience, 5 th edition, 2012: Sinauer Associates (Not necessary. Will only cover the 1st quarter of the lectures)

Lecturer(s): - Andrew Allen, Angelina Fong, Joel Bornstein, Graham Barrett, Stuart McDougall, Song Yao, Shitij Kapur

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Sem 1

Rating:  2.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I decided to write a review on this subject because the current reviews are slightly outdated and i wanted to discuss some issues with this subject. This is a subject that can be part of a LOT of majors. You'll find that people majoring in neuroscience, physiology, HSF and apparently even cell and developmental biology. So this subject provides a lot of options for those undecided on their major. In essence, this is an extension of the neuro bits seen in PHYS20008 and the neurophysiology component in BIOM20002. The strange thing about this subject is the lack of prerequisites. To me, it seems like this subject punishes 1st yr adventurers who don't take into mind the recommended subjects because I would be completely lost and would be crying if I did this in 1st yr. This review will be subjective because I did do NEUR30003 as well but I will try to be objective here.

Lectures: I'll start off by saying that the the 1st few lectures were very basic in that they were review sessions of whatever we learnt in 2nd year. It was the same content with a few pedantic details to take note of. Simple concepts of the biochemistry in producing action potentials were present where we were expected to know how certain neurotransmitters were synthesized in neurons or what was the protein structure of certain channels. These were good lectures and they were presented very well. From the experimental techniques to record neurons, things just went downhill, things became dry and lecturers did not feel very engaging. The content was definitely interesting but they were presented in a way that it seemed like they wanted to fail students rather than educate. The content in this subject somewhat flows with each other with the exception of ENS which seems like a system on its own.

From here on out (week 3 or 4 onwards), the textbook was almost useless because the lecturers focused on recent research in neurophysiology except Graham's content. Graham's content were biochemistry topics regarding signalling in neurons. If you took MCB, this is not challenging at all. I'm not going to mention which lecturer but it was clear from the piazza board that people were so frustrated with his lecturing style and found the MST questions completely unfair. I have to agree on this because I had to actually watch the lecture recordings and write things word for word because questions in the MST were asking things that seemed subtle and minor. It destroyed my ability to actually learn from lectures when the next set of lecturers took over. Rather than understanding which physiology often stresses on, it felt like I had to rote learn things comprehensively without understanding at all.

It was mentioned in the beginning of our lectures that PollEv would be implemented and while it was useful when a certain lecturer was lecturing. It was not consistent throughout the semester and would've been great if each lecturer did use this.

One saving grace of the lecture series though was that we had an opportunity to be lectured by the dean of MDHS - Prof Shitij Kapur. This definitely did not fail to disappoint because his lecturing style was the most simplest but most interesting and while it was not examinable, it was one of the best lectures I've ever had in my undergraduate studies.

Assessment - After all the frustration and difficulty I've vented towards the subject, you would think that this means people did poorly on both 25% msts. On the contrary, you could actually see a negative skew in the grade distributions where 50% of the class scored H1s in the 1st MST and 40% scored H1s for the second one. Overall, 33% of students received H1s at the end of the subject. It was clear the coordinators knew that the class were very smart, hence the lack of help except in discussion board. Without any tutorials, limited exam papers, ok teaching styles, a lot of students were capable of doing well. This is still confusing to me because the grade distribution in NEUR30003 was nothing like this! Not only that but the MSTs would give less than 1 minute/question which really makes me think that those enrolled in neurophys are monsters (including me lol..) The final exam was fair though. It provided 108 questions with 2 hours given. However, there were clear signs that the coordinators were not careful in drafting this paper. One obvious sign was when we had an extended matching question and the abbreviation for an answer was given in the question. The abbreviation (SVZ) was next to the blanked space and you only had 1 option to pick from in the list hinting that things were messy behind the scenes.

Overall After going through my list of complaints, one great thing about the subject was Angelina's coordination. While she may be busy coordinating the 2nd yr research subject, any student could see she was doing her very best in providing us information and helping us in discussion boards. Her replies would often be very prompt and helpful as well. One could see she understands our needs when she presented her respiratory lectures. Things were so clear and you knew what you had to study even though it was very complicated. You should only do this subject if you're interested in the nervous system and don't mind looking at its cellular and biochemical level. However, do not do this subject if you have interest in finding out how this explains behaviour. That is explained in Principles of Neuroscience. And more importantly, do not do this if you're a first year. This may be very painful to go through without the recommended knowledge. A few people were upset doing this subject and have expressed pain in the discussion boards.

A side note: There were some people that complained it was unfair that those doing NEUR30003 had an advantage doing this subject. However, I think this is completely fair. People who chose to do both subjects are most likely actually interested in the areas of the nervous system. It is inevitable that both subjects have overlapping content because they need to go through big ideas already discovered.

PM for any questions :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tvasa on July 03, 2018, 05:58:02 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANAT20006 Principles of Human Structure

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week
                           4 x 2 hour practicals throughout the semester
                           - Practical Class Week 7: Anatomical Structures
                           - Practical Class Week 8: Upper and Lower Limbs
                           - Practical Class Week 10: Back and Vertebral Column, Respiritary & Cardiovascular Systems
                           - Practical Class Week 12: Gastrointestinal, Reproductive and Urinary Systems

Assessment:   ADSL Quizes x 8 (10% in Total)
                                2 x 30 minute mid semester tests (worth 15% each)
                                Final exam (worth 60%)


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No. However for Sections B and C of the exam they release a few sample Questions for you to get an understanding of the way these sections are set out. They don't release answers however in the Exam Revision Lecture Junhua answers a few of them.

Textbook Recommendation:  General Anatomy: Principles and Applications (Eizenberg) and Gray/s Anatomy are recommended. However often they emphasise in lectures how the textbooks cover topics in far more detail than they teach you. Hence I think reading any 'recommended' textbooks would only be confusing and probably a waste of time. I never used any textbooks as the lectures and ADSL online tutorials were enough.

Lecturer(s):  Junhua Xiao, Dagmar Wilhelm, Jason Ivanusic, Stuart Mazzone, Simon Murray and Varsha Pilbrow. All the lecturers are pretty good, but Junhua is by far the best. As the subject coordinater, she always makes it VERY clear what is assessible as she goes through her lectures. I found it useful watching her lectures online for notetaking because of the quality of her explanations.

Year & Semester of completion: 2018

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 87 (H1)

Comments:

Practicals

The practicals are very useful. If you're lucky enough to get good demonstrators (which are medical students), then you'll gain a lot out of them. My advise would be to try if you can go through the prac booklet before each prac and start answering the questions. I found that going into the pracs with an understanding of the concepts they cover really helped. Often you'll see a lot of people who haven't even read the booklet and then when the demonstrators are asking questions and explaining things, these people look very lost. As you are in a small group of about 8 people, you often spend most of the practical having discussions with other students and your demonstrator. Hence, that's why it's a lot more useful to enter the pracs as prepared as possible because otherwise you won't be able to contrubute to any discussion.
For clarification the pracs don't usually assess any content outside the lecture material, however sometimes demonstrators will inform you of some finer detail and hints to questions on the MSTs, so it's important that you're actually listening to what they say.

Mid Semester Tests

I found the assessment quite fair. There are 2 MST's across the semester that are not too difficult if you know the lecture content.
MST 1 covered material from Lectures 1-12 (Embryology, Nervous System, Human form and function, Skeletal System & Bones, Articular System, Muscular System, Inegumental System, Vascular System). I find this MST a bit harder than MST 2 despite the fact that MST 2 assessed more content. A lot of fine detail is assessed here, and in my opinion the embryology questions were the hardest (although some people from other reviews stated the Nervous System to be the most difficult concept, but I disagree). The average for MST 1 was 22/30  (I recieved 24/30) while the average for MST 2 was 21/30 (I recieved 27/30). While the average for MST 2 was lower, in my opinion MST 2 is much easier to do well in. While it assesses lectures 13-25 (Vertebral column & Back, Upper Limbs, Lower Limbs, Visceral Systems, Upper and Lower Respiratory Tracts, Thorax, Cardiovascular system), I personally found the nature of the content easier to remember. In saying this however, the upper and lower limb topics were EXTREMELY dense with content and it was often very difficult trying to remember this section. Luckily there was only a couple questions relating to this topic such as which muscles are innervated by what nerve/artery etc....
At first 30 minutes for 30 MCQs seems daunting, but you will find that it usually only takes 15-20 minutes to complete the entire test, giving you time to go back and review your answers.
They do not release the answers to either of the MSTs, however they do email you a report of which areas you got questions wrong in. For example, it may say you got Question 5 wrong and then below state that Question 5 assessed the Nervous System etc... It never really bothered me that they didn't release specific answers because the exam doesn't assess any of this content in Mutiple Choice format anyway.

ADSL Tasks

ADSLs were essentially weekly quizes. They release a 'Tutorial' each week (The name is a bit misleading - they are basically online modules that  include diagrams and more information from the topics covered in lectures), and then a quiz to be completed that accompanies each Tutorial. The tutorials are LENGTHY and it often took me multiple days to hand write all my notes from them. Some people may prefer to just read them, however I found it useful to actually write the information down and print out the images (or if you don't have the time you could just type them). The ADSL tutorials also are accompanied with links to a website called Anatomedia (which a lot of the lecture diagrams come from). Anatomedia and the ADSL tutorial information work hand in hand, and the Anatomedia content often goes into a lot more depth. Often you have to make an informed decision about which Anatomedia content is actually relevant (as a lot is extened knowledge that isn't assessed) and in the beginning it can be a bit overwhelming.  At the top of the page for each ADSL Tutorial it will provide 'refrences' for sections to go through in Anatomedia. FOLLOW THIS. Otherwise you will just get overwhelmed by the amount of sections/topics Anatomedia has and which ones to go through. In addition, having the lecture notes opened as you go through each ADSL Tutorial/Anatomedia helps work out which sections of Anatomedia are relevant and worth revising. The accompanied ADSL Test (which is open for a number of days) is a free 10% to your assessment. They have a 20 minute time limit each however you can complete them multiple times until you recieve 100% . However if you don't get 10/10 on the first go it won't tell you which ones you got wrong. I was usually always behind due to how long it took to go through each tutorial, so when the due date for the tests came, I always found myself using StudentDoc where people had uploaded the answers to the quiz. My suggestion is to screenshot your answers to the quiz because once the quiz closes you can't access them again for revision.

Exam

The exam this semester was very fair and in my opinion less difficult than expected. However, that isn't because the exam was necessarily easy (as I'm sure many people would have found it hard) but because of the way I approached my revision of diagrams. As stated extensively in other reviews the bulk of the exam assesses your ability to label and answer questions referring to DIAGRAMS. Any of the diagrams in the ADSLs, Anatomedia, prac booklet and the lectures CAN and WILL appear on the exam. At first this seems a bit fustrating because there is A LOT of potential diagrams that they could choose to put in the exam and it may come down to a bit of luck in terms of which diagrams you understand best. My advise is that during your exam revision, make a document of all the ADSL/Anatomedia diagrams from your revision notes and practise labelling them without any help. I would label them during SWOTVAC everyday before I began revising my other notes until I had them all commited to memory, and also to make sure I wasn't forgetting how to label things the next day.

The format of the exam is:

Section A: 20 MCQs on the remaining 1/3 of the course that wasn't assessed in the MSTS. If you have revised this content well enough then you will be able to pretty much answer all the questions during reading time.

Section B: 4  x 10 mark questions each requiring you to label a diagram (so that's 4 diagrams). This is a "fill in the gaps" style of answering Q's so again, it's all MCQ. This semester  2/4 of the diagrams were from lectures and the other 2 were from the ADSLs. I was pretty relieved with this section because 3/4 diagrams I was familiar with (the other one less so but I managed to make a few educated guesses). An Embryology diagram from the lectures initially caught me off guard but when it came to answering it, it was actually not too difficult if you knew the basics. I didn't study embryology  much because one of the practical demonstrators told my group that they never really assessed embryology on the exam, but luckily it wasn't too difficult if you knew the general concepts of embryology.

Section C: 4  x 15 mark questions that each include a diagram. This is the "extended response" section, that is broken down into numerous questions (It's not just a single 15 mark question). This section is the most difficult because you don't have the help of MCQ memory cues. Each of the 4 questions will include a diagram that you have to label, and in this section there will be no list of words to choose from when labelling. So you really do need to make sure you're familar with diagrams, but luckily each label was usually only worth 1/2 mark. In addition to labelling a diagram, you will get questions relating specifically to the diagram and questions not relating to the diagram. They will also assess clinical significance here.

Again, you shouldn't really feel too pressed for time. I think I finished the exam with about 15 minutes to spare. If you're lucky enough to be familar with the diagrams from Section B, and the MCQ questions in Section A, then these 2 MCQ sections can be completed quicker than "a minute a mark".

All in all, this subject rewards those who dedicate a lot of time into commiting a whole lot of facts and diagrams to memory. If you have completed revision notes throughout the semester, then by the the time SWOTVAC comes you can just spend your time revising and reading through them.

Goodluck!!!!



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: j_820 on July 07, 2018, 10:33:43 am
Subject Code/Name: UNIB10009 Food for a Healthy Planet I

Workload: 2x 1hour lectures and one tute per week (note that tute attendance is a hurdle requirement, you need to attend a minimum of 8/10 tutes to pass)

Assessment:  25% MST based on weeks 1-4, 25% Forum report, 50% exam.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, around 5 past exams for Section B but not sections A (MCQ) or C (forum qs). Also 5 past MST papers.

Textbook Recommendation:  None, readings are supplied from the LMS, you can also purchase a printed version of it from the Co-op.

Lecturer(s): so many haha, there is a new lecturer pretty much every week: Mohan Singh, Snow Barlow, Julia Steenkamp, Neil Mann, Anneline Padayachee, Bill Malcolm, Sengeetha Chandra-Shekeran, Rachel Carey, Paul Knight, Ingrid Appelqvist.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2018.

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Overall I'm pretty happy that I took this breadth, it was relatively easy whilst being interesting at the time. At the end of the subject, I definitely felt that I learnt something from this subject, the content we learnt from the nutrition and obesity lectures were applicable to real life as well, which is always good to pique you're interest in the subject. We covered everything from food trends, climate change, nutrition, obesity, famines, how agriculture can pull people out of poverty, the city's food bowl and allergies. Even though it is more geared towards the style of a agriculture/science subject (ignoring the 3 lectures on economics), the content was at a basic level, so it is quite accessible to students from other disciplines too. That being said, I wouldn't call this a subject a total 'bludge' since all the content from the lectures, 10 tutorials and weekly readings is examinable (though the tutes kind of direct you to what you need to take away from the readings). However, the level of effort required to do well in this subject is definitely less than the level required for your other core subjects for sure.
 
Assessments:
The MST held in Week 5 was based on the first 4 weeks of class and was fair, with the MCQs being quite easy and straightforward, sometimes you could just answer them based off logic. However, the written questions are a little time-consuming, so make sure you keep an eye on the time when doing the MST. Same goes for the exam.
The Forum Report was a 1000-word written piece based on the lecture from one guest lecturer (which they ended up calling a 'forum'), people did pretty well, the average was 75%. There was no need for citations because it was a succinct summary of the forum.
The exam was 2 hours with 15 mins reading time, and consisted of MCQs, short answer questions (you answer 5 out of the 7 they give you, which is great because you can steer your focus to particular topics you're stronger in) based on the lectures, and 1 out of 2 questions based on the other 2 forums you have. You also get to bring in a double-sided A4 cheat sheet, which really helps if you haven't really had the time to properly study for it.
Would recommend this subject because of its light workload and for being interesting overall, requiring a little effort but not to the level that it compromises your other subjects.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: EBrookBa on July 13, 2018, 02:09:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: MIIM20001
Workload: 170hrs recommended study time
3x 1 hour lectures a week
2x 90 minute practicals in weeks 11 and 12

Assessment:  2x MSTs worth 20% each
End of Semester exam worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No. No sample exam, just a few practice questions. The "challenge questions" given throughout the term are also past exam questions (I think)
Textbook Recommendation:  Prescott's Microbiology by Willey J, Sherwood L, Woolverton C. 10th edn, 2017 - I found this really useful for the first 4 weeks as it gave a strong foundation and extra information which was really interesting to know about. If you can grab a pdf copy of an older version then that's fine too, as any important diagrams etc will be in the lecturer's slides, and you can borrow this textbook from the library too.
Lecturer(s): Dr Karen Waller, Associate Professor Jason Mackenzie and Dr Laura Mackay

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2018

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H3

Comments: Overall this subject was brilliant, the only reason that it doesn't have 5/5 is due to the lack of practice questions / sample exams  and past exams, which in turn, made it difficult to study for.
The lectures were brilliant, all 3 of the lecturers were really thorough in what you needed to know, and how you needed to apply it. I particularly enjoyed Dr Mackay's lecture series, as she managed to make a whole ton of information, which involved a lot of rote learning, really easy to understand and commit to memory. If you're like me and you struggle with rote learning (I have an illness which makes this an incredibly difficult task), then think carefully about whether you're ready to spend a lot of time (often more than your classmates) committing different names, medications and microbial species to memory. For me, the trade off was worth it, as I have always loved learning about bacteria and viruses and why certain aspects of our immune system work the way they do. It was NOT easy, in fact I spent maybe 20 hours a week on this subject, but I'm so happy with the outcome, and that I managed to complete a subject based on rote learning at the height of my illness.
In the first series of lectures, you learn about bacteria and the fundamentals of microbiology, such as testing mechanisms, Koch's postulates, and DNA replication. Karena is very specific on what she wants you to know, such as which illnesses, treatments and variants, and side effects you need to know, and simplifies otherwise complex information.
Dr Mackay talks very quick, and includes a lot of detail in her lectures, but finishes early (usually 35-40 minute long lectures) and likes to emphasize the applications and connections between immunology and  microbiology. I found wikipedia was particularly helpful during swotvac, as it was useful to link between different topics that I'd have otherwise not linked.
Jason is amazingly passionate, and is really good at engaging his audience. He includes a lot of detail, like Laura, and it's important that you remember /all/ of this detail, as it can come up as a 12 (?) mark question at the end of your exam that you didn't think was important (hint: it was me, and dengue fever). Every disease that he goes through should be committed to memory, and all of the treatment options too. Jason liked to constantly draw links between host cell processes (2 lectures) and how viruses exploit these processes, so having a solid understanding and good memory of the host lectures is incredibly important.
The exam: The exam has 3 sections. Part A is for MCQ on the last 12 or so lectures. Part B is fill in the blanks, akin to first year biology lectures, and part C is an extended response section with around 6 questions. In part C, I found that the questions required the very fine points of detail to score well, and you needed to have an understanding of /why/ certain processes were useful (hint: why do viruses / bacteria use them?).
All in all, I was really happy with the structuring and coordination of this subject, and found it a good subject if you want to go into the health sciences / med area.

Sorry if this review hasn't been clear. I haven't had my breakfast yet. Don't judge me, it's holidays.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on July 14, 2018, 02:09:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: FREN10004: French 1 - Winter Intensive 

Workload: 5 hours x 4 days a week

Assessment: x2 listening assessments (10% each), x1 mid-semester exam (20%), x1 oral presentation (25%), x1 written journal (10%) and x1 final examination (25%)

Lectopia Enabled: NA

Past exams available:  No. But there were, however, various practice reading comprehension tasks and quizzes on the LMS.

Textbook Recommendation:  The textbook, “Vis-à-vis: Beginning French”, is an absolute necessity.

Lecturer(s):. NA

Year & Semester of completion: Winter Term 2018

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Initially, I underestimated the 'intensive' element of this subject. But after an hour into my first tute, I came to realise that I'd need to work exceptionally hard in this subject if I were to do well. Indeed, the tutor advised the class that 3 hours minimum of extra work was needed after every day's intensive lesson. And she was most definitely right. One day of this course is roughly equivalent to a week worth of content (in the standard semester). However, I became accustomed to the fast pace of the course and absolutely loved the subject. Francoise, the subject coordinator, consistently updated the LMS with each day's guide, respective powerpoint, practice listening tests, practice worksheet solutions and sample diary entries for the journal. This organisation meant that the subject was fair in all regards. That is, students were given every opportunity to perform well on the assessment tasks. Another element of this subject that I thoroughly enjoyed was the close classroom bond established. Naturally, students are required to engage in speaking activities when learning a foreign language, which can sometimes contribute to self-consciousness or embarrassment. The comfortable classroom environment, however, meant that everyone learnt together and supported each other's progress.


Listening tests:

The first listening test was fairly straightforward if you had properly revised. It followed the structure of a true and false section, a response section and a dictation one. It's really important that you pay close attention to how the question is posed. For example, it may specify that all numbers must be written in letters, or that definite articles must be included, etc. One aspect of the French language that I found quite difficult to grapple with was the omission of certain sounds. Thus, for the dictation section, it's critical that you pay very close attention to the final constants of words, which will likely indicate whether the subject of the sentence is feminine or masculine. Perhaps this may not be such an issue if you've already learnt a Romance language. I've only ever come from a Germanic background (German and English), where (nearly) all sounds are pronounced.


Written Journal:

Given that this is not being written throughout the semester, but over the period of 1 week, it is important that students consistently pen down entries. At the start, they may be around 25-50 words, but the last few ones should hit the 80-120 word mark. Every day the tutor will recommend a new topic to write on (it will correlate with the content of the day). Writing is an excellent way to consolidate and fuse different grammatical structures and vocabulary. As you're drawing on new vocabulary, it is essential that you know its gender (if it is a noun), and its different forms (if it is an adjective). No dictionaries are allowed for university languages!


Mid-Semester written exam:

Again, this assessment task wasn't too bad if you've studied. I actually found that I had quite a substantial amount of time to review my work and make corrections. There is a reading section at the start, some smaller questions/grammar exercises in the middle, and a final composition at the end. For the composition, there will be list of grammatical structures that must be incorporated into the response. This provides a nice framework for planning the written piece. The journal entries definitely helped with this final section, and all of the others.


Oral presentation:

The oral presentation is in response to Gainbourg: A Heroic Life (performed in French), which the entire cohort watches sometime in the second week. Within each tutorial class, students will be allocated (generally with a partner) with a certain character of the film and an accompanying situation. I found it helpful to first construct the script in English, and then compare it with my partner. In that way we could make any minor adjustments before we translated it into French. As concerns pronunciation, Google Translate is an extremely helpful guide. After listening several times to its automated pronunciations, I began to construct my own phonetic translations, so that I could effectively mimic the sounds. Creativity is also assessed here, so do go to the effort to make a costume and have a background powerpoint slide, etc.


Final examination:

The final exam is definitely designed to be finished at the 1.5 hour mark. In reading time, take the time to fully understanding the reading text and perhaps start to answer the comprehension questions in your mind. This gives you the confidence to move onto the further comprehension activities in the centre of the exam. These activities necessitate a rigorous understanding of all the verbs learn throughout the course. At some stages, my mind blanked at certain conjugations, so it really is important that you do not confuse your verbs (regular verbs, irregular verbs, verbs for the recent past, near future, regular past, and present tense). I wasn't informed of this, but the final written composition is 200-250 words. Therefore, I'd suggest that you leave around 40 minutes for this.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on July 15, 2018, 07:18:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: Econometrics 2/ECOM30002

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

Assessment: 4 assessments worth 7.5% ea, 70% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, they incorporated many past exam questions into tutorial questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  There’s a QME text they put up, but lecture notes are sufficient.

Lecturer(s): David Harris

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Sem 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Third year econometrics is a subject that typically strikes fear into the hearts of many prospective economics majors, but Econometrics 2 is relatively gentle in its difficulty and actually somewhat tolerable.

It is clear that David has tried to shift the focus of the course away from rigorous matrix manipulation and the conceptually challenging  underpinnings of statistical inference, and more into a practical, applicable subject that is more about interpretation and analysis of data. This was clear in the assessment, as although there were a few lectures on proofs of various properties of estimators/standard errors, no difficult algebraic proofs were assessed.

Instead, the focus of this subject was almost entirely about interpreting the results of a regression analysis (with an emphasis on causal vs statistical interpretation of regression coefficients), looking at the assumptions underpinning our analysis (eg. Were the right/relevant variables used?) and “correctly” choosing our model. None of the content was that conceptually difficult to get your head around, it was more learning a bunch of rules and definitions and how to relate the variables of different regressions.

For reference, the course was broadly split into 4 topics: cross-sectional data, statistical inference/properties, panel-data and time series.
 
Tutorials

Tutorials are standard for commerce stats subjects – a tutor goes through a few questions while you’re supposed to click along with R. It was nice that David included several past exam questions as tutorials, so the tutor was able to give you hints as to how to approach them on the real deal. Also, if you can, try and get Daniel Tiong (attendance isn’t marked so you can move around tutes). He’s a bit eccentric but the guy is so passionate about teaching and incredibly knowledgeable and approachable, he actually made econometrics interesting (which is a minor miracle for me lmao). He’s been teaching a long time, so is great at figuring out intuitive ways of explaining sometimes quite abstract concepts to students. By far the best tutor I’ve had in any subject at the uni.

Assignments

The hardest part of the course were the assignments, where we had to learn R. The most I’d ever done up to this point was a few basic MATLAB scripts, so these assignments presented a steep learning curve. David does go through some examples of code in the lectures themselves which helps.
It is useful to be able to know how to use R in the industry, but yeah it was just a pain in the ass to learn. It’s not assessed on the exam though.

Exam

There are subjects where the lecturer can be a real prick and try to trick students up. There are other lecturers who just want to see if students understand the material. Thankfully, David is the latter.

The exam was very standard in its difficulty, if you know the content then you will pass just fine. There was one “proof” question that I couldn’t manage to do worth like 5% of the exam (which I think was an attempt to separate students at the top), but the rest of it was just variations of tutorial/assignment questions that we’d seen before. However, the exam was very long – normally I finish with quite a bit of time to spare but for metrics 2 I was writing the entire time.

Overall

As I’ve said, Metrics 2 isn’t that hard a subject. David has clearly tried to make it more relevant and practical to students actually working in industry – foregoing tonnes of statistical concepts and proofs in favour of more analysis and interpretation of various regression models (which is a tonne easier). It’s a pre-req for honours years in finance/economics and I can certainly see why. Unlike some other subjects (ahem, OB) I can really see the tangible benefit of what I’ve learned and how it can be applied to practise. Learning R is super useful too. The content can be somewhat dry at times, but it's third year econometrics so what can you really expect. Overall, Metrics 2 is a well lectured and well taught subject that isn't as hard as the name suggests and serves as a great capstone for any undergrad economics student seeking to sharpen up their statistical analysis skills.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: sterobo on July 17, 2018, 06:39:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30010: Microeconomics

Workload: 2 hour long lectures and 1 tutorial each week.

Assessment:  5 assignments due fortnightly (top 4 are worth 35%). One 2-hour long exam (worth 65%).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. Three were available, and so was an in-depth guide explaining what exam questions for each of the topics would look like.

Textbook Recommendation:  Unnecessary. Lecture notes are comprehensive enough.

Lecturer(s): Georgy Artemov

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 (Sem 1).

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90+)

Comments:

This is a challenging subject but one that you can do quite well in if you put in the effort. Students who have done Calc 1-2 and/or Mathematical Economics are placed at an advantage for the Constrained Optimisation topic and naturally anything that has to do with utility maximisation. Being familiar with various different functions offered an alternate approach to this section of the course as you could often just graph the indifference curves yourself and perform whatever analysis you needed to carry out (although, there are often other much simpler solutions).

Students who have done Competition and Strategy are at a massive advantage for the Game Theory segments of the course as I'd estimate that up to 80% is essentially the same.

Georgy is an excellent lecturer who is very passionate about the subject. He was trialling an approach this semester where pre-recorded lectures that went through the content in great detail were posted before live lectures. These were good for those who are less mathematically inclined but I didn't really find it to be particularly useful (as the pace was a little too slow). Live lectures moved rather quickly on occasion but Georgy was keen to make the experience as interactive as reasonably possible, which certainly helped. You absolutely need to be attentive during lectures for this subject because the slides are difficult to go through from scratch by yourself.

The tutorials ranged from being almost useless to rather helpful. This is because some of the problems required long and rigorous proofs which never really came up elsewhere (not even on assignments) - on more than one occasion, I spent the entire tutorial copying down pages of meaningless algebra that the tutor went through because there was nothing else to do. On other occasions, the tutorials offered useful practise problems for assignments and the exam. I had three different tutors over the semester and two of them were excellent.

The assignments are not easy by any means. Mind you, they're doable, but they'll require a decent amount of effort and a significant amount of thought.  They often extended upon examples covered in lectures and tutes or made some kind of unexpected alteration to an example we had previously dealt with. Georgy often combines various parts of the course in these questions (i.e. giving us a problem from one part of the course but framing it as something from another part). I found I performed best on these when I started 4-5 days early and had it completed at least 24-36 hours before the deadline, so I didn't have to work under the intense pressure of an encroaching deadline. They're difficult but I found them to be quite fulfilling and enjoyed  the challenge they posed.

On a side note, I would highly recommend that anyone who intends to complete further study in the field (or other similar ones) use the assignments as an opportunity to practise using LaTeX. Georgy suggested this to the cohort and I found it to be a worthwhile investment (and much more pleasant to deal with than MS word).

The exam allows you to take in 10 double-sided pages to use as a reference. Like most exams that allow this (or more), you generally don't have the time to put it to good use but constructing the cheat sheet is decent revision in and of itself. Last year, the exam was supposedly very hard (there's a rumour floating around about the fail rate before scaling that I won't mention to avoid scaring prospective students away) so going into the exam, Georgy had more or less indicated that it would not be as bad. And he wasn't wrong. From a technical perspective, the exam was not particularly hard. The first question was more or less free marks. The second was a proof question. The final two were on Bilateral Trade and Information Cascades (which were topics that were only covered in the last week of the subject - meaning that they were not well practised by much of the cohort because the former didn't even feature in the tutorial from memory and the latter only briefly did. Naturally, we didn't have an assignment on them either).

As the previous review mentioned, the last three questions were quite controversial and there was quite an uproar amongst the cohort on Ed (a more modern discussion board platform that admin used in place of the OLT) in the subsequent days. The proof question was a modification to something that we had seen in an assignment, but Georgy had previously said something to the effect of 'such proofs are not suitable for the exam' in the aforementioned in-depth exam guide. This led to some confusion amongst students and many did not properly prepare for such questions. The final two almost felt shoehorned in.

I left the exam expecting to have done much worse than I ultimately ended up going. While I did answer everything (I know the first 2 questions were more or less correct), what I put down for the final two questions felt rather sketchy to me. I feel as though the exam must have been scaled or marked leniently in the end (since I don't think Georgy expected so many people to find it hard - there was no calculus/Lagrangian on the exam, for example, despite this having been a staple of the previous exams).

Like the other review, I had to dock marks for the exam and the tutorials but this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it appears to have been scaled reasonably. Otherwise, the subject was incredibly well run and taught (even though it is definitely hard) and Georgy and Svetlana (basically the OLT) went above and beyond to answers literally hundreds of queries about the subject, tutorials, assignments (and really anything moderately relevant to the course) on Ed in a timely and extremely-helpful fashion. For anyone up for the challenge, I could not recommend the subject highly enough.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: junyper on July 17, 2018, 10:24:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP10001 Foundations of Computing 

Workload:  Three 1 hour lectures and one 2 hour workshop per week

Assessment:
•   Project 1 (10%)
•   Project 2 (10%)
•   Project 3 (10%)
•   MST (10%)
•   Grok worksheets (10%)
•   Final exam (50%)

Echo360 Available:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, from year 2012 to 2017 with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s): Tim Baldwin, Nic Geard, Marion Zalk
Tim teaches the first half of the semester, Nic teaches the second half, and Marion runs the revision lectures

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 S2

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
This subject mainly teaches Python (version 3.6), topics covered included lists, dictionaries, tuples, CSV, image manipulation etc. Towards the end of the subject, algorithms, HTML and the internet were covered as well.
I had no prior programming experience while taking the subject, and found the content of the subject extremely difficult. Nevertheless, I did not regret doing this subject and it was one of the most enjoyable subject I took this semester. Consistent effort is needed in order to do well in the subjects as the online worksheets and projects are very time consuming. I see many, many positive reviews about the subject online, but I know a handful of people who absolutely hated this subject. Hence, before taking this subject, it would be wise to learn some Python online and see if you actually like it.

Lectures
Most of the time, I have no idea what is going on during lectures, but I still attend them anyway. Lecture slides are released very late and contain little info. During lectures, Tim/Nic would use Grok to demonstrate some code. Many students skip lectures because it is sufficient to learn Python using Grok Learning.
From week 3 onwards, the third lecture will alternate between guest lectures and revision/advanced lecture. Some guest lectures are pretty interesting and worth attending. The slides are provided, and although guest lectures are examined, only basic concepts will be tested, so I personally think that attending guest lectures are not compulsory. As for the revision lectures, don't even bother attending them because they are a complete waste of time. It's poorly structured and messy. Advanced lectures were alright, and the content in these lectures were not examinable.

Workshops
During the first hour of the workshop, the tutor will quickly teach some new (or sometimes old) concepts, then we will proceed to do the tutorial sheet. This is where you get to practice writing code by hand. In my tutorials, there will always be insufficient time to go through all the answers in class. During the second hour, it is a lab session where students do their Grok worksheets, and there will be three extra lab demonstrators to assist you.

Projects
The three projects consisted of 4 or more individual questions. It is a must to start early for all of the projects, because it certainly cannot be completed in a short period of time (at least for me). Questions in project 1 is much easier compared to project 2 and 3, and is marked more leniently, so make sure to score well in it. There are marks allocated for style and comments, which can be easily gained if you follow PEP8. For project 3, Tim conducted a card game tournament for students to compete with each other. While the idea itself seems interesting, I find project 3 too tough and was eliminated from the game early due to having too many errors in my code. For project 2 and 3, there is an extra question for bonus marks, but I did not even have to time to try to attempt them. I got around 8 marks (out of 10) for all of my projects, and did all my Grok worksheets, which I think is what helped me got an H1 for this subject.

MST
Despite the MST being easier than the sample test and last year’s test, I performed very poorly and failed the test. At that time, I still find it hard to understand Python code, thus I took a long time for each question and barely made it in time to finish the test. There are some fill in the blank questions, a convert for loop to while loop (or the other way around) question, and so on. If I remember correctly, the average for the test was around 55.

Final Exam
I did all past year papers (2012 to 2017) and find the final exam to be a bit difficult. Beware that not all questions in past exam papers are relevant, because the syllabus for each year differs a little. For this year's exam, although we learned CSV, image manipulation, HTML etc, none of them were examined. I made the mistake of revising the Grok slides instead of lecture slides. There were certain things covered in lectures that were not in Grok, and so I had to leave a few questions blank. There was also a project-related question (from Project 1). The “bastard question” was worth 25 marks, which was way more marks compared to past exams. Although Tim said to ignore this question until you are finished with all the other questions and are sure of the answer, I still tried to attempt it because there were many other questions which I could not answer. Overall, I think it is not enough to just revise for the final exam using Grok, lecture slides and past exam papers. For revision, I used sites like Edabit to try to attempt some questions and went through the solutions.

Getting Help
There are lots of ways to get help in this subject. While doing Grok worksheets, there is a tutor messaging feature which I find very helpful. You could send your questions and get an answer in 2 hours or so during the first few weeks of the semester. Later on, it can take up to 2 days if there are too many students asking questions (especially for projects). There is also an online forum on Grok where students/ tutors can help answer your questions. During the semester, there were a few active students who would always help answer other students' questions. I personally think the forums is a better way to ask questions because the quality of response for tutor messaging differs. Sometimes the online tutor’s reply makes me want to kill myself, but sometimes it restores my faith in humanity.

Alternatively, you could also ask Tim/Nic questions after lectures or ask your tutor/demonstrators during workshops. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hungry4Apples on August 03, 2018, 03:06:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: ELEN20005: Foundations of Electrical Networks 

Workload: 3x Lectures, 1x 2hr Workshop

Assessment: 10% Workshops, 10% Mid Sem, 20% Assignments (x3), 60% 3hr Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screencapture

Past exams available:  Yes, three.

Textbook Recommendation:  Don't need a text book. Lecture slides are top notch. Do buy the practice problem booklet though!
Lecturer(s): Robert Schmid

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 sem 1

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 81

Comments: Best subject I've done at uni so far! Robert is a very good lecturer, makes sure everything is in order and you are well prepared for the esam and mid sem. He writes tough but fair exams, telling us he just picks questions from the practice problem booklet to use. If you do all the questions in the booklet, you will be fine. My sem was the first where we were allowed 2x double sided cheat sheets. I think this made us worse off seeing as our exam was relatively tougher and longer than past years. However I had made sure to put every question from the practice problem booklet i struggled with on there, and sure enough, half of those exact questions appeared on the exam (just with numbers changed). My recommendation is to expect a tough exam, you have to work for your H1 in this subject.

The workshops were really annoying, in fact they are the only thing I can fault. At times the demonstrators were very useless, not being able to help you with anything other than the workshop. You are not allowed to ask them for help with anything else. The equipment was very outdated and crappy. Meaning a lot of our circuits had issues because of bad wires or breadboards. Make sure you know what you are doing before hand for the workshop and you will be fine. Some students struggled but that was largely due to incompetence and simply not being up to date with the content. Also, make sure you take the time to understand what you are doing in the workshops as there will be a question on your exam directly relating to an experiment you conduct.

The assignments are somewhat challenging at times. However for the most part you should be able to get high 90s if you know what going on in the lectures. Your groups are your workshop groups which are randomly selected. Attempt ALL of the questions yourself. Robert likes to ask questions in his exam that directly relate to assignments. Also in doing it all yourself you get practice with tougher exam style questions.

Overall a very good subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hungry4Apples on August 03, 2018, 03:23:53 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004: Engineering Mechanics 

Workload:  3x Lectures, 1x 2hr Workshop

Assessment:  1x Midsem 15%, 5% weekly quizzes, 30% Assignments, 50% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing, don't buy anything.

Lecturer(s): Katherine Stok

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 sem 1

Rating:  1 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 91

Comments: This subject is absolute CANCER. I have never completed a more unorganized, poorly taught subject at uni.
The lectures are very boring, with lecture slides not being made by the lecturer, so half the time she would disregard information on the slide or sometimes confuse herself. Concepts taught are very interesting, but made me hate them because of the way they were taught. You go through questions in the lecture that are quite different to the exam. We didn't do many questions using vectors, and yet in the exam, a lot of questions required vector manipulation (e.g. cross product). 

In the workshops, my tutor was awesome (he is the reason I gave this subject a 1 and not 0). He manage to teach us better than the lecturer helping us understand. However the endless assignments handed out in workshops take forever to do, and are very vague in what they want. We also weren't taught how to do half of each assignment till 2 days before it was due. The lecturer had very poor communication with the tutors aswell as organizing the course.

The material we were given to practice with (the tutorial sheets) were so difficult. I would be lucky if I could do 1/3 of the questions on the later sheets. These sheets included questions even the tutors couldn't do. So do not be depressed if you can't do them.

The exam was quite fair in the end, but fair questions were not what I was used to given the material we were given to practice with. Whilst they were fair, they were not what we practiced in lectures or tutorials so that was really annoying. We were not given any practice exams or any resources to prepare us other than the aforementioned cancerous tutorial sheets.

The mid sem had some mistakes in it and the weekly quizzes had to be postponed many times due to material not being taught yet. This subject was very frustrating and trying. To be honest the only reason I did so well was due to cramming in swot vac. I scored a 66% on the midsem and got about 80s on the assignments. So I was very surprised with my score.

If you don't have to do this subject. Don't. If you do, good luck, and prepare yourself for a semester long headache.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: showtime on August 05, 2018, 11:11:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: SPAN10001 Spanish 1 

Workload: 2 x 2 hour tutorials

Assessment:
2 x online assignments [20%]
2 x written compositions [20%]
1 x group presentation [10%]
1 x individual oral presentation [20%]
1 x final exam [30%]

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation: Exploraciones, 2nd Edition, 2016 (Blitt & Casas). You have to get this new (with the access code) as a decent chunk of the assessment is directly connected to the online copy.

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2018

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)

Comments:
This subject was great fun! As the previous review said 5 years ago, the class dynamic is fantastic and full of camaraderie. Depending on what other subjects you're doing, it can be really refreshing to walk into an environment that feels far more collaborative than competitive.

The general pace was much faster than I expected, but it was still manageable- maybe even beneficial, since there isn't much time to forget previous concepts. Despite the speed, the topics were still taught thoroughly and in such a way that older skills were continually reinforced by the new. I also found that the tutors were quite good at giving English equivalents for concepts, so linguistic jargon was largely avoided when teaching grammar. That being said, they didn't spend much time explaining some ubiquitous concepts like grammatical gender, presumably because people would just pick them up through actual use. So familiarity with linguistics or a similar language is still a minor advantage.

In general, the subject was coordinated decently. Although there were no past exams available, there were always plenty of other resources. My biggest criticism was the way some assessments were communicated to students. The assessments themselves were pretty simple, but the expectations were not always made clear. This resulted in mass confusion in the days leading up to the first group task. So, here's an easy breakdown of what we did:


Given the intertwining of language and culture, it should be no surprise that there was a cultural project. Called "Proyecto Selfi", this was built right into the various art-related assessments, as well as a trip to the NGV. It was a nice idea and a good way to connect the assessments, but the overall execution felt a bit flat as it didn't actually facilitate cultural discussion with any Spanish-speaking people. One tutor even remarked that some past presentations had ended up being mildly (and unintentionally) offensive because of this.
This is not at all to say the cultural aspect of the subject is bad or unnecessary- quite the opposite, in fact. You do learn plenty of new things about various Hispanic cultures, and usually in an engaging and respectful way. It's just that, in hindsight, the result still feels kinda shallow. And interpreting abstract art just isn't everyone's cup of tea.

YMMV vastly depending on your tutors. Tutes are split between two of them, and the differences in teaching style are so noticeable, it takes some getting used to. My tutors were a lot of fun, which was great for people who needed a relaxed environment. However, some students might prefer the more structured approaches that other streams offered. No matter who you had, though, you were in good hands- the tutors are all very capable and are always willing to help.

En resumen, I found Spanish 1 to be a solid, well-taught and enjoyable subject. It is straightforward and unlike high school language classes, manages to be neither dry nor very difficult. Of course, some effort is required to do well, but the assessments are nicely balanced and it's not too hard to stay motivated. Plus, you gain an immediately useful skill! This might only be the first step in properly learning Spanish, but it's surprising how much you can comprehend (in reading, anyway) with the basics you learn here.

Spanish is a very beautiful and useful language that is definitely taught well at Unimelb, so do yourself a favour and give Spanish 1 a shot!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: unimelbovermonash on November 01, 2018, 02:00:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra

Workload:  3 x 1 hour lectures per week (3 hours)
1 x hour tutorial per week / 1 x hour practical per week right after tute (2 hour stream)
5 hours per week

Assessment:  8% Online assignments, 2% Written assignments, 10% MATLAB test, 80% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture / only one half of lecture slides are recorded (like most maths subjects ie calc 1 and calc 2)

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 per sem from 2014 - recent. No answers.(Doesn't matter too much, you can always double check your answers for good practice)

Textbook Recommendation:  Lecture slides are sufficient. Do not buy any textbook they offer you. (same goes for mostly all maths subjects in years 1-2)

Lecturer(s): Diarmuid Crowley (very good lecturer)

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Sem 2

Rating:  2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: pending (most likely between 70 and 85)

Comments: if you didnt get above 38 in spesh, or haven't even done spesh and are planning to do actuarial this subject is one of the maths subjects which are compulsory for entrance into actuarial (ir ur not doing am1 and am2). also, if you are planning to do actuarial, i'd suggest doing calc2/lin alg - unless you truly hate yourself or are VERY interested in mathematics would i suggest am1/am2. anyways, firstly, the bane of this subject and most other maths subjects are these ridiculous 80% exams. if you don't have to take a maths subject for your major, do not take any maths subjects, as I've taken both arts and commerce breadths (taken their core subjects ie reason for arts and finance for comm), and I can fairly safely say science cores are some of the hardest of all cores in the first year (granted, mostly in my experience). dont listen to commerce people when they say their course is hard unless they're doing maths heavy subjects (ie actuarial - these guys are read deal). other than that these people have no idea what they're talking about.

professor crowley is mad. great lecturer who from background is mainly into maths/physics, and u can definitely see he has a passion for maths and wants to share it with others. this is great from a lecturer, especially when initially starting topic 4 of the lecture slides (general vector spaces) do you start to have second thoughts on doing the subject.

weeks 1-3: not too hard; matrix row operations mostly, consistent/inconsistent systems - walk in the park - do as much of the orange problem booklet as you can in this time - uni will only get harder. introduction to 3 dimensional space somewhere around this time, cross product, and geometric applications (learn geometric applications really well, these come up in the exam 10/10 times).
weeks 4-8: general vector spaces, inner product spaces. only advice here is to try not to get overwhelmed. theses are new concepts, and they will take time for you to get used to. keep doing the orange booklet, watch youtube videos if they help. eventually if u keep revising and looking over this section, it will all make sense.
weeks 4-8 contain some of the most important concepts you'll have to learn to be able to pass in this subject. as i said, at first it might seem overwhelming, but keep revising and it'll all make sense.
week 9-10: eigenvectors, eigenvalues : fairly simple don't worry too much - practice diagonalisation (comes up in exams often)
weeks 11-12: linear transformations: this section uses concepts from weeks 4-8, not too hard but close exam time so a bit tricky. you dont want to fall behind so by the end of week 12 finish all questions u can do in the orange booklet.
swotvac: cram, revise, you know do your thing.

during this time, you'll have weekly assignments, 8 of which are online, 2 are handwritten. handwritten assignments are a good resource for studying for exams, although, some of the proofs can be quite tricky. while i'm on the matter of proofs, you'll encounter many proofs during lectures and even in the orange booklet. these aren't necessary to learn for the exam, but if you understand these you're ahead of 80% of the cohort, and it'll prove useful for 1-2 questions on the exam (you'll be able to get an h1 without learning proofs if u can do everything else near perfect).

also, go to your tutes. if you're struggling in this subject these are the greatest resources. ASK YOUR TUTOR QUESTIONS. you're PAYING them in your subject fees to HELP you. who cares if you ask a stupid question, get it through your brain, make everything make sense, and if you're at melbourne uni it will eventually. (also extra help at mathsassist when u need).

here's the thing though with tutors, 99% can be great, but there is always 1%. in this instance, if you ever encounter Allen Russell for one of your tutes, RESCHEDULE this class IMMEDIATELY. you will hate your tutes in this case; half the time i went to another tute alongside this tute to get my attendance marked (it was too late for me to reschedule; ur not actually meant to do this but if ur a keen learner nws). allen's tutes can sometimes be helpful; some of the explaining he does at the start is, but other than that everything is terrible; answering questions, marking written assignments, marking the matlab test - ridiculous. avoid at all costs to get +10% to your grade (of course, im overstating this- personal bad experience here). but anyways avoid him. (also the reason why this is a 2/5 instead of a 3.5/5)

matlab sessions are fairly ok; bit of a waste of time to go to them after week 4. if ur only doing lin alg, you dont get matlab program. if you do esd 2, u get matlab and can practice commands during the programming and mechanics section. if u do esd 2 u have an advantage, if not, good luck. (u can use computer labs for matlab to practice closer to the test in week 12 when they're free).
 
i've spewed everything i can think of about this subject in this post, hope u find it helpful. feel free to dm me if u have any other questions. good luck with lin alg.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on November 03, 2018, 04:41:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra

Workload:  3 hours of lectures, 1 hour of tute followed by 1 hour of lab time with Matlab

Assessment: They changed it this sem. 10% Matlab exam, 8 x 1% online mini tests, 2 x 1% take home assignements (Calc 2 style, i.e HARDER) 80% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, many available and online, will need to have good detectives to find answers.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nope, I bought the lecture slides pack though cause I enjoy learning that way.

Lecturer(s): Allyson Costa, cool guy, slow but I enjoyed his enthusiasm. He did his lectures on Onenote with the slides which was cool, allowed him to teach in a more dynamic way.

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Sem 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
I enjoyed this subject. Maybe more than Calc 2, my exam score will determine it.

Allen Russel was pretty bad, I had him too like the above reviewer, although I'm only 2nd semester so not sure what having a good tutor means, I just know what kind of style I prefer. Also not sure if it's my ageism though (he was older). I disliked his teaching method at the start of the tute, wasted time and took up too much time in the tute to do questions. (To be fair he was trying to get student participation) Helping out while we were working, he was knowledgeable, but didn't really offer a lot of insight. I much preferred my last semester's calc 2 tutes which we went straight into worksheets and had more time to converse with the tutor.

The subject is cool and holistic My favourite part was seeing the application of vectors in wacky vector spaces such as polynomials. But I dislike the ordering of the content. Transformations should come before eigenvalues in my opinion. I feel transformations was the worst topic taught as there was so much notation but so little examples of how it is used I was so lost when doing practice exams about what I should be using even looking through the lecture slides. This semester's exam was simpler, but it could have been much worse. (Note this could just be my incompetence)

This subject has many, many lemmas about theorems and rules that you will need to remember. Since it is not AM1, there is not a heavy emphasis on proofs but they do pop up on the exam, and most of the time (I think) it will be ones that the curriculum has already explained. Revising over each lemma and theorem of the lecture slides is critical, in my opinion to being able to solve every question in the exam.

EDIT: Managed to get the exact same score as calculus 2
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: showtime on November 07, 2018, 06:45:55 pm
Subject Code/Name: SWEN20003 Object Oriented Software Development

Workload:  2 x 1-hour lectures, 1 x 2 hour workshop

Assessment:
Project 1 [8%]
Project 2 [22% in two parts, 6% & 16%]
Midsem [10%]
Final exam [60%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, and a sample exam

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Matt de Bono, Shanika Karunasekera

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2018

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This fantastic subject uses Java to introduce you to the world of object-oriented programming (OOP) and, yes, software development. The subject is roughly split into three areas: the Java language, OOP concepts, and software engineering. Besides the coordinator, it doesn't appear to have changed much since the last review in 2015, but to sum up:

TOPICS

ASSESSMENT

OTHER

Overall, this subject is very interesting, well-taught and fun. Chances are, it will be your most enjoyable computing subject yet!

(Edit: I originally gave this a 4.5, then moved it up to a 5 when I had trouble thinking of faults. However, stevenhuyn articulated some good points so it's back down to a still excellent 4.5 for me.)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: showtime on November 09, 2018, 12:20:41 am
Subject Code/Name: COMP20003 Algorithms and Data Structures 

Workload:  2 x 1-hour lectures, 1 x 2-hour workshops

Assessment:  2 x projects [15% each], 1 x mid-semester test [10%], 1 x final exam [60%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, including sample solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  S. Skiena's The Algorithm Design Manual, is "recommended" but completely unnecessary.

Lecturer(s): Nir Lipovetzky

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2018

Rating:  3.5 - 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

ADS is exactly what it says on the tin. Here, you'll learn about both the theory and implementation of some basic algorithms and data structures used in computer science. The focus is fairly evenly split between searching, sorting and graph algorithms.

The first 3-4 weeks are particularly designed for students coming in from Eng Comp rather than Foundations of Algorithms. This time is spent introducing complexity analysis and binary trees, so if you're from the latter you will probably find this period very slow. Even if you aren't, you'll probably still find the first weeks slow. Don't worry, though, it picks up from then on.

Lectures are generally well taught, but in this subject in particular, there's a big difference between understanding what's explained to you and being able to apply these things. Naturally, this comes into play with the assessments.

The projects look simple on paper, but don't be fooled- unless you're stellar, programming them is brutal. Don't leave them to the weekend before the due date, if you can help it. You use C again, so you have to be adept with pointers and memory allocation.
This semester, Assignment 1 involved implementing a dictionary using a binary search tree from scratch. More practical non-algorithmic aspects like I/O, file manipulation and makefiles were also included. These things weren't directly related to the content of the course, but they took a good chunk of time to code, so it wouldn't be wise to underestimate them.
Assignment 2 was a bit easier to program since we were given a near-complete template, and had to basically translate a few given lines of pseudocode into actual code in order to solve a 15-puzzle. However, it was more conceptually difficult and computationally intense than the first. If you didn't want to wait literal hours for your experiment results, you had to make further optimisations.

The midsem and the final exam were both pretty reasonable. Generous amounts of time were given, and while the questions did challenge depth of understanding, there were no real tricks or surprises.

Workshops were good places to revise and practise content and ask questions, as the tutors and demonstrators made a lot of effort to help. But in my opinion, many of the programming exercises felt irrelevant to the topics being taught, were difficult to understand, and ultimately took more time than they were worth. I appreciate the work put into making them and I don't say it without shame, but I think it's far better to spend the hour to understand the assignments, lectures and the tutorial questions instead. If you can do all the exercises, great! But you're not disadvantaged if you don't.

My biggest piece of advice to get through this subject is to make good use of the forum and your friends. ADS is quite theoretical and getting unstuck alone is not easy, even with Google. Chances are, someone else has already had the same problem as you, and if they can't help you, a tutor will.

Overall, ADS is quite a solid subject. It may not be the most fun computing subject, but it does teach interesting new content and ways of thinking, as well as encourage you to understand concepts instead of parroting them. If you are willing to put in a lot of work, you will be rewarded accordingly.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on November 10, 2018, 04:55:19 am
Subject Code/Name: SWEN20003 Object Oriented Software Development

Workload:  2 lectures, 2 hour workshop and lab

Assessment:  (copied from showtime)
Project 1 [8%]
Project 2 [22% in two parts, 6% & 16%]
Midsem [10%]
Final exam [60%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes.

Past exams available:  2 sample exams were given, no answers

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing required

Lecturer(s): Matt de Bono (primary) , Shanika Karunasekera (minor), Eleanor McMurtry (more minor)

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Sem 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
I think @showtime gave a good summary of the content in the previous review, just wanted to add my comments of why I rate it 4/5 instead of 5/5.

The main problem is due to the structure of the subject, you don't have a chance to practice half of the content in your assignments. Basically you aren't really specified to use any techniques in your whole assignment that is from the second half of the semester.

Due to the fact that in second half of the semester, everyone is working on their assignments instead of lab work (at least in my class), that means no one really gets exposure to the more advanced subjects. I honestly didn't write a single interface or enum in an IDE for the whole semester, might be I'm a bad student but yeah just the way the subject is structured. In past experience, assignments were a bit more aligned with the content.

And this subject demands functioning code, not good code in an algorithmic sense. Matt said that we are aren't in an algorithms class, so just make it work. But the code does have to be good in that it's documented, but that is like previous classes.

Every lecture you have with Shanika (a small amount) you will kinda miss Matt, doesn't help that she teaches somewhat more of the drier content of OOSD. Eleanor designs the assignments (iirc) and she took 2 lectures, one on Git (not examinable) and Game programming as well, she wasn't bad.

Overall though, this subject is a decent flex into Java, IDEs, maybe even Git if you're keen! Projects were fun to do if you were on top of your stuff I had a lot of fun playing with Slick. The subject does have success in that it can teach you about the importance of design before tackling a complex program (the assignment), it's just that you never got to see much of the later content in action in your own hands.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on November 10, 2018, 05:09:29 am
Subject Code/Name: INFO20003 Database Systems

Workload:  2x1 hour lectures, 2 hour tute and lab

Assessment:  10% MST, 3x10% assignments, 60% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 sample exam but a decent amount of practice questions in general

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): Renata Borovica-Gajic (primary) , David Eccles (minor)

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
I really liked Renata as a lecturer. She gives us easy assignments (Based on the bell curves she releases), but otherwise I like the way she runs the course and content and of course teaches.

Doing well at the assignments will lead you much more comfortably into the exam, as there is a lot of content. Overall I'd say this subject is wide but shallow, so if you were taking more memory subjects, you would kill this subject as long as you had some programming aptitude and basic maths, it's highly memory based for a large percentage of the marks.

Only difficulty I had with the subject was that Conceptual modelling needed more examples from tutors/lecturers of the thought process of tackling those problems so everyone comes up with slightly different answers, I never had the knack for getting the same answer they did (or a better one). It was a subjective topic because interpretation and design depends on the person, but some designs are better than others. Otherwise the other 2 assignments were easier to full mark as they had right or wrong answers.

This subject could be dry to a lot of students, but I think Renata has made the subject pretty good, apparently she came in 2016 Sem 2. It really makes you appreciate how the fuck anything on the internet even works without massive amounts of lag. It covers interesting topics and has a nice balance of theoretical algorithms parts and practical parts.

Also recommend getting David Eccles as a tutor as he writes the exam, might be scary but you'll thank me later.

Content:
Database Modelling
SQL
Query Processing and Optimisation
Concurrency, Transactions, Distributed Databases, Data warehousing
Database Administration
NoSQL introduction

Also would like to point out, doing both this subject and SWEN20003 in the same semester is definitely manageable.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: alxhrmnn on November 11, 2018, 03:29:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure and Function 

Workload:  6x1 hour lectures per week, 4x 2 hour anatomy practicals (optional but highly advised), 1x 2 hour physiology practical (necessary attendance for 10% report marks), a whole lot of optional DSLs, CALs and Anatomedia if further help with topics are required.

Assessment:  10% written lab report (question based), 2 x 10% MSTs, 2 x 35% end of semester exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 4 readily available past papers as well as questions in most of your lectures (especially physiology) as well as practice questions galore for MST and end of semester revision (from the lecturers).

Textbook Recommendation:  I don't know, check previous posts...

Lecturer(s):
David Williams: Primary physiology lecturer, probably not as good as Charles Sevigny, the BSci equivalent, but definitely still an amazing lecturer and even better coordinator. I believe he is the primary reason for the massive upheaval of the subject (will elaborate later);
Jenny Hayes: She returned!! Best anatomy lecturer hands down. She has a habit of repeating important concepts 3 to 4 times, which means you usually don't have to re-watch her lectures. She also ensures everyone is well accustomed to an anatomical diagram before continuing her explanations. Such a great lecturer, happy to see here back,
Alistair Stewart and Michael Lew: Pharmacology Lecturers, I don't think I ever attended any of their lecturers in person, but they're definitely very capable lecturers over lecture capture ahaha,
Dagmar Wilhelm: Taking the hardest and probably least liked topics of Embryology and Reproductive Anatomy, she breezes through them and makes them pretty damn palatable,
Varsha Pilbrow: "Deeper Anatomy" - Inside a muscle or bone or skin etc., she prefaces later lectures which use this knowledge for further implementation. Definitely a good set of lectures to watch and very useful. Slightly fast.
Quentin Fogg: THE most difficult set: Arm, Leg and Back Anatomy. Oh god what a series. Tries to make what is so difficult and so complex easy and fun, but that is a hard task with arm and leg anatomy. I skipped half these lectures until the very end. Definitely requires quite some time to revise. Very content heavy.
Stephen Harrap: Renal function - These lectures are a nice end of semester break with many PollEv questions interspersed and very "general concepts based". Don't skip these "in fear" like I did.
Stuart Mazzone: Nervous System Anatomy. He appears quite early and really "sets the tone" for what the rest of the semester will feel like. Before his lectures are a set that makes the semester feel like it will be a breeze. His lectures I feel adequately portray the pace and the dedication required for the rest of the semester

And finally, the "interspersed" lecturers/workshop lecturers which only covered one or two lectures each
Someone for artificial limbs - I din't need to watch that one (wasn't examined) so I didn't, heard it was interesting though.
Jason Ivanusic for "principles of viscera" and "upper respiratory tract anatomy": great lecturer, a key one for 3rd year anatomy, basically just showing his face to us. Importantly, he does NOT preface the difficulty for respiratory anatomy so don't skip Jenny's Lectures because of him.
Paul Soeding, Makhala Khammy and Noel Cranswick: Applications of pharmacology, great, useful lectures for understanding of pharmacological principles,
Angelina Fong: Workshop on Cardio-resp integration: again, wasn't explicitly examined therefore only watched about half of it.
Charles Sevigny: Cardiovascular Challenges Workshop and Physiology practical coordinator. What can I say. One lecture from this guy is too few. david is great in his own right, but this guy is like the Physiology equivalent of Terry Mulhern. Some even sneak into the BSci Physiology lectures for him. This workshop is definitely work watching!

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Pending

Comments:
Now I'm no "H1 student" of sorts like many of the other reviewers but because previous reviews are a bit dated and it's pretty obvious there has been an overhaul since, I decided to give this subject a fresh review. Hence, expect no "textbook recommendations" or study advice. Instead, can I say, due to the hard-work of David Williams (primary physiology lecturer and coordinator) and return of Jenny Hayes as an anatomy lecturer and coordinator, this subject has truly boosted it's ranks to, in my opinion, a subject that can compete with and even possibly beat (in terms of quality) MCB (entirely dependent on which areas of study you prefer). This is in stark contrast to previous reviews. I came into this subject with low expectations but curiously got an email the week before semester which stated, from David Williams himself, that I should "remove all expectations of the subject as it has undergone a major overhaul". It was as if he could read my mind. Boy, did he do a good job on that overhaul. This subject is now well integrated and the anatomy and physiology components definitely seem to fit well into each other. It is still split into 6 main topics based on body systems (Foundations, Neuromuscular, Musculoskeletal, Cardiorespiratory, Genitourinary, and Digestion), but each feels like a unit in and within itself with anatomy and physiology building upon each other. Pharmacology is interspersed in between but mainly collects in the later lectures within the Cardiorespiratory (principles of drug action, with cardiorespiratory examples) Genitourinary (for drug elimination) and Digestion (for adverse drug effects). This also worked well. Whilst the first week or so may feel out of place, with a mismatch of 'embryology', 'homeostasis' and 'drug examples' lectures being placed throughout the week in a random fashion that leads one to believe there is no thought process behind it, it quickly turns formulaic and flows on from another from the second week onward. The practicals are amazing (no dissections though unless you pick anatomy in 3rd year), and the resources provided are wide and easy to use. The only thing is anatopedia seems to only work for university computers as it required a "screen larger than the one on my laptop". The famous clickers you hire at the start of the year, mentioned by all previous OPs for this subject, we're also done away this year in lieu of PollEv, which some lecturers (David and Stuart: both physiology) definitely use more than others (Jenny, Varsha, Dagmar, Quentin: all anatomy). Overall, much like MCB, this subject actually motivated me to study it through general interest and great lecturing, which means, for the second semester in a row, the core Biomed subject I believe far exceeds the other selective subjects (I took Microbes and Experimental Pathology in semester 2 and Biological Psychology in semester 1). The MST's were difficult, yes, as they were in MCB I guess, but weren't impossible, and the whole theme for the entire semester was to focus on "principles" rather than details (yes, even for that dreaded musculoskeletal system AKA arm and leg hell). This statement proved correct from the type of questions provided in the MSTs and End of Semester Exams. The Practical Report wasn't a report as much rather than a series of questions based on observations in the practical. DEFINITELY watch the workshop on cardiovascular challenges for this report, it answers 9/10 of the questions (Also, as mentioned prior, Charles is just a legend). The practical was also fun, giving you a chance to measure blood pressures like **real doctors**. The end of semester exam was easy, perhaps too easy, composed primarily of MCQs and ERQs (fill in the blanks). There was only 20/120 marks of the  dreaded "integrated response questions", and only in the second end of semester exam. It was also (nicely) explicitly told to us which sections would be examined in each exam (an explicit break down). Overall, this subject was my favorite so far in all of my degree. It has motivated me to continue trying for better and better marks and for that ever elusive MD place. Fingers crossed for my first H1 since first year first semester. Definitely ignore those previous reviews. This subject is now one to be remembered forever.

PSA: HSF is back, it's revived, and it's better than ever. Thank you especially to David Williams and Jenny Hayes for a great revival of a subject I previously dreaded. Fantastic Work!!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 15, 2018, 06:32:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL20002 Financial Mathematics II

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

Assessment: Assignments 2 × 10%, Mid Semester Exam 10% (45 minutes), End of Semester Exam 70% (2 hours) - Hurdle: Need at least 50% on the final exam to pass the subject

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  5 past/sample final exams and 4 past/sample mid semester exams, all with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: Compound Interest and its Applications by Fitzherbert and Pitt (Also used in ACTL20001/FMI, one of the prerequisites for this subject) - As I said in my review for FMI, it's not vital but does provide very good explanations (which may not be completely clear from lectures and lecture slides) and extra questions with fully worked solutions. Also, given it's used in both the core level 2 actuarial subjects and is priced around $30 new, I'd suggest it'd be worth getting.

Lecturer: Jason Davis

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5 (Objective rating, not based on my personal level of enjoyment of the subject, or lack thereof :P)

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (72)  :o ... Expected much lower

Disclaimer:
Spoiler
The majority, if not everyone, of people taking this subject will be actuarial students aiming for a high enough mark to obtain their exemptions. I came into this subject in that boat (despite previously having doubts), but around half way through the semester decided actuarial was definitely not for me. I also lost motivation, and thus by the end of the semester was literally aiming for a pass - I'll try to remain as objective as possible (or at least be very clear when something in my review is purely personal opinion), but if you're an aspiring or current actuarial student reading this, keep in mind I was probably aiming a lot lower than you, and therefore may also have a slightly different perception on things.

In addition, this subject was previously taught by Mark Joshi who sadly passed away in 2017. Jason took over for this year, and from the handbook it looks like there will be a different coordinator next year, so I'm not too sure if everything will remain the same.

Comments:
Spoiler
This is a compulsory subject for the Actuarial Studies major, and a big step up from Financial Maths I. It's probably one of the biggest challenges faced in the first two years of the Actuarial Studies major in terms of assessment (second to MAST20004/Probability). To maximize your mark, you really need to be staying up to date and consistently engaging with the material - I did not do this, and it definitely came back to bite me during my mid semester exam and final exam preparation.

Topics covered include:
-Pricing a variety of different types of bonds (Discount securities, floating rate notes, indexed notes ...)
-Various techniques to analyse portfolio performance
-Different rates of interest (Spots rates, forward rates ...)
-Forward contracts/arbitrage
-Risk of default
-Using stochastic interest rates if IID (Annuities and accumulations, Life insurance)
-The lognormal distribution
-Dependent stochastic interest rates
-Time series models (Auto regressive and moving averaging, usually used in the context of dependent stochastic interest rates)
-Excel simulations

IMO the content in the second half of the subject when things became probabilistic was significantly more interesting than the first half. Although the latter half of the subject was meant to be harder, I actually found it easier to engage with (especially when trying to catch up in exam period) because of this.

Lectures:
Spoiler
Lectures in this subject consisted of being talked through lecture slides (all uploaded way before the lecture), which would contain a decent amount of blanks that needed to be filled in during the lecture. Occasionally, hand-drawn notes or Excel simulations were also shown. The slides typically took you through the theory and contained a few examples per lecture, which were usually very useful. However, a significant amount of time is also needed to process the content and work through it yourself (Probably a given).
I relied on lecture capture, which worked fine and got everything needed, however I regret doing this now as I think watching at home contributed to my disengagement and allowed me to slack off more - That being said, if you're motivated and focused, using the capture would probably work fine for this subject (It did for me in the past), although it was definitely frowned upon by the lecturer.

Tutorials:
Spoiler
Although there are no participation marks, unlike previous actuarial subjects (*Cough, Intro to Actuarial, cough*), tutorials in this subject were highly useful, and as a result (at least from what I saw/heard), most people would regularly attend. The questions/solutions often provided further information that was not covered in lectures, so at minimum FMII students should be doing the questions and checking the solutions that are posted at the end of the week. However, tutors also provided useful tips and tricks (E.g. Quickly setting up equations of values on the Casio FX82 calculator), so it'd be best to attend all/most tutorials to maximize your mark. It's highly recommended that you try the questions yourself first to get the most benefit. From the tutorial page in the LMS: "In 2017 there was a very strong correlation between students who made an honest attempt at the tutorial questions and their final grade. "
The questions themselves were mainly calculations, worded theory and proofs. There were also questions involving Excel work which were also just as important (See final exam).

Assignments:
Spoiler
The assignments were probably (IMO) the most enjoyable part of the subject. They were both Excel based, and required you to create a dynamic spreadsheet using lecture material and basic Excel functions (No macros/programming could be used). The dynamic part is important, and I'd also add that you should try to account for every possible situation (I lost marks on my first one for limiting the range of what the answer could be) - Don't assume the results will be something you'll necessarily see in reality.
The lecture content needed for first assignment was quite simple and easy to understand. However, implementing the actual spreadsheet was the challenge, and really required you to think outside the box. On the other hand, the actual theory/content needed for assignment two required more thinking and understanding, but the actual Excel spreadsheet was much easier to implement. As a whole, the cohort scored much better in assignment two.

Mid Semester Exam
Spoiler
Unless it will change in the future, the mid semester exam only tests a small section of the first half of the subject (Usually 2-3 questions worth 10 marks). As a result, if a topic you're not comfortable with comes up, it can have a big impact on your score. It's also important to note that all the past/sample exams are very different, so it's very difficult to predict what you might get/wing it by rote learning. If you want to score well in this one, make sure you're up to date with all the content! That being said, if you know what you're doing, timing probably won't be an issue for you. The MSE will most likely contain mainly calculations (But not too many stock standard "bookwork" type calculations).
This year the median score was 6.5, which was apparently lower than usual.

Final Exam
Spoiler
All the content is technically testable, but the final exam apparently should be skewed towards the latter half of the course. The final exam will also provide a challenge, but has a bit more predictability than the mid semester exam; Not in a way that allows rote learning if you want a good/exemption level score, but so that you'll have an idea of what topics will likely appear - That being said, Jason made a point that the particular challenge/think outside the box type questions won't be retested, so you should focus more on the content/slides/tutorials rather than past exams. Also, since it obviously covers a much larger range of the content, you won't be screwed if a particular topic you're weaker in comes up. Personally I found my final exam, as well as the past ones easier than their mid semester counterparts, but this was most likely due to the reasons outlined above. Also, my final exam seemed quite a bit easier than previous years (Which a couple of people agreed with me about). The final exam will typically contain calculations, more theoretical questions, definitions/written theory, and as mentioned earlier, questions related to the Excel simulations, testing your understanding of how you set it up (Should be easy if you did the simulations). As per usual for actuarial subjects, you don't get a formula sheet and need to know the key formulae (As well as how it works and how you'd modify it if some condition changed) - Fortunately though, you're not expected to memorize any complicated formulae for particular results, e.g. the variance of time series processes   

Ultimately, this is a challenging subject which you need to keep up to date with if you want to score well. While this was the subject that made me decide actuarial was not for me (despite my initial enthusiasm in first year), if you can get through this one and maintain interest you'll probably 'survive' the major.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on November 16, 2018, 09:11:29 pm
Subject Code/Name: MEDS90020: Principles of Clinical Practice 3

Workload: Varies depending on rotation.

Assessment:
Written examination - PCP3 rotation based (2 x 3 hours), end of semester 1, end of semester 2 (35%)
10x OSCE stations (2 per rotations)  end of year (35%)
Mini-CEXs throughout the year (two per rotation, of which the best 8 will contribute to mark) (10%)
Written tasks specific to rotation (e.g. reflective piece in GP, discharge summary in  Mental Health), throughout year (10%)
Standardised case-based discussion, end of year (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  No

Past exams available:  Recalls available on UMMSS

Textbook Recommendation: 
Will outline rotation-specific study material below.
Although I never had it, "The Unofficial Guide to Passing OSCEs" is a great textbook to refer to.

Lecturer(s): Clinical site-dependent

Year & Semester of completion: 2018

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: N/A

Comments:

General comments
MD3 has been the best year of medical school so far for me. This is your advanced specialty year, where you will rotate between Child and Adolescent Health, OB/GYN, Aged Care, General Practice and Psychiatry. You will shuffle through many different hospitals and clinics during the year, so make sure you have a private car available. Otherwise, the teaching in each rotation was great and all of my teams made an effort to include me as much as they could.

I found the year less time-intensive than earlier years, but this is variable depending on how much you want to stay back. You get more responsibility as you begin to help admitting patients into the ward, reviewing patients as needed, and finishing some mundane paperwork/scutwork. As usual, there will still be lots of free time spent observing on the wards however. When there was nothing interesting happening, my teams were always happy for me to leave early and study. Compared to MD2, you will find yourself with much more free time (and not clerk patients because you have no more long cases to do).

Lectures are usually front-loaded into the first week of rotation so that 90% of your time on subsequent weeks were devoted to your placement. I found that this worked quite well as I wouldn’t be completely clueless on my team, so to get the best value out of being on placement, study the material beforehand! Each rotation emphasises different parts of history and examination (e.g. birth, growth, immunisation, feeding, HEADSS for paeds, and forensic, developmental and psych history for mental health) so make sure you are familiar with these during your rotation.
Refer to the presentations and conditions in your study guides to get an idea of what you should be studying. Throughout the year, most questions expand past taking only a history + examination, but now you’ll need to discuss how you would address a patient’s concerns and most importantly, counsel them on their options.

I would strongly advise writing rotation-specific notes before you start that rotation, as you won’t be completely clueless when you start out. This was how I organised my year:
•   CAH term: Finish CAH notes by Week 4, begin WH notes (which is by far the heaviest in terms of content)
•   WH term: Finish WH notes by Week 4, revise for mid-year written exam
•   AC term: Finish AC notes by Week 2, begin writing GP notes (which I knew would be the heaviest in semester two)
•   GP term: Finish GP notes by Week 3, begin writing MH notes, begin OSCE practise
•   MH term: Finish MH notes by Week 2, spend the rest of the term refining previous notes and revising

As for how to write your notes, I’m a huge fan of tableception. Compartmentalising similar things allows you to build up your own structure when answering questions.

(https://scontent.fmel7-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/46347676_318620508957347_7254580812442501120_n.png?_nc_cat=106&_nc_ht=scontent.fmel7-1.fna&oh=3eefc3d27344422866e3d86f04021816&oe=5C6CD7D8)
 
Rotation-specific advice + study resources

Child and Adolescent Health
This was one of my favourite rotations throughout the year. I was fortunate enough to be placed at the Royal Children’s Hospital, which I think is one of the most amazing hospitals to work at! There is a strong culture of teaching amongst the registrars and consultants – for example, at the end of most General Medicine rounds we would often be asked to talk about something we learnt in rounds and research a topic to present on the next round.

The lectures at the beginning of the rotation don’t usually pop up in exams. However, the high yield topics would be vaccinations, fluid management, SUDI/SIDs, non-accidental injury, HEADSSS screen, and physiological/pathological murmurs in children. Looking at the most important and common presentations, I would group them into clusters:

•   Seriously unwell child (hypoglycaemia, DKA, meningococcal septicaemia, anaphylaxis, meningitis-encephalitis)
•   Child with altered conscious state (afebrile seizures, febrile seizures, mimics)
•   Child with changes to breathing (Asthma, bronchiolitis, croup, pertussis, epiglottitis, foreign body)
•   Child with vomiting and abdominal pain (both surgical and medical causes)
•   Failure to thrive (there are lots of differentials here)
•   Child with fever
•   Child with rash (infectious and inflammatory causes)
•   Child with developmental delay (yes you need to remember your milestones)
•   Child with a limp

When thinking about your differentials, it is useful to also group them by age as well, as some conditions are more common in certain age groups.
The RCH guidelines are more than enough to get you through – they’re very comprehensive and most questions are based off the guidelines. You can also find the RCH handbook for complementary information. The RCH Kid’s Info Fact Sheets are very useful as they’re mainly targeted at parents, so you can refer to them when practising how to counsel patients. 

The rotation is split into three sub-rotations in ED, a random specialty and General Medicine. I personally found the ED shift to be the highlight of this rotation – we were able to assign ourselves patients and review them independently, after which a registrar would come and find us to present to them. They have seemed to develop a slick, well-oiled system. Shifts are usually 8 hours and split into an 8am-4pm and a 4pm-12am block, but you do not have to stay the whole time! In the morning I would advise coming in at 11am as it’s usually quiet until Fast Track opens at 11. Otherwise, your contact hours for the rest of the rotation are quite variable but I was able to be off by noon on General Medicine at the latest for most days.

You will also be able to attend a special session where you go to a local high school to practise your adolescent interviewing skills under the HEADSSS framework. Near the end of your rotation you will also have a simulation session of Advanced Life Support in paediatrics.

During this rotation you will have two rostered Mini-CEXs and you will have to write weekly reflections on interesting patients you see on the ward. Don’t worry about the reflections – they’re usually marked leniently.

OB/GYN
This is the most time-intensive and content-heavy rotation of the year. The first week of lectures is an absolute marathon, but it does provide around 85% of what you need to know. Otherwise, other resources include the Permezel textbook and the guidelines from PROMPT and RANZCOG. These should adequately cover what you need to know.

What makes this rotation so time-consuming is the much feared logbook, but each clinical site is lenient in its own way. You need to tick off a certain number of births, clinics, reviews and certain major procedures. While it’s a lot to look at, most people usually have no problem signing everything off by the latter end of the rotation – if this is your rotation before exams, try sign off everything as soon as possible so you have as much time to study as you can.

The great thing about obstetrics is that most women are healthy and well. Attending your first few births is quite a surreal experience – new parents literally crying with joy, unable to put babies in jumpers because they can’t stop their hands shaking – I had a dad literally grin and pat me on the back after waiting 14 hours for a baby to come out. It’s a time to cherish.

It’s different in each site, but you will usually be allocated a midwife to essentially shadow. Birth shifts entail a lot of waiting and observation, which can be quite boring for medical students. I would advise going on obstetric ward rounds with the doctors if possible and following them around, while letting your midwife know where you’ll be. This means that you’ll be able to attend to emergency Caesareans as they arise. Finally, if you’re able to, try and be allocated to a multiparous patient as labour is usually much shorter.

On birth shifts, most medical students will stand and observe but I would recommend you get as involved as you can. Palpate for the foetus and offer to insert catheters after each epidural. Nothing beats being the accouecher as well – try and see if you could catch the baby with the patient and midwife’s permission (because it is incredibly rewarding!)

The rest of your obstetrics term will entail clinic visits and a few random items here and there (e.g. US, pregnancy day assessments). As always, ask if you can see the patients independently if there are rooms available!

There are also lots of opportunities to get involved in surgeries. I'm not interested in surgery in the least, but it's still fun to ask if you can scrub up for most procedures. However, in gynae you’ll be usually relegated to the infamous job of holding the uterus up (which to be honest can get quite exhausting).

As for what’s important to study: every single lecture. I’m not kidding, but the good thing is that EVERYTHING will be reinforced on the wards. All of the material in Women’s Health is high-yield.

As for your assessment, you’ll need to write two case commentaries (one in obstetrics, one in gynaecology) based on patients you see. You will need references for each case so you should try and refer to guidelines. They can be marked quite harshly – so prepare yourself for it.

Aged Care
This rotation can be quite intense or relaxed depending on where you go. It’s split into Geriatrics (essentially General Medicine), Rehabilitation, Aged Psych and Palliative Care. It can be a rotation with lots of spare time – there isn’t much as much opportunity to speak to patients as they can be delirious, demented, mentally unwell or about to die.

The aged care guide from the university is your bible for this rotation, but it is missing information on Palliative Care. Refer to the eTg guide on palliative care and you’ll be set.

High-yield topics include:
•   Orthogeriatrics and Falls Prevention
•   Cognitive impairment: Dementia, delirium, depression
•   Urinary incontinence
•   Rehabilitation
•   Polypharmacy
•   Cognitive screening tools
•   Social support and services (ACAS, respite, TCP, role of allied health)
•   End-of-life care (managing symptoms, legal aspects)

Luckily there is no rotation-specific assessment in aged care.

General Practice
This is the most highly variable rotation. There are two extremes – either your GP will make you sit in the corner and observe, or you’ll be independently consulting every patient you see. I would HIGHLY recommend that you go rurally for this rotation as you will have a higher chance of parallel consulting (e.g. independently seeing a patient and offering a management plan before calling the supervisor in to double-check). In my practice, patients would book to see me and I was expected to print off scripts, pathology requests, and write patient notes and referrals. If I was unsure about anything I could call my supervisor to come in, so you won’t be left to flounder. I had many great, memorable experiences – seeing a walk-in patient with renal colic in the setting of a solitary kidney, and another patient with ?PE, and I was able to call and handover to the nearest ED service for these patients. I was also thrown into some difficult encounters – such as talking to patients who had been sexually assaulted or were severely depressed, at times suicidal. It’s a good idea to reflect on the patients who leave a strong impression on you.

Many students in more affluent metro areas were essentially passive observers for their rotation, which is not ideal for learning. While it is intimidating at first, you will find that your clinical skills improve immensely by reviewing patients by yourself, and it’s great seeing how much you’ve learnt during your clinical years.

As for the content, you’ll need to revise common presentations from MD2, but there is added emphasis on preventative medicine. You should know about:
•   All national screening programs (e.g. breast, prostate, colorectal, cervical screening, CV and diabetes risk, CKD, etc).
•   The top 30 common presentations in RACGP (https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2013/januaryfebruary/common-general-practice-presentations/)
•   ALL of the content covered in the workshops and online modules – often appear on past examinations
•   Motivational interviewing (e.g. smoking and alcohol cessation)

For the rotation-specific assessment, you’ll need to write a 1000 word reflective piece on a patient you’ve seen in clinic.

Mental Health
A hugely important rotation with lots of spare time. Mental illness is incredibly common amongst the population and quite debilitating, so I would encourage you not to dismiss it right away – which a lot of medical students unfortunately do as it’s less concrete than other fields of medicine. It’s an under-resourced field and doesn’t get the appropriate amount of funding given the impact it has on society.

During your rotation you’ll be sent around to many different private clinics, inpatient units and other mental health services (e.g. Crisis Assessment Team). The patient demographics at each service is different. The Crisis Assessment Team, for example, reviews patients they feel are “high-risk” in an outpatient setting. Private clinics admit voluntary patients and refuse to admit involuntary ones, who are sent to public inpatient units. Therefore, those at public inpatient units are usually quite unwell and agitated. It can be quite confronting. You have to remember that these patients are being held against their will (which will frustrate anybody, especially if they don’t think they have a mental illness) and some attempt to abscond. Unfortunately, a lot tend not to improve either – non-compliance rates are higher compared to other fields as many don’t think they’re unwell anyway.

There is a logbook for mental health which will require you to interview patients, but there isn’t much opportunity to as you’ll mainly be relegated to being an observer. Make the most out of these by practising doing a Mental State Examination and then present to your registrar afterwards. If you get the opportunity to interview a patient do it – patients can be much more difficult to build a rapport with in a mental health setting, so this will help you be more comfortable asking difficult questions, using correct language in sensitive topics, and negotiating with patients who you can’t establish a rapport with. 

If you can, attend a Mental Health Tribunal. These are independent hearings that review whether a person should still receive involuntary treatment. The treating team will present their case for involuntary treatment to a lawyer, consultant psychiatrist and community member. Patients may also represent themselves at the hearing, which can at times fracture their relationship with the treating team. No doubt will you be exposed to many interesting ethical dilemmas.

The amount of content in mental health is smaller compared to other rotations. The DSMV contains enough detail to get you through. Focus your studies on:
•   Mood-affective disorders (major depression and bipolar disorder)
•   Anxiety disorders (GAD, OCD)
•   Psychotic disorders
•   Panic disorders

The rotation-specific assessment requires you to write a letter to an imaginary GP updating them on a real patient you’ve seen. Follow the sample letters on MDConnect to have a good idea of how you should formulate your letter.

MDRP1
If you’re keen on a specific project, you can ask any potential supervisor whether they have a research project that is suitable for a medical student. Otherwise, wait for the SONIA database to open in April with a list of available projects. You’ll need to attend interviews with potential supervisors – make sure you come armed with questions about not only the project itself, but the working environment, how much work you’re expected to do, and what support you will receive. After projects have been finalised, you’ll need to submit a draft research proposal followed by your draft literature review. Since your supervisor is the one who assesses these, make sure you email working drafts to them with enough time so they can give you feedback before you submit.   

Major Assessments
There are two written exams in each semester: a WH/CAH, and MH/AC/GP. They usually consist of around 45 MCQs and 6 SAQs worth 20 marks each.

There is not much room for study before both exams. Your exams will be the week after you finish your placements for each semester, so you absolutely cannot leave study for the last minute. Studying and making notes ahead of each rotation will not only lighten your load coming into exams, but you’ll also be able to get more advanced teaching and feedback from your team if you understand what is happening on the ward.
Collaborating with others is a must before your written exams. To minimise your study workload, “divide and conquer” – upload past exam recalls onto a Google document and assign people questions to answer and present at each study session. It’s great for making sure you’re all on the same page, and I found it useful to hear answers that I had never thought of.

For the OSCEs, unfortunately, anything can be examined – even procedures. Start revising the whole year extremely early. Most people will begin to do some form of OSCE practise by August, three whole months before the end-of-year OSCEs. You’ll have two stations per rotation, so don’t neglect   revising material from earlier in the year. Don’t just focus on your rotation-specific histories and examinations, but focus on the communicative stations as well. These can involve medication counselling, explaining a procedure to a patient, answering questions, breaking bad news, explaining results and negotiating a plan with the patient – the list goes on. Cover as many different types of stations as possible, because the medical school will throw you stations you’ve never practised before. It is imperative that you’ve practised enough so that you have a good structure and approach to each different type of OSCE station. As always, practise with others, see what they do differently, and keep refining how you’ll handle the stations. With an unexpected station, it’s important that you fall back to a structure to work your way through, but at the same time don’t misread the stem.

You don’t need to stress too much over the Standardised Case Based Discussion. You’ll be shown a video of an incomplete history that lasts for 4-5 minutes. Then you will tell the examiner what else you would like to ask, what you’d examine for, what investigations you’d like and how you would manage the patient. It’s very similar to a CSL, except you only have 15 minutes. Make sure to spend most time on history, but don’t run out of time. Practise how you will organise your notes from the example video they give you, and that should be enough.

Ending Comments
On our very last day of OSCEs, one of our coordinators congratulated us for finally becoming “pretty much doctors now”. We all scoffed, but it’s great seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…and also dreading the light from the incoming train that is internship. Make sure that you have at least two references for the PMCV match in the next year – my suggestion would be to ask your GP supervisor and a consultant you’ve developed a good rapport with in clinic.

This year was by far the most interesting year of medicine for me – take as many opportunities to help out on the ward as you can, because I found that there was usually more than enough time to study throughout the year. That being said, you can always leave if you find that your time could be better spent doing something else. The end-of-year examinations are a major slog, with your assessments being scattered over two weeks, but you'll finally be able to rejoice as these will be the final examinations in medical school that count towards your Z-score!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: carlton_99 on November 17, 2018, 11:43:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10005 - Genetics and The Evolution Of Life

Workload:  2 x 1-hour lectures and 1 x 1-hour tutorial per week; 1 x 2-hour practical every fortnight

Assessment: 4 x Module Tests (20%), 5 x Practicals (25%), 1 x Assignment (5%), Exam (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yes, but only one

Textbook Recommendation: Same textbook as BIOL10004, however it is not really required for this subject in my opinion.

Lecturer(s): Dawn Gleeson, Hayley Bugeja, Luke Holman, Andrew Drinnan, Theresa Jones

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Pending

Comments:

Lectures: The lectures in this subject, are as a whole very interesting. The genetics component taken by Dawn Gleeson is amazing, and gives a great insight into some of the major aspects of this particular topic. This is especially emphasised for those who would like to continue with genetics in their second and third years. Next was a topic on transcription, translation and the genetic techniques used for DNA analysis. This was taken by Hayley Bugeja and was again very interesting, and should be one of the easier topics if you have completed Year 12 VCE Biology, which overlaps greatly with this university subject. The next module of the course was Animal Diversity and was taken by Theresa Jones. She is a very good lecturer, however at times the content can be quite dull, as it is mainly just remembering classifications of animals (kingdom, phylum and species). Furthermore, this part of the course is mainly about memorising a lot of theory so try and learn it as you go, and don't leave it to the end of the semester. Following this we analysed protist, fungi and plant diversity with Andrew Drinnan. For me this was the least interesting topic of the lot; mainly because I have a deep hatred of plant theory. However, similar to animal diversity it is mainly memorisation, with little application available. The last part of the course was Population Genetics, and this was taken by Luke Holman. This part of the course was relatively easy to do, once you understand the reasoning and working out behind it. This is largely maths-based and involves the calculation of allele and genotype frequencies, which can be very dull because of its repetitive nature.

Tutorials: The tutorials in this subject are not a hurdle requirement, but they are helpful, especially if there is a specific part in the lecture you find difficult understanding. In most tutorials you will do a variety of worksheets from a provided problem booklet, whilst in others you will do a wide range of activities to further substantiate your understanding of specific lecture topics. 

Practicals: The practicals in this subject were SO MUCH better, when compared to those of BIOL10004. They are easy to do well in if you prepare well beforehand and utilise the knowledge of your practical demonstrator (during the practical).

Module Tests: One out of the four module tests are done in the tutorial class, whilst the rest are done online and at home. The one completed in the tutorial was the most difficult as you weren't afforded the luxury of having your notes in front of you (which you CAN do when you undertake the other three tests at home). In summary you can do very well if these tests if you prepare well for them, and this is especially appropriate for those you do at home. Even though you can have your notes in front of you for these, I personally would recommend preparing for it well, as it reduces the time needed to search through your notes.

Assignment: The assignment for this subject was again easier when compared to that found in BIOL10004. It involved using a program to undertake an investigation into three main components regarding specific mutants of Drosophila. The aim is to determine whether these are dominant/recessive, autosomal/sex-linked and independently assorting/linked.

Exam: The exam in this subject was more difficult when compared to the one completed in BIOL10004. Although I found the topics in this subject easier some of the questions required lots of application which was quite difficult. It was also a very long exam and I had no time to check over any part of the exam. One caution I would give is to ensure you prepare for an exam that is harder then the practice exam you are given (which seems to be a reoccurring theme for both biology first year subjects).

Concluding Comments: Overall, this subject is very interesting and I highly think it is a great introduction into genetics and evolution. You will especially like this subject if you are pursuing a possible major in genetics (or an associated field). My final tip would be to ensure you prepare beforehand for everything, including practicals, as this results in picking up easy marks (before you even complete the exam).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mtDNA on November 19, 2018, 12:24:11 am
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002 Biomolecules and Cells  

Workload:
3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 hour tutorial (weekly), 2 hour practical (fortnightly)

Assessment: 
A 20 minute multiple choice test held mid-semester (5%); work related to practical classes during the semester with a combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class, completion of 4 or 5 on-line pre-practical tests + written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words + and 4 or 5 short multiple choice tests (25%); completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a written assignment not exceeding 500 words (5%); a 3 hour examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (60%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. an 80% attendance at the practical classes together with a result for the assessed practical work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with screen capture (they even record the actual lecturers too!)

Past exams available: 
No, but there was a sample exam which had more questions than an actual exam. Solutions were provided. Moreover, there are some additional questions provided for certain topics (a sample MST and questions from Mary Familari on her content were provided).

Textbook Recommendation: 
D Sadava, D M Hillis, H G Heller, M R Berenbaum, Life. 11th Ed. Sinaver/Freeman, 2016 is recommended by the coordinator and lecturers do assign pre-readings, but this really isn’t required. Students who use the textbook mainly do so to reaffirm concepts which were unclear in lectures.

Lecturer(s):
Coordinator: Prof. Dawn Gleeson

W1-3: Prof. Geoff McFadden, Lectures 1-9; Cell Biology.
W4-5, 9-10: Dr Mary Familari, Lectures 10-13, 23-27; Cell signalling, Homeostasis (endocrine & nervous systems), Immune system, Stem cells.   
W5-7: Dr Lisa Godinho, Lectures 14-20; Cardiovascular, Circulatory, Respiratory, and Osmoregulatory systems.
W8: Prof. David Gardner, Lectures 21 & 22; Digestive system
W10-12: Dr Alexandra Harvey, Lectures 28-33; Reproductive system, Development, Animal taxa.

Year & Semester of completion:
2018 Semester 1

Rating: 
4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:
H1

Comments:

Overview & Tips:

All in all, this was a very enjoyable subject to take which was also a nice transition from high school to Uni. The content was largely stimulating and the assessments were very accessible to all students. A great thing about this subject is that you can really maximise your score by doing well in your ‘pre-exam’ assessments given this is 40% of your grade.

When planning your timetable, I would suggest placing your tutorials before your practicals - this is because sometimes the tutors give you a few tips about the prac at the start of the tutes. Also, note that the MST for this subject is completed during your tute time, so you may want to be careful when choosing a time for your tute (i.e. morning or afternoon, the start of the week or the end of the week). That said, don’t just choose a time later in the week in the hopes that you’ll hear questions from other students because they make multiple versions of the MST, so you will most likely get a different question set. Therefore, I guess make your choice based on whether you focus better during the morning or afternoon. Furthermore, when choosing a prac time, I would try avoid pracs on Monday - this is because you will not find out the in-prac assessment before the actual prac, so everyone who does it on Monday essentially walks in blind with no knowledge on what is going to be assessed. Sometimes tutors will tell you in your tutes, but generally you will find out from other people who have done it before you (for some pracs it won’t really matter, for others it can make a difference - for instance, the assessment for prac 1 could’ve been completed at home beforehand, so preparing and perfecting your responses here would pretty much guarantee a 6/6).

In regards to doing well in this subject, I would first point out that the main difference between High School and your 1st year BIOL subjects is that there is a much greater focus on rote learning mass amounts of content as opposed to critically thinking about the content. For instance, there were never any application type questions in the MST or exam (at least ones you would find in VCAA papers); instead, questions such as labelling the kidney structure or regurgitating the differences between the innate vs adaptive immune response would be tested. In this sense, I was actually surprised that the difficulty wasn’t necessarily regarding the way questions were asked; the difficulty mainly arises due to the large amount of detailed info you need to know for the assessments (I bold detailed here, since some answers require very intricate details. For example, you may be asked how many grams of sugar there are in a can of coke [this was in our exam lol], or the disease which arises due to a lack of vitamin b - both concepts which are presented in lectures for perhaps less than a minute or so but then show up on exams). Therefore, I’d really recommend keeping up to date with all your lecture content (though I was up to week 5 content in SWOTVAC  :P ), and studying by using heaps of diagrams! Here, what I did was print out unlabelled diagrams (such as a picture on nephron structure, or perhaps the development of a zygote) and then label them and outline any related info (e.g. the structure’s name and function) - this will help a lot for section b of the exam (which I’ll discuss below). Another study tool is to write out paragraphs on processes (i.e. section c practice), which again I’ll discuss below (though I started doing this for BIOL10003).

A final note - in my opinion, completing VCE Biology (units 1-4) is an enormous help for this subject (especially year 11 given the large focus on systems), but is by no means a requirement to get a H1. From my experience, my friends who didn’t do VCE Biol struggled quite a lot in learning all the new jargon in the subject, since a large portion is learned during year 11 and 12 Bio, and sometimes the lecturers don’t really explain what certain terms mean. That said, doing VCE Biol doesn’t guarantee a high mark either - a number of my friends who got above 40 in Biol got low 70s in the subject, so work definitely needs to be placed in this subject for a H1 - this is because although a large portion is taken from VCE Bio, there definitely is a greater level of knowledge needed for concepts which were in VCE (mainly the info was much more advanced for all the systems content) and there were at times completely new concepts (such as cell development and animal taxa).

Lectures :

For us, all lectures started at 8am and ran on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Also, note that because the biomed cohort is increasingly expanding, the lecture rooms are generally over-filled in the first 3 weeks. Therefore, since this will probably be your first lecture at the uni, make sure you’re early and grab a seat! I remember having to sit on the floor for my very first lecture (not a great way to start the semester hahahaha). But as the semester goes by, you’ll see the attendance rate dropping (for me, I stopped watching lectures after week 4... 100% do not recommend).

Geoff, the first lecturer, presented quite basic content on cell biology. His content was similar to the VCE curriculum and concerned prokaryotes, eukaryotes, the plasma membrane, proteins & enzymes, cellular respiration, endosymbiosis, cell division, and carbohydrates & nucleic acids. As a result, the first three weeks were pretty chill since the only new important info was the differences between archaea, bacteria, and eukarya (which appears again in BIOL10003), and content about the specifics of the cytoskeleton. As a lecturer, Geoff was really good, and he showed quite a handful of videos and diagrams in comparison to the other lecturers. Note though that because of this, his slides at times lack info - for instance, he may just have pictures for slides for cellular respiration, but then you can be expected to write a 10 mark essay question on it for the exam in section c. So when reviewing his content, look thoroughly at the diagrams he shows, since you’ll soon find that diagrams are very assessable and often form the basis of those intricate and detailed questions I mentioned earlier.

Next, we had Mary who taught us her first portion of lecture content on tissue types, homeostasis, cellular signalling, and the endocrine system. Imo, this is when the course begins to get a bit more challenging given the appearance of a fair bit of new content, such as learning the different types of tissues (epithelial, muscle, connective, and nervous), and the specifics of certain cellular process such as the effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline and the secondary messenger pathway involved. That said, Mary was a very good and enthusiastic lecturer and provided us with study questions as revision for both the MST and the exam.

The third lecturer was Lisa. She presented content on most of the systems, including the cardiovascular, circulatory, respiratory, and osmoregulatory systems. The foundational knowledge was very similar to year 11 Biology, but it was interesting to learn the systems at a much greater level. In my opinion, Lisa was the best lecturer (though I could be bias since I liked her content the most), and it was awesome that she used Poll Ev at the beginning of every lecture to review what we had learned in the previous lecture. As mentioned above, diagrams are SUPER important if you’re looking to do well in her section b questions, since a thorough understanding of what the system looks like is required. For us, we got a question on the osmoregulatory system, but she had sneakily inverted the Loop of Henle, so if a student didn’t know the structure well enough to notice, that would’ve been a solid 5-10% of the exam mark gone.

After Lisa, we had David Gardener who presented two lectures: the former on nutrition and the latter on the digestive system. In my opinion, David was not a very good lecturer since he was largely unenthusiastic and was frankly boring (though not the worst, Alex is coming up). His first lecture was honestly such a mess given the content which was assessable was super unclear - he had tables listing all the vitamins and minerals, and when asked the question “do we need to know this”, he responded “yes, because it’s important for your everyday lifestyle” in the lecture  :-\  (Just to let you know, the only examinable ones were vitamin B, C, and D. You just needed to know if they were water or fat soluble, what they did in the body, and what disease would arise if there was a deficiency of the vitamin). That said, his content on leptin and it’s role in weight gain was extremely interesting. His second lecture on the other hand was much more engaging given the step-up from year 11 bio.

Afterwards, we had Mary again to deliver her second set of lecture content: the nervous system (in two parts), the immune system, and stem cells. The first part of the nervous system was pretty cool since it was entirely new (I guess if you’ve done VCE psych it’d probably be familiar); this concerned concepts such as the different regions of the brain and their functions as well as certain diseases which arise when there are abnormalities in certain regions, and the different phases of sleep. The stem cells lecture was also super fascinating.

Finally, we were punished with Alex who presented content on the reproductive system, cell development, and animal taxa. Personally, I was extremely interested about learning development before we had Alex since the field of IVF has always been fascinating to me; however, Alex really put me off from the concept (that said I still have hope that MCB will re-ignite that passion and will influence me to take the cell and developmental bio major). In my (probably very popular) opinion, she was extremely disengaging and dull - it was almost like she didn’t want to be there. In addition, she would often go on tangents and use terms which were defined later in the slides, which made it so challenging to understand what she was saying (for example, she began her first lecture on fertilisation using terms such as ‘cumulus oophorus’ and ‘zona pellucida’ without explaining their meaning until the end the lecture). Because of this, it takes about 2 to 3 hours to watch one of her lectures on lecture capture given you have to constantly rewind the lecture to note down all the terms and processes she mentions which aren’t addressed on the slides. Also, if you haven’t already heard, animal taxa is the bane of most students’ existence in this subject given how dry the content is (though it’s taught much better in BIOL10003). Luckily I think we had only two multiple choice on it in the exam, and I think they were the exact same multiple choice from the sample exam.

Tutorials :

The tutorials for BIOL10002 consisted of a classroom of about 20 students with one tutor (i.e. the teacher), and were overall quite useful. In the tutes, you will go through a powerpoint slide prepared from the tutor, which covers content from the previous week of lectures as well as associated revision questions. These questions aren’t really exam-style questions, but are designed to help you remember the content. Because I was pretty slack with the subject, I stopped doing the homework questions after week 2 lol, but they seemed quite helpful as a revision tool during the semester (based on a quick skim the day before the exam hahahaha). Most importantly, I found that tutes helped a lot in highlighting what type of content is assessable, especially given the fact that it’s the first Uni exam you will be taking from the transition from VCE. I had Sarah as my tutor, and she was absolutely amazing - because she used to be in charge of marking all the exams in previous years, she would often give us tips on what to study based on what showed up in previous exams (for example, she would mention that in X year, X lecturer briefly mentioned X content but it came up in the MST/exam). In addition, she included a lot of practice section c questions in her tutes, and more importantly emphasised how they mark it.

Practicals :

In total, we completed 6 pracs, as listed below:

Introductory practical - using the microscope: here, we went through setting up a compound (light) microscope and learning how to properly complete biological drawings. This was pretty simple stuff and you most likely would’ve done this in high school, but just note how to complete a biological drawing correctly, since this will be assessed in future pracs in both this subject and BIOL10003 (i.e. know exactly how to write a title, get the magnification, how big a drawing should be, etc.). Note: this prac was not assessed.

Practical 1 - cell structure: here, we stained a plant cell and observed it in a light microscope, we observed the effect of osmosis under the microscope when rhubarb cells were placed in different solute concentrations, and had to prepare a slide of from a living plant cell. For this prac, questions from the booklet about osmosis and a drawing from the living plant cell were assessed for in-prac. Note that the osmosis questions could’ve been completed before the prac.

Practical 2 - cells and tissues: here, we had to identify whether a solution for blood plasma was hypertonic, hypotonic, or isotonic by preparing certain solutions with blood. Next, certain carbohydrate substrates were mixed with yeast to determine which solutions could be metabolised by the yeast. For this prac, a hand-in sheet for the blood activity was assessed for in-prac (from memory, this was about whether you identified the solutions correctly in your experiment and your definitions of hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic).

Practical 3 - heart and lungs: here, we had to observe the texture and volume of a mass of lung tissue in comparison to liver tissue, and then observe a section of lung tissue under the microscope. Next, we had to dissect a heart. For this prac, the in-prac assessment was to correctly identify two parts of the dissected heart and to give a function of a third part (the parts were chosen by the prac demonstrator), as well as a hand-in sheet which was about correctly labelling where gas exchange occurs in a the lung from a microscope cross-section and explaining why (i.e. Fick’s law).

Practical 4 - structure and function of the mammalian digestive system: here, we had to mix a different digestive enzymes with different substrates in various test tubes to identify the digestive enzyme and substrate pair, and what effect the reaction had (i.e. colour change, mass change, etc.) Next, we had to dissect a rat and observe it’s digestive system. For this prac, the in-prac assessment was to correctly identify two parts of the dissected rat’s digestive system and to give a function of a third part (the parts were chosen by the prac demonstrator).

Practical 5 - comparative reproduction: here, we had to dissect a rat and a frog and compare it’s reproductive systems. For this prac, the in-prac assessment was to correctly identify two parts of the dissected rat’s (and maybe frog, I can’t really remember) reproductive system and to give a function of a third part (the parts were chosen by the prac demonstrator).

For the BIOL10002 pracs, you complete these in the Redmund Barry labs. Here, I’d say there are about ~120 students in the lab, with each bench holding ~7/8 students on each side. For most pracs you generally work individually, but there are some cases where you work in pairs. In terms of timing, there is a person who announces to the entire group the timeline for the practical, and I found that the bio pracs aren’t that challenging to finish in time (in fact you often finish 15 minutes early). A prac demonstrator will manage your bench and will help you out with any questions you have, and will mark your in-prac assessment. 

For each practical, there is an instruction booklet you receive which details all the associated content, steps to complete the experiment, and some questions which are meant to help with the post-prac tests. For practicals 1-5, each is worth 10 marks, with 1 mark coming from a pre-prac quiz, 6 marks coming from the in-prac assessments (which I’ve listed above), and the remaining 3 marks coming from a post-pracs test. The pre-prac quiz was just an online test with 10 multiple choice; this was untimed and just tested if you read the instruction booklet (i.e. there is nothing to stress about here, all you need to do is have the booklet open with you while you do the quiz and all the answers are in the booklet). To the the 1 mark, you need to get 8 questions out of 10 (tbh this is essentially free marks). The in-prac assessment is generally completed at the end of each prac. I personally found it quite simple to full mark these if you prepared adequately for the pracs; however many people I spoke to found it challenging to get high marks in the prac component. There were two post prac tests - one is completed while you do your MST in your tute; the other one is a timed test completed at the very end of the semester on the LMS. These test both the content from the instruction booklets, and more importantly the results you received from your pracs (particularly the activities you do which aren’t assessed during the in-prac assessment). They are both multiple choice (I think they were both out of 15); the first post-prac test covered the introductory prac, prac 1, and prac 2, while the second covered prac 3 - 5. Apparently doing the questions in the instruction booklets help for these, but I was pretty lazy so I wouldn’t know  :P . Just make sure you have your results and the content with you while you do the tests.

Just something to note about practicals: each practical is 5% of your final mark. I think most students forget this, especially when you compare the time put into doing well in pracs versus the MST or the assignment. If you want to do well, make sure you do well in every prac.

MST :

The MST, which is 5% of the final mark, was completed in week 7 and covered Geoff’s and Mary’s content (lectures 1 - 13). This was 15 question multiple choice (I think). For preparation, there is a sample MST with addition questions. In general, the MST forces you to revise the first portion of the course and will give you an indication on how you are going, hence it’s a pretty useful assessment. Overall, it was quite easy to do well in it given the multiple choice weren’t too tricky; I’m pretty sure the average was 11 or 12 out of 15. Just a hint - the lecturers are aware of the overlap between the VCE course and this subject, so they like to test things which are new for all students (therefore expect a few MCs which cover new content). 

The Assignment :

The assignment, which is 5% of the final mark, was due in week 8 and was about temperature change and it’s effect on hormone concentrations. In summary, we were given data for an experiment and we had to present the data in a graph, write up results, and write up a discussion. Although this sounds simple, the average for this assessment was around high 50s to low 60s. This is because they are very strict when marking. Just a few tips: make sure your graph is perfect - essentially, people who had a ‘complicated’ graph not only lost marks in that section, but also lost marks in their results and discussion since every time they referred to the graph they’d lose marks. The difficulty with the results is the word limit - to get around this, change up your sentence structures (don’t write "X increases as Y increases. Z decreases as Y increases”. Instead frame your sentence like “as Y increases, X increases and Z decreases”), connect your units together (e.g. 20mins instead of 20 mins - that way, it’s counted as 1 word instead of 2), and use hyphens with no spaces (20degrees-40degrees instead of 20 degrees - 40 degrees, this cuts 3 words in this case alone). With the discussion, include your data and explain it in full. The final bit to be marked is your reference list - to make sure you do this properly, visit re:cite unimelb.

Independent Learning Tasks :

There were about 5 ILTs: these were an online study tool which went through content, followed by a series of 8 to 10 multiple choice questions on the content. Generally, the ILTs complemented the lecture material, but there were a few which were quite different (such as the one on blood components). The ILTs contributed 5% to the final mark, and are really free marks; they are there just to help you with your revision. That said, don’t be complacent and forget to do them (your tutors will remind you but you’d be surprised by the amount of people that forget to complete them). To get the 5%, you need to average 80% or above over all the ILTs.

The Exam :

The exam, which is 170 marks and contributes 60% to the final mark, is divided into three sections: section a (multiple choice), section b (fill in the blank), and section c (the essay section). To my memory, section a was ~50ish marks and divided into two types of multiple choice: the first handful are 1 markers and are just basic re-call questions, the next bunch are 2 markers and are deemed to be more challenging (though most of them were still pretty simple). Section b was ~70ish marks with ~8 or 9 questions; here, there would either be a paragraph of text with gaps and you would have to fill in the blanks, or there would be diagrams with blank labels and you would have to complete the labels (therefore revising this subject using diagrams will help enormously). The final section was 40 marks, with three questions: question 1 and 2 being 10 marks each, and question 2 being 20 marks. Thankfully, Dawn Gleeson (the coordinator for the subject) will tell you which lecturer wrote which question in your final lecture (which is a summary lecture that goes over the frontiers of biomedical research, exam procedures at unimelb, and other stuff for jaffys). For us, question 1 was written by Geoff, question 2 was written by Alex, and question 3 was a combination of Mary’s and Lisa’s content.

Section A is probably the easiest part of the exam, though as mentioned above, they can test very specific details. The best way to prepare for section c is to write up paragraphs going through processes (e.g. the process of egg or sperm development, the process of cell development, etc.). Although this is an ‘essay’ section, just be able to write about a page or two for the questions. Imo, the hardest part of the exam is probably section b, since some of the options may require very specific knowledge, so don’t stress too much for the section c since you’ll generally be able to write on the topics listed (that said, they may throw in a minor topic to really separate the cohort - they did this with us, but if you studied your lectures properly you would’ve been fine).

In my experience, the exam only covered lecture content, so I wouldn’t bother revising ILT or prac content. In terms of timing, it’s very easy to finish the exam in time; the tutors and lecturers recommend a minute a mark, but since most multiple choice are simple recall, you can finish the multiple choice earlier and spend more time on the section c.

Also, note that the Biol exam is 3 hours long and is always held on the very first day during the exam period.

tl;dr If you work consistently in this subject and appreciate the content you learn, you’ll certainly do very well at the end of they day - good luck!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: mtDNA on November 19, 2018, 12:52:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10003 Genes and Environment  

Workload:
3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 hour tutorial (weekly), 2 hour practical (fortnightly)

Assessment: 
A 20 minute multiple choice test held mid-semester (5%); work related to practical classes during the semester with a combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class + completion of 4 or 5 on-line pre-practical tests + written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words + and 4 or 5 short multiple choice tests (25%); completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a written assignment not exceeding 500 words (5%); a 3 hour examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (60%).

Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. an 80% attendance at the practical classes together with a result for the assessed practical work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled: 
Yes, with screen capture (they even record the lecturers!)

Past exams available: 
No, but there was a sample exam which had more questions than an actual exam. Solutions were provided. Moreover, there are some additional questions sheets provided for certain topics (a sample MST and questions from Dawn on the genetics component).

Textbook Recommendation: 
D Sadava, D M Hillis, H G Heller, M R Berenbaum, Life. 11th Ed. Sinaver/Freeman, 2016 is recommended by the coordinator, but this really isn’t required. Students who use the textbook mainly do so to reaffirm concepts which were unclear in lectures.

Lecturer(s):
Coordinator: Prof. Dawn Gleeson

W1-2: Dr. Alex Idnurm, Lectures 1-6; Classification & Parasites.
W3-5: Prof. Rob Day, Lectures 7-14; Disease & Transmission, Resistance, Hominin Evolution.
W5-9, 12: Prof Dawn Gleeson, Lectures 15-27, 33-36; Genetics.
W10-11: Dr Patricia Jusuf, Lectures 28-33; Molecular Genetics, Mutations, Gene Editing.

Year & Semester of completion:
2018 Semester 2

Rating:  Out of 5
4/5

Your Mark/Grade:
H1

Comments:

Overview & Tips:

Given this subject and BIOL10002 are both coordinated by Dawn, the structure for the assessments are essentially the same (though the content is obviously very different). Undoubtedly, this subject was much harder than BIOL10002, though the content you learn is extremely interesting nonetheless. Like I mentioned in my BIOL10002 review, you really want to maximise your score by doing consistently well in the ‘pre-exam’ assessments - after all, this contributes 40% to your final mark and they are very easy to do well in.

In terms of timetabling, I would again suggest placing your practical time after your tute, though it’s less important in this semester since the tutors rarely gave advice about the pracs. Unlike BIOL10002, the MST was actually conducted in the practical time instead of the tutorial, so you may want to be careful when choosing a time for your practical (i.e. morning or afternoon, the start of the week or the end of the week). That said, don’t just choose a time later in the week in the hopes that you’ll hear questions from other students because they make multiple versions of the MST, so you will most likely get a different question set. Therefore, I guess make your choice based on whether you focus better during the morning or afternoon. Furthermore, when choosing a prac time, I would try avoid pracs on Monday - this is because you will not find out the in-prac assessment before the actual prac, so everyone who does it on Monday essentially walks in blind with no knowledge on what is going to be assessed. Sometimes tutors will tell you in your tutes, but generally you will find out from other people who have done it before you.

To do well in this subject, I would again recommend the same advice I have in my BIOL10002 review - ensure you study consistently in this subject (given there is much more content, it’s even more important to not fall behind), and always use diagrams in your notes. In addition to these tips, I’d also suggest writing pages summarising certain concepts (i.e. section c essays) such as the history of disease, the evolution of resistance, sex determination in human or Drosophila, the process of X-inactivation, etc. This is because there is so much more content to know in this subject, and often certain concepts appear over multiple lectures (such as sex determination and X-inactivation), so summarising these concepts will also help you make links between different lectures. Moreover, do the practice genetics problems from Dawn - this is the main difference between BIOL10002 and BIOL10003, whereby the exam has a larger number of problem-solving questions. Note that Dawn has plenty of questions in her slides, though the questions in the exam, despite being very similar instructor, are much harder in difficulty.

Given a huge amount of content is covered in this subject, VCE Biology doesn’t really confer an advantage anymore - quite a lot of the content will be new, and concepts which overlap with the VCE course (e.g. hominin evolution, pedigrees, transcription/translation) are covered at a much greater level than VCE. Therefore, as mentioned above, it’s extremely important to work consistently in this subject to get a H1 (that said, it’s not overly challenging to catch up if you fall behind - I was up to week 7 lectures in SWOTVAC, and I managed to learn all the content by a few days before the exam).

Lectures:

Like BIOL10002, the lectures annoyingly start at 8am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Alex, the first lecturer, presented content on biological classification & taxonomy, viruses, viroids, prokaryotes, fungi, medical mycology, and parasitic protists. You’ll find that his content is very dense, and at times knowing what content is assessable can be confusing. To let you know, Alex puts a lot of specific names of species in his lectures, but your really ‘just' need to know about Corynebacterium diptheriae, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, mycobacterium leprae, streptomycin griseus, microsporidia, Candida albicans, Aspergillus fumigatus, Cryptococcus gattii, Gardia lamblia, Trichomonas vaginalis, Leishmania, Trypanosoma, Balantidium coli, Entamoeba histolytica, Toxoplasma gondii, Plasmodium, and Cryptosporidium (that said, there are plenty more he goes through, some of which may be important such as the bacterial diversity including actinomycetes, spirochetes, etc. though I don’t recall there being questions on these). It can be quite daunting to memorise all of these names, though I found printing pictures of the species and annotating them with the relevant information really helped. Thankfully, there is an ILT on the parasitic protists, which also helps in memorising those.

Next, we had Rob who covered the history of disease, classification of animal parasites, parasite strategies, resistance, origins of new epidemics, parasite control, and human evolution. Like Alex’s content, the stuff Rob teaches is extremely dry given most of it is just rote learning, though as mentioned above, diagrams are an enormous help, particularly if you are a visual learner. His first lecture on the history of disease will sound pretty fluffy and flowery given the lack of ’science’, though don’t discredit this content - apparently this lecture has formed the basis of section c questions in the past, so do treat this seriously (imo, when you actually learn it properly it becomes very interesting). Next, there is classifications - unlike BIOL10002, the taxa content is taught much better. You will be expected to know Plathelminthes (including Trematoda and Cestoidea), Nematodes, and Arthropoda (including Hexapoda and Arachnida). You will also need to know that Wuchereria bancrofti as an example of a nematode, Schistosoma as an example of a trematode, and Trichinella spiralis as an additional example of a nematode (then more superficially, tape worms being cestoidea). Although this is largely boring, his following content on parasite strategies (excluding the parasite life cycles) and evolution for resistance is really interesting. He then covers origins of new epidemics - a thing to really focus on is the epidemic & rate of infection graph, as well as the formulas  slope = r x N, where r = P x C x D (he has tested this in previous exams as the section c). In regards to human evolution, unfortunately you’re gonna have to know all the names again and features of each species - for us, I would say this formed about 10 to 15% of our exam, so don’t just learn this superficially (rip me lol); take the time to learn all the details (specific cranial capacities, what each primate looks like, when each structural change occurred, where the species existed, etc.).

The third lecturer was Dawn. She presented content on mendelian genetics, including histone modification & epigenetic effects, DNA replication, extensions to Mendel (e.g. pleiotropy), sex determination in different species, X inactivation, gene interaction, blood groups (now with the bombay phenotype, secretor locus, and MN locus), and finally linkage (including 3 markers). Thankfully, Dawn is an absolutely amazing lecturer and her content is really interesting. As mentioned above, always do the questions she puts in her slides because they generally are exam-style questions. Also, note that Dawn often omits pictures and diagrams from the slides she puts up on the LMS, though they are often assessable. In addition, she will often go through many diseases with you, though you’re not expected to know them all - at the end of the semester, she’ll put a document on the LMS outlining which diseases you need to know (if I remember, there was about 17-25) and the specific information about them that was examinable.

After Dawn, we had Patricia who presented lectures on gene expression and regulation, mutations and examples of disease, and gene editing. Her content, although being a slight extension to the VCE course, was mostly similar and therefore it was pretty simple to power through some of her lecture content. Just note that transcription, RNA processing, and translation, go into a lot more depth, and that you will be expected to know about the specifics of the genetic causes and effects behind the diseases resulting from mutations.

Finally, Dawn came back to teach us more epigenetics (essentially genetic imprinting and Knudson’s two hit model for cancer development), variation within a population (i.e.e STRs, SNPs, VNTRs, etc.), and population genetics (essentially the simple maths you learn in maths for biomed with allele frequencies).

Tutorials:

In the tutes, you will go through a powerpoint slide prepared from the tutor which covers content from the previous week of lectures, as well as associated revision questions. These questions aren’t really exam-style questions, but are designed to help you remember the content. I personally found these tutes to be a lot less helpful than the tutes in BIOL10002, though I would that that’s because Sally (my tutor) never really discussed tips for the exam, almost always struggled to finish the powerpoint in time, and wasn’t very clear with her explanations. That said, they still help slightly by highlighting what type of content is assessable (e.g. being able to actually identify a Tasier from a picture, or an old world monkey to a new world monkey).

Practicals:

In total, we completed 7 practicals, as listed below:

Introductory practical 1 - prokaryotes & eukaryotes: here, we prepared a bioassay with fungi and bacteria to determine effective antibacterials and antifungals respectively, and we performed a serial dilution. Note: this prac was not assessed.

Practical 1 - pathogen diversity: here, we observed the bacterial growth from our serial dilution, observed gram staining of three different species of bacteria, observed the growth of bioassays with bacteria and fungi, and observed slides of various protists and animal parasites. For this practical, there was a timed multiple choice test done at the end of the practical which counted for the in-prac assessment. From memory, this was based on calculations with the serial dilution, and a few multiple choice on the bioassays.

Practical 2 - ectoparasites & transmission: here, we viewed slides of a mosquito, fleas, lice, and a tick. Next, we had a series of case studies where we had to deduce the parasite and disease from the symptoms and information provided, so it felt like we were (extremely experienced) doctors for the day hahahaha. For this practical, the drawing of the tick and your ability to correctly diagnose the patients in the case study were assessed for in-prac. Note that for the case study activity, you had to research 10 parasites and the diseases they cause in order to be able to complete this activity accurately. That said, one of the patients had was infected with a parasite which wasn’t on the list of parasites we had to research; instead it was from our lectures  :-\ . For this prac, I remember the average was extremely low (some benches scored no more than 1 or 2/6 for the in-prac assessment).

Introductory practical 2 - chromosomes, cell replication, and auxotrophs: here, we had to prepare a slide and view chromosomes from it under a light microscope, and prepare some auxotrophs with bacteria. Note: this prac was not assessed.

Practical 3 - DNA, a gene, and an Auxotroph: here, we extracted DNA from E. coli, observed the mode of inheritance for a certain trait, and observe the results of the auxotrophs prepared in the introductory practical. For this practical, your ability to extract the DNA successfully and a drawing of meiosis and independent assortment of the gene of interest (GAI1) was assessed for in-prac. In this case, your meiosis drawing, which was in the instruction booklet, could be completed prior to commencing the practical.

Practical 4 - chromosomes, sex linkage, and transformation: here, we transformed bacteria with the pGLO plasmid, prepared a slide of specific cells to observe mitosis occurring, and chloroformed Drosophila to determine the mode of inheritance for eye colour. The process of chloroforming was actually super fun, though note the flies will begin to wake up soon if you’re not quick (my lab partner needed help so I left my bench for a solid amount of time, so when I got back to my seat I saw all my flies singling around on my bench... the meme below perfectly represents my reaction). For this practical, your drawing for observing mitosis in your prepared slide and the correct phenotyping and determination of the mode of inheritance for the eye colour locus was assessed for in-prac.

Practical 5 - gel electrophoresis and transformation: here, we completed a gel electrophoresis with a gene locus mixed with multiple restriction enzymes and then plotted a standard curve showing the results. Next, we observed the results from the pGLO plasmid transformation, and then observe gene linkage in a plant species, followed by observing gene interaction in a fungal species. Fir this practical your plotting of the standard curve and the correct identification of genotypes and phenotypes for the gene interaction in the fungal species was assessed for the in-prac.

In my opinion, the practicals for BIOL10003 were much more challenging and time-consuming than the practicals for BIOL10002, but that said, you can still do very well in them and you gain more skills from these pracs (you’ll realise all the memes about pipetting bois are so accurate after doing this subject). Again, there were two post-prac tests: one covered the intro prac, pracs 1 and 2 and was completed with the MST in the lab, while the next covered pracs 3-5 and was completed on the LMS as an online timed multiple choice quiz at the end of the semester. Note that for the second post prac, there were so many chi squared tests, so be prepared for that.

As I mentioned in my BIOL10002 review: each practical is 5% of your final mark. I think most students forget this, especially when you compare the time put into doing well in pracs versus the MST or the assignment. If you want to do well, make sure you do well in every prac.

MST:

The MST, which is 5% of the final mark, was completed in week 5 and covered Alex's and the first portion of Rob's content on parasites (lectures 1 - 12). This was 15 question multiple choice (I think). For preparation, there is a sample MST with addition questions. In general, the MST forces you to revise the first portion of the course and will give you an indication on how you are going, hence it’s a pretty useful assessment. Overall, this MST proved to be much more challenging than the MST completed in semester 1 given most of the content isn’t covered in the VCE course and relies heavily on brute memorisation; I’m pretty sure the average was 3.3/5. That said, you’ll be perfectly fine if you know all the intricate details from the lectures, as well as specific details about the species mentioned in lectures. In my experience, the majority of questions were given to Rob, so definitely make sure you know his content quite well.

The Assignment:

The assignment, which is 5% of the final mark, was due in week 9 and was much easier than the assignment in BIOL10002. The first part (Part A) involved using a program to undertake an investigation into three mutant traits in Drosophila. The aim was to determine whether these traits are dominant/recessive, autosomal/sex-linked, and recessive lethal/dominant lethal/not lethal. Part A was 40 marks, and as mentioned above, it really was extremely simple to do well in this assessment given you included all the relevant information. The second part (Part B) was an absolute joke; it was 10 marks (i.e. 2% of your final mark) and just required you to give feedback on the assessment, so essentially you could either get 10/10, 5/10 (if you partially completed the feedback by skipped the written part), or 0/10 (by forgetting to do the feedback). Part B just took 5 minutes to do. Overall, this assignment was really time-consuming (par a that is), but super easy to do well in.

ILTs:

There were about 6 ILTs. Generally, the ILTs complemented the lecture material, and were personally really helpful, especially for gene linkage and protist parasites. The ILTs contributed 5% to the final mark, and are really free marks; they are there just to help you with your revision. That said, don’t be complacent and forget to do them (your tutors will remind you but you’d be surprised by the amount of people that forget to complete them). To get the 5%, you need to average 80% or above over all the ILTs.

The Exam:

The exam, which is 180 marks and contributes 60% to the final mark, is divided into three sections: section a (multiple choice), section b (fill in the blank), and section c (the essay section). To my memory, section a was ~70ish marks and divided into two types of multiple choice: the first handful are 1 markers and were more or less re-call questions, the next bunch were 2 markers and are deemed to be more challenging. Section b was ~60ish marks with ~8 questions; here, there would either be a paragraph of text with gaps and you would have to fill in the blanks (generally calculation based such as population genetics or genetics problems such as blood typing or pedigrees), or there would be diagrams with blank labels and you would have to complete the labels (therefore revising this subject using diagrams will help enormously). The final section was 30 marks, with three questions: question 1, 2, and 3 were all 10 marks each. Thankfully, Dawn will tell you which lecturer wrote which question in your final lecture. For us, question 1 was written by Rob, while question 2 and 3 were written by Dawn. She also tells you which lecturers write which questions on the section b.

Section A is probably the hardest part of the exam imo; this is because not only do you need to know really specific details, but you will have to do quite complicated genetics problems which are really time-consuming (imo much more challenging than the ones from the sample questions), so it’s really easy to lose marks there if you’re unable to correctly do the problem. For section c, Dawn’s questions were broken into smaller mini questions. Generally one of her questions will be a genetics problem (e.g. linkage, gene interaction, hypothesis and chi squared testing, etc.) while the other is based on theory in genetics (e.g. source of variation, X inactivation, sex determination processes, etc.). Imo, her questions were very accessible to most students. The question from Rob is generally the hard one; in our year, he gave us one on hominin evolution which required very specific information, so it was certainly a differentiator for the cohort.

In my experience, the exam only covered lecture content, so I wouldn’t bother revising ILT or prac content. In terms of timing, I found it quite challenging to finish the exam in time, particularly with all the genetic problems in the exam. Overall, I found that lots of the content which were assessed in the MST didn’t really show up much in the exam, so definitely focus on week 5 to 12 content when studying for the exam. Also, note that the Biol exam is 3 hours long and is always held on the very first day during the exam period.

tl;dr If you do all the genetics problems, work consistently in this subject, and appreciate the content you learn, you’ll certainly do very well at the end of they day - good luck!

(https://i.imgur.com/rPfq60t.png)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dddknight on November 21, 2018, 11:55:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30010 Advanced Techniques in Molecular science

Workload:  1x 1 hr lecture, 1 x 5 hr practical, 1x 1 hr tute

Assessment: 
-10% lab participation assessed throughout the 12 weeks
-36% lab notebooks (Exp1 - 8%, Exp2 - 17%, Exp3 - 6%, Exp4 - 5%)
-4% bioinformatics worksheets
-20% Exp1 report
-20% Student group presentations
-10% MCQ + calculation final exam (45min)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with/without screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, two past papers available

Textbook Recommendation: 
Keith Wilson and John Walker, Principles and Techniques of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2010, 7th Ed) Cambridge University Press
(Not necessary, all is provided on LMS and Leon will explain everything.)

Lecturer(s):
Dr Leon Helfenbaum and A. Prof Nicholas Williamson

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Sem 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Overall
As one can pretty much guess from the assessment, there is a lot of work to be done in this subject. In writing this review, I hope I don't scare anyone when I provide my views of this subject. It is daunting and anyone who went through 2nd year BCMB20005 would know how much work there is in the assessment and perhaps you could say that it's much more in comparison. Right from week 1, me and a friend commented 'why does it feel like it's week 12?' It's one of the hurdles of the biochemistry and molecular biology major and I have to say - if you have survived those 12 weeks regardless of what grade you have, well done and give yourself a pat on the back because this was a rollercoaster of a ride.

Lectures
This is held once a week in person, unlike 2nd year. However, you could just watch the lecture recordings if you don't feel like coming. Generally, most students don't attend and this really comes back to what's your best learning style. The content at times is a mix of sometimes too much and sometimes a rehash of 2nd year techniques lectures. We go through details into DNA technology and protein purification methods. Nick will spend 3 weeks lecturing us on mass spectrometry techniques. Just like 2nd year techniques, the lectures themselves mostly don't have any relevance to the pracs themselves. These lectures are standard but I will give my opinions on this later in the assessment.

Tutorials
The tutorials are held once a week as one class in a lecture hall. The tutorials went thru the lecture material to prepare you for the final assessment and go thru what is expected in the presentations and reports. The tutorials had better attendance compared to the lectures and imo i think you'll find much benefit going for them because they make you engaged with the content.

Practicals
This is the crux of the subject. Now you may ask - what are we going to do in 5 hours? Well the 5 hours isn't spent completely in the lab. About 30 mins would be spent having lunch while another 30 mins could be spent going thru a pre-practical lecture given by Leon. However, I will say that it's likely that you will go home late past the expected 5 hours for the 1st few weeks. This is because the lab work is a lot especially for the 1st few weeks. Throughout the 12 weeks, 1 experiment is completed in about 4 weeks. Now you may be wondering - how do we complete 4 experiments in 12 weeks if it takes up that much time? Simple. You need to multitask. Within 1 practical session, you'll find yourself moving to and fro from 1 experiment to another. At one point, you may be busy prepping your PCR reaction and within the next minute, you'll be getting ready to purify a protein. It gets confusing at times keeping track of the details of each experiment. I agree that it may feel daunting for the 1st 3 weeks but keep calm and push through. It will be worth it all. At times, Leon may stress you but the key is to just focus on your work. Just like 2nd year, your class participation matters and it's assessed in the same way. Remember to work well with your partner for the next 12 weeks :)

Do take note that sometime you'll have to come 1 or 2 days after your pracs to do additional lab work. This may be the 2nd phase of the experiment for that week and you'll arrange a time with your demonstrator to do it. Before I forget, mistakes in the prac can be extremely damaging to you and maybe your lab partner. Mistakes can be detrimental to the class results but that's not an issue because you simply need to explain it in the lab notebook. However, you may be asked to come another day to repeat your experiment. I've went through that and it was humiliating but I think it was good because it taught you what the real world can be like.

Lab notebooks
Now these lab notebooks replace the reports that those doing 2nd year techniques would have seen. However, the important difference in these notebooks is that you don't have to be as detailed. The expectations on what to include in the notebook is written in the lab book. However, if you do feel like it's necessary feel free to include. These notebooks are mainly to get a feel on what is expected if you were working in a lab. It's used to document what were the aims, methods, results and the conclusions of your experiment u just conducted. They're kept as a precursor to the formal report for the scientist to keep track of. However, one major complaint is that the expectations of the notebook are way too much. I find myself doing these notebooks almost everyday of the semester. At times, they were vague and made it difficult to interpret what is expected. These lab notebooks count for about 36% of the overall grade so try to protect them at all times.

Bioinformatics sheets
These are pretty much the ILTs that you see in 1st year. They're provided in order for you to be familiar with the bioinformatics software you'll be using in the practical classes. They count for very little and it's very difficult to fail them. As a result, they'll be changed and become a hurdle requirement instead.

Report
Now the report is 2500 words and it was due right after the break. Technically, one would argue we had plenty of time to work on this. However, this can be challenging when you still need to work on other experiments and familiarise with what's going to happen in your 5 hour prac that week. Especially since week 5-6 are probably the busier portions of the prac. In addition, you'll most likely be multitasking with your other 3rd year science/biomed subjects. And the difficulty is reflected in the grade distribution where the average was about 13/20. Now the report isn't your standard 2nd year techniques report but is a hybrid of both that and a journal article. My advice is try to ask Leon for guidance and talk about it more with your lab group.

Presentations
Preparations for the presentations started at around before the start of the break. Before the break, you'll need to submit a summary answer sheet answering a few questions. The questions are generally straightforward and count for 2%. Your group will consist of 5 people and each person is expected to speak for about 3 mins each to describe the major findings of the paper chosen by a supervisor from the BCMB dept in Bio21 assigned to you. The presentation will be held on your final prac in week 12 and on that same day, you'll be expected to write a 1000 word summary to describe the paper individually. The summary is about 8% while your presentation will count for about 10%. Your meeting with your supervisor will generally be held during the last hour of your prac for the 1st 2 weeks. Afterwards, you and your group will need to arrange a time to meet. My advice is to ask for help as much as you can from your supervisor because they know the paper really well. Ask them for guidance as to whether the organisation of the presentation sounds good. If you're good with presentations, you'll probably find this a cake walk but remember to look after your own teammates.

Final exam
Now this is the bane of the subject. What makes this painful is that the last 10% given by this exam may actually be important in attaining a H1. As I said, the report average is pretty poor and there are very little people that can make it to 16 and above. Because there are multiple little assessments done in this subject, the penalties will accumulate and it may affect your overall grade. This exam itself is a beast of its own even if it has changed to mainly MCQs. Within that 45 mins, you will find yourself pressed for time. If you've taken PHYS20008, you'll know what that feels like. The difficulty is reflected by how our same cohort scored an average of 5/10% in sem 1. Perhaps what makes it more painful to study is that everything covered in the exam has almost nothing to do with the prac and is focused on the lecture material that most people don't attend. Throughout the 12 weeks, there is no mention of the lecture material in pracs which makes it difficult to revise.

Final thoughts
This is a challenging subject and this was one of the subjects that nearly brought me to tears. However, I must say that this is necessary. It teaches you that life can be pretty bad and that there may be a lot of expectations from you when you enter the work force. This subject is a must for anyone seeking work in a lab for honours or masters. The practical experience you obtain is so valuable and I doubt there is a subject that can rival the expectations wanted. I would even recommend this subject to those who seek entry into health professional jobs because these are likely the expectations you will be asked to satisfy. It is hard but it will build you up to be a stronger person. My advice for this subject is to stay close to your lab group and meet them daily to discuss things in your lab notebook. It's tough so it's comforting to have friends to look out for you and to aid you in this trial. If anyone has questions, feel free to PM me :)

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: esile52 on November 22, 2018, 09:41:31 am
Subject Code/Name: CVEN30009 Structural Theory and Design 1

Workload: 1x two-hour lecture, 1x one-hour lecture, 1x one-hour tutorial per week, 2 single lab class in weeks 9 and 11.

Assessment:
3x "Home Lab" Group Assignments (5% each)
2x Design (Group) Assignment (10% and 5%)
3 hour exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes

Past exams available: Yes, and fully worked solutions are provided dating back to 2010.

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s): Dr Ryan Hoult, Dr Philip Christopher, and Dr Abdallah Ghazlan.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2018.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
One of the most well-organised subjects I have taken. There is a logical progression of the lectures where the main focus is to develop the skills required to complete the design assignments. Consequently, the lecture slides outline the methodology required to complete the two major assignments. The content was, at times, difficult to understand. However, this content was easy to learn via practice in the form of working on the design assignments and attending and completing tutorial questions. The subject draws on information learnt in Eng Mech and a little from Eng Materials. There is a lot of content to get your head around, especially as they have reduced the number of formulae on the formula sheet, so practicing questions without referring to notes during SWOTVAC is essential to ensure that you can write down all the formulae required.

Lectures
There were three main themes for the lectures, presented by each of the lecturers. Ryan taught the first few lectures which were mainly revision in addition to a novel method of calculating deflection of beams (you'll need this for the exam!). Later in the semester, he returned to teach deflection of indeterminate beams which was finicky at first, but interesting to learn. Phillip taught the section required for the design assignments, the content may feel overwhelming, but once you start chipping away at the design assignment, you should be fine. Abdallah took the final, and arguably the hardest, series of lectures. These involved new concepts but were supplemented with tutorial questions which came with complete solutions. Note, during the semester, there is ample consultation time with all the lectures which is worthwhile to attend. Abdallah was responsible for the discussion board this semester, which we all found to be invaluable as you could post your question and would often receive quick replies.

Tutorials
Unfortunately, I didn't attend as many tutes as I should have this semester, but from what friends have said, some tutors were better at explaining things than others. Luckily, all the solutions are provided soon after the tunes are released. Note that some small formulae are taught in tutes and NOT IN LECTURES, that are required for some calculations in the design assignment.

Assignments
Assignments 1, 2, and 3 were group assignments with the same group (so, choose your friends wisely!). Assignment 1 wasn't too difficult. Assignments 2 and 3 required a lot more work and a significant report, I would recommend getting started on these as soon as possible. As assignment 3 is a spin off of assignment 2, it should be slightly easier to complete. The last two assignments are based off simple one hour labs where you just collect data. [Note that this semester, most people were surprisingly given around 100% for assignment 2 and 3, which surprised me because there were a lot of numerical calculations so they obviously didn't check your figures when the marked it, but rather just made sure each section was present.]

The feedback given for the assignments is minimal. would recommend going to see them in consultation time if you wan't more feedback.

Exam
The past exams were a major part of my revision, this prepared me for the exam except for the fact that this semester's exam was fairly different to previous years. Some advice: don't simply rely on past exams haha. From reading the other reviews, this seems to have been the case for 2017 as well, so I would imagine that they are trying to introduce more complexity into the exams.

Overall
This is a really solid subject. As I've said, it's well taught, well coordinated, and well constructed. That said, it is also a tough subject. There is lots of content and lots of assignments, so you really need to keep up during semester to avoid the requirement for an enormous cram session in SWOTVAC.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: esile52 on November 22, 2018, 10:09:20 am
Subject: CVEN30010 Systems Modelling and Design

Contact Hours: 2x 1 hour lectures; 1x lab near beginning of semester; 2hr computer workshops almost every week; 2hr tute every second week

Assessment:
(Massive) Design Project 50%
Reflective Journal associated with Design Project 5%
1x Lab Report Week 6, 5%
2 Hour Exam 40%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, about six, no solutions provided. See google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y6oMPlwOYQeHzBp_ZE7ak54-jvNCXVH1vz1XO8P5SLo/edit?usp=sharing
Using unimelb email, you should be able to access this

Textbook Recommendation:  None. Readings provided in lecture. Make sure you do these as they're examinable

Lecturer(s): Prof Stephan Matthai and Mr Amir Orangi

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2018

Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not yet released

Comments:
Summary: Probably the worst taught subject I have taken. By week 12, very few of us had any idea of what was expected for the exam. Lecturers are long and rambly as well as confusing. Workshops were good.

Lectures
Each week consisted of two lectures, one taught by Amir, the other taught by Stephan. Amir taught the soil hydraulics section, whilst Stephan taught more theoretical content in relation to numerical modelling and the basics of designing computer models. Amir's content drew on stuff learnt in Earth Processes whilst applying this knowledge to more complex applications of seepage. His lectures were punctuated with examples that he would work through. Often his handwritten notes were not captured by lecture capture, so I would recommend attending the lectures if you can. His lectures were very interactive, often asking the students if they knew the answers but not being too forceful. Make sure you follow any instruction from Amir to do 'homework' or 'research this yourself' as this content that he directs you to research could, and was, examined.

Stephen's lectures were fairly dry and content heavy. His slides were packed with information. Luckily for the exam, you get an A4 page of notes/cheat sheet. Most of us just copied all of Stephan's content onto this sheet. Oftentimes, the content was difficult to understand as it was our first introduction to the nitty-gritty of designing computer models. It was often difficult to discern what was in fact examinable.

Some of Stephan's lectures were replaced by guest lecturers which were interesting. However, only one guest lecture's content was examinable on the exam.

Workshops
These were invaluable as we were required to learn a new software, GeoStudio, and these workshops began with step by step instruction of how to use the program. This was essential as GeoStudio was required for major sections of the design project. Note, there are only a few computer labs at uni which offer this program, so google 'melb uni software computers geostudio' and this should link to an excel file that tells you which labs have the program. Often, it was challenging to find a computer lab that was empty when you needed it to complete the first stage of the assignment. Furthermore, if you download the student version of the software, it seems that it is not backwards compatible with the full version at uni. Also, you can download a free 30 day trial of the full version which I recommend you download in WEEK EIGHT or NINE, rather than at the beginning of the semester because it will be much more helpful later on.
The workshops were taken by Abbas, who was really helpful in answering all questions and helping out with simple problems encountered with the new software.

Tutes
These were run in big classes with two tutors. Most tutes ran through info required for the design project. The tutors were generally helpful, but because so many students are in need of them, it was often easier getting the people sitting at your table to help.

Lab
The lab entailed one or two hours of work. It wasn't challenging especially because you worked in groups of six. Make sure you take down all the measurements as you do not have another chance to get them. The lab report questions were not overly complicated, but required a bit of work. You'll need to revise Particle Size Distribution stuff for a small bit of the report.

Design Project
The most fun and stressful part of the subject. This assessed previous knowledge as well as all the GeoStudio stuff. It was interesting to construct a design report, however as it was our first one, formatting errors contributed to loss of marks. There's A LOT of work required, so make sure you start in week one, and every time you complete the calculations, make sure you're writing the report as well.

Exam
This was the worst part of the subject. It was difficult to understand what part of Stephan's lectures would be examinable. Reading over past exams, the questions were often just asking you to memorise and restate stuff mentioned in lectures. In my exam, 2018, there were a few questions that were not testing our knowledge, but rather whether we had happened to copy the information onto out cheat sheet which is a stupid method of examination. The exam was two hours, but it seemed as though three hours worth of content had been put into the exam.


Good Luck !
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on November 22, 2018, 01:35:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING10001 The Secret Life of Language  

Workload:  2x1 hour lectures per week, 1x1 hour tutorial per week (excluding week 1)

Assessment: x3 problem solving assignments (morphology and syntax, semantics, phonetics and phonology, respectively) totalling 50% of marks, and a 2 hour exam worth 50% at the end of the semester.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with lecture capture

Past exams available:  One sample exam

Textbook Recommendation:  An Introduction to Language by Fromkin et al is prescribed. There are several editions of this textbook, which cover more or less the same content. Therefore, to save yourself a hefty fee at the Co-op, I’d strongly recommend that you either borrow the book from the library, or use the online e-book. While the textbook often goes into more detail than the lectures, I still found it helpful to complete the weekly readings. Even if the book fails to explicitly impart insightful knowledge, it helped me substantially for the curveball assignment questions.

The subject manual, however, is an absolute necessity. The style of exercises mimicked what students could expect in the assignments and the exam. After a particular topic had been completed in the lectures, Barbara would then release the relevant manual answers. 

Lecturer(s): Barbara Kelly, and a handful of guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, semester 2

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1


Comments:

This subject was coordinated superbly. Before every lecture, Barbara would upload a copy of the slides to the LMS, which provided students with the opportunity to get an initial idea of what could be expected. Given the amount of content covered in a single lecture, this made sure I didn’t get too lost. In relation to the content itself, there is a wide breadth of topics offered. These included morphology, syntax, language diversity, the brain and language, semantics, phonetics, phonology, historical linguistics and first and second language acquisition. While some of these were conceptually challenging, the mini practical tasks in the lectures helped to relieve confusion. In addition to this, the tutorials were spent working on the exercises in the manual. This time is extremely beneficial. My tutor would give students about 5-10 minutes to solve a problem on their table, and then report back to the class, where we would solve the exercise collectively. In this way, everyone had the ability to contribute, make errors and learn from these, and listen to the questions and feedback of others.

Unfortunately, not all topics were assessed on the final exam or assignments. Therefore, I will cover the main topics in my explanation below.


Morphology:

This essentially studies the formation of words, and their internal structure. For lovers of meaning, this was a fascinating unit- especially when languages other than English were studied. For example, kiqeht’al translates to ‘we recognise them’. The fun part is, you are assessed on your ability to decode these words from a data set, and determine what each of the morphemes represent.


Syntax:

Syntax examines how strings of words come together in a sentence. Tree diagrams will become very familiar during this topic. While these are discussed in the lectures, and are elaborated on further during the tutorials, I felt that my grasp on trees wasn’t complete. But then I discovered Evan Ashworth on Youtube, who explained these (and many other areas of linguistics) extremely well. He takes nothing forgranted, and will take the time to carefully articulate the reasons behind each of his steps. Highly recommended!


Semantics:

Centred around meaning, I maintain that this unit was the most ambiguous of them all. You will learn some mindboggling things, such as how not all synonyms are ‘real’ synonyms. You will also learn what is implied or entailed in speech, and why there are a myriad of categories for antonyms. My best piece of advice for the relevant assignment would be to explain, explain, explain. Cover all bases and you can’t really go wrong. If you don’t, the tutors will deduct some easy marks.

Phonetics:

The study of sounds. As tree diagrams are linked to syntax, the IPA chart is linked to phonetics. Perhaps the biggest downfall of this subject was the misleading information given to students before the exam. Students were told that an IPA chart would be provided in the exam, and that learning it was not necessary. Yes, an IPA chart was provided- but the fundamental categories were blank. Therefore, it is essential that you learn the manners and place of articulation well.

Phonology:

Phonology is a natural extension of phonetics. Students will study how there are rules governing the types of sounds that a single letter can produce. For example, when we say ‘s’, we only have the mental conception of the sound ‘s’. In reality, we may be producing a ‘z’ sound, depending on the types of sounds surrounding that final ‘s’. Compare ‘bags’ and ‘bugs’. Without a firm knowledge of why and how this happens, the assignment will prove difficult.

Historical Linguistics:

This topic studies why language changes, why words change, and why sounds do. But what is essential for this area, is that you memorise the common, natural sound changes. For example, what happens to a voiceless stop when it is surrounded by vowels. The lenition chart provided in the lecture slides is a bible for this. So, learn it well. While many students tended to discount this topic as a prominent exam contender, do not treat it as such. Barbara likes to insert pockets of historical linguistic knowledge in the exam to see who was paying attention.


Overall :

On the whole, this is a fun subject for anyone interested in language. It challenges, excites and inspires  :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on November 22, 2018, 03:04:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10002 Free Speech and Media Law 

Workload:  1x2 hour lecture per week, 1x1.5 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: x1 assignment totalling 30%, a 2 hour exam worth 60% at the end of the semester, and a 10% attendance and participation mark.

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with lecture capture

Past exams available: Yes, 2017

Textbook Recommendation: There is a subject reader available at the Co-op, which amalgamates all of the relevant readings. However, Jason will also upload each of the weekly readings to the LMS; meaning the reader isn’t a necessity. I personally found it more convenient to print the weekly material off the LMS, instead of lagging around a heavy reader.

Lecturer(s): Jason Bosland

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, semester 2

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1


Comments:

Free Speech and Media Law provides students with an excellent opportunity to gauge their interest in law, and whether they will pursue the Juris Doctor after their undergraduate. While it cannot be denied that the reading is heavy and the content is often perplexing, there is a great reward when students can finally appreciate a particular area of law. The topics covered include, the rationales of free speech (as a foundation), defamation, sub-judice contempt, suppression orders, journalist sources, privacy, racial vilification, and technology in the digital age. Although Jason is an engaging lecturer, and often details these areas well enough, I had to work especially hard to grasp a topic in its entirety. So, in addition to the readings, I often found it helpful to locate academic articles through Discovery or go and visit my tutor for consults. Perhaps the extra effort required to do well in this subject is the dividing factor between students who enjoyed the subject and those that regretted this choice.


Assignment:

Covering the topic of defamation, this 1500 word assignment requires students to respond to a fictional case study. This assignment relies upon students having a sound knowledge of defamation fundamentals in Australian law. Therefore, you must understand the elements of a cause of action (identification, publication and defamatory meaning), the defences available in a claim (the variant qualified privileges, fair comment, truth justification, innocent dissemination), and how Australian defamation law compares to American law.

Given that no sample is provided by the faculty, or even a rough outline, structure caused me havoc in this assignment. While tutors will introduce you to the traditional legal IRAC method (issue, rule, application and conclusion), this was only done verbally. Naturally, this conflicts with the whole point of the IRAC method, which applies to written language. Ultimately, however, I just decided to adhere to my instincts, and categorise the material as I desired. As I received a H1 in this assignment, it obviously didn’t turn out too poorly. Just ensure that you are thorough with the detail- be rigorous with your case law/statute law footnotes, get straight to the point, and ensure that you are consistently entwining the law with the context of the case.

In relation to referencing, it is advised that students follow the Australian Guide to Legal Citation. However, be aware that you don’t need to follow it to the letter. I thought I had to do this, and drove myself crazy trying to hunt down relevant page numbers for case law that is 200+ years old. Hint: these pages don’t exist online. So, just mimic the examples on the assignment sheet. 

Just finally, do try and plan this assignment well. You need to be astute to the details to determine plausible imputations. I spent a week just outlining everything I would write. This made the writing process much easier, and meant that I wouldn’t find a major disaster mid-writing, which would set me back.


Exam:

Jason treats the lecture in week 12 as a revision lecture. And what I discovered (as I had anticipated) in the exam, was that his explanation of each area is targeted at the exam prompt. Thus, it is critical that you pay attention to the direction of his discussion, and where he is particularly pensive.

In the exam you will write 2 essays. Given that the exam is open book, and you are thus given the opportunity to bring in pre-prepared essays, I would strongly recommend that you determine your two topics weeks in advance of the exam. As I discovered after the first assignment, the standard is ridiculously high in law subjects. So, to contend with the competition, it is key that revision is taken seriously.

As some kind of framework for revision, I used the prompts from 2017. I deconstructed these and worked through relevant evidence from readings, potential interpretations and more importantly, how I would put this all together. Above all, clarity is needed. Some tutors even told me to put headings above each new argument. Shock horror. This would have been a sin in VCE English or Literature. Also, the lecturer seems to be big on the stylistic choice of ‘firstly, secondly, thirdly’ in introductions. At the crux, they are just stressing the importance of establishing a clean argument. And doing this prior to the exam, will be very helpful! The restricted timeframe and usual exam pressure won’t foster an insightful thesis statement.

Overall:

Choose this subject if you have an interest in the way the media and free speech interact in a legal context. Going into this subject, I was apprehensive about whether or not I was vehement enough to have an opinion on this type of subject matter. But the more I learnt, the more comfortable I felt voicing my opinion in tutes and on the page. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on November 22, 2018, 05:00:58 pm
Subject Code/Name: GERM10002/GERM20005 German 4 

Workload:  2x1 seminars per week, 1x2 hour seminar per week

Assessment: x1 writing test totalling 20%, x2 listening tests totalling 10%, x1 reading test totalling 15%, x1 oral assessment totalling 5%, and a final examination worth 50%. This will differ slightly for second year students, who are required to submit x3 200 word journals throughout the semester worth 10%, collectively.

Lectopia Enabled: NA

Past exams available: No, but a work sheet with exam ‘indications’ was provided.

Textbook Recommendation: Essential German Grammar is required. This book provides some excellent grammar exercises, which are often employed when a new concept is being introduced. Nifty grammar tables are also contained within.
 
Lecturer(s): NA

Year & Semester of completion: 2018, semester 2

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1


Comments:

After almost enrolling in German 6, I am glad that I gave myself the opportunity to revisit some fundamental elements of the German language in German 4. This subject covers anything from relative pronouns, the passive voice, adjectival nouns to the imperative. Both tutors were charismatic individuals, who sought to instil their knowledge of the language in students at every stage. The subject becomes increasingly interesting after the film, The Comedian Harmonists, is introduced. This becomes the focus of most tutes after week 5, where cultural elements pertaining to the Weimar Republic and WWII are explored. Owing to the novel vocabulary/ideas this topic provoked, the grammar exercises became substantially more exciting.

Fortunately, the class sizes were appropriate, and fostered an environment, where students felt comfortable exchanging German. Some of the tutors like to nit-pick work as they roam around the classroom. While this sometimes becomes irritating, it is nice to have insight from native Germans, who are willing to share their thoughts on what is or is not typical German. 


Writing Test:

There wasn’t much direction given for this test. And so, when I first saw the test, I was surprised that students weren’t asked to write a composition of some sort. While there was the opportunity to write your own sentences, most of it was ‘fill in the gap’ style. That was one of my main issues with this subject. I do not believe that competency can be assessed via this style. Regardless, if you have worked hard to understand the relevant grammar leading up to the test, you should be fine.

Listening Tests:

The first test was in the form of multiple choice. It was a very accessible test, which saw the average hover somewhere around 90-95%. A vocabulary list is provided on the LMS to assist with the more challenging words and phrases. While memorisation of this list wouldn’t necessarily ensure that you would pick the correct answer, I found the list helpful for enhancing my own vocabulary. You never know when the words/phrases will come in handy (source: the reading test vocabulary sheet helped me add a new dimension to my essay in the exam).

The second test took the form of ‘fill in the gaps’, and was slightly more challenging than the first test. It relied more on students’ holistic knowledge of German vocabulary (ie. which gender does noun X have).

Reading Test:

The reading test was centred on the Comedian Harmonists. Again, it was in the form of multiple choice. The text was fairly demanding, and necessitated a ‘global’ understanding of the piece. That is, you must be able to pick up on the implications to determine the correct option. Although my result was fine, I was surprised with the tutor’s rationale behind one of the options. But nevertheless, some things are simply subjective.

After the test, it is handy to use the material (based on the Comedian Harmonists) to strengthen your text-specific vocabulary. This is particularly helpful for the oral examination.

Oral Exam:

While this is only worth 5% (regrettably), it is worth preparing for this thoroughly, in light of the exam. Prior to the exam, students will receive a list of potential questions. Only 2-3 will be picked during the actual assessment. In my opinion, the assessment was slightly unconventional. It consisted of yourself and a partner both sitting before the tutor, who would ask each student different questions. It seemed to add to intimidation, as each student would be comparing their own responses against their partner’s.

Final Exam:

The exam was fair. It covered almost every grammatical concept we had covered over the semester, and asked students to write a composition at the end. If anything, silly mistakes under exam pressure will be the only factor weakening your score.


Overall:

Like I mentioned above, I am glad I took German 4. The concepts are explained extremely well, with enough examples and time for adequate consolidation. In conjunction with the enthusiasm of the teaching staff, this subject has encouraged me to study German further at university.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: omegalul on November 23, 2018, 02:59:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90050 Geotechnical Engineering

Workload:  1x 1-hour weekly lecture, 1x 2-hour weekly lecture, 1x 1-hour weeklyish tutorial and 2x practicals

Assessment: 
2 online assessments (5% each)
2 lab reports (14% and 7%)
Retaining wall design group project (10%)
3-hour end of semester exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, no solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  None, lecture notes are sufficient

Lecturer(s): Mahdi Disfani, ARUP geotechnical team and various other guest/industry lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Didn't see a review of this subject so hopefully this brief review is useful to those who will take this subject in the future.

Lectures and Tutorials
Mahdi covered revision on the soil mechanics component of Earth Processes and Systems Modelling and Design in the first week. Revision was quite brief so if you feel there is a gap in your knowledge its best to take out your soil mechanics notes from previous studies and start revising. But to be honest, as long as you know how to calculate total and effective vertical stress in soil, you'll be more than prepared to tackle the content in this subject.

Mahdi then covered consolidation and geotechnical strength in weeks 2-6. A lot of the content for these components should feel familiar if you took Earth Processes for Engineering. All in all, I think Mahdi did a good job in explaining the concepts and there was an adequate amount of examples presented in the lectures to help you understand the content.

Weeks 7-10 covered lateral earth pressure and retaining walls. Mahdi decided to bring in ARUP's geotechnical team to teach these components of the course. I felt like the quality of lectures varied greatly. The MSE section was covered very well with slides relevant to the tutorial problems and a lecturer easy to follow. But other sections were at times either too fast paced, slow paced or confusing. I believe the problem is that a lot of the slides were adopted from previous years rather than being written by the lecturer themselves. Furthermore, it didn't help that there were discrepancies between what was presented in lectures and tutorials.

The last two weeks covered compaction, pavement design and liquefaction. I felt that the content was quite rushed and didn't get much out of it. In regards to the exam, as long as you know how to design a pavement using a design chart and know what numbers to plug into the liquefaction related equations you'll probably be fine.

I can't speak too much about the tutorials since I only attended one of them. As per usual, tutorial problems and solutions are posted on the LMS.

Assessments
My main gripe with this subject is how the teaching staff refuses to answer any questions in regards to assessments. Don't expect much help from the discussion board. This subject made me realize how great the structural teaching team is in providing assistance.

However, if you know what you're doing, then you'll be able to get through the assessments without much problem.

The quizzes were give away marks, as long as you're up-to-date with the lecture content and tutorial problems it shouldn't be too difficult.
The lab practicals weren't particularly difficult, my only gripe was the vagueness in what was expected from students.
The group design project was quite time consuming so I recommend finding a group of mates you work well with.

Exam
The 2018 exam tested literally everything covered in the course . When I say everything, I mean everything. If 2018's exam is indicative of future exams, make sure you go through all the content covered in assignments, tutorials and lectures in preparation for the final exam. Since you aren't given a formula sheet, try to memorize or at the very least be able to derive formulas that were covered in the course.

My best advice for preparing for the exam is to not tunnel into working through tutorial questions exclusively but to go through the lecture notes and assignments as well.

TL;DR
A good subject that gives you an introduction into consolidation, geotechnical strength, retaining wall design, pavement design and liquefaction but was hampered by the mixed quality in guest/industry lectures and lack of assistance. Furthermore, it wasn't clearly communicated to students what was expected of them in the final exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AlphaZero on December 04, 2018, 01:34:22 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1

Workload:
Every week:
> 4 hours of lectures (2 hours + 1 hour + 1 hour lectures)
> 1 hour practice class
> 1 hour computer laboratory class

Assessment:
> 6 written assignments (15% total, equally weighted)
> MATLAB Test (5%)
> Examination (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with document camera capture.

Past exams available:
Yes, 10 available (2009 to 2018) plus many MAST10007 Linear Algebra exams (see comments for explanation).

Textbook Recommendation:
Elementary Linear Algebra: Applications Version, 11th Edition (Howard Anton & Chris Rorres) is a great textbook for reading and selected questions, but is not required. You are given a problem booklet, the lecture notes, the practice class sheets and the computer laboratory sheets, which is more than enough study material.

Lecturer(s):
Dr. Alexandru Ghitza

Year & Semester of completion:
2018 Semester 1

Rating:
4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
First Class Honours (H1)

Comments:
Important Notes: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1 is the first of two subjects in the first year accelerated mathematics stream. Taking both MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1 and MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 is equivalent to taking the three subjects MAST10006 Calculus 2, MAST10007 Linear Algebra and MAST20026 Real Analysis. MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1 covers all of MAST10007 Linear Algebra, and selected parts of MAST20026 Real Analysis and MAST10006 Calculus 2 (where the rest is covered in MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2). The accelerated mathematics stream requires a minimum raw score of 38 in VCE Specialist Mathematics, or equivalent (roughly, top 13%).

This was, by far, my favourite subject that semester and is a great way to introduce strong maths students into the world of university maths. Unlike secondary school, you are not protected here by omitting difficult concepts. In university you are taught maths rigorously and Alex is very careful to cover everything. Further, content is also covered very quickly even with the extra lecture each week, so it will be very important that you stay on top of things and are studying regularly. There is a fair chance you won't understand some difficult concepts upon first presentation, and so it is also important you follow up with questions during consultation times, reread notes, do practice questions, etc.

Lectures:
I think the lectures were amazing. Alex delivers them very well. However, given the pace of the subject, it means losing focus during a lecture is very unforgiving since you will probably not catch up. You are given the notes to the week's lectures on the weekend. You should print these and annotate them as Alex does.

Practice Classes (Tutorials):
Tutorials were my favourite classes. You are given a problems sheet which you work through in small groups of 2-3 on whiteboards. The solutions are then given to you at the end of the class. You should also use these classes to ask questions about content you do not completely understand. Your tutors are your friends!

Computer Laboratory Classes:
Here, like the practice classes, you are given a booklet to work through on your own where you complete tasks to build up your knowledge of MATLAB. The only reason I don't give this subject a 5 out of 5 is that sometimes, this class can be a bit boring if you have previous experience in programming.

MATLAB Test:
In week 12, you will take a short 45-minute test on MATLAB. The questions there are designed to test your ability to use technology to solve simple Linear Algebra questions.

Assignments:
All assignments are handwritten (as of 2019 since 2018 presented with technical issues with online assignments, and so Alex gave up on it). Generally there are a wide range of questions - some are very accessible and there will always be one question to separate out the cohort. It's important to realise that assignment questions are not the same as exam questions, and so it's important that you do not start assignments the night before they are due. The questions are not necessarily straight forward and trust me, Alex generally designs questions to make you think and ponder for sometimes many hours before making any sort of progress.

Examination:
Worth 80%, this assessment is the most important of them all. You have no calculator and no notes - just a pen and some script books, and 3 hours to yourself. The exam is fairly straight forward if you have done the work prior to it. But even with poor preparation, you are not doomed. The exam is always designed so that it is easy to pass, but hard to score well in. There are enough questions there that are accessible and easy to make progress on. But, there are equally many questions that will really test your ability and push you to think.

Overall, I think the accelerated stream is generally a hit or miss for most people. You will either like it or dislike it - there is not much in between. However, if you put in the effort, I believe the subject is very enjoyable.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dddknight on December 05, 2018, 05:03:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30001 Protein Structure and Function 

Workload:  3x 1hr lectures, 1x 1hr tutorial (sometimes), 1 computer practical session

Assessment: 5% computer tutorial worksheet, 20% assignment, 2x 10% MSTs, 55% final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes. Plenty

Textbook Recommendation:  Mike Williamson “How proteins work?” 2012 Garland Science (A pretty good book for certain sections of the course)

Lecturer(s): Paul Gooley, Mike Griffin, Danny Hatters, Isabelle Rouiller and Gavin Reid

Year & Semester of completion: 2018 Sem 2

Rating:  3.8 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Let me first say that the review given by vox nihili is pretty good already. I write this review just because there have been slight changes in the course in terms of who's lecturing and the assessment. As the previous review pointed out, each module has its own seperate distinct elements that don't connect with each other too well. Having gone through functional genomics, you'd think that this subject would be manageable but this subject is a beast on its own. The content of each lecture is pretty hard to grasp so don't feel too sad if you didn't understand it when you left the lecture. In fact, don't be too sad if you don't even attend the lectures. When I attended the lectures in week 10, there were less than 10 students coming in a class of about 100. This subject expands on the content covered in the 1st few weeks of 2nd yr biochem covered by Paul (in 1st sem) and Terry (in 2nd Sem). This includes the primary, secondary, tertiary structures of proteins and all the beta hairpins and folding principles covered. It's a tough subject and I feel it's necessary to go through each lecturer just as vox nihili has. However, you do get a sense of special knowledge as mentioned and it's nice to see the various techniques used to study proteins. It's also noteworthy that I felt knowledge of chemistry (Equilibrium including Gibbs and kinetics principles) and a bit of physics helped in doing this subject.

Paul - So nothing has really changed much from what the previous reviewer has stated. Paul is an NMR expert and it can be pretty hard to understand the principles of NMR. However that's okay. My advice is to not get too bogged down by the principles but focus more on how to interpret the results of NMR data. In my opinion, it felt Paul was a bit too intellectual in his lectures and it was hard to really grasp what he was saying. Sometimes, you should really just read his slides first and then think about what he's saying. It also helps if you try and find the actual published paper he uses in lectures to understand the results. My final advice to those doing this subject is NMR cannot determine structure by itself. You need some structure template to work with in order to gain information about the structure dynamics. This section was hard to follow but it's amazing what we can really do to understand proteins.

Mike - Most of my friends found that he was pretty dry to listen to. His focus was mainly on structures found by X-ray crystallography and SAXs as well as principles on enzymes. A bit of physics would be useful as he goes through constructive and destructive interference using X-rays on proteins. Perhaps what makes Mike's content hard is that the 3 topics mentioned above don't have much link with one another making it hard to review.

Danny - Danny focuses mainly on folding principles and how we can observe them through FRET and stopped flow experiments. If you've went through molecular analysis of cell function, you'll see that this is an expansion of the content. As mentioned, Danny is more focused on seeing whether you can apply these concepts into biological experiments which is great. He wants you to apply knowledge and not simply regurgitate. In doing his exam questions, they feel like questions that you would see in the lab subject. He's one of the nicest lectures out of all of them and you can tell that he does his best in giving you the best learning experience.

Isabelle - Unfortunately, this was the year Terry was replaced. Now this is good and bad. This was good because we wouldn't have to go through his really difficult exam questions and this was bad because we didn't get to see his fun lectures. Isabelle is an expert in cryo-EM and it makes sense to include her because this is one of the leading technologies now used to visualise proteins. However, what makes her lectures poor, and I have nothing against it, is that her french accent was strong and made the lectures difficult to follow. BUT! You can tell from her lecturing style that she tries her best to educate. This is shown by how detailed her slides are and everytime the lectures ended early, she would always give time to go through her review questions and provide answers to them. While I didn't attend her tutorial (and i wish I did), she apparently used Legos in order to try and build structures of proteins and I really wish I came for that! Her content went focused on cryo-EM, structures of motor proteins like dynein and kinesin as well as signalling proteins (huge advantage if u did BCMB30004).

Gavin - Now Gavin is apparently one of the leading experts in Mass Spectrometry in Australia. Unfortunately, his lectures were not great. The flow of his lectures were so poorly connected making it hard to follow. In addition, if you were watching him on lecture capture, he doesn't use the pointer as with other lecturers making it difficult to follow. The saving grace of Gavin is that his questions are basically the same every year so there is really no surprise when you do his questions in the exam.

Now each lecturer has their flaws but in my opinion, when you sit down and stop complaining, you'll see that the techniques used to study proteins are pretty amazing. It highlights how much we've really progressed with biochemistry and the papers each lecturer have highlighted have shown us what we've been able to determine. And it's pretty cool. While the content of this subject is hard to grasp, I think it's so much better than what you've learnt in functional genomics. It's a special knowledge that informs you what have we done to understand biology and it is really the foundations of drug design.

Tutorials- Honestly, I felt like these were sort of a waste of time and didn't attend most of them. Perhaps the most necessary tutorial to attend was the PyMol tutorial because it gives you the necessary skills necessary for the assignments. The tutorials given by Paul were pretty helpful in getting your mind thinking about how NMR works and what questions to expect. Danny does hold an interactive session on a paper where you'll input answers on your phone. I honestly wish the tutorials would switch to this direction. If I'm not wrong, some tutorials did involve people working in groups (not too sure) and it may be helpful for those who enjoy that.

Assessment
Computer lab - In comparison to BCMB30002, this was poorly conducted. During the prac, no effort was made to use the microphone or the main computer. So we were pretty much left to do our own thing based on written instructions and we could ask Paul and Mike for help if needed. The focus of the assignment was to get used to PyMol and write figure legends. Honestly the latter wasn't an issue because these are the same figure legends you would write in 2nd year techniques. There were issues imo in understanding questions but you could just ask help from Paul. The assessment isn't too strict and you would get at least 4/5 for this assessment.

Assignment - The assignment is a bit more straightforward in this subject and you'll be asked to answer a few questions. Each lecturer has their own assignment with their own set of questions. You'll be asked to use PyMol to create a figure they want and write a figure legend. Honestly, it's hard to say whether this was an easy assignment or not. I remembered overthinking a lot for this assignment and found it a pain because Gavin made our questions so vague. Perhaps what helped most was that piazza was setup so we could ask questions to clarify with one another the meaning of some questions. In terms of grade dist, me and my friends did very well so I can't really say whether this was easy or not.

MSTs - Honestly, I find these tests a huge pain and they were also held on the day of my Adv tech pracs. The MCQs were written in such a way that penalized you so harshly. Those who have done PHYS20008 would know how this feels. You'd be given a series of statements and you'd be asked to choose the option with the correct combination of statements. It's a huge pain because there were moments I was penalized for missing 1 fact out of the 4. I could not score a H1 for either MST because of this. The good thing about these MSTs is that they each only contribute 10% so managing a pass doesn't create too much damage. Consider these MSTs like concept checks to see whether you're progressing and catching up with the content. They don't really measure how well you do in this subject. Oh and there is no SAQ section anymore.

Exams - This has been changed to 2 hours. It comprises of both an MCQ and SAQ section. Our exam was held in the 1st week of the exam period. It was a real pain because we only had 2 weeks to go through Gavin's poor lectures and review everything that we went through already. Initially, the preparation may feel like a pain especially when you have to go learn some intricate details but I think what helps in this preparation the most are the past exam papers given in the library. You'll see that the questions given are somewhat similar and it gives you an idea what each lecturer wants to ask. Surprisingly, I didn't really have an issue with time just like BCMB30002. Some people did so I may not be the best example. All of the questions are very fair here unlike the MSTs. My advice is writing more does not always equate to more marks. You may just be wasting time and losing marks in other sections. Just be relevant. To be honest, I feel like they should've included questions where they would ask which techniques would be appropriate to probe certain experimental questions. It would be the best way to examine if you really understand what each technique can do.

Overall, the subject is hard. If you're doing advanced techniques in molecular science, you pretty much will have a tough sem. Definitely hard but the content is pretty interesting to learn. In entering a BCMB major, I always wanted to see chemistry being applied in biological contexts. While I didn't get to see too much of that, this subject was closest thing to it. It was great seeing principles of equilibrium, spontaneity and polarity being applied to understand proteins. I don't give this subject a too high rating because I feel like the content can be disengaging for so many people in this subject. One could sense this when you compare lecture attendance on the 1st day to last day. Unfortunately, it's a must for those wanting to do a BCMB major which is very restricting. As I said with Adv Techniques, if you managed to go through this subject and appreciated everything taught, give yourself a pat on the back, you survived what i think is the 2nd hardest subject of Biochemistry.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Hydroxyl on December 08, 2018, 03:55:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: ISLM10002 Islam in the Modern World

Workload: 1 x 1.5 hr lecture & 1 x 1 hr tutorial per week (2.5 hours per week)

Assessment: 1 x 800 word Take Home Test (worth 20%), 1 x 1500 word Journal Exercise (worth 30%) and 1 x 2000 word Major Essay (worth 50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with lecture capture. We were told that there was no lecture capture by the lecturer, but the link was found by visiting echo360 and going through other subjects. The Lecture Capture Link was added to the LMS later.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  ISLM10002 Subject Reader - available from the Co-op for ~$43. Not really recommended, can do without it.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Muhammad Kamal

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2018

Rating:  4.9 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (82)

Comments: TL;DR - This subject is great overall - the workload is much lighter than your typical breadth subject and provides an interesting insight into how a religion, such as Islam, is coping with the challenges of modernity.

Lectures:

There were 12 lectures for the subject. These covered interesting topics, such as:

Weeks 1-3: Historical Background

Week 1: Belief and Practice in Islam
Week 2: Origins and Developments: Islam, Muslim Empires, Movements and States
Week 3: Issues in Islamic Legal Thought

Weeks 4-5: Colonialism and the Muslim Response

Week 4: Post-Caliphate Reformers
Week 5: Contemporary Thinkers

Weeks 6-12: Contemporary Issues - this is where the bulk of the subject lies, as the subject primarily deals with the religion and it's impacts in the modern world. Weeks 1-3 provide more of a background into the faith.

Week 6: Mass Media Islam
Week 7: The Status of Women and Human Rights
Week 8: The Question of Palestine
Week 9: Jihad and Militancy in the Muslim World
Week 10: The Struggle for Democracy
Week 11: Muslims in the West: The Case of Australia
Week 12: Islam and the West: Where to from here?

I found each lecture pretty interesting. My favourite for the subject was Week 7, which was about women's rights. I also chose this topic for my major Essay - as there were many avenues for discussion. It was also a topic that I found pretty easy to sustain a 2000+ word argument for.

I found the lectures quite stimulating. It was more so conducted as a class, where we could stop and interrupt to add our own options. Dr Kamal was always happy to hear the points of views of the students and even called on us to question it. It is not that important to take that many notes from each lecture, however I would strongly advise taking detailed notes for the first 6 weeks as this comes up in the take home test. From memory, the take home test was due in Week 8, so two weeks to answer 5 questions with a paragraph each is totally reasonable. I found the marking to be quite harsh for this, with the overwhelming majority of students scoring a H2A for this assessment. I only barely managed a 16/20 (H1), but this only came after a review of my original work (15.5/20 - H2A). However, I think it's important not to stress if you do not receive that many marks for this, as it is only worst 20% of the subject.

From Weeks 6-12, more of the material covered was for our own knowledge rather than the assessments. Some of the lectures ended early but there were many points of discussion regarding the different topics. You could chose to write anything that is mentioned in the lectures for your major essay, and I would recommend doing a topic that is based on the lectures. Why I stress this is because it is much easier to find resources that answer the topics and the points they need directly. I found all the answers to my major essay in the Subject Reader and was glad that I bought it as it helped push me over to the H1 mark.

I would just like to stress that this subject takes a very academic focus, and is not a theology class, so to speak. Some information should be taken with a grain of salt, as it does not represent the ideology of some Muslims. In fact, a small amount of information is slightly incorrect and I would always recommend going back and fact checking some of the "facts" that Dr. Kamal states. He emphasises that it is just his opinion, and most should be regarded as such until checked with primary religious texts/sources.

Tutorials

The tutorial program links some of the discussions of the lectures with other theory and practice. I found the tutorials helpful in providing an alternate point of view, as you can learn a lot from other students and what they have to say (and consequently, use that in your essay OR assignments). It also provides a great opportunity to engage with your tutor and ask them questions about how they want the assignments to be written (as they are marking it). However, I found that there was only one tutor for the subject (Dr. Sirin Yasar). She was helpful in many aspects, but I found that sometimes the standard was quite high for our work and, as previously mentioned, it seemed like the entire tutorial class got H2A's for their assignments across the ball. However, I didn't find all the tutorials helpful. You need to go to at least 80% of them, so try and make use of them while you can. The best thing that came out of our tutorials was the friend groups that we formed ahah.

Assessment

As mentioned above, there are 3 assignments throughout the semester.

Take Home Test (800 words)                              20%   Due Monday, Week 8
Journal Exercise (1,500  words)                         30%   Due Monday, Week 11
Major Essay (2,000  words)                                50%   Due Monday, Week 2 of Exams

Assignment details are:

Take Home Test (20%)

Students will be assigned a series of five questions in week 6 of teaching period. Answers to be submitted in week 8. Mark: 16/20 (H1)

Journal Exercise (30%)
You must select three of the assigned weekly readings and for each reading write a 500 word reflective response.  Mere summary of the reading will not receive a good mark. You are expected to discuss issues raised in the reading. If you feel it is appropriate you may also decide to critique (appraise) the reading. If you do please stick to the quality of the arguments and evidence offered by the author rather than addressing the writing style. Your focus must be on the reading you have chosen to respond to, but in order to deliver a high quality response you are advised to read around the subject dealt with, starting with the other readings linked to the week, both assigned and additional. It is recommended that you wait till after the relevant class discussion has taken place before completing a response in order to take advantage of insights generated by the class. It is also recommended that you do not attempt to complete your responses at the last minute but space them out through the semester. You can submit 2 responses of 750 words each (which is what I did). Mark: 23/30 (H2A)

Major Essay (50%)
Select one of the essay questions and write a 2000 word answer in essay format.
An essay is an extended intellectual engagement with a particular question or topic. It must demonstrate not only an ability to write to an acceptable standard but, just as importantly, an ability to think to an acceptable standard. You are required to research the relevant issues, and to show evidence of that research in the form of appropriate reference and quotation. You are asked to query and evaluate all that you read and, through a critical engagement with it, develop your own opinions and ideas. These ideas must be argued and substantiated by rational means, and in a logical order. Your argument must have a clear structure. You will lose marks for errors in spelling or grammar.
Your essay will be assessed on the following criteria:
The quality of the research completed on your chosen topic
The quality of the insights into your topic that you display
The quality of the analytical and critical thinking you display
The quality of the arguments you present and the evidence you use to defend them
The originality of the insights and arguments that you display
The quality of your writing style (the clarity and elegance with which you present material and arguments)
Appropriate adherence to scholarly conventions
Grammar and spelling.
Mark: 42/50 (H1).

Why the subject lost 0.1 of a mark is because there is no clear rubric as to what is actually expected of you and where you could lose marks. I found little to no comments and many ticks throughout my first assignment and lost 20% of the overall mark.

What is also important to note is that Dr. Kamal gives the Major Essay topics in Week 3 of Semester, and it is due during the examination period. It is the first assignment you receive, so you may as well start working on it!! I had to do it in between my CHEM10004 (Chemistry 2) and PSYC10004 (Mind, Brain and Behaviour 2) exam, which only gave me 5 days to complete it all! It was stressful indeed. Interestingly, you receive the final assignment first, so finishing that and giving yourself a lot of time to practice is important.

A note about scaling:
Everyone in the subject received a 1 mark bonus added to our final grades, which could push change the overall letter grade. For me, my overall mark for the assignments was 81/100 which was then bumped up to 82 for the subject.

Overall, a fantastic subject and an interesting breadth! This was my first breadth and I really enjoyed it. I would recommend that you do not slack off in the subject, especially with the assignments. It is not as easy as a H1 as one would like! But with a bit of effort and practice, you could definitely score highly :D

Hydroxyl


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AlphaZero on December 08, 2018, 09:57:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2

Workload:
Every week:
> 4 hours of lectures (1 hour each)
> 1 hour practice class

Assessment:
> 2 written assignments (10% total, equally weighted)
> Mid-semester Test (10%)
> Examination (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, but only the lecture slides. The lecturer uses the whiteboard so it's best to attend.

Past exams available:
Yes, 10 available (2009 to 2018) plus many MAST10006 Calculus 2 and MAST20026 exams (see comments for explanation).

Textbook Recommendation:
None. The lecturer provides his own text guide, which is essential. It's available at the university Co-op Book Shop.

Lecturer(s):
Prof. Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion:
2018 Semester 2

Rating:
4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
First Class Honours (H1)

Comments:
Important Notes: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 2 is the second of two subjects in the first year accelerated mathematics stream. Taking both MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1 and MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 is equivalent to taking the three subjects MAST10006 Calculus 2, MAST10007 Linear Algebra and MAST20026 Real Analysis. MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 2 covers all of MAST20026 Real Analysis, and the remaining parts, (which is pretty much all of) MAST10006 Calculus 2 (where the rest would have been covered in MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1). The accelerated mathematics stream requires a minimum raw score of 38 in VCE Specialist Mathematics, or equivalent (roughly, top 13%).

Just like MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1, I thoroughly enjoyed this subject and was by far, my favourite subject of the semester. Students should be careful though. MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 is much more difficult in comparison to MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1. This subject develops the theory behind many very important parts of mathematics in mostly chronological order. The content here is covered very quickly, and it is highly unlikely that at students will not digest everything upon first presentation. There are even comments about MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 being one of the hardest first year subjects due to its pace, and because it covers around 1.6 subjects worth of material. It will be very important that you stay on top of things and are studying regularly. This subject is very unforgiving if you fall behind even for strong mathematics students. That being said though, taking the subject is has been an amazing journey, and I strongly encourage students to take it if they are up for a rewarding challenge.

Lectures:
Barry is very interesting and delivers lectures very well. However, given the sheer amount of content that needs to be covered, sometimes, he necessarily needs to skip a few details, and so you have to teach yourself (as well as utilising consultation regularly). This is the only reason I didn't give this subject a 5 out of 5. Barry essentially uses lecture slides and walks you through the concepts. (All notes are in the text). He then does the examples on the whiteboards (which can sometimes be frustrating given the whiteboards are not recorded). You should take notes only on the examples. You can annotate your text if you like, but not much more is required. Your focus should be on listening and understanding what Barry is saying.

Practice Classes (Tutorials):
Tutorials were awesome, though since the questions are essentially from the text, if you are prepared, this class can be pointless. Nevertheless, it can be fruitful to answer questions again with a tutor watching your logic and reasoning so that they can make any necessary corrections. In this class, you complete a set list of questions in groups on the whiteboards. Selected hints / solutions are found at the back of the book, but you will find them useless if you don't understand the content in the first place. You should consult your tutor and/or utilise consultation hours should you need assistance.

Assignments:
All assignments are handwritten. The questions on the assignments are generally of high difficulty. Although it will seem like some are easy, do not be fooled. There are small nuances everywhere to catch those who are not focused. Like most mathematics at university level, assignment questions are not the same as exam questions, and so it's important that you do not start assignments the night before they are due. The questions are not necessarily straight forward and trust me, Barry will make sure you have thought about it for days before coming up with a solution.

Mid-semester Test: The mid-semester test might just be the worst score you will ever get on a mathematics test. If you are not prepared, you will not score well at all. The test contains content from the first 20 lectures (or first 5 weeks) of the semester. It's 45 minutes long, and is generally around 40 marks. (40 marks in 45 minutes as opposed to 40 marks in 60 minutes in VCE).

Examination:
Worth 80%, this is a massive assessment. You have no calculator and no notes. Only a pen is required. The exam, unlike the mid-semester test, is much more straight forward if you have done the work prior to it. The exam is always designed so that it is relatively easy to pass, but hard to score well in (just like MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1).

Overall, I think MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 is a very rewarding subject if you put in the effort. It's also a subject that is really the turning point in most students' mathematics education. After completing the first year accelerated stream, students generally come out with a deeper appreciation for higher mathematics.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: beaudityoucanbe on June 19, 2019, 12:00:26 am
Subject Code/Name: ANCW30011 Underworld and Afterlife

Workload:  One 2 hour seminar per week and weekly 1-2.5 hour "lectures" (explained below)

Assessment:  3 Forms of Assessment:
1) Document Analysis 500 words 15% due week 5
2) Research Essay 2000 words 45% Due Week 8
3) Take-Home Exam 1500 words 40% Due during the examination period (this semester was released 17th June 9am and due 18th June 11pm)

Lectopia Enabled:  No? There arent normal lectures, but weekly videos

Past exams available:  No, no exams were available but they are very simple questions and easy to write

Textbook Recommendation:  There is no text book, they release their own 'textbook' which has all the readings for the week (which is all on LMS)

Lecturer(s): Parshia

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) Document Analysis H3, Research Essay H2B, Essay TBD

Comments: Ok, so this is my very first review so bear with me... Plus I'm an accounting major so did this as a breadth
**NOT AN EASY H1 IF YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCE IN HISTORY ESSAY WRITING**

Lectures:   The lectures are recorded in multiple 20 minute sections with Partia delivering the material. The delivery was interesting and he had some very interesting points. These lectures provide the first step to understanding the material, its kinda of like giving you some background knowledge and he explores some key parts of the reading material (i watched the lectures and took notes, then read the material).

Seminars: Every week, you really have to read all the prescribed materials otherwise you will be completely and utterly lost. The class is 100% discussion and you will be lost in it all if you haven't read the materials or watched the lectures. Writing down EVERYTHING can be incredibly helpful and will help a bit (not very much for me) for the first two assessments but is an incredible asset (yea i do accounting...) for the exam. The seminars can be look at great or a waste of time sometimes
Partia will initially ask basic questions about the material to kick off our thinking then will bring out some 'complex' questions (still many are veeerrrryyyy simple) where you will discuss in a small group and then "present" back to the class. The class environment in this semester was incredible. I've never experienced this before in commerce subjects. Everyone on your table backs you up with your arguments if you struggle, even other tables will politely 'butt in' to add or dispute (then at the end kinda attacked you when you make some friends so it was great!).
This can really get you thinking and analysing the texts but the second hour will get incredibly draining because the groups present the exact same info and will quickly get repetitive (a lot of us worked the first hour then did our own work in the second).

Assessment:
1) Document Analysis: was based on one week, i think week 4? but was straight forward. I really struggled with the writing i think because i have never written anything like these before.
2) Research Essay: You're given 5 questions from the first half of the semester and write on one of them which are all based on one different week of the semester. I got a good grasp on the writing a few days before it was due so my first half was utter shit, then got really good, then i got drained from working on it for so long and it became shitty again.
3) Take Home Exam: Wow this was so easy (i am still waiting for my grade). It requires NO research and (I'm quoting from the LMS and Parshia) "it doesn't require original ideas". For week 7 onwards, i cannot stress how important it is to look ahead and choose 2, 3 even 4 weeks that you find most interesting and take FURIOUS notes throughout. I mean FURIOUS. Write absolutely every breath and every letter down. With the lectures, write it all down word for word. When you have the exam released COPY AND PASTE. I did absolutely no preparation for the exam and it was a breeze writing it because all the info i had for it was from discussion and lecture. You are expected to use primary sources and secondary sources from the LMS (everything you've already read). My favourite week was week 12 where you assess similarities in contemporary films and ancient myth (i found this incredibly interesting). I recommend reading the last week in advance, writing down the movies and watch them! It would definitely help as i haven't watched some of the movies i talked about so used knowledge from the lecture, seminar and readings.

Overall, its a really interesting subject and I've learnt a lot of really interesting information. Its honestly a pointless subject (for me, but i can 100% see its merit if you're an arts student) but i am quite glad I've done it. It quickly turned from a joke subject to one that i actually wanted to do the work for

6/7/19 UPDATE - OVERALL 70%
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: beaudityoucanbe on June 19, 2019, 12:33:40 am
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10002 Introductory Financial Accounting 

Workload:  One 2 Hour Lecture, One 1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment: 
On-line Quiz (1)   Individual   2%
On-line Quiz (2)   Individual   3%

These are quite annoying. I did poorly on the second one because it was unclear ho to fill it out (to me at least). I never liked online quizzes and would've much preferred a 10% MST or a second assignment

Practice Set Assignment   Individual   15%
I messed this up big time. I think a lot of students did. No explanation for how to use the accounting software (Xero) was provided, only like four 5-minute videos. I followed those and got it all wrong (ended up getting 7/15). Then when i frantically did it all manually, i got it all 100% correct which really hurt but i got some consolation knowing i messed up from the software not knowledge.
 
Tutorial attendance/participation   4%
Tutorial random exercises   2 x 3% =6%

Tutorials are painful (explained later)

End-of-semester exam   70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with everything recorded. Other lecturers wouldn't record the second screen and would draw on it or explain stuff but everything was recorded.

Past exams available:  Yes, 6 exams with solutions were provided!

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended: Carlon, et al (2018), Financial Accounting- Reporting, Analysis and Decision Making, 6th Edition, Wiley.
I didn't get it and don't feel very disadvantaged at all

Lecturer(s): Warren McKeown - great lecturer. Knew he had to compete with Noelsy and was great. I enjoyed listening to his lectures

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Comments:   Overall its a repeat of IFA, with a lot of information repeated and with a little more detail
 
Lectures: 5/5. Warren was great and his slides were awesome. Had perfect amount of info and can add dot points from what he says. The lectures were very robust and had so helpful. He explained everything very clearly.

Tutorials: i absolutely dreaded them. My tutor struggled to get through the entire tutorial work and was very slow in getting through it. When he asked questions, NO ONE ANSWERED. 0 discussion was had, it got to the point where i grew so sick of it and was answering pretty much every single question which sped it up. I only showed up for the 10% and to get my answers and leave.
The tutorials are released a week before and were quite helpful. I found them quite straightforward. I highly recommend doing it all and consolidating your knowledge from the answers and tiny discussion had in the class. There are a lot of questions but they are broken into 3 categories: "REQUIRED to be completed before tutorial", "SHOULD be completed" and "MAY be discussed". I just did them all
The random exercises is just one question from one week of the tutorial so it isn't very hard to complete it and get a good mark for em.  Should be a guaranteed 9% if not 10%.


Week by Week Outline of Content
Introduction, Conceptual Framework and External Reporting
Double Entry Recording
Accrual Accounting and Adjustments
Inventories
Receivables
Non-Current Assets
Liabilities
Equities
Share Issues/Changes in Equity
Statement of Cash Flows
Accounting for GST
Course review and Revision questions
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on June 21, 2019, 03:06:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM30001 Basic Econometrics

Workload: 2 × 1 Hour Lecture per week, 1 × 1 Hour Tutorial per week

Assessment:
2 × Group Assignments, 10% each
1 × Mid Semester 40 minute Multiple Choice Exam, 10%
Tutorial Participation, 10% (5% Attendance, 5% attempting pre-tute work)
2 hour End of Semester Exam, 60% (Hurdle Requirement)

NB: Lecture/tutorial content and assignments/exams are identical to the masters subject with the same name (ECOM90001), however masters students don't get tutorial participation marks and instead their exam is worth 70%. This subject and ECOM20001/Econometrics 1 are also a non-allowed subject pair. 

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, although I think in a lecture theatre with dual screens you may miss out on some of the stuff currently being projected. You'll have access to everything, but this may make the actual lecture a little less clear.

Past exams available:  2018 final exam and practice questions for the final and mid sem exam provided, all with extensive solutions. 2016 past exam also available on library website, but no solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: No mandatory requirements, but lectures reference Principles of Econometrics, 5th ed by Hill, Griffiths, and Lim. I was able to find the 4th ed online, and barely used it. A few others are also recommended in the subject guide, but it's all optional and buying any textbook is definitely not necessary.

Lecturer(s): Andrew (Andy) Clarke

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (85)

Comments: Overall I found this to be an interesting and well-organised subject. Some of the content was fairly difficult to grasp, but the assessment itself was not too bad at all, and mainly required knowledge/understanding of the various properties and procedures taught, and well as interpretations. It was often stressed in lectures that we don't need to reproduce the complex proofs and algebra presented, and that it was just there so we could see where things came from. R is the language used, which is a plus as this is one of the languages used more in the "real world". Downloading R studio (it's free :) ) is very recommended, if not vital. However, you're not expected to come up with your own code or anything, you'll pretty much just need to copy certain aspects from the lecture slides and/or tutes for the assignments (which can done in groups, but I'll assume no one who's taking the time to read subject recommendations wants to be "that person" who doesn't contribute :P ).

Major topics were:
-The Basic Linear Model (Statistical properties, hypothesis tests, model specification)
-Dummy (Indicator) variables
-Heteroskedasticity
-Autocorrelation
-Time Series
-Stochastic Regressors (Issue of Cov(X,ε) ≠ 0)
-Panel Data
-Count Data
-Binary Outcomes

Lectures
Involved being talked through the slides/theory, with examples that often included R output. Extra accompanying handwritten notes were also often used and posted to the LMS. Andrew was a great lecturer and explained things well, although (as is the case with most uni subjects) extra time is needed to review, process and understand everything. There was quite a lot to sort through in the lecture slides which made reviewing it a bit harder, but it wasn't a major issue.

Tutorials
Very R focused. You're given access to the questions and R script beforehand and expected to use the script to attempt to answer the questions, which the tutor will take the class through. Don't worry if you don't get everything before the tute. I openly admitted to my tutor I wasn't on top of everything in terms of understanding the tute stuff and still got full marks for attending all the tutes and trying the questions beforehand. My tutor explained things very well, sometimes even better than in lectures. I definitely got value from attending, beyond the 10% participation marks. However, given most of it was done on R, I felt most the tutorial questions weren't that helpful for exam revision.
Note the first tute doesn't count towards your participation mark, and is pretty much an easy intro to R session, reviewing some basic statistical concepts you're expected to know like correlation and types of functions.

Assignments
Can be done in groups of 1-4 with people in your tutorial. Despite the horror stories you hear about group assignment, I honestly found doing it in a group helped with certain things I didn't understand yet, although everyone contributed fairly which isn't guaranteed to happen (But if your first group isn't good you don't have to work with them on the second assignment). Assignments were a bit more challenging than the exam IMO (although this may have been from my understanding during the semester vs during the final exam), and as mentioned above required you/your group to create your own R script, which must be added as an appendix to the assignment. That being said, marks were pretty good overall (From LMS, assignment 2 average was 30.73076/35, median was 31.00/35).

Mid Semester Exam
I expected this to be online since it was MC and so many other economics subjects do this, but it was treated as a formal mid sem in Wilson Hall under exam conditions. Focused on the 'Basic Linear Model' topics. Practice MC questions were provided, which were much harder than the actual test. 40 minutes was more than enough time to complete and check everything. I believe Andrew said the median was 10/12 and the mean was close to that too.

Final Exam
Focuses on the major topics listed above from Dummy Variables onwards. Apart from undertaking F- and t- hypothesis tests, the content from the mid semester exam is not directly examinable. As was the case with the mid sem, the practice questions provided were much more difficult and theoretical than the actual exam. The 2018 exam was a fair representation of what to expect. However, as stated on the LMS, exams solutions are intentionally far more extensive than what is needed for a "perfect answer".
No real surprises on my exam. The focus is on understanding/explaining properties of the models/variables, the implications of violating the standard MR assumptions, basic calculations/interpretations and tests. R output is provided to answer questions, but everything you need from it is very straightforward (especially since you've seen it all semester). There is also a formula sheet (for the mid sem too), meaning you don't have to remember the exact detailed of formulae/models, although you still need to know how to use them.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on June 23, 2019, 01:53:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10003 Physics 1

Workload:
3 × 1 Hour Lecture per week
1 × 1 Hour Problem Solving Class (Tutorial) per week
8 × 2.5 Hour Labs throughout the semester

Assessment:
10 × Assessable Online Homework Tasks, 15%
8 × Labs incl Pre-lab work, 25% (80% Attendance and 50% Overall Result Hurdle Requirement)
3 Hour End of Semester Exam, 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, past 11 years, all with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed text is Fundamentals of Physics, 11th ed by Halliday & Resnick. Can be easily found online. I used it a little bit at the start of semester and found it helpful, but got too busy to keep up at the end and feel (pre-mark release) I survived without it.
A lab/logbook is necessary to purchase ($8 from a website linked on LMS before the semester started). The handbook is also available to purchase (Also $8), but the entire content of the handbook can be found on the LMS so purchasing a hard copy is not vital.

Lecturers: Dr Philip Urquijo (Week 1-4), Prof Harry Quiney (Week 5-6), Prof Geoff Taylor (Week 7-12)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: I really enjoyed this subject, though there are definitely many who don't. I did VCE Physics in 2016 so my knowledge was probably a little rusty compared to most of my peers. During the semester there were times I felt it'd be easier if my knowledge was fresh, but I think by the end I had caught up through the subject's coursework and it wouldn't have really made a difference. The content extends upon some of the topics taught in VCE, and also introduces some new stuff, particularly rotational motion, friction, special relativity (unless that was your chosen area of study in VCE) and optics.

Major topics were (more info in handbook):
-Mechanics
-Waves and sound
-Optics
-Gravitation
-Special relativity

Lectures
Such parts were definitely more useful than others... I'd recommended current students to just do what works for them in terms of watching/attending lectures. There were also demonstrations in lectures which could be helpful in aiding/applying your understanding (but not vital), which can't really be visualised by using the lecture capture. I felt the main takeaway would be the formulae, examples and basic definitions and concepts. Quite a lot of content in total, so falling too behind  on the content in the slides isn't advisable.

Problem Solving Classes/Tutorials
Basically the same deal as a maths practical/tute. You get into groups and work together on the whiteboards on the handbook questions, while the tutor walks around and helps out. Trying the questions beforehand is recommended, and you'll probably get more out of the class if you do. Basic answers can be found in the handbook, then more in depth solutions are put on the LMS at the end of the week. That being said, I still gained from attending (both when I was up to date and doing the work beforehand, and when I was behind), but I don't think skipping a few hurt me too badly.

Labs
The total mark allocation is slightly complicated, but basically each of the labs is 3.125 marks (25/8). Of this, 20% (I.e. 0.625 marks) is from the pre-lab work. From this, half (0.3125 marks) is given for submitted the pre-lab questions on time (At least 10 min before the lab), and the other 0.3125 marks is from your actual answers. The pre-labs were 2-4 very basic questions, usually multiple choice, on the content of the prac and/or the basic physics theory behind it.

In the actual labs you'd work in groups of 2-3 to complete the experiment, collect results/data and write a report. Definitely read the pages in the handbook on the relevant lab before, but don't stress if you don't understand everything as your demonstrator will talk you through it at the start and show the group how everything works. The handbook also contains an example prac which you can base your report structure on, as well as what to do and key points to note down as you do each particular experiment.

As someone who struggled with the practical report writing side of science in high-school, it got easier as the semester progressed, even though I often felt like I was missing stuff and/or not doing it right. Also, half the marks were basically participation marks (For following safety procedures, working well as a team ect.), so if you turn up and do your best/engaged with it, you'll probably get a decent mark regardless. I thought I completely failed the first lab (I struggled with what to write, barely talked about the physics concepts, and my group got 30 m/s^2 something for Earth's gravity!  :o) and ended up with 70% for the actual lab work (I.e. Not including the pre-lab stuff), which only improved from there. Prac content didn't always relate to what was currently being taught it lectures, but everything you needed to know is provided in the lab book and is fairly straightforward.

Homework Assignments
Done through WileyPLUS, with access through the LMS (no extra purchases required :))). Some easy stuff and some very difficult stuff that was beyond the exam standard. 3 attempts for each question which also helped. I found them to be a good way to help me get my head around the lecture content and keep up to date.

Exam
Follows a pretty standard structure from year to year, so having all those past exams available is very helpful (not that I had time to do most of them...). A formula sheet with most the stuff you need is provided. A major exception to this was the constant accelerations formulae from VCE + a few others - I derived and/or memorised the constant acceleration ones them and wrote them on my exam at the start which worked for me. Therefore, focus more on understanding what everything means and the actual physics definitions and explanations behind things (There are worded questions too). Fortunately not a hurdle which was a relief during the lead up to the exam, but the exams are honestly not too bad; 3 hours was also more than enough time.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on June 24, 2019, 12:42:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: MULT10018 Power (Arts Foundation)

Workload:
   • Lectures: 2 x 1 hr per week
   • Tutorials: 1 x 1 hr per week (except week 1)
   • Workshops: 1 x 2 hr per week (for 3 weeks)

Assessment:
   1. Annotated Bibliography: 500 words (15%)
   2. Research Essay: 2,000 words (45%)
   3. Take-home Exam: 1,500 words (40%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: All required readings are made available on the LMS for free, including the Arts Foundation Reading Pack.

Lecturer(s): Andrew Dawson BEST LECTURER EVER, Mediya Rangi, + 3 guest lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H3 (68)

Comments:

Power is one of the 6 Arts Foundation subjects (Power, Reason, Language, Representation, Identity, Aboriginalities). It's the most political out of the six, and is highly recommended for politics / int'l relations / sociology / anthropology (the main lecturer, Andrew Dawson, is from the anthropology department). The general consensus is that students who choose Power are either (i) Aiming for Law; or (ii) Hoping to lead a Marxist revolution against the state in a few years' time.

Power introduces students to the philosophical and sociological aspects of political thought, specifically Marxism. It looks at how power is exercised, accepted, and challenged. Key thinkers include Karl Marx DUH, Max Weber, Michel Foucault, & Erving Goffman.

All Arts Foundation subjects also integrate 3 different disciplines from the Bachelor of Arts into its content. For Power, these are Political Science, Gender Studies, and Geography.

I went into this subject expecting the worst, as AF is generally seen as a waste of time. Despite that, I loved Power, and while I disagreed with the Marxist content, I found it to be incredibly intellectually stimulating.

Lectures

If you've read my university journal, you might know about my man crush on Professor Andrew Dawson, the main lecturer. He is an absolute legend. Even if you don't do Power, his lectures are worth going to anyway. Andy was very engaging and you can sense his enthusiasm from a mile away. I gave Power a really high rating, and it's all because of him. Sit at the front row for maximum enjoyment.

Lectures for weeks 1-4, delivered by Andy, looks at Rationalism, Capitalism, & Nationalism. Weeks 5-10 are delivered by guest lecturers, looking at State and Power (Political Science); Sex and Power (Gender Studies); & Space and Power (Geography). Finally, in weeks 11-12 Andy and Mediya comes back to bring everything full circle.

Tutorials

Maybe it was just me, but I found tutes to be a waste of time. We mainly just answered questions from the subject guide. My tutor was Charity - she was very knowledgeable on the subject, and very helpful if you approached her individually, but in terms of collective discussion tasks, hers weren't the best.

Skills Workshops

For all BA students, you're required to attend 3 x 2hr workshops. Pro-tip: Put them in the first 3 weeks of the semester, as that's before assignments start coming. I had left mine to weeks 7-9, in which case they became redundant.

Skills workshops are a waste of time, sadly 100% attendance is required to pass.

Assessments

Assignment 1 is a 500 word annotated bibliography and it's said to be the easiest you'll ever get. You're given a list of prompts and is required to analyse 3 different types of sources which relate to your choice of prompt, and to comment on their relevance, currency, reliability, etc.

Assignment 2 is a 2000 word research essay. The prompts are the same ones from assignment 1, so you can start this very early on. You're required to go into detail about your topic - the more depth, the better.

The final exam is the exact opposite. Instead of depth, you're required to show the breadth of your knowledge. The exam has a very short time limit. In 2019, we got the prompt at 9am Tuesday, and had to submit it by 5pm Thursday - so we had about 1.5 days to write it.

Final thoughts

Power is definitely one of the better AF subjects. While I wouldn't have done it had they been optional, I'm glad it was what I went with. As a History & Economics major, this subject somewhat clashed with the content (particularly Economics), but I learnt quite a lot from this and engaged in a number of very thought-provoking discussions.

In short, if you're into political and philosophical debates, or are aiming for law/politics, then Power is the one to go for.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on June 24, 2019, 12:58:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: HIST10012 The World Since World War II

Workload:
   • Lectures: 2 x 1 hour per week
   • Tutorials: 1 x 1 hour per week (except week 1)

Assessment:
   1. Primary Source Analysis: 500 words (20%)
   2. Research Essay: 2,000 words (50%)
   3. Take-home Exam: 2 x 750 words (30%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: Required & recommended readings can all be found on LMS. There is no official textbook, though I recommend The Global Cold War by Odd Arne Westad

Lecturer(s): Hannah Loney

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments:

The World Since WWII covers all major int'l events from 1945 (VE/VJ) to 2001 (9/11). Background knowledge of WWII is useful, but not necessary.

Initially, it starts off as history, but progresses into politics as the events get more recent. Key topics includes decolonisation, proxy warfare, Stalinisation, nuclear warfare, neoliberalism, globalisation, human rights, counterculture, political Islam.

Lectures

It's incredibly content-heavy, and Hannah moves through at supersonic speed. To put things into perspective, the entirety of the Vietnam War and the Korean War, including background and aftermath, are covered in 50-minute lectures. You're required to teach yourself the more in-depth content through the weekly readings.

Hannah is very engaging and clear in the way she presents the content. She also talks incredibly fast so RIP to anyone taking notes by hand. A large number of sources (both primary & secondary) are cited in her lecture slides. Make note of all of them! They will be useful for the final exam.

Tutorials

My tutor was Michael, though I also went to Toby's tutes. Michael was fun and engaging, and covered many useful background info, but tute discussions lacked depth. Toby was more on the serious side but goes in-depth with discussion and offers a lot of different perspectives. Michael focuses more on the background of the events while Toby looks more at its implications. Michael was philosophical while Toby was more political. On the whole, I thought both were great, but preferred Toby's.

I really recommend going to extra tutes ran by different tutors to get a variety of views. Yes, it does mean an extra contact hour or two, but it helps a lot with...

Assessments

Assignment 1 is a 500-word primary source analysis on one of the two readings for week 1, which are the Long Telegram and the Novikov Telegram. You're required to talk about its reliability and historical context, and most importantly, form an overall contention.

Assignment 2, the 2,000-word research essay, contributes the most to your grade. You're given a choice of prompts covering every single lecture topic, from which you must choose one. Topics can be niche or broad, and there's a good variety so you're guaranteed to find one you like more than the rest.

The exam comprises of 2 essays, 750 words each, where you're required to answer the prompt while tying together all 12 weeks of content. No additional research is required, you only need to use the readings and the sources cited in Hannah's lectures.

Please remove if not allowed: In the spoiler tag I've put the 2019 exam topics to give a general idea of what to expect.
.
Spoiler
1. What was the most significant social transformation in the period from 1945 to the present, and why? What were its international implications? 
 
2. What was the most significant political transformation in the period from 1945 to the present, and why? What were its international implications?
 
3. What was the most significant economic transformation in the period from 1945 to the present, and why? What were its international implications?
 
4. What was the most significant cultural transformation in the period from 1945 to the present, and why? What were its international implications?
 
5. What was the most significant turning point in the period from 1945 to the present, and why? What were its international implications?

Final thoughts

The World Since WWII is a brilliant and highly rewarding subject which really teaches you all about how our present world became the way it is. While it is a history subject, it is also highly political and I'd also recommend it for anyone wishing to major in politics / international relations. It was hands down the best subject I did in semester 1 (though as a history/politics nerd I might be biased), and in my honest opinion I'd really just recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on June 24, 2019, 01:33:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics

Workload:
   • Lectures: 2 x 1 hr per week
   • Tutorials: 1 x 1 hr per week

Assessment:
   1. Online multiple choice test (5%)
   2. Assignment 1: 750 words (10%)
   3. Assignment 2: 1,250 words (15%)
   4. Tutorial participation (10%)
   5. Final Exam (60%) - hurdle

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Plenty in the library, many more posted on LMS during SWOTVAC, though not all are completely relevant as the course content was changed for 2019.

Textbook Recommendation: 
Principles of Microeconomics by Joshua Gans, Stephen King, Gregory Mankiw, Martin Byford. The newest edition is 7th ed, but any would do (I got by with 3rd ed.)
Case studies and Applications by Jeff Borland (not really needed)

Lecturer(s): Phil McCalman, Tom Wilkening

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (79) so close yet so far

Comments:

Intro Microeconomics is compulsory for all economics majors, as well as all 1st-year commerce students in general. It also seems to be one of the most popular choice for breadth, though these poor unfortunate souls usually begin wishing they did beer tasting instead by week 3.

The subject covers four main topics, which are:
   1. Competitive markets
   2. Welfare + government intervention
   3. Theory of the firm
   4. Game theory

Some of the content repeats VCE Economics, however as someone who didn't do 3/4, I found it relatively easy to catch up. The content is quite intuitive and isn't overly difficult, though the same cannot be said about the maths.

Lectures

Micro has two lecturers: Tom, who in the first lecture, prepared 23 slides of legit content written in Times New Roman; and Phil, who had 13 'Welcome to Commerce' slides written in Comic Sans. Phil was more engaging, but he also had a tendency to use PhD-level jargon despite having other choices of vocab available. On the other hand, Tom kept things clear, simple, and straight-to-the-point. I personally preferred Phil, but I was one of the few who did.

Tutorials

I have a bunch of grievances regarding tutes. For every tute we had a sheet of in-tutorial work, where we were supposed to attempt the questions ourselves before the tutor goes through answers. These were horribly organised. We either got so little questions that class ended half an hour early, OR we got so many tasks that the tutor literally whizzed through the answers at the speed of light without explaining what was really going on as there wasn't enough time. Also, answers for tute worksheets were never made available to students, not even before the exam.

In 2019, the commerce department introduced 'Tophat', an online platform used to mark tutorial attendance and to set pre-tutorial work. The app costs money, but has free access zones in the Baillieu Library, FBE Building, and the Spot. Don't buy it as it's a waste of money.

My tutor was Farzana. Despite being somewhat hard to understand due to her accent, I thought she was a great tutor.

Assessments

The first assessment is an online MCQ test. There were 8 questions and weighed 5% of the final grade. While it's not worth much, it's a good revision of the first weeks and it's a good opportunity to fill any gaps before moving on later weeks.

Assignment 1 is worth 10% and covers equilibrium, elasticity, taxes and welfare. The most important thing is to keep in mind the word limit when writing, because it's only 750 words but there's quite a lot of explanations involved.

Assignment 2 is worth 15% and covers theory of the firm and price discrimination. Assignment 2 was much harder than the first one, and a lot of people lost marks for simply not handing it up on time because they underestimated how much work was required.

Exam

The exam is worth 60% and you must pass the final exam to pass this subject. It's 2 hours, with 15 minutes reading time, and is split into 3 sections:
   - Multiple choice (30 marks, 10 questions)
   - Short answer (30 marks, 2 questions)
   - Extended response (60 marks, 2 questions)
   
In 2019, two questions from MCQ were straight-up COPY AND PASTED from previous exams, so it's definitely worth doing as much practice exam questions as you can to prepare.

IMO 2 hours was just enough to complete the exam so you must be really good with time management in order to finish the paper. The exam was insanely hard, meanwhile students tend to collude on assignments, hence most of us weren't prepared on answering exam-style questions individually under timed conditions.

Final thoughts

Intro Microeconomics is not the most interesting subject. The content is intuitive but the maths is slightly more difficult. Don't collude too much on assignments as it'll backfire during the exam. It's probably one of the more useful breadth subjects, but the subject isn't a cruise.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on June 24, 2019, 02:31:29 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10005 Quantitative Methods 1

Workload:
   • Lectures: 2 x 1 hr per week
   • Tutorials: 1 x 1 hr per week

Assessment:
   1. 2 x Mid-semester tests (7.5% each)
   2. 2 x Assignments (7.5% each)
   3. Tutorial attendance (10%)
   4. Final exam (60%) - hurdle

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: A lot of past exams in the library, plenty more posted on LMS.

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Business Statistics by any author is adequate.

Lecturer(s): John Shannon, Wasana Karunarathne

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (94)

Comments:

There are already a number of reviews for QM1, but I thought I’d offer the perspective of a mathematically inept arts major who did it as breadth:

QM1 has a nasty reputation and it’s notorious for being one the hardest subjects you’ll ever do. It allegedly has a 30~40% fail rate, and is compulsory for BCom students.

Despite that, QM wasn’t as bad as what people make it out to be. It started off dull, but got better and better, even (dare I say) fun. A lot of concepts, particularly for excel, were also applicable to real life.

QM's difficulty is exaggerated as it's straightforward as long as you do the work. Having only done methods in VCE (which was my worst subject),it was overwhelming at first. But the learning modules gives you plenty of practice and it was easy to catch up.

Key topics in QM1 include: probability, data analysis, statistical inference, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and linear regression.

Lectures

They weren't the most interesting, and a lot of the earlier ones were also confusing. John was very monotone. Zoning out (or falling asleep) in lectures was easy - I had a friend who showed up to the lectures just to use John's voice as a lullaby.

BUT, they got better in the later weeks for hypothesis testing & confidence intervals. This might just be my own opinion though as I personally prefer statistics. In the final weeks everything came together and the content went from disjointed to complementary topics.

In the final 2 lectures, John went through a practice exam. The structure of the exam was changed recently and is very different from past exams, so the last lectures are definitely worth going to.

Tutorials

It's essential to do the pre-tute work on LMS, or you'll be incredibly lost. (Also, you should be doing them anyway as they contribute to your final mark). I found the tutes really helpful in consolidating concepts and topics. Go into tutes with questions on your mind so you can follow along and fill the gaps in your knowledge.

I had Adam as my tutor. He seemed half-asleep most of the time BUT when it came to explaining concepts he was amazing, very clear and made things very straightforward. Also, he's a pretty chill dude.

Assessments

There are 2 assignments, each weighing 7.5%. Both are group work but you can do them individually too. I did assignment 1 in a group, but assignment 2 by myself.

The reason: everyone did their fair share of work for assignment 1, and so I didn't bother learning the parts that weren't assigned to me. This backfired later on as I couldn't keep up, so I went solo for assignment 2. While the workload was insane (it was designed for 4 people), it pushed me to really understand all the concepts. I got a lower mark from doing it by myself, but it also helped me have a stronger grasp of the content overall.

I'd recommend doing both assignments individually if you can. If you must work in a group, attempt all questions by yourself anyway.

The two midsems both weigh 7.5%. Midsem 1 focuses on data analysis and probability, while midsem 2 looks at hypothesis testing. The best way to study for them is to work through all learning module exercises on LMS.

Final exam

The structure of the final exam changed this year. Instead of MCQs, you get three extended response questions (split into smaller parts). Q1 (32 marks) looks at probability and data analysis; Q2 (40 marks) mimics Midsem 2 and includes multiple hypothesis testing questions; finally, Q3 (30 marks) looks at regression, with a few confidence intervals thrown in there.

Final thoughts:

In a nutshell, QM is far better than what most people make it out to be. It was an intimidating subject at first but as long as you stay on top of your work, it's not too scary. I even found this subject enjoyable in later weeks, even though maths is far from my strength. Overall, I liked QM1 — it's not an easy subject, but I think it's worth the workload.

Finally, I thought I'd end this review with the lecturer John's favourite catchphrase:
"How do you avoid making mistakes? By never making a decision."
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Bunjil on June 27, 2019, 11:13:22 am
Subject Code/Name: ANAT30007: Human Locomotor Systems

Workload:  3x 1 hr lectures a week and 11x 3hr pracs (no pracs in first week)

Assessment:  2x MSTs (10% each) Theory exam (40%) Practical Exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Although it's useful to attend and Varsha generally brings in bones/models for her lectures and discusses them and these aren't on the lecture capture

Past exams available: No, Varsha uploads a few sample questions before each MST and before the prac exam

Textbook Recommendation:  Drake Et Al (2009) 'Grey's Anatomy for students' and Moore et al ' Clinically oriented anatomy'

Grey's is given for free on the LMS but didn't really use it or any other resources, lecture notes and Anatomedia are sufficient

Lecturer(s):

- A/Prof Stuart Mazzone - Neuroanatomy (3 lectures)
- Dr. Varsha Pilbrow -  Bones and muscles of arm, forearm, hand, hip/thigh, leg and foot. Shoulder Complex. Elbow complex, wrist and hand joints, hip and thigh joints, knee complex, foot and ankle joints. Evolutionary anatomy (16 lectures)
- A/Prof Quentin Fogg - Lumbar Spine and back,, cervical spine and neck, nerves/vessels of upper limb, nerves/vessels of lower limb, clinical anatomy of the back (7 lectures)

Clinical Lecturers
- A/Prof Martin Richardson - Surgical Repair of the Upper/Lower limb (2 lectures)
- Dr David Ackland - Bioengineering the musculoskeletal system (1 lecture)
- Dr Alex Rhodes: Imaging the Musculoskeletal system: Upper/Lower limb, back (3 lectures)
- Dr John Bui - Imaging the musculoskeletal system 1: principles (1 lecture)

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating:  4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) TBD

Comments:

Thought I'd give a more updated review of this subject as a few things have changed since the last review not that long ago. Human locomotor systems is basically just a continuation of some of the 2nd year prequisite subject, but you go into a lot more detail. Before I say anything else my biggest warning about this subject is it can get full on. if you don't have a good memory DON'T do this subject as it's basically just rote memorising a lot of structures, their origin insertion and function, with a little bit of clinical signifiance. If this sounds boring or unappealing to you then turn away now because this subject won't be kind to you.

Basically, the lectures can be roughly broken into 5 topics - Neuroanatomy, back/neck, upper limb, lower limb and evolution. Throughout the semester you also receive clinical lecturers from actual clinicians/researches. These are themed generally on surgical approaches and radiology and clinical applications of the anatomy you learn. More on these later.

So you start the semester relatively easily with Stuart in neuroanatomy. This is basically just a continuation of the neuroanatomy covered in 2nd year but with a greater emphasis on the neural interface that enables us to locomote (aka move). The content is very interesting, and Stuart teaches it at an amazing pace and makes it pretty easy. As mentioned in previous reviews, if you're doing/ have done Principles of Neuroscience you'll be advantaged during this section as you do a whole lecture series on movement in principles. Questions for this section were fair and reasonable and nothing seemed untoward. A great start to the subject!

Next comes the back/neck with Quentin. The lecture on the back is extended from last year but the lecture on the neck is new (and imo a very confusing concept). Quentin is unfortunately the reason i deducted -0.5 for this subject as I found him a confusing and bad lecturer. Firstly instead of taking the time to review concepts before going into more difficult stuff he just says 'this should be familiar from last year' and then jumps into it. He also seems way more interested in anatomical research than teaching the content (he seriously spent 25 minutes talking about Pub Med in his back lecture...) and to cap it all off his lecture slides are just pictures with no headings/organisation and just jumps around so it's hard to follow. Quentin's one saving grace is his questions on assessment were generally fair and reasonable, just make sure you take the time to review your anatomy from 2nd year as its all assumed knowledge and he won't review it. Again in terms of content, the back lecture was fairly simple (know your structure of a vertebrae like the back of your hand, seriously) but the neck lecture was a nightmare for be as it was very confusing and poorly taught. Anatomedia and google in general are great resources to supplement your knowledge with these topics.

Following this, you move into the real meat of the subject with Varsha when she takes you through the upper and lower limbs. The limb lectures are generally broken down into bones/muscles of a region (e.g. arm/forearm) and joints (shoulder/elbow/hand/knee/hip/leg/ankle/foot). This section of the course is information rich, and probably the most overwhelming part for a lot of students. The content is very interesting and Varsha does a good job at bringing in a lot of clinical applications for the anatomy she teaches (e.g. about fractures of a bone and the implications this has on endangering nerves/vessels) - my advice would be to understand these clinical applications as a lot of them appear in MSTs! Expect to memorise ~ 100 different muscles, their origin, insertion action and nerve supply over the course of this section as well as many different ligaments, joint types and clinical applications during this section of the course. Even though this section is tough, Varsha has a way of making it seem bearable. She is a genuinely lovely human and it seems shes listened to past cohorts and has slowed down her speaking when delivering lectures. Her coordination is a real highlight of this subject, and I was surprised to hear that the coordination of this subject was critiqued in the past. Varsha was always very prompt in responding to emails, and kept us duly informed and was always receptive to us during the semester. As mentioned before, it's probably best to attend Varsha's lectures in person as she brings in bones/models and talks about them and you can get a bit lost if you're watching online as it isn't captured.

Quentin jumps in between the transition to upper and lower limb to deliver 4 lectures on nerves and vessels of the upper and lower limbs. Again, nothing changes here with respect to his previous lectures and I even think he replaced Jenny Hayes who used to teach this part... anyway the content here is not too hard and Quentin does present a nice table of the Nerves at the start of his lectures (memorise this!)

The final block of lectures are delivered by Varsha and cover evolutionary anatomy. This is either hit or miss depending on your interests, I personally found it very interesting and it was a nice way to end the semester. Varsha is clearly passionate about evolutionary skeletal biology as this is what her resarch is on. Nothing left of field here and the assessment questions were again fair.

Throughout the semester there are also external clinical lecturers delivered by clinicians and researchers. The topics of these are radiology, surgery and bioengineering the musculoskeletal system. These were interesting but it was hard to know what to take away from them (and this thought was definitely echoed by the cohort). Varsha stressed to 'know the anatomy' of the content rather than the details. There was quite a few hiccups from the radiology lectures as they were cancelled/moved around due to personal circumstances from the lecturer but Varsha was very prompt in letting us know and trying to fix it. The cliicians were very nice people and even offered for us to view them in surgery/ visit their research lab! My only piece of advice in terms of assessment would be to know the pros/cons of the imaging modalities and the radiology lectures well in general as these seemed to be the main clinical lectures emphasised on in assessment.

Now the part everybody's been waiting for - the practicals. The practicals in this subject are probably the best part of this subject and the amazing resources the university gives undergraduates the access to is a great privilege and really makes you feel like you've acquired a unique experience and knowledge. There are 11 practicals throughout the semester (none in the first week), and these can either be Workshops or dissections.

Workshops (5 of them) are generally done before dissections and are basically the exact same as 2nd year anatomy practicals. You're assigned to a group and rotate around 5 stations looking at prosections and discussing them with demonstrators. The demonstrators are clearly quite knowledgeable (and I believe they're all doctors/med students) but I found a lot of them quite hard to understand due to accents and their quiet voices. Sometimes these workshops can feel like a baptism by fire because of the vast amount of knowledge they expect, but Varsha stresses that the workshops and dissections are at a level above of the required knowledge of the subject. Demonstrators were happy to receive any questions and were generally quite helpful. Dissections (6 of them) are everybody's favourite and the reason most people do this subject. For 6 weeks you dissect the upper/lower limb muscles and joints (anterior/posterior) with each dissection broken up into a region that you get to do with a partner (e.g. muscles of the anterior forearm). These are overseen by demonstrators, who oversee 2 cadavers (So two groups). These are really brilliant and it's super helpful to see the anatomy in 3D and actually 'do' the cutting yourself to see what structures lie where. At the end of dissections, the demonstrators label structures with flags and ask you to identify them. Very helpful. You get a chill workshop on evolutionary anatomy at the end of semester where you look at skulls/ other parts of our ancestors/apes. Really cool and Varsha brings in some findings from her own research. Very interesting and a nice way to end the semester.

The two MSTs are pretty straightforward as long as you review your stuff and know it pretty well. The first MST covered Neuroanatomy, back/neck and upper limb whereas the second MST covered the lower limb.

There are two exams at the end of semester, a theoretical exam covering lecture content and a practical exam. The theoretical exam consists of 30 MCQ (10 of which were on evolutionary anatomy) and 6x long answer questions (15 marks each). Varsha let us know what topics the 6 long answer questions would be and this year they were neuroanatomy, upper limb, lower limb, back, nerves/vessels and evolutionary. Thought this exam was very reasonable and pretty fair. Hand hurt at the end though. The practical exam was a bit more difficult to prepare for. This was 100 MCQ with images of prosections/disections with various labels. Throughout the semester Varsha stressed that the practical exam would be more 'identify the functional relevance' rather than just identify but I found a lot of it was 'identify structure 1' lol. Easier than i was expecting but unsure of how I went

All in all, a really great, interesting and rewarding subject. The access the university gives you to cadavers is pretty much unparalleled and almost stands a standalone reason to do this subject. Be warned of the immense workload and memory-intensive content. Good luck! :)






Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sutanrii on June 29, 2019, 04:04:50 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1

Workload:  For each week: 4x 1-hour lecture, 1x 1-hour tutorial, 1x 1-hour lab

Assessment:  6 Assignments (3 Online, 3 Written, 15% total equally weighted), MATLAB Test (5%), 3-hour Final Exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (document camera)

Past exams available:  Yes, Final Exam 2009-2018. Short answers (excluding proofs) provided only for 2017 and 2018. As well as one practice MATLAB test.

Textbook Recommendation:  You're provided with a textbook (Elementary Linear Algebra, Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 11th edition, Wiley, 2013.) and a problem booklet + short answers on the LMS. But tbh the lecture slides and the problem booklet are sufficient to prepare you for the exam.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Alexandru Ghitza

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 1

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (95)

Comments:
This subject covers the entire Linear Algebra, and a bit of Real Analysis (Introduction to Number Sets and Techniques of Mathematical Proofing) and Calculus 2 (Two-Variable Calculus). However, this subject will serve as an alternative subject to only Linear Algebra as a prerequisite. While the subject pace is fast as the content goes from week to week, I find the pace of each lecture to be pretty standard.

Lectures
Alex released the lecture slides every week on the LMS with empty spaces left for us to fill in as Alex wrote on them during the lectures. Everything that Alex wrote on the empty spaces was recorded with the doc camera so it isn't essential to attend the lecture in person.

Considering that Alex used to teach Calculus 1, I believe he's knowledgeable in explaining arcane mathematical terms to most of us that have just finished high school, and I do feel that he delivered the lectures with great clarity. He usually explained each concept slowly to make sure everyone understands. Moreover, I also find Alex's lecture to be enjoyable as he occasionally cracked some jokes. The atmosphere of the lecture overall is light-hearted. "Time flies when you're having fun" - Alexandru Ghitza 2019

I'd recommend doing the problem booklet after each lecture to reinforce the understanding of the concepts taught in lectures, which will be useful in the preparation for the final exam, especially since the exam is worth 80%.

Tutorials / Problem Solving
We received a tutesheet from our tutor, sit in groups of 3 or 4 and solve the problems on the whiteboard. The tutor will go around the class to check on our workings and give feedback. At the end of each tute, we received the solution to the problems, which would also be up on the LMS at the end of the week.

MATLAB / Practical
After the tute, we would walk with our tutor to the computer lab, where each of us was given a lab sheet. We'd then work on the lab sheet using MATLAB while exploring ways we can use MATLAB to solve numerous LinAlg problems. One thing to note about AM1's MATLAB test rather than LinAlg's is that there will be one extra question requiring us to write an 'm-file'. This can be either beneficial (for those with prior programming background) or hellish (for those who don't). But overall, I don't find the MATLAB test to be hard if you're familiar with MATLAB's functions and commands, even if you don't have a prior programming background.

Assignments
I find this aspect of this subject to be the hardest and the most stressful. In this semester, we have 3 online and 3 written assignments. The online assignments were a breeze as long as you understand the content. The written assignments especially the first one, however, are much harder. Often the questions will require you to ponder for quite some time before you'll have the slightest idea of how to start. My tips in doing these questions are to write down everything you know that is relevant to the question and work your way from there.

Final Exam
This will probably be the most daunting aspect of this subject for the cohort due to its weighting being 80%.

I think different people have different methods of studying for a maths exam, but I find grinding the past papers to be the most useful and efficient. I find the exam itself to be straightforward as most of the questions have a similar style as past exam papers and the problem booklet (which justifies my reasons for doing past papers and the problem booklet).

Conclusion
As part of the accelerated stream, this subject covers 4 lectures per week (instead of the typical Maths subject being 3). So in total, there will be 48 lectures throughout the semester. If you're considering whether to take this subject or LinAlg, I think it depends on how much you like Maths and how willing are you to dedicate one extra hour of lecture per week for this subject. Difficulty wise, this subject isn't much harder than LinAlg. We did cover the same topics and the exam questions I believe were similar. The difference in the difficulty would only come in the assignments and the MATLAB test.

The additional lecture per week and the additional contents from RA and Calc2, however, will require you to put more time into studying for this subject. But I don't find them to be particularly difficult compared to the LinAlg contents.

With that being said, I'd recommend this subject for those who enjoy maths and are up for a challenge. While this subject has a higher workload and requires additional effort, the satisfaction of completing this subject is rewarding. (If you're planning to take Accelerated Mathematics 2, I would highly, highly encourage you to take this subject).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on July 02, 2019, 08:47:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30001 International Trade Policy

Workload:  2 × 1 hour lecture per week, 1 × 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
2 × 50 minute within semester tests (At the approx 1/3 and 2/3 mark of the semester), 15% each
1 × 1000 word essay, 20%
2 hour end of semester exam, 50% (Hurdle)

Lecture Capture Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but did not capture extra writing on the white/blackboards

Past exams available: A sample exam with the same format as the final was provided with solutions. I was also able to get the 2017 and 2015 exams from the library website without solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:  Formal recommendation is International Trade, 2nd Edition by Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor. Not at all compulsory and only recommended if you're really struggling with the maths/derivations in the lecture slides.

Lecturer: Reshad Ahsan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (71)

Comments: Even though I'm writing this after finding out I somewhat bombed the exam (Got a H1 grade in both tests and the essay), I found taking this subject to be a really positive experience and have no regrets ,although I've already got the WAM needed for entry into the masters I want to do so long as I pass everything, so I'm probably currently a lot less stressed about marks than others... - Really well organised and interesting subject. Also, keep in mind that despite this being a "policy" subject, most the content was maths based, with not as much discussion on real world events as you might expect. That being said, you still get a great opportunity to apply the theory to the real world in the essay.

The first part (a bit over half) of the subject was pretty much all about the 3 major models covered, Ricardian, Specific Factors and Heckscher-Ohlin, with a few other concepts like terms of trades introduced. The second half of the subject involved smaller concepts/models covered at a quicker pace, such as Offshoring, the Increasing Returns to Scale model, Economic Geography, Import Tariffs, Politics and Trade and the Environment. Your knowledge of the prerequisite subject Inter Micro/ECON20002 is also very important so be sure to revise the major concepts like utility, comparative advantage, MRS, MRTS, PPF ect. if it's been a while.

Ultimately, if you enjoyed Inter Micro, was comfortable with the maths in it, and also have some interest in trade (even if it's just for a specific issue), I would highly recommend this subject.

Lectures
Pretty standard experience. Lecture slides contained the theory, explanations and examples/discussions. Reshad explained things well, and generally wrote a few things on the boards to help illustrate the content better. This was not captured, so in person attendance was required for the full experience, however you could get by without it.

Tutorials
While there were no participation marks and full solutions were released, I definitely got benefit from attending and found my tutor explained things really well. You get the tute questions beforehand, and will probably get the most out of the session trying them beforehand, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. The tute questions were not too difficult once you were on top of the content.

Tests
The assessable content for each test would be narrowed down to a set number of lectures/tutorials about a week before (basically just a range based on where we were at in the subject), and a practice test with solutions was also provided for the second test. This assessment was honestly very helpful for me personally, because when I was falling behind at the end of the semester the second test pretty much forced me to finally understand the Specific Factors and Heckscher-Ohlin model. Overall I found the tests to be very fair (Pretty much 70% or so on the basics, then the rest on harder extension type questions). Full questions/solutions were provided after each test was marked, as well as an extensive feedback report was outlining the mark distribution and common mistakes. Marks were also scaled if overall results were below the usual average (Everyone got +2/30 for the first test). The distributions for both were somewhat unusual, and had a peaks of around 25-30% of people getting H1s and another 25-30% of people getting Ps.

Essay
As mentioned above, this is the main opportunity to apply the content in this subject to the "real world". Although I'm not super political and mainly did this subject because I got the impression it'd be "mathsy", you can pick pretty much any trade topic of interest, so I was able to find something I was interested in and able to engage with. You're also able to complete this essay individually or in pairs.

You're asked to email your/your group's topic and what you intent to discuss to Reshad by the start of 6 week, and after that date he will begin to email replies assessing the suitability of the topic and making suggestions. I found his reply really helpful, and appreciate that he obviously put thought/research into his response. You're also provided with a rough template, example and detailed guide including a criteria, so there's plenty of great resources even if you're not entirely sure how to approach it. Research and referencing are required too, but most ITP students would have most likely already done OB, so the referencing wasn't too much of a learning curve.

Exam
Definitely a lot tougher than the overall standard of the tests, especially the extension type questions. There were still enough of the basics so that you'd comfortably pass the hurdle if could do the tutes (plus a 50% weighted exam is relatively low), but expect a fair amount of new/challenge questions to pop up. There were also some worded questions (mainly based on the models), as well as references to theorems from lectures you needed to know.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on July 03, 2019, 10:32:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30005 Money and Banking

Workload: 2 × 1 hour lecture per week, 1 × 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
Tutorial Participation, 10% (5% attendance, 5% actual participation)
2 × Assignments, 10% each
End of semester exam, 70% (Hurdle)

Lecture Capture Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 4 recent ones with full solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  A few listed in the handbook, not needed at all unless you’re really keen on monetary policy I guess. Extra reading notes by Mei are also placed one the LMS if you feel you need more of an explanation.

Lecturer: Mei Dong

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (81)

Comments: While I honestly didn’t enjoy this subject that much for most of the semester, objectively it was well run, and would be a great choice for someone with an interest in monetary policy. Most of the actual models were highly stylised and hard to relate to the real world, but there was some discussion and questions on real events, systems, and empirical evidence. The first half of the subject focused on money, then capital, lending and banks were introduced in the second half. A lot of the models stemmed from the Overlapping Generations (OLG) Model, which helped the learning process. There was also a standalone lecture on Cryptocurrency, as well as a special lecture by Dr. Gianni La Cava from the RBA which I felt was a great addition.

Although this is a macro subject, knowledge of micro is important too (particularly utility and the substitution effect), hence both Inter Macro and Micro are prerequisites for this subject.

Lectures:
Most of us already knew Mei from Inter Macro, who is a great lecturer who explains things well. Slides were helpful in the learning process too.

Tutorials:
Tutorial questions were (usually) released a few days before the lecture, and you were encouraged to try the questions beforehand. Tutorial sheets (as well as assignments and exams) followed a very set structure of 5 True/False/Uncertain questions (explanations were more important though, and some answers could be both uncertain and true or false depending on the justification), then 2-4 longer calculation and/or worded questions. Most of them weren’t too bad once you knew the content. My tutor was really good too.

Assignments:
The first was individual, but for the second you could work in groups of 1-3 people within your tutorial. However, both assignments were pretty similar in terms of difficulty and quantity, although it helps having more people to check/confirm. Despite the 2000 word total listed in the handbook, there were no word limits imposed, and you just had to answer the T/F/U and extended questions. Assignments also required a tiny bit of research. Were a bit harder than the tutorial stuff overall. The feedback provided was helpful, explaining why I’d lost marks/how to gain full marks, and even extras for some questions I did get full marks for.

Exam
At least from what I saw/heard, a lot of us found this year’s exam quite tough, and I honestly think they scaled it based on my final score. The exam requires you to be familiar with and able to use the models presented (Standard OLG, Lucas, Random Reallocation ect.) and systems (E.g. The Central Bank), as well as knowing particular key results for the T/F/U questions. There was also a question on Cryptocurrencies and the special lecture. A thorough review of lectures, tutorials should be enough to get you a decent score. The past exams helped consolidate my knowledge and refocus my study too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dankfrank420 on July 04, 2019, 12:17:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: CVEN90049: Structural Theory and Design 2
https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/2019/subjects/cven90049 

Workload:  1 2hr lecture, 1 1hr lecture and a 1hr tute per week

Assessment: 
3 smaller assignments totalling 20%
Design assignment worth 10%
Exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, going back all the way to 2012 – with full solutions!!!

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook, but you’ll need to print out AS3600, AS4100 and the OneSteel sheet.

Lecturer(s): Elisa Lumantarna and Tai Thai

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

The subject is split up into three sections – reinforced concrete (slabs, beams, columns and pre-stressing), steel structures (beams, columns and connections) and structural analysis (direct stiffness method, moment distribution method and influence line diagrams).

Having come from STAD 1, you should be familiar with some of the preliminary concepts of the reinforced concrete and steel sections. STAD 2 steps it up a notch and teaches you how to go about solving questions using the standards (which brings it in line with industry practise). The lectures for these sections were uninspiring - not a slight on the lecturer as Elisa was pretty engaging, more in the sense that the content itself was pretty dry. They basically entailed Elisa going through the physical principles that underpin various phenomena, then pointing you to the part of the standards that you’ll have to employ to answer questions. Not much “understanding” is actually required here, it’s more of a case of knowing how to work through the mechanical process.

The analysis part of the course (taken by Tai Thai) was much more difficult in my opinion. It required the memorisation of some pretty esoteric stuff and the processes to solve for bending moments and shear were quite involved. The only real way to learn is to smash out tonnes of practise questions. Thankfully, the lectures and tutorials are stuffed full of worked examples so you should be able to figure it out eventually.

A huge positive for this subject is how well coordinated it is. Tutorial questions align well with the content taught in lectures, the assignments assist in learning, and the teaching staff are more than willing to help you learn. Abdallah (who you’ll remember from STAD 1) seemingly monitors the discussion boards 24/7 and is very helpful with answering questions relating to content or assignments. I’ve had some shockingly taught classes over my time so it’s nice to have ample resources and support there when you need it.

Tutorials:

Tutorials were pretty standard. A tutor will solve a question infront of the class while most of the students struggle to keep up. Tutors rarely to finish on time (particularly the final portion of the course), and only covered certain portions of the assigned tutorial sheets, leaving you to figure out how to do the rest with the aid of the solutions. I reckon having two hour tutorials to go over the tutorial sheet comprehensively would be much better, considering the amount of students I talked to who struggled to absorb the content at times.

Assignments:

Probably the only reason I have to give this subject a 4/5 is the assignments.

The three smaller assignments (you work in a pair) were kind of annoying, there’s a lot of work to get through for just 20% of your grade (particularly the direct stiffness one which was needlessly difficult imo). The instructions weren't that clear and there was no marking rubric, so we were unsure as to what to include. For some reason, they also seemed to mark the "discussion" questions very harshly.

The design assignment was veeeeeeeery long. You work in groups of 6, but I had some pretty useless group mates so it was up to me and another person to smash out most of the 50 page submission. Moral of the story - choose carefully who you work with. It’s only worth 10% too, which I felt was a bit unfair considering the amount of work you’re required to put in. However, like STAD 1, they’re pretty lenient with the marking though so you should do alright.

Exam:

One thing I’m grateful for is the fact that the STAD exams are relatively standard in terms of difficulty. This isn’t calculus 2 where they’ll try and trick you up, for STAD 2 you pretty much know what every single question is going to be asking you before you open the booklet.

My one complaint with the exam this semester was its length. I normally finish most exams with heaps of time to spare, but this one I was writing the whole time and knowingly had to write down wrong answers just so I could move on. They cover absolutely mountains of content in the semester (probably most I've ever done in a single unit) and they include pretty much every aspect of it in the exam. However, they’re very lenient markers in this subject as they’re more interested in your method instead of getting the “right” answer.

Overall:

A tough (and sometimes arduous) but well taught and well supported subject. You’ll be working pretty hard all semester, but the staff are there to help. Assignments are a pain in the ass but the exam is very fair.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on July 04, 2019, 09:47:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW20001 Corporate Law 

Workload: x1 2 hour lecture, x1 1hour tutorial

Assessment: x2 online 30 minute multiple choice quizzes (5% each), x1 written assignment (15%), 2 hour written exam (75%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes

Textbook Recommendation: Hanrahan, Ramsay, and Stapledon, Commercial Applications of Company Law

Lecturer(s): Helen Anderson

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Unfortunately, the low rating has little to do with the actual course content. As an Arts student, who knows little about shares, capital maintenance, the difference between companies, and the roles of directors, this subject taught me all I needed to know within the scope of 12 weeks. The tute exercises, in conjunction with the assignment and the final exam, were practical problems that could sensibly be extended to a 'real life' scenario. I appreciated this aspect of the subject.

One of the biggest issues with this subject is the calibre of tutors. I honestly had to attend three different tute classes within the first 1.5 weeks to find a tutor that would help answer the tute questions properly. Knowing how to interpret and apply the law to these tutorial questions is absolutely vital to succeeding in the assignment and the final exam. So, it is important to find a tutor, who is more interested in solving the problems at hand rather than listening to the sound of their own voice.

My second issue with this subject was the marking. For the written assignment, I spent a fair bit of time fleshing out the issues and writing a proper legal response. However, when I received my mark it was a P. If it hadn't been for the encouragement of those around me to appeal this mark, I probably would have conceded to my essay as being an 'average' attempt. But I eventually contested the score to find that an error had indeed occurred. This took my mark to an H1. So, essentially, don't be afraid to question a mark if it seems off.

Compared to PBL and Free Speech and Media Law, this subject is treated very similar to an actual law subject. Therefore, the amount of content is quite a shock. However, if you dedicate a few hours every week to sorting out the law and issues, you should be able to build up a firm foundation. This isn't a subject that you can cram for with a written exam worth 75%. A proper understanding of the Corporations Act is needed to pick up on the issues embedded in the factual scenarios.

Ultimately, it's a real shame that the internal workings of this subject were poor. Put that aside, and the content was presented clearly and the LMS page offered various resources (ie. past exams, sample assignment and a subject guide) that were quite helpful.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: walnut on July 05, 2019, 12:27:53 am
Subject Code/Name: KORE10001 , Korean 1

Workload: x2 2 hour lecture

Assessment:
Written work in Korean, 600 words (25%),
Two oral assessments, total 800 words (20%),
A cultural discovery project, 800 words (15%),
A 2-hour written examination, 1800 words (40%),

Lectopia Enabled: No

Past exams available: No

Textbook Recommendation: Ewha 1-1 Korean textbook and workbook

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments:
Okay, if you're wanting to do Korean just because you're interested in Kpop or Korean dramas do NOT do this subject. This is honestly not an easy subject and you really have to spend time and effort in order to do somewhat well. Personally, I found that it was crucial to be able to write in Korean before starting Korean as from the second lesson onwards you're already forming sentences and learning heaps of vocabulary. So I'd recommend having a solid foundation of the Korean alphabet and being able to read and write Korean before starting this subject. Also as Korean is an alphabet- the writing system is much like the English spelling system so it honestly would take only a day max to do the above suggestions.

As there are 2 spoken assessments-  I'd recommend singing Korean songs whilst reading the lyrics in hanguel (not romanisation pls). Also, doing this as you start Korean will really help, because the pronunciation is so important and its very easy to slip up. Reading the lyrics in korean is also very beneficial, as especially in the exam there is ALOT to read, so if you increase your reading speed it'd help you greatly with time. I'd also recommend watching Korean tv shows just to get the hang of how the sentences are structured and how the words are pronounced. Additionally, as there's just so much vocabulary, I'd recommend making a quizlet for all the topics covered.

Classes: Honestly the content was relatively interesting, but pretty fast paced. However I found that too much time was spent on learning about the significant historical Korean figures, it would've been better to utilise that time to practice our speaking skills.

Assessments: Most were hard but doable, as long as you understand the grammar and vocabulary it's honestly not that difficult to pass at the least. However, one of the orals in particular would be incredibly difficult to score well in if there was no assistance given, as we had to write a whole paragraph on a Korean historical figure. The thing is, you have to remember that this is meant to be beginner Korean, but this assessment was asking us to talk about warships, or in my case turtle ships, weaponry, shields which are NOT covered in the textbook.

Exam: Okay, the exam was difficult. The amount of vocabulary that we were expected to know was more than what was included in the textbook and as no dictionary was permitted; let's just say that there were quite a few unknown words. Basically, what I'm saying is that you need to know about basically every word that is mentioned in class, because they can put anything into that exam so just keep that in mind. Also for the exam you really have to know your sentence structures well, because well, in this years case, we had to write a whole whopping paragraph (300 characters) on a significant Korean historical figure. Although we had to do that in one of the orals, I personally think that it was a bit unfair as we were not given any warning and was told that the most we had to write would be 2 sentences. Yeah, its safe to say that I'm pissed.

tldr: do this subject only if you have a genuine passion for Korean because the workload is substantially heavy.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: MONOPOSTOtm on July 05, 2019, 02:00:44 am
Subject Code/Name:
COMP10001 Foundations of Computing

Workload: 
Three one hour lectures and two non-mandatory tutorials of one hour each. Tutorial one is in a class setting where lecture content is revised. Tutorial two is going through course content with tutors roaming around in a computer lab.

Assessment: 
30% Projects (x3)
10% Mid-semester test
10% Grok worksheets (A tailored version of khan academy)
50% Final exam

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:
Yes, 7 exams with solutions and a few more without.

Textbook Recommendation:
None needed.

Lecturer(s):
Tim Baldwin and Nic Geard as well as some guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion:
2019 Semester 1

Rating: 
5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
93

Comments:
This is a very well taught subject.
Lecture content is useful and engaging, however, most of the actual LEARNING of python is likely to be done through the grok website.
Every week, two "worksheets" will be assigned online to be completed. Some have questions that are likely to take time to think about or wrap your head around, so try to get them done well before the deadline.
Projects are also to be completed through the grok website, in a similar vein to the worksheets. The difference being that project's questions will all relate and lead into one another to eventually form a bigger system.
This subject does ramp up in difficulty quite quickly, the first time you're introduced to a project, it'll probably seem really intimidating, but with enough time committed, they can all be done well.
As long as you've been keeping up to date on the worksheets, the mid-semester test should pose no problem.
Going through old papers for the exam and brushing up on python syntax on grok is also very useful.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on July 05, 2019, 02:17:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: LING20011 Grammar of English

Workload: x2 1 hour lectures, x1 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: x2 problem solving assignments (worth 25% each), x8 tutorial exercises (worth 10% in total), x1 written exam (worth 40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  A sample exam was provided.

Textbook Recommendation:  Student's Introduction to English Grammar, Huddleston & Pullum, 2005 Cambridge University Press

Lecturer(s): Peter Hurst

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Whether you are a Linguistics major/minor student, Arts student, or a student from a different faculty altogether, Grammar of English is an excellent subject choice. While the Secret Life of Language might help you for the first week or two of the subject, no previous linguistics experience is necessary to score well in this subject. What I did find helpful, however, was the background knowledge of a second language. If you are a native speaker of English, learning the grammar fundamentals can be such an abstract process. Therefore, if you have something concrete to compare the grammar to (like a second language), the content is made much easier to digest.

Peter is a highly knowledgeable lecturer. He explains the concepts in an understandable manner, and is willing to stop and answer any questions during lectures and tutorials. While his 'spontaneous questioning' approach to teaching the content may seem confronting at times, it really does force you to question whether you have understood the content.

The assignments, tutorial questions and exam are all intimately related. In terms of difficulty, the tutorial questions provide the fundamental basis for what are quite difficult assignment questions. While the exam felt more like the tutorial questions, the multiple choice questions were very tricky (about 8 different options, where more than 1 answer might apply). The good news is that all assessments correspond nicely with the lecture content. This means that if you diligently attend/listen to lectures, there should be no surprises.

One of the biggest keys for success in this subject is learning how to justify your answers. There are several 'tests' that are applied in this subject to identify forms/functions, which are important across all the assessments. While Peter repeatedly goes through these tests in the lectures and tutes, it is essential that you learn how to formalise your explanations. The tutorial answers provide great templates for this. So, after every tutorial check to see whether your answers are similar to those posted on the LMS.

The only thing I can really fault with this subject was perhaps a lack of clarity with what was expected in the first assignment. I lost several marks for not being detailed enough in some explanations. However, this was corrected in the second assignment, where examples were provided.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: clarke54321 on July 05, 2019, 03:56:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: GERM20007 German 5 

Workload:  x1 2 hour language seminar, x1 1 hour conversation class, x1 1 hour cultural studies class

Assessment: x1 MST (15%), x1 oral presentation (5%), x1 written vocabulary work (5%), x1 in-class test for cultural studies option (12.5%), x1 presentation for cultural studies option (12.5%), x1 written exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  NA

Past exams available:  None

Textbook Recommendation:  Anne Buscha and Szilvia Szita, B Grammatik. Leipzig, Schubert Verlag.

Lecturer(s): Daniela Mueller is the subject coordinator.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Contrary to previous reviews, German 5 was a very enjoyable subject. The reasoning behind this difference probably comes down to the changes made to the subject in 2019. There are no more lectures for this subject, but instead a conversation class and a cultural studies option. The cultural study options all seemed extremely interesting. They consisted of Deutsch lernen durch Deutsch lehren, Tragic Heroines in German, Intensive Grammar, and Road Movies.

In relation to the language seminars, a new theme packet would be released every 3-4 weeks for every new topic. Every week you cover a new text, which you read as a class and answer comprehension questions about. There is also a new grammatical concept that is introduced. Unfortunately, the grammatical concepts are fairly fundamental; leaving little scope to improve your written German. The grammar includes adjective endings, prepositions, and different clause types.

The conversation class provides a break from the abstract and less conversational notions of German culture. During these classes, you are exposed to a range of everyday, conversational contexts and accompanying discourse markers. The practical nature of this class is therefore useful if you are planning to finish at German 5 and travel to Germany to work or study in the future.

For the cultural study options, I chose the Learning by Doing option. You essentially learn the different teaching methodologies and pedagogues behind teaching German as a foreign language (all in German, of course). After developing this theoretical knowledge, we were then able to prepare and conduct an actual teaching session in front of the class. While it seems daunting, you are only teaching for 10 minutes. The student-driven focus in this class therefore made for very entertaining teaching sessions. And while this option is great if you intend to become a German teacher in the future, it is equally as valuable if you are wanting to learn more about your own preferred learning methods.

The exam for German 5 is fair. It tests all the weeks of the language seminar, focussing predominantly on the texts studied, the grammar introduced, and the relevant vocabulary.

In conjunction with the somewhat rudimentary grammar tested, my only other issue with this subject was the vagueness surrounding assessment. At times, the LMS failed to make it clear what was exactly expected of you.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: beaudityoucanbe on July 06, 2019, 10:21:05 am
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law

Workload: One 2 Hour Lecture

Assessment:
On-line Quiz (1) Multiple Choice Individual 10%
On-line Quiz (2) Multiple Choice Individual 10%


End-of-Semester Exam Multiple Choice 80%

Lectopia Enabled: yes

Past exams available: no, youre given 1 practice exam with solutions, not a past exam

Textbook Recommendation: Recommended: Lambiris and Griffin, First Principles of Business Law, 2017/10th edition (‘FPBL’)
Must buy - you are required to learn cases which are only available in the text book, there can be as many as 20 in a week or as few as 5
You might be able to get a second hand copy (just dont rely too heavily on the textbook, just use the cases)

Lecturer(s): Tanya Josev (Lecturer) and Will Phillips ("tutor")

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5/5
I hated not having tutorials, youre left in the dark not knowing what you know cause youre given no questions. Other than that a 5/5 subject

Comments:
Subject Outline:
First few weeks give you background info, the very basics of the origin of law, how law is made etc
Focus of the subject is contract law, you spend 4 weeks on this (how its made, whats in a contract, breaches, remedies)
Then you get into Tort Law - specficially negligence

Lectures:
Brilliantly taught, Tanya is extremely knowledgable and explains everything very well. Great lecturer.
She goes through content for, usually, the first hour and also links it back to cases in the textbook (which you should buy)
After the break, youll go through a "tutorial". You have a very short fake case and she will ask questions about it linked with the content you just learnt. There was a decent bit of participation (2 or 3 people wanting to answer, and theyre always different)

Tutorials:
This is what i hated about this subject. There are none. To be fair, since all assessment is multiple choice, i see how theres no need for them. I personally like to have questions to complete and get feedback and see how well i am understanding the content rather than waiting for the assessment to see if im doing well or understand nothing.
That being said, you have access to Will, the PBL Tutor. You can send him questions about anything but he wont respond to questions like "hows a contract made?" - you have to ask "specific" questions like "whats thw dofference between x and y". He will give you incredibly detailed answers and is very usefull. He also wants you to explain what you understand/think.

Assessments:
1st quiz - 100% theory. All questiona have 4 answers and can be easily answered, especially with good notes. Some questions were based on legislation. I finished with about 20 minutes remaining

2nd quiz - 20% theory, 80% casee. This was hard. Read all the cases you have learnt so far before starting. Have all the cases easily accessible (in word document). Majority of questions are longer, giving y9u a short scenario and will ask "which case will the defendant (or plaintiff) rely on?" And 4 cases are listed. If you dont know them, you will struggle with time. I had a word document of all cases summed up in 2 lines of facts, 1 of the judgement/outcome. Searching for cases made it easier and quicker. The time constraint makes this hard and sometimes wording can be tricky. Some questions were based on legislation. I JUST managed to finish in time

Exam
Mixture of questions based on legislation, theory and cases.
I found the legislation questions the harded because you really have to focus on the wording. The answers look identical but are vastly different, the first 5 were legislation so i skipped them and finished it later.
Questions were similar in style to the quizzes, some were cases, some theory etc.
You get to bring in a double sided typed or handwritten "cheat sheet". 4 size font is actually very easy to read. I managed to squeez my cases on one side and my notes on the other side. You may refer to it a decent bit (to make sure youre thinking of the correct case) but the notes side was pretty much left untouched. There were a few tricky questions to distinguish h1s, but if you can make solid notes you'll be fine.
You also are able to mark the question booklet in reading time. Threres no point in reading, just answer straight away (you couldnt shade answers in thr answer booklet though so please be careful and dont rush shading the 10 or so answers you have cause i made a mistake and realised i straight up skipped the first answer and shaded q2 as q1, q3 as q2 so on so that wasted a bit of time trying to fix it.

Mark 85% overall, not an overly difficult subject - incredibly interesting though

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: GirRaffe on July 07, 2019, 09:09:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004: Introductory Microeconomics

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

Assessment:
1) Online MCQ 5%
2) Assignment 1 10%
3) Assignment 2 15%
4) Tutorial participation 10%
5) Exam 60% (hurdle to pass)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, many. The course has changed a lot over time though (it got a lot harder in my opinion) so don't bother doing anything more than 2 years back. The course was also changed in 2019 to include/exclude some topics, so make sure you double check with the tutors/lecturers before going on a wild goose chase.

Textbook Recommendation: There were textbooks but I didn't buy it? (it was my breadth lol)

Lecturer(s): Phil McCalman, Tom Wilkening

Year & Semester of completion: 2019, Semester 1

Rating: 3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
Overall grade: 65 (H3)
Assesment marks: MCQ 7/8 (H1), Assignment 1 53/60 (H1), Assignment 2 47/60 (H2A), Tutorial 10/10 (TBC), Exam 30/60 (TBC) - yes I bombed the exam, more on that later

Comments:
This is my breadth so I put very minimal efforts into it (I do science, way too many contact hours with my core subjects to have time for it) but regardless it was still quite an enjoyable subject. I did VCE Economics and there was indeed a LOT of overlap, but the exception was that there is a LOT more maths involved. The hardest level of maths involved I'd say would be derivatives and understanding graphs.

Content
Topics covered were:
- Demand and supply (and market equilibrium)
- Elasticity (includes cross-product elasticity)
- Welfare (consumer and producer welfare)
- Government intervention (taxes, quotas and property rights)
- Externalities
- Firm theory (short and long run)
- Different types of markets (perfect, imperfect, monopoly, monopsony)
- Price discrimination
- Game theory (simultaneous and sequential games)

If some of these sound familiar to you then you're probably right - yes they're exactly the same as VCE Economics. For those of you who didn't do VCE Economics (or have forgotten) the first part of the course is basically just teaching you that in a perfect world everyone is rational and seeks to gain the most economic benefit for themselves. From this, basic economic models of demand and supply are formed and consumers/producers react accordingly to different events (e.g. if the price is higher there would be less people wanting to buy and more people wanting to sell - most follow this simple logic).

The next part of the course teaches you how to measure the collective benefit of consumers and producers, and how the government 'intervene' with the market in order to produce a more desirable outcome or boost welfare. The reason why they do this is because of externalities - or spillover costs or benefits to third parties who were not originally involved in the trade (e.g. pollution).

The second last part is firm theory (yuck). I found this part the hardest and dryest part of the course - most of it hinges on the fact that firms wants to maximise profits, but there were so many graphs involved which made it really confusing. At the end of the day, the concepts all made logical sense but there was a lot of drawing and interpreting graphs and it is really easy to get them mixed up (e.g. AVC and ATC sounds very similar, but they mean different things - average variable cost and average total cost) The only interesting bit about this part was price discrimination, which is where firm charge different prices for different consumers. Really makes you think about the world and how it operates.

The last and my favourite part of the course would have to be game theory. If you've ever heard of the prisoners' dilemma it is basically that, but explored in depth. My absolute favourite part of the course because it is without a doubt applicable to other areas in life, and it does help you think more strategically and clearly in situations of doubt.

Lecturers
I had Tom and never went to any of Phil's lectures. Tom has an engineering background so he does an absolutely brilliant and methodical job of explaining concepts, and even tells when you don't really need to learn something (because it is only a secondary explanation for the concept being taught, and that if you don't understand it you can just 'throw out' the second explanation).

Assessments
I found the assignments to be fine, though typing up mathematical calculations were a massive pain. They were both based on concepts covered in lectures. The second assignment was a lot harder than the first, but the lecturers gave a lot of helpful hints about it. There were also assignment 'consultation' sessions that you can go to if you are stuck.

There was also a practice text for the online MCQ, and also a lecture-style review session before the actual test. I found the review session particularly useful as not only was it explained why a/b/c/d/e was the right answer, but also why the other answers were wrong. For the actual test I highly recommend doing a 'cheat sheet' because I found it extremely helpful to just have one page of crucial information right in front of me.

Tutorials
Huge pain in the backside having to attend them. While they were easy marks, I felt that most of the time they were extremely slow and because NO ONE wanted to answer any questions there was no actual discussions involved. I think you could miss one or two tutorials before it affects your tutorial marks, and you could also do a 'replacement' tutorial but would have to discuss it in advance with your regular tutor.

You were also assessed on whether or not you attempt the pre-tute questions on Top-Hat (doesn't matter if you get it correct or not). Top-Hat was an online platform newly introduced this year, and I disliked it very much. You have to pay for it in order to access it at home, but there some free-access zones like Ballieu, FBE and The Spot. Don't spend any money on it and just do the pre-tute questions before class like I did. Pre-tute questions takes about 30 minutes if you actually try, and 2 minutes if you just put in random answers. Just make sure that the pre-tute questions aren't actually closed when you're doing them, because this means that it will show up as 0% attempted and you will lose tutorial marks for it (I had to email my tutor because she kept closing them the day before my tute and when I did them before my tute my attempts were not counted).

Exam
The exam was extremely hard this year and it ended being scaled up. The MCQs were reasonable, but the short and long answer sections covered topics that were only touched on in one lecture (for example, monopsony, competitive fringe). Even if you really enjoyed this subject and had a solid understanding of most of the concepts in this subject, you will just have to pray to the Gods that the exam covers what you're good at. Looking at past exams you will understand what I mean - it really is a mixed bag in regards to what they focus on, and it heavily depends on the year. But like I've said at the beginning, don't go back any further than 2 years because the scope of this subject has really changed. I think I did a 2016 exam and it was mostly about concepts and explaining concepts, as opposed to what it is now which is drawing graphs and interpreting graphs.

Final Thoughts
I have always liked economics and this subject certainly didn't ruin my love for it. However, if you are looking for a WAM booster breadth, this is NOT it. If you are doing this because it's a prerequisite, pray to all of your God(s) that your exam will not be hard (but it most likely will be hard). If you are just genuinely curious/interested in economics, I would recommend just googling some of the topics I mentioned and satisfying your curiosity that way instead of ruining your WAM.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on July 10, 2019, 11:49:28 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST30020 Probability for Inference

Workload:  Weekly lectures x 3, tutorials x 1, assignments x 1 (total of 10 assignments). Assignments consist of problems to complete and a summary sheet to write up.

Assessment:  30% Assignments and 70% Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 past exams with solutions. We were given the 2012 and 2013 while the lecturer discussed the 2017 with us together.

Textbook Recommendation:  Alan Karr - Probability. It is ok, it gives a different perspective and aid with independent learning.

Lecturer(s): Konstantin (Kostya) Borovkov

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Wow wow hold your horses man, we just met? Jk jk, marks are discussed later, please keep reading!

Comments:

This review is aimed towards those who have completed MAST20004 Probability or MAST20006 Probability for Statistics. I will try inform readers as much as possible regarding the content of the subject while attempting to keep it relatable (I reckon just bombarding you with abstract and possibly unfamiliar terms is not so helpful). After all, this is also an opinion piece as well as an objective review so my opinion and experience in the subject will be ubiquitous throughout the review, too.

You will find that the words ‘rigor’ or ‘rigorous’ will be used very often to signify how the author simply has poor vocabulary and knows no better word. More importantly though, it is to emphasise the fact that Probability for Inference is much more rigorous than Probability and really should not be taken lightly as a ‘repetition of Probability but a bit harder’. Please also note that the word ‘probability’ is used in many different ways: Probability is the subject MAST20004 Probability, probability can also be a field of mathematics or a function. It should be obvious to readers what the author means though (hopefully).

   An intuitive feel for what the subject is about
Probability for Inference (PFI) can be thought of as a more (surprise surprise) rigorous and ‘purer’ (in a mathematical sense) of MAST20004 Probability.  Though both are introductory courses to probability, one focuses more on the computation and ‘applied’ side in second year Probability while in third year PFI, topics are rigorously constructed from the ground up. Proofs are also the main focus of the subject, instead of computations. As a result, students often find PFI much more difficult due to the rigor that they are not used to seeing in a seemingly very ‘applied’ maths course. In terms of topics covered, some covered in Probability like Moment generating Functions will not be covered in PFI and conversely, PFI will introduce some new topics such as Characteristic Functions. Of course, there are still overlapping topics as they are both introductory courses, just taught from different perspective but do not be fooled in thinking that you won’t have to spend a good amount of effort for the topics you’ve already done in Probability, as the newly introduced rigor will really catch students off-guard on these seemingly elementary topics.

   Some informations on the topics covered in PFI
   Probability spaces: Here we introduce the tools required to quantify a random experiment such as different type of sample spaces, indicator functions, σ – algebra, events. A few items in this list are familiar to students of Probability though most are new. We then rigorously introduce the function P⁡(⋅) which we call a ‘probability’ and discuss its elementary + advanced properties like continuity, monotonicity, Borel – Cantelli Lemma.
   Probabilities on R: Now that we know what the function ‘probability’ is, we can talk about a specific probability, one defined on R (it’s actually defined on B(R) but I’m guessing you probably don’t care, yet, right?).
   Random Variable/Vectors: arguably, one could say that probability is the study of random variables (RV) and random vectors (RVec). This is why we introduce it here, in a rigorous fashion of course as it is what this subject revolves around. We will look at different properties of RV’s and Rvec’s (which are just the higher dimensional version of RV’s). Once done, we can introduce the concept of independence between events. Now, this is probably the right time to introduce order statistics as this subject. After all, this is Probability For Inference (meaning there will be statistics will be built on the probability foundation we’ve laid) and this is where statistics start to enter the game.
   Expectation: This is the first tool for playing around with RV’s (and Rvec’s of course).
‘Of course, it is just a repetition of expectation in second year probability and so students should probably just not worry about it and chill. Hey, maybe it’s the perfect time to catch up on other subects’ – is what I would like to say. Except that… SORRY!! DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. What you’ve been introduced to in Probability are just computational formula, not the definition of expectation. Here, we rigorouly define expectation and discuss its properties and applications.
   Conditional Expectation: Similar to expectation, one should be very careful as this is a very different animal compare to one introduced in Probability. In fact, the problems you see here in PFI regarding conditional expectation is completely different from those in Probability.
Oh and conditional expectation has a nice geometric interpretation as well, btw.
   Some applications to Statistics: Now that we’ve got all the tools we need, it is time to apply them and application to statistic is our first stop. Topics from MAST20005 Statistics like Sufficient Statistics, Neyman – Fisher Factorisation, Maximum Likelihood Estimators will be introduced (don’t worry, you do not need to have done MAST20005 Statistics before hand). Here though, we will prove them, instead of just focusing on the computational side of things. Other topics introduced include Bias Estimators, Efficient Estimators and its uniqueness, Rao – Blackwell Theorem.
   Convergence of random variables: To those of you who did not enjoy MAST20026 Real Analysis (it is a prerequisite), this topic can be a nightmare. This is probably the most ‘analysis’ part of the course. Meaning, we analyse RV’s as a function just like how we did with ‘regular’ functions in MAST20026 Real Analysis. Basically, one can have a sequence of RV’s which will converge in different ways to something as the sequence goes on forever. This is however, just a tool. The main focus are the applications of these, namely the LawS of Large Numbers, the Law of Small Numbers.
   Characteristic functions: If you enjoy computations then this topic is for you. Oh but do not forget the rigor in your computation 😊 (whatever that means). Here we are introduced to the powerful tool of Characteristic Functions (ChF) which are the older brother of Moment Generating Functions (MGF) and Probability Generating Functions (PGF). These ChF guys are guaranteed to exist (unlike MGF) and works even if the RV is not discrete (unlike PGF). The purpose of introducing these guys is to aid us in proving convergence of RV’s as the RV’s are very much married to these ChF. They go hand-in-hand together, almost.
   Further applications to Statistics: Finally, we revisit the MLE, introduce a new concept of Empirical Distribution Function (EDF) and discuss its properties. Not much to say here other than the fact that the last few slides aren't examinable.

   Lectures and lecturer
The lecturer, Kostya has written his set of slides for the entire course which he makes available at the beginning of the course. This means that we have access to the whole course lecture material from the beginning of the semester. The slides are quite informative and really, almost all of what you need to know is on there.
The lectures follow a conventional format of the lecturers going through and discussing his slides. Recordings were available, fortunately and I made extensive use of it.
Personally, I find that Kostya is a quite humorous and knowledgeable lecturer and he stands out from the other lecturers thanks to this humour that he provides in the lectures. I also quite enjoy his philosophy on studying, which I was luckily able to find out about through our conversations in his consultation. Both he and Ai Hua enjoy sharing their philosophies with students. Generally, they’re pretty cool people to be around, especially for students.

   Assignments and tutorials
There are 10 weekly assignments in addition to the weekly tutorials.  Regarding tutorials, some of the questions require experience to tackle from scratch while some are more manageable. Unlike most other maths subjects, tutors go through all the questions during tutorials from start to finish. Regarding assignments, each assignment consists of a couple of questions, which were not too lengthy. Together, the assignments account for 30% of the subject marks. Opinions on the difficulty were mixed, some students find to be rather arduous to work through while others find it ok. Depending on your style, you may wish to tackle the assignment alone or in a group. Together with the assignments, you also need to complete a summary sheet, which you have to summarise the weekly content of the lectures.
In saying this, I acknowledge that there is a popular opinion where students find the sheer volume of the assignments to be too much work. There are just too many assignments that students need to complete and some even say that one assignment in Probability (which there were only like 4 for the entire semester) did not take as long as one assignment in PFI to complete. I personally find the bolded opinion to be almost always true, though in Probability, we have to attempt problems from the booklet as well and there are no booklets in PFI so it equals out. I think it is just Kostya's way of making sure that students work on the material regularly. Now, do these 10 weekly assignments really prove to be a huge workload for students? I honestly find that this is not the case. Tutorials are provided with solutions so it is only a couple of questions per week that we have to complete. Most of the work comes from understanding the lecture material, I reckon, not the assignment question.
   Exam
The exam is quite a typical pure maths exam, with lots of proof questions and some computation questions. I hate to say this but one cannot really judge the difficulty of the exam because it really depends on the amount of resources you’ve put in during the semester. All the topics are examinable, except for the last maybe 5 – 10 slides. The first three questions follow a certain format and the questions get unpredictable onwards. It is a lengthy exam and of course, you need good speed and accuracy in order to finish it without making too many silly mistakes.
One could find the exam quite fair if one spent quite a bit of time studying the material while others may find it extremely difficult as they could not give a fair share of their time to the subject. Long story short, the harder + smarter you study, the better you do. Question is, what is studying smart?
I’ve been trying to answer this question for a very long time now, and to avoid making this review too long, the short generic answer I can personally give is that do not spam exams and learn exams for revision. Revise the lecture notes and tutorials and assignments, rather. Exams should be employed but only as a ‘sharpening tool' and not a replacement for the knife making machine – lecture notes, tutorials, assignments. In addition, please do not make the mistake of predicting exams. I’d love to go on but this is digressing. Please shoot me a pm should you like to discuss these studying techniques. I’m very interested!
   Final thoughts
All I can really say is that PFI is a very similar animal to Probability and yet, incredibly different. One could say that PFI is much more difficult but it is best left for the current students of the subject to judge it for themselves. Like most subjects, if you spend resources and have good studying strategies, you’ll find the subject ok. On the other hand, if you do not have a quite strong maths background nor studying strategies, for example, you’ll find that this is a nightmare. To do well in PFI, you’d need to put in a lot of work but this is also the case for Probability. Likewise, it is not too difficult to score above a 70 in PFI either, provided that you put in an honest effort. Of course, one might initially find PFI to be seemingly more difficult due to the rigor but like most things, one eventually will get the hang of it and things become much more manageable.
Personally, I put in quite a bit of effort into this subject and in hindsight, I found everything to be quite fair. Frankly, I knew the material (lecture slides, tutorials, assignments) quite well. However, it took me the first few weeks to get the hang of everything which made my few initial assignments suffered quite a bit. Thankfully, things eventually clicked and I worked even more diligently as the semester progresses, putting me at a 27/30. On the exam, although frankly, the questions were doable if given enough time, my lack of exam experience did not allow me to complete them all within the given constraint, giving me a final grade of 88/100.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tiffanylps09 on July 17, 2019, 05:59:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10005: Physics 1 Fundamentals 

Workload: 
3x 1 hr lectures & 1x 1 hr problem based per week,
8x 2.5 hr pracs & 10x weekly homework assignments throughout the sem

Assessment: 
Practicals 25%
Ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%)
3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.
** the lecturer does demonstrations during the lecture that you might not get to see if you watch at home

Past exams available:  Yes, 11 past year papers, however for some of the older exams we were only provided short answers w/o the explanation

Textbook Recommendation: 
Textbook : Optional /
Green Handbook : Used for Pracs & Tutes (or you could just print them yourself) /
Blue Lab Book : They make you buy it to write your reports in.

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating:  2 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: One mark away from a H1  >:(

Comments:
**This subject was compulsory for my major (Animal Health) / I have a love-hate relationship with Physics having dropped it in Year 11 thinking I'll never have to do it ever again. HAH.  :'(

Lectures: I went to the first few but then towards the end of the semester I just couldn't be bothered.
Some of the lecturers try to make it exciting with demonstrations and stuff which are funny to watch at times.

Tutorials: They were okay. I attended most of them to catch up on stuff since I didn't really go to lectures.
I had Jame as my tutor, he was cool and funny. He does a short explanation at the start of the tute then let's us just do the exercises on our own. So if you want help with a specific question, ASK cos he doesn't explain any of them unless someone asked.
**the guy also baked us cookies one time, it was nice

Assignments: Easy with the help of google and the option to practice until you get it right.

Practicals: The worst part of the whole subject.
Firstly, out of the 12 weeks in the semester, 8 weeks you'll have a Physics Prac. Compared to the 5 in Biol 10004 and 6 in Chem 10003, just that alone made a lot of people hate it so much. Including me. The Pracs are draining and most times the content of the Prac has not even been touched on in lectures. So, you go in knowing close to nothing and if your demonstrator wasn't great at explaining the concept, you and your partner(s) are on your own. This was what happened to me. My demonstrator was new and very inexperienced. My partner and I had to just refer to the handbook and try to work out how the concept worked. Having to do that AND physically do the experiment (which it tends to consist of multiple sections) AND write out a report AND draw diagrams AND print out results AND identify limitations etc. I dreaded each Prac and my scores started off pretty bad, but hey, it got better towards the end. My advice would be to really look at the experiments before going in and understand how to explain the physics behind each of them. OR you could just get a demonstrator that really helps you out with the concepts.

Exam: So back to the point I made about me not really catching up with lectures. (I ended up only reading lecture slides)
Physics had really dropped to the bottom of my priorities. I was spending all my time studying for other subjects that by the time it came to 2 days before the exam, I had my first uni burnout. Looked at the practice exam and just couldn't be bothered with them. I ended only actually completing 1 out of 11 of the past years (all by myself, no peeking at answers). The day of the exam, I had to wake up before dawn sit a 8:30am exam. At that point, I had completely given up. But, when I opened the exam paper to attempt the questions, my first thought was "Damn, this is easy". Now, I'm not saying that not studying for an exam is good but, I honestly was so surprised. I was expecting to be completely screwed over but I ended up being able to answer every question to an extent. My advice would be not to aim to complete all the past years as some of the questions are basically repeated over and over. I think determining what kind of questions that always appear will really help. Also, the physics department had revision sessions during swotvac which I did attend to at least make an effort to not fail the subject. It was basically a crash course that summed up the whole semester. That was useful.

Final Words:
I definitely did not enjoy this experience. But I guess the exam made up for it. To whoever who attempts this subject, I wish you all the best. And if you're like me and don't have a choice, don't stress, you'll meet loads of people who are the same and you guys can become friends through the mutual hate for the pracs YAY. If you need more detailed advice, feel free to message me.  ;D

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kekedede28 on July 17, 2019, 09:19:34 pm
Subject Code/Name: FINA20006: Painting Techniques

Workload: The intensive teaching period goes for 6 days, Monday to Saturday, 9:30am - 4:30pm with an 1 hour lunch break at 12:30pm. Hand-in for the folio and visual diary is 10 days afterwards.

Assessment: Folio of work completed during class and 2 x painting done during your own time (80%), and visual diary (20%).

Lectopia Enabled: N/A - no lectures! Painting all day everyday.

Past exams available: N/A - no exams either!

Textbook Recommendation: There's no prescribed textbook but there are some recommended books given in the subject guide at the beginning, which I guess would be helpful to read? Everything is taught by your teacher though and they're more than happy to answer questions so you don't need to get anything. 

Edit: Oh! There's a supply pack and material levy you have to pay for though (~$150 in total). You could probably buy the supply pack yourself (the material levy is the 'stuff for everyone' that they give you) or use supplies that you already have at home but it's artist-grade stuff in the pack and since they buy everything in bulk, you get awesome high quality stuff at an absolute ripper of a bargin!

Lecturer(s): Various professional artists take the classes. I believe most of them are seasonal or teach one term and don't teach the next so it varies greatly.

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Winter. It's run during most of the teaching periods though - Semester 1 and 2, June, Winter, February and Summer - but get in quick cause the subject is quota'ed and places fill up fast.

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments: Really loved this subject. The teaching staff were helpful and incredibly helpful (there's even this sit-down to check on your progress/ask 1-1 questions mid-way through), and you really improve at the end of it whether your were a total beginner or advanced because you're just thrown into it doing painting 8 hours a day. It's a breadth subject for all courses bar Fine Arts and they assume no painting knowledge so anyone can do it.

The subject is essentially broken down into projects and you work through them during the teaching period.
- Project 1 is the visual diary. You ideally should work on this as you're doing the paintings and it should be filled at the end. It should track your 'creative process' and how you got to your final painting, and this is how they mark it. Take heaps of pictures of everything, research different artists and paintings, and do little random experiments testing out brushwork, a certain colour scheme, blending technique etc.

- Project 2 is one tonal painting of a paper sculpture (which may be as a simple or complex as you like). You do thumbnail sketches to test out different compositions and a tonal drawing to prepare beforehand. This is done using oils on wood - they'll guide you on how to prepare a wood panel for painting.

- Project 3 is two geometric abstraction paintings done in acrylic on wood, one in class and the other at home. You're introduced to colour here so that's the main thing you should be focusing on. Don't go crazy complex with your design - this is abstract art remember and something as simple like white on white could be considered an excellent painting.

- Project 4 is two still life done in oils on wood (one in class, one at home). You basically get some objects and paint it. Choose simple objects.

- Project 5 is an appropriation of two paintings from the NGV's permanent collection. On the 4th or 5th day you'll visit the NGV as a class and the teacher will guide you through some paintings talking about technique and whatnot (you'll have to take notes during these to put in your visual diary). You could choose from them to appropriate but my recommendation would be to go back during the lunch break (it's right next door) and find the simplest paintings to use (check out the contemporary section). This painting is done in oils on canvas - you'll learn how to prepare a canvas in class.   

My main advice for this subject is to be don't slack off. You'll have homework every night during the teaching period and that's mainly stuff to add to your visual diary - do it - and the subject doesn't lie when it says intensive because you have a lot to do in a short period of time. Use the class time wisely, keep up with the work and don't waste the 10 days you have after the teaching period (esp. cause most of them are in oils which take forever to dry - bringing in like 3 wet paintings to submit is gonna be hard lol). Overall though, really fun and rewarding subject and would totally recommend it to anyone looking for a breadth to do.

P.S If anyone is super shitty with maps like me and gets lost to the teaching workshop on the first day lol, the simplest way from the tram stop on the Flinders Street/NGV side is to cross the road from the tram stop, walk left to the the big road, turn right and walk down that big road until you see another big road, turn right and keep walking until you see a big 'Gate 5' sign - turn in and then you're there! There are quicker ways but just in case you're lost and late on the first day lol. 

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Okay, one small gripe about the subject: the oil painting part was essentially a bare-bones introduction to oil painting. You're taught all the technical, unique things about oil painting like odourless mineral solvents, alkyd medium and rabbit-skin glue but then you don't even get to see let alone use them... I guess it's for OH&S reasons but it was kinda disappointing nonetheless. :(
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AlphaZero on July 28, 2019, 09:21:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20009 Vector Calculus

Workload:
- Three 1-hour lectures
- One 1-hour tutorial

Assessment:
- Four written assignments (5% each)
- 3-hour written exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, but only the main document camera.

Past exams available: Yes, lots and lots, some with answers.

Textbook Recommendation:
The lecture slides is available at the Co-op book shop. The lecture notes are online too, but I definitely recommend getting the book. It comes with a printed booklet of the problems sheets too. If you want more material to read, Vector Calculus by Marsden and Tromba (really any recent edition) is great, especially for those who prefer a higher level of mathematical rigor.

Lecturer(s):
Dr. Christine Mangelsdorf

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 96 (H1)

Comments:
MAST20009 Vector Calculus is really the first subject that combines students coming from both the first year accelerated stream and the main stream, and is a must for students who wish to pursue applied maths, pure maths, physics or mathematical physics. The subject essentially takes what you learn in first year into higher dimensions.

The subject is broken into 6 sections.

Section 1: Functions of Several Variables
This section looks at limits, continuity and differentiability of functions of several variables (rather non-rigorously), as well as the chain rule for multiple variables. It also introduces the Jacboi matrix (derivative matrix) and the Jacobian for change of variables later, and also the matrix version of the chain rule. You will also look at Taylor polynomials for functions of several variables and error estimation. Locating critical points and extrema of functions will be revisited and you'll be introduced to Lagrange multipliers which are applied to optimisation problems with one or more constraints.

Section 2: Space Curves and Vector Fields
This section revises concepts from Specialist Maths / Calculus 1: parametric paths, and its properties such as velocity, speed and acceleration, as well as arc length. Concepts such as the unit tangent, unit normal, unit binormal, curvature and torsion are also seen, along with the Frenet-Serret frame of reference of a particle travelling on a path. In vector fields, you will look at ideas such as divergence, curl and Laplacian. Studied is also an informal look into flow lines of velocity fields and other useful things used later such as scalar and vector potentials.

Section 3: Double and Triple Integrals
This section is pretty self explanatory. Here you will learn how to evaluate double and triple integrals and put them to use against some physical problems (such as finding volumes, areas, masses of objects, centre of mass of an object, moment of inertia, etc). This section also discusses 3 important coordinate systems (polar, cylindrical and spherical) before finally diving into change of variables for multiple integrals.

Section 4: Integrals over Paths and Surfaces
Here, you will learn about path integrals, line integrals and surface integrals and apply them to some simple physical problems such as finding: total charge on a cable, mass of a rope, work done by a vector field on a particle, surface area of an object, flux, etc.

Section 5: Integral Theorems
The previous 4 sections build up to this. Finally, we have the required theory to understand the whole point of the subject. Here, you will use and apply Green's Theorem, the Divergence Theorem in the Plane, Stokes' Theorem (a basic version of it) and Gauss' Divergence Theorem, which make your life so much easier. You also get to apply some theory regarding scalar potentials and conservative vector fields studied in section 2. Some direct applications of the integral theorems include Gauss' Law and the continuity equation for fluid flow (latter not examinable). Those who are studying physics might want to look into Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic fields too (these are not examinable).

Section 6: General Curvilinear Coordinates
Here, we get to generalise some theory regarding coordinate systems. This makes our lives easier when dealing with a coordinate system that you may have not studied before, such as oblate spheroidal coordinates. Some connections to concepts back in sections 1 and 3 are also drawn.


So, what do I think of this subject?

Lectures
As a student who came from the accelerated stream, I can say this subject is markedly easier than AM2. From what I've heard from some mates, the pace of the subject is much like Calculus 2 and Linear Algebra. I personally felt that the subject was a bit slow. We spent so much time in lectures on just performing calculations rather than looking at the theory in any sort of depth. It got to the point where I didn't want to attend lectures because it just got so boring. (Like, yes, I think we know how to integrate \(\sin^2(x)\) with respect to \(x\). Other than that, Christine is a great lecturer and is very easy to understand.

Assignments
There are 4 of them and they are incredibly tedious. They're not hard at all. It's just a calculations fest. The questions basically consist of more tedious exam questions. Eg: here's a region, calculate its area. It's really not hard to full score the assignments. Just pull up Wolfram Alpha or use a CAS to check your calculations. Be careful to justify everything and be wary of direction and cheeky negative signs.

Tutorials
These are the best classes. You just get a sheet of problems and you complete them in small groups on the whiteboard while the tutors watch over your working and make any necessary corrections. I had a great tutor, and since I had my tutorial classes on Friday afternoons, it was a pretty small class and we had great banter. Nothing much else to say (other than "Will, you're a legend").

Exam
Like most MAST subjects, it's 3 hours and worth 80%. There are an insane amount of past exams available. Do as many as you can. Doing well in this subject is about practice.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Shenz0r on October 17, 2019, 03:04:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: MD4: MEDS90025: Transition to Practice and MD Research Project 2

Workload: Varies.

Assessment:
MDRP2
Progress Reports (3 short reports, submitted at 6 week intervals, accompanied by supervisor reports), throughout semester (10%) Note: 10% if all 3 submitted, 0% if < 3 submitted.
Literature review, 5000 words, due mid-semester (week 11 of 22 week subject) (30%)
Journal-style monograph describing the research (suitable for peer review, with author instructions), 4000 words, due at end of semester (40%) [Hurdle requirement]
Poster presentation at Student Conference 4, 1500 word equivalent, end of semester (10%)
Supervisor evaluation, end of semester (10%)
Satisfactory standard in professional behaviour, as demonstrated by observed Professional Behaviour Assessment [Hurdle requirement]

TTP
Situational Judgement Tests, written, 2 x 80 minutes, during term [Pass/Fail]
Satisfactory performance in simulation exercises  (basic life support), during term [Pass/Fail]

Vocational Selective
Safety and Quality Improvement Project Plan, 1000 words (eg. patient safety, infection control, clinical audit), during term [Pass/Fail]
Supervisor report (using structured report form), end of term [Pass/Fail]
Case Based Discussion, 2 x 30 minutes each, during term [Pass/Fail]

Trainee Intern
Case Based Discussion, 2 x 30 minutes each, during term [Pass/Fail]
Multisource feedback (coordinated by supervising intern) using structured feedback form, x 2 (one at the end of each term) [Pass/Fail]
Log Book - satisfactory completion of clinical tasks as specified in each rotation
Applied Clinical Knowledge Test, 2 x 2 hr MCQ exam, end of term [Pass/Fail]

Year & Semester of completion: 2019

Comments:
MDRP2
Depending on the project as well as your supervisor, this can either be extremely relaxed or intensive. The main aim of the project is to give you an opportunity to conduct your own research project that you can potentially present and publish. While some students do have the opportunity to go to conferences, sometimes you simply won't be able to due to the nature of your project. Many people continue on with it as junior doctors, so don't be too discouraged if you don't get those chances yet.
Every person will have their own unique experience with this subject, but the most general advice I can give is to be familiar with your topic, regularly communicate with your supervisor (or your team), actively maintain your curiosity and ask questions, and try to be as independent as you can. Since this does take up the first six months of the year, I would encourage you to still go onto the wards and get some clinical exposure - otherwise you will be severely deskilled by the time interviews and TTP come about. Some clinical schools run several clinical skill tutorials throughout the term, but not all do.

PMCV Internship Match
This will be quite a stressful part of the year for you, so it's best to get started early. The Postgraduate Medical Council of Victoria (PMCV) is responsible for matching you with health services that you've preferenced. There is an excellent explanation into the process here.
Unlike other states, the Victorian match is merit-based. Different health services will have their own requirements and weighting, which can include:
My advice would be to get started on your cover letters early (late March-early April) and definitely do not forget your interview preparation. Most interviews are conducted in early-mid June, and the match results are out in July. Most people try to use their research supervisor as a reference, but be careful about who you pick as you cannot de-nominate them. You should pick someone who you are pretty confident will give a good reference, and they must have clinically supervised you. The more recent the reference, the better. There is also no "gaming" the match as it runs similar to the GEMSAS and VCAT matches. Go to the information sessions of all the health services, and then draw up a list of what hospitals you want to go to, but do not fill up your preferences with hospitals you're not likely to get into as you'll run the risk of being unmatched. Always put in more applications than you need to avoid being unmatched - 8-10 at minimum. I found that "Marshall & Ruedy's On Call" was an extremely helpful book in giving you a structure on how you'd approach  clinical scenarios that you're likely to encounter. It's also a great book for internship as well.

Transition to Practice
For the last half of the year, you'll finally be back on the wards. There will be a couple of weeks of lectures at the beginning where you revise everything that you've probably forgotten over the years. You'll be allocated a medical term, a surgical term, and then an elective that you can do wherever you'd like.

I would emphasise that unlike MD2/3, this is not a time when learning clinical medicine is your biggest priority. You are not just a medical student observing in the background anymore - you are the trainee intern. Try to stick around the intern as much as possible, because you are going to be doing their job next year and it's worth picking up skills that'll be helpful when you start working. Learn how to document properly, actively seek out opportunities to put in drips or catheters, practice referrals and handovers, help out with admissions and write discharge summaries - try be an active team-player. Develop good work etiquette (AKA being aware of behaviours that piss people off or make life for other people harder) and communicate often with your team. Observe how your intern manages the constant interruptions to their workload. See how they update friends and family of an unwell patient. Ask practical questions as this is probably the last chance you have before you're thrown into the deep end as a junior doctor. Be aware of what guidelines and resources you can refer to. You don't have to know everything (and you won't), but try read up on common things that'll pop up on your ward so you 1) can understand what's happening and 2) are able to somewhat come up with a plan (rather than always needing to defer questions from patients and nurses to your intern).

The team will involve you more as you're a final year medical student, so you will be allocated some jobs to do, but also remember to always liaise with the team on things you're not sure about. You are also not a slave - you're not being paid to do all of the intern's boring paperwork, so it's a fine balance to strike. The more enthusiastic and proactive you are, the more opportunities you'll be handed, and the team is usually way more accepting if you'd like to take a few days off. Do not be that guy who only shows up once in the middle of ward rounds, doesn't come in for the rest of the term apart from when they need to get something signed off, and as a result has no idea how to function properly as a junior doctor. I would usually try to let the team know what I wanted to do early in the term so that when an opportunity came, they'd let me know. Make sure that you're being supervised appropriately and counter-sign all documentation with the intern

I was usually off by lunchtime everyday. You do not have to go overboard and stay back to ridiculous hours though - as a general rule, once the other doctors tell you to leave, there's probably not much for you to do (and you're not being paid for the mundane jobs either). That being said, I think it's better to be on a busier ward.  Gen Med would be a great medical term for learning how to do bread-and-butter referrals and discharge planning of complex patients, while clearing out jobs in the middle of a 6 hour ward round. In surgical terms, you should probably stay and help out the ward intern rather than always going into theatre (especially if there will be too many people scrubbed up in theatre already). Try and attend pre-admission clinic (where patients are assessed for any perioperative issue) - it's a bonus if you can do the history, examination and fire off some investigations to chase too. That being said, if you do go to theatre, definitely practice putting in some urinary catheters, and if you are scrubbed in, ask the fellow/registrars how to close the wound.

You'll realise that many of the jobs that an intern does can get quite stale and menial after a while during the day - until you go on a cover shift. Arrive in the afternoon for a cover shift once a week, and chances are you'll probably hold the pager and you can practice prioritising, assessing patients and answering any questions from the rest of the covering nurses. You'll feel more like a doctor, and it's a nice break from all the discharge summaries you'll begin to hate doing. I'd highly recommend doing covers as much as you can.

While there is an accreditation examination at the end of the year, most people pass without needing to study quite intensively. As long as you're familiar with MD2/3 knowledge, you don't need to be constantly studying throughout this year. Teaching MD2/3 students both on the ward and in class is a great way of refreshing content you should probably know. After your day has finished, go and relax (as your interns will probably tell you!)

(As a side note, it's a great idea to be actively involved in teaching more junior medical students, because you'll have to learn how to juggle/prioritise both work and teaching responsibilities as a doctor anyway. Remember how common it is as a medical student to feel discouraged when the team forgets your presence and doesn't teach you? Or that you always feel like you're in the way? By being involved in their education, it's a good opportunity for you to practice being a mentor and role-model, as it'll be expected of you as you climb up the medical ladder)

Final comments
Finishing medical school is the first step in a very long pathway. Of course, you don't need to know the ins-and-outs of recognising and managing every Zebra condition you've been taught, but it is expected that you know how to manage basic, common conditions and that you are safe by ruling out life-threatening causes and recognising when you need to escalate for more help. This is the time to try step up from "just the medical student" to being a trained medical professional who is allowed to have a voice and opinion on what is in the patient's best interest. Next year, you will become a doctor that your patient and team has to trust, so this is an important time to try gain some more responsibility before it becomes expected of you.

That being said, this is also your last chance to really relax before you begin full-time work, so make the most of it after you've developed a good relationship with your team. And finally, congratulations on attaining your medical degree! :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: foodrawrocicy on October 24, 2019, 07:27:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: LAWS10005: Food Law and Policy

Workload: 1 x 1.5 tutorial and 1 x 1.5 lecture per week. Classes don't run the week when the reports are due and class time is used for individual consultations instead.

Assessment: Attendance and participation (10%), a stakeholder analysis on a food issue (30%), and another report, same everything except the issue's different (60%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yup.

Past exams available: No exams for this subject!

Textbook Recommendation: Weekly readings are available online. There's also extra readings provided every week if you're keen.

Lecturer(s): Professor Christine Parker and a bunch of guest lecturers.

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 7 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBD

Comments:
This subject was pretty great - the lecturers are top notch, the subject coordination was perfect, and the content and work was very interesting and simulating. Every week you cover a different topic during the lecture and then you use that knowledge and apply it to case studies during the workshop. An important thing to note about this subject, though, is that it's very different any of the other law breadths available. There's very little legislation to be seen and instead you focus on the theory and reasoning behind the legislation - which imo, was so much more challenging and fun.

In terms of assessment, you write two stakeholder report on two food issues. The issues change every year - this year was GM canola for the first report, and a choice between free-range eggs and health star rating for the second. You don't have to do any research as you're expected to only use the weekly readings (and a prescribed list for your topics) and the report is essentially you explaining the different views and proposing the best solution that balances these views.

Topics for the lectures include: food safety (using raw milk as a case study), GM foods, pesticide regulation, food waste, food labelling, governance of healthy food systems, and indigenous food and law. And topics for the workshop: food safety and negligence, GM labelling and consumer safety, bioengineering and pesticides and their effects on the food system, pesticide regulation, health and nutrition labelling, olive oil and false description/misleading conduct offences, and free-range egg labelling.
 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: beaudityoucanbe on October 30, 2019, 09:19:39 am
Subject Code/Name: BLAW30002

Workload:  1 two-hour lecture and 1 one-hour tutorial

Assessment: 30% group assignment and 70% exam (non-hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but only audio. There are very rarely any extra slides, if there are its just photos when the lecturer explains the facts of a case - not needed. I always attended lectures but I dont think it would be too hard to follow if you just listen.

Past exams available:  Yes, theres a lot held by the library, only a few are relevant but none were provided by the lecturer. However, she does go through EXTENSIVELY whats on the exam. Told us 2 questions with multiple parts and basically tells you the questions you will be asked. However, it doesn't make it much easier because you have to apply the facts to legislation - thats the tricky part off the subject.

Textbook Recommendation:  BUY BUY BUY. Theres two you need to get, the textbook and the legislation. If you want to do well, buy it. Its not a difficult subject but if you want to find extra things then you need  it (explained below).

Fundamental Tax Legislation (Thomson Reuters, current edition); AND
Sadiq et al, Principles of Taxation Law (Thomson Reuters, current edition)

Lecturer(s):  Sunita Jogarajan

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75% on assignment (yet to do exam and will update after exam)

Comments:
Lecturer: Sunita is an awesome lecturer. Slides are great and have pretty much all you need is on them. She explains every beautifully. her slides are basically summarised legislation. But if you want to get the "bonus marks" there is some legislation nearby the legislation shes said you need which may be relevant and applicable. That will get you an extra mark if you manage to find it.

Tutor: I had Kayla Milone. Shes also awesome. Knows the content incredibly well and provided summaries and short quizzes for knowledge/retention and then went into the questions in good detail.

Tutorial: You HAVE to prepare. If you dont, its a waste of time and you will struggle. This is my first law subject (commerce major and principle of business law doesnt count as a law subject given its all multiple choice). The content is very straight forward and very easy to understand, theres not a lot that tricky (aside from FBT and CGT which can be at times because of the amount of work required for them which needs pretty much a good knowledge of the whole subject to do). Looking back, i very very highly recommend that you write dot points applying the legislation to the case, go to the tutorial, correct yourself and add anything you missed. Then after the tutorial, write out a proper answer. You can bring ANYTHING into the exam.

Assignment: Was very straight forward, nothing surprising. The structure and wording was very similar to the tutorials. Its done in pairs which is a little annoying. You get the exam very early and you will realise that you havnt done the content required. What I did was after the lecture, id make notes and then do the part of the assignment which was relevant. This meant i was working on it like 2 times a week. I kinda regret this. Towards the end i was getting so sick of it that i started to get lazy and dropped marks because i wanted it over and done with. Maybe do it in 2 sittings (its really not that hard) then read over and fix it up as many times as you want. Otherwise, its not a very tricky assignment.

Exam: Will update when i sit it
In the final lecture, Sunita gives you A LOT of info about the exam. She outlines what the question is and how many marks. She is very generous.
e.g. she said:
Q1 a) residency b) CGT c) assessable income
Q2 a) "specific question" (we assume a theory question cause she said it doesnt apply to the facts) b) tax consequences (literally the whole subject)
We know what the exam is, its not hard to figure out the questions because theres only so many things she can ask before it becomes repetitive. She also gave use 2 sample questions with the exact same format as question 1. Like i said before, the challenge of the subject (and any law subject) is to apply facts to legislation. If you have been practicing with tutorials throughout the semester and did well on the assignment, youre all set. She also said that Q2 "was to reward you for the work done on the assignment" so my guess is that most of it will be similar facts to the assignment with a few new facts/trickier facts to differentiate a H1.
Now some bad news. Sunita never gives out a 90%. She said 80% to 90% is already incredible work. If you want a 90%, youre dreaming. To get 90% you need to write everything was looking for PLUS some stuff that she wasn't expecting. This is annoying but it does not change my opinion of this subject. Its a great subject.

!!Making Notes!!: OK. making notes in any law subjects is incredibly important. You have to do it as you go. For every subject i recommend this rather than cramming and freaking out in SWOTVAC. In my notes, i basically copied and pasted the slides and added what ever was said in the lecture that i thought was useful. You can bring in any amount of notes, books, papers. There is absolutely no requirement on what you bring in. My friends are bringing their notes, the textbook and legislation. That ridiculous. You only have 2 hours to write and it can be very time consuming, especially if your looking for cases that apply or legislation. I plan on doing the same thing. BUT my notes INCLUDE the legislation and summarised cases. Theirs dont. Im bringing em in as a backup or to make myself feel better. I wont need to touch them. In your notes, do this as well. This way, you have everything you need together. When youre answering a question, i have everything together - the theory, legislation, cases, tutorial.
The reason why i recommend buying the textbook is if you want to do well. You can easily get away without them - sunit provides all the legislation references (and explains them). She tells you what the cases are and when they are needed (so you can pretty much just drop em after a sentence).

Overall: Its a great subject. Im probably the only one who enjoyed tax. Some subjects can be incredibly draining. During the lecture, Sunita would read out the facts of the case after the theory and would ask us what we think the courts decided. You just vote by raising your hands and then she tells you the outcome. This was genius although she didnt do it often (told her to do more in SES). Its so great becasue you get a list of facts and then can quickly answer it. (plus it was fun for me... thats kinda sad but yea..)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: beaudityoucanbe on October 30, 2019, 09:41:39 am
Subject Code/Name: ACCT20007 

Workload: two 2-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial

Assessment:
4 SAP assignments (due weekly toward end of semester) (10%)
Group assignment (20%)
Tutorial (10%)
Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 3

Textbook Recommendation:  No point in buying

Lecturer(s): Matt Dyki

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  a solid 0.2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
SAP: 100%
Tutorial: 100%
Group assignment: 79% (fuming i didnt get that H1)
Exam: TBD

Comments:
Lecturer: TERRIBLE LECTURER. Confusing. Inconsistent. Boring. The slides are confusing to follow. You do a LOT of poll everywhere WHICH IS ASSESSED and is part of the tutorial mark. It doesn't recored correct answers, just participation. The poll everywhere was confusing and pointless. most gave up towards then end and just entered random shit, especially when he dosent give you enough time to answer.

SAP Assignment: The worst assignment I have ever done. You are given about 20 steps for each set (theres 4) and you just have to follow the steps on some software. Its easy but an absolute waste of time. Easy 100%.  made the mistake of blindly following the steps (it just gets too difficult to care about it. Especially when some dumbass takes your code and screws everything up the NIGHT before its due. I wa stuck in Giblon till 11pm redoing it). There are questions on the exam that ask you to directly reference/discuss the SAP.

Group Assignment: So stupid. This semester, you do a videos presentation. You have to wear formal business attire. Its a 10 minute video. A lot easier than a 2000 or 3000 word assignment. After the video submission, theres a Q&A where 2 people ask questions about your videos and critique it. You have the opportunity to explain why you did something. They will make you feel like you have done something wrong - you need to defend yourselves, but then if there is a flaw they are trying to pick up on, accept it and provide a recommendation on the spot. It a very calm "interview" you dont have to be nervous.

Tutorial: A COMPLETE AND UTTER MESS. WASTE OF TIME. I ripped my tutor to shreds in the SES survey. She wasted 30 minutes of it talkign about something from the lecture and it never made sense cause she didn't even know what she was talking about. You need to do a 5 minute presenation summarising the lectures which was supposed to get you some short feedback to work on for the group assignment. This always took like 10-15 minutes. We rarely went through the tutorial and when we did, she would say "i think its better to show you HOW to answer rather than give you the answer". I think this is absolutely ridiculous. You SHOW how to answer as you go through the answer.

Exam: Will update
Overall: I absolutely loathed this subject. i gave it .2 for the effort they go through (which is pretty terrible anyway). I really hop they change coordinator or just piss the subject off completely. Im in my 2nd last semester and id rather drop out and not finish my degree than repeat the confusing, irrelevant mess that is called AIRcon. My deepest condolences for those that have to experience the absolute crap fest that is this subject. (I get so triggered when i talk about this subject...)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 13, 2019, 02:35:43 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30019 Behavioural Economics

Workload:(per week) 1 × 2 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:
Assignments, 4 × 5%
Group Presentation, 10%
Tutorial Participation, 5%
2 Hour Exam, 65% (Hurdle Requirement)

Lecture Capture Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, standard advice was that tute/assignment/lecture questions were enough. I also found some old exams (2011 was earliest) on library website but these were hardly relevant.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing is required, the subject references certain books outlined in first lecture, but they're definitely not needed.

Lecturer: Siqi Pan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2019

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments:
Overall, if you've done and enjoyed Intro and Inter Micro, and are looking for a relatively easy and light elective/breadth, this one would be a good choice. It was also pretty interesting as it extended on some standard (neoclassical) economic models, and introduced the behavioural versions, making them (somewhat) applicable to the real world.

Topics:
1. Introduction
2. Preferences and Choices
3. Beliefs and Probability Judgement
4. Choice under Risk and Uncertainty
5. Intertemporal Choice
6. Behavioural Public Policy
7. Fairness and Social Preferences

Lectures
Mainly involved Siqi talking through and explaining the slides. I feel she explained things well and added onto what you would have just gotten by reading through the slides, so definitely worth listening to or attending lectures. Assignment answers were also talked through during lectures (worked solutions also given though), and we did a few behavioural experiments/surveys. As I mentioned above, this subject was relatively light in content, and even with the assignment discussions and surveys, lectures pretty much always started later and finished earlier than the standard 5 min after/before advertised times.

Tutorials
Standard tutorials from weeks 1-5 where you'd get a tute sheet before, are encouraged to give it a go beforehand, then the tutor would take the class through it during the tute. From week 6-11, the first half of the tute would involve a group presentation and questions/discussions, and then the second half would be back to the standard format where the tutor goes over the tute work.

Assignments
Pretty straightforward, 3-4 questions similar to tute/assignment questions that we had about 2 weeks to work on. Don't know if this will be continued, but in 2019 when I did this subject, to prevent people copying each other's work and encourage people to actually give it a proper go, marks were based solely on if we put the effort in, showing full working ect! I got things objectively wrong and still secured the full 20%, and from what I heard many others were in the same boat :o That being said, they still served as good practice for the exam.

Group Presentation
There are 6 behavioural economics based papers available on the LMS in the tutorial section. At the start of the semester, you're required to form groups within your tutorial and let your tutor know your preference of paper (according to my tutor all the papers were all of equal difficulty). From there, you and your group need to present a paper one week during the second half of the semester (each particular paper was allocated a week). An outline was given about what to talk about regarding the paper, then your group needed to create their own application of the main theory discussed in the paper.

Participation
A bit different the usual ECON tute participation mark scheme. In each of the 5 weeks there was a group presentation that wasn't our own, we were required to read the paper and make 2 comments/questions/critiques ect. on it and hand this in to our tutor. Our participation marks are based on these submitted comments. Presumably each sheet of comments handed into our tutor was 1%, but this wasn't explicitly stated and I didn't think to ask.

Exam
A few harder questions, but overall I didn't find it too bad (although I don't know my mark yet!). I don't think the lack of past exams would have impacted anyone's score. Exam mainly involved applying the knowledge rather than memorising things and no major surprises which was great.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Mischi on November 17, 2019, 12:17:59 pm
BIOL10003: [https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/biol10003[/url] 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures a week, 1 x 2 hour practical a fortnight, 1 x 1 hour tutorial a week

Assessment:  5% ILT, 5% MST, 25% Practical, 5% assignment

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Only a sample exam unfortunately, but Dawn provides a lot of practice questions for her part of the course.

Textbook Recommendation:  The recommended textbook is the same as it was for BIOL10002: Biomolecules and cells. I personally didn't get much use out of it this semester at all.

Lecturer(s): Dr Alex Idnurm (Lectures 1-6), covering: animal classification/taxa, fungi, protists, bacteria, medical mycology, parasitic protists
Prof Rob Day (Lectures 7-14), covering: disease/history of disease, parasite strategies, evolution of parasite resistance, new technologies in biomedicine, and evolution.
Assoc. Prof Dawn Gleeson (Lectures 15-26, 33-35), covering: mendelian genetics, epigenetics, sex determination, blood typing, extensions to Mendel, independent assortment and gene linkage, genomic imprinting, pedigrees and lots of problem solving questions for genetics.
Dr Patricia Jusuf (Lectures 27-32), covering: DNA transcription, translation, mutations, mutant case studies, gel electrophoresis

Year & Semester of completion: I completed this subject in 2019 semester 2

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not out yet

Comments:
Overall I found this subject less enjoyable than its semester 1 counterpart BIOL10002. But I think that is because I preferred and was much more interested in the content taught in semester 1, especially the physiology aspects. I must say, the genetics part is taught very well in my opinion and I enjoyed the problem solving aspect to them. To me from everyone else in the course the overall impression of this subject is mixed, those who are like me didn't exactly dread it, but found it a step down from last semester. Then there were others who much prefer this stream of biology and found it much more interesting. For someone who did not complete biology in year 12, I found that first year biomed (and I'm sure subsequent years) has helped me narrow down where my passion is in biomedical sphere.

Anyway, now for lectures:
Alex's lectures started us off for the semester, he only does a single lecture regarding animal taxa and classification yet it popped up as a 15 marker on the exam, so don't disregard it! This also means that what Dawn says at the end of sem that the marks are allocated proportional to how much they are covered in lectures is a lie. We barely saw any of his other content in the exam, maybe a MC or two on fungi? I found the best way for me to study his section of the course was to compile a "Disease Files" as well as a brief report on the rules and semantics of classifying organisms. My friend made Pokemon-like cards for each parasite on them and then their strengths, weaknesses, life cycles etc and I thought that it was really creative and effective.

Rob's lectures are probably the most frustrating to learn. Whilst he does have less content than what Alex has, he claims that a lot of what he examines cannot be found on the lecture slides or in the textbook, we kind of have to magically infer it all. His two lectures on evolution also had more questions allocated to them on the exam than his other 5 or so on parasites. So don't disregard them either. For his evolution lectures I made my own cladogram following the different species of primates, how they changed physiologically to adapt to new conditions, etc etc. His other lectures were okay to study, because for parasite strategies and resistance the things you need to know are more clear cut. However for his questions about disease history and what leads to disease, he is very vague in the answers and it could genuinely be any one of them, so make sure you practice those.

Dawn and Patricia's lectures were probably the best in my opinion. Dawn is a very captivating lecturer and always relates all the genetic concepts to disease to keep your interest. I found that sometimes however her lectures are hard to compartmentalise in the sense that sometimes they don't follow a logical order so it is hard to imagine some of the concepts. Patricia's lectures are also very good, and what I loved about her lectures is that she makes it very clear what is actually examinable and what isn't. For both of their lectures, I think problem solving and practice questions are the best way to go, and both of their lectures are heavily assessed in the exam relative to Rob's and Alex's, so keep that in mind when you plan your study.

Pracs:
Pracs for this subject in my opinion were a lot harder than the pracs in semester 1. They require a lot more background research and work, definitely do study for pracs as you would an assignment or for the MST, as an individual prac weighs almost the same as them! Also, losing marks here and there in prac can really reduce your overall score in the subject, so keep that in mind!

Tutorials:
I have never found bio tutes helpful at all, I think its a much better use of my time to study in that hour on my own, but I did go to the majority of them anyway to be a good student and I think the only info they hold that may actually give high yield info is the prac advice they give, other than that, for content learning it's not really worth it.

Overall: tl;dr
I gave this subject a 3.5/5 primarily because I found that although some lecturers did teach their aspects quite well, others did not. Tutorials were not a good use of time (other than for prac advice), and pracs were for the most part pretty boring.

Don't hesitate to PM me if you have any questions :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tiredandstressed on November 18, 2019, 06:01:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: [https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/phyc10007/]PHYC10007 Physics for Biomedicine

Workload: Contact hours: 3x one lecture per week, 1x problem-solving class (tute) per week (starting from week 2) and 6x two and half hour laboratory sessions + 1 take-home experiment (up to 6 hours of work)
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:  Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).
Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. attendance and submission of work for at least 80% of workshop sessions together with a result for assessed work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. However, Professor Prawer often failed to use the recording system correctly, meaning the lecture wouldn’t always be recorded, would recommend attending his lectures at least

Past exams available:  Yes, all the way back to 2008, however solutions were limited for more recent exams

Textbook Recommendation:  Physics for the Life Sciences 3E, Martin Zinke-Allmag, Ken Sills, Rezza Nejat and Eduuardo Galiano-Riveros, Cengage Learning: ISBN 9780176558697
Very important as the lectures do not go into enough depth of what is examinable, and the suggested problems are often featured in the exam

Lecturer(s): Dr David Simpson: Weeks 1-6- Kinematics & Dynamics, Energy and Transport Phenomena, Vibrations & Waves
Prof Steven Prawer: Weeks 7-12- Electricity & Magnetism, Radiation & Imaging, Optics (but Steven fell very behind schedule so Optics was removed for 2019)

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semster 2

Rating: 1/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBD

Comments: All the reviews on here are quite outdated, Physics for Biomedince has changed quite a bit, so hopefully this is helpful for future students.
The first big change is Physics for Biomedicine only has 6 labs instead of 8 (woo yea!) instead we do a take-home experiment that is worth the equivalent of two labs. I think the coordination is much better compared to previous years, as rumours have suggested and our lectures although not amazing were sufficient.

Before I begin my review, its best I reveal that I hated physics before going into Biomedicine, I’ve always enjoyed sciences (bio & chem) but I could never understand physics and ended up not doing it in VCE and chose to do psych instead (best decision ever) even though my parents weren’t so happy I was doing a “fake science”. So as you can see I was not looking forward to this subject and after completing the horror of Chemistry for Biomedicine, Physics was not looking appealing.

Dr David Simpson takes you for the first six weeks and teaches you on Kinematics & Dynamics, Energy and Transport Phenomena, Vibrations & Waves. He is a great lecturer very clear and interesting, I personally never slept in his lectures and found is slides quite detailed and clear to read. The only problem was since he was a new lecturer he often uploaded his slides very late (like an hour before the lecture) which wasn’t ideal since I wanted to print the slides and write on them (which I would recommend for Physics for Biomedicine- handwrite your notes- so you are actively learning. David’s content looked scary at first but once you took some time to go over his slides and the textbook it wasn’t too bad. And many of us found his stuff easier compared to Steven’s (which I’ll go into later…). Make sure you try to over his lectures after each one and practise a question or two in the suggested problems to ensure you understand what is going on. It very easy to fall behind as the lectures build up for each other, so consistency is key, physics is hard but doable if you take the time to understand the content. In the lectures there always a demo- which is sometimes cool quite boring but they do illustrate the content being learnt so try to take notes of what is happening and why it occurs since the demonstrations are very much examinable in the final exam (popped up in the 2019 exam lol)

Steven then takes you for the final six weeks his content is Electricity & Magnetism, Radiation & Imaging, Optics. Steven was a boring lecturer his voice ended up getting annoying and was quite unengaging- however his long explanation is examinable and his questions focused more on the theory than the calculations. The great thing about Steven is he is very transparent he will tell you if something is important and will be on the exam (he told us that neurons would be 20 marks on the exam and this was indeed true) so there were no surprises there. However, his content was quite challenging and after doing the subject I still don’t know what was going on xD. For Steven’s content it is very important you attempt the suggested problems as he tends to just copy questions from there and put it on the exam, rewarding students who do the extra work.

The problem-solving classes were similar to math tutorials- answering question in a group on the whiteboard, my tutor was George and he was okay at explaining some of the stuff but often I would leave the class more confused going in, if you can try to have a look at the questions before going into tute and familiarise yourself with the formula and theory relevant to the tute, otherwise attendance is not compulsory, but recommended problem-solving questions have been on the exam before.

The seven practicals you complete are not all that fun, and can be draining- in your timetable it says the practical go for three hours- but it is only 2.5 hours. Before each practical, there is a pre-lab however they are not too challenging (except for the radiation one) and they contribute to your practical mark. Make sure you get the logbook and handbook as they are essential for the practicals.
Different demonstrators prefer different things in your report, all of which usually want you to follow the Predict-Observe-Explain model which is covered in your lab book and not hard to understand. My demonstrator, particularly wanted me to emphasise the conclusion (limitations and improvements for the experiment).  When you pick your lab time you will also be randomly allocated in one of four groups; groups 1 & 2 do their labs in odd weeks, groups 3 & 4 do their labs in even weeks. I was in group 4 meaning I got to my lab after learning the content for the relevant practical, people in groups were 1 or 2 were unlucky because often we had not gone over the content for the lab. Now I will go over each practical. Being concise is key in your report, and often they marked quite nice for physics labs.

Experiment 1: Linear motion
As your first experiment, this is probably one of the toughest to finish on time (since none of us did) but the demonstrators are nice and they tell you this before the lab that they don’t expect you to finish so don’t stress. This experiment was probably the easiest theory wise you are simply moving the cart (similar to lectures) and recording position-time, velocity-time and acceleration-time graphs and understanding the relationship between all three. You will also explore Newton’s second law but this is not too bad you will find the force is proportional to the product of mass and acceleration.

Experiment 2: Energy conservation 
Here, we investigate the difference between kinetic and potential energy and how energy is conserved- it is very easy to predict that you will be equating equations. Just keep in mind the formula for kinetic energy and you should be fine. I this experiment, you will be bouncing a ball and recording the curve and establishing the relationship between potential and kinetic energy and then you will compare this with an inclined plane.

Experiment 3: Gas laws
Probably one of the easiest experiments, as everything is centred to the ideal gas equation, here you will be blowing to a pipe and observing and how far deep will you no longer blow bubbles (be careful don’t blow too hard because water will flow out and you might get your lab partners wet). In the next part of this experiment, you will investigate the relationship between volume pressure which all relates to the ideal gas equation.

Experiment 4: Thermal effects
This experiment was pretty crap, least biomedical one there is. You will first explore heat transference which relates to colour spectrum and you will find which colours are absorbed more at different temperatures. Then you will look at energy absorption and cooling and simply comparing the absorptions of a black disc compared to a white disc.

Experiment 5: Ultrasound
One of the easiest experiments (and you’ll finish early) unfortunately you won’t be using medical ultrasound. Instead you will use some bootleg one, it is important for this lab you know before going in how to use each setting as this will save you plenty of time in the lab, this lab centres on the speed of sound which is great since you know you will be trying to achieve a value/ gradient of 343.

Experient 6: Radiation
I will not go into much detail in this lab since I wasn’t really sure what was going on but the physics demonstrators are nice and they marked quite nicely and I got full marks in it. 

Experiment 7: Take home (group) experiment
You will either be given the muscles experiment or the worms experiment
In which for both you will be looking at some type of neural activity, once receiving your box you will decide on an experiment to do and perform ad submit a report of 500 words per person. Most of us did not know what was going and somehow managed to get good marks in it so do not stress about it. Our groups were not able to get any numerical data and we were still able to do well in just follow the lab manual and the BackyardBarns website and you will be fine. If you get a worm box you will need to use diluted vodka to anaesthetise them but be careful too much vodka and you will kill the worms. The group experiment is work\th two practicals (you will receive a group mark), the estimated time to complete the experiment is 3 hours but we were able to do it an hour, and the report won’t take you long.

The weekly assignments were an easy 15%, you three attempts to get it right which was nice, but some of them were quite hard and took over 30 minutes, they aren’t too bad just know that you should not just be doing the weekly assignments in order to do well in this subjects it is imperative you also do textbook questions.

The great thing about physics compared to Chem is that the exam is only 60% so it is not as stressful as compared to Chem.
The final exam is three hours in duration and worth 60% of your grade. It consists of short answer questions only, with a total of 120 marks. Each major topic is assigned a question on the exam, the exam is all short answer, with an even split of calculation and theory questions. Many of us were very stressed as the past exams were challenging and I went into to swot vac only able to answer 2-3 questions at most, but as previously mentioned the physics workshops during swot vac were great and the support the tutors provided was amazing they really did help to tackle each past exam question and get you into the mindset that you should approach each type of questions- with my favourite tip “If it is a theory question and you don’t know what’s going try to use common sense and bs an explanation and you might get a mark”.  The exam was challenging, but I was able to have a go in every question which was nice I know I got some totally wrong but I was still able to attempt every question (except for the 2019 exam the radiation question was horrendous) but otherwise use swot vac wisely and you’ll be able to answer many questions in the exam. The exams follow a similar pattern and they tend to ask similar things every year, which is why it is important to do past exams as early as you can to familiarise yourself with the style of questions you will face on the exam. Three hours is not a lot of time I wasn’t able to finish the exam keep your eye on the clock and if you are stuck you are better off moving on to the next question.

Physics for Biomedicine is a pain, but if you were able to survive Chemistry you will be okay! Take some extra time to learn the content, apply it questions and you will do well. It is a challenging subject but very doable.
Good luck ;D
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sutanrii on November 19, 2019, 08:57:49 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10004 Physics 2: Physical Science & Technology

Workload:  For each week: 3x 1-hour lecture, 1x 1-hour tutorial, 1x 3-hour lab (although we needed to be dismissed after 2.5 hours)

Assessment:  10 Weekly Online Homework (15%), 8 Lab Practical (each with an online prelab) (25%), 3-hour Final Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but lecture demonstrations are usually not recorded

Past exams available:  Yes, Final Exam 2008-2018 along with the solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed textbook is Halliday & Resnick, Fundamentals of Physics, 11th ed., Wiley 2018, which we were recommended to buy in the subject's LMS FAQ. I personally didn't buy any textbook, but one of my mates who had it didn't find it very useful and instead recommended Physics for Scientists and Engineers.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Christopher Chantler (Week 1 - Week 6), Prof. Elisabetta Barberio (Week 7 - Week 12)

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating: 2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:
Around the start of the semester, you can purchase a handbook and a lab book for $12 and $10, respectively. The digital copy of the handbook is available on the LMS so it is not necessary to buy the handbook. If you a leftover lab book e.g. from Physics 1, you can reuse it for this subject. Otherwise, it is compulsory to buy the lab book for $10.

Lectures
The first half of the semester involved Chris covering the topic of Electromagnetism (including the four Maxwell Equations). Chris was a light-hearted lecturer. He tried to make the lecture entertaining while encouraging the audience to participate in answering questions on the slides. In my opinion, his lecturing style was suited for students who are new to the topic to get them interested. The drawback to this was that Chris tended to make the lecture content much easier than it was in the exam.

The second half of the semester involved Elisabetta covering the topic of Fluids, Thermal, and Modern Physics (although particularly in this sem Prof. Geoffrey Taylor served as a replacement lecturer for the Fluids part for one week). Compared to Chris, Elisabetta was a much more serious lecturer and it'd be best to not generate any noise/distraction during her lecture. She'd pause whenever this happened which perhaps may be reasonable but certainly tensed up the lecture atmosphere.

The issue I see in the lectures was that we were mostly taught the theories and would rarely solve any problem. In fact, a lot of these theories weren't actually examinable, especially the Modern Physics part (in the exam we were just expected to use sophisticated formulas and plug in the unknowns). This issue was expected to be resolved by doing the tutesheet and the online homework, but I still think that they were insufficient. I guess this is where the textbook shines as stated by Hancock.

Tutorials / Problem Solving
We sit in groups of 3-4 and then attempt to solve the tute sheet problems in our groups. There was also a tutor who would supervise the progress of our discussions and help answer our questions. A more detailed solution would be posted on the LMS at the end of the week.

One thing I could appreciate of this subject was there were standby tutors in the Laby Ideas Centre every weekday from 11am-3pm, so it wasn't difficult to get help.

Lab Practical
Before each lab session, we needed to finish the Online Pre-Lab questions. The questions were usually quite easy and straightforward but some can be tricky.

At the start of the lab, a demonstrator would brief about the experiment and gave possibly some warnings or tips. We then got into our lab partners (whom we were free to choose) and started doing our experiment. We were required to take down our observations, publish results (mostly using excel), and give analysis and discussion in our lab book, which would be graded by our demonstrator.

This is honestly my most hated aspect of this subject. Since most of the practical marks are based on our lab book, I personally felt that the whole purpose of doing the experiment was to compose a well-written report rather than doing the experiment itself. It was common to see students rushing to finish their report before 2.5 hours have passed, and it was just painfully hectic.

Another annoying part was that the marking of our report was subjective to our demonstrator. There were times when I think I wrote really well but got lower than I expected. I found it hard to improve my report as my demonstrator barely bother to give any comment/feedback. There was one time where I get to have my report checked in front of my demonstrator and I was told my report was incomplete, only to realise that he/she forgot to read the last page of my report (which may explain why I got lower than I expected?) .-.

Online Homework
The weekly online homework consists of more or less 10 questions which we were to input the final number and the corresponding units for each question part (although sometimes it can be multiple choice). We were provided with 3 tries to obtain the correct answer along with a hint which if used would set the maximum score attainable for that question to be 80%, although I felt that the hints were most of the time blatant and not really helpful. It's worth noting that the questions were all taken from the exercise questions from the prescribed textbook (with the numbers altered, but the question wording is preserved) and were generally harder than the exam questions.

Final Exam
There were a lot of past papers provided and the School of Physics was generous enough to provide us with the solutions. These past papers were very valuable for the final exam because many questions were recycled, if not reused. They also served as an indicator of what may not be examinable. Having done really well in Physics 1 and observing the question styles on the past papers, I was confident that I could ace the final exam, but oh boy how wrong I was.

This year they decided to dramatically increase the final exam's difficulty level. They added several questions that were very unconventional relative to the past papers' questions, and many of us were just speechless. One example was that in the past papers, there were usually questions asking about R (resistor + emf) circuit analysis and perhaps questions about capacitors, both are very straightforward. This year they combined both topics into one big question where we were to analyse an RC (resistor + capacitor + emf) circuit + a switch. Many of us were just hoping that our exam mark would be scaled up. (I myself skipped around 15% worth of the exam lol) Update: They did!

Conclusion
In my opinion, this subject was harder than Physics 1 and involved a lot of calculus, especially in the Electromagnetism part. I was particularly disappointed with us having to use Maxwell's Equations without having to know how to use Vector Calculus properly, and how most of the Modern Physics questions were just using formulas and plugging in the unknowns.

As I've stated, I definitely loathed the practicals in this subject, and it's primarily why I gave this subject a low rating. The things commendable about this subject were probably the availability for help through the standby tutors and the abundance of final exam papers and solutions.

Due to the long contact hours as well as online homework and prelab every week, I don't recommend taking this subject if you don't have to unless you have a strong interest in the topics in this subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on November 20, 2019, 12:46:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP30020 Declarative Programming

Workload: 2 lectures, 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  2 assessments 15% each, 70% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes 2 were give, 1 sample. only 2010-2014 available from library.

Textbook Recommendation:  Any Haskell intro book would get you through the first 6 weeks. I didn't use a textbook however, resources from the classes are enough.

Lecturer(s): Peter Schachte

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: You study Haskell and then Prolog. Both are interesting, I enjoyed Haskell as it felt more like a modern language. Have been told by many to do this subject as it opens perspective as you finally learn a language that is not C like. It definitely was enjoyable. Hard to motivate without knowing a little bit about the content.

Exam had no abstract theory in it and so it was more applied theory as it was all coding questions, so if you become king at Prolog/Haskell the examination will be a breeze for you.

I enjoyed Peter (the Lecturer), however he does use a laser pointer which won't show up on lecture capture. It aids a little bit being able to see the point he's specifically talking about but you can infer usually.

1 assessment on Haskell, the other on Prolog. 160 lines of code and 100 respectively (this is including documentation). These languages make you feel powerful. They are dense languages so you do not have to write as much code but it can still take you a long time. The Prolog one was made trivial this semester because he said we were allowed to use a library and due to the nature of Prolog (that you will learn if you pick this subject) just stating the question and the constraints solves the problem for you, i.e. you don't have to write specifically on how the solution is crafted.

If you attend the tutorials, the material is just questions, that you can access at home so what tutor you get will impact the value you get from the class. I stopped attended after like 6th week but doing the questions weekly is very useful at getting actual practice on the content.

This semester was the first time we had Haskell and Prolog on Grok, (which you should have used for COMP10001?) Did its job, I used that rather than the tutes but some of the questions were recycled from Models of Computation this semester. Might change, but they were pretty good questions.

Overall a good intro to some declarative langauges.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on November 20, 2019, 01:03:22 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP20008 Elements of Data Processing

Workload:  2 lectures and a 2 hour workshop

Assessment:  2x 20% assignments, 1x 10% Oral, 50% Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes plenty

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing

Lecturer(s): Pauline Lin, Uwe Aickelin and Chris Ewin

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Subject could be renamed Data Wrangling and gives the the appreciation of dealing with data, processing it, combining data sources, privatising and some intro to creating predictive models from it. You learn basics of correlations, blockchain and ethics too which I thought were interesting subjects.

In the workshops you learn how to actually use Python along with Numpy, Pandas and some other libraries inside the Jupyter Notebook to do the above mentioned things on the data. The workshops are pretty handholdy if you got the right tutor, but the assignments... if you know how to google Python documentation, you will find alright.

Feels much more like a practical science subject than any other computing subject I've taken so far. You still learn some high level algorithms, some math, but there's a lot more theory involved.

Exam is all theory short answer, no programming knowledge expected.

Each of the assignments is like a take home prac, except you are equipped with your data and your programming skills. Googling and your practice from your previous workshops is essential. You end up with a long report showing your findings after following the specification.

This semester was the first time you could do assessment 2 and the oral in a group project (same group). Good change.

There were some great guest lectures on privacy, that alone was pretty TED talk worthy.

Since this is a prereq for Machine Learning, this subject a pretty good intro to data wrangling and what that entails, lecturers were great in my opinion. Apparently a previous lecturer was terrible and fired a year ago.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on November 21, 2019, 05:11:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: HPSC10001 From Plato to Einstein

Workload:
   - Lectures: 2 x 1 hour per week
   - Tutorials: 1 x 1 hour per week

Assessment:
   - Source Analysis: 10 x 200 words [50%] (Separated into 3 separate assessments worth 15, 20, and 15 percent each)
   - Take-home Exam: 2,000 words  [50%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: Subject reader available from Co-op, but is also for free on LMS

Lecturer(s): Kristian Camilleri

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (72)

Comments:

HPSC10001 is generally taken by BSc students as breadth. I was one of the few arts students taking it as my elective. There is quite a lot of science concepts involved, and while the lecturer/tutor explains them as they pop up, it is much more beneficial if you know them already.

This subject starts off with pre-Socratic philosophy in Ancient Greece to modern physics. The subject is split into different time periods: ancient/medieval, early modern, and modern science. There is a heavy emphasis on maths, physics, and astronomy, with not much on other areas of science like chemistry or biology (alchemy gets brought up in one lecture but that's about it).

Lectures

Lectures are ran by the subject coordinator Kristian, who is very experienced, very knowledgeable, and very enthusiastic on the topic. Lectures are very content heavy and Kristian moves through quite quickly, but he always pauses in the middle for questions. Overall, lectures are very interactive and you get the most out of them if you attend.

Tutorials

For tutorial readings, you're given a PDF each week which contains both primary and secondary sources. There is a fair amount of reading, but generally if you just do the primary ones, you're set for tute discussions. Tutorial discussions are incredibly useful because 50% of the assessments (the 10 source analysis tasks) are all based off of the readings set.

Assessments

Source analysis: Throughout the semester you're given 10 different primary sources to analyse, each worth 5% of your total grade. Each source analysis is 200 words and you're required to identify the author, date, summarise the text, and briefly talk about its historical significance. They are given out in three different sets and four days are given for each set.

Final Exam: The final exam is a 2,000 word take-home research essay. Exam topics are released at the start of the semester in the subject guide. There are 10 topics in total, the first 5 are due during the middle of the semester and concerns content from the first half of the course (antiquity and medieval science), the last five are due a month later during the exam period and covers content from the second half (early modern and modern science).

Final Thoughts

HPSC10001 is definitely a great subject for students majoring in physics, maths, or history. The subject is very well organised and the content was very interesting. There is a larger emphasis on the history over the philosophy of science so if you're looking for a subject that looks at philosophy and ethics, this isn't the best option; however if you want to learn more about how science and maths developed and became the way it is, then I highly recommend.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on November 21, 2019, 05:12:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: POLS10003 Introduction to Political Ideas

Workload: 
   - 1 x 2 hour lecture per week
   - 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
   - Source Analysis, 500 words  [12.5%]
   - Research Essay, 2,000 words  [50%]
   - Take-home Exam, 1,500 words [37.5%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: N/A. Readings made available online.

Lecturer(s): Dr Clayton Chin

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:

I did Intro to Political Ideas as an arts elective (I’m a history/economics major) and loved this subject. Students are recommended to have done the arts foundation subject MULT10018 Power, but it’s not necessary. IntroPol goes into so much more depth so students who have done Power are not really at an advantage.

Lectures

Lectures are definitely the worst part of this subject (the review will go uphill after this). There is one 2-hour lecture a week and it was often difficult to sit through the whole thing (the lecture theatre was practically empty after week 4). Lectures were also incredibly content heavy so often the lecturer could not get through all the slides.

The length is the only downside though. Clayton makes the 2 hours more bearable - he asks a lot of questions which makes lectures interactive. He is also one of those absolute legends who do not merely read from the lecture slides.

Tutorials

There is one 1-hr tutorial per week. In tutes we generally went through tutorial readings and discussed key ideas brought up during the lecture. As POLS10003 is mostly a political philosophy subject, there are less heated debates than subjects such as International Politics. Modern politics do still get brought up quite a lot though.

If you are doing POLS10003, try to get John Green as your tutor. He is extremely fair with in-class debates, marking assignments, and brings up a lot of points for all sides and different POVs. Finally, if that doesn't convince you, he takes his entire tute to the pub at the end of the semester.

Assessments

Assignment 1: 500 words, due early on in the semester. For this assignment you are given the writings of two political thinkers and you must discuss their views regarding a particular topic. As an example, I did "Karl Marx vs Thomas Hobbes - What is Human Nature?".

Research Essay: 2,000 words, due around the mid-sem break. Topics are given out quite early, there is a wide variety of topics so you're bound to find one that you like. The topics are quite arbitrary and broad so there are many different ways you can go about them.

Exam: 1,500 words. The exam is split into 3 parts: Part 1 is 3 short responses (150 words each) discussing  3 different political ideas. Part 2 and 3 are longer responses (500 words each) responding to two prompts.

Final Thoughts

Intro to Political Ideas is an amazing unit and it is a perfect introductory subject to the different political ideas and key debates. This subject is an absolute must for anyone thinking of majoring in politics/int'l relations, and I highly recommend it for other students too.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on November 21, 2019, 05:13:40 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANCW20025 Archaeology of the Roman World

Workload: 
   - 1 x 1.5 hour lecture per week
   - 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
   - 2 x 2,000 word research essays [90%]
   - Oral presentation [10%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: N/A. Readings made available online.

Lecturer(s): Gijs Tol (pronounced 'high-zz')

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments:

Roman archaeology is a very small subject (in 2019, there were a total of 27 people) and there is also a higher proportion of mature-age students compared to other subjects, which makes it quite an interesting class.

Lectures

Lectures are 1.5 hours long and are run weekly by the subject coordinator Gijs (which is pronounced with exactly none of those letters). As it's a small subject (in 2019, there were 27 people), most lectures are very empty, which leaves a great amount of room for discussion. Lectures are quite interactive and Gijs usually leaves 15-20 minutes at the end for questions each week.

In week 6, the lecture is run by a guest lecturer who talks about how Roman archaeology was used by Fascist Italy in the 1920s-1930s. Other than that, the content is very much based in ancient times.

Tutorials

Due to the size of the subject, Gijs runs both tutorials. Tutes are very much discussion based, and unlike lectures, which generally only focus on historical aspects, tutes also look at political/social/ethical aspects of archaeology, so there is more of a focus on the present-day.

In week 5, there is a prac held in the Object-Based Laboratory in Arts West where we get to examine authentic Roman-era coins to try and date them. This is the only practical aspect of this subject.

From week 8 onwards, tutorials are dominated by individual presentations of our 2nd research essay topics. Each presentation goes for 10 minutes, with an additional 5-10 minutes of question time, feedback, and discussion.

Assessments

There are two assessments in this subject, which are two 2,000 word essays, one due in week 8 and another due early in the exam period. Each is worth 45%. The final 10% comes from your tutorial presentation.

For the first essay, you must choose from the prompts given, but for the final one due during the exam period, you come up with your own topic and it can be about literally anything as long as it relates to Rome. The tutorial presentation (which weighs 10%) is on your final research essay.

Final Thoughts

On the whole I thought Roman Archaeology was an amazing subject. There was a good balance between archaeology, history, and present day applications. It’s a small subject so classes are very interactive and you receive very detailed feedback for assessments.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on November 21, 2019, 05:15:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload: 
   - 2 x 1 hour lectures per week
   - 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
   - 2 x multiple choice tests [5% each]
   - 2 x group assignments [10% each]
   - Final Exam [60%]
   - Tutorial Participation [10%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: There's about 20 past exams on the library website. Only the 2016, 2017, and 2018 exams are relevant to the current course (as of 2019 semester 2) and they are the only ones which also have answers.

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Macroeconomics by Ben Bernanke, Nilss Olekalns and Robert Frank.
Both 4th and 5th edition are fine for this unit.

Lecturer(s): Lawrence Uren, Nahid Khan

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Pass (53)

Comments:

Introductory Macroeconomics is compulsory for all Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Arts (Economics) students, so if you are reading this, chances are you don’t have much of a choice with picking this subject. If you are looking for a breadth subject, please note that Intro Macro has ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics as a prerequisite.

Lectures

There are two 1hr lectures a week, and covers four main topics:
   • Keynesian Model
   • AD-AS Model
   • Economic Growth & the Solow-Swan Model
   • International Economics

I was in Lawrence's stream, he's a pretty great lecturer with a good sense of humour. I've never been to Nahid's lectures, but from going through both of their annotated slides, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference apart from the fact that Lawrence writes more legibly.

Tutorials

Tutes go for one hour each week and cover contents from the previous week. In each tute, there will be a worksheet which you will be given time to attempt yourself before the tutor goes through the solutions.

Each week there is also pre-tutorial work uploaded on the LMS which must be completed before the tute. Most tutors are quite relaxed with checking to see if you have done it, but it does account for 10% of your overall grade.

Assessments

Multiple Choice Tests: There are two online MC quizzes throughout the semester, the first one was in week 4 and the other in week 11. Both are worth 5% each and have 15 questions with 30 minutes to complete them.

Group Assignments: There are two group assignments, the first was due around week 6 and the other in week 10. They were worth 10% each and you could work in groups of up to 3 students from your tutorial. The assignments were incredibly short, but requires quite a lot of detailed explanations. The word limit for both were 1,000 words.

Exam: The exam is worth 60%, it has 60 marks and goes for 2 hours with 15 minutes reading time. There's 15 multiple choice questions (1 mark each), and 3 larger questions worth 45 marks in total.

Final thoughts

I found Intro macro to be quite a challenging subject even though the common consensus is that it is better than intro micro. To compare the two, macro has a much heavier emphasis on theory while micro has a bit more maths. I wouldn’t recommend taking macro if you are looking for a good breadth option. For a commerce subject, it's really not that applicable unless you plan to become a policymaker in the future.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on November 28, 2019, 07:36:06 am
Subject Code/Name: ECON30011 Environmental Economics

Workload: 2 × 1 hour lectures, 1 × 1 hour tutorial (Generally per week, however 3 tutorials were replaced with presentation sessions in week 8, 9 and 10)

Assessment:
Presentation (8 minute limit), 15%
Assignment, 25%
2 Hour Multiple Choice Exam, 60% (Hurdle Requirement)

Lecture Capture Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but sometimes difficult to hear, especially audience discussions

Past exams available:  One mock exam, covering the first half of the semester to give you an idea of what to expect.

Textbook Recommendation:  Environmental and Natural Resource (11th ed) by Tietenberg and Lewis. I bought it because I was very interested in the content and would ideally like to apply it in a future career, but definitely not necessary to have.

Lecturer: Veronika Nemes

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2019

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 (now I know I've passed :P), but feel this could vary greatly depending on what you're hoping to get out of it.

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments: Overall, I found the content of this subject really fascinating to learn about, and really felt I got something out of taking it. Probably wasn't perfectly organised, but understandable given a new coordinator took over this year, so should only improve from here. It had a fairly small cohort size (around 65) and discussions were highly encouraged in lectures, giving it somewhat of a more intimate feel (if you attended). Ultimately, I'd only recommend this subject if you're actually interested in environmental problems. Don't take it thinking it sounds like an easy elective/breadth because it's definitely not.

Lecture topics were:
-Economic Approach to Environmental Problems (market failures and policy instruments)
-Economics of Pollution Control
-Global Air Pollution (Ozone Layer and Climate Change)
-Electricity Generation Policies
-Energy (Natural gas, oil, nuclear)
-Recyclable Resources
-Transport
-Fisheries
-Land Use, Conservation, and Biodiversity
-Water

Lectures:
LOTS of information to absorb for each lecture. Ideally you should be keeping up and reviewing consistently (I didn't do this, it caused stress in the exam period!). That being said, Veronika obviously really knew her stuff having worked in the industry, and I always found lectures very interesting. Audience participation strongly encouraged, as mentioned above. Grey non-examinable slides were also provided for interest.

Tutorials:
Also pretty interesting. The class would go through a problem set you'd have access to beforehand (sometimes with solutions), similar to standard economic tutorial questions. Also some discussion based questions, and we'd sometimes work on the questions in groups. While actual calculation based questions are not required for the MC final exam, most tutorial questions were still relevant/needed for the exam.

Presentation:
A lot of freedom was given in choosing your topic, as long as too many people weren't doing the same thing. You're given the choice between 3 presentation "types", academic, policy or pub, and can choose any "environmental economics" problem. A clear rubric was given, so getting a good mark was very doable with sufficient practice. The key point was to "extend"/add your own contribution and linked to/use the lecture content. Apart from your own, the other presentation sessions were optional to attend.

Assignment:
Required a good amount of effort (given it is 25%), but I enjoyed it overall and it wasn't too difficult. Some questions were similar to tutorial stuff and required graphs, calculations ect. Reviewing tutorial solutions helped here. There were also more open-ended type questions, requiring your own interpretations/opinions. Surprisingly the open-ended questions weren't too hard to score well in as long as you gave it your best attempt and linked the lecture concepts.

Exam:
Despite being MC, this was NOT an easy exam. 33 questions, each with between 3 to 14 possible answers (usually around 8 or so? but I didn't really pay attention to the "average" number of possible answers in the exam). Some answers could be easily crossed off, but for others it was quite difficult to choose between the remaining few choices, and you really had to know the details of the lecture and tutorials content. Based on my score, I think some scaling occured as I was kind of worried I failed the hurdle here. But based on my experience, one should be fine if they give it their best effort to learn the content.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on December 11, 2019, 02:32:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30026 Metric and Hilbert Space 

Workload:  3 lectures + 1 tutorial weekly

Assessment:  3 assignments, together worth 20% of the final marks.

Lectopia Enabled:  No. The lecturer insteads pre-recorded them and uploaded them on YouTube.

Past exams available:  Yes one exam from 2018. This is a new subject.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nope

Lecturer(s): Daniel Murfet

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Wow bro, hold your horses man? Jk jk, marks are discussed later, please keep reading :))

Comments:
   Briefly on what the subject is about
The motivation of the subject is that we don’t really know what space is. Most of the time, we think of space as \(\mathbb{R}^3\)or maybe \(\mathbb{R}^4\) if you include time. As it turns out, this notion of space is incomplete and is wrong in certain cases. However, some concepts in \( \mathbb{R}^3\) makes sense, like how we can measure distance on it or how we can “add” points together. Such fundamental concepts can be generalised and from such, we create different types of “spaces”. Thus, this subject is really just about studying these new kinds of spaces that we’ve defined.
    Content
The main topics about spaces covered include
Some applications/tools topics include
   

    Skills required to do well in the subject
Some minimal and necessary (but not sufficient) skills/knowledge to do well in this subject
       Lecturer
As a lecturer, Daniel is very passionate and understand the subject at an extremely deep level. After all, this is his field. You can pretty much just mention any problems from the notes or any part of a proof and he’d be able to recognise it on the spot and help you with it. He knows his notes extremely well.
As a person, Daniel is very humble, calm and down to earth kind of guy. He is also a very good listener. He’d patiently listen to your question and answer them, not just jump straight to conclusion and assume what you’re asking.
You’ll definitely like Daniel as the lecturer.
   Lectures
Although the pace within the lecture is nothing out of the ordinary, you’ll likely find that the rate at which content is introduced is incredibly fast and that’s because in some sense, it is. A lot of people will say that this is due to the immense about of content in the subject. Personally however, looking back, it was not the volume of content that made this subject so fast for me. It was more that I was not used to thinking about this kind of stuff. Thus, each unit of content required a lot more time to process and while I’m still trying to understand one concept, another one which is built on it has already been introduced.
To do well, I think one just has to grind and devote time to the subject. Over time, you’ll improve and grow as a mathematician, during which you’ll find the subject much more manageable.
Daniel also mentioned that he witnessed how students go through a journey throughout this subject and change, as a mathematician.
Bottom line is, there’s no big secret, you’ve just gotta grind.
   Tutorials
The tutorials do not follow the traditional format of everyone working on problems in small groups. Instead, they are supplementary lectures that is intended to aid students with the main lecture’s topics.
The tutorials are not examinable unless otherwise specified.
   Assignments
The assignment is generally quite difficult and requires small but ingenious ideas to solve. This is why discussion with friends is so beneficial as bouncing ideas back and forth can really give birth to something completely new.
This year, the assignments got easier as the semester progresses. The first one was a killer and I only managed to get through it thanks to discussing it with a friend of mine who is very dedicated to the subject. The second one was more of a you-need-to-be-careful type of assignment and the last one was not bad at all.
The assignments take time to do so make sure you get to it early.
    Exam
The exam’s difficulty completely depends on how much time you devoted to the subject throughout the semester, especially during the revision period leading up to the exam. As a general rule of thumb, if you’ve done very question in the lecture notes, you’ve got pretty much no problem. Some people even went so far as to claim that you’ll get 90+ for sure if you’ve done all the questions in the notes.
The bulk of the exam is pretty much just problems from the lecture notes or problems very similar to those. There will be at least one proof from lectures that you’ll be expected to reproduce.
In 2018, this is consistent. The exam was 100% problems from the lecture notes + a proof.
In 2019, the lecturer is a bit more creative and made 68.75% of the exam marks just lecture problems + a proof. The other 31.25% were some new stuff. One question was on lecture definitions and coming up with an example, which was worth 12.5%. This was fine in the sense that if you studied the material, you should be able to do most or all of it. The remaining 18.75% was a new question which were not from lectures nor similar to anything found in the lecture notes. I think this question really screwed people. To earn these 18.75%, it is not enough to just know the material well. Instead, you needed to come up with a small but ingenious idea in the heat of the exam which I find to be very demanding. Personally, I think I only managed to solve this problem in this heat of battle out of pure luck. Honestly, I don’t think I could’ve done it again, like ever.
    Final comments
In general, this has been rumoured to be the most difficult undergraduate subject in the department of maths and stats in unimelb. I think it’s certainly lived up to it. The volume of the subject wasn’t not too bad, but the unfamiliar content is really what screws people over.
Now, I don’t have the distribution of marks, so these are just my guesses based on experience and anecdotal evidence. From pass to H3, I think it suffices to know definitions and be able to do assignments with help from friends. For the H2B – H2A range, generally you’ll need to know definitions, be able to follow proofs line by line and be able to do assignments with help from friends. For the 80 – 90, I reckon one needs to know definitions quite well, be able to follow proofs line by line and be able to do assignments completely on your own, with maybe exchanges of ideas with friends. For the 90+, I reckon it’s all the above + ace your assignment marks + but also lots of experience in studying in general. I think two people can spend an equal amount of time on the subject, but one will get a higher score (by about maybe 5 marks?) if that person has more experience in studying, especially maths subjects. In addition, at the 90+ range, the element of luck – something I firmly believe is involved in everything we do – plays a major role in determining whether you’re in the low 90, mid 90 or high 90.
Personally, I lost 1 mark on the assignments, but luck was in my favour on the exam so, thankfully I didn’t make any mistakes, putting myself at 99/100. This would not have been possible without not just lots of luck but also the immense effort I put in during the semester. I only got what I did because of the time and effort I put into this subject. If anybody else spent such an amount of time, they'd do just as well, if not, better than I did.

There was a 100, followed by me then a 97, according to the lecturer.

 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on December 12, 2019, 10:10:57 am
Subject code/name: MAST30012 Discrete Mathematics

Workload: Weekly tutorial + 3 lectures

Assessment: 3 assignments, worth 20% of the final grade

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1 exam from 2018 with solution. It is a rewritten subject

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing needed

Lecturer(s): Richard Brak

Year & Semester of completion: 2019

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Bruh, you gotta chill. Jk marks are discussed later, please keep reading

Comments:

Briefly about the subject
Discrete mathematics basically deals with things that can be counted (at most countable sets). It is arguably one of the most manageable level 3 maths subject in unimelb, especially when you get Richard Brak as the lecturer.
For those looking for the most chill third year maths subject in unimelb, I guess you could say that this is the one. The material is not too abstract, and it is somewhat familiar with what we’ve seen in earlier years of mathematics education. In saying that though, to say that you could do well without trying is a gross underestimation of the subject. The volume of the subject is still comparable with some of the difficult subjects like MAST30026 and MAST30020, in my opinion. I think this subject is deceivingly difficult as I’ve heard of people who were very confident with the exam, expecting a 90+ but ended up with low H2B. I suppose you could say that it is an easy subject to pass but still difficult to do well on.


Content
The course is divided into basically 7 parts
Counting stuff (Enumerative combinatorics)
How to walk around places (Lattice paths)
How to putting balls into boxes (Pigeonhole Principle)
Determining whether something is odd or even (Parity argument)
Putting sequences into the coefficients of polynomials (Generating functions)
Interesting sequences and their usage (Fibonacci and Catalan)
Solving sliding puzzles and rearranging stuff (Permutations)


Lecturer
Most of the students’ opinions about Richard Brak that I’ve heard of are extremely positive. The only negative thing I’ve heard of is “when he writes on the board, he covers the writing so I can’t see his writing”.
I’ve been taught by Richard Brak during 2 semesters, one for MAST20026 Real Analysis and one for this subject. In both cases, I found him to be a very good educator. He explains the concepts very well and in-depth, telling you exactly what you need to know for the exam. What’s much better though, is the fact that he constantly reminds you what the terms mean and what the concepts are when he first introduces it to you. It’s something like this: so in DM, the notation is that a k-subset means a subset of size k (it has k elements in it). Here’s how he teaches it to a newbie:
“Here’s a definition: an k-subset is a subset of size k.” *Goes on to explain stuff for 5 minutes* “So then number of k-subsets, which remember that it means a subset of size k, of an n-set, meaning a subset of size n is given by…” *Proceeds to repeat the same sentence again and again until it’s in our brain*
I find this to be very conducive to learning because one’s learning benefits a lot from seeing the same concept over and over again.


Tutorials + assignments
Tutorials and assignments follow the standard format of a mathematics subject at unimelb. Questions are fair and very relevant to the lecture content. They’re pretty much the same as examples provided in the lectures, with small variations. Some are also taken from previous years’ exams. Of course, you’d still have to think about the problem for a while, but you should be able to solve them if you put in some honest effort in studying the subject.


Exam
The bulk of the exam were questions very similar to ones you’d find in assignments and tutorial.  There were no shockingly difficult questions on the exam (unlike many subjects), really, as Richard has been known for making very reasonable exams. The generic advice is that if you’ve studied diligently throughout the semester, you should have no problem dealing with the exam, which is still true.
Both the 2018 and 2019 exams were fair. Richard tried to ask problems on as many topics as possible but unable to ask problems on everything, of course. A question in 2018 was asked again in 2019. There were no trick questions that required you to really think and figure out some tricks.  All questions were pretty much “if you studied, then you can do it” and things you’ve seen before during the semester.


Final comments
A good tip is beware that all material including things from the lecture notes are examinable so if you have time, go through examples and all concepts covered in the lecture notes even if they didn’t make their way onto assignments and exams. I made the mistake of not studying everything and skipping some stuff I thought was not important. To my luck, they had to goddamn appear on the exam and it nearly screwed me over. It took me like 45 mins to figure this 3-mark (out of 100) question out while my friend all did it in like 2 seconds because they’ve seen it in the lecture notes. Thankfully I did fine, lost 1 assignment mark and 1 exam mark, putting myself at 98/100.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on December 12, 2019, 10:26:24 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST30001 Stochastic Modelling 

Workload: 3 lectures + 1 tutorial weekly

Assessment: 2 assignments worth 20% of the final grade

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, lots with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: 

Lecturer(s): Nathan Ross

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2019

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: wow, you gotta calm yo farm mate. Jk jk marks are discussed later, please keep reading ;)

Comments:

Briefly about the subject
This subject talks about stochastic processes and how you can use them to model certain problems. The format of subject is quite standard: you’re taught certain concepts and then you’re given a problem which can be solved by modelling using the concepts you were taught. One could say it is the next step forward from MAST20004 Probability as there is a strong resemblance in the theme of the two courses.
Difficulty is the debatable part of the course. I reckon that it really comes down to just how much time you want to devote for this subject and your mathematics background. It is not a pure maths type of subject like Probability for Inference, Complex Analysis, etc so you don’t have to do (too much) analysis, mainly just calculations. However, the concepts are not easy to get your head around so I wouldn’t say that you could do well without spending a decent amount of effort, either.
Personally, I found this subject extremely difficult, possibly because of the little amount of time I devoted to it. It was very struggling for me to wrap my head around certain concepts. I'd always have to re-think about concepts that I thought I've already understood it. Honestly though, I find that probability subjects are difficult in general and need to be treated with respect if you wanna do well on it. This subject is certainly not for those looking for a chill third year maths subject.
My review will be pretty short as it’s not much different from MAST20004, MAST20005, MAST20006. If you’re looking into doing this subject, you’ve probably have done those and thus, you know what it was like.

Subject content
•   Stuff that randomly change, one step at a time (Discrete time Markov Chain)
•   Stuff that arrives over time but forgets what happened in the past (Poisson Process)
•   Stuff that randomly change over time (Continuous time Markov Chain)
•   Analysing queues of customers (Queuing theory)
•   Stuff that arrives over time that remembers what happened in the past (Renewal Theory)
•   Stuff that changes as a result of its fluctuations of its small constituents (Brownian motion)
Lecturer
Nathan is a cool dude. In lectures he seems a stoic and emotionless but then in tutorials he’s very enthusiastic and energetic. All I can say is that he is a very knowledgeable lecturer and he really understands this stuff. He’s also very generous when it comes to the exam. He is quite open about telling us what is to be expected on the exam and provides many past assignments and exams with solutions.

Lectures
•   Lectures follow the usual format of a maths subject. You’ll find that Nathan’s lectures are kind of funny because everything he says, he makes it sound like it’s not important but really it is. He’ll often makes subtle jokes, but people don’t seem to catch those, probably due to his stoic expression.
•   Nathan often spends time during lectures to summarise the stuff we’ve gone through and at the end of the semester, he even taught us how to study for the exam, something that seldomly happens at the tertiary education level.
Tutorial
•   Tutorials follow the standard maths subjects format of working on the board together. The questions are either exam-style questions or walkthroughs to help you derive certain things, with the goal of assisting with your understanding of the material. I find these walkthrough questions to be extremely interesting and helpful.
•   Tutorials are thankfully provided with solutions (unlike certain subjects).

Assignment
The assignment questions are on par with what you see in tutorials and what you’d expect on the exam. They’re pretty much just additional problems that can be a little lengthier but conceptually, it is just as difficult (or just as easy, depending on how you look at it).
I found the assignments very difficult, probably due to my lack of understanding of the subject. 


Exam
The exam this year is quite fair, following a similar format to previous years’ exams:
•   Discrete time Markov Chain (2 questions)
•   Renewal Theory (1 question)
•   Poisson Process (1 question)
•   Queueing theory (1 question)
•   Brownian motion (1 question)
In terms of difficulties, everything is quite standard, meaning that they’re just as difficult as previous years’ exams with certain exceptions. Queuing theory this year is a little bit easier but we were thrown with a very difficult Brownian motion question so it balances out. The difficult thing about this subject's exam is that only a few questions are standard in the sense that you've either seen it before in lectures or if you've really studied and understood the material, you'll be able to do it for sure. Lots of the questions are trick questions in the sense that they require you to come up with an ingenious idea to do it. In saying that though, all of this can be solved if more time is devoted to really understanding the material.
I haven’t gotten a chance to see my exam yet, but it seems like I lost 2 assignment marks (out of 20) and 12 exam marks (out of 80), putting myself at 86/100.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on December 12, 2019, 11:30:33 am
Subject code/Name FNCE10002 Principles of Finance

Workload: lectures + tutorial weekly. Lectures are 2 hours

Assessment: Exam (59%), MST (21%), Online assignment (10%), Tutorial attendence (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  no, only sample exams.

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Corporate Finance 2nd Asia-Pacific Edition. Probably a good idea to buy, please keep reading to see why.

Lecturer(s): Asjeet Lamba

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating:  3 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Gee you gotta relax man. Jk jk please keep reading, marks are discussed later :)

Comments:

1.   Briefly on what the subject is about
The idea behind this subject is that if you give the bank your money, for some reasons, they’ll give you back more money. Everything throughout the subject will be built on this idea.
About the difficulty, this is a difficult subject and covers quite a bit of material + it’s fast-paced. The hardest part though, is not the volume nor the pace, but our (possible) unfamiliarity with the material. In our daily life, we’re not used to thinking about the fact that $100 can somehow be worth the same as $90. Thus, it’ll take a lot of time to get your head around these new kind of weird concepts. In saying that though, with a bit of time and effort, one will get used to it and when everything clicks, it’s all manageable. 
Something I dislike about this subject is how they claim to be teaching the subject without assuming any prior finance knowledge but yet, they throw terminologies and concepts at us like we already know it. To counter this, you’d need to read the book diligently or go to consultations very frequently.

2.   Subject content
The topics covered are in brackets
•   Maths involved in finance, how to add, subtract, take exponents, lots of formulae (financial maths)
•   If I give you money, you’d better pay me back, but with a little more (Debt Value)
•   If I give you money, you can choose to pay me back whenever you want (Equity Value)
•   Putting all your valuables in a safe can be quite convenient as everything is locked up and safe in 1 location but it also means that the thief just has to attack that 1 single safe. If the thief gets his/her hand on it, you’d lose everything all at once right? (Portfolio theory)
•   How much is this product worth, based on how much all the other products are worth? (Asset pricing)
•   How much money should you spend on each of your hobbies? (Capital Budgeting)
•   If you want to buy something and haven’t got any money, should you borrow money from only dad? Or only mom? Or both? (Capital Structure)
•   That iPad pro looks good but I’m afraid something will happen to it so I’ll buy an insurance (Options)

3.   Lecturer
Asjeet is a very knowledgeable and professional lecturer, definitely knows his stuff. On recording, he seems quite chill, nice and tells us a lot about how to do well on the exam, which I quite appreciate. In person, however, he seems a little short-tempered and not so nice, anymore. Maybe it’s just me.

4.   Lectures
Lecture slides are uploaded weekly and the lecturer goes through those slides during the lecture. The format of the lecture is a little different from most other subjects I’ve seen. Instead of introducing concepts, terminologies and go through examples, Asjeet instead goes through a case study with us to help motivate the concepts. This is a cool idea, except that he keeps throwing terminologies that we’ve never heard of before around so it kind of defeats the purpose.
Despite nothing really making much sense when I first listened to the recordings because of these terminologies he throws around, after doing a little bit of researching, reading and thinking, I find that he actually explains the concepts quite clearly on my second time listening to the recordings. That’s when I realise that the difficulty in understanding what he says is a terminology problem.

5.   Tutorial
The tutorials follow the format of the tutor going through the problems in the tutorial sheet with us. The tutor would give you some time to do the problem as a group and then go through it. My tutor was very smart, somehow was able to understand what I was trying to ask even when I didn’t know what I was trying to ask. He knew his stuff and explained concepts quite well.
The problems in tutorials are what you’d expect to see on the exam and are thus all examinable. Keep in mind that not everything on the exam will be something covered in tutorials.

6.   Exam/MST/Online Assignments
The nice thing about this subject is that all assessments were pretty much just problems similar to those you find in lectures and tutorials. Ergo, keep up with all the problems and you’d be in good shape.

7.   Final comments
Personally, I find that the lecture content seems really scary and difficult, but the problems turn out to be not so bad. I guess the calculation questions are the easy bit as you can just follow a certain recipe. The difficult ones are the conceptual, explain kind of questions. Those screwed me over on the MST (lost one multiple choice) and the exam (lost another multiple choice), putting myself at 96/100 for the final grade.
Despite the high score though, I don’t think I’ve quite understood this subject. I feel like I just made it through based on my raw studying experience.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: AlphaZero on December 13, 2019, 12:44:39 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20030 Differential Equations

Workload:
- 3 one-hour lectures
- 1 one-hour tutorials

Assessment:
- 3 assignments (10% each)
- Exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes.

Past exams available:
At least 5, all with solutions except the 2016 sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation:
You don't necessarily need them, but stronger students might like to read more than just the lecture slides.
- Linear Partial Differential Equations and Fourier Theory, Pivato
- Elementary Differential Equations with Boundary Value Problems, Trench

Lecturer(s): Dr David Ridout

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92 (H1)

Comments:

Course Structure
Section 1: Linear Ordinary Differential Equations
This section looks at, you probably guessed - linear ODEs (ones with no partial derivatives). Here you learn how to solve simple first order ones before drawing some 'hand-wavy' analogies to linear algebra to help solve higher order initial value problems (IVPs). You will learn about reduction of order and how the Wronskian can be used with Abel's theorem to solve some simple 2nd and maybe 3rd order linear ODEs. Then, you will jump into solving some vector-valued first order linear ODEs, where you will recruit linear algebra again using diagonalisation (remember that from over a year ago?) to decouple systems. You then get to look at matrix exponentials and how you can take a more theoretical approach to solving vector-valued first order ODEs.

Section 2: Series Solutions
Some ODEs are a little hard to solve, so instead we guess a solution of the form of a power series and aim to solve recursion relations for the unknown coefficients. That's the idea of this section, but as mathematicians, we must deal with the many questions. Does my solutions even converge? If so, where does it converge? Does my solution genuinely solve the ODE, and if it does, is it the ONLY solution (in other words, is it THE solution)? To answer such questions, one needs Real Analysis, and while MAST20026 Real Analysis isn't a prerequisite, students who have taken it have quite an advantage since most of the analysis material will actually be familiar.

Section 3: Laplace Transforms
The Laplace transform is an incredibly powerful tool for solving many ODEs as they essentially convert derivatives into polynomials (which are way nicer)! In this section, you'll learn how to use Laplace transforms to solve ODEs and learn many theorems to help you take Laplace and inverse Laplace transforms (without any Complex Analysis). You'll also be introduced to the Heaviside step function and the Dirac delta function which are commonly used in modelling problems.

Section 4: Boundary Value Problems and Fourier Series
The difficulty of the subject begins to ramp up in this section. Here, you will look at BVPs for our favourite differential operator, the one-dimensional Laplacian and develop the theory behind Fourier series and more generally, eigenfunction expansion, which will be used extensively to solve IBVPs later on. Lots of linear algebra stuff here, so it might be good to revise some theory of inner products, eigenstuffs, vector spaces, bases, orthogonality, etc.

Section 5: Linear Partial Differential Equations
In this section, you will get to study the heat/diffusion equation, the wave equation and the Laplace equation, and learn how to solve simple enough IBVPs using techniques such as separation of variables and employing eigenfunction expansion, in what will be some very very long questions. Again, we must ask questions of existence and uniqueness, drawing on more Real Analysis and even some Vector Calculus. Towards the end of the section, you'll also get to explore these equations when circular symmetry is involved. Things get quite interesting for the wave equation and this leads nicely into Methods of Mathematical Physics, which explores Bessel functions.

Section 6: Fourier Transforms
Here, we start to look at BVPs on unbounded domains (makes sense right?) and how that leads to the motivation for the Fourier transform (more hand-wavy stuff here). In this section, you'll get to explore the similarities and differences between the Fourier and Laplace transforms (and their inverses), and understand their strengths and weaknesses in solving a variety of differential equations. You'll also get to look at Green functions and their use with convolutions. With some sneaky algebra and manipulation, Fourier transforms can also help evaluate some pretty tricky integrals.

My thoughts:
What an amazing subject! I thoroughly enjoyed this subject, and this so far has been the only subject to receive a 5 out of 5 from me. It is very well organised, I found the content to be incredibly interesting, and it has made me really excited to explore the world of applied mathematics further.

Lectures
I believe David produced the slides from scratch when he took over the subject 2016 and boy are they really well done. These should be your number one study tool. David is a great lecturer. He's pretty funny and always loves a bit of banter. David also supplies plenty of extra material including problems sets, and links to textbook exercises and readings for those who are keen. Consultation is also good to visit every once in a while.

Tutorials
Problems sheet, whiteboards, small groups. Same as always.

Assignments
The assignments are pretty standard. Easy to score high in if you put the time and effort in, but usually quite hard to get perfect in. There is always the small nuance to miss or the silly error. Check your answers thoroughly, and be careful to justify any steps that aren't obvious (being sure to correctly quote the relevant theorems). Oh yeah, and you can LaTeX your assignments if you crave the nice looking equations and typesetting like I do lol.

Exam
The exam is 3 hours long (+15 mins reading time). No calculator, but you are allowed one double-sided A4 page of ORIGINAL HANDWRITTEN NOTES (not even a photocopy). The exam is 100 marks and usually has 7-8 questions with one or two per section. Just do the past exams shown on the LMS. The structure is literally the same every time and there aren't really any surprises.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Elizawei on January 02, 2020, 01:37:09 am
Major: Neuroscience 

Third Year Subjects:
Principles of Neuroscience (NEUR30003)
Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits (NEUR30002)
Visual Neuroscience (NEUR30004)

Year of completion:
2019

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Average Mark: 83.667

Comments:
Unapologetically, I do have to admit that I picked neuroscience because of its flexibility and its reputation of being the easiest biomed major. In third year, I was involved in about 5 different committees for various clubs/organisations, alongside a hectic volunteering and part-time work schedule. When choosing my major, I knew my priority was to find one that is “crammable”, and that will get low maintenance. Neuro and HSF were the most popular majors for biomed students, and they are actually very similar with a lot of crossover. For my study plan, I applied for permission to take Visceral and Viscera Systems as part of my neuro major, as I was really keen on doing that anat core, but not so keen on doing Locomotor (the other anat core). Neuro was certainly a kind major, and offered a lot of flexibility in terms of what the other two subjects were. To take this major, you only need to take the two neuro core subjects in s1 and have free choice in s2 for the other two major subjects.

Semester 1
Neuro sem 1 was super chill, with both core subjects (principles of neuro and neurohpys) being all multiple choice, for both MST and end of sem exam. Content were hugely carried over from HSF and second year subjects, with the content really quite reasonable. The only downside to these subjects was that there were often weird facts that came up in MCQs in MSTs, and if you haven’t memorised those random points, then there’s not much you can do. Principles end of sem exam was almost identical to previous year exams, so highly recommend doing all the past exams you can find (however that may be changing that next yr :’(). If I had to choose, neurophysiology was certainly more enjoyable than principles of neuro, as I found principles to be a bit vague, as it covers a lot of philosophy, and history. Even though I did get a better score in principles in the end, neurophys was more interesting and I felt it had more relevance to what I was interested in. Lectures for both subjects were good, but some lecturers might ramble. I unfortunately never really went to lectures, but the content was manageable enough to watch on 2x speed later at home ;)

Principles of Neuroscience: 87
Neurophysiology: Neurons and Circuits: 84

Semester 2
Sem 2 passed by with a blur, and I did Viscera and Visceral and Visual Neuroscience as my major subjects. Gotta say, I did relax a bit in sem 2 (as sem 2 GPA didn’t count for med entry), and I chose visual neuroscience because I was genuinely interested. (I have heard many good things about Complex Functions, and if I needed to pick a wam-friendly subject, I would have gone for complex functions). I have realised, unfortunately, after the first MST for both subjects, that neither viscera nor visual neuro were “easy/crammable” subjects. Visual neuro gave an amazing overview over everything related to vision, and how we perceive vision in the brain. There were a lot of emphasis on the pathways, as well as the mechanisms involved in processing vision. There were 2x MCQ MSTs, which I found was fair (but copped Ls since I couldn’t cram enough content in time), and one final exam (3 hrs, with 2 hrs extended long writing). To be honest, not a fan of the long answer exam questions on the exam and came out of the exam feeling quite terrible. Similarly, I knew about 60% of the content going into the anat exam, as I realised last minute that it was impossible to cram all the blood supply, nerve supply, attachments, function for all the systems in the human body. But although viscera was my worst subject this year, it certainly was the most enjoyable and special, as we could work on cadavers. I highly recommend viscera, as it is so well coordinated and the practicals for dissection were super well led. Unfortunately, I was a terrible student and never studied enough to get 100% out of the practicals, but I still loved the subject. I feel like it’s so rare to be able to have the honour of working on a cadaver in a small group, it truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For visual neuroscience, it was super fascinating to learn about the eye, as well as some of the eye diseases and technology that was there to restore vision. The lecturers for visual were also super knowledgeable, with most of them having their own amazing research in the field. I barely made it to 20% of the lectures, but I’m sure they were super high quality and well delivered.

Viscera and visceral systems: 74
Visual Neuroscience: 78

Overall, I really enjoyed neuroscience as a major, as it was the easiest and most crammable major (for s1 at least), and it was perfect for my hectic extra-curricular schedule. It was also so interesting to learn about the visual pathways, and the foundation cores in s1 allowed me to have a minimal understanding of how the brain works. For those who identify as “crammers” or not a fan of labs/practicals, then this major is for you. If you have any more queries, please reach out to me for more questions/advice!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: gamma032 on January 05, 2020, 10:09:30 pm
Subject Code/Name: SWEN30006 Software Modelling and Design

Workload:  1-hour lecture, 3-hour workshop

Assessment: 
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  5 past exams and one practice exam provided on the LMS at the end of the semester.

Textbook Recommendation:  The course closely followed Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development (3rd Edition) by Craig Larman, 2004. An ebook version is freely available on the University Library.

The suggested readings, provided on week one, include most of the first four parts. Although the subject does not follow the order of the book, Larman's diagrammatic style and advice are repeated in lectures and tutorials. I felt I had a far better understanding of the content after reading it each week; Larman's depth and explanation style worked well for me.

Lecturers: Phillip Dart and Patanamon Thongtanunam

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments:
Although all of the subject's content is in the text, it taught me a valuable set of skills I'm sure I will use in the future. I enjoyed the projects and found the exam reasonable, though the lectures and workshops need some work.

Subject content
Software Modelling and Design (Softmod) analyses the stages of the agile software development cycle. Parts have already been briefly explored in Object Oriented Software Development. For example, software patterns, design class diagrams and object-oriented principles make notable returns.

The three main content areas are:
  • UML diagrams and documents
  • GRASP and GoF Software patterns
  • Agile processes
I think the lessons are invaluable and Phillip has deeply expanded my perspective and changed how I will approach software problems out of Uni.

Softmod has a focus on skills, not raw content. We were asked to analyze requirements, summarize, model, evaluate alternatives and justify decisions. By doing the workshops and submitting assignments, you can generate a feedback cycle and improve.

Although the paradigm seems dry, I was continually struck by the level of practicality and utility in the ideas taught. If you have the energy to try to become a better programmer, you will no doubt find the content engaging.

The code examples, workshops and projects are in Java, but there is no further discussion of its features and syntax.

Lecture
Only one hour of lecture is provided every week. Therefore, the lectures are relegated to introductions of concepts before they are explored further in workshops.

The lectures use the same ideas, case studies and diagrams as Larman's text, but are presented with context, anecdotes and Java code examples.

Workshops
The workshops are the heart of this subject. They are unique to other subjects' workshops in that they present new assessable content.

Each workshop was led by two tutors, who made a one-hour presentation before letting us complete the week's problems. The questions took me between 1 and 4 hours to finish, though some can be completed in groups. Your work had to be presented to a tutor to receive the attendance point, accounting for 1% of your grade up to a maximum of 8%.

To allow for absences and the length of the work, students were allowed to submit in the following week's workshop.

The workshop content is critical to the subject. Missing out on the cycle of practice and feedback as well as the assessable content is a huge loss, so I think you should at least review the workshop slides and attempt the problems.

I wasn't a fan of the current model. I felt the content could have been presented in the lecture instead to make the workshop less draining.

Projects
We were asked to complete two separate projects. Groups of three must be enrolled in the same workshop, so I recommend organizing a group beforehand if you want to work with someone. The same group completes both projects.

Project 1 involved a mail delivery robot. The robot's intelligence had already been coded in a simulation. We were asked to add a new function to the robot in software and complete a model of the domain, a model of our proposed software changes and a written justification of our decisions.

Similarly, project 2 was on an automated parcel pickup and delivery car. We had to provide many of the same documents and then build our solution in software. This problem was significantly more complex and made use of algorithms seen in Design of Algorithms.

The projects took us 10-20 hours of our time each, about half done independently.

I enjoyed the projects. They brought light to the content and encouraged you to step through the entire software development process. I was particularly surprised to see how differently my teammates might have solved the problem. Working on a software problem in a team was a valuable experience.

That being said, the existing code bases we were given had been reused and modified from previous years. There were unused code fragments that led to confusion within the groups.

Our team organized our code on Github and completed our diagrams together on Lucidchart. Although these technologies aren't taught, we found success with them. I've made our second project public if you'd like to take a look.

I heard that teams that did not have all members contribute to each part were penalized and there is a peer-review survey after both projects.

Exam
The exam contained a good mix of theory, modelling, and programming.

Because the focus isn't on content, we were allowed two double-sided cheats in the exam hall. For some context, here are page 1 and page 2 of mine, but I found plenty of better ones online.

Although the questions are far clearer than the workshops, it did require a strong understanding and intuition of the concepts taught in the subject. It was not enough to ROTE learn the content or rely on your cheat-sheet.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Sutanrii on January 13, 2020, 05:58:57 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2

Workload:  For each week: 4x 1-hour lecture, 1x 1-hour tutorial

Assessment:  2x Written Assignments (5% each), Mid-Semester Test (10%), Final Exam (80%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. However, Barry writes on the whiteboard which isn’t recorded, so lecture attendance is necessary (or alternatively you can borrow someone else’s notes).

Past exams available:  Yes, Final Exam 2009-2018. No short answers/solutions given, but the 2017 and 2018 Final Exam were discussed on the last two lectures.

Textbook Recommendation:  Barry's Accelerated Mathematics 2 Printed Notes, which is available at UniMelb’s Co-op. The book contains all the lecture slides and exercises with short answers and is realistically necessary.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 97

Comments:
This subject is part of the accelerated stream and covers the rest of Real Analysis and Calculus 2 (roughly 90% and 70%, respectively) that aren’t covered in its sem 1 counterpart, Accelerated Mathematics 1. Despite being a first-year subject, this subject puts a lot more emphasis on RA than Calc 2 so expect the difficulty to be of at least a second-year subject. Moreover, this subject covers the content of pretty much two subjects (although there are some overlaps) in the span of one semester so the pace will be very fast, in fact much faster than AM1.

If I were to describe this subject with one word, it would be rigour. Many computations we used to do straight away are not allowed in this subject. Nearly every step requires proper justification and any assumptions made must be stated clearly (even when doing a simple integration by substitution). Visual proofs are also pretty much worthless in this subject, so some theorems that are obvious will take about half a page to prove. One of my mates described this subject as a mathematical essay, which I think is why this subject is a hit or miss (albeit much more likely to be a miss).

I find one of Barry’s quotes to be fitting in describing this subject:
"A common emotional response to my treatment is: this stuff was so easy at school, why does Barry make it so hard? Well, the reason why I make it so hard, is either that your teachers lied, or probably more likely, they have carefully protected you from things that might be troubling. However, most of you are over 18 now, so you can deal with R-rated Mathematics"

Nonetheless, if you find the pace to be bearable and you’re willing to commit extra effort to appreciate the content, this can be a very eye-opening subject. You get to encounter numerous R-rated concepts that are crucial and interesting in mathematical analysis but are often neglected.

The topics covered in this subject are (in order):
Content
1. Sequences (RA)
You’ll learn what a sequence is and the definition of a limit of a sequence using the ε-N definition. From this definition then several common limit theorems are proven. You’ll encounter a lot of limits, fractions and inequalities here, and you must get comfortable working with them (decreasing the denominator increases the fraction, etc) as they will be used a lot throughout the subject and will help a lot for the MST and the final exam.

You’ll also learn about bounds in sequences, in particular, the supremum (least upper bound) and infimum (greatest lower bound). You’ll find several unique theorems/properties possessed by real numbers which many seem visually obvious but are damn hard to prove. Towards the end, you’ll encounter the “order of hierarchy”. Make sure to remember this by heart as they will be extremely useful in Improper Integrals and Infinite Series.

This topic was discussed in the first six lectures (which is before the last self-enroll date) and I’d say is a good representation of how rigorous this subject can get. My suggestion is that this is a good time to decide whether or not to continue if you’re trying out this subject.

2. Limits and Continuity of Functions (RA)
Similar to sequences, you’ll learn what a function is and the definition of the limit and continuity of a function, this time with the ε-δ definition. You’ll also be introduced with the first major theorem in this subject: The Intermediate Value Theorem, which again, visually obvious but not so easy to prove.

3. Differential Calculus (RA)
Remember the first principle of derivative? Well, this subject tells that the first principle doesn’t happen to be the “first principle” after all. You’ll start by defining what it truly means when a function is differentiable at a point, and from there you’ll derive the first principle and prove several common rules eg. chain rule. You’ll also be introduced with some major theorems: First and Second-Order  Mean Value Theorem, Taylor’s Theorem with Lagrange’s Remainder and L’Hôpital’s Rule.

4. Integral Calculus (RA + Calc 2)
You’ll first be taken into a journey of how the early 19th-century Mathematicians progressively attempted to find the area under a curve. Here, you’ll be introduced with the terms Riemann Sum, Upper/Lower Sum, Upper/Lower Darboux Integral and finally Riemann Integral which is the integral we learned in high school. After all that then connections are made to differential calculus, also known as the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. (Unlike in most high schools where integration was directly taught to us as the “inverse” of differentiation). This subject then gradually shifted into the Calc 2 part as you’ll learn numerous techniques of integrations.

5. Differential Equations (Calc 2)
This is probably the easiest topic as almost everything is computational. You’ll learn numerous concepts surrounding 1st/2nd order ODE and how to solve them. You’ll also touch on the application of ODEs in Mathematical Modelling: Malthusian/Logistic Population Growth Model, “Solute-Solvent Mixing” Model, Motion with Drag, and RC/RL/RLC electric circuit.

6. Improper Integral (RA)
After taking a stroll through computational ODEs, you’ll be pulled back to the rigorous side of this subject as you’ll cover this topic. This topic covers the possibilities of standard (Riemann) integral going wrong eg. integrand goes unbounded or interval of integration is infinite, and whether the integral can still exist as an improper integral or is forever a bad integral. You’ll learn various tests to determine the fate (convergence) of such integrals. Try to develop the intuition in quickly determining which convergence test to use for certain scenarios, as these questions will definitely be on the exam and are worth quite a lot.

7. Infinite Series (RA)
Ever heard of the controversial Grandi’s Series (1-1+1-1… = 1/2) or perhaps the notorious Ramanujan Summation (1+2+3+... = -1/12)? This topic starts by rigorously defining what it means when an infinite series converges, and how deplorable (or what Barry likes to call, antisocial) it is to treat infinity as a number. Similar to Improper Integral, you’ll learn various tests to investigate the convergence of a series, and it’ll be very advantageous for the exam to develop such intuition. Towards the end, you’ll encounter some known types of series: Taylor Series, Power Series, Complex Series, Fourier Series (the last two I reckon are non-examinable).

Lectures
Everything examinable on the lecture slides is in the textbook and are organised really well, so there’s no need to copy down the lecture content. However, when you read the textbook, there will be example problems in every lecture but often with no solution. This is where Barry would write down the solutions to these questions on the whiteboard during the lecture, which is not recorded and is one major downside of this subject.

Aside from that, Barry is an old fashioned yet fantastic lecturer. He has taught this subject since 2009 and his experience does show in how well he explains the concepts. He often uses simple analogies or hand gestures which I find helpful. He shows a lot of passion for this subject, and I generally find his explanations and his quotes to be intriguing. If you’re curious about how Barry explains stuff, here’s a video where Barry was interviewed about the Indian JEE exam: https://youtu.be/0h_x13xHjVs?t=376

Due to a large amount of content covered, it is crucial to stay up to date with the content by reading the textbook after each lecture and immediately come to consultation sessions when in doubt. Otherwise, it’ll be very difficult to catch up on the content since there are four lectures per week. Just as Barry said, “If you do no work in your time in this subject for about three consecutive days, you will be completely destroyed.”

Tutorials / Problem Solving
A standard maths tute. You’ll sit in groups of 3 or 4 and solve the exercise questions in the textbook which you can actually do beforehand. The tutor will go around the class to check on your workings and give feedback. It’d also be wise to use this time to ask your tutor if you have any problems with the content.

Assignments
There are only two written assignments throughout the semester but they are very lengthy and worth 50 marks each. Barry recommended not spending over 8 hours on each assignment, although personally, I spent around 12-15 hours. The questions seemed intimidating at first, but after giving some thoughts I don’t find them to be too bad. The 1st assignment covers topic 1-2 (100% RA), while the 2nd assignment covers topic 3-5 (25% RA, 75% Calc2). The 1st assignment involves more analysis and proofs with limits, while the 2nd assignment involves more computations with ODEs (although the integrations are very nasty). I think most find the 2nd assignment to be easier but I prefer the 1st one as I’m more comfortable working with proofs and I dislike working with long and nasty algebra.

Also, make sure that all notations have been used properly as the markers are very scrupulous about that. Getting one simple misuse of notation is like bringing water through airport screening and will be an instant deduction. “Please, we don’t want any notational abuse. If you abuse notation, I will abuse you” - Barry

Mid-Semester Test
The MST will cover topic 1-3 up to the Mean Value Theorem, so it will be purely RA. Furthermore, it will be very fast-paced as the duration is only 45 minutes. Time management is paramount here. Fortunately, a lot of marks are allocated to simply stating definitions or theorems, so you can save a lot of time for the harder questions. Just be sure to include the important keywords, or memorise word by word if necessary. I lost 4 marks (out of 40, which equates to 1% of the final grade) simply because I didn’t include a few keywords I thought was unnecessary/obvious. Also, it’d be a good idea to familiarise with the example and exercise problems in the textbook as Barry may put some of them in the test.

Final Exam
Ok, this one’s definitely scary. A 3-hour, 80% weighted exam covering two subjects (one being a 2nd year subject), and to make matters worse, Barry persists that no formula/cheat sheet is given/allowed.

However, I think that the exam was fairly doable if you have understood the content and done several past papers. Just like the MST, there’ll be a lot of “state the definition/theorem” questions and a couple of problems taken directly from the textbook, both are very handy to save time. Also, roughly 35% of the total mark is allocated to solving ODEs or integrals. They should be straightforward so it’d be great to work on your agility/techniques in integrating and in dealing with nasty algebra, and beware of miscalculations.

The scarier part is probably where you need to apply appropriate convergence tests to random improper integrals and series. This is purely analysis and will require more thinking as there are many tests to choose from. But after doing enough exercise questions you can notice some kind of pattern and develop the intuition to solve them instantly.

Conclusion
Due to the fast-paced nature of this subject and the four lectures per week (where attendance is necessary), it can get overwhelming trying to keep up with the content. A substantial amount of effort and commitment will be required through consistent studying and attending lectures in person. Instead of taking this subject, you can actually take Calc 2 and RA separately and you’ll still cover the same content without having to struggle too much. Or if you have no interest in doing RA, it’s definitely better to just take Calc 2.

However, if you’re up for a challenge, completing this subject can be a rewarding experience, especially as a first-year. As far as I know, this subject can also replace both Calc 2 and RA as a prerequisite to numerous other subjects, which I think is pretty cool.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on February 20, 2020, 11:27:43 am
Subject Code/Name:  ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics

Workload:  2x2hr lectures and 2x1hr tutorials a week for 6 weeks.

Assessments:  Online midsem test (10%), 2 x 2-Part Assignments (10% each), Final Exam (60%), Tutorials (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes - plenty, but none are fully relevant to current course, and many do not come with answers. There is however a sample Section A exam released at the end of the teaching period on LMS.

Textbook Recommendation: Microeconomics, 7th or 8th Edition, by Rubinfield and Pindyck. It's not an absolute necessity.

Lecturer(s):  Svetlana Danilkina

Year & Semester of Completion:  2020 Summer Term

Rating:  5 out of 5 (objectively 3 out of 5, but +2 for Svetlana's presence)

Your Mark/Grade:  H1 (86)

Comments:
Intermediate Microeconomics is the second-year continuation of ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics, which is also a prerequisite. The 7 topics of inter-micro are:

   1. Consumer and producer theory
   2. Competitive markets and monopolies
   3. Partial and general equilibrium
   4. Oligopoly and duopoly
   5. Game Theory
   6. Choice under uncertainty
   7. Economics of information

Lectures

2 x 2hr lectures weekly. Svetlana, the lecturer, is highly engaging. Occasionally she goes off-track to rant about socialism (she opened the first lecture with a passionate 30 minute monologue on why socialism failed) so if you have radical left-wing political views here's your trigger warning. She is a great lecture and I enjoy her rambles.

Lectures are incredibly content heavy and fast paced. Each lecture also has a short online quiz on LMS (which Svetlana calls "nobody expects the Russian in-quiz-ition"). It doesn't contribute to your grade, but gives you a good revision of the content, and also mimics the style of questions in Section A of the exam. In the final weeks, Svetlana re-uploads all lecture quizzes for more practice.

Tutorials

2 x 1hr tutorials weekly. Just like previous ECON subjects, pre-tutorial work are uploaded to the LMS and must be completed prior to class. They account for 2% of your grade and are checked randomly 4 times throughout the teaching period. Tutorial participation accounts for 3%, and the final 5% comes from attendance.

In-tutorial work are also uploaded to the LMS prior to class however you do not have to complete them before. It's good to have a look through the questions prior to the tute anyway just so that you won't get lost when your tutor goes through the sheet.

Assessments

Midsemester test: Worth 10%. 1 hour, 10 questions (mostly multiple choice). The MST only covers consumer theory.

2 x Assignments: Worth 10% each and are both done individually. Both are split into two parts - part A (10 marks) is an online test similar to the MST except you get multiple attempts (your highest attempt taken as final score); part B (20 marks) is just like your average intro micro/macro assignment.

Final Exam: Worth 60% and is split into 3 parts. Part A (20 marks) is multiple choice. Part B (20 marks) short answer, and Part C (40 marks), extended response. For Parts B and C, they both contain 3 questions, and you pick two do complete each. I thought the summer 2019 exam was definitely on the difficult side, even though according to my tutor Svetlana is known for writing quite straightforward questions.

Joke Competition: There is a bonus assessment in the form of a joke competition -  seriously. Of course, there are rules - aside from the obvious ones like plagiarism, the joke must also be either directly relevant to the course material (for example, no jokes about GDP as that's macroeconomics), or alternatively you can poke fun at socialism. Participation is optional, but it does give you a bonus mark if you choose to do it.

Final Thoughts

I loved intermediate micro and found it much more enjoyable than intro micro/macro. For non-economics majors, I highly suggest taking intermediate micro as elective/breadth if you have already done ECON10004.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Eric Patrick on February 23, 2020, 05:57:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

Workload: 1 × 2 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: practical-based individual assessment 10%, group assessment 10% (quiz 3% + memorandum 7%), tutorial assessment 10% (4 × examinable quizzes 4% + tutorial attendance and participation 6%), final examination 70% (with hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, but not quite helpful.

Past Exams Available: There are seven exams provided, but sample exams only.

Textbook Recommendation: There is one required textbook, but not necessary to buy it.

Lecturer(s): Noel Boys

Year & Semester of Completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Your Mark/Grade: 89

Comments:

1. Lecture
Noel Boys is a great lecturer, although I went to only two lectures for the whole semester. His teaching style is extremely enthusiastic such that the lectures, although with somewhat boring accounting stuff, are overall entertaining. Lecture recording is not quite helpful for this subject, since everything is clearly listed and explained on the lecture slides. I seldom watched the recording during the semester (except for rare circumstances such that a particular word might not be clear enough in explaining the idea); instead, I simply looked through the lecture slides and took notes simultaneously.

2. Tutorial
Fortunately, my tutor Alisha is nice and can explain the knowledge clearly and concisely. In order for us to participate in the tutorial, she usually came up with various group discussion topics and walked around to see how each discussion group was going. At the end of each tutorial, she would back up all important knowledge and give a personal prediction on what might be examinable based on her past marking experience. Sometimes, she failed to back up everything within the time limit; in this case, she would kindly send us an email with detailed explanations of the topic.

3. Assessments
The computer- and practical-based individual assessment requires us to analyse a company's transactions and prepare a transaction analysis worksheet and two financial statements on Excel. This assessment should be overall straightforward with some tricks involved (eg. formatting issues). Although it is a bit hard to get a full mark due to the tricks, most students find it relatively easy to get a high enough mark.

The group assessment is the most difficult part of this subject (personally speaking), since I am not good at doing any kind of group task indeed. The start point of this assessment is calculating some ratios as a group; after that, the group needs to answer some quiz questions in terms of interpreting the ratios, and a memorandum (actually a report) should be written with more detailed ratio analysis provided. The difficulty of the quiz component is far beyond my expectation, since most questions are really ambiguous. For example, one question asks whether a 3% increase in Inventory Turnover is insignificant, moderate or significant. This is very hard to say since there is no benchmark provided in the lectures. The memorandum is marked with a rubric, and remember, most assignments with a rubric in UMEL can be tough, since it is really a subjective issue in determining the quality. My recommendation is to analyse one point in detail rather than include many points with on-the-surface analysis.

Tutorial assessment is a reward and most students can get a full mark (or almost). Do not rush when doing the examinable quizzes and try to get most questions correct (by searching the lecture slides or even asking your friends directly). Try to ATTEND every single tutorial, and even if you do not speak a single word for the whole semester, you can still get almost 5 out of 6 in this component (if your tutor is not so strict)! I feel sorry now since I missed one tutorial and was late for almost every tutorial hence lost 1.5 out of 6 in terms of tutorial attendance and participation (the easiest mark), and ARA (89) is the only subject that I failed to get a 90+ in my first year.

The final exam is not as horrible as you may think now. Since I lost so many marks in terms of the group assessment, I was a bit depressed during the SWOTVAC and did not prepare for the ARA exam carefully (even did not know how to prepare an Income Statement in the right format). However, the overall mark for this subject is far above my expectation due to an excellent performance in the final exam. The key point is that, for ARA and future accounting subjects, the time may be a bit limited in the final exam; do not hesitate and think about what to write, just write everything you know, since redundant answers are not punished. Allocate your time reasonably for each exam question; if you spend too much time on a single question, just skip it and move on! The sample exams may be useful, but since I did not look at them at all, I cannot provide recommendations on how to utilise them.

Overall, this is a great subject, especially for those with accounting background prior to entering university. Enjoy it and wish all the best for your university life!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:43:01 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10002 Principles of Finance

Workload: one 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Online individual assignment: 10%, MST: 20%, Tutorial participation: 10%, Final exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Two sample exams with answers were provided

Textbook Recommendation: No need for that

Lecturer(s): Asjeet Lamba

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 91

Comments:
POF is sometimes deemed the easiest commerce subject in level 1 and is widely regarded as a WAM booster by people from other disciplines. Well, it is true that POF is rather easy in terms of the maths (or more precisely arithmetics) involved, which explains its popularity among science students. When it comes to theories, however, POF can sometimes get a bit tricky.

Lectures:
In POF, most stuff you’ll need for assignments and exams are written on lecture slides. But I do think it’s quite important to listen carefully to recordings from week 5 on because that’s when theories start getting more and more confusing. You may even have to google some of them and teach yourself a bit due to the ambiguous wording of slides and even more ambiguous explanations from the lecturer.

Tutorials:
You will be required to complete a set of pre-tut questions on a worksheet every week, which will contribute to your participation marks. But don’t worry if you’re not sure about your answers because the marking of participation depends solely on the submission of works instead of quality. As for the tutorials themselves, my suggestion is to particularly focus on theory questions. Your tutor’s explanation may serve as an elucidation of the lecture. What’s more, keep taking notes during the tutorial as the solutions posted on lms would be incredibly brief.

Online assignment:
This assessment is called an assignment, but it’s essentially an online test, which is required to be completed at a designated time. Despite being a test under time constraint, it’s actually a giveaway of 10 marks because the question set will be released beforehand. So you’ll have enough time to complete it and discuss your answers with others. As a result, losing marks for this test should be a rarity.

MST:
The MST also has 14 MCQs, so one hour should be more than enough. All questions were purely based on calculations and no theory was tested. It may seem rather easy to get close to full marks in this test but you really have to read the questions carefully to avoid making silly mistakes (I made two although I was super confident before the test)

Exam:
One important thing to note is that sample exams are not indicative of the exam AT ALL as the actual exam would be far more calculation-based, with most questions involving only pressing your calculator. So don’t be intimidated by the overwhelming amount of theory questions in sample exams. As far as I know, they haven’t been updated for years.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:44:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1

Workload: four 1-hour lectures, one 1-hour practical, and one 1-hour computer lab per week

Assessment: Six assignments (three online, three written): 3x2%+3x3%=15%, Computer lab test: 5%, Final exam: 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Past exams from 2009 to 2018 were available, with brief answers provided for 2017 and 2018.

Textbook Recommendation: No need for textbook

Lecturer(s): Alexandru Ghitza

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments:
AM1 covers all topics in Linear Algebra (with some extension) and multivariate functions in Calculus 2. Having looked at LA’s past exam papers, my conclusion is that AM1 is not too much harder than LA. So don’t get intimidated by the ‘accelerated’ in its name (AM2 is a different case though).

Lectures:
The pace of this subject is moderate. Alex always took us through every example question step by step, so there shouldn’t be any confusion as long as you concentrate. Alex also put all his writing into the recording, so missing a few lectures wouldn’t be a problem.

Practicals:
Just like in other maths subjects, you are given a handout of questions which you will try to solve on whiteboards in a group and show the answers to your tutor.

Computer labs:
Scheduled to be right after your practical, in the computer lab you’ll learn to solve problems using knowledge of linear algebra on MATLAB, a mathematical modelling software. At the start of the class, you get a booklet of MATLAB demonstrations and questions (not necessarily relevant to what you have learned). And you’re free to leave whenever you wish.

Assignments:
The three online assignments should be a breeze as ALL questions are fill-in-the-blank. What’s more, you get three attempts for every question. So although you cannot check your answers with others (everyone got a different set of questions if I remember correctly), you should be expecting full marks for this part. Regarding written assignments, I personally think there weren’t any hard questions, except one which was excluded in marking.

Lab test:
The MATLAB test took place towards the end of the semester. As far as I can remember, most questions were rather simple to anyone who had done some revision. There were indeed a few tricky ones and you may even run out of time before you finish. But it’s worth only 5% anyway and those easy questions should set you above 3/5. So don’t worry if you don’t have any programming experience.

Exam:
The exam was rather fair with a large proportion of questions resembling those from past exams. That being said, there were a few questions that required in-depth thinking. Make sure you’re really familiar with the more generic question types so that you can take some time to contemplate the hard ones. It is also noteworthy that there could be questions on theory explanations and applications. So don’t miss out on that in your revision.






Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:46:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

Workload: one 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Online individual assignment: 10%, Group assignment: 10%, online tests: 1x4=4%, Tutorial participation: 6%, Final exam: 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Past exams were provided, with questions from two or three exams rearranged into seven files

Textbook Recommendation: No need for that

Lecturer(s): Noel Boys

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 89

Comments:
As an introduction to accounting, ARA necessarily involves a huge amount of rote learning. Due to such a dreary nature, even a lecturer as hilarious as Noel cannot manage to vivify this subject –– Oftentimes he had no choice but to read off from the slides.

Lectures:
Lectures are generally easy to follow as not much thinking is required in ARA –– it’s all memorising with only a tiny bit of flexibility (if at all). For every lecture there should be around 50, 60 slides (with every slide filled with words), most of which you’ll have to remember. The only upside about this subject is probably the lecturer, Noel, who occasionally tells jokes that lighten the lectures up a bit. But overall, lectures are rather boring and listening to them are not much different from reading the slides (for about half of the lectures what I did was to read the slides first and only turn to the recording when I ran into something confusing).

Tutorials:
ARA tutorials were a bit inefficient as the pace was incredibly slow. Also, the questions in tutorials were either too basic or irrelevant to the exam. So there’s really no need to pay much attention in tutorials.

Individual assignment:
The individual assignment consists of two parts. The first part is a worksheet, whose solutions will be given to you after the deadline (for part one). You are then required to make a balance sheet and an income statement based on the corrected worksheet. Both of the two parts are rather straightforward and not that difficult. One thing to be particularly careful of is the assignment’s strict format requirements, which can cost you quite a lot of marks (trust me it really does). If you don’t make any mistakes in formatting, full marks are definitely achievable.

Group assignment:
The group assignment has two parts as well and it’s done in a group of three or four. Part A involves making vertical and horizontal analyses and calculating some ratios. This part shouldn’t take too long as it’s purely mechanical. Also every group got the same data so it’s quite easy to compare your answers with other groups. Surprisingly, however, this part wasn’t assigned any weight at all according to our final mark for the assignment. But still, don’t be too offhand with it as the marking scheme is subject to changes. After your group submits part A, every group member will have to do an online MCQ quiz based on the figures you got (the quiz has 3 questions for a group of 4 and 4 questions for a group of 3, so that’s 12 questions in total). This contributes 3% to your total mark and is marked on a group basis (i.e. all 12 questions will count towards you mark). Then comes part B, in which you’ll write a 1000-word report for a different company than the one in part A. The marking for part B is stunningly harsh (most groups I know got under 80). But it’s not really a problem as it’s worth only 7%.

Online tests:
Four online tests will take place throughout the semester. Every test has around 20 to 30 MCQs and are mostly rather basic. You should be able to get most of them right even without revision.

Exam:
Despite the overwhelming amount of theories in ARA, a large part of the exam was on preparation of financial statements (and probably worksheet as well) and calculations. As the calculations in ARA only involve simple arithmetics, you should aim at full marks for this part if you’ve known all formulae by heart. For financial statements, unfortunately, there was only one practice question provided. So you’ve got to make good use of that. As far as I’m concerned, the key to this part is the classification of items. If you could get that right, you would have got approximately 40 marks already (based on the exam I had). So my advice is to make every effort to know where exactly every single item belongs to. The rest of the exam is on theories. As mentioned before, ARA mainly entails rote learning. And if you do spend a decent amount of time on memorising definitions and figuring out how to apply them, these conceptual questions should appear straightforward as well.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:47:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Online MCQ quiz: 5%, Assignment 1: 10%, Assignment 2: 15%, Tutorial participation: 10%, Final exam: 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Four past exams with detailed answers were provided.

Textbook Recommendation: Get one if you’re bewildered by the ambiguity in this subject

Lecturer(s): Phillip McCalman and Tom Wilkening

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95

Comments:
For someone who's done economics in high school, over half of the content in Micro should appear rather familiar. But one important caveat is that the topics in Micro you reckon you’re familiar with might not be exactly the same as what you learned before — Uni-level Micro can sometimes be far more in-depth in terms of quantitative reasoning.

Lectures:
The difficulty and pace of lectures in Micro really depend on your prior knowledge of both economics and maths. Those who’ve done economics before and are good at maths are likely to digest lecture slides faster and more easily.

Tutorials:
At the start of every tut you will be given a worksheet. Your tutor will firstly take you through relevant concepts for each question and then give you some time to work on it yourself, after which the solution will be shown and explained. Pre-tuts are done online. I’m not sure whether they’ll count towards tutorial participation, but I’d suggest you do all of them to secure the easy 10 marks.

Online quiz:
In my year there were only eight questions in total in the online test. But considering that the quiz takes place only a few weeks into the semester, many people might not have gained a good grasp of this subject. Added to that the questions can be quite tricky. So don’t underestimate it just because it’s all MCQs.

Assignments:
Both assignments are done individually. There’s a weird mismatch between the difficulty of questions and the marks you get. Most questions are much harder than the exam, with some requiring self-teaching (e.g. partial derivatives in my semester) and some ambiguously worded. As long as you put some effort into the assignment, however, a decent mark is guaranteed. Most people I know got over 90% for both assignments.

Exam:
You should be able to find a common pattern after scrutinising all past exams provided. But there’s no guarantee that the actual exam will follow that pattern. The exam I had, for example, had a much stronger focus on maths than any of the past exams




Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:51:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Group assignments: 2x10%=20%, MST: 10%, Final exam: 70% (no marks allocated to tutorial participation)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Two past exam papers and one sample exam, with brief answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: Absolutely no need for a textbook as everything you need will be taught in lectures

Lecturer(s): Shuanming Li

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 90

Comments:
Despite being named Introduction to actuarial studies, it’s actually not a compulsory subject for actuarial students. But it’s been highly recommended by the actuarial department and past students as it’ll give you a solid foundation for level 2 actuarial subjects (I shall find out next semester). And for students from other disciplines, this subject might be a good choice if you are good at maths.

Lectures:
A major upside of this subject is its clarity as it’s one of the most (if not THE most) maths-based subjects in commerce at level 1. So ambiguity should not be expected. Also, almost everything you’ll need for your assessments would be put on lecture slides (I say almost because answers to some example questions would only be shown in recordings). Some students were complaining about the lecturer’s accent. Well it’s true that he had an accent but, trust me, you’ll quickly get used to it. And on top of that, his accent wouldn’t really affect understanding. So why bother being picky about that? I mean, how often can you get a lecturer who can always get things across and puts everything on the slides?


Tutorials: Tutorials are basically pointless. First of all, there’s no participation marks. Moreover, detailed answers to all questions in tutorials would be posted on lms at the end of every week.

Assignments:
Both assignments were rather easy, either involving simple calculations or basic spreadsheeting. Added to that they are done in a group of 4. Some moderate effort and double-check would suffice to get your group full marks.

MST:
A sample exam and a past exam were provided, whose difficulty was beyond my expectation. But the MST in my year was relatively easy, with most people I know scoring around 90%. Regardless of the difficulty, you really have to be alert to the time limit. With only 45 minutes available, you can’t afford to get stuck on any question. So make sure you not only have understood all concepts and simple derivations but also are able to solve questions quickly.

Exam:
Sample and past exams are highly indicative of the actual exam. However only final answers will be given, so you’ll have to ask your tutor or lecturer for detailed explanations. My tip for the exam is: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE IT. Admittedly a large part of the exam simply involves applying formulae and thus doesn’t require much thinking. But a weird thing is: quite a lot of marks could be taken out for unknown reasons (could be missing steps I guess). When I saw my mark, I thought the exam got scaled down, but it then turned to be the other way round.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:51:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Two online quizzes: 2x5%=10%, Two assignments :2x10%=20%, Tutorial participation: 10%, Final exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Three past exams from 2016 to 2018 were available, with detailed answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: It might be a good idea to get one as some topics may lack clarity

Lecturer(s): Nahid Khan and Lawrence Uren

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 91

Comments:
Compared with Micro, Macro has a stronger focus on theories. So take some time to figure out the logical reasoning for every topic.

Lectures:
The pace in Macro is just as slow as that in Micro. There wasn't much content in every lecture as Lawrence would sometimes go into detail on a really simple idea or derivation. In the meantime, however, there was a lot of ambiguity in his explanations, which necessitated the reading of textbooks or searching online. A highlight of lectures was a comprehensive final revision of all major topics –– different topics were reviewed in the last lecture of each of the four streams.

Tutorials:
Macro tutorials have basically the same structure as Micro, in which you are handed a worksheet at the start and given some time to think about each question before your tutor walks you through them. There are pre-tuts as well but my tutor stopped checking them from around week 5. You’ll get 10 out of 10 for participation as long as you attend all tutorials. If you really want to make sure you don’t lose marks for tutorials, do the pre-tuts.

Online tests:
Online quizzes were generally easy, with a few hard questions and some weird ones on non-examinable topics. Most people I know got close to full marks.

Assignments:
In Macro, you get to choose whether you’ll do the assignments alone or in a team (teammates limited to in-tutorial). Most, if not all, questions were pretty generic and required more copying off from lectures than original thinking. Added to that marking was as lenient as Micro’s.  So the assignments should be a breeze if you’ve understood everything from relevant lectures.

Exam:
The exam has 15 1-mark MCQs and SAQ of 45 marks grouped under three topics. MCQs in my exam were a bit tricky, which was partly due to their ambiguous wording. For SAQs, my suggestion is to focus on topics with models, which you’ll probably have to sketch in the exam. The pattern of questions can be somewhat inferred from past exams, but there’s no guarantee that the exam in your semester is not an anomaly. The exam I did, for example, had two questions worth 9 marks in total on a case study which was barely even touched on, despite the fact that all SAQs from the three past exam papers were largely generic.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:52:49 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2

Workload: four 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour practical per week

Assessment: Two written assignments: 2x5%=10%, MST: 10%, Final exam: 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but whiteboard writing is not captured

Past exams available: Loads of past exam papers available from around 2009 to 2018 (but only the ones in recent years would be relevant), with NO answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: The yellow book written by Barry

Lecturer(s): Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:
This is probably one of the hardest subjects in year 1 (according to Barry himself) as it essentially covers both Calculus 2 and Real Analysis (it can replace both Cal 2 and Real Analysis as a prerequisite). Added to that AM2 digs deeper into some topics (especially those Barry is passionate about). So get prepared for a punishing workload. There is no question booklet in AM2 and all practice questions are from the yellow textbook written by Barry himself. And the fact that not all practice questions are provided answers can make the learning process in AM2 particularly arduous. In our mid-semester subject survey, no one rated the pace ‘slow’ or the difficulty ‘easy’. This really shows how challenging AM2 is considering that most of the cohort were maths, physics, and actuarial students with a lot of chancellor scholars among them. Unless you are doing a maths related degree or have a strong passion and aptitude for maths, particularly mathematical rigor and proof, I would NOT recommend doing this subject.

Lectures:
Barry is a fantastic lecturer who vivifies seemingly dreary concepts by making witty comments on a regular basis. Respected and loved by all students, he received an ovation which lasted a minute at the end of the course. He is also known for his undisguised preference for mathematical analysis over things like calculus techniques. So you can tell this subject will be heavily skewed towards its analysis part. In fact, what gets expanded on in Calculus 2 like is oftentimes only touched on in AM2 (especially integration techniques!!). As a result, some extra effort is more than necessary when you are studying such topics. Another unique feature of AM2 is that Barry writes EVERYTHING on the whiteboard and DOES NOT record it. So you either have to attend every lecture physically and take notes or get those notes from trustworthy mates (by trustworthy I mean those who can take quality notes). There is also a third option if you’re skilled in dictation by any chance (use it as a last resort, trust me it’s really time-consuming).

Practicals:
Practicals are probably the only way for you to get detailed explanations of textbook exercises and feedback on your working (unless you go to consultations on a regular basis, which I never did). So make sure you clearly lay out your working on the whiteboard so that your tutor will be able to provide valuable feedback on it. And in order to do that, you’d better do some revision before every tutorial (attempting a few questions is even better)

Assignments:
I got the lowest mark I’d ever got in my first assignment (73% for your information) and most of the marks I lost were for sloppy notations and proofs, which came off as a bit of a shock –– no subject I did before had such an emphasis on mathematical rigor. I did much better in the second assignment as I was gradually getting the hang of it. An important piece of advice I’d give regarding the two assignments is to carefully go through the solutions provided, which are probably the most detailed ones you’ll get in this subject, and reflect on your mistakes and potential room for improvement because these solutions are to some extent indicative of the marking scheme for the final exam.

MST:
The MST in my year took place at lecture 23 and covered the first 18 lectures (with l’Hopital’s rule being lecture 19, you can see how nasty the test was gonna be). The test was 45 minutes long and no sample tests were available, so you’d expect it to be challenging. Fairly speaking though, most questions shouldn’t be a problem except a few tricky ones of course. If you’re not aiming at full marks, my suggestion is to ignore the hard ones and get all easy ones correct to secure an 8 out of 10.

Exam:
Difficult though AM2 might be, the final exam is actually not that intimidating. Half of the exam is overlapped with Cal 2. This part should be a breeze  given that you’ve managed to follow along through the semester. Barry did not mention the overlap with Real Analysis (as far as I can remember). But after comparing past exams, I reckon at least a quarter of the final exam is from the Real Analysis exam. Anyway, the analysis part of the exam would be much harder than the Cal 2 part, with quite a few tricky questions that require some in-depth thinking. But still, a large proportion of analysis questions are pretty generic. Overall I think more than 80% of the exam shouldn’t be a problem IF you’ve thoroughly understood all topics and on that basis memorised all theorems and formulae (you have to do that since there’s no formula sheet, otherwise you’ll have to derive them). An important tip for the AM2 exam is that EVERYTHING, except the lecture introducing complex analysis, can appear on your exam. And it is not useful at all to try to summarise a pattern from past exams. Before the exam in 2019, for instance, the last topic (power series) had almost never been tested, yet it constituted about 10% of the actual exam. It is also noteworthy that answers to the past exams would not be provided in a direct way –– Barry prefers to go over them in the last two lectures (and still he won’t present final answers to you so you’ll have to check with your peers). If you haven’t finished your revision before the last two lectures, I’d suggest that you ditch the two lectures and get notes from others. In that way you’d be able to take mock exams during the swot vac when you’re more prepared.




Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on February 23, 2020, 08:53:48 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10002 Introductory Financial Accounting

Workload: one 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Online quiz 1: 2%, Online quiz 2: 3%, Individual online assignment: 15%, Two random tutorial exercises: 2x3%=6%, Tutorial participation: 4%, Final exam: 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Four past exams from 2017 to 2019 semester 1 were available, with detailed answers provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Like most other commerce subjects, lecture slides are well enough.

Lecturer(s): Warren Mckeown

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 semester 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:
With more focus on comprehension, IFA requires much less rote learning than ARA. That being said, the time spent on this subject should be no less. But IFA is definitely far more enjoyable if you’re good with numbers.

Lectures:
The pace of lectures in this subject, like ARA, is rather slow. However, some decent effort is definitely needed in order to fully grasp the concepts and methods you learn. Warren managed to put everything across with great clarity and lecture slides were well structured. This should be a huge bonus for those torn by the ambiguities and contradictory concepts in ARA. And if you’re worrying about what topics are examinable and have no idea where to start your revision towards the end of the semester, Warren stated EXPLICITLY what would and would not be on the exam in the revision lecture. This was really helpful to me as the few most tedious topics were thrown out, which saved me heaps of time.

Tutorials:
IFA tutorials are, so to speak, not of much use. At least that’s the case with mine. There was a selection of exercises from the pre-tut question sheet to be finished before every tutorial, which my tutor never checked. Almost all questions were numerical, so you’re guaranteed to get them right as long as you’ve fully understood the lecture and haven’t made any careless mistakes. Tutorials were predominantly in the form of teamwork, in which you would discuss pre-tut questions with your teammates and sometimes write on the whiteboard. Usually too much time was assigned to every problem. Added to that my group always went through the question really fast as our answers were pretty much the same. So most of the time we were just chit chatting, waiting for other groups to finish. After that, my tutor did not provide explanations. Instead, she would ask every group to share their answers with the class. And the only thing you’ll get is just the final answers unless you ask for extra illustrations. What is more, at the end of every week, detailed solutions to all pre-tut questions would be provided, which rendered tutorials even more meaningless.

Online quizzes:
Make sure that you’re familiar with everything from relevant lectures before you click start, especially the second one. The first quiz (2%) was rather easy, in which I had plenty of time to check my answers against lecture slides. The second one (3%), however, was much harder. And I felt a bit pressed for time as I didn't do any revision before the quiz. But you shouldn’t worry too much about them. At the end of the day, they’re only worth 5% in total. It is also noteworthy that a few questions could be on non-examinable topics. In such cases, just follow what the lecturer says.

Online assignment:
This is a 15% individual assignment in which you’ll need to use an accounting app called Xero to record transactions from invoices provided and produce income statements and balance sheets. The assignment includes two parts. In the first part, everyone gets the same invoices, so you can compare answers with your mates to ensure you get full marks. Invoices in the second part would differ from person to person. If you’re majoring in accounting, I’d recommend you to take some time to figure out everything about the app because obviously you’ll encounter something similar in your future study. For those doing it as an elective, especially aspiring actuaries, which I myself am, a quick tip is to skip all formalities and focus on the numbers only. If you did that, the assignment would come off as much simpler.

Participation and random tutorial exercises:
Your participation mark should be a solid 4 out of 4 as long as you go to every tutorial. Random tutorial exercises are simply two questions picked from the textbook by the tutor and they should be a breeze compared with online quizzes. If you’re unsure about your answers, just double-check with your tutorial groupmates and then you’ll be well set for full marks.

Exam:
The exam is half theory and half practical. There are 200 marks on the exam paper, which is because Warren doesn’t want to give half marks (not really sure about that). In terms of difficulty, the exam was rather fair except a 20 mark question asking us to identify for ten scenarios related concepts and provide explanations. The real problem with the exam is time. I finished the exam only about 5 minutes early, which was the slowest among all subjects I did last semester. My advice for revision is to focus on past papers as they offer a lot of insight into the actual exam. If you scrutinise every one of them, you’ll notice some types of questions that appear quite frequently. Make sure you’re super familiar with them so that you can save some time to ponder on the harder questions in the exam.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Eric Patrick on February 23, 2020, 10:30:37 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics

Workload: 2 × 1 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: quiz 5%, assignment 1 10%, assignment 2 15%, tutorial attendance and participation 10%, final examination 60% (with hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, and can be crucial to learn this subject well.

Past Exams Available: There are four past exam papers provided.

Textbook Recommendation: It is still not mandatory to purchase the textbook (like many other commerce subjects), but might be useful since some explanations in the lecture slides are not clear enough.

Lecturer(s): Tom Wilkening

Year & Semester of Completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 3.0/5.0

Your Mark/Grade: 91

Comments:

1. Lecture
Overall, Tom is a good lecturer. There are two lecture streams in this semester with two different lecturers. Compared with the other lecturer whose lectures were regarded as the "most boring class for the entire semester" by one of my friends, Tom's lectures were more intellectually rich and entertaining. He would add some interesting cases inside the lecture slides instead of plainly talking about the theories and diagrams for the whole class. The problem is with Tom's pattern of speech. He frequently rushed in the lectures and could not make his pronunciation and expression clear whenever the lecture content was overloaded and/or time was limited. However, I would reckon that I was able to make sense of his logic when I spent some time listening to the recording. As long as you can get adapted to his way of teaching, listening to Tom's lectures should be a valuable experience.

2. Tutorial
My tutor for this subject is a bit incompetent (hence I cannot and do not want to remember his name). There were at least two times in the semester such that he forgot to bring the tutorial sheets to the class and aimlessly explained the questions on the whiteboard which made no sense at all! However, even though there was nothing to look at, he still required students to discuss the "questions" as a group and blamed us for not being passionate and participative. What the hell should we discuss about? Due to these facts, I did not go to two tutorials and lost 2 out of 10 for tutorial attendance and participation. I also found out that he sometimes failed to explain the questions accurately and even failed to recognise his mistake hence correct it. This can be really misleading since a lot of tutorial questions are highly related to exam questions with similar styles. For me, the tutorial sheets were not useful resources for preparing the final exam, and I did not perform well in the exam as a result. For students who have a nice tutor, tutorial for this subject can be vital such that you should prioritise the revision of tutorial questions rather than going through the lecture slides at first.

3. Assessments
For most (commerce) students, the microeconomics quiz is the first piece of assessment that you will have during the university career, thus this quiz may not be such straightforward as you think (like what we have prior to university). The quiz questions are mostly case-based, so you should not only familiarise yourself with the pertinent knowledge but also analyse the cases correctly to choose the right answers. There are eight questions in total with a 25 minute time limit; however, I reckon that this time limit is not as sufficient as you think, since some cases can be really tricky. Overall, it is hard to get all answers correct, but the average should not be very low; after all, this is a MCQ and you can discuss the questions with your fellow students - a good start point for university assessments.

The two individual assignments are my favourite part of this subject. Indeed, they are a bit time-consuming, especially when we need to use PowerPoint to draw the graphs (very inconvenient); but the reward for such effort is fascinating - both assignments were marked out of 60 and I have never seen any of my friends who got a grade below 52. The fact is that there are correct answers for each of the assignment questions (mostly calculation-based), so you can check your answers with others to make sure they are correct. There are also no formatting issues or any similar (horrible) requirements, so marks are awarded for correct answers only.

In terms of tutorial attendance and participation, I cannot give any recommendations since my tutor is awkward as mentioned above. Overall, this ought to be an easy mark to get.

The final exam for this subject is a perfect reflection of how you are going for the semester. Although the MCQ part of the final exam can still be tricky like the MCQ assessment, students may not struggle with the short- and long-answer questions, since every question should have appeared in the lecture slides. As long as you listen to each lecture carefully and understand the main topics, there is no excuse not to work out these final exam questions. This also helps us identify what to review in the SWOTVAC - we can mainly focus on the most important theory, diagram or model in each lecture since they are the only stuff that may appear in the final exam. Tutorial sheets and past exam questions are good resources in terms of exam preparation (though I did not go through them in detail), since what you see there should be what you will see in the exam.

A final point to make is about mathematical issues. Compared with macroeconomics that you will learn later, microeconomics focuses more on mathematical stuff, so make sure you are familiar with them and have a workable calculator in the final exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Eric Patrick on February 23, 2020, 11:48:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10002 Principles of Finance

Workload: 1 × 2 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: online assessment 10%, tutorial attendance and participation 10%, mid-semester test 20%, final examination 60% (with hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, and its usefulness may depend on different persons.

Past Exams Available: There are two sample exams but not quite helpful in indicating what will be expected in the exam.

Textbook Recommendation: The required textbook is highly recommended since most students have no finance background and the book makes the topics more understandable.

Lecturer(s): Asjeet Lamba

Year & Semester of Completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Your Mark/Grade: 93

Comments:

1. Lecture
The accent of the lecturer is strange - I have to acknowledge this fact at first. However, once you can focus on his expertise and professionalism, this will not be an issue anymore. The lecturer may not be such impassioned, but the lecture content is still intellectually abundant, and I really enjoy how dedicated Asjeet Lamba is when delivering the lectures. Each week's lecture slides should include roughly 60 pages with almost a quarter of them focusing on case studies. If you are not so eager to gain more finance knowledge (like me), you can definitely skip these cases since they are not examinable. On the other hand, if you want to broaden your horizon, try to listen to the lectures or the recordings carefully, otherwise it is hard to grasp the principles and theories underlying the cases. For the other knowledge, looking through the lecture slides may be enough, hence there is no need to listen to the lectures in great detail. The textbook is a good resource such that it gives a deeper explanation of some theories and calculations.

2. Tutorial
Cameron is the best tutor I have ever had, and I am looking forward to having him as my tutor for future subjects if possible. He can always focus on the main topics of each lecture but deviate from the lecturer's teaching style. For example, every week he would compile his own tutorial notes instead of following the lecturer's instruction on how to teach in the tutorial. His tutorial notes were highly condensed with every point focusing on HOW TO GET MORE MARKS. For all calculation-based questions, he would work out general formulas such that we can use directly to get the correct answer. For those theory-based questions, he would usually construct an answering structure guiding us how to explain the theories concisely but get the full marks. After reviewing his tutorial notes each week, the knowledge became quite straightforward, and overall POF is a very easy subject for me.

3. Assessments
The online assessment is very easy and almost every student can get a full mark. The questions were released a week before submission, and everyone would get exactly the same questions. In this case, we would have a week to work them out and compare our answers with others. As long as we are careful and do not forget to do it, how can we lose mark in this assessment?

Another generous mark comes from the tutorial assessment. What you need to do is going to the tutorial and submitting each week's pre-tutorial questions. So long as you have submitted enough of those questions, you can get a full mark! The quality of the work does not count, so literally you can just copy some stuff from the lecture slides and enjoy a full mark!

The mid-semester test is a bit tricky, and a large number of students do not perform well based on past experience. One thing you need to be careful with is the wording of the questions - the beginning year, ending year and amounts can be misleading and interfere with a correct calculation, and Asjeet likes to put redundant information into the questions to confuse us. Another thing relates to the formula sheet. Since there is a formula sheet for both the mid-semester and final exams, students may not be quite familiar with the formulas. Under the exam condition, some students struggle with which formula to use, since the formula's name is not provided and they have never looked at the formulas in detail (since they think they do not need to memorise). Students should also practise how to use the calculator efficiently, which can help them save a lot of time in the exam.

The final exam is fair enough with most questions focusing on calculations and a reasonable distribution of difficulty. Again, if you are familiar with the formula sheet and the operation of the calculator, you can easily get most calculations correct. The difficult point is with the MCQ part of the final exam, since many of the questions require a thorough understanding of the relevant theories. During the exam viewing session, I found that I had got five of those questions incorrect, since I did not review the theories at all. The sample exam papers are generally not useful, since the questions do not resemble the real exam questions, thus do not think you can perform well in the exam if you can get all sample questions correct.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 03, 2020, 12:53:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: HIST20013 The Holocaust and Genocide

Workload:  1 x 1.5 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials a week

Assessment: 
   - 1,500 word primary document analysis (40%)
   - 2,500 word research essay (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s):  Angel Alcalde

Year & Semester of completion:  2020 Semester 1

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H2A (76)

Comments:

First, just a disclaimer that I did this during the crazy online semester. That said, there weren't major differences - all assessments and content were the same - we did miss out on a visit to the university archives, so unfortunately I cannot review that part of the subject.

Content

The first part of the subject looks at theory. It covers the history of violence and genocide and the reasons behind why they take place, specifically political, cultural, economic, and even psychological factors. Different roles are also covered - victims, perpetrators, bystanders, witnesses, and "grey-zones".

The second part of the subject is on specific case studies. The major one is (obviously) the Holocaust. Other main examples include Armenia, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Lesser known cases  are covered briefly, as well as examples of mass killings which aren't fully recognised as genocides.

Assessments

Document analysis: 1,500 words worth 40%. You get a choice from 10 documents, most of which are in regards to the Holocaust. You have to analyse the document with reference to 1-2 themes using the document as evidence.

Research essay: 2,500 words worth 60%. You can choose from a list of prompts or make your own (though you must get approval). The prompts are broad and focus on the theoretical side of genocide studies, and you must refer to at least two case studies.

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed this subject and overall found the content to be interesting and engaging. History-wise, it doesn't go into any of the actual genocides in detail, not even for the Holocaust. It's a pretty great elective for international relations / anthropology students due to the heavy political and societal focus.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 03, 2020, 12:56:21 pm
Subject Code/Name: HIST20069 Modern European History

Workload:  1 x 1.5 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials a week

Assessment: 
   - 1,500 word primary document analysis (40%)
   - 500 word tutorial journal (10%)
   - 2,000 word research essay (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s):  Gregory Burgess

Year & Semester of completion:  2020 Semester 1

Rating:  2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1 (80)

Comments:

Overall, I found this subject to be badly organised - and this was before the university even shifted to online learning (this was the Corona semester). My other complaint is that I found the content delivery to be on the dry side, even though 19th/20th century Europe is something I'm personally interested in.

Content

The subject begins with the French Revolution in 1789 and ends with the outbreak of WWI in 1914. The topics covered (in order) are:
   - French Revolution
   - Napoleonic Wars
   - Industrial Revolution
   - Revolutions of 1848
   - Nationalism
   - Developments in science and culture
   - Unification of Germany and Italy
   - Paris Commune
   - European imperialism
   - Outbreak of war
If you plan on studying European history any further, then the content would be highly useful.

Assessments

Document Analysis: 1,500 words worth 40%. You get a choice from 3 primary sources on a particular topic (in 2020, it was the Industrial Revolution) and respond to it like you would with any history source analysis.

Research Essay: 2,000 words worth 50%. There are roughly 10 topics to choose from covering all aspects of the subject. All of the topics were incredibly broad (for example - this was one of the prompts - 'Discuss the impact of the French Revolution in Europe').

Tutorial Journal/Presentation: 500 words worth 10%. Sorry, can't be of much help here. It was replaced with a discussion board post in our year due to online arrangements.

Final thoughts

I know I gave this unit a low rating, but I think with proper organisation, it can be a great subject. I just won the bad luck lottery - the subject coordinator actually just wanted to bloody retire but the university "forcibly delayed my plans" (actual quote from Greg) last minute so he was winging it from the start. That, in addition to moving online half way, made this subject one of the least enjoyable ones I've done so far. However, I still recommend this unit, especially to those wishing to study European history further, purely for the content.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 03, 2020, 12:59:34 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM20001 Econometrics 1 (Renamed - previously known as Introductory Econometrics)

Workload:  2 x 1 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials a week

Assessment: 
   - 3 x Assignments (15% total)
   - Tutorial (5%)
   - Weekly Quiz (10% total)
   - Exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, all exams from 2018 semester 1 are available, plus a sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Econometrics, 3rd edition by Stock and Watson. It's not really required, and if you must get a textbook, then any that covers regression would do.

Lecturer(s):  David Byrne

Year & Semester of completion:  2020 Semester 1

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1 (95)

Comments:

If you are reading this, chances are you're trying to decide between Econometrics 1 and Quantitative Methods 2. I'll get to that at the end of the post. But first off, some disclaimers:

(i) I did this during the online semester, so our assessments were modified. I wrote this review without factoring in those changes to the best of my ability.

(ii) If you are noticing contradictions between my review and the previous two reviews in this thread, that is because this course was changed in 2018, but those reviews were from 2013 and 2017.

Content

This subject may as well be renamed Regression 101 because that's the entire subject. The first week covers probability and statistics revision from QM1, the rest of the subject is wholly regression based. The topics are:
   - Single linear regression
   - Multiple linear regression
   - Nonlinear regression
   - Time series regression
   - Regression application

Software

For this course, you must learn the programming language R (changed from the previous software Eviews). The additional packages used are 'AER', 'Stargazer', and 'ggplot2'.

Assessments

Assignments: 3 group assignments spread throughout the semester worth 5% each. The assignments all require R and you would need to also submit an index page with all your codes at the end of the assignment. They're mostly maths/computing questions without much writing involved.

Exam: worth 70% and is hurdle like all FBE subjects. The exam is 2 hours long - 10 MCQ (section 1), 3 short answer (section 2) and 3 extended response questions (section 3).
Section 1 - mostly theory based, with some maths
Section 2 - mostly maths based, usually with at least one proof question
Section 3 - maths/computing based, including writing R pseudocode.

Weekly Quiz: 12 quizzes in total. Your 10 highest ones are counted. Worth 10% total.

Tute participation: I mean, this is the easiest 5% you'll ever get. Don't take it for granted. In our year, since it was the *Covid* semester where everything was online, Dave put this 5% to an entire new assignment where we had to write a full report and create an econometric regression model to analyse the effect of easing social distancing restrictions on the spread of Corona. Pray that you don't get anything like that.

Econometrics 1 vs Quantitative Methods 2

Econometrics 1: Depth, quantitative, maths focus
Quantitative Methods 2: Breadth, qualitative, application focus

I highly recommend econ majors to do Econometrics 1 instead of QM2, as in 3rd year you MUST do at least one econometrics subject. If you did Econometrics 1, then the subjects you can choose from are:
   - ECOM30002 Econometrics 2
   - ECOM30003 Applied Econometrics Modelling
   - ECOM30004 Time Series Analysis and Forecasting

But if you did QM2, the only subjects you can do are:
   - ECOM30001 Basic Econometrics (which is essentially Econometrics 1)
   - ECOM30002 Econometrics 2 (but only if you got H2A or above in QM 2)

Final Thoughts

As an arts major with a weak maths background and no prior experience in computing, I went into this subject feeling really unsure of whether I made the right choice of picking this over the renowned WAM-booster QM2. Econometrics 1 is quite a jump from QM1, and the first few weeks were challenging. But by the second half of the semester it easily became my most enjoyable subject. I absolutely loved this subject and highly recommend it to all Commerce and Arts (Economics) students.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on July 08, 2020, 09:28:52 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics 
Workload:  2 x 1 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials per week.

Assessment:  Note that the final exam is a hurdle. (50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject.)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, a selection of exams ranging back from 2016. (but not all exams from that period, e.g. 2016 semester 2 was not given, but semester 1 was.)

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Microeconomics, 7th edition by Gans, King, Byford and Mankiw, and Microeconomics: Case Studies and Applications, 4th edition by Borland. The first textbook is highly useful and is used for module readings. The second is to give you a taste of the applications of things you've learned over the course of the subject, so feel free to skip on this. With that being said, they do give out chapter references for reading in modules for those inclined. 

Lecturer(s): Professor Tom Wilkening and Jonathan Thong. Tom ran the afternoon stream of lectures, and Jonathan ran the morning stream of lectures. Both lecture streams occurred on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For this review, only Tom's lectures will be included, since I never went/viewed any of Jonathan's lectures.

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1 Note that this semester was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes transitioned into online learning by the third week of semester.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B :( choked on exam

Pre-requisites: Entry into Commerce, Biomedicine or Science degrees OR a study score of 25+ in Methods otherwise.

Comments: Some background about me: I did VCE Economics but it is not a pre-requisite for this subject (or any at unimelb). With that being said, it does help with understanding early concepts like opportunity cost, price elasticity of demand, demand/supply graphs but expect to go a lot in-depth and learn a lot of new things. I think those that did IB HL Economics will find this course pretty standard (...at least that's what my friend told me...)

 This subject is a compulsory subject for all commerce students, and a pass is required to successfully enroll in ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics (another compulsory BCom subject) and ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics. With that being said, you'll meet a whole range of people doing this from the arts faculty through the economics stream over there.

Lectures and content
The course itself is well designed and presented in an approachable manner, Tom's lectures often included various tidbits of useful information that didn't appear on the lecture slides. As noted by someone a while back here, Tom's engineering background means that his explanations of any equations here were easily understandable and basically just only told you the useful parts. With that being said, some people did complain about his intonation of his voice but honestly you get used to it. Lectures themselves included examples and definitions, but most of Tom's working out was done on a second projector, but he uploads those as well. Overall, the lectures were sufficient and sometimes entertaining! Both lecturers seem to do a great job.

Tutorials
Tutorials were fine, essentially you break off into small groups answering questions from the tutorial sheet given at the start of the session, and then collate answers while the tutor presents the correct answers. My tutor was pretty good and I am yet to have heard of a "bad" tutor from this semester. These people also mark your assignments and potentially the exam (unconfirmed) so it's always good to build a good relationship with them! Ironically, I almost never showed up to any tutorials after week 5 since I felt the tutorial videos made for international students with incompatible timezones were sufficient.

Assessments
Assessments wise, we had a multiple choice test (5%) consisting of 10 questions that occurred in week 4. This was pretty easy if you've kept up with the work and honestly if you did VCE Economics, you could answer like 8 of them right now...

The first written assignment (15%) occurred just before the mid-sem break, so around week 5. It is an application of the things you've learnt up to this point. It seems very daunting at first, but as you breakdown the questions themselves they get easier. We had around a month and a bit to complete it. I received a 48/50, my best mark in this subject.

The second written assignment (15%) occurred in around week 7-8, and was due around week 11. This is the same as assignment 1 but just on things learnt since assignment 1. This was easier than the first one, but I found myself getting lower on this than the first one. (It seemed like almost everyone else improved however.)

For the previous two assessments, it is highly recommended to consult the discussion boards, Cameron Low (I think he's like the head tutor? no clue) is an absolute saviour in this and in Principles of Finance (review soon hehe) as he answered basically every query anyone had. Definitely the reason why I got such a high mark in my assignments.

The final exam (70%) was of moderate difficulty. I am unsure as to what I got but I ran out of time and had to rush the questions. I think with proper study and doing past papers, you can easily get a 80+ in this exam and hence really, the subject itself.

Concluding remarks
Overall, this is a very well done subject despite the pandemic forcing online teaching. I think this subject would be a lot better if it weren't for the forced transition. Otherwise, a very good introduction to microeconomics and university schooling in general.


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on July 09, 2020, 02:23:00 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis 

Workload:  1 x 2 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorials per week.

Assessment:  Note that the final exam is a hurdle. (50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject.)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, but only one was given which faithfully represented the final exam itself. More on that later.

Textbook Recommendation: Accounting: Business Reporting for Decision Making, 7th Edition by Birt, Chalmers, Maloney, Brooks, Oliver and Bond. I found the lecture slides sufficient enough but if you want to do more questions or have a deeper understanding, then get this book.

Lecturer(s): Noel Boys

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1 Note that this semester was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes transitioned into online learning by the third week of semester.

Rating: 2/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Pre-requisites: None...well entry into unimelb...

Comments: This is a compulsory subject for commerce students.
I have no prior experience in accounting but for those who do, Noel will quickly tell you that ARA is quite different and not "all black and white". With that being said, those who did do VCE Accounting or equivalent may have an easier time completing assignments. (balance sheet, cash flow statement etc.) This subject is pretty boring, despite Noel's attempts to spice things up.
 
Lectures and content
Personally I dislike having two hour lectures, but for the most part Noel does a great job at conveying information through. His usage of analogies will keep you awake (somehow tied in a fishbowl or something with accounting) throughout the lectures. His whole demanour is probably the reason why I even watched the lectures anyways...
Content wise, unless you somehow have a passion for accounting, this is a very boring and dull subject but I doubt this will change; maybe I just inherently hate accounting??? Regardless of my opinion, it is an important subject for all commerce students to do as it will offer a glimpse at how businesses record assets, liabilities, equities and more, along with introducing Excel who I feel will be along with me for the rest of my life... :)
Noel himself seemed a lot more pessimistic than usual this semester, but who wasn't. I think he was just about done by the final exam, his last rant is legendary haha...

Tutorials
Tutorials are essentially like any commerce tutorial - you get given questions and you answer them in groups. My tutor was good and my tutorial itself was good as well, so no complaints here. There is a tutorial participation mark (where you had to attend them) but that was waived, and instead it is expected that you complete the pre-tute quizzes (4%). These are pretty easy and honestly you could answer them with common sense half the time.

Assessments
Assessable tests are 4 glorified pre-tute quizzes that are in total worth 6% of the final grade. These have a timelimit of 3 days and are usually opened on Fridays and closed Sunday evening. These aren't hard, but I did miss on the very first one when the COVID-19 panic went super saiyan. But otherwise, pretty chill and as long as you keep up to date, you'll be fine with these.

Assignment 1 (10%): This introduced Excel and essentially is just filling in the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement. While the numbers and timelines are different per student, you could still cross-check with your mates so it shouldn't be too hard. Be careful that you read everything on the instructions sheet that comes with the assignment, as Noel wants your answers in a particular format. He makes a very big deal on this and it is kinda funny when he does go on his rants about students not reading the instructions properly.

Assignment 2 (10%) was formerly a group assignment but was changed to an individual assignment owing from the pandemic. This was just like assignment 1 but with a focus on ratio analysis and 12 multiple choice questions. For some reason, the only thing that was counted towards our final grade here was the 12 multiple choice. These were pretty easy and I got my best mark here (10/12).

Final exam (70%) was the source of most of the ARA controversy you may have seen on Reddit or Unimelb Love Letters, as it was significantly harder than any of the past exams given. While Noel did say that the past exams from previous semesters were not indicative of the actual exam, I don't think anyone was expecting how hard the exam was going to be. The one practice exam that he did give us was a lot easier and I suspect it was just for us to see how the exam was formatted. The final exam consisted of 81 questions, all of which were a mixture of multi-choice, drop-down, and calculations, and 4 unfilled statements. I have yet to meet anyone that got their statements to balance, but I'm sure there are a couple of people that did. I am worried about my mark here since while I did finish it, I don't think I did that well. I'm expecting a H2B/H3 here, but I'll be happy with a P.

Concluding remarks
I think this subject in this semester definitely soured the taste of accounting for all that did it, and despite Noel's best efforts to make this "fun", it is a very dull subject and his exam did not improve my opinion of accounting. It is a shame that we didn't get to see the funny Noel that people often talk about on here, but I hope my review of this subject is a minority from here on.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Endosymbiosis on July 09, 2020, 05:58:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST10016 Mathematics for Biomedicine

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

Assessment:  Ten weekly written assignments (25%), an oral presentation (5%) and a final written examination (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  One past paper is available, but no solutions were available (so frustrating).

Textbook Recommendation:  None. Everything you need to know is in the lectures.

Lecturer(s): James Osborne

Year & Semester of completion: 2020

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Having just completed VCE mathematical methods and under the belief that I could kiss maths goodbye forever, MAST10016 came and obliterated my fantasy of a maths-free uni experience. As a first-year core subject, if you are good at mathematics, this subject will not be hard to get a H1 in whatsoever, as long as you keep up to date with lectures and weekly exercise sheets. The nature of the maths is VERY different to what I experienced in VCE, with little to no calculus or complex problem-solving involved. The first week in our tutorial we did a little high-school maths revision exercise, as we begun practicing drawing simple hyperbolas and quadratics and solved some basic derivatives. Other than that, the only other cross-over from VCE is probability, which the entire subject is essentially centred around.

Three topics were explored: population genetics (finding the probability of an 'A' or 'a' allele), enzyme kinetics (investigating the rate of cellular reactions and the role of enzymes and inhibitors in these) and disease modelling (investigating how different types of diseases can be spread throughout the population). Whilst these topics sound quite interesting to a Biomedical student at a glance, as we delve deeper into each topic, personally I found them to be quite mundane and tedious. Whilst James is a knowledgeable, friendly and funny guy, I found that even by the second week, his explanations and derivations went in one ear and out the other - they were simply too hard to follow. If he had simply gotten to the point a lot quicker and emphasised that point, I would have found this subject much easier to follow. There were lectures, particularly towards the end of the course, that I could finish watching and simply have no clue what just happened.

I cannot emphasise enough how useful exercise sheets are. They are what I solely relied on to achieve a H1 in this subject. Because they are harder than tutorial sheets and exam questions, completing these sheets will give you an understanding of the subject that will allow you to complete the exam and assignments with little to no troubles. Sometimes a very similar question would appear on the exercise sheet and the weekly assignment and so you could just go through the workings from the exercise sheet to understand how to do the assignment question. For exam revision, I simply went back and redid all of the exercise sheets and identified all of my areas of weakness, which I found to be a useful method of studying, since there is only one practice exam with NO solutions  >:(

All in all, this subject will be pretty uninteresting and often painstaking unless you have a great fondness for maths. However, the actual content itself is not that hard so a nice WAM booster :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tiredandstressed on July 10, 2020, 06:37:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20149 Music Psychology  

Workload:  No lectures, just watch videos online, there is a 2 hour seminar for discussion but it not compulsory to attend.

Assessment:  10 online weekly quizzes, consisting of four questions (open book, open time) (40%) and a 2000 word written assignment (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No exam, no sample essays were provided

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Many guest lectures but the coordinators are Dr Elly Scrine & Dr Katrina Skewes McFerran

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester One

Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: If you’re looking for an easy H1 Music Psych ain’t it. Let me explain.
So yea Music Psych has little to no commitment hours, as long as you do the quiz (in which you have a week to do) that pretty much it for most of the semester. Keep in mind the quiz questions were sometimes ridiculous super broad, and you couldn’t choose between two answers, I guess they do try to make it difficult. Keep in mind each question is worth 1% so try to get as little wrong, and don’t forget to do the quiz because you then lose an easy 4%. So you might be thinking, the weekly quizzes are easy right, why such a low rating. Let’s discuss the essay.
This essay had the least amount of instructions, I legit had no idea what to write. Basically, every week you will go through  different topic, you can choose the topic (or two topics) you found the most interesting and choose this to be the centre of your essay. Based on the topic you chose in your introduction you must identify three key theorists and explain how their works have contributed to the research field in your topic. Then, in your body you must critically analyse three articles and evaluate their research design, research bias and their overall results. The introduction was super unclear I am still not sure if I even wrote what they wanted, the rubric required us to discuss quite a lot but I couldn’t fit it in the word count and just chose not to address the whole rubric. The body was actually interesting to write, each week Dr Kat critically evaluates two articles and she shows us the skills and approach we should take for the assignment, this was helpful. The conclusion required a discussion of future recommendations for any possible research.
My main complaint with the final essay was the lack of clarity we had on we were supposed to write (in the end, yes I did well). They changed the assignment to previous years and with such lack of clarity, I was so confused. I would encourage you to start your essay early (Week 10, because there is plenty of research you will need to do before you write).
Overall, a decent subject I have it little to no effort and still got a H1, it wasn’t easy the essay was stressful, but it does fulfil as a WAM booster.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on July 11, 2020, 08:06:12 am
Subject Code/Name: ELEN90054 Probability and Random Models

Workload: 3× 1 hr lectures per week
1× 2hr Tutorial/Examples Class (Basically just another lecture dedicated to the lecturer doing problem booklet questions, but called a "tutorial" on the handbook/timetabling system. Also normally only went for 1hr)
1× 2hr Workshop

Assessment: 6× 5% Workshops (Basically assignments with a dedicated workshop session)
*2× 10% Tests
*1× 50% Exam

*NB: Usually it is one 10% mid semester test and a 60% exam with a hurdle, but the assessment structure was revised and the hurdle was removed this semester due to Covid-19

Lectopia Enabled: Yes with screen capture (obviously given the circumstances, but I believe they are also normally available for all lectures and the tutorial/examples class)

Past exams available: 3 with numerical solutions only, for both the final exam and mid-sem test

Textbook Recommendation: Probability and Stochastic Processes by Yates and Goodman is recommended and lectures use some examples from it, but it's really not necessary. Lectures and the problem booklet are enough.

Lecturer: Brian Krongold

Year & Semester of completion: 2020, Semester 1 (Online/Covid-19 Semester)

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments: Having gotten a H3 in MAST20004/Probability in undergrad I was worried about this subject so decided to get it over with early on, but fortunately it turned out to be nothing to worry about. Some of the content can get a bit tricky, but overall if you persist and keep up with the problem booklet/lectures, the exam and test/s are mostly doable, at least with Brian taking the subject. Handbook provides a pretty good overview of the content so I won't re-list that here. Brian was also a really great lecturer who explained things in good detail and provided a few extra materials for harder concepts/questions.

My favourite part of this subject was probably the workshops. Despite the name, as mentioned above they were basically assignments which had a dedicated workshop where you'd normally get assigned a partner and start to work on it together (this didn't happen during this semester, but in normal circumstances I highly doubt you'd have enough time to finish it all in the session), then it'd be due a week or so later. They contained a mix of theoretical and MATLAB questions, the latter of which mainly involved setting up simulations. Most people doing this subject would be coming from the BSci Electrical Systems major where Engineering Computation/COMP20005 would have been compulsory, but if you were one of the few people like me who didn't come from the standard pathway, make sure your coding skills are up to scratch unless you want to be relying on a workshop partner. However, having fortunely done COMP20005 as a breadth in undergrad, a decent understanding of this subject would be more than sufficient for the skills required for the workshop MATLAB questions. The simulations meant that you could pretty much verify most your theoretical calculation answers, so while these workshops were usually pretty time consuming, getting full marks or close to it was very doable.

For weeks when there wasn't a workshop assignment, the timetabled workshop session pretty much became standard tutorials where you'd work on problem booklet questions and could ask the tutor for help which was quite helpful, especially before a test or the exam.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jasoplum on July 11, 2020, 01:51:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR20004 Engineering Mechanics 

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures, 1x2 hour workshop per week

Assessment:  30% on 3-4 assignments, 15% on MST, 5% on weekly quizzes, 50% on final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with lecture capture

Past exams available:  A couple available on the exam archive but none given. Note that different lectures = different style of questions.

Textbook Recommendation:  None prescribed, Meriam JL and Kraige LG, Engineering Mechanics : Dynamics 7th Edition and HGibbeler RC, Statistics and Mechanics of Materials 3rd Edition recommended on the website but I wouldn't say you need them. Questions for practice are from the textbooks anyways.

Lecturer(s): Christian Brandl for Statics/Solids, Bagus Nugroho for Dynamics

Year & Semester of completion: 2020, Semester 1

Rating:  3.5/5 online. 4/5 if in person.

Your Mark/Grade: 77 (H2A)

Comments:
Note that I took this subject during 2020 where everything's online so it may be a slightly different experience to what others might experience.

There's a lot to go over in this subject but like what you might've heard or seen, this is not an easy subject. It's difficult, no doubt. Maybe the most difficult in my undergrad so far. Yes the likelihood of someone failing isn't impossible. Yes people have dropped out or redone the subject. But don't let that scare you too much. It is possible to get through this subject, it is possible to do well and maybe even enjoy this subject.

CLASSES AND ASSESSMENTS
Lectures
The lectures are taught by Christian for Statics/Solids and Bagus for Dynamics, and are in a format where the first 2 essentially teach the week's content and the third lecture is reserved for examples about what the first 2 lectures teach. In online teaching, the first 2 are recorded and sent at the beginning of the week, and the 3rd is a webinar with the lecturer to ask questions. While you might think that this means there is not as much to learn, trust me when I say that this is a lot, and I mean a LOT of new concepts and content. Something I would recommend is just making sure you redo the questions from the lecture by yourself. It's easy to just go and say "yeah I get this" but until you actually do it, you won't fully understand it.

As for the lecturers I found both Christian and Bagus to be quite friendly and engaging (well at least as well as it could be in online only). I did find Christian's methods and explanations a bit confusing at times. Bagus I felt was better and more clear in his explanations and working out. He also felt really relatable as he would talk about his past experiences as a student and just occasional stories about him, which helped keep the engagement and just made the subject better in general. There were some people that found Bagus a bit confusing, but I would attribute that more to just the dynamics topic itself.

Just a note that the subject content and difficulty can vary between lecturers so you may get a different experience.

Workshops
The workshop structure contains a mixture of prac weeks and non prac weeks. In non-prac weeks, the workshops run similar to that of a 2 hour tutorial, going through assigned questions with your group (explained in a bit) for 2 hours and working together either on the whiteboard, or in the case of online, in breakout rooms. In prac weeks, the 2nd hour is spent instead on the actual prac, which is kind of similar to ESD2 in the way it runs. However, in online classes there is just generally no prac week, instead a video of the experiment which is more of a simulation is sent to be analysed as part of the assignment.

And here is where I emphasise the importance of finding a good group. This is the group you'll be working with for the entire sem, including every week in the workshops and also in all the assignments. I was lucky enough to get really good group that I could work with, and because of that I enjoyed doing the assessments even if some of it was long and tedious. The workshops and breakout rooms were also more enjoyable because of this. However, I can see both the assignments and workshops turning into more of a chore or obstacle simply by having a bad group.

Assessments
The assessments consist of 3-4 assignments worth a total of 30%, a mid-sem test worth 15%, weekly quizzes worth 5% and a final exam worth 50%.

The assignments are what you would expect in engineering and mainly consist of analysing the theoretical parts of a concept and then comparing that with the experimental results. They are a mixture of maths and deriving, problem solving using learnt content and analysis of the experiment with MATLAB. It should be noted that MATLAB is a key component, and can be 30-50% of the assignment, so make sure someone in your group is comfortable with using MATLAB. You have approximately 2 to 3 weeks to do each assignment. It's a decent amount of work so don't leave it till the last day with your group. If you're online, I would highly recommend going into group zoom calls with your group throughout the assignment instead of just texting each other, it just helps a lot with communication.

The mid-sem was quite difficult with little time to work through questions. The topics based off the statics/solids section and made by Christian (who does favour making more difficult questions). For online, it was split into 3 separate mid sems worth 5% each. As I'll discuss later however, it can vary quite a bit between lecturers so you might have a different questions.

The weekly quizzes are well just that, 5 questions each week totalling 0.5%  to basically "keep you engaged" in the subject. Some of these are more difficult than others but these questions are just off a textbook.

The final exam was more lenient in time than the mid sem but with a higher difficulty. I'll speak more about it in THE DIFFICULTY section.


CONTENT: STATICS/SOLIDS AND DYNAMICS
The subject is split into 2 sections, Statics/Solids and Dynamics. Statics/Solids are a follow up from ESD2 with an expansion of a lot of new content. The structure is as follows
   - Week 1: Revision of ESD2 stuff (FBD, Method of Joints)
   - Week 2: Method of Sections and Frames/Machines
   - Week 3: SFD (Shear Force Diagrams) and BMD (Bending Moment Diagrams)
   - Week 4/5: Stress, Strain and Poisson's Ratio
   - Week 6: Centroids and Area Moment of Inertia, Flexure/Beam Bending

In terms of learning and understanding the content, the statics and solids parts are mainly alright (Weeks 1-5). They are a slight increase in difficulty from the mechanics section of ESD2, but it's not large and much of it just comes from the fact that there is a lot of new content involved. Week 6 however, does dial up the difficulty quite a bit with a lot of new concepts being introduced. This is where some integration or deriving may be applied, and can be a struggle at first to understand and apply. However, it is still doable with time and there are resources both provided by the subject (short video explanations) and also you can easily find some explanations online as well. This part is mostly okay, but as I'll explain later can actually be quite difficult depending on the questions (in THE DIFFICULTY).

Dynamics is where the scary reputation of engineering mechanics comes from. Like statics/solids, dynamics introduces quite a lot of new concepts. However, these are definitely harder to wrap your head around and can be quite confusing at times. The applying of these concepts is main difficulty for this section. The structure for dynamics is
   - Week 7: Particle Kinematics and Coordinate Systems
   - Week 8: Particle Kinetics and Work/Energy
   - Week 9: Linear and Angular Impulse and Momentum
   - Week 10: Free Vibration and Rigid Body Motion: Relative Velocity
   - Week 11: Rigid Body Motion: Relative Acceleration, Instantaneous Centres, Equation of Motion
   - Week 12: Revision

Weeks 7-9 are generally ok with a bit of time to understand everything. Application and general problem solving are the hard part, and unfortunately simply doing more questions does not have that same effectiveness as something say in prereq math subjects (Calc 2, Linear Algebra, Eng Math), although doing questions of course does still help. However, the topics in week 10 and 11 are where you'll find the most confusion. A lot of this will not have been anything you've seen before, and the content can be hard to understand at times. But once again, the real difficulty lies in the application and problem solving aspect.

THE DIFFICULTY
And if you haven't noticed already, why engineering mechanics is so difficult is due to the application of these new equations and concepts that you learn, for statics and solids and especially for dynamics, NOT just the new concepts. Because of the high amount of new concepts, there are too many different types of questions that can be made and so many different ways to apply these concepts. Therefore at times, it can feel like there is a lack of a methodology or consistency when working through a problem. What I basically mean is that it won't be like say in ESD2 where if it asks to solve a truss system you automatically know the steps, method of joints -> find reaction forces -> FBD at each joint and use Fx, Fy, M = 0, at least not for much of it.  That's not to say that there is no pattern or method to approach a question, for a lot of it there is, even for the harder topics like rigid body motion. But as I'll explain below, the questions can be adjusted to vastly change the approach and the difficulty.

The thing is with eng mech, is that it has an extremely high skill ceiling. The questions can be made to be however difficult a lecturer wants it to be, and there is no better example of this than on the exam. Before the exam, the lecturers, Christian and Bagus, said that they did not use the past exams as a reference, and it showed. Bagus said that the exam questions were going to be doable as long as you studied, and similar to that of the examples and questions they gave in lectures. And for the dynamics questions with Bagus this was true, most of Bagus' part was doable and similar to the style of the lecture questions, with enough difficulty to be able to separate the cohort of students. However, Christian's questions were not consistent with this, and so what ended up on the exam was that pretty much ALL of the statics and solids parts were actually harder than the dynamics portion. In fact, the hardest question of 5 on the exam was based off weeks 1-3, the easiest topics in eng mech. What I'm trying to say is that how difficult the subject is can vary greatly with the lecturer so it's hard to know what to expect even by doing past exams, as each lecturer has a different approach and difficulty and chooses slightly different topics.

TIPS
Aside from making sure you get a good group, redoing the lecture questions and not falling behind (you will die if you fall behind), I don't really have other suggestions I can give. From my experience, other stuff like the quizzes can also help with studies and so can the tutorial worksheets (both the workshop ones and separate tute ones). I found part A of the tute worksheets to be good in difficulty and manageable whereas part B I struggled with at times particularly for some of the topics. A lot of part B was harder than the exam but remember the difficulty would vary with the lecturer. Overall, just study however you can and try to find a method that suits you.

FINAL WORDS
I guess to describe the role of the subject, it's best thought of as a stepping stone or a filter for future engineers. The problem solving and all those difficulties are what you would expect to have continuing forward, and for many this will be a good idea of whether or not you want to continue into engineering. I found the subject overall to be interesting at times, a good motivator and enjoyable. Other times I found it confusing, a demotivator and a source of stress. But ay, here I am, finishing this subject with no regrets and continuing in my journey to becoming an engineer. Like I said at the start, is this easy? No, definitely not. But is this doable? Yes it is. And can you find enjoyment in this subject? Through all of the confusion and difficulties, yes you actually can. This is one hell of a subject and I wish you good luck in getting to the other side!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: M909 on July 11, 2020, 11:38:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGR90034 Creating Innovative Engineering

Workload: 1× 3 hr lecture per week (plus you'll probably have a whole lot of group meetings and interviews during the semester)

Assessment:
8× Reflections (750 word limit each), 22.5% (Hurdle)
7× Peer Responses, 13.5% (Hurdle)
Various group progress tasks, 10%
Personal Innovation Plan, 9%
Final Group Report, 35%
Participation (within your group in general, not strictly in lectures), 10%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but there is an 80% attendance hurdle

Past exams available: N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Lots of readings, all of which will be posted to the LMS. Not really helpful for your overall project, but provides many genuinely useful advice/tips/strategies for your future career, and can also help boost your reflection/peer response/personal innovation plan marks.

Lecturer(s): Peter Cebon, Rowan Doyle, Jillian Kenny (one for each stream)

Year & Semester of completion: 2020, Semester 1 (Online/Covid-19 Semester)

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Low H1

Comments: This is a very unique and challenging subject, which is pretty much compulsory for engineering masters students who have done ESD1 and/or ESD2. Basically you will be allocated into teams based on your project preferences, and need to design a solution to a (real!) sponsor organisation's problem. After pre-research, you eventually go out and interview relevant people (which was a bit easier in the Covid semester as everything was over Zoom or Teams), and over many weeks eventually formulate a solution.
Initially I bushed this subject off as something to get over with, but began to enjoy this subject more as things progressed and the task became clearer. Overall, the phrase "you get out of it what you put into it" is pretty accurate for this subject. That being said, I was lucky to have a good group where most of us gave our best effort, and we actually collaborated (to a much better level than has occured in most my previous group assignments) and built on each other's ideas. I imagine it would have been very hard without this, and I definitely couldn't have done this project by myself.

Reflections occurred most weeks (usually unless other stuff was due) and required you to write about a CIE related experience of significance for you from the week. I found them quite difficult and time consuming, but if you engage with them they can be quite helpful on a personal level. To do well, you needed to really dig deep and look for the core reasons why you felt the way you did.
Once allocated into your teams, you will also be assigned to respond to one of your teammate's reflection each time there's a reflection due (you'll rotate and everyone will eventually respond to everyone). To do well in the response, you needed to add something onto your teammate's response and/or challenge their thinking in a supportive tone. My marks also seemed to increase when I suggested a relevant reading material.

The progress tasks weren't too bad, and seemed to be a good indication of how the team was progressing and/or if changes needed to be made. Putting together the final report wasn't as daunting as it initially seemed, as a lot of it was just rehashing what your team would most likely have been discussing for the past few weeks. Finally, the personal innovation plan allowed to draw on your experiences in the subject and bring in lecture/reading material to create a plan for your future career.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: lst1103 on July 12, 2020, 04:09:54 pm
Subject Code/Name: ITAL10004 Italian 1

Workload:  Each week, there were two two-hour tutorials (a mouthful ahh), with no lectures! Very interactive sessions, though potentially to a lesser degree than they would have been on-campus—breakout rooms, whilst slightly traumatising, provided the opportunity for some peer-oriented collaboration and general discussion.

Assessment:  Because of the current state of the world, the assessments were reworked a little. 20%: four quizzes of varying length on Mindtap (all open-book and generous with regard to time restraints!); 20%: two written tasks, of approximately 250 words each; 30%: short oral conversation w. tutor towards the end of the semester; 30%: 90-minute exam (was completed on Canvas this semester, but probs an anomalous occasion).

Lectopia Enabled:  Not rlly applicable because we had tutorials only, but I'd assume that all lectures were recorded this semester, because we're living in the time of COVID.

Past exams available:  A sample exam was uploaded to Canvas two days before the actual exam—a little late but its structure and level of difficulty was actually akin to that of the real exam (something that I can't necessarily say for some other subjects !).

Textbook Recommendation:  Piazza 2019. Can't really proceed with the subject unless you have the textbook, as it was heavily relied upon throughout the semester. Also, you kinda need access to Mindtap, too, which you can obtain access to by purchasing the book x Mindtap bundle! Some of the assessment tasks were on Mindtap, and loots of the homework was the completion of Mindtap exercises.

Lecturer(s): N/A

Year & Semester of completion: 2020; S1

Rating:  4 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Such a great subject, especially for those who're monolingual (me!) and are learning a language for the first time. Aside from the COVID disruption and the notion of the breakout room, I really enjoyed Italian 1. The Italian faculty is incredible, and so, SO understanding—Vita Giordano, the subject coordinator, gave me (and others, I think?) access to Mindtap free-of-charge because I stupidly bought the book only, rather than the Mindtap bundle, from Amazon (so maybe it wasn't so stupid??!). The emails sent by Vita and my tutor were always so jubilant, and such positivity was really encouraging during a difficult semester. My only qualms are regarding the online delivery of the subject, but that's not any fault of the Italian department. If I had have completed Italian 1 on-campus, I'm sure that I would have awarded it a 5! 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: a819 on July 12, 2020, 06:42:27 pm
Subject Code/Name: FOOD20003 Intro to Food Science & Human Nutrition

Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture, 1 x 1hr lecture, 1 x 1hr tutorial

Assessment: Mid semester test 20%, 1000 word essay 20%, final exam 60%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: No, but practice multiple choice and short answer questions provided (no solutions)

Textbook Recommendation: Understanding Nutrition: Australia & New Zealand edition by Eleanor Whitney. (I used an older edition of the textbook which was fine)

Lecturer(s):
Dr Ken Ng
Prof. Neil Mann 10/10
Dr Pange Zhang
Dr Sameera Sirisena
Dr Robyn Larsen
Dr Anita Lawrence
Dr Chiara Murgia

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2020

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:
Please note that this subject was completed during the COVID lockdown period.

I recommend this subject to anyone who is interested in pursuing a major in either food science or human nutrition (or if you want a WAM booster). The subject was divided into two categories: Food Science (W2-5) and Human Nutrition (W1 and W5-12). The topics covered were:
Food science: carbohydrates, proteins and lipids
Human Nutrition: digestive system, carbs, water, minerals, proteins, vitamins, lipids, metabolism, energy balance, weight management and planning a healthy diet

The content is quite basic and easy to grasp, especially if you have a background in science or biomedicine. There was some overlap between food science and HN topics but I enjoyed the HN lectures more.
There were some issues with lecture recordings including audio issues and some lecturers went over time. I highly recommend completing the practice questions on canvas for revision. In saying this, some questions asked for specific numbers/ facts (eg: What percentage of Australian adults are underweight?) which won't we examined.

Textbook
The recommended textbook is necessary for this subject as the lecturers do not cover all the content in the lecture recordings. Also the multiple choice questions in the book were beneficial for revision as they were in collaboration with some of the lecturers according to Prof Mann.

Tutorials
There are 11 tutorials in total. While attendance was not compulsory, there is a hurdle requirement of 70%. Due to COVID restrictions, there was no ZOOM tutorial but instead we had to fill out a worksheet with practice questions. Feedback was provided to students who submitted their responses.
The food science tutorials/ worksheets involved simple calculations and answering questions based on readings.
The human nutrition worksheets included case studies and were pretty straight forward. The content covered in the tutorials (calculations) appeared on the final exam.

Assignment
The assignment was a 1000 word essay (/20) where we had to research a topic from the 6 provided. We were provided with an assignment rubric which detailed the topics, subheadings we could implement as well as formatting guidelines. Graphs and figures were also required in the essay. The essays were marked by associated tutors.

Mid-semester
The mid sem this year was completed as a canvas quiz in week 7. We has 1hr to complete 60 questions. The mid sem ONLY examined the food science components and associated readings and tutorials. Therefore, completing the readings is a must!

We weren't provided with past MST practice questions BUT the practice questions on canvas associated with each module was great for revision for both the MST and final exam. The mid sem was problematic as there were multiple incorrect questions in the test. Hence, students were awarded free marks. From memory ~ 60% of the cohort achieved an H1.

Exam
Worth 120 Marks
The final exam ONLY covered the Human Nutrition content. Students were provided with practice MCQ quiz and a document of practice part B questions (no solutions).

Part A: 48 MCQs 50 minutes
Was completed as canvas MCQ quiz similar to the MST. Style of questions was similar to the practice canvas questions and textbook questions.

Part B: 72 Marks 70 minutes
Included 10 questions with varying mark allocations. Prof Mann told us that the short answer exam this year was different to previous years as it included more case studies to prevent collusion and plagiarism. There was an issue with canvas during our exam which granted students and additional 25 minutes to complete the exam. However, I didn't complete the exam in time as some questions required you to explain detailed concepts with 2 marks lmao.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: jasoplum on July 13, 2020, 05:38:26 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENEN20002 Earth Processes for Engineering

Workload:  3x1 hour lectures and 1x1 workshop per week. 1 lab session during the semester (changed to video if online).

Assessment:  4 group assessments worth 10% each, 1 lab report worth 10% and exam worth 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with lecture capture

Past exams available:  Yes, all exams from 2009 - 2019 were given (for 2020)

Textbook Recommendation:  No textbook used or needed

Lecturer(s): Dr Murray Peel, Mr Giancarlo Bonotto, Dr Samintha Perera

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 88 (H1)

Comments:
Note that I took this subject during 2020 where everything's online so it may be a slightly different experience to what others might experience.

Earth Processes is one of those subjects with a general opinion of "meh". It's not too difficult but not too easy either, the content can be either interesting or dry af depending on the person and there's really for many it's just a prereq for civil majors and nothing much more than that. With that said, I feel like overall I enjoyed the subject (may not be the general opinion) but there is a bit to dissect.

CLASSES
Lectures
There are 3 lecturers that you'll go through during the semester, Murray for Water Cycle and Climate/Weather (Weeks 1-5), Giancarlo Solid Earth and Landscaping (Week 6) and Samintha for Soil Mechanics and Characteristics (Weeks 7-11). Murray explains the concepts quite well and generally in good detail. While some do think he is a bit monotone which I can agree with, I feel like it's more the content itself that makes it difficult to be taught in a really pumped and energetic way, more on that later. Giancarlo has a heavier accent which can be difficult to understand at times but brings his own interesting parts as he likes to relate the concepts to real life examples a lot and even to his own projects. His part only goes for a week so it's not focused too much. Samintha which goes for the last 5 weeks has differing opinions, which I'll give my own. She also has a similar problem to Giancarlo with her heavier accent making it difficult to understand at times, and there is also a problem in that many of her online lectures were 1 hour and 30 minutes long (instead of 1). I found this problem to generally be solved by just playing at 1.25x speed as the longer duration was due to her speaking slower than other lecturers. Overall, with some pausing and rewinding sometimes and increased concentration, I feel that much of her explanations are actually quite detailed and made a lot of sense. I transcribed some of what she said for my notes which ended up being very useful and clear for working out concepts, and I think that her lecturers, albeit with some annoyances, were fine. I do think I am in the minority with this however, so keep in mind that you may not have the same opinion as me.

As someone who I think overall enjoyed this subject more than most, I can agree that the lectures and content can be quite dry at times. Learning about rain, rocks and dirt doesn't sound like the most fun thing in the world and I do admit that while uni was still open for the first 3 weeks, I dozed off in some of the in person lectures. What made this subject interesting to me was the application of this content, in engineering examples and modelling etc which you can see when doing the projects (which I'll get to later). The information gained from this subject is actually very useful and is more than just some rote learning.

Workshops
They might be named workshops, but these are basically tutorials. During the in person session, what would happen is just mainly them giving you an intro and then you doing questions on the problem sheet for the hour and them going through near the end of the session. This was changed up once you went online. Instead, they were run by having the worksheet and a video sent out at the beginning of the week. The video would essentially show the tutor going through the worksheet and answering it, and then the timetabled workshop was used as consultation. The worksheet contained questions either using excel for content related to the content learnt, or calculating and theory type more general questions in the later parts of the semester. One thing I will say about the workshops from me doing them online is to make sure you actually do the worksheet questions and complete all of it. Although it sounds fairly easy to skip and in online the consultations generally I did skip, the worksheet itself is very important because everything you do in the projects and assignments directly relate to and sometimes are even straight ripped off the worksheet. On average it took me about 1 and a half to 2 hours to complete each worksheet, but it was definitely worth it because I knew exactly what to do in the assignments afterwards.

CONTENT AND EXAMS
The first topic is focused on Water Cycles, Climate and Weather. The topics are as follows
   • Climate Systems and General Circulation (Coriolis Effect, Hadley, Polar and Ferrel Cells)
   • Rainfall and Stochastic Modelling
   • Radiation, Solar Zenith, Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change
   • Water Cycle, Catchment Processes and Evapotranspiration
   • Runoff Processes, Catchment Modelling and Nature of streamflow
This part generally requires a lot of modelling in excel (as you'll see in ASSIGNMENTS) and the content is well what you'd expect. Most of the theory is straightforward although some might be a bit confusing to think about at first (ex. Solar Zenith, Coriolis effect). On the exam, the questions are pretty much recycled from previous years with half of it being theory based while the other half requiring calculation using a catchment model. If you do the past exams and prepare and answer all the questions in detail beforehand (particularly the theory ones), this will be the easiest part of the exam. The most important part is preparing properly. The questions don't change in an online format.

The second topic goes for just a week and is focused on Solid Earth and Landscaping. They are about
   • Rock types and Earthquakes/Tectonics
   • Weathering, Erosion and Deposition
   • Soil and Climate
This is pretty much all theory. On the exam, there'll be a question on it that generally will be the same or similar to previous years.

The final topic is on Soil Mechanics. The topics are
   • Soil Characteristics and Classification
   • Water in Soil
   • Soil Stresses
   • Soil Strength
   • Soil stability and minerology
This part is what I would consider the most difficult part of the subject. There is quite a bit to learn, but overall the difficulty is decent and not too bad. The exception I'd make to this is the soil minerology parts, as out of nowhere a lot of chemistry was referred (which as I don't do chem I was extremely confused). I transcribed and noted down what she explained and used that in the exam. The content you'll get out of this are a mixture of calculations using formulas, drawings with Mohr Circles and general theory. Like I said in the lectures, if you're struggling a bit to understand certain parts, try to just pausing and rewind a bit, maybe even transcribe Samintha's explanation and you'll be fine. On the exam, it will be generally similar to that of previous exams and parts may be the same. However, maybe due to an online format this semester some parts did differ from previous years and there was a controversial question where the rest of the marks all required you to get an initial question correct.

So as you can see, the exam is actually very similar and even mostly the same as previous years. And they don't try to hide this as well, you get the exam from 2009 all the way to 2019 (this is 2020) and revision lectures which show these questions. In exchange though, solutions are NOT provided for any of the exams (understandably). Therefore, studying for this subject's exam is much more straightforward than other subjects. The tips I would give are a couple of things. The first is to go through each of the questions they'll go over during the revision lectures, and answer each of them as well as you can, with the best explanations and answers you can provide, going through lecture slides and lecture capture to do so. The next tip is to just do some past exams IN EXAM TIME, the time for earth processes is actually quite tight and goes fast so make sure you know what you're getting into. And lastly, particularly for those doing it online, make sure you have good lecture notes that you've written and can ctrl + f and refer to. Despite the online situation, the questions are pretty much the same or similar so if you have these notes you'll be in a much better position, particularly if they mix it up (which they did for soil mechanics). I just copy typed what was on the lecture slides during the lectures and occasionally also wrote what the lecturers said if it was important, you may have a different way.

ASSIGNMENTS
During the semester, you'll have 4 group assignments and 1 lab report due, worth 10% each. These are not small assignments, they are genuine fairly large assignments and if you think that it's a lot, you'd be right. This is where the majority of your time will be spent in this subject and it can be a bit difficult and stressful particularly towards the later weeks (I had 3 consecutive assignments due in 3 weeks for just this subject). However, don't start panicking. It is a lot of work, more than other engineering subjects in level 1, but it is doable. Again, it is doable.

The first 2 assignments are based off Murray's content and are all about modelling rainfall and water storage using excel. It is here that you'll really be using your excel skills a lot to model but I wouldn't worry about studying excel beforehand as most of the modelling is generally explained in the workshop videos. Something to note is that although there are marks are based of your excel modelling, most of it is based off the theory, that is the analysis, interpretation and discussion of it and so understanding what the model actually does and explaining it in detail is the focus. Assignments 3 and 4 on the other hand are based off Samintha's content, the soil mechanics topics. Instead of excel, you'll be doing calculations and drawing diagrams (Mohr Circles), but the analysis and discussion are still the important part of it. Note that assignments 2 to 4 are specifically written as a REPORT. That is, with a proper structure of an introduction, methodology etc. If you're not the strongest with report writing, don't worry so was I, but you'll learn to learn to figure it out eventually, it's not as scary as it may seem as long as you know the content and the explanations. From my experience, although the word limit was 1000-2000 words for each assignment, even though it may seem like a lot for my group, we ended up always going over 2000 words and had to spend quite a bit of time shortening it down because of that.

As for the lab report, that is of course also in a report format. For online, instead of actually doing the lab, it was instead recorded as videos for us to watch and the data sent to us. This was both a bad and good thing because while you didn't get to actually experience and do the prac, you knew the data you were getting was going to be correct and the tutor helped explain some of the concepts more as it was through video. The lab report took a decent amount of time but was in line with the time it took for assignments (individually).

The last thing I would like to stress is the HUGE importance of a good group. With Earth Processes, 40% of your mark is automatically based on group work and you'll be working with the same group throughout the entire semester. When you have these large amount of assignments especially, it's really important to have a group that is willing to do work and in sync with each other. I would say make sure you find a good group, but groups for better or worse are automatically allocated. I was lucky that I had gotten allocated good group members, we all put in a lot of effort into the assignment and we could also banter and chat as well. However, to contrast this I had a friend who had the opposite experience. His group members essentially ghosted them for the better part of 3 of the assignments and so he was left to do them all by himself, which trust me, that is not something you would ever want to experience. Other than just luck, the main tips I'd give with this is just to make sure to actively communicate not just over text but have meetings over zoom (or if not 2020 in person as well) fairly often, particularly the week before the assignment is due. It helps a lot with the relationship of the group and is also a lot easier to communicate together than just say through text.

FINAL WORDS
And that's Earth Processes! At first, I felt like the subject was pretty dry and stressful as I did assignment 1. However as I continued on, I started to feel more indifferent about the subject and actually started enjoying it towards the end as well. Out of this, I feel like I got a lot out of it, more than many other subjects. This isn't the most difficult, but it certainly has quite a bit of work and effort required and it isn't an easy subject either. Others may have a different opinion and I feel like the general consensus is that this is a fairly dry and mundane subject but I think it was alright. I gave this a 4/5, but if you get a bad group this would probably reduce to a 2/5. The general opinion I think would be a 3/5. 
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 15, 2020, 10:16:56 pm
Subject Code/Name: BLAW10001 Principles of Business Law

Workload: 1 weekly lecture, split into multiple recordings (~2 hrs/week), optional discussion board, recorded workshop videos before each assessment task

Assessment: 2 Multiple choice tests (10% each, 40 questions, 1 hour) and 1 Multiple choice exam (80%, 60 questions, 1.5 hours)

Echo360 Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  1 Sample paper for each assessment task, and weekly (optional) quizzes

Textbook Recommendation:  First Principles of Business Laws by Michael Lambiris and Laura Griffin, (Essential, has all the cases and content in it) - was available from the UniMelb library for free this semester

Lecturer(s): Tanya Josev (and Arlen Duke for the workshop videos)

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 94 H1

Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

I thoroughly enjoyed this subject. The content was interesting, practicable and useful. The overall workload was extremely light, consisting of watching the lectures, and reading the textbook. The multiple choice assessment was definitely a bonus, but, due to the high exam weighting, each question is worth a lot.

The lecturer, Tanya, and the tutor, Will, were both fantastic and always happy to answer student questions. Tanya was extremely clear, and really conveyed her passion for the law through her lectures.

Overall, there is almost nothing to fault about this subject and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an easy, enjoyable, and interesting breadth subject!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 15, 2020, 10:42:25 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10002 Principles of Finance

Workload: 1 weekly lecture (2 hours), 1 weekly tutorial class (1 hour)

Assessment: 1 Mid-term assignment (14%, Multiple choice), 1 Mid-term exam (23%, Multiple choice), 1 Final exam (63%) (Note: Tutorial participation credit was removed and redistributed due to COVID-19 this semester)

Echo360 Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 sample exams and 1 sample mid-term

Textbook Recommendation: Introduction to Corporate Finance by Graham. Honestly, I found the textbook mostly useless. Asjeet always insists you read it before watching the lectures, and whilst it's useful to get a rough gist of the material, I found that there were frequently material covered in it that was completely irrelevant, or it was missing substantial amounts of content that were in the lecture slides.

Lecturer(s): Asjeet Lamba

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 89 H1

Comments: Overall I'm fairly neutral on this subject, I think that mainly stems from me not finding Finance particularly interesting as opposed to any inherent flaws in the subject.

Lectures
Asjeet is a pretty good lecturer overall, he definitely seems to cares about the students and will often state that he hopes the main thing you take away from the subject is an appreciation and understanding of the role of finance in the world. Sometimes I found his explanations a little unclear, and the occasional tangents were a little absurd (cuckoo clocks!), but his humour and passion were definitely appreciated. However, I did find the 2 hour lectures a bit tiresome, I think they'd be more engaging and less tiresome if they were split into two 1-hour lectures instead.

Tutorials
It's crucial to complete the tutorials each week, and definitely useful to attend the tutorial classes. Many of the questions are past exam questions, so you can also get a feel for the final-exam whilst completing the work.

Mid-term exam and assignment
Fairly straightforward, just pay careful attention to the wording and questions (e.g. annuity due vs ordinary annuity), I got 100% on both the mid-term exam and assignment with not too much work.

Exam
The exam was not too difficult, the harder parts being the conceptional and explanatory questions. The tutorial questions and practice sample exams do a good of preparing you for the exam, so just make sure you're comfortable with them. I did find it helpful being open book so that I could refer back to content to double check my answer.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 15, 2020, 11:40:57 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC10001 Physics 1 Advanced

Weekly Workload: ~7 pracs (3 hours), 1 tutorial class (1 hour), 3 lectures (1 hour each)

Assessment: Weekly questions on WileyPlus (15%), ~7 Lab classes and lab reports (25%), Final exam (60%)

Echo360 Enabled:  Yes, but demonstrations were sometimes posted separately or not possible this semester

Past exams available:  Yes, 5 past papers with worked solutions

Textbook Recommendation: Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday and Resnick. This textbook is incredible, definitely worth getting a copy and learning from it. The explanations, diagrams, and examples are super helpful when learning the content .... often more so than the lectures.

Lecturer(s): David Jamieson (1st half) and David Simpson (2nd half)

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 1.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Overall, the issue with this subject wasn't with the content (which could be quite interesting), but with the way the lectures, assessment, tutorial classes and overall faculty administration was handled. I can't speak for the regular Physics 1 stream, but certainly this was quite a disappointing subject, and dampened my enthusiasm for physics.

Lectures
David Jamieson is extremely passionate, but will incessantly speak in tangents and sidetrack himself, making the lectures quite hard to follow. His slides are also quite busy and the maths gets skipped through very quickly (not stepped through like in maths subjects); I felt there was a lack of coherency to the flow of the lectures, and it was often hard to discern what was actually examinable or the critical parts of the lecture.

I found David Simpson to be much more calm and methodical, and whose slides were much less busy and more focused, which I appreciated much more. Interestingly, however, some students found the reverse; I suppose it's just a matter of taste in lecture style.

Lab classes and lab reports
This was single-handedly the worst part of the subject, and the most affected by COVID-19. The expected time to completion each week was officially around 3-5 hours (not including the 2 hour Zoom 'lab' class). But, realistically, most students found themselves far exceeding that 'expected completion time' - I dreaded each week's lab report. Much of the lab report was tedious data collection (e.g. measuring 20-40 distances on a screen) and report writing (painful, long, and exhausting). The reports themselves took ages and seemed to be far in excess of what would have been expected had we been on campus. It also didn't help that lab classes started later into semester, and took up heaps of valuable time from other subjects/commitments. Unfortunately, the subject team didn't do much to make it easier, even after complaints from students. Hopefully things improve for next semester.

Problem solving tutorials
These were often meandering and kinda useless. As a result, attendance steadily dropped throughout semester in my group to as low as three students (out of ~18 to begin with). Part of the problem is that there are around 15 large questions per Problem sheet which are not really designed to be covered in a 1 hour class. I think this subject could be better served by extracting the crucial questions and content to be covered in the tutorial class, and splitting the rest off into a dedicated Problem book that can be worked on independently by students (like in Maths subjects). Otherwise, the net effect seems to be that nothing much really gets covered, and it's quite dispiriting.

WileyPlus
These can actually be quite interesting and challenging questions, but there are simply too many per week on top of the other assessment and workload. Also, the interface and accuracy/precision system is abysmal. They were definitely a time-sink each week, but do help in consolidating the content.

Exams
These are really quite difficult, and often incorporate quite challenging questions that are hard to approach in exam circumstances and given exam time constraints. They didn't feel too streamlined though, with many questions on specific topics worth between 20-31 (out of 150), whilst other topics were ignored or given little attention. I feel exams would be better if they had a more even mark distribution, with more - and shorter - questions instead. The exam this year was scaled up slightly (up to 5%).

Overall, I found the workload exceeded what was reasonable (particularly the lab classes) and did not enjoy the way the subject was implemented at all.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 16, 2020, 12:09:24 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20009 Vector Calculus

Workload: 3 lectures/week (~ 1 hour), 1 tutorial class (1 hour)

Assessment: 4 Assignments (5% each), 1 Final exam (80%)

Echo360 Enabled:  Yes, Christine split lectures into smaller chunks and uploaded to LMS at beginning of week

Past exams available:  Yes, 5 past exams with brief answers/working

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing required (excepting lecture slides), Vector Calculus by Marsden and Tromba is recommended for supplementary reading, but I found Vector Calculus by Colley better.

Lecturer(s): Christine Manglesdorf

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 93 H1

Comments:

Lectures
Christine is an excellent lecture; very clear, precise and focused. Her explanations were great, and the subject coordination overall was fantastic. There was quite a bit of hand-holding though (e.g. demonstrating how to evaluate a determinant painstakingly each and every time), but you could just fast-forward through those bits. Clarity and precision is definitely to be preferred over vagueness.

Consulation
This year consultation was moved online via email. You'd send in an email with your questions and working at any time, and Christine would respond and provide guidance/answers as appropriate quite quickly too!. I found these too be really quite useful, and made frequent use of these to ask questions, or just regarding any nuance I came across that wasn't covered in the lectures themselves. I hope this get continued for other subjects next semester.

Tutorials
Tutorials were fantastic! I had Andrei Ratiu, who was amazing and super calm, and would always include extra challenges or teach interesting extended content if there was time at the end of the lesson. The only inconvenience was that it was difficult for those without a stylus/touch screen to be able to collaborate properly in the tutorial given the current circumstances.

Assignments
Honestly I found the assignments to be quite easy, scoring 100% on 3/4 of them. They are generally quite straight-forward applications of the content in the lectures, and often have direct parallels in the lecture notes. If you pay careful attention to the (checking orientation, notation, drawing graphs really carefully), it shouldn't be hard to score well.

Exam
The exams are quite straight forward, and don't seem to change much each year. There are generally no tricky question and no real proof questions (more just 'show that' procedural style questions), just be careful to not make any careless mistakes as usual :). Also, pay attention to notation (e.g. Christine prefers a tilde under vector operators), there are often dedicated marks for correct use of notation, so don't just throw them away! If you have completed the problem book questions and past exams, then the exam shouldn't be any surprise.

The only reason I gave this subject 4.5 instead of 5 is that I felt there was much scope and content that could have been covered in greater depth and rigour than were (e.g. TNB frames, flowlines, conservative vector fields...). Vector Calculus just felt like an extension of Calc 2 (or UMEP), and wasn't really that difficult. Overall, it was an extremely enjoyable and well-taught maths subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on July 18, 2020, 09:24:35 am
Subject Code/Name: ACTL20001 Introductory Financial Mathematics

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Individual assignments: 2x15%=30%, Final exam: 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, including tutorials as well

Past exams available: One practice exam with solutions was provided

Textbook Recommendation: Compound Interest and its Applications, Fitzherbert and Pitt, 2013

Lecturer(s): Ping Chen

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 99

Comments:
* Due to COVID-19, most of the classes this semester were online. Hence my comments may not be indicative of the delivery of this subject in post-COVID era.

In my opinion, IFM is at the same level as intro actuarial in terms of difficulty. What’s more, roughly a third of the topics in IFM have already been taught in intro actuarial. So it really disappoints me as I was expecting much more of a subject with ‘financial maths’ in its title.

Lectures:
Ping is one of the most dedicated lecturers I’ve ever seen. She usually released both recordings for a week on monday or even during the weekend before. And she even kept posting recordings in the week when all teaching activities were suspended as the campus was moving online (this was probably for accreditation purposes though). Ping is also incredibly responsive. I sent her queries a few times and she replied to me on the same day or even within a few hours every time.

In terms of lecture contents, all definitions were clearly stated and all formulae derived. Added to that all you need for the exam are already put in lecture slides. Ping would also supply some tables for illustration purposes when it came to complicated topics, especially those where multiple similar formulae were introduced. Despite all these merits, this subject actually managed to drive me away from actuarial studies. At first look it may seem that we’ve learned a lot of stuff in IFM but, at the end of the day, they are basically variations of cash flow calculations. In terms of maths taught in this subject, I’d say there’s barely any, if at all.

Overall the delivery of lectures deserve a solid 5/5 but the actual contents of lectures do not hold much appeal to me.

Tutorials:
I went to the first tutorial and didn’t attend tutorials anymore knowing that they would be recorded. In fact, I don’t even think there’s a point in watching tutorial recordings when detailed solutions to tutorial sheets are provided in a timely manner.

Assignments:
The two assignments consisted mostly of straightforward calculation-based questions, which you can easily get right by avoiding careless mistakes. Other questions required a bit more of writing, including for example analyzing the suitability of a modelling process and providing suggestions on property purchase. These are also rather simple, all you have to do is to imitate the answers provided in tutorials or conduct some basic research on some government websites. And on top of the simplicity of assignment questions, marking was also very generous. I reckon if one puts in decent effort they should get close to full marks on assignments.

Exam:
As a part of the changes to actuarial accreditation, the syllabus of IFM was modified in 2020 (btw it was titled Financial Mathematics 1 in the past). The consequence is then that we only had one practice exam and no past exams were available. But fortunately some extra question sets were provided in addition to tutorial sheets (I highly recommend doing these extra questions or at least taking a look at the trickier ones).

The exam was originally scheduled to be 2 hours long. In the last week, however, Ping announced that the exam would last 3.5 hours (including reading and scanning) and that the amount of questions would stay the same. Based on my experience in the exam, I honestly don’t think this was true (so did everyone I know doing this subject). But still, three hours and a half was long enough for me to double check all my answers. In terms of difficulty, I’d say all questions were pretty much generic and the hardest part was to press the same figures on the calculator as what you wrote. What made the exam really easy was that it was open-book (thanks to that I didn’t have to memorise all those hideous formulae), which was kinda surprising given that this subject was linked to actuarial accreditation. After the exam I thought scale-down was right on its way, especially after I heard of a few tragedies in some other subjects. Luckily it turned out that it wasn’t.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on July 18, 2020, 09:25:40 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20004 Probability

Workload: 3 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour practice class, and 1 one- hour computer laboratory class per week

Assessment: Four written assignments: 4x5%=20%, Final exam: 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available: All past exam papers from 2009 to 2019 are available, with answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: Saeed Ghahramani.  Fundamentals of Probability with Stochastic Processes, 3rd Edition.  Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005

Lecturer(s): Mark Fackrell & Sophie Hautphenne

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 98

Comments:
* Due to COVID-19, most of the classes this semester were online. Hence my comments may not be indicative of the delivery of this subject in post-COVID era.

Probability is a content-heavy but not-so-difficult subject. At a glance it seems that you’re gonna be inundated with overwhelmingly many concepts and formulae. But when it comes to actually solving problems, this subject doesn’t really demand much in-depth thinking.

Lectures:
In the first few weeks where lectures were still in-person, there were two streams taught by Mark and Sophie respectively. After all subjects moved online they started giving lectures on an alternate basis (i.e. they taught every other week).

Both lecturers had a bit of accent but I believe it won’t take you more than a week to get used to it. At the end of the day, accents don’t really matter as they managed to clearly explain every single topic.

The only downside of lectures is the proofs. As Probability does not have Real Analysis as its prerequisite, some of the proofs in lectures were not 100% rigorous and I wasn’t particularly comfortable with that. So be alert if you’re doing these two subjects in the same semester.

Tutorials:
This is the first subject ever in which I have never attended a single tutorial or lab. I asked at the start of the semester those who had done Probability before if tutorials and labs were helpful. Every one of them gave pretty much the same reply, and then my tutor never got to see me in class. So there’s really nothing I can say about tutorials or labs.

*It doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that I could easily handle all tutorial and lab questions on my own. In fact, there were a few times when I got a bit confused and asked my fellow students for help.

Assignments:
Out of consideration for those who struggled to follow the course due to the COVID situation (probably), the assignments this semester were incredibly easy (I took a look at last sem’s assignments and they were by all means way harder). In one of the assignments the average mark was 18/19! This was a bit frustrating as there was basically nothing to learn from these assignments.

*Just as an aside, I'd like to recommend the problem sheet to those who wish to extend their understanding or practice their problem-solving skills. It may be a bit outdated and some of its questions have lost relevance, but if you take a bit of time to examine the questions you can definitely sift out those worth doing.

Exam:
The single best material for exam preparation is the past exams. So far Probability is the only subject I know that provides as many as 10 past exams with solutions (some of which are brief though). You don’t necessarily need to finish them all, in my mind 2 or 3 from recent years should suffice. For the rest you can quickly go through all the questions and pick out the tricky ones to do. In the meantime, you may find it helpful to spend some time polishing your answers to the types of questions that appear frequently across all years.

The specification of this semester’s final exam differed from past years’ in that: A. Two cheat sheets were allowed instead of one (I honestly don’t know why, there’s enough space on a single cheat sheet), B. There was an extra 15 minutes to allow for technical issues (which doesn’t make any difference if you’ve been working hard enough).

The exam paper was not well written. There were two or three typos, which got corrected very late in the exam. Added to that the corrections were made in zoom chat so I doubt if everyone actually saw them before the exam ended. Fortunately apart from the typos the exam was rather fair, with almost all questions being generic.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on July 18, 2020, 09:28:11 am
Subject Code/Name: PHYC20016 Elements of Quantum Computing

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour lab per week

Assessment: Two assignments: 2x20%=40%, Final exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Obviously no since 2020 is the first year this subject is offered. But there is a set of practice questions provided.

Textbook Recommendation: No

Lecturer(s): Prof. Lloyd Hollenberg, Dr. Charles Hill, Dr. Muhammad Usman, Dr. Casey Myers, Prof. Udaya Parampalli, Dr. Nitin Yadev (Dr. Thomas Quella and Prof. Carsten Murawski were also in the staff team but didn’t give lectures)

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments:
* Due to COVID-19, most of the classes this semester were online. Hence my comments may not be indicative of the delivery of this subject in post-COVID era.

Elements of Quantum Computing is a newly introduced subject in 2020, so I guess I’m the first one to post a review of it.

I have strong mixed feelings about this subject. On the one hand, I really appreciate the joint effort of the lecturers from four different departments to start such an initiative to systematically introduce quantum computing to undergrads. On the other hand, the actual delivery of lectures was not that systematic. I wouldn’t say this subject was disorganized, but it was by no means well coordinated.

Lectures:
There were 23 lectures in total (one less than scheduled because of COVID) and they were co-taught by six lecturers from physics, maths, computing, and finance departments. Usually I don’t talk about the syllabus in my subject review since such info can be easily accessed online. But obviously this subject is an exception. Below is a rough outline of topics:
1. Basic knowledge about quantum computing (e.g. quantum circuit, measurement and operators)
2. Quantum algorithms: Deutsch-Josza algorithm, Simon’s algorithm, Shor’s algorithm, Quantum key distribution, Grover’s algorithm, Quantum phase estimation, Quantum Fourier transform, Quantum approximate optimization algorithm, Quantum Machine learning
3. Applications of quantum algorithms in various fields including cryptography, option pricing, portfolio optimization etc.

A major downside of this subject is that all concepts were not clearly explained. Moreover, sometimes a formula or method would be thrown into your face out of nowhere without any illustrations. What makes matters worse was the lack of study materials online, which made self-study particularly hard. I remember there were a few times when I got really confused as to how a result was obtained and thought that I must have missed something. When I googled it the only resource I could find was some research papers which were absolutely not for beginners. Finally it turned out that we were supposed to take the result for granted without knowing the derivation.

In terms of maths involved I’d say it’s next to none.
The only thing you’ll need is just some elementary knowledge of matrix operations and basic arithmetic skills. All the heavy machinery would have already been done for you.

Labs:
My strategy for attending labs was to attempt questions on the lab sheet first and wait until the end of week when solutions were released. And then I’d attend next week’s lab if I had any queries or skip it if I could figure everything out on my own. In fact, in most weeks the lab sheet questions were so simple that there was no need for labs at all. Added to that questions posted in the discussion board would usually be answered within a day. So attending labs wasn’t that necessary.

Assignments:
The first assignment was a breeze. I reckon they deliberately made it easy for us who had just made a foray into quantum computing. The second assignment was a real pain in the neck and this was mainly due to a 6-mark question on programming real quantum computers on IBM platform. We had to struggle all by ourselves since literally nothing was said in lectures about how real quantum computers worked. I spent a whole day on this question and wrote some nonsense which even I myself couldn’t understand. According to the solutions later released, the lecturers didn’t actually expect much from us. This was further evidenced by their lenient marking.

Exam:
Well first of all there were no past exam papers as this subject has no past. One practice exam with solutions was made available, which was not that helpful because most questions were overly straightforward. To be honest I was thinking revision was necessary if we’d be tested on such simple questions in an open-book exam (still I did a thorough revision as I had plenty of time for exam preparation)

The exam was, for want of a best word, weird. About two thirds of exam questions were in a similar vein to those in the practice exam and were thus effortless. Nonetheless, the other third was wildly beyond my expectation: There was one question which I didn’t even understand what it was asking; there was another question which I could barely even get started on. I counted after the exam that I left almost 20 marks (out of 100) unanswered, a record high (others were not even close). And so I was expecting a low H1, but I got 87 as my final mark. I guess either the marking or scaling was generous, or both.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: honlyu on July 18, 2020, 09:33:03 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST30021 Complex Analysis

Workload: three 1-hour lectures (much longer this semester, will explain later) and one 1-hour practical per week

Assessment: Four written assignments: 4x5%=20%, Final exam: 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available: All past exam papers from 2016 to 2019 are available, with NO answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: None

Lecturer(s): Michael Wheeler

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 99

Comments:
* Due to COVID-19, most of the classes this semester were online. Hence my comments may not be indicative of the delivery of this subject in post-COVID era.

This is the first level 3 maths subject I’ve done (in fact I haven’t done any level 2 maths either if AM2 doesn’t count as one), so there was quite a leap in difficulty for me. As a result my journey at the beginning of the semester wasn’t rather smooth (I reckon this was partly because I hadn’t done Vector Calculus and Differential Equations before, where some topics in Complex Analysis were already touched on).  As the subject went deeper and deeper into the complex realm, however, the topics seemed more connected and my understanding solidified. So don’t panic if you feel lost in the first few weeks. Just try your best to follow along. As far as I’m concerned, the connections between some topics won’t manifest themselves until the later half of the subject. What’s more, some seemingly bizarre proof techniques would become commonplace as you approach the end of the semester. Some proofs, when you first encounter them, may seem like they rely on one miracle after another. But I assure you, if you take some time to summarise and categorise all the proof techniques used, you should easily note some general rules.

A word of caution: It is true that the applications of some theorems in Complex Analysis bear a striking resemblance to those of their real versions. It is also true that linking complex concepts to corresponding real ones can be conducive to intuitive understanding. But sometimes disasters can strike if one blurs the boundary between complex and real analysis (this is hard to explain but it does pose a risk). The best advice I can give is that: You can compare definitions and theorems in this subject with similar ones in real analysis if this helps with your learning. It is nevertheless not a wise idea to assume that any concepts in the scope of real numbers can be extended to the complex plane unless you’ve actually been taught so in the course.

Lectures:
Michael was an articulate lecturer and his explanations were always flawless. A downside is that he speaks quite slowly, but that was compensated by extended lecture duration (at least 1 hour, the longest was over 1.5 hours if I recall). As a result we were actually able to dig deeper into some topics than in normal semesters (according to Michael himself).

The only thing I don’t like about lectures is that we only finished 28 out of all 34 scheduled lectures. Excluding the week when the entire uni broke down, we should have had 31 lectures. However Michael decided to further cut the number of lectures as ‘many students were falling behind’. Fortunately from the discussion board it seems that Michael is planning to upload last year’s recordings of lecture 29 to 34 (hopefully I can get my hands on them as soon as possible).

A major highlight of this semester’s Complex Analysis is the three 2-hour revision sessions, which can be a huge help if you feel that you haven’t had a good grasp of some topics. There’s no guarantee, however, that there would be revision sessions of similar lengths in future semesters.

Tutorials:
To be honest I no longer attended tutorials since week 3, with the main reason being that the pace in online tutorials was incredibly slow. Added to that Michael would post detailed solutions on canvas. Despite the fact that only the solutions to the first four problem sheets were released in time, most questions were either proof-heavy or solvable using Wolfram and so there shouldn’t be an urgent need for solutions.

NB: If you’re doing this subject in-person, don’t expect any posted solutions from the lecturer. Solutions in this semester were provided on the basis of the low quality of online tutorials. In the past they had never been available.

Assignments:
More than half of the assignment questions were rather straightforward. If you have understood the lectures well you wouldn’t get stuck on them. A few questions required some in-depth thinking and there’s no guarantee that you can solve them. It is also noteworthy that even those easy, straight questions could require ponderous computation.

Marking for assignments wasn’t particularly harsh, but not lenient either. I put in quite a lot of effort but still lost 2 marks in total (yes that’s more than the mark I lost in this subject, thanks to scaling).

Exam:
This semester is the first time ever the exam is in open-book form. We were allowed to use as many handwritten notes as we wished (printed notes were not allowed, which was unfair to those taking electronic notes). And the only allowed printed materials were lecture slides. In consequence, unlike in past exams, statements of theorems and proofs from lectures would no longer be asked.

In terms of exam preparation, I’d say tutorial sheets should take priority over anything else, followed by past exams and then assignments. In fact I ranked assignments before past exams in my own revision thinking that the difficulty or complexity of open-book exam questions would be comparable to that of assignments.

Contrary to what I was thinking, the questions weren’t particularly hard. I  had half an hour left after I finished the exam to check all my answers (the exam itself was definitely harder than past years’, what made them not so challenging was the fact that we had our notes at hand). By a rough calculation, I reckoned that the highest I could get was 95. And it turned out that my final mark was scaled to 99, a huge surprise.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on July 24, 2020, 05:49:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOL10008: Introductory Biology: Life's Machinery

Workload:  3x Lectures/week, 1 Prac/Workshop stream, each in alternating weeks and 1 tute/week

Assessment:  6x module tests throughout the semester 15%, 5x Prac/workshop tasks 25% (prac attendance is also a hurdle), Written report based on one of the pracs 10%, final exam 50% (passing exam also hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  New subject, so no past exams, but some practice questions were offered.

Textbook Recommendation:  Knox , et.al , Biology, An Australian Focus 5th Ed, but you don't need it! Don't waste your money.

Lecturer(s):

A/Prof. Alex Johnson

He took the first module which is meant to be an introductory "What is life?" sort of thing. He talked about the origins of life, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, DNA replication and the molecules of life. I thought he did okay with what he could. He was obviously very knowledgeable but since this is an intro class he did his best to "dumb things down" for us. Unfortunately, I think he went a bit too far because I felt we lacked proper explanations for things (however this is a recurring issue throughout the whole subject, see the comments section, not just with him). It would be interesting to see him teach a higher level subject on the topics he researches (biotechnology in plants).

Prof Ute Roessner and Dr. Heroen Verbruggen

They took the second module together, talking about transcription and translation, energy transformations, glycolysis and the formation of ATP and photosynthesis. This was my second least favourite module. They tackled such complicated processes and so many of them, in only 2 weeks, so you can imagine how much they had to dumb things down. It was also very hard to understand what we needed to know for the exam. Especially with Ute's lectures. And even so, I preferred her over Veroen. Veroen just seemed inexperienced in lecturing. Watching his lectures (which were all online cause COVID anyway), it felt like a nervous kid giving a presentation. Not seeing his face didn't make this better either. He would often stutter and struggle with how to explain things in a simple enough manner to us. I felt a bit sorry for him

Dr Jen Fox and Dr John Golz

They took the 3rd and the best module. John is imo the best lecturer in this subject and my 1 point out of five go to him and Jen Fox (but mostly to him). John took animal and plant physiology, and homeostasis and Jen took human physiology. They were really good at explaining things at the right level, although to be fair they did get a lot more time than the others.

Prof Alex Adrianopolous

He took the genetics module. He was that lecturer that you probably would like very much as a person, but not particularly as a teacher. The main issue with this module was that we didn't get to see exam style questions being answered. Alex would often give us questions and just tell us to do them as homework without providing much guidance. Most of those questions were also so much harder than the small examples he would give us, so when it came down to practicing exam questions, the genetics ones left me feeling very deflated. I had to pretty much self-study this whole module by myself with online videos and task sheets to be able to even begin to understand what the exam questions asked.

Dr Alex Idnurm

He took the last module on challenges life faces and how evolution works, disease in both animals and plants and cancer. This was an ok module. The first half was a bit confusing and all over the place, but the disease and cancer bit was interesting.

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Sem 1

Rating:  1 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 74

Comments: Like I said in the "Lecturers" bit, the main issue with this subject is that it tried to do too much in too little time. It's meant to be a subject for people with 0 prior experience in biology, but it did not come across like that at all. They basically used the exact same slides (the lecturers admitted it) as BIOL10009, the intermediate biology equivalent. Another big miss for me is that they made it all so....boring. Im a biochem major so I'm supposed to find this stuff interesting, but the plant physiology taught by John was more interesting to me than the biochem bit explained by Ute. They basically stripped the subject of all the interesting bits for the sake of simplification. 3rd major issue: hard to study for. So unclear what is wanted from us.

I also had the disadvantage of taking this during COVID and they transitioned online in the worst possible manner. The pracs turned into bad quality videos and 2 small quizzes per prac which had questions that seemed to have nothing in common with the prac.
They also put each of us in a dozen canvas groups and sent us a gazillion emails almost every day making us hunt for needed info like a needle in a hay stack, which made me miss 2 deadlines.
Overall this was just a headache of a subject. I just wanted to get done with it. Would it be better during a normal semester? Probably. But my advice would be to go in with low expectations.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: PLACEHOLDER123 on November 25, 2020, 11:21:35 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30028 Numerical Method & Scientific Computing 

Workload:  2*1 hr lecture, 1*2 hrs Tutorial

Assessment:  2 assignments worth 20% each, 60% for final exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 2

Textbook Recommendation:  (Cleve Moler, 2004) Numerical Computing with MATLAB,

Lecturer(s): Hailong Guo

Year & Semester of completion: 2020S2

Rating: 1 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBD

Comments:

I've used this subject review threads a lot so I thought make some contribution, since the last review for this subject is quite old.

I'll keep it short and concise.
Matlab is mainly used although there are one optional exercises using Python with numpy and matplotlib.


The topic include:
- Matlab 101
- very basic stochastic simulation
- Floating point numbers and round off error
- Root finding and discretization error
- solve linear system, aka system of linear equations
- data fitting, using both linear (the method you see from Calc2, LA)
   and non-linear methods (lsqcurvefit from the optimization toolbox)
- Initial value problem , aka, solve ODE (that is not hand-computable) with inital value

To be honest, (the majority of) the content taught in this subject is quite dry and unintersting at that.
It seems to follow the formula of
1 > introduce something
2 > derive something
3 > tell you that there is a matlab command for that
4 > goto 1 :)
 
Assignments:
The assignments are really tedious and frustrating, they expect you:
- write some code, usually tens of lines of them
- use matlab to publish your code, (publishing is slow, you also need to fiddle with settings to produce desired output)
- copy and paste your code to your word document
- produce a lot of image
- save them in a folder
- import them to the same word document
- zip all the code and image in one zip file and submit


You can already see where the tedious part is, if they require you to produce a lot of images(which they do),
you probably spend half of the time just doing the formating, saving, keep track of required file, etc.
and this is something that doesn't need to be a problem

How hard is it to just use interactive Python, Jupyter Notebook etc?
You have my code, you can reproduce everything, matlab itself is not a good language, matching file name and function name, one (main) function one file anyone?

Some of the questions are, quite frankly, nuts. Like they throw a program at you and they ask you the operation count (think of time complexity)
but they don't just want a big O notation mind you, they want the EXACT operation count.

The question themselves can be quite vague, e.g. what the heck is "interrogate the output"
what does that mean? and what the heck is "comment on the graph", what do you want me to comment? Isn't a picture already worth a thousand words?

The marking is quite strict, for example, they expect you to use "the technique of vectorization" wherever possible.
If you don't and just use a conventional for loop instead you lose marks, like a lot of them.

what? This is MAST30028 not COMP30028, if it runs just fine then why?
If you want the ultimate performance, teach this subject in C++ please, PLEASE! I beg you.

Exam:
Exam question is quite similar to assignment question, there are 2 past exmas available this year.

Overall:
if you are not required to do this subject, don't do this subject.
I give this subject 1 out of 5 rather 0 out of 5 is that there are small part of the content quite useful, like condion number, discrtization err
and the concept of machine number, which in turn explains why if when you subtract two very big but close numbers,the result can be unexpected.

For a very basic introduction to Matlab, it can be passable, which you may or may not find useful.
For me, matlab's 1-index and end inclusion require some time to getting used to.
Really hope this subject can be taught in interactive Python in conjunction of numpy, scipy and matplotlib in the future.
Until then, don't :)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on November 26, 2020, 04:31:39 pm
Subject code/name: HIST30010 Hitler's Germany and Fascism

Workload: 1 x 1.5 hr lecture & 1 x 1 hr tutorial a week

Assessments:
   - 3 x multiple choice tests (15% total)
   - 1,200 word document analysis (30%)
   - 2,500 word research essay (55%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: N/A

Textbook Recommendation: N/A

Lecturer(s): Angel Alcalde

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your mark/grade: H1 (83)

Comments:

This is the first third-year history subject I've done (I'm a current 2nd year student), and I found it to be a massive, absolutely massive step up from all the 1st/2nd year history subjects. The focus on historiography as opposed to historical events threw me off at first. For instance, in 1st/2nd year, the first assignment is always a primary document analysis - a speech, a journal, a letter, etc. In this subject, the first assignment is a secondary document analysis - analysing a historian's interpretation. That said, I loved this subject and I'm really glad I did it early to get a taste of what harder history subjects involve.

Assessments

Multiple Choice Tests: There are 3 tests spread throughout the semester worth 15% total. Each test only has 5 questions, which is great, until you realise that means each question is one mark to your final subject score. They cover mostly content from lectures and occasionally readings. Each test has a time limit of 10 minutes each.

Document Analysis: This was in the form of a 1,200 word book review. Most books are quite lengthy (around 600 pages) so it's pretty time consuming. But otherwise, it's an easy assessment as not much external research is required. There was a subtle focus on historiography which tripped up a lot of people, myself included.

Research Essay: 2,500 words due prior to the exam period. I found this to be an incredibly difficult assignment, due to the intense focus on historiography. You have to analyse at least 5 interpretations or historiographical schools in relation to an aspect of fascism (eg. violence, antisemitism, leadership, etc). Actual historical content accounts for only around 1/3 of the essay. There was also a large focus on recent historiography, which I found was the most difficult part of the assessment.

Final thoughts

This subject can be incredibly challenging for non-arts students due to the heavy historiographical focus, so if you are thinking of doing this for breadth, you've been warned. I also found that those who study Politics/Philosophy did better than actual History majors. That said, it was an amazing subject and I highly recommend. Also, this is the second subject of Angel's I've done and I can confidently say he is an amazing lecturer.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on November 26, 2020, 04:35:15 pm
Subject code/name: HIST20060 Total War: World War II

Workload: 1 x 1.5 hr lecture & 1 x 1 hr tutorial a week

Assessments: 2 x 2,000 word essays (50% each)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Subject reader available online

Lecturer(s): Mark Edele

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your mark/grade: H1 (86)

Comments:

First off, obligatory disclaimer that I did this during the online semester so the review might not be a 100% true reflection of what the subject would be like normally. That said, there wasn't many big changes to subject in terms of content and assessments.

Assessments:

Primary Document Analysis: 2,000 words worth 50%. Your usual first assignment in history. You get a choice of speeches made by important WWII-era leaders such as Churchill, FDR, Hitler, Chiang, Hirohito etc and do the usual analysis.

Research Essay: 2,000 words worth 50%. Your usual research essay in history - responding to a prompt out of several choices given. You can also create your own prompt but it must be approved by the subject coordinator.

Final thoughts

Overall, I thought this was a very standard history subject. There's not a big difference from first-year subjects and is also very similar to the other second-year ones I've done. As there are no weekly quizzes or a final exam with multiple questions/prompts, you can get away with basically attending only the relevant weeks' lectures as you are not tested on anything else. It's not a difficult subject, the assessment criteria were fairly standard, and Mark is quite approachable and always really happy to answer questions.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on December 01, 2020, 03:36:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

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

Assessment: 2x written assignments (each worth 10%)
2x MCQ (5% each) 
1x exam (60% of final) Note that this is a hurdle, 50% on the exam is required to pass.
The remaining 10% comes from tutorial participation, i.e. this was literally free since they waived this for sem 2 2020.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. More importantly, the lectures were not pre-recorded!! (this should make sense, considering the nature of the subject :) )

Past exams available:  Yes, around 4-5 past exams.

Textbook Recommendation:  Feel free to obtain a copy of the book, but it isn't needed other than for further understanding of the content. The lecture slides + tutorials do more than enough.

Lecturer(s): Lawrence Uren and Nahid Khan. Lawrence presented all the lectures, and Nahid ran the fortnightly review sessions to provide students with additional questions.

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2 - note this was delivered fully online owing from COVID-19 restrictions.

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A !

Comments:
This subject is a core subject for the B-COM, and a core within anyone majoring/minoring in economics, meaning this is one of the most popular subjects in first year. A pass in Introductory Microeconomics (ECON10004) is required to enroll in this subject. 

As a second semester BCOM student, I initially didn't think much about this subject since at the time I was planning on majoring on actuarial studies (ACTL10001 review soon?!!), and really only did it since it's a core subject for BCOM. However, as soon as I watched the first lecture, I felt like I had to major in economics! Lawrence is easily the best lecturer I've had (in a small sample size lol) so far within the uni and I actually doubt anyone will top him for me. There are many reasons why I enjoy his style of teaching, but perhaps the best part of Lawrence is his tone and demeanour - I really found it relaxing and kept myself grounded during these turbulent times. There were some caveats with his teaching - he did not have many examples on slides, relying on Nahid's review sessions and the tutorial sheets to do that for him. He was receptive to feedback, so there were more examples in the second-half of the course. I also knew some students who found his voice annoying...I digress.

Assessments
Back to the actual course, the MCQs were quite easy as long as you kept up to date with content. I think the first quiz was in week 4, and the second in week 10. The assignments were also quite easy; with Lawrence admitting that the averages for the assignments being a lot higher than expected. These assignments were done in groups of 1 to 3 - i.e. you can solo these assignments. If you were to work in a group (which I did for both), then you had to choose your group-mates from your own tutorial. I actually became pretty good friends with my two group-mates and it made the assignments a lot easier, since you can just delegate work to others whilst also discussing your own work with others. Since the assignments were easy, I don't think people doing the assignments solo had any real disadvantage. 

Tutorials
I didn't go to many tutorials, but my tutor was quite nice and always made sure that you understood the content well. I highly recommend going to the first few weeks of tutes, then to leave since having a good relationship with a good tutor helps a lot in the long run.

Coursework/content
Coursework wise, if you did VCE Economics or equivalent, then you'll recognise a lot of the content in this subject, specifically AD/AS curves and its properties, Keynesian and Classical economics (even though we weren't told it explicitly back then :P) and balance of payments. If you didn't, then don't worry since everything was accessible if you did intro micro. Difficulty wise, I found it easier than micro (I guess represented by my marks) especially if you enjoy real-life applications of economics. We examined a lot of the effects of COVID-19 and other great economic events (Great Depression, GFC) with respect to the theory we learnt, so I found that very cool!

Exam
The exam was alright, being 25 MCQ (usually 20) and 8 short-answer questions. There were no diagrams on this exam as noted by Lawrence as drawing diagrams would be time-costly on this online exam, so there were some weird and wacky questions but overall I felt good about it and I'm pretty happy with my mark.

Concluding remarks
As noted I will more than likely major in economics now as a result of this subject. I really enjoyed this subject and definitely would recommend this as a breadth if you've done intro micro. If you're doing this as a core, I hope you have Lawrence and Nahid (I think they only teach sem 2) and I'm sure you'll have a blast! Or not, since you know, this is a core subject for all BCOM students regardless of your major. Thanks for reading :)




Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on December 01, 2020, 04:15:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload:  2x 2 hr lectures*, 1x 1 hr tutorial per week.
*this varied between week, but expect around 3-4 hours of lecture content per week.

Assessment: 2x written assignments (each worth 10%)
1x MST (midsem test) (worth 10%)
1x exam (70% of final) Note that this is a hurdle, 50% on the exam is required to pass.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. More importantly, the lectures were not pre-recorded, since we had a new lecturer.

Past exams available:  No - this is explained later in the review.

Textbook Recommendation:  Feel free to obtain a copy of the book, but it isn't needed other than for further understanding of the content. The lecture slides + tutorials do more than enough. To obtain the book, ask a past student to send it since it's out of print and it's way too expensive.

Lecturer(s): Benjamin Avanzi - he is a new lecturer at unimelb, but has taught courses similar to this in UNSW. (i.e. he knows what he's doing lol)

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2 - note this was delivered fully online owing from COVID-19 restrictions.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
This is the only level 1 subject within the actuarial major (denoted by ACTLXXXXX) and it's actually the only one that's not needed to satisfy the major itself. As per title, this subject serves as an introduction to the actuarial and what exactly actuaries do. Benjamin in particular is a new lecturer at Unimelb, so we had a new curriculum to reflect this change.

It's obvious that Benjamin is a huge geek over actuarial studies and anything actuarial related, making this subject very interesting (I mean, if the lecturer doesn't seem interested, then why should you be?) as it could be but at the end of the day - it's actuarial studies, so it's quite hard and for me, a little bit boring. If I could sum-up this review, it would be to do it if you are interested in the actuarial major since it provides a GREAT overview of the profession. I cannot recommend this as a breadth if you're just good at maths; Ben makes an emphasis on theory more so than previous years.

Assessments
Definitely the worst part of the subject are the two group assignments. You are randomly assigned to groups of 5, where you have to co-ordinate who's doing what on the assignment. You also have to submit a group contract, signalling what is expected from the 5 of you and what happens if someone does complete their obligations.

The first assignment was an application of financial cash flows (which is weird way of saying it...) via the form of purchasing an investment property. We "roleplayed" as consultants to a wealthy client who wanted to purchase a property. We were to use Excel (which isn't taught in the subject, so you'll need learn it somehow) to record all cash-flows and any interest gained or taxes etc. This was actually pretty alright, but my group didn't do too well for a multitude of reasons. Average here was a 79%.
Assignment 2 fared better for all groups on average - an 85 I think. This was a continuation of the first assignment so we had the same groups. In this assignment, we had to research how insurance providers price their plans with respect to certain risk factors - e.g. age, location etc. This was a lot more interesting and hell-of-a-lot-easier than the first one.

Ben is quite responsive to any allegations of a group member(s) not doing their part - as long as you have proof somewhere and you listed it on the contract you submitted as a group, then he'll recognise it and will mark their assignments as 0.

The MST was very hard, average was 9/18 and the highest mark was a 16. If you've read past reviews of this subject, then this shouldn't come too much of a surprise :)

Tutorials
Like most of my subjects, I went for the first month (4 weeks) and came to the last few just to consolidate on work. The tutes weren't too useful since solutions were provided at the end of the week anyways, along with a certain tutor being kind enough to provide detailed solutions. There is no guarantee that you'll have access to these detailed solutions in the future however.

Coursework/content
The first four weeks relate to financial mathematics - so if you've done Principles of Finance (FNCE10002), then this shouldn't be too hard. The hardest part is the notation used - you need to remember what "v" means or "an" (I can't do the symbol lol). It's not too bad however, but there is a large difficulty spike in tutorial questions by week 3.

The next few weeks (5-9?) cover demography - the data of which actuaries use within their risk modelling. This was my favourite part of the subject, since this is actually why I was interested in actuarial studies in the first place. Alas, this is just me I feel lol.

The last weeks feature a lot of theory regarding insurance pricing and superannuation, the two most interesting topics to discuss on a coffee date I am sure. In all seriousness, these were actually alright and were the hardest topics to grasp both mathematically and theoretically. The superannuation lecture was taken partially by former VIC Premier John Brumby, who is now chancellor of La Trobe Uni (I had no idea lol). This was definitely a highlight for me since it made superannuation more interesting by providing an "insider's view" of the concept. Hopefully Ben gets him back next year! 


Exam
I can't actually comment on this - I am awaiting a special consideration regarding technical issues. From what I've heard, it is a bit weird and odd, with a huge emphasis on applications of theory - this was an open book exam.
The main issue for studying for this subject was that there were no past exams - Ben made a comment about how it would take too long and how the actual past exams were certainly not indicative of this exam. Take that as you will but I felt like it would have been easy to pass. I apologise that I could not provide an adequate review here.

Concluding remarks
If you read my review above here, then you would know I am no longer pursuing the actuarial major - the maths isn't for me and whilst there was some interest with some aspects of the profession, I think I prefer other things like economics more. With that being said, I would have not made the switch away from actuarial if it wasn't for this subject, so I am grateful that this subject really did its job of introducing first years to, actuarial studies! I really did enjoy this subject and I wish everyone pursuing this major the best of luck. Like I said earlier, I wouldn't do this subject as a breadth if you're only good at maths - Ben loves his qualitative aspects perhaps more than the quantitative aspects. Thanks for reading.



Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: cancer1123 on December 05, 2020, 03:34:42 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30028 Numerical Methods & Scientific Computing 

Workload:  two 1 hour lectures and one 2 hour lab class a week

Assessment:  two assignments worth 20% each and final exam worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 past exams available

Textbook Recommendation:  Moler Numerical Computing with Matlab

Lecturer(s): Hailong Guo

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 sem2

Rating: 3.5

Your Mark/Grade: 83

Comments:

Overall the lectures were very dry and it was rather difficult to learn anything from watching them the first time around. They contained a lot of non-important excess information that only really served to obfuscate what is actually important and make it harder to understand what was going on. The lecturers were only useful to me after having read the relevant textbook chapters and having spent a considerable amount of time attempting the assignment questions.

The lecturer was also quite dry in his delivery and wasn't able to intonate his voice in a way that emphasised what was important in the lectures which further complicated things.

Due to this I relied quite heavily on the textbook, which luckily is quite well written.

The exam was a bit of a curveball, the theory behind each of the questions in the exam was essentially the same as what was done in the past exams but the approach required and way the questions were asked were very different from the past exams.

There's another reply about this subject this semester I would like to address because I don't entirely agree with it:

The assignments were a bit heavy but they did a fantastic job at teaching the content, and they were worth 20% each so I feel like that justifies the time that was required to complete them.

Outputting everything in the right format and putting everything together was a bit tedious so I agree on that part, but it's also sort of just what creating a report entails and is a skill and of itself. It's also the exact sort of thing required in a lot of jobs anyway so   
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also disagree entirely that Matlab isn't a good language, I think it's a fantastic language. It's easy to use, has a really nice dynamic environment, has just the right amount of syntax so that programming doesn't take forever and it's really clear what everything is doing, is really fast and also has plenty of ready functions available without having to import a whole bunch of stuff like in python.

I agree that some of the questions were a bit vague but honestly all you had to do was go to the labs or consultation and ask about it he would spend as much time explaining and clarifying it to you as was needed.

One thing I took particular notice of is that the commenter criticised the marking for requiring the use of vectorisation (rather than a bunch of for loops and if statements):
Vectorisation makes the program FAR faster and also condenses what would otherwise at times take 5-10+ lines of code and a large amount of effort into a single, easily understood line of code.
That's a pretty basic concept and important lesson that strikes at the heart of what you want to accomplish in programming and numerical computing.

Overall I'd sum it up at crappy teaching, great subject.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: kiwikoala on December 06, 2020, 01:27:05 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20005 Competition and Strategy

Workload:  Weekly 2 x 1 hour lectures,  1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  3 x 10% assignments, 70% exam (Assignment style)
Final mark = max {assignments + exam weighted, exam only}

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, Pre-recorded, no live zoom chat. High quality recordings though, he uses OBS, facecam and edits his vids!

Past exams available:  Plenty of materials

Textbook Recommendation:  "A. Dixit and S. Skeath, Games of Strategy, fifth edition W.W. Norton and Company. This textbook, while useful for all students, is not strictly required for the subject." - subject guide (I didn't use)

Daniel made plenty of supplementary materials like exercises (I didn't use them either)

Lecturer(s): Dr. Jun Xiao

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Sem 2 (Corona Time!)

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: It was great. My best breadth. Content is shallow and math is basic but very fun to learn. It's even easier if you remember content from intro micro such as Nash Equilibirium, monopolies and welfare.

Just wanted to update from the previous review that Jun and Daniel are still teaching 4 years later and are both still incredible. Worth doing as a breadth/elective for any student who is interested in game theory concepts.

Content is almost the same as the last review, week 12 is different from what I see.

I copped a H1 from doing assignments well and watching lectures (lol). I watched the appropriate recorded tutorials uploaded by Daniel before each assignment. Killing the assignments (i.e. understanding the concepts) set you up for the exam quite well as they were in the same format.

For more stuff on content read: https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=43031.msg921945#msg921945

The hardest questions of assignments/exams are based on some of the games learnt in lectures but with a mild extension to the rules. If you were comfortable doing 1st year math, then this will also be pretty good. Otherwise it's not too bad with some practice. A lot of questions were just resolving the exact game from the lectures with different numbers.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on December 09, 2020, 05:03:59 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB20002: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Workload:  1 modules/week (11 total) ~ 10-12 short videos per module + 1 tutorial/per week

Assessment:  11xweekly quizzes 1% each; 2xMST 15% each; 3x assignments 3% each; exam 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with/without screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, answers on MCQ sections

Textbook Recommendation:  Nelson and Cox, Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, 7th edn. 2017 IS RECOMMENDED BUT NOT NEEDED

Lecturer(s): Prof. Terry Mulhern and Prof. Heather Verkade

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1 2020

Rating:  6 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 86

Comments: I decided to do a review of this subject because the previous ones are quite old and the structure was changed. It used to be 3 lectures a week, but now its short videos that you can watch as you wish and 1 tutorial a week in which the lecturer goes through questions (usually PollEv style) about the module from the previous week and gives you a chance to ask questions and all that. I personally think the new version is perfect. The videos range from 10-12 per week and go from 3-12 min. The videos are extremely well made and both Terry and Heather are terrific lecturers.

The content ranges from pH and basic chemistry to protein structure, enzymes kinetics, metabolism and regulation (taught by Terry) to the more molecular side i.e. transcription, translation, laboratory techniques, etc (taught by Heather). It is quite content heavy, but its also very easy to keep up with the content, especially with the short videos.

The assessment is also very helpful in keeping you up to date. 1 short quiz every week worth 1% that helps you consolidate your learning of the week's module (and you get 3 tries so its pretty much a free 11%) plus 3 super easy assignments worth 3% each. The MSTs are fully MCQ and can be a bit tricky. Terry particularly likes to test your understanding of his content not just rote learning, but don't let that deter you, his explanations are amazing and make it very easy to study. Final Exam is 50% and is part MCQ (which is pretty much the same as MST), part SAQ which is pretty much the same sort of questions as the assignments, albeit a bit harder.

This is the subject that made me wanna major in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Cannot recommend it enough. Especially if you're doing something bioscience related. Absolutely loved it. One of my favourite subjects of all time.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: c.lim37 on December 10, 2020, 01:15:21 am
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics 

Workload:  Weekly: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: 
- Weekly multiple choice quizzes (10%)
- MST (5%)
- Assignment 1 (10%)
- Assignment 2 (15%)
- Exam (60% hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes. Since this was Jeff's first semester teaching Intro Micro again, he provided us with past exams that he wrote (2011 and 2014 I believe..?, as well as a 2020 mock exam). They were all pretty much the same structure as the actual exam so I'd recommend paying particular attention to these, or at least read through the sample answers during SWOTVAC so you know what kind of answers they're looking for. (I didn't really look through these until the night before the exam oops)

Textbook Recommendation:  Didn't bother looking at the recommended texts beyond week 2, don't feel like I missed out on much.

Lecturer(s): Jeff Borland - I really enjoyed Jeff's lectures this semester. They were well-structured, clear and concise, and he provided just enough examples to get the point across without boring you. I'd recommend printing out the slides before the lecture, having a flick through and taking notes of anything that doesn't make sense to you and paying particular attention to those parts during the lecture. I'd then make summary notes at the end of each week to solidify my understanding (but I'm sure most people could get by with just annotated lecture slides). I found that drawing graphs to understand cause and effect really helped too.

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 91 (H1)

Comments:
Assessment Advice:
- Weekly multiple choice quizzes (10%), of which your top 7 scores are averaged to make up 10% of your grade. (Note that since this was done during one of the COVID semesters so tutorial attendance was waived and we just had to do the pre-tutorial quizzes, pretty much a free 10% since we were allowed 2 attempts at each quiz)
-MST (5%) is a 10 mark MCQ quiz. This is probably the easiest to score well in, as the questions are basically the same as those in the weekly pre-tute quizzes with a few numbers or words switched out. If you pay attention to the weekly quiz feedback, you should be able to score high in this one.
- Assignment 1 (10%): 1000 words, fairly straight forward, we just had to answer questions on the first area of study (supply/demand, market equilibrium, international trade). If you spend a couple of hours on this it should be fairly easy to get 9 or 10%. One piece of advice for all assessments, USE GRAPHS!!
- Assignment 2 (15%): 1500 words, again very similar to assignment 1, but this time with 1100 words to answer questions, and a 400 word case study (which is pretty easy to get marks on, I waffled quite a bit here). This assignment was largely focused on the second area of study (theory of the firm, price discrimination, marginal cost/marginal revenue), but also included some stuff on market failure.
- Exam (60% hurdle): Straightforward, no hidden surprises exam. Section A consisted of 10 multiple choice questions, section B consisted of 3 short answer questions and section 3 included 3 sections of questions more similar to that of the assignments. Though the exam itself is not difficult, I'd recommend really making use of graphs to show your thinking, planning your time out well and working fast, as I ran out of time at the end and struggled to upload all my graphs (online exams amirite).

The three main areas of study for this subjects are: Weeks 1-4 Market Outcomes in Perfectly Competitive Markets, Weeks 5-9 Theory of the firm and managerial economics, Weeks 10-11 Game theory and Week 12 Exam Revision. For lecture 24, Jeff asks students to email him for any topics they want him to go over so I'd recommend making use of this as he further explains the requested topics here.

As a first year with no background in economics at all, this ended up being my favourite subject this semester. Jeff kept his lectures short enough as to not be overly time consuming or boring, and really kept us in the loop via LMS announcements. He was also pretty quick to reply to emails too so I'd recommend emailing him or your tutor if you're unsure about anything. As for tutorials, I attended them for the first 5 or so weeks but quickly found them to be useless. The tutorial worksheets are actually VERY useful for exam revision (basically the same format as sections B and C of the exam) but I ended up just doing them in my own time and checking the solutions at the end of the week, as the tutor's explanations were hard to understand and ended up just confusing me. Overall a great subject, I'd say I recommend it to all but it's a Comm core so y'know :P
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on December 12, 2020, 11:40:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST20018 Discrete Maths and Operations Research 

Workload: 1 hour tutorial, lectures were a mess

Assessment: Exam worth 80%, Assessments were also an unpredictable mess

Past exams available:  Yes, about 5, solutions were not really provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Linear & Integer Optimization by Sierksma for the OR part, but not required and not really necessary

Lecturer(s): Alysson Costa

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating:  1.5/5

Mark/Grade: 90 H1

Comments:

The lecturer and subject coordinator this year was new, and without going into too much detail, kinda messed up the whole subject experience. Lectures were frequently a mess, assessment requirements and weighting changing on a daily basis, foisting unwanted software and platforms on us and just created an all-round complete mess and chaos on a daily basis. At least tutorials were good though.

The Operations Research side of the subject was interesting and enjoyable, but the Discrete Maths portion was a hodge-podge of subjects, that whilst sometimes interesting felt a little out of place on a uni curriculum and honestly a little pointless. Overall, the subject honestly ended up as a bit of a failure this semester, which is disappointing as it had some potential.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on December 13, 2020, 12:07:55 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20026 Real Analysis

Workload: 3x1hr Lectures, 2x1hr tutorial

Assessment: 5 Assignments, worth 4% each, Exam, worth 80%

Past exams available: Yes, 5 with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  None required, but I found Understanding Analysis by Abbott helpful

Lecturer(s): Paul Norbury

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 80 H1

Comments:

Overall, I kinda felt this subject was a bit boring, and I didn't find Paul to be the best lecturer; a bit too reserved and often pulled things from nowhere in his proofs without bothering to explain them. It wasn't a terrible subject, and I found it got more interesting after Calculus (Differentiation, Riemann Integration, Series and Taylor Series) was introduced, but I didn't particularly enjoy this subject and hence engaged poorly with it, and so my marks also suffered for it.

I must admit that I did practically none of the Problem Book questions for this subject, which was probably a mistake, but I just wasn't particularly engaged in this subject. Unlike other maths subjects, there are two tutorials each week, but I honestly didn't find them to be particularly useful and hence skipped a number of them towards the end of the year.

IMO there was way too much time spent on basic Mathematical Logic (~first 4 weeks), where that time could've been better spent on later parts of the subject or simply fleshing things out better.  For example, there was a ridiculously inordinate amount of time spent on truth tables, yet Taylor series were extremely rushed and crammed in at the end.

Assignments often had a mix of some very easy proof questions, and some very hard questions. The tutors generally gave marks for trying to sketch a proof though, even if not completely correct. The exam this year was a lot more 'creative' in the style of its questions, probably to compensate for COVID and online exams. There must've been some scaling of this subject to compensate for the exam difficulty imo.

Also note that, from next year, there will be a new Advanced version of this subject on offer.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on December 13, 2020, 12:43:51 am
Subject Code/Name: LING10001 The Secret Life of Language 

Workload: 2x1hr lectures, 1x1hr tutorial

Assessment:  3 Problem Solving Assignments worth 50%, 1 2-hour Exam worth 50%

Past exams available:  1 Sample exam (NOT representative of the final exam at all)

Textbook Recommendation: An Introduction to Language by Fromkin (9th AU Edition) - I found readings to be helpful, but there weren't super necessary

Lecturer(s): Peter Hurst

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 90 H1

Comments:

I absolutely loved this subject! I've always wanted to study Linguistics at Uni, and this subject was a wonderful introduction to it. It was impeccably organised and coordinated, the teaching staff were incredible (shout-out to Peter for awesome lectures, and to Nick for super fun tutorials - Nick's solo singing at the end of each tutorial was a true highlight  :) )

Tutorials this semester were very cramped, having 30 students and 1 tutor, which was not fair on either the students or the tutor. However, I found that everyone worked really well together in the breakout rooms. 'Reading Groups' were also made available, which to me was new coming from Science, but I definitely benefited from them and made a good friend from it too!

The assignments took some work, but with time and effort they were fine. They tested linguistic reasoning, knowledge and application in a Problem-solving or structured argumentation context.

The content was super interesting, I personally enjoyed Syntax & Morphology and the smaller topics like Language & the Brain, Language Variation, and First & Second Language Variation. Semantics & Pragmatics were the most wishy-washy of the lot, and felt like it belonged in a Philosophy class more. I personally found Phonetics, Phonology to be trickier (but completely doable with effort), as I'm not a natural auditory learner.

Overall, I thought this subject was pretty straightforward, super enjoyable and interesting, well coordinated, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in Linguistics!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on December 13, 2020, 12:56:30 am
Subject Code/Name: MAST20004 Probability 

Workload: 3x1hr Lecture, 1x2hr Tutorial

Assessment:  4x5% Assignments, 3hr 80% Exam

Past exams available:  Yes, many, and with solutions

Textbook Recommendation: Fundamentals of Probability by Saeed Ghahramani recommended. Personally I did not find it useful, and I think the lecture slides and lectures are plenty sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Xi Geng

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2

Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 H1

Comments:

Xi was an absolutely amazing lecturer, coordinator, and warm and genuine human-being. His assignments were often extremely challenging, but I gained a lot from them. He focused on building up a rigorous intuition of the subject from scratch, and developed the subject in a fantastic manner whilst providing useful resources and lecture-by-lecture supplementary notes. My tutor was also excellent, very engaged, passionate and knowledgeable, and we often spent a large amount of the class chatting about further Probability. Stochastic processes was very interesting, it’s a shame we didn’t go into more detail, but Stochastic Modelling is more the subject for that.

Overall, Probability was an immensely interesting and satisfying subject that I’m incredibly glad I took. The exam was very fair and straightforward with Xi, with no surprises. Each of the topics covered in Probability are quite interesting, and the subject definitely does have quite a rapid pace, so it's important to keep up to date (although I admit I did almost none of the Problem Book for the subject). Probability is a wonderful subject, and in my opinion, far less difficult than the reputation it has acquired.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: PLACEHOLDER123 on December 24, 2020, 09:17:28 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30022 Decision Making

Workload:  3x 1hr Lecture, 1x 1hr Tutorial

Assessment:  4x assignments spread evenly since week 3, worth 5% each; final exam, worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Y

Past exams available:  Yes, at least from 2016 and onwards

Textbook Recommendation:  No need

Lecturer(s): Mark Fackerll

Year & Semester of completion: 2020s2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2

Comments:

I found that there isn't even a single review for this subject so I thought I make one, it will be quick;

First of all, this subject centered around game theory, and it is probably the most interesting
3rd year MAST subject in my opinion.

Assignments and lectures:
Unlike many other MAST3xxxx subjects, the assignments are very
approacheable, if you watch the lecture closely you shouldn't have any problem to score well,
it is kind of Calc2 style "do what I do" but there are more to it.The only more difficult part
of this subject is towards the end, the "dynamic programming" section, yes, you heard it right,
it's  almost mean the same as the term you heard from Computer Science: an algorithm that look back its past,
and do something about it. AND it is just like dynamic programming in CS, it can be pretty hard;

Exams:
The exam is very fair, and it is just like assignment questions, very approachable but it can be hard to finish everything
on time, so be sure to practice a lot. Notes were not allowed previously, but this year, 2020s2, has been an exception,
so this actually makes this year a bit easier.

Takeaways:
Now personally, I like this subject, like a lot, partly because it feels like I actually learnt something that is quite useful,
game theory can be easily applied to real life situations so that you will make more sensible, more rational decisions.
 
Finally, there is a "sequal" to this subject taught by Mark Fackrell as well, MAST90137 Mathematical Game Theory,
and I am very looking forward to that(if I am able to do it, that is).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tiredandstressed on January 08, 2021, 06:52:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002 HUMAN STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION 

Workload: 6x 1 hour lectures per week (usually, 2 x 2 hour lectures + 2 x 1 hour lecture)
4 x 2 hour anatomy practicals (optional- but is now introduced in assessment, so I recommend attending)
Physiology practical (since this was completed online in 2020 I am not sure how many hours it would be on-campus but I would say ~2-3 hours)

Assessment:  Significant changes to assessment this year, this was planned prior COVID-19, but COVID-19 definitely did ignite the changes in the assessment and they are detailed below.
5 x in-semester progressive assessments tasks as end-of-block quizzes (5 x 4% each to total 20%)
1 x mid semester test in week 6- blocks 1-3 are assessed (10%)
1 x physiology assignment submitted at the end of week 10 (15% split into 10% group report based of experiments & data viewed online + 5% individual MCQ quiz)
Anatomical practical test in week 12- workshops 1-3 are assessed (15%)
1 x 2 hour exam (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes (but online semester)

Past exams available:  We did not receive any past exams (the 2010-12 exams were available on the library website)

Textbook Recommendation:  Prescribed texts
Eizenberg, N., C. Briggs, C. Adams & G. Ahern.
General Anatomy: Principles and Applications.
Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Principles Of Human Anatomy And Physiology 2nd Asia-Pacific Edition Gerard J Tortora - Wiley Direct
I didn’t read much of the readings XD

Lecturer(s):
Block 1: Foundations
Spoiler
L2: Important principles of body structure and function- David Alan Williams
L3: Drugs - what do you need to know & why- Alistair Stewart
L4: Embryological Origins I- Dagmar Wilhelm
L5: Embryological Origins II- Dagmar Wilhelm
L6: Q&A Foundations Block
Block 2: Neuromuscular
Spoiler
L7: Nervous System and Nerves I- Stuart Mazzone
L8: Nervous System and nerves II- Stuart Mazzone
L9: Neurophysiology I- Yossi Ranther
L10: Neurophysiology II- Yossi Ranther
L11: Neurophysiology III- David Alan Williams
L12: Anatomical principles - muscular system- Michelle Rank
L13: Skeletal Muscle function I- Gordon Lynch
L14: Skeletal Muscle function II- Gordon Lynch
L15: Skeletal Muscle function III- David Alan Williams & Yossi Ranther
L16: Bioengineering - Bionics I- guest lecturers
L17: Bioengineering - Bionics II- guest lecturers
L18: Q&A Neuromuscular Block

Block 3: Musculoskeletal
Spoiler
L19: Anatomical principles - skeletal system & bone- Michelle Rank
L20: Anatomical principles - articular systems- Michelle Rank
L21: Vertebral column & back- Charlotte Clark
L22: Upper limb I- Charlotte Clark
L23: Upper limb II- Charlotte Clark
L24: Vertebral column and back Q&A- Charlotte Clark
L25: Upper limb live Q& A- Charlotte Clark
L26: Lower limb I- Charlotte Clark
L27: Lower limb II- Charlotte Clark
L28: Lower limb live Q & A- Charlotte Clark
Block 4: Cardiorespiratory
Spoiler
L29: Anatomical Principles - vascular system/vessels- Michelle Rank
L30: Principles of viscera- Jason Ivanusic
L31: Cardiovascular system I- Michelle Rank
L32: Cardiovascular system II- Michelle Rank
L34: Cardiovascular Physiology I- Yossi Ranther
L35: Cardiovascular Physiology II- Yossi Ranther
L36: Cardiovascular Physiology III- Yossi Ranther
L37: Cardiovascular Physiology IV- David Alan Williams & Yossi Ranther
L38: Cardiovascular Physiology V- David Alan Williams & Yossi Ranther
L39: Thoracic walls and diaphragm- Michelle Rank
L40: Upper respiratory tract- Jason Ivanusic
L41: Lower respiratory tract- Michelle Rank
L43: Respiratory Physiology I- David Alan Williams
L44: Respiratory Physiology II- David Alan Williams
L45: Respiratory Physiology III- David Alan Williams
Block 5: Guts & Gonads
Spoiler
L46: Female and Male Reproductive System I- Dagmar Wilhelm
L47: Female and Male Reproductive System II- Dagmar Wilhelm
L49: Reproductive Physiology I- Kristina Anevska
L50: Reproductive Physiology II- Kristina Anevska
L51: Gastrointestinal tract Anatomy I- Michelle Rank
L52: Gastrointestinal tract Anatomy II- Michelle Rank
L53: GI Anatomy + GI Live Q & A webinar- Michelle Rank
L54: Urinary Tract Anatomy- Rex Barton-Smith
L55: Gastrointestinal Physiology I- Joel Bornstein
L56: Gastrointestinal Physiology II- Joel Bornstein
L57: Renal Physiology I- Stephen Harp
L58: Renal Physiology II- Stephen Harp
L59: Renal Physiology III- Stephen Harp
L60: Renal Physiology IV- Stephen Harp
Block 6: Therapeutics
Spoiler
L61: Drugs in Clinical Practice- Paul Soeding
L62: How drugs work: the receptors and agonists I- Alistair Stewart
L63: How drugs work: the receptors and agonists II- Alistair Stewart
L64: Autonomic pharmacology: receptors in practice- Makhala Khammy
L65: How drugs really work- Graham Mackay
L66: Drug absorption, distribution & elimination- Michael Lew
L67: Toxicology, adverse effects and tolerability- Michael Lew
L68: Drug discovery- Alistair Stewart
L69: Clinical evaluation of drugs- Neil Crompton
L70: New drugs for COVID-19: what could possibly go wrong? I- Alistair Stewart
L71: New drugs for COVID-19: what could possibly go wrong? II- Alistair Stewart

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 2
*Note: since I completed this subject in the online COVID-19 semester some of my comments may not be applicable

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Introduction:
This subject has experienced significant changes in assessment, there has been a shift from a final high stake assessment to more progressive assessments with a final low stake assessment, many of us endorsed this change and it was much needed after the hell of MCB. These changes were planned prior COVID-19.

The subject is divided into six blocks which are foundations, neuromuscular, musculoskeletal, cardiorespiratory, guts & gonads and therapeutics. With exception of musculoskeletal & therapeutics each blocks covered the relevant anatomy of that topic, then the corresponding physiology, the pharmacology component is taught in the end. Therefore, in contrast to MCB, in HSF it was a lot easier to examine the interrelationships between the different disciplines. Michelle was the best lecturer and broke down and taught anatomy very well.

Lectures:
The foundations block as the name suggests is the background of each discipline you will examine the principles of feedback loops (physiology), principles of drug action (pharmacology) and embryonic origins, only the embryonic origins was examined in the MST, there is no quiz for block 1 so it starts of very breezy, the content here is setting the foundations for your further studies, the foundation blocks lasts for a week.

Block 2 is neuromuscular and it lasts for two weeks, you will delve deeply in to the anatomy of the brain and spinal cord and learning about the basis of the neural networks of the CNS & PNS then you will explore neurophysiology whereby action potential, neurotransmitter release and electrical excitation is covered. Yossi does a good job in breaking down this topic, it starts of challenging but once you get your head around it is actually pretty good, you will notice they always ask similar questions (e.g. if the intracellular concentration of K+ increases, what will happen to resting membrane potential, they will just change the ion or concentration to vary question) once you understand the principle of equilibrium it makes sense. If you struggle with this topic this of the cell as a box and ions are coming in and out (either by leak channels or voltage gated channels, and you will need to determine what will happened to resting membrane potential when certain concentrations are altered). Then you will look at the principles of muscle anatomy and the process of muscle contraction in the neuromuscular junction this was also well taught.
Best way to go about this topic is to make summary notes on the processes and memorise, ANKI will also be your best friend.

Block 3 is musculoskeletal this is completely anatomy based; Michelle covers the principles of anatomical structures and then Charlotte will delve deeply into back & vertical column, upper limb and lower limb. Learning about the anatomy was a lot of fun because we could see the muscles and feel the bones and be like (ohh that’s my radius, but my biceps brachi are kinda small XD). However, this year they decided to teach back & vertical column, upper limb and lower limb by online modules instead of fast-paced lectures (and again this was planned prior COVID) tbh I actually prefer that compared to lectures because I could go ay my own pace and I felt like I was actually learning better this way, but there was a major issue with the modules and that was that each module was allocated 2 lecture sessions (i.e. the modules were expected to take two hours of time) however many of us took a lot more than that, labelling each structure on your own takes time and the allocated time was not enough and many of us ended falling behind in the course. So although I liked the module I felt like being allocated only two hour wasn’t an accurate representation of the time required to view the content, after each module a live Q&A was done where we could ask questions directly to Charlotte and she would provide feedback from a quiz done after the module. Overall, the musculoskeletal block is taught well, but like I said many of us fell behind and it didn’t help that the MST was the week after musculoskeletal finished, so many of us didn’t start the week 6 content since we were catching up lower limb right before the MST ^_^

Block 4 is cardiorespiratory where you will explore the anatomy & physiology of the heart and lungs and how they interact with each other. It beings with looking at the anatomical principles of vessels and viscera, then the anatomy of the heart specially looking and the significance of its structure (pericardium) and then looking at the greater vessels, Michelle teaches the anatomy of heart really well and I enjoy this lecture series. Next you will look at cardiac physiology, the content was really interesting we learnt about what a heartbeat actually is, how blood is circulated, the cardiac action potential and how the ECG measures heart rate. However, Yossi didn’t teach this very well it was information overload his slides were quite bare but he a lot to say, to overcome this a transcript was provided which was super helpful since we didn’t have to pause the lecture every three seconds to get everything down, since the transcript was provided. Interrelating the anatomy & physiology of the heart was not difficult since both lectures will mention the opposite discipline in their explanations which was nice.

Block 5 is guts and gonads- a creative name whereby you will delve deeply into the anatomy and physiology of the reproductive, digestive and urinary system. The anatomy section was taught very well, and dare I say the best, Michelle breaks down abdominal walls and the digestive tract very well, it was clear she was passionate about this area of anatomy and I can confirm you will not struggle memorising the anatomy and she does a good job ringing in your brain, there was also an additional webinar that gave us a preview of what to expect in the anatomy practical test (I will discuss this later). Moving on to physiology reproductive physiology was the easiest to gauge with, Kristina although monotone was good at getting her message across (basically it is all hormonal regulation and feedback systems). Moving on to gastrointestinal physiology, this was easily the worst taught topic with many of us very confused with the lectures series the day before the final exam ^__^. The lecturer was unengaging, and with no learning outcomes it was hard to determine what the point of his lectures were (his slides were content heavy). So here is my advice this is what you need to know
Spoiler
-   The enzymes/ locations involved in the digestion of proteins, fats and carbohydrates (and be able to compare and contrast- a summary table is a good way to do this)
-   The steps of digestion going from the mouth to the anus (what digestive process occur in each organ, and the consequences if one organ does not function correctly)
-   Strong understanding of the physiology behind important processes such as; chewing, chemical digestion, vomiting and defecation
Finally, we finish physiology with renal physiology (remember the loop of Henle, yes she’s back) Stephen’s slides were a lot more basic, and he emphaises that understanding the principles of filtration was all that was needed to do well in the exam. Renal physiology took a few times to get my head around, but apply it to you own life (e.g. what the colour of your pee means) did help in understanding the concepts. My tips for this section is have a diagram of the loop of Henle and write down the steps (like a flowchart) of what is absorbed/ secreted and at which limb, as well as other physiological processes.

Block 6 is therapeutics, and is solely pharmacology and keeping a glossary list and drug table will be helpful in your studies. You should be able to explain the following
Agonist, antagonist, selectivity, specificity, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, affinity, KA and KD, EC50, potency, efficacy, bioavailability, volume of distribution, clearance, half-life, different phases of a clinical trial.
As well as the name, receptor, and mode of action of the 30+ drugs covered in the lectures (PM ME IF YOU WOULD LIKE A DRUG SUMMARY TABLE)

Assessment:
The progressive quizzes, were as what you expected, one after each block (expect foundations) mostly MCQs/ EMQs (with the exception of the musculoskeletal block with a 6 mark extended response question).
The quizzes were fair, there were some issues with sone technical errors but otherwise they were fine.

The MST was online this semester; the average score being 85% with a mode of 39/40. As you can see the cohort scored very well on the MST, and this is due to the online nature of the assessment, being open-book most of the anatomy questions were straight-forward the physiology questions however really did test your conceptual understanding of the theory covered in weeks 1-6. If the MST is closed book I would recommending, revising using anki and study groups & for physiology getting a blank piece of paper and writing a feedback system / process without notes are good ways to revise.

The physiology assignment was conducted quite poorly online, obviously there was not much they could have done but my experience was quite poor. We just watched videos of how to use the equipment, results that we had to interpret and answer a series of questions (often long extended response questions) all questions were assigned a number of marks so that’s how you should guide the length of your response. The report is completed as a group, so divided the questions and then cross-check your member’s response. The individual quiz was a simple 10 MCQ on the coronary vessels (not covered in lectures) the virtual heart was kinda cool, but the assessment was not challenging.

The anatomy practical test was interesting, all MCQs with a pictures from the online anatomy workshops. The anatomy workshops all covered the anatomy covered in the lectures you go through stations of different features of certain anatomical systems (a demonstrator will guide you through structures and often ask you questions to identify a structure/function). The anatomy workshops online were conducted well, the demonstrators were nice and answered all questions. The anatomy practical tests, is explained in the GIT bonus workshop, whereby all the questions include a cadaveric diagram questions will ask you to identify structure, function but go beyond that and asks questions on relationships with other structures, some question pointed to structure X and asked what nerve innervates it. Michelle explains that the anatomy workshops learning outcomes should be used as a checklist of what is to be examined on the final test, and I agree the tests was fair and the learning outcomes were a good guide on what to expect. Only workshops 1-3 are assessed on the practical test, workshop 4 is examined in the exam.

The final exam:
The exam was split in 2 x 20% 1 hour exams (due to online nature of assessment- and were scheduled on two different dates, a week apart)
The first exam was an integrated short answer exam, it consists of anatomy and physiology questions from Block 5 and (10 marks for each discipline) and then followed by 2x integrated 20 marks questions integrating the three disciplines (anatomy, physiology and pharmacology)  therefore it is important that upon completing block 6 you create flowcharts/mindmaps/links of how therapeutics links with physiology which links with anatomy, the questions were fair and one of them was predictable my main tip for revising is making your own integrated questions based of the interrelationships you have created.
The second exam was a multiple choice exam of 60 questions covering all blocks (but with a greater emphasises on block 5 & 6) with a smaller exam not everything was examined so as long as you cover all groups (especially blocks 5 & 6) you should be fine!

Final comments:
The coordination of the subject was not perfect, there were some gaps in communication but the coordinators are very active on piazza and I encourage you all to be active on piazza ask questions (you will find that you will get to the point where they will say “we don’t know”- highlighting what little we know about the human body) but helping others is a great way of learning (it’s all anom so no one will know if you get the question wrong). HSF was a great subject I enjoyed learning the content, the lectures although not perfect did a sufficient subject in teaching us, motivating me to major in Physiology. HSF is defs the better of the two second year cores.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on February 27, 2021, 02:12:42 am
Subject Code/Name: MGMT20001 - Organisational Behaviour

Workload:  1x 1 hr lecture, 2x 1 hr tutorial per week.

Assessment:  Note that the final exam is a hurdle. (50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject.)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Lectures were all pre-recorded (i.e. no live lectures)

Past exams available:  Only one past exam (presumably from last year), as well as a new sample exam made especially for this summer term. More on that later :)

Textbook Recommendation: whoops just realised i put the wrong book! The textbook changes quite frequently, but you are expected to have a copy and for assignments you'll need it as they want you to reference from it. Sorry!   

Lecturer(s): Joeri Mol.

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Summer term. Note that this subject was held completely online - including the exam.

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 75

Pre-requisites: NONE

Comments: This subject is compulsory for all commerce students, and the nature of the subject (essay/word-based subjects + a dreaded group report) makes OB one of the most infamous subjects in all of the university...or maybe just amongst commerce students but I'm sure if you have any commerce friends they'll be sure to tell you all about how they *love* the subject! Hence it made sense to me to complete this subject over the summer, even though I think I'm okay at essay writing...but man I am glad I did it over summer :)

Lectures and content
Joeri is one of the more interactive lecturers that I've had, with his amazing life experience anecdotes appearing once in a while. I bring this up since this was my favourite part of the subject. Really though, Joeri's lectures were enjoyable and perhaps my favourite in all of uni right now...he was that good!
Content wise, it is a bit dry and shallow for my taste - albeit this may be the goal of the subject: to introduce behavioual terms to us commerce students and learn how to interact with others in the workplace! Still though, don't expect anything revolutionary - a lot of it is just common sense labelled with jargon. There are some interesting tidbits here and there, and applying it to case studies can be fun, but mostly this subject's content is pretty disjointed and boring. Don't expect to get anything revolutionary from this subject is really what I'm saying.
The most important part to focus is on the last 5 topics of the subject - these are the 'macro' topics (micro for the first few) - they make up 75% of the final exam, where one of them will be applied to one of the five case studies.

Tutorials
The tutorials in this subject featured a 6% participation mark (0.6% per tutorial) and a 4% pre-tute mark (0.4% per pre-tute). Pre-tutes were actually very helpful, especially in the second-half of the course where you learn about macro topics (which make up 75% of the final exam). Tutorials themselves were alright - worked in groups to answer tutorial questions, and present any findings to the rest of the tutorial. My tutor often enjoyed going on with her little soliloquy but I didn't really pay too much attention. Just complete pre-tutes since they're always useful and turn up to tutes for questions and the important 0.6%!

Assessments
The first individual assignment comes almost immediately when you start the course (at least in summer) and consists of applying topics learnt in the first few weeks to a case study. In my case, it was to do with the Victorian Government's handling of COVID-19. This was to be done in a report style. This wasn't too hard but as my first paper at university it was a new and a bit of a daunting experience, but the co-ordinators held a quick tutorial on how to write a research paper to a university level in the first week.

The second assignment is a bit different compared to the ones future and past students may do - for me, this was a similar report to assignment 1 (individual) with another case study with new topics learnt. However, for future students, the second assignment is actually a group assignment. See other reviews for...reviews of this part since I didn't do it. Unfortunately, I think 2021 summer term may be the last time the group assignment is removed. It does make sense as for why there is a group assignment in this subject (which is all about working in teams...).

This leads onto the exam - the exam is usually made up of one question regarding your group assignment, and the other questions about one macro topic and one case study. These were all long-answer based. I felt quite prepared for the subject, given that Joeri does let you know what combinations are not on the exam. Be prepared to write a lot, but time shouldn't be an issue if you had prepared some notes for the cases beforehand.

Concluding remarks
Wasn't as bad as I thought, but I'm happy to have got it out of the way and I can't recommend this as a breadth...good luck to all those doing it!

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: BuffInvestmentBanker on March 27, 2021, 01:08:14 am
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30012 Foundations of Fintech

Workload:
chunky 2 hr lecture
1 hr workshop (half the time of this was no coders bitching about the class and then ending with a mid 70 in the end)

Assessment:
Quizzes: 20%
2* Assignments: 20% total
2* Projects: 40% total
Exam: 20% (hurdle)

Past exams available:  No.  This was the first sem with an exam (20% weighted and hurdle wtf??). But it was similar to the weekly quizzes. All theory

Textbook Recommendation:  Lect slides be enough

Lecturer(s): There was a few modules and each module had different lecture. They where all from the famous mind, brain markets lab at melb which is a world class experimental/computational/behavioral finance facility

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 S2

Rating:  5 Out of 5 (organization was meh and tough for neebies to coding but the content was A**)

Your Mark/Grade: 89%

Comments:
If you're a neebie to programming gg bc it's gonna be a wild ride. I'd suggest comp10001 at the min but tbh that should be enough, python for everyone on edx/coursera should be enough as well (self learn that over winter seriously and pay attention and you'll get H1). Personally I did fit1053 (at monash) which is what I'd say is closest to comp10002: foundations of algo but uses python if that make's any sense (tougher class than FoC no doubt)., also did VCE soft dev and self learnt a lot C++ and python throughout high school so I'd define my coding skill as very much above average. However despite being well versed in soft dev in python I learnt a boat load from this class. A lot of interesting machine learning/data sci applied to finance industry, numpy, pandas, and a lot of other libraries. The content was a holistic view of tech in finance from banking to algo trading to machine learning in finance. I interned at as quant trader and I shit you not a lot the content in this class came up and was used during my internship. Personally I'm very interested in quant trading or becoming a strat at an IB so the content in this was sooooo useful.

However it's not an easy class by any means and the assignments/projects where a massive time sink. I actually had some blank questions in my project just cuz I was busy with other classes despite coming from a strong coding background. However given you pay attention in lectures the weekly quizzes should be a free 18/20+ and same goes with the exam.

It might be the wam boost we all need from certain classes (**cough** ARA **cough** OB), but it'll boost your skills and knowledge no doubt. I had a mate who did comp20008 and got 71 in that and got 82 in fintech so it's definitely not an impossible H1 by an means. But the content was soooo interesting (as compared to other finance classes like PoF)

If you're a finance/CS/DS/math student wanting to work in finance (especially trading) take this class, it's a fucking must
If you're a finance student wanting to take a class that actually builds relevant skills that will help in the ever changing industry take this class (like really what you learning in ethics of finance, or int'l finance? python and ML is the future be ahead of the curve not behind it).

Also if you're a non coder none of my mates who a lot don't code got H2B at the very least (these guys have H3 to H2A wams) with hard work you can smash it. I'd say content is like 50/50 coding/theory cuz the quizes and exam is all theory which is 40% and assignments/projects arent 100% code. Also the theory is quite easy, there will be hard coding problems but the theory questions will boost your score a considerable amount dw)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on June 12, 2021, 02:58:33 pm
Subject Code/Name: FNCE20005 - Corporate Financial Decision Making

Workload:  1x 2 hr lecture, 1x 1 hr tutorial per week.

Assessment:  Note that the final exam is a hurdle - 50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Lectures were all pre-recorded (i.e. no live lectures)

Past exams available: None, only a sample exam. More on this later

Textbook Recommendation: Business Finance12e (Peirson et al 2014). Not needed at all - in fact, the online tutors didn't even help those who had problems with the questions in this textbook! Lecture slides are already comprehensive. I'd suggest you search up topics you are not sure about instead!

Lecturer(s): Chander Shekhar

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Pre-requisites: FNCE10002 - Principles of Finance

Comments: Whilst this subject isn't actually directly needed for the finance major, it is needed as a pre-requisite to the major level 3 finance subjects, Investments and Derivatives. In addition, this subject used to be a level 3 subject back in the day.

Lectures and content
CFDM goes into the depths of how big corporations finance and what decisions they make regarding their financing decisions. This subject focuses on public companies (any company with stocks you can buy basically) so considering the recent trends, this subject is pretty useful!
 
Lectures were just your typical finance lectures - pretty long (albeit they never exceeded 2 hours) and for the most part, pretty boring. Chander reads mostly off the slides but does add some important comments occasionally, so bear-the-boredom and watch the lectures! With that being said, he is a pretty cool guy and a lot better than the PoF lecturers.

Let's talk about content: in twelve weeks, you'll learn about:
Introduction & Options
Spoiler
You'll learn more about options as they pop-up somewhat frequently in this subject. Definitely not hard and this is the closest "PoF" type topic you'll get in this subject
Raising Capital: Equity
Spoiler
You learn how companies issue stock to raise capital - whether that be through private or public means. There is a huge emphasis on public stocks here so don't worry too much about private placements - they'll only appear on the MST I think.
Debt and leases
Spoiler
This time, you learn about companies taking on debt and leases/leasing to raise capital. This is the first tricky week of the subject, especially with the leases. However, it's relatively intuitive and after enough practice, it's not that bad.
WACC and capital structure policy
Spoiler
Expands more about WACC (CAPM, debt etc.) and further elaborates on certain policies - irrelevance theorem, trade-off policy etc. Definitely a very theory heavy week so get your notes done as soon as possible! WACC calculations are simple and follow PoF with a few caveats.
Payout policy
Spoiler
How companies pay dividends (if they even do). This is actually a tricky week if you're not careful - especially with tax rates. Read the slides very carefully as they will test you on this!! The timeliness of when you receive the dividend does affect a lot (capital gains tax, share prices etc.) I only remember this since my friend told me about this 30 minutes before the exam, and it popped up in a question! Shoutout to her!
Mid-sem test/break
Spoiler
Pretty self-explanatory! Mid-sem assesses weeks 1-5. Good luck!
Sensitivity analysis, break-even analysis and decision tree analysis
Spoiler
This is an interesting week actually - you'll mostly focus on decision-tree analysis since that's pretty doable (kind of like tree-diagrams you do for probability questions). Not a hard week, and to be honest I didn't watch the lecture this week.
Real options
Spoiler
Options appear once again!  This time you learn how to emulate finance decisions via options - e.g. you can think of the potential to expand a business as a call option. This week also continues decision-tree analysis.
Takeovers Part 1
Spoiler
You learn how companies takeover other companies. There's a lot of maths here but it isn't too bad. You learn that "1 + 1 > 2" here but it'll make more sense when you learn the concept of 'synergy'.
Takeovers Pt. 2
Spoiler
More theory heavy this week, you learn other ways of taking over and how target companies can defend from hostile takeovers. You also dabble a little about how private equity firms use debt to buy-out a company here.
Corporate restructuring
Spoiler
Learn how companies change their internal structure, why and how they do it! Not too much about this week from memory but still pretty important.
Risk management
Spoiler
Essentially an introduction to the third year subjects - but without the maths components. Don't fret too much about this.

Tutorials
This was one of the many subjects that re-introduced in person tutorials. They were great - especially if your tutor was good. My tutor was great and could easily explain concepts that Chander/slides could not. Really recommend that you try to get an in-person tutorial (if you can). Definitely grateful that I went to all tutorials since the tutorial answers can be tricky, albeit the head tutor does upload his video solutions every week on LMS/Canvas. There is no hurdle requirement/participation mark here, so feel free to drop-out of tutorials. For the most part though, the tutors were nice and knew what they were talking about...

With that being said, it seems like semester 2 2021 CFDM does have a 10% participation mark in tutorials - meaning a 70% weighted final exam. Not sure if this will be the case for future years.

Assessments
Both assessments were open-book and non-zoom supervised.

The mid-semester test in this subject is tricky. It's not hard - you can easily answer all the questions (it's 20 MCQ), but the answers were very detailed and you really had to be on top of your game to get a good mark here. Answers would often have two phrases within them - for example, say the question was "What's 1+1?". One of the answer choices would be "1 + 1 is 2, but only if 2 is a negative number". Obviously the first part is correct, but the second phrase is false! Just imagine this in a finance context and you can see why this gets really tricky. This wasn't even the worst part - you always had "none of the above is true" or "more than one of the above is true" answer options to choose from. This meant even though one answer was obvious - you have to check for the others to see if it they were right. As such the average mark for this MST was 11/20, and it has been around this level historically. I don't think it gets better in level 3 subjects as I've heard haha. :(

The 80% exam is a bit scary, but honestly I found it a lot easier than the MST. It features 20 MCQ (similar to MST in terms of difficulty and style), around 8 true/false questions (where you had to explain why as well - this was the bulk of the exam as it was worth 40 marks), and 3 short/long answer questions (which were almost all mathematical based). New edit: this exam was scaled by 17 marks! Wow!

Chander only gave us one sample exam, which served us well. The questions were on par difficulty to the real exam, and the last question of both exams were similar. Still though, I couldn't get a sufficient answer here. You'll have to make sure you have a decent scanner/or use a tablet here, since Chander and the tutors only accepted handwritten answers. Make sure you upload early onto Gradescope!

In terms of the content tested, Chander mentioned 60% of the exam would be on weeks 6 onwards, and 40% in the first half. He definitely lived up to that, so be prepared to check closely on notes from weeks 1 - 5. As this exam was open book, you didn't need to remember much, but having organised notes will help you immensely and is the sole crediting factor to (potentially!) my exam success. I also recommend making "cheat sheets" - notes on how to tackle problems with formulae.
 
Concluding remarks
Pretty interesting subject - if you want to do this as a breadth after PoF, then it's a departure from the formulas and more onto developing intuition and understanding the underlying theory about how companies work financially.

P.S. I MESSED UP THE FORMATTING SO THIS [list LSIT TING] DOENST GO AWAY[/list][/list][/list]
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on June 24, 2021, 03:16:20 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90082 Mathematical Statistics 

Faculty: Mathematics and Statistics

Workload:  3 lectures a week and surprisingly no tutorials

Assessment:  2 assignments worth 10% each and 1 exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Yes, there was a mock exam which is a past exam

Textbook Recommendation:  The course is based on the book Statistical Inference by Casella and Berger but you don't really need it. The lecture notes are self-contained.

Lecturer(s): Liuhua Peng

Year & Semester of completion: 2021

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Haven't received it yet

Comments:

This is a relatively relaxing subject at Master level and there is a legitimate reason for this: it is attempting to accommodate students from different backgrounds like say, Economics, Finance, Mathematics, etc. As a result, the rigour level is kept to a minimum and the pace is fair, meaning that the amount of content is also fair and that's what I meant by "relaxing" - relaxing in terms of amount of content, pace and abstractness. My view is that if you are someone who wants a chill subject, or a Maths students with interest in Statistics or a student from a different background wanting to do a Maths subject, you should definitely give this a go.

To sum it up, this subject is, in my opinion, a sequel to MAST20005 Statistics in the sense that it revisits topics MAST20005 Statistics and explore them a little further but also doesn't go too deep in any topics. The "atmostphere" and "flavour" of the subject also resembles MAST20005 Statistics, not too much pressure (like say MAST20004 Probability or MAST30020 Probability for Inference).

As for the content the subject is divided into 3 major parts

1. Point estimators
2. Hypothesis testing
3. Interval estimators

For topic 1,  the first 7 weeks, the set up is that we want to estimate certain quantities (say the average amount of money Australians make per day) and so we collect data and using those datas, we compute some figures. The questions one can ask are:

So the topics covered were
- Method of moment and maximum likelihood estimators
- Bias, mean square error
- Uniformly minimal variance unbiased estimators (UMVUE)
- Crame-Rao lower bound
- Exponential family
- Sufficiency, completeness and ancillary statistics
- Rao-Blackwell and Lehmann-Scheffe Theorem
- Decision theory and Bayes estimators
- Asymptotic estimators

For topic 2, the next 2 weeks or so, the set up is that we now have a claimed figure for our quantity of interest. Should we trust that figure? How can we test the claim? The natural questions one can ask (and thus, try to answer) are
The topics covered were
- Uniformly most powerful test
- Likelihood ratio test
- Bayes test

For topic 3, the set up is that although getting a figure for estimating our quantity of interest is nice, we don't know how sure we can be of such a figure. It might be instead nicer to get a range of values where we think our quantity lie in. But how do we find such an interval? How does changing the length of such an interval change our confidence level?
The topics covered were
- Inverting tests
- Pivoting the CDF
- Bayes intervals

So the topics covered were more advanced than MAST20005 for sure, but the depth and rigor was kept low, which according to the lecturer, was kept low to accommodate students from various backgrounds.

Lecturer
The lecturer was great, knowledgeable and friendly guy, gave enough contact hours per week. It's also his fourth year teaching this subject so his exam and assignments were fair. There were some optional assignment questions, to challenge the students with stronger mathematical backgrounds. No complaints here

There were no tutorials but I think it's ok because the lecturer went through many many examples in lecture for all concepts, which I quite liked.

Overall, nothing peculiar about this subject. It was not too difficult, not too easy in terms of complexity and the amount of content was also fair. I'd highly recommend you guys taking this if you're looking for a doable subject. One still has to work hard for sure but for a master subject, it gives you a lot of breathing room. Definitely one of those subjects that the harder you work the better you do, almost linearly lol.

Now that I think about it, I cannot really think of anything that was negative about this subject. If I was trying my best to knitpick, I'd say maybe considering how this is a theoretical statistics subject, I would've hoped that we covered a little more proofs and went through some deeper results in theoretical statistics. But then again, this is a general subject trying to accommodate a large population so I think it's optimum, the way it is now.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: lm21074 on June 26, 2021, 12:42:49 pm
Subject Code/Name: PSYC10003 – Mind, Brain and Behaviour 1  


Workload: 2 x 1 hour lectures per week (for Learning and Cognition), 2 x 2 hour lectures per week (for Sensation and Perception and Behavioural Neuroscience – most lectures are split into two parts), 1 x 1 hour tute per week, plus research methods modules which overall takes around 2 hours

Assessment: 1500 word essay – 40%, MCQ Exam – 55%, Research Experience Program participation or alternative task – 5%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (lectures were pre-recorded)

Past exams available:  Yes, practice quizzes were available for all of the components except RM (Learning and Cognition, Sensation and Perception, Behavioural Neuroscience)

Textbook Recommendation: Recommended textbook readings are posted onto Canvas
Lecturer(s): Learning and Cognition A/Prof Meredith McKague
Sensation and Perception – A/Prof Piers Howe
Behavioural Neuroscience – Prof Olivia Carter and Dr Jason Forte
Research Methods - Dr Christopher Groot

Year & Semester of completion: 2021, Sem 1

Rating: 3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: results haven't come out yet but I know it won't be too good

Comments: Overall, I really enjoyed this subject and found it was well-run. If you enjoyed psychology in high school or if you’re interested in the mind, the brain or behaviour, definitely give this one a go. A number of students in my tute were commerce students taking it as a breadth subject, but the majority were Sci/Arts/Biomed students. As mentioned above, the subject is split up into four components: Learning & Cognition, Sensation & Perception, Behavioural Neuroscience and Research Methods.

L&C has some overlap with what is covered in VCE 3&4 Psych (e.g. classical and operant conditioning, memory and the amnesias). In S&P, you look at visual attention, motion, colour, depth, and object & scene perception as well as audition, which I found quite interesting. Behavioural Neuroscience, as expected, is quite biology based, and it goes into quite a bit of depth, but you will be eased into it. This content looked at anatomy and physiology of the brain and neurons and what happens when things go wrong in the brain. The Research Methods modules were a set of 12 videos run by Dr Christopher Groot, with recommended readings from a RM textbook (found on Canvas) and quizzes at the end. Each week, a lecturer did a Q&A session on whatever content was being covered. There were also discussion forums on Canvas for each topic covered.

Tutorial content built upon what was learnt in the lectures and also focused on essay prep. The L&C tute content (conditioned compensatory response theory, etc.) was assessable on the exam. The RM tutes focused on using JASP and interpreting descriptive statistics.

In Weeks 4 & 5, there were no lectures as we were guided through how to write an essay and the essay rubric and various assignment Q&A sessions were held. The assignment was a 1500 word essay on retrieval practice and we were given a lot of support with it. On Canvas, there were also assignment planning modules where you could plan components of your essay according to the rubric. One of the tutors ran Shut Up and Write Sessions over Zoom (which turned into Shut Up and Study Sessions once the assignment was over) which you can infer what they were according to the title. Really helpful for kicking procrastination.
The exam was held in the last week of the exam period this year. It was an open book 120 MCQ exam (not sure if it would be open book if COVID wasn’t a thing), with 30 questions on each section. Some of the questions were the same as those found in the practice quizzes. Overall, I found the BN section the toughest and the RM section the best – an answer option for one of the RM questions was “OMG Chris, why are you being so mean to me?!”

One tip I would give for this subject (which I guess goes for any subject lol) is to keep up with the lectures, especially the BN ones. Although you can get away with downloading the lecture slides and using control + F during exam, stress-watching heaps of lectures at a time before the exam really isn’t nice. Using solely the BN lecture slides in the exam isn’t the most helpful thing as some slides just contained pictures. 

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on June 30, 2021, 11:32:23 am
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30012: Current Advances in Molecular Science 

Workload: 1 module/week (total of 7 modules) with small video lectures, about 1h in total per week + 2 hour workshop/week

Assessment: 3 written assignments (500 words each, 10% each) + 1 MCQ MST 10% + Group presentation at end of sem 15% + Paper review end of sem 15% + Final Exam 30% 

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  New subject, so no past exams.

Textbook Recommendation: No textbook.

Faculty: Science/MDHS

Lecturer(s): Heather Verkade, Stuart Ralph, Malcolm McConville, Laura Edgington-Mitchell, Isabelle Rouiller, Ian van Driel, Paul Gooley (though they do change in Sem 2)

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Sem 1

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (84)

Comments: This was an okay subject, not my favourite ever, but didn't hate it either. This subject builds upon knowledge from lvl 2 BCMB to give us a "taste" of 7 research pathways we could go into: 1) Gene regulation 2) Epitranscriptomics 3) Metabolomics 4) Protein trafficking 5) Protein structure and function 6) CRISPR 7) Cell signalling and regulation.

Each module is taken by a different lecturer (in order above). I found most of them to be really knowledgeable and easy to work with during the workshops. The lecture content is given in small videos (a la BCMB20002) and during the workshop you go through a research publication that applied the lecture content to obtain data and results, and discuss it as a group.

This is a good subject if you're thinking of going into biomedical research, there's a heavy focus on publication writing, literature reviews and translational biochemistry.

I found most modules to be okay, but because each were only 1 week long, they were often very vague. Module 3 and 5 were the absolute worst. 3 was just badly done, with no clear outcomes or what we're expected to know. The lectures for 5 were better, but the workshop was a waste of time, no discussion just us working through a question document while Isabelle was slowly scrolling through the answers... But the rest were all interesting and engaging, I highly recommend going in person if you get that possibility. I think Module 4 and 7 were my favourites.

Overall, I didn't find this subject hard to do well in, the assignment guidelines were pretty vague, you'll have to write a Lit search review, a Ministerial Briefing and a News and Views article. If you've never heard of these before, neither did we. They were challenging to write because no one really knew what they were doing, but I think they were pretty lenient with the marking because I know lots of people got high H1s, including myself. The MST is mcq and I found it fair, but the average was around 65%, which I think balanced out the assignments a little. The presentation and paper review are based on the same research paper. You will be put in groups of 4-5 with a mentor, often an author on the paper and you'll have to present the paper to the rest of the class as a group and write an individual review, due at the end of semester. Everyone got an H1 on the presentation so again they were pretty lenient. And likewise, the review was pretty easy to write since, by then, you'd be pretty much an expert on this paper anyway. The final exam is saq, and like the MST, is based on the lecture content, so as long as you have decent notes, you should be right. A lot of people found it challenging, but I personally found it pretty fair. There werent any surprising questions and I think the time limit was decent.

Finally, this is meant to be a sister subject for Advanced Techniques (BCMB30010) under the reworked BCMB major. While this made 30010 easier, taking both subjects concurrently was rough. Deadlines for both always in the same weeks, sometimes in the same day plus online practicals for one when we had in person workshops for the other on the same day (which sucks for someone with a long commute home). It felt like they did not coordinate these two subjects well together at all, so I would recommend taking them both in separate semesters. But maybe do this one first because you're taught how to do literature searches and all that which would be beneficial for the report in 30010.

As a core subject for the BCMB major, its okay, really nothing to stress over, but you still need to put in some effort to get good grades, especially for the MST and Exam, but its really not that hard to keep up with the work, so it should be a fairly easy H1, especially as far as BCMB subjects go.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on July 01, 2021, 01:19:04 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON20002 - Intermediate Microeconomics

Workload:  2x 1 hr lecture, 1x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment: 
Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Lectures were all pre-recorded (i.e. no live lectures)

Past exams available: None, only a sample exam. More on this later

Textbook Recommendation: Microeconomics: Global Edition, Ninth Edition, Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, (2017). Not needed at all, lecture notes were comprehensive enough and the lecturer himself said they were just 'recommended' not required. To be honest microeconomics at this level pretty much follows Hal Varian's Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach, so if you really want more reading then that's a good place to start.

Lecturer(s): Joshua Miller

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Pre-requisites: ECON10004 - Introductory Microeconomics

Comments: This is required for any economics major. This subject runs also during the summer term. Note that Intermediate Macroeconomics does not require this subject as a pre-requisite.

Lectures and content
This subject delves a lot more into microeconomics as advertised. You'll learn a lot more about the intricacies of how consumers and suppliers interact with each other in the market in various ways, and also learn some new concepts. I think it is worth mentioning that there is no game theory in this subject, unlike its introductory counterpart.

Joshua is a new lecturer for this subject, and has revamped the subject quite a bit. Looking at past reviews this subject seemed to be a "WAM booster" but I can assure this is not entirely accurate anymore. The lecturer is very passionate about economics and developing both economic and mathematical intuition of concepts. I really appreciated this, since I would always get the mathematical intuition, but never the economic! Otherwise though, this is an interesting subject and you'll learn quite a bit from it.

Lectures themselves were broken up into short videos. They actually never summed up to 1 hour per "full lecture", but this is honestly a lot better than having a straight-up 1 hour lecture. It makes it easier to focus on a specific part of the lecture.

Let's talk about content: in twelve weeks, you'll learn about:
Week 1 - Supply and Demand
Spoiler
This is just a recap of intro to micro - elasticity, supply and demand equations, equilibrium price + quantity. By far the most easy week and you'll probably won't be tested on this directly
Week 2 - Consumer preferences and budget constraints
Spoiler
This week introduces the concepts of consumer preferences (if given two goods, which one would the consumer choose and how many would they want?). Essentially this is an 'application' of marginal benefits and marginal costs - a VERY RE-OCCURRING CONCEPT THAT I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO REMEMBER AND UNDERSTAND!!!
Week 3 - Consumer choice
Spoiler
Elaborates a bit more upon week 3's consumer preferences - this is the bulk of the mid-semester and perhaps assignment 1 content. I think this is the week you learn about marginal rate of substitution, which is actually the most important concept in this whole subject.
Week 4 - Individual demand, income and substitution effects and intertemporal consumer choice
Spoiler
A big week actually, but the first part is just understanding what happens when a supply/demand curve shifts (lower income? lower supply?). Intertemporal consumer choice is just consumer choice but with respect to time - so we add in interest rates and price baskets. Mathematically, this is somewhat similar to Principles of Finance stuff but it's quite intuitive anyways so don't worry.
Week 5 - Equilibrium Analysis and Efficiency in Exchange
Spoiler
This is a very tricky week in my humble opinion. Edgeworth boxes are very tricky to understand for myself and there was a 10 mark question about it on the exam that I didn't do...but it's not too bad otherwise this week.
Week 6 - Uncertainty and Consumer Behaviour
Spoiler
By far my most favourite week since this introduced the concept of uncertainty with consumer behaviour. You learn about risk and actuarially fair premiums. I thought I left actuarial for good! The second assignment was about this week.
Week 7 - Production and Returns to Scale
Spoiler
After spending half the term on consumers, we now move towards producers. Learn the basics of producer theory and how they interact in certain markets, along with short-run and long-run introductions.
Week 8 - Cost of production
Spoiler
It takes money to make stuff! Learn how producers minimise costs in a plethora of ways!
Week 9 - Profit Maximisation
Spoiler
A very interesting point that Joshua made was how minimising costs does not always imply profit maximisation. It turns out (spoilers!) that this is true when marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost...I think. It's been a while sorry hahhaahha
Week 10 - Monopolies and Price Discrimination
Spoiler
Learn why monopolies are bad for consumers but good for suppliers, and how monopolies price according to their consumer base (first degree/second/third degree price discrimination). I think this was covered back in intro to micro.
Corporate restructuring
Spoiler
Learn how companies change their internal structure, why and how they do it! Not too much about this week from memory but still pretty important.
Week 11 - Oligopoly
Spoiler
Whilst monopolies are basically banned from ever happening, oligopolies are a bit more doable. Learn how two companies try and maximise profits - through collusion or not. You also learn about Bertrand competition, and Cournot competition, along with sequential game competition. This is the closest to game theory you'll get here!

Tutorials
This subject was held entirely online. I did not go to any tutorials past week 4 since I could not be bothered. They help, and they are the only way of getting in-tutorial answers. Even then, you had to take photos or write super fast as the tutors would not send their answers afterwards. (perhaps some did, but for most they didn't). The pre-tutorial questions were quite good for the most part, and their answers were released after the week ended.

Assessments
The first assignment was about week 2-3 (maybe 4?). I didn't really do well on here, but it was an easy assignment for the most part. Many of my friends scored their highest mark here, so just keep up to date and don't leave things to last minute!

The mid-semester test examined weeks 1 - 5. This was a fair test, but some of the questions in the question bank (people didn't have the exact same MST as each other) were quite hard. There was also an issue with the first question regarding ambiguity of answers, so we all received +6 marks on our MST. This was great since I had no idea how to answer it anyways. My best tip is to just do all the tutorial questions. There are only so many ways they can ask you a question before they repeat themselves!
 
Assignment 2 was pretty tough. I spent the bulk majority of the two weeks working on it alone (you can do assignments in groups or individual, like intro to macro). Based solely from week 6 (uncertainty), it expanded a lot further beyond the tute questions, so a lot of research was needed.

Something I have yet to mention is that this subject used Edstem as our discussion board. It is super useful and hopefully all subjects implement this, instead of the archaic looking and feeling online tutor.

The final exam (60%) was not bad actually. 60 marks in total, with 6 questions each worth 10 marks. They tested most of the weeks, especially on the weeks which didn't have an assignment about it (i.e. uncertainty was not on it :( ). To prepare for this: do the sample exam (past exams IMO never help when we have a new lecturer/format), do ALL the tutorial (pre and in-tute), and try to understand what you're doing. Ask freely on Edstem and go-to consults if needed and you'll be very fine for the exam.

Bonus: I think Joshua sent 20+ announcements leading up to exam about how it'll run and how to upload it. This was very annoying but understandable. We just had to handwrite (on tablet or paper) and upload it to Gradescope and match the pages.

Concluding remarks
Pretty alright subject content-wise, and decent lecturer and subject team. I only wish that there will be less announcements for any future cohorts. I would try and do this subject over summer! On-to intermediate macro now!


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Duckhole on July 02, 2021, 08:51:36 pm
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002 - Biomedicine: Molecule to Malady

Faculty: MDHS

Workload:  Three 1-hour lectures per week plus six 1-hour tutorials per semester.

Assessment:  x2 Multiple choice MSTs throughout the semester, each worth 20% (40% in total). End of semester exam worth 60%, with SAQ component worth 40% and MCQ component worth 20%.

Lectopia Enabled:  All lectures delivered live via Zoom. Recorded and uploaded onto lecture capture.

Past exams available:  No past exams made available but a sample SAQ exam was provided beforehand.

Textbook Recommendation:  No recommended textbook but the Janeway's Immunobiology textbook that is recommended for Principles of Immunology is quite useful for a lot of the modules given that the subject is quite heavy on immunology.

Lecturer(s): Multiple guest lecturers for each module.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2021

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: I'll give a general overview of the subject, followed by more specific information about the different modules. It looks like there haven't been many reviews for this subject in more recent times so I'll try to include some information about what might have changed. Overall I found this subject to be very enjoyable, possibly my favourite subject of the semester. This subject focuses on five different "maladies" with various guest lecturers who research these specific diseases delivering the lectures so you really get to sample the most up to date scientific information and recent developments in the field. This year, we covered B-cells, cystic fibrosis, pandemics, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. For each module we also had interviews with patients who came and talked to us about their experiences living with the disease and personally I thought this was a highlight of the subject.

The modular structure of the subject is really useful for revising the content later on. Jessica Welch, the subject coordinator, is an incredibly lovely person and is very approachable. All lecture recordings are were uploaded in a timely manner, typically 30 minutes after the live lecture concluded (all lectures were delivered live via Zoom). Feedback quizzes for each module were made available, as well as FAQs from the live lectures. I believe relevant journal articles and research papers were also made available as recommended readings but I didn't really use these. Extensive feedback for each MST was given, including a very thorough analysis of the overall cohort performance and Jess was also very transparent about how the questions are subjected to 'quality control' after marking to make sure assessments are as fair as possible. Needless to say, subject coordination was impeccable.

B-cells
This entire module was taken by Dr Vanessa Bryant. This was my favourite module of the subject, but this may be because I'm biased as an immunology major. This module can be generally divided into two subsections, with the first half of the module focusing on primary immunodeficiencies that affect B-cell function, and the final two lectures covering the therapeutic applications of antibodies, particularly the importance of broadly neutralising antibodies in the context of HIV. We covered four different immunodeficiencies in detail as well as a more general overview of how B-cells develop in the bone marrow. This is probably obvious, but this module delves quite deeply into immunological concepts like VDJ recombination and the formation of germinal centres, etc. I think a lot of people who aren't accustomed to immunity initially found this module to be challenging because of this so would definitely recommend brushing up on all the immunological concepts you went through with Odilia in MCB. Can be quite complex, particularly with the bNAbs lecture, and may need a few rewatches and extra time spent outside the lectures just really drilling the basic immunology of it into your head. Once you understand it though it's really not too bad in terms of the amount of content.

Cystic Fibrosis
We had two lecturers for this module: Dr Chloe Stutterd for the first half and Dr Jo Harrison for the second half. Chloe kicked off the module with the genetic and molecular basis of Cystic Fibrosis, where we went through the different mutations that lead to CF and genetic and environmental factors that affect the disease phenotype. We also went through the structure of the CFTR protein and how its functions become aberrant in disease, leading to the clinical manifestations of CF. Jo then went into more detail about the clinical features of CF, firstly covering the pulmonary aspects of CF, followed by non-pulmonary aspects and therapeutics/management of CF. Wasn't too bad in terms of detail or complexity and the content was interesting.

Pandemics
The largest module of the semester where we covered three major human pandemics with three lectures for each: Malaria, HIV and COVID-19.

For malaria we had Prof. Brendan Crabb and covered the epidemiology/natural history of malaria in the first lecture as well as some features of the malarial parasite and how it causes disease. The next lecture mostly focused on drugs to treat malaria and potential drug targets whilst the final lecture focused on vaccines against the disease and the different approaches that have been adopted for vaccination.

The HIV component was taken by Prof. Sharon Lewin and again followed a similar structure to the malaria lectures, with the first lecture covering epidemiology of HIV, as well as virology and immunology. The second lecture focused on current treatments and we briefly touched on vaccine approaches, whilst the third lecture focused on a HIV cure for the first half before finishing off with a patient interview.

Lastly, we finished off the module with COVID-19, with two lectures from Prof. Damien Purcell and a lecture by the coordinator Jessica Welch. The two lectures focused on the virology of COVID-19 and its pathogenesis whilst the second lecture focused on vaccine strategies. Lastly, Jess went through infection control strategies for COVID-19 and we briefly looked at case studies of the public health approaches adopted by different countries that were successful in controlling COVID-19.

Rheumatoid Arthritis
In my opinion, this was the most difficult module to get through. First few lectures were taken by A/Prof Natalie Sims who covered bone and synovium health. This was okay-ish but having to remember the inflammatory cytokines and the cells involved was a bit hectic. Nevertheless, Natalie was very easy to understand and presented her content clearly and succinctly. The other lectures in this module were presented by Dr John Moi, who spoke more about RA symptoms and associated deformities, epidemiology, risk factors, before finishing up the module with lectures on treatment, focusing specifically on TNF-a blockers. That final lecture was a doozy and went into a deep dive into many different monoclonal antibodies as well as the head-to-head clinical trials conducted for each of them. The final exam examined these concepts in a lot of detail too and this module was by far the most content heavy in my opinion.

Type 1 Diabetes
A really fascinating module. Like with most of the modules, this was a very immunology heavy topic. Our primary lecturer was Dr Tom Brodnicki who took us through the general history of T1D, its autoimmune basis, as well as how NOD mouse models have influenced T1D research. The stuff on autoimmunity was very interesting but also complex and initially difficult to understand, but Tom does a good job of explaining it. The last two lectures, one of which was a patient interview, were taken by Prof. Tom Kay. We finished up the module exploring the most current research into a cure for T1D.

In summary, a well-coordinated subject which can be quite content heavy at times but definitely manageable with consistent work.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 03, 2021, 11:35:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM30002 / ECOM90002 Econometrics 2

Workload: 1 x 2 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
- 4 group assignments worth 7.5% each (can be done individually if you dare)
- Final exam worth 70%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yes, we were given the 2020 Semester 1 exam and half of the 2016 Exam.

Textbook Recommendation: Introduction to Econometrics, 3rd Edition by Stock and Watson

Lecturer(s): Matthew Greenwood-Nimmo

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments

Matt was a fantastic subject coordinator and he made the subject content incredibly straightforward. I only joined the subject in Week 3 so at first I was quite worried about how behind I was going to be, but despite horror stories of how difficult ECOM 2 was, I found the content was taught in a very simple and easy-to-understand method.

Despite that, it was a still a major step up from Econometrics 1. The maths was very easy but I struggled a lot with the coding component, particular the Monte Carlo simulations. Coding isn't on the exam but it is a major part of all 4 assignments, particularly the last two, where the codes become a lot more complicated than the usual regression analysis most people were used to from Econometrics 1.

In terms of content, the subject was split into 3 topics:
   1. OLS and 2SLS regressions
   2. Panel Data
   3. Time Series

I can't say much about tutorials because I didn't go to any of them after 2 weeks. Daniel Tiong (tutorial coordinator) uploaded videos of him going through each tute sheet every week and those were infinitely more helpful.

As for the exam, it's pretty much structured like the course content. There are 4 questions, the first two corresponding to topic 1 (Q1 gives you a real life situation and asks you to interpret the regressions, Q2 gives you a Monte Carlo simulation). Q3 and Q4 are on Panel Data and Time Series respectively.

My one complaint regarding this subject was that we never received any personalised feedback on assignments. Matt provided detailed sample answers, but it was still frustrating getting back an assignment that I scored 76% on and seeing zero feedback on my actual response - not even a slight indication of where I lost marks on. I know some other groups received some feedback, but it would've been great if that had been consistent across all tutors marking.

Overall, though, ECOM was a very enjoyable subject. I'll end this review with some screenshots of our discussion board taken the night before our final exam to sum up the unit.

(https://i.imgur.com/Fi6ff2D.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/FC2AHaR.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/AefQgMq.png)
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 04, 2021, 09:43:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP10002 Foundations of Algorithms

Workload:
- 3 one-hour lectures
- 1 two-hour workshop

Assessment:
- 2 assignments (15% each)
- 1 Mid Semester Test (10%)
- Exam (60%)

Past exams available:
Yes, sample exam with solutions, a handful of others without.

Textbook Recommendation:
Programming, Problem Solving & Abstraction with C by Alistair Moffat. Excellent textbook imo, definitely worth reading.

Lecturers: Shaanan Cohney & Jianzhong Qi

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Course Structure
The course starts with an introduction to what algorithms are, and an exploration into programming in C (which is a lot more to-the-metal then Python). C is beautiful but painful, it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot (and you will at first, all the time), but it also has a certain simplicity and power that it enables that is wonderful. The introduction to C and the first 4ish weeks of semester are too slow imo. Learning how the handling of pointers and dynamic memory allocation in C can enable recursive data structures was a really nice moment for me. Big O Algorithmic complexity is covered in the typical non-mathsy slightly-handwavy manner. There's a few string search algorithms and the common sorting algorithms covered (QuickSort, MergeSort, Bubble Sort, Heap Sort, Insertion Sort), but this knowledge doesn't every really seem to be directly tested on (just how to use library functions for them). I do feel like there's more focus on the coding than there is on the algorithms themselves, which I understand is a known 'issue', but is regardless still decent coverage at an introductory level.

My thoughts:
I don't really have anything to fault in this subject other than that overall, I got fairly bored quickly and didn't really show up to any of my workshops and had to painstakingly force myself to watch the lectures. I just felt I'd do better by just reading the textbook or online resource and then just attempting the assignments (which worked for me). It's a good introductory algorithms subject that's well taught and coordinated.

Lectures
Lectures were split by both lectures, with Jianzhong taking over after the mid-sim break. Shaanan was a new lecturer for this year, and did an absolutely excellent job. Jianzhong I understand has taught this subject multiple times, and brought lots of experience. They were both excellent, super super happy to help anyone out, answered questions on Piazza breathtakingly fast, took onboard feedback, and were overall a pleasure to have teaching and coordinating. (Having said that, I admittedly skipped multiple lectures, no reflection on the lecturers themselves. )

Workshops
2 hour session, going through some content followed by individual work on problems on Grok. My tutor was good, and I have no issues with how they were run, but I stopped attending after Week 4 as I felt I'd rather spend that time woking by myself (which admittedly mostly involved me doing nothing instead) and I just wasn't getting much utility from them.

Assignments
Assignments are fairly long programming tasks, that take quite a while. Emphasis here is more on C - the more fluent your C, the faster you'd finish. I managed to drop 1/2 mark on each, from minor things, and as long as you think carefully about your solution correctness you can do well. I learn a lot from doing them though, as they forced me to actually practice.

Exam
The exam definitely felt fairly long, and it seems like many (most) didn't complete the exam. This semester it was all via Canvas quizzes (IDE and any resources allowed), with mostly straight programming implementation questions. Didn't do as well in the exam as I'd have liked, but then I'm much better at maths exams then programming under time constraints.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 04, 2021, 09:57:46 pm
Subject Code/Name: COMP20008 Elements of Data Processing

Workload:
- pre-recorded lectures, 1 hour live lecture
- 1 one-hour workshop

Assessment:
- 1 individual assignment (20%)
- 1 group assignment (30%)
- Exam (50%)

Past exams available:
Yes, sample exams without solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:
None.

Lecturers: Pauline Lin and Chris Ewin

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 0/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

My thoughts:
Oftentimes rude or unhelpful tutors, inconsistent and contradictory replies, doubling down on their assignment specification instead of clarifying what was clearly an error. Pretty poor lectures, useless workshops. Content that is overall just below the surface of a good Google search. Hell, Foundations of Algorithms is a 1000x better course and curriculum with useful content, at a level 1. You’d hope at this stage a level 2 subject would at least be more worthwhile. Honestly they could scrap the entire subject and there’d be no substantive change.

I don't really want to go into it any more since the whole subject was just terrible. My advice: if you can avoid it, don't do it and just use the time to google everything instead (literally what you'd be doing anyways).
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 04, 2021, 10:22:50 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST30021 Complex Analysis

Workload:
- 3 one-hour lectures
- 1 one-hour tutorial

Assessment:
- 4 assignments (5% each)
- Exam (80%)

Past exams available:
5 years worth from library, NO solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:
None, slides are sufficient.

Lecturers: Dr Mario Kieburg

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Course Structure
First 2 thirds of the course cover complex differentiable functions, continuity, holomorphicity, contour integrals, Cauchy's Theorems, deformations, Residue theorem, singularities, Taylor and Laurent series, logarithms and branch cuts, extended complex plane, sequences and series of functions... The last third is kind of a grab-bag of content including different applications with differential equations and harmonic functions, the Riemann zeta function, Beta function, analytic continuation, Mobius transforms.

However, a significant amount of the course doesn't really seem to be examined or assessed on, and kinda seems a little incoherent in the flow - there is a LOT of content, and it feels like the subject could be streamlined to become more coherent.

Note that there was no solutions provided to the tutorial sheets until very late in the semester (for complicated reasons), which was definitely a significant hurdle.

My thoughts:
Complex Analysis is undeniably an utterly beautiful subject. There is an insane amount of content, and it's absolutely incredible to learn. I found this way, way more interesting than Real Analysis, and it has massive connections to all areas of maths. Honestly, the proofs often made more sense to me than Real Analysis, and overall I was a LOT more engaged with the content (but still nowhere near enough). I definitely felt I gained a lot from this subject, and hope I've increased in my mathematical maturity and knowledge.

However, I was not a very good student this semester, and spent almost no time per week outside of the lecture or tutorial practising or revising, and most of my 'learning' was in doing the assignments. This was definitely not a good approach, and I definitely wish I'd actually put more effort into the subject from the beginning. My preparation for the exam was a very superficial review of the content (too superficial), and working my way through the tutorials.

Lectures
Standard MAST lectures, however I didn't feel Mario so much 'explained' the content as told it to us. I felt this was definitely a let down, and part of the reason why I gave this 3.5/5 instead of. higher rating. Otherwise, the subject coordination was excellent, and Mario definitely cared about the students and was always very responsive on the Ed forum.

Tutorials
Tutorials were standard MAST tutes, definitely a highlight of my week. Andrei Ratiu is still IMO my favourite MAST lecturer/tutor, he's seriously knowledgeable, calm, polite, and has an incredible knack for explaining things perfectly.

Assignments
Assignments were HARD. There were 2 compulsory questions (often quite long with multiple parts), and 1 choice between a further computation or proof question. They took a lot of time to do well on, and you had to be really, really careful about each point. I managed to get 27/30 on 3, and 100% on my last one. I appreciated the opportunity to think properly about the subject content without the pressure of an exam, and I definitely learnt a lot from them. Mario introduced Assignment practice sessions after the second assignment where he would step through similar questions and show us how to solve them in detail, this was a life saver (Mario did the same for the final exam, so in many ways we knew what to expect in advance). The grade distribution was quite startling, with a large proportion failing on average. The exam was markedly easier in comparison. 

Exam
8 questions to complete, the last of which you have an option between 'Advanced Computation' or 'Advanced proof'. Mario was definitely very kind with the exam, the proof questions were definitely within reach and the computational questions were pretty straightforward. Honestly though, I'd kinda rather have had a harder exam, or one with more questions, since each one was worth a lot. There was no scaling this semester, and a markedly lower failure rate (19%). Be warned that each lecturer seems to set quite different exam/assignments and bring a different focus to the subject. Mario tried very hard to reduce the failure rate and make it more accessible.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on July 04, 2021, 10:28:03 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30010: Advanced Techniques in Molecular Science

Workload: 1x 5h prac per week (no more lectures or tutes)

Assessment: 30% Lab notebook maintenance, checked every week; 20% practical skills assessment; 15% Report draft components (5% intro, 2.5% methods, 2.5% results, 5% discussion); 20% Final Report; 15% final exam; HURDLE: completion of 2 worksheets, one at beginning of semester, one at the end and must achieve at least 70% in each to pass the hurdle

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, but the content has changed so not fully relevant anymore

Textbook Recommendation:  None

Lecturer(s): No lectures for this subject anymore, but Iza, the new coordinator will do some in-prac "tutorials" outlining the theory for some techniques

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1 2021

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments: I thought I'd write a review on this subject given that it's now been reworked to ease some of the workload. The presentation, for example, has now been transferred to the new sister subject BCMB30012. As mentioned above, there are also no more lectures or tutorials, only a 5h prac every week. There are 4 main experiments, all focusing on phosphatases:

1) Transfect cells with phosphatase gene to express your enzyme
2) Enzyme expression and activity assay
3) Phosphatase localisation within the cell (microscopy)
4) Mass spec

Ex 1+2 will form the basis of your report and Ex 4 will teach you how to complete the 2nd hurdle worksheet. Ex 3 is really chill, and not really assessed, you just look at fluorescence under a microscope, pretty fun.

The assessment has also changed a bit:

Instead of having a 1-time draft for the report worth 15%, its now been split into 4 deadlines, each for one component. While this makes it easier to focus on one thing rather than get stressed about writing a full draft of the report in one sitting, this also means 4x the deadlines. And its critical to do well in the draft, so you can get feedback and write a good final draft of the report. However, 40% of the whole final draft will be an abstract and an appendix where you outlined how you incorporated the feedback from the draft into the final version. A lot of students, myself included felt a bit bamboozled by this because we did not get any feedback on any abstract and didn't know we had to write this appendix, so really only like 50% of you final report will actually be the draft components.

The lab notebook is now 30% altogether, and you have to submit it every week, 2 days after your prac, and you should get a grade by your next prac. This will take you time. Don't underestimate how much time it will actually take you to complete the notebook every week. Some weeks it took 3 hours, others it took a whole day. DO NOT leave it until the last hour, you've been warned. When it comes to the marking, I'd quite subjective to each demo. I had Alex and was really happy, but I know others were stricter in certain aspects. It really depends on who you get as a demo and figuring out what they focus on and what they want to see on your notebook, and how.

The 2 worksheets were before each graded at around 2-3%, and they've now been changed to a hurdle: you must deliver and get at least 70% on each to pass the subject. The first one is about using protein data bases and pubmed and really easy, you'd have to intentionally do bad to get anything under 80%. The second one is about Mass Spec and a lot harder if you're unfamiliar with it. You will go through most of it in class in the last 2-3 weeks, but make sure you pay attention and ask questions if you don't understand what's going on. I know someone that got exactly a 70% and im pretty sure its just because their demo was kind. This is such a stupid way to fail the subject, just make sure you dont miss the pracs on Experiment 4 and again, ask if you don't understand and you'll be right.

Lets see what else? The exam is now 15% and given that there are no more lectures a lot of us were really confused as to what they could ask, but it was pretty chill. Half of it was calculations that you should have learned how to do in the pracs or year 2, and the other half was design an experiment (pretty easy) and a mass spec data analysis (again, experiment 4 is pretty important, make sure you pay attention).

This subject is definitely easier than it was in previous years, but it still requires a lot of time commitment. The notebook and prac prep alone was half of my study for the whole week. It wasn't necessarily a hard subject, getting an h1 should be pretty easy, like nothing was particularly challenging, but it does depend on you putting in the time. It's a must subject for anyone looking to go into wet lab research and Iza is a great and really kind coordinator. Great subject, but I would highly recommend under loading if you're going to take it. I took 3 subjects and I struggled to keep up as it is, I can't imagine what it would have been like with 4...
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: Tau on July 05, 2021, 11:58:23 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECOM20001 Econometrics 1

Workload:
- pre-recorded lectures (~2 hours)
- 1 one-hour tutorial

Assessment:
- 3 assignments (5% each)
- Tutorial participation (5%)
- weekly quizzes (1% each)
- Exam (70%)

Past exams available:
Multiple+sample exam, all with solutions.

Textbook Recommendation:
Introduction to Econometrics by Stock & Watson. However, Dave's slides are excellent and plenty sufficient and I didn't ever use the textbook.

Lecturers: A/Prof Dave Byrne

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95 H1

Comments:

Course Structure
The entire subject is basically one long introduction to Econometrics as a discipline, and to Linear regression via OLS as a foundational tool. You cover the basics of probability and statistics required for Ecom 1 (I guess a refresher for those who did QM1), followed by Single Linear regression, Multiple Linear regression, Non-linear regressions, interpretation of regression analyses, and time series regression (which is only very brief, but I found the most interesting). You learn about point and interval estimations and testing and interpretations, including p-values and confidence intervals.

My thoughts:
I came from a maths background (this was a breadth), so it definitely felt pretty chill since it's quite mathematical/analytical in nature. Really, there's very little foundations to this subject - 'Non-linear regression' is really just OLS applied to transformed variables (i.e. everything is linear in the parameters), time series is just regressing on 'lagged' values of the same data set, and multiple linear regression is just super-imposed linear regressions. Essentially everything you learn reduces down to the first 3 weeks of content or so, so just make sure you have a handle on that. I thought that everything was definitely useful to learn, but kinda wish I was able to do Econometrics 2+Time Series since I got bored pretty quickly and just felt I was lacking lots of depth. For commerce students, this subject will set you up really well for further studies. No regrets taking this, and definitely enjoyed the experience.

Lectures
Dave is an excellent lecturer and coordinator. The subject was incredibly well run, and just flowed seamlessly. Content is straightforward, the slides are excellent, just pause/take notes/ponder/whatever works for you and you should be fine.

Tutorials
Standard Commerce tutes, depending on the tutor you may find there's less or more interaction and explanation. My tutor, Sylvia, was excellent, and really made sure people interacted.

Assignments
Assignments were easy but quite tedious. You had the option of doing them in groups of up to 3, or individually. I managed to get 100% on 2/3, which is certainly possible with care and attention to detail. You're required to write basic R code, but no programming experience is expected. Weekly quizzes are easy marks, and a decent way to check your understanding.

Exam
The exam this semester was via Canvas (absolute pain typing in regression formulas this way), and was quite long. Many people found it harder than usual, and that they could not complete it in time. Exam questions are fairly standard, so just practice doing pst papers.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: tiredandstressed on July 06, 2021, 06:34:14 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYS30010 ADVANCED HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY 
*new subject alert*
Workload:  2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour workshop (however is in a lecture setting, NOT LIKE A TUTORIAL, but more interactive than a lecture)

Assessment:  11 weekly individual online submissions: CAL (only 10 of the 11 tasks will count in final mark) (20%)
*Basically 10 MCQ questions, some fill in the blanks and tick all that apply questions (open time & open notes, you have about a week to complete each quiz). Each quiz Is worth 2%
11 weekly individual online submissions: Challenge Questions (only 10 of the 11 tasks will count in final mark, ~300 words) (40%). Each CQ is worth 4%.
End of semester exam; which consists of 10 challenge questions, worth 100 marks. The exam was open for 24 hours however was expected to be completed within ‘two hours’. (40%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture- Zoom lectures

Past exams available:  No (new subject) but workbook questions are provided that were based of the exam

Textbook Recommendation:  2nd year physiology textbooks might be helpful

Lecturer(s):
Spoiler
L1: Central and autonomic regulation of visceral function I- Andrew Allen
L2: Central and autonomic regulation of visceral function II- Andrew Allen
WS 1: Central and autonomic regulation of visceral function- Andrew Allen
L3: The heart – specialized structure and function- Lea Delbridge
L4: Cardiac muscle cells & electro-mechanical coupling- Lea Delbridge
WS 2: Cardiac Function- Lea Delbridge
L5: Haemorrhage and shock- Charles Sevigny
L6: Acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease- Charles Sevigny
WS 3: Renal function- Charles Sevigny
L7: Erythropoiesis- Yossi Rathner
L8: Haemostasis- Yossi Rathner
WS 4: Blood- Yossi Rathner
L9: Respiration I- Angelina Fong
L10: Respiration II- Angelina Fong
WS 5: Respiration- Angelina Fong
L11: ENS and Endocrine I- Joel Bornstein
L12: ENS and Endocrine II- Joel Bornstein
WS 6: Digestion- Joel Bornstein
L13: Inflammation I- Kristina Anevska
L14: Inflammation II- Kristina Anevska
WS 7: Inflammation- Kristina Anevska
L15: Carbohydrate, fat, amino acid metabolism: the basics- Matt Watt
L16: Fuel metabolism during exercise- Matt Watt
WS 8: Metabolism- Matt Watt
L17: Fuel metabolism and the adaptation to exercise training-- Matt Watt
L18: The brain and metabolism- Garron Dodd
WS 9: Metabolism II- Garron Dodd
L19: The neuroendocrine adaption to metabolic challenges- Garron Dodd
L20: The importance of skeletal muscle for health and longevity- Gordon Lynch
WS 10: Muscle & Metabolism- Gordon Lynch
L21: Regulation of muscle size: pathways of protein synthesis- Rene Koopman
L22: Regulation of muscle size: pathways of protein breakdown- Rene Koopman
WS 11: Muscle- Rene Koopman
L23: Muscle development myogenesis- Kristy Swiderski
L24: Skeletal muscle injury and repair- Garron Dodd

Year & Semester of completion: 2021, Semester (completely online)

Rating:  3.5 of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (88)   

Comments:
This is a new subject, and is now the new major core subject for the Physiology degree, but can be taken by other majors such as (HSF).
Overall, this subject was intellectually stimulating, each week had a new topic which helped keep things fresh. Some topics were covered better, than others but otherwise was a good subject. The weekly challenge questions varied in difficulty but were a good task in assessing students knowledge.
Lectures:
2 x 1 hour lectures, means there is less content, than a usual science subject, which was nice. However, considering there is a weekly assignment question, it makes sense for there to be less lecture content. Lectures in third year focus on specific topics, that dig deeper from second year physiology. For example, in week 3 the theme is ‘renal function’ the lecture covered was haemorrhage and shock, so we are covering niche topics rather than a general overview which was presented in second year.
Andrew’s lectures were standard, not overwhelming difficult however his challenge had little relevance to his lectures and was the first and most demanding question. Typically challenge questions were not expected to have further research (on diving adapatations) BEYOND lecture content but his did, his CAL was easy expect for one question, which again was not covered in detail in the lectures.
Cardiac function delivered by Lea, covered the cardiac action potential and were delivered as small mini videos. I liked the content, and found it easy to understand, however some peers found her monotone, but she explains concepts with easy-to-read diagrams which was great. Her challenge question was arguably the easiest of the course, and was comparing two disease she covers when discussing malfunctions in the cardiac action potential)
Charles takes us for renal function and focuses more on disease and pathogenesis, his workshop was helpful for the exam. His challenge question was a challenging clinical scenario that required a diagnosis, justification, and explanation of symptoms and why a certain treatment may be effective.
Yossi covers lectures on blood, which was presented as interactive mini lectures, his slides were bare and he could unclear at times. His lecturing style was not appreciated by the cohort, since I felt his long explanations were unclear and incoherent. His challenge question was fair.
Angelina covers respiratory physiology and again focuses on what causes respiration goes wrong, her lectures were wells structured and this was reflected in the CAL and challenge question, which was again another clinical scenario.
Digestion… let’s just say the lectures weren’t that great. Slides were detailed which was good, but the presentation of the lectures were unengaging. However, what made it worse was the workshop! The workshop normally covers the CAL, the challenge question and student’s questions (if time permits). However, this workshop was so disorganised I left halfway because it was incomprehensible. Unsurprisingly, digestion was essentially omitted in the final exam (lol).
Immunity was a repeat of second year immunity and didn’t focus on pathophysiology which was a bit sad, If you have done MCB, the immunity series will be very light for you.
Metabolism and muscle were pretty straight forward and were covered well.

Assessment:
The CAL was a weekly 10 MCQ quiz, that covered the lecture content of that week, it was open for five days, untimed, open notes and open collaboration (yes you can collaborate in this subject completely, including the final exam)
The challenge question was a weekly assignment-based question that required a short answer response of ~300 words that tested students abilities to apply their knowledge, no feedback is given to your individual response but an cohort feedback is provided. Averages ranged in the ~70%.
The final exam was interesting, it was essentially 10 challenge questions, that covered all lectures taught in the subject. No practice exam is provided, but there were workbook questions, which is what the questions in the exam were based of. Two of the exam questions were identical to workbooks questions, and the rest required to content of those workbook questions but were adapted to be more of a clinical scenario. The exam was available for 24 hours but was suggested to be completed in 2 hours. This is a lie, majority of us took at least 8 hours to finish the 100-mark exam. This was because of the depth required in the questions, and ensuring your answer was simultaneously concise and detailed. The questions were fair, some were harder than others, but you have 24 hours to devour it. I assume the exam was marked relatively harshly considering it was only worth 40%. My advice for the exam is to answer all the workbook questions in sufficient detail and see if you can think of how a clinical example may arise from the provided questions.

Overall, this subject was coordinated well, and the content was interesting and the assessment was rewarding and provided students with ability to be flexible in their learning due to the low-stake final exam. There wasn’t much support for student help which could have been improved.

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 17, 2021, 05:50:38 pm
Subject Code/Name: ECON30020 Mathematical Economics

Workload: 1 x 2 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
5 assignments (individual) throughout the semester worth 10% each - your 4 best marks will be counted
Final exam worth 60%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yes, but the course was significantly changed in 2021.

Textbook Recommendation: Mathematics for Economics, 3rd ed, Hoy et al

Lecturer(s): Simon Loertscher

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 0 out of 5 :(

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (85)

Comments

Content-wise, the subject is split into three parts:
- univariate calculus and optimisation
- linear algebra
- multivariate calculus

I really wanted to like this subject. Despite my high hopes, it unfortunately ended up being my least enjoyable.

Backstory - I did ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics in 2nd year with the legendary duo Svetlana Danilkina as my lecturer and Daniel Tiong as my tutor. They made me, an arts student with a horrific maths background (raw 34 in VCE Methods) become fascinated with the maths of economics. When Daniel suggested to me to do Maths Econ in 3rd year (which Svetlana taught and he also tutored for), I was doubtful as I barely passed high school maths, but I decided to go for it.

Well, plot twist - a new coordinator came by the time I entered 3rd year. This subject ended up being a dumpster fire. The subject guide was released only about two weeks after the semester started, the Canvas page was horribly disorganised (lecture recordings were posted on the home page instead of under 'lecture capture'), and for some incomprehensible reason, Simon refused to annotate slides - instead, he wrote on spare pieces of paper, using a ballpoint pen that made markings his camera could barely pick up, and at the end of each lecture, posted photos of these scribbles for the rest of us to decipher.

The only saving grace was Svetlana who uploaded her own notes (typed up, too, so that they were actually legible) each week, oversaw the discussion board and answered all questions. What I found amusing was that the subject coordinator actually put a disclaimer on Svetlana's notes saying that these are not official course notes. They certainly were much more helpful than the "official" ones he put up.

Disorganised was honestly too mild of a word to describe it. Our first assignment was literally released an entire week late, and was actually only uploaded when multiple students emailed the lecturer or their tutor saying that they couldn't find it. When it was finally uploaded, it was actually Svetlana, not the subject coordinator, who made the announcement letting students know that the assignment was finally released.

And if you think I am going a bit hard on this subject coordinator, I wasn't the only one with complaints. My tutorial size dropped from 21 students in the first week to only 3 by the census date. Yes - I repeat - THREE. Also, from reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/unimelb/comments/lxj867/thoughts_on_econ30020_mathematical_economics_2021/

For future students - only take this subject if the coordinator is Svetlana.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 17, 2021, 05:51:32 pm
Subject Code/Name: ENGL30051 Comedy

Workload: 1 x 2 hr seminar per week + also 30 minutes of online weekly material

Assessment:
1,500 word essay due week 6 (40%)
2,500 word research essay due after SWOTVAC (50%)
Class participation also counts for 10%

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: N/A.

Textbook Recommendation: N/A

Lecturer(s): Sarah Balkin

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments

ENGL30051 is one of the new subjects UniMelb began offering in 2021, as such I went into it with a lot of doubts, especially as, before this, I had not taken a single English/Theatre Studies subject at uni. Admittedly, I do come from a theatre background, which absolutely came in handy during this subject. The subject also has some focus on the more historical aspects of comedy (eg. Ancient Greeks), so as someone who loves history this was a major plus. Aristophanes was by far the best part of this entire course.

Since I had no other university Literature/English/Theatre Studies subjects to compare this with, I found myself constantly comparing the subject to high school English and VCE Literature. There is definitely an overlap with VCE Lit but obviously ENGL30051 goes into a lot more depth and detail. I definitely struggled with both the midsemester essay and the final research assessment, and I had a feeling that both my essays was very "VCE-like". It definitely becomes a much more straightforward subject once one gets a better understanding of what is required.

ENGL30051 is absolutely subject that students who do English and Theatre Studies as a major / minor would find much more easy, unlike a few other arts electives I've done where the way they were structured or taught seemed to cater for students who don't actually major in it. To be absolutely honest, I don't even have any idea as to why I got the score I did (I'm very happy with it, but also very confused), since I did very badly on the first essay but very well on the second, but I felt that my first essay was way better than my second. The criteria honestly confused me a little.

Overall I'd say that ENGL30051 is a very interesting subject in terms of content, though its assessments may be a bit of a struggle especially for those who have never done any ENGL subjects prior to this.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: hums_student on July 17, 2021, 05:52:31 pm
Subject Code/Name: ISLM30018 Diplomacy: Engaging the Muslim World

Workload: 1 x 1.5 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
1,000 word review article due in week 4 (30%)
1,500 word group project due in week 10 (35%)
1,500 word research essay due after SWOTVAC (35%)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: N/A.

Textbook Recommendation: N/A

Lecturer(s): Matthew Nelson

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (77)

Comments

Just a general note - In 2019 and 2020, this subject was known as 'Crisis Zone: Age of Uprisings', and before that it was 'Crisis Zone: Islam and Resistance'. As you can probably guess, it has gone through some changes in content as well.

Topics covered included
- The War on Terror
- The Arab Spring (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria)
- The Islamic State
- General Turkish and Iranian history and politics
- Themes including youth, women + gender history, and media.

This is not like any other arts subject I've taken before in regards to assessments. In most other arts subjects (not including the non standard ones like languages/economics/psychology), a "research essay" would have to be at the very least 2,000 words. In 3rd year they're usually 2,500 words. And even then, it's never enough to cover the breadth and depth of whatever issue or topic the research essay is discussing. So you can guess my disbelief when I found out that the assessments in this subject are 1,500 words max. For a third-year subject which covers such complex and hotly debated issues, I found this to be incredibly strange. And perhaps because of this, I struggled with the assessments as I found myself constantly exceeding the word limit, and clearly I had rather poor judgement of what sections to cut and what to keep.

Overall though, it was a very decent subject and the content covered is both relevant and useful. I think the nature of the short assessments makes the subject a lot more accessible for non-arts students who may not be as comfortable with writing essays, and there was certainly a lot of students in my tutorial who were doing it as breadth. Overall, it was an interesting subject. As a politics student who has always wanted to do an Islamic studies subject, who also had no space for electives left on his study plan, this subject ended up being perfect as it also counted towards the Politics and International Relations discipline.

I should mention in regards to the short assignment though - this is purely based on the preferences of the subject coordinator. I know in previous years the research essay was 2,500 words. So I can't guarantee this information will be accurate for future students.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: itsmonica on August 14, 2021, 03:22:45 pm
Subject Code/Name: CHEM10006 Chemistry for Biomedicine

Faculty: Science

Workload: 3 x 1hr lecture weekly, 1 x 1hr tutorial weekly, 6 x 3 hour practicals over the semester, and 3 x ILTs.

Assessment: 3 x 30 minute online tests (6%), 6 x reports for the practicals (20%), 3-hour end of semester exam (74%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: 2015-2019 with answers!!

Textbook Recommendation: P. Mahaffy, R. Tusker, B. Bucat, J. Kotz, G. Weaver and P. Triechel, Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity (2nd International Edition), Cengage Learning, 2014.

Lecturer(s): Sonia Horvat for physical chemistry, Craig Hutton for organic chemistry, Gavin Reid for bioorganic chemistry and Megan Maher for inorganic chemistry.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester one, 2021.

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: 77 (H2A)

Comments:
I have quite a bit to say about chem for biomed, so I'm going to go through each part bit by bit.

Let's start with the physical chemistry which was lecturered by Sonia Horvat. I personally found Sonia to be one of the best lecturers, she was really enthusiastic, motivated, clear, concise, and she gave great examples. She is also one of the tutors, and was a fantastic way to begin the course with.

Organic and bioorganic chemistry is where a lot of people (including myself) find this subject to go a bit downhill... The content is certaintly a lot more difficult, the lecturers are not particularly good, and there is a lot to remember. I would really recommend reading the text book for this part, asking your tutor / Campuswire as many questions as possible, completing the OWL cengage questions (which I personally think are a lot more useful than the textbook questions), and making mind maps / summaries, especially of the reaction types and mechanisms. This section of the course will definitely demand a lot more of your attention, and was 100% the part I struggled the both with in terms of the exam. There is a big focus on applying new mechanisms and labelling compound (E vs Z, R vs S etc) in the MST and exam.

Some people didn't really like the inorganic section or the lecturer, but I personally found it to be very fascinating, especially as it covered a lot of biological molecules (eg. haemoglobin) which we had previously learnt about at the surface level in biology. There's a lot to remember / take in for all those biological molecules, so I once again recommend making summaries / mind maps with a good picture of the molecule, the formal charge, the denticity etc as this will come in handy, especially during the exams.

I personally felt that I put in quite a lot of effort in this subject throughout the semester (yet still just scraped a H2A), and I definitely recommend good summaries / notes, completing the OWL questions and tutorial questions, and asking as many questions as possible.

Overall, it is a really interesting subject!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: itsmonica on August 14, 2021, 04:07:09 pm
Subject Code/Name: ITAL10006 Italian 5

Faculty: Arts

Workload: 18 1-hour language seminars scheduled across the semester, a 1-hour conversation class per week, eight 1-hour Contemporary Italy lectures scheduled across the semester, three 1-hour seminars related to the WIL project scheduled across the semester, four 1-hour tutorials scheduled across the semester, three 2-hour film screenings scheduled across the semester, 6 x 1-hour school placements in the second half of the semester.

Assessment: 3 x 200  word (or equivalent) online language tests (15%), 400 word contemporary Italy mini-project (aka short answer questions) (10%), 1200 word contemporary Italy history project (aka an essay) (30%), 800 word group assignment based on the work-integrated learning project, and 1000 word (or equivalent) exam (25%).
You also must attend a minimum of 75% of all classes, and all pieces of assessment must be submitted, in order to pass the subject.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available: No past exam available.

Textbook Recommendation: They supply all necessary texts, but you could always buy a copy of Pinocchio if you would like.

Lecturer(s):
Matt Absalom runs the language seminars, Antonella Cavallini runs the conversation class, and Elisabetta Ferrari runs the lectures and the tutorials.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester one, 2021.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 86 (H1)

Comments:
Since Italian 5 is the common entry point after VCE units 3/4 Italian, this subject is somewhat more of a step-up, but unlike other subjects you may have done previously (or at least for myself, coming from a biomed / science background), hard work and organisation definitely pays off.

There's a lot to cover for this subject, so I'm going to do based on class-type and assessment-type, as there is quite a lot to cover (and there is literally no reviews for this subject online)

First off, there is language seminar one, run by Matt. Basically in this hour Matt will just read out a story to you in Italian and then put you into break out rooms (this was done on Zoom) to discuss the story / answer some questions. In terms of assessment preparation (especially as we had a question about which story was our favourite in a quiz), I had a notebook where I would write down key terms / some notes on what was being read, and I always wrote down the discussions / answers to questions which were covered in the break out rooms. (However, these stories covered were typically more difficult than the listening tasks covered in assessments).

There is also language seminar two, also run by Matt, which is a bit of alternative grammar class. When I did this subject, we focused on agreements, but in the context of inequality within the Italian language against women and gender-neutral people. A lot of people really did not like this take, but I thought it was really interesting, as well as really important within today's age. As all the assessments were open book, I really recommend making summary tables / mind maps based off the content taught by Matt, the class discussions, and the articles and videos shared on the LMS by Matt. This won't take long (like max 30 mins after each seminar), but it as a lifesaver come the exam.

Language practice is run once a week by Antonella (such a lovely lady!), covering a bunch of topics about Italian culture (eg. schools, family dynamics, history), as well as just general conversation and story-telling techniques. This was such a nice way to meet people in the class, as well as just have a bit of fun with the Italian language. As the "content" from Antonella's class is covered in the exam, I once again making brief summary notes / tables as you go throughout the semester on what you have been learning.

Elisabetta (who is actually the sweetest person ever) covers the lectures and tutorials. When I did this subject, this covered the original story Pinocchio, the associated history of the story at the Risorgimento, and some of the many film adaptations of the story. This is definitely the part of the subject which people find the most difficult, as it does take a bit of hard work on your part to do well in. Reading and making summary notes on Pinocchio, watching the lectures, completing the set readings, and watching the film adaptations is pretty much left entirely up to you. It will take some motivation, but I recommend making a document with dot points and citations / references for all the readings set (they're not too long, don't stress), a document comparing the film adaptations vs the original Pinocchio, as well as a document on the actual story of Pinocchio (I included things like a chapter-by-chapter summary in English and Italian, and a quotes bank based on character and theme). Trust me, it will make the two assessments SO MUCH easier. Also, I really recommend doing the tutorial questions, and taking note on the discussion which happens in the tutorial, as they can really guide what is expected of you during the assessments.

You may be a bit confused when enrolling for this subject, as there is also seminar three and language practice two. These are essentially the same thing, but let me explain... The first language seminar three covers a bunch of theories on how to teach a foreign language (make a summary table, it comes up in later assessments), and the second is where you meet the teachers who will be running the mini-internship you do in a school. Matt will organise a couple schools (I think he found three or four for us), but you are welcome to contact your own high school or primary school and go there instead, especially if travel distances are an issue. The other seminar three or language practice two sessions are actually just in the timetable to account for the hour you will spend at the school each week, which I think was from weeks seven to twelve. Not going to say the school I went to for privacy reasons, but it was a high school and I was with the year 12 class. It was quite enjoyable to watch the class and help the students with their speaking and grammar. (However, if you are in your first year of uni and are female like myself, I wouldn't recommend going into a year 12 co-ed class.... you may find it difficult to be taken seriously).

Now onto assessments! The language tests are relatively easy, as long as you have notes (note these might change from year to year). The first one covered the language teaching theories and has a listening task, the second covered language seminar three content about making things inclusive and your favourite story from seminar one, and the third covered a listening task, how you felt you have improved your Italian, and inclusive language. The first one was timed, the other three were not.

The "Italy mini-project" was actually three short-answer questions and timed to ~65 minutes. One question was a text analysis from Pinocchio, the second was recounting the events from the Risorgimento, and the third a question about the historial context of Pinocchio. Not too bad, but definitely why I recommend reading Pinocchio and making good notes.

The essay was definitely more tricky, with ~6 topics being released ~two days before. I personally wrote a quick plan (my main contention, my main point for each paragraph and the associated readings I needed), and it really helped. I was very nervous before writing the essay, but it actually went okay. Yes, it was in Italian, and yes, it was timed at ~75 minutes.

The exam was very much like the language quizzes. We were only told that there would be a question about each of the four main classes (ie inclusive language from seminar 3, listening from seminar 1, Pinocchio from lectures/tutorials, and ~something~ from the language pracs). There was an inclusive language question, a listening task, a recording about the historical context of Pinocchio, and a question on the content about the language pracs (mine was about motivations for travel).

Finally, there is the project about the mini-internship. First off, you have this table of observations that you have to fill out about each visit you make to the school (do it straight after, don't be me). This is part of a OneNote document, where you just record any resources used by the teachers, and some other general observations. You then make a video (in Italian) with ~two others who went to the same school as you about ths experience, what you learn / saw / reflected on, as well as how it relates to those teaching theories.

All in all, a great subject, but it definitely involved a lot of work!
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on September 01, 2021, 08:02:24 pm
Subject Code/Name: ANCW20015: Classical Mythology 

Workload:  1 set of short lecture videos every week + 1x2h seminar per week (3 seminar per week in winter)

Assessment:  Document analysis (15%), Research essay (40%), Take home exam (35%), Weekly quizzes (10%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Some past exams available from the library.

Faculty: Arts

Textbook Recommendation:  All texts are provided.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Monique Webber

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Winter

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 84

Comments: Overall, I really enjoyed this subject. It's brilliantly coordinated and delves into really interesting topics such as heroes and monsters of the ancient world and sexual violence. No prior knowledge of the classics is needed, but it does help, especially because greco-roman mythology has a lot of characters and names being thrown around, so I would recommend reading some re-tellings before taking this subject, those by Stephen Fry are a great start.

I recommend taking this as an intensive in the winter, mainly because you get it done in 4 weeks, but it is intensive. There are quite a lot of readings to do before every seminar, and all the assessments rely on them. The primary readings are the most important and will be the ones discussed in the seminars, so for the love of god, read them. You will get called out if you don't and it's just a bad situation all around; if you do the readings you get to interact with the class and join in really interesting discussions, which makes this subject so much better. Personally, I didn't find it hard to do the readings because unlike other subjects, these I found genuinely interesting. You're basically reading stories about heroes and monsters, Odysseus and Apollo, Athena and Dionysus, literally the best readings you could ask for. The secondary readings are less of an issue, but you should still know what they talk about for the assessments.

Speaking of assessments:

- Document analysis: a 750 word assignment analysing a primary text, likely Hesiod's Theogony. Pretty much go through it in the seminars, so do the reading and join the discussion and you will be a-okay.

- Research essay: 1750 word essay researching a topic. You basically have to choose a topic (you can choose your own) and form an argument for a question and back that argument up with both primary and secondary sources of your own finding. All the topics were really interesting and the tutors are always open to discuss your ideas and help you along the way. It did take work, but it was also very rewarding and a genuinely fun experience (as someone from science, writing arts essays is a whole different ball game, but this one was really fun).

- Take home exam: 1500 word essay on topic given. No research necessary, but not penalised. You're meant to use the resources given and discussed in class to show what you took from the subject. The topics are quite broad which allow you to take in many different directions and didn't find it particularly challenging, though still requires a fair amount of work and reading.

- Weekly quizzes: alternate between mcq and 1 saq worth 100 words. Pretty easy, just watch the content videos and you'll be fine.

This is probably my favourite breadth I've ever done and recommend it 100%. But please do the readings, I feel like I missed out on a lot that this subject could offer because my peers never did their readings so a lot of our seminars were just the tutor asking people what they thought and them either saying they didn't read them or fully ignoring them (gotta love zoom). So many awkward silences. And I felt like my tutor was really invested in getting everyone involved, which I appreciate, but that meant those of us that did do the readings got to discuss less and just sit there in silence. I also felt at times that my tutor was a bit tone deaf. When you're teaching about a sensitive subject like colonisation, you can't say Alexander the Great colonised the Indians to "share" his culture and "improve" civilisation. The staff were very conscious of trigger warnings and issues surrounding the content, there were just some comments that didn't quite fit, and I truly don't believe they meant anything bad with them. So be aware that there are quite a few trigger warnings.

All that aside, it's a fantastic subject with fun assignments and really well coordinated. Monique was super engaging in the content videos and all tutors are super interactive and engaging in the seminar discussions. Also, if I managed to get H1, so can you. I went from 67 on my previous arts breadth to 84 by just doing the readings and putting in some work in the essays. And it was all done in a month. Highly recommend.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on November 23, 2021, 08:50:39 pm
Subject Code/Name: BCMB30004: Cell Signalling and Neurochemistry 

Faculty: MDHS

Workload:  10 content modules, with 1x 2h workshop per week looking at the module of the previous week

Assessment:  5x Small written assignments (7% each); 2x MCQ MSTs (10% each); SAQ Final exam (45%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, but no answers and some questions outdated

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Paul Gooley, Daniel Scott, Justine Mintern, Ian van Driel, Laura Edgington-Mitchell

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Sem 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 87

Comments: This has become my favourite BCMB subject. It is very well coordinated with super interesting content and engaging lecturers. Overall, there was a lot more cell signalling than neurochemistry, which I personally didn't mind but I am a biochem major so that kind of played to my strengths. If you're a neuro major, I'd still recommend taking it, though be aware that neuro content doesn't really start until module 8-10. The first 4 modules were also quite heavy in protein structure, which took me a bit by surprise. However, the content becomes fairly straightforward once you get used to the pace and style of the subject.

Gooley takes modules 1 and 4 (intro and nuclear receptors), Scott takes modules 2 and 3 (GPCRs), Mintern takes modules 5-7 (ubiquitin, autophagy and cell death), van Driel takes module 8 (immune privilege and signalling) and Edgington-Mitchell takes modules 9 and 10 (pain signalling).

I personally enjoyed Mintern's content the most and van Driel's the least (felt very disorganised and superficial). The assignments were pretty easy and straightforward. The first 2 were to use PyMol to design protein figures, the 3rd was using Prism to analyse data and make experiments and the last two were to read papers and answer questions about them. Gooley and Scott were great at giving individual and group feedback, but Justine just uploaded a vague "answer sheet" and was also very harsh with the marks which left a lot to be desired. Still, better than Ian's, who didn't give us any feedback in any way, shape or form.

The MSTs were fair, but I found the first one much more challenging. If you don't do so well in the first mst, honestly, don't get disheartened, like I said, it does take a while to get used to the pace of the subject. The subject as a whole is quite content heavy, so if you're considering it, make sure you do one module a week and attend all the workshops. It's super important to be on top of things, otherwise you will be swamped with content by exam time. Also, exam questions are similar in style to questions given in workshops, so make sure you know how the lecturers expect you to answer those, it will give you a good idea of how to answer exam questions. The exam itself I found very fair but very long (3.5 hours) and incredibly exhausting so make sure you get a good meal and water before you sit it (this was during COVID, so it might change once exams are back in person).

Overall, I really loved this subject and would highly recommend as an elective to anyone in the bcmb major, but it is content heavy, so go in motivated and make sure you do the work every week so you don't feel overwhelmed and unprepared by exam time.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: dahyun on November 24, 2021, 07:18:16 pm
Subject Code/Name: KORE20002 - Contemporary Korea

Workload: 1x 2 hr lecture, 1x 1 hr tutorial per week

Assessment: 

Note: there is a hurdle via the 80% tutorial participation rate, meaning you can miss up to 2 tutorials without special consideration explaining your absence.


Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture. Lectures were delivered live, then uploaded later onto Canvas.

Past exams available: N/A (final essay subject, BUT there were samples of final essays from previous years. Read more below.)

Textbook Recommendation: On Handbook it says the lecturer's upcoming text, but given it is an arts subject you'll receive weekly readings - some compulsory, some optional. Otherwise no large encompassing textbook.

Lecturer(s): Jay Song & Andrew Eungi Kim (Andrew took the first 6 weeks, but Jay is the subject co-ordinator and the marker of the final paper)

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 2 (online)

Rating: 4.6/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Pre-requisites: None (you don't need a prior knowledge of Korean...just English...)

Comments: I took this subject as a breadth (commerce), given my interests in Korean culture prior to this subject. The tl;dr here is only do it if you actually enjoy writing essays and like doing readings, since hallyu is only one topic in this subject!

Lectures and content
This subject delves into contemporary Korean history and society (i.e. subject does as advertised). This means you'll explore Korea as a nation from the 1950s (Korean War) to modern day Korea. There is some analysis of the two Koreas, but it is largely focused on South Korea (referred to as Korea from here on). As this is an arts subject, you will be expected to complete readings to enhance the lectures, since they are mostly a shallow dive of each topic. Jay mentioned a few times that this subject was merely a glance at contemporary Korea, focusing on breadth rather than depth of the topics. This means you don't need to have a good knowledge of Korean society to appreciate much of the subject!

Let's talk about content. In twelve weeks, you'll learn about:
Week 1 - Introduction to Korean Culture (A)
Spoiler
This reminds me of OB lol - just an intro to culture and how it can be analysed, then an introduction to Korean culture and what makes it different to Australian culture, or Japanese or Chinese culture.
Week 2 - Religions and Values (A)
Spoiler
Moving towards religion in general and in Korea - particularly, how Christianity spread across Korea, and comparing it to Christianity in Japan and why that outcome is different.
Week 3 - Women in Korean society (A)
Spoiler
Self-explanatory, but an analysis of how women are viewed and treated within Korean society, and how traditional values etched within society are starting to unravel in modern day Korea - see the #MeToo movement for more information. Analysis of cosmetic surgery is also here.
Week 4 - Multiculturalism in Korea (A)
Spoiler
Korea is one of the most homogenous countries in the world! So an increasing number of foreign residents (especially non-East Asian) in Korea and its effects on society are the things you'll analyse here.
Week 5 - Hallyu!!!!!!111 (A)
Spoiler
This is why you probably even considered the subject - the majority of people in my class certainly chose it for this reason. This week analyses how Hallyu came to dominate the world, and the consequences of Hallyu for Korean society.
Week 6 - Korea's economy (A)
Spoiler
Being a commerce student this was the most interesting week for me 8) but nah this is a good week detailing how Korea came from a war-torn nation to being one of the global economic powers.
Week 7 - North Korea's Nuclear program (J)
Spoiler
Pretty topical as always. Analysis of how we even got to where we (Trump and Kim, Moon and Kim etc.). I don't remember too much about this ngl lol
Week 8 - Japanese colonialism and its effects upon Korean society (J)
Spoiler
Comparison of colonial subjects across the world, and the legacy of Japanese colonialism (see: comfort women). Jay is very passionate about this topic, and I think that itself says something about the effects of colonialism!
Week 9 - Post-Korean War (J)
Spoiler
All about the Korean war and the immediate time period after it. This was quite a personal topic for me, so it was extra interesting to analyse how this war affected families across the border.
Week 10 - Juche: Socialism in North Korea (J)
Spoiler
Explanation of Juche, the ideology of North Korea, then more analysis on modern day North Korea under Kim Jong-un's rule.
Week 11 - Human rights in Korea (J)
Spoiler
This was definitely a surprise topic for me when I read the subject guide. Analyse human right violations in Korea (both sides, but a large focus on North Korea) and how the South can help mitigate this issue.
Week 12 - Korea Diasporas (J)
Spoiler
Korean diaspora across the world! Where have Koreans in the last 100 or so years have migrated? Who was the first Korean migrant(s) to Australia? Find out more this week!!!


Tutorials
This subject was held entirely online unfortunately, owing to the COVID-19 related lockdowns in Melbourne. However, the people in my class were really good and always willing to talk about the week's content in the discussions. This is very refreshing when compared to commerce tutorials...lol. Anna was the lone tutor for this subject who did a similar subject a few years ago, and definitely made the tutorials a lot more fun and engaging. Probably my favourite part of the subject. As mentioned before, you'll need to attend at least 10 of the 12 tutorials (there's a tutorial week 1) to pass the subject. Special consideration can be applied for if you were sick for a week, but I'd ask Jay about this whenever you run into such an issue. These tutorials could sometimes turn into QnA sessions whenever an assessment was due soon, but other than that no complaints.

Assessments
The first assignment, a research proposal (10%) is pretty easy and not too bad. You'll need to declare what topic (out of the 12 possible covered) you want to write your paper on, and explain the structure, and include references with some analysis of the references themselves (e.g. was it a Korean anthropologist that wrote this reference? Or did you pick an American psychologist instead? Justify why you did so etc.) This isn't too hard and you can always book a consultation to either Jay or the head-tutor.

The oral presentation (20%) requires you to do an oral presentation on a topic which is NOT the topic you chose to write your proposal on. This could be done in week 4 or week 12, with the week 12 list of prompts being released in week 9. During this semester, we had to record a PowerPoint/slides presentation and upload the presentation as a video with audio. With that being said, for 2022 (hopefully!), this will be done in tutorials in person. Not hard but I did mess up here a little bit.
 
The mid-term essay (30%) essentially is a first draft of your paper. I was quite confused at what they wanted from us, but again, going to a consultation does solve this issue. The final essay (40%) is what it is - a 3000 word essay that you spend the semester working on. Now, if you are smart, you would have done what I just said, and not instead, write 3000 words on the day before the due date. Now who would do such a thing...but in all seriousness, this felt very satisfying to finish and seeing the culmination of your hard-core research into a neat 3000 word essay is amazing! While you do get a sample of previous essays (2017), they are not done in the same format as done these days so don't copy it I suppose. Just a quick tip for my non-arts peeps: use high quality references. A random reference from a dodgy publication won't suffice (cough cough OB) here!

Concluding remarks
Brilliant subject, and has actually made me think of doing an arts masters lol, or even an arts degree. We'll see, but I think I have a new passion for anthropology now lol...or maybe I'm just a koreaboo (lol after writing this all up, I just realised my atarnotes username and profile picture...lol)...who knows...anyways this subject is ran extremely well, and the content is very interesting and the assessments help build knowledge on a topic you (should) be passionate about! Thanks for reading and I think expect further arts breadth reviews!


Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on November 28, 2021, 11:51:07 pm
Subject Code/Name: MAST90056 Riemann surfaces and complex analysis

Faculty: Science

Workload:  On the surface, 3 one hour lectures

Assessment:  3 assignments, 20% each and exam 40%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 but useless, I did not use them and will never recommend them

Textbook Recommendation:  Ahlfors and Forsters book. Definitely recommend for reasons I will discuss. But it's up to you whether to get it or not, of course.

Lecturer(s): Paul Norbury

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 2

Rating:  1 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:

This subject is the meeting point of topology and complex analysis. We learn a little bit more complex analysis but mainly study these objects called Riemann surfaces which are surfaces with some additional complex structure, loosely speaking.

This will be a review to help you decide whether or not to take this subject.

To give a useful review, lemme start with the pros. Riemann surfaces are interesting objects to study in its own right and Paul is a strong mathematician, quite knowledgeable who is fair in his marking and believes in conscientiousness. Provided that you honestly worked through the assignment as best you can, he'll give you a good mark that you will deserve, regardless of anything else (I'll leave you to interpret that however you like). My understanding is that Paul likely knows that this subject is a little too difficult (in the wrong way) and adjusts his marking accordingly, which is always nice to see. The exam was a beautifully written exam for a 3 hour session but since we were only given 2 hours to do it, I found it to be extremely difficult, but I believe was scaled which was very fortunate. He is also very willing to help students, always staying back after lectures for as long as needed to answer questions and giving 3 hours of consultations per week which is quite a lot I reckon.

With that said, to save you some time let me just say that if you're just looking for some random maths subjects to do for your Msc then do not pick this subject. Otherwise, if you know some differential geometry and either have a specific reason to study Riemann surfaces or are interested in it then this subject is for you. There are a lot of problems with this subject, particularly its structure, the way it is taught and the assignments. Before I go into this, lemme just say that yes I did ok in this subject but not without a lot physical and mental pain throughout the semester. I had to pay a high price for it, let's put it that way.

As for the structure of the course, students are only required to know complex analysis to be able to take this course. However, from the way it is delivered, it is obvious that you do need to know some differential geometry, geometry and topology for sure. I would say that the real prerequisites for this subject are metrics and hilbert spaces, geometry, complex analysis and differential geometry. My understanding from what the lecturer said is that if he puts all that in the description then the number of students taking this subject will be too low. He said that we are expecting a different kind of maturity here, meaning that students should take the subject and drop it if they find it not to be their cup of tea at around week 3. There are obvious flaws in this argument imo but I didn't wanna start a debate with him. In any case, if you take this subject you can imagine its like taking on a subject with twice as much workload since you have to be teaching yourself topology and differential geometry at the same time. The students who have had all the background knowledge (most definitely not me) will find this subject to actually be pretty chill.

As for how it is taught, like I said Paul is a strong mathematician but having been at the top for so long he likely forgot what it was like to be a student and is imo not very organised and horrible at explaining/motivating concepts. There are no prewritten notes and he pretty much handwrites everything as we go which I do not mind too much. My problem with this is that the statements that Paul writes down are very terse and in many important cases not rigorous and even wrong which really makes the studying process a lot more daunting. At times I would wonder if I don't understand the material or the statement was just wrong. In addition, each lecture will consists of him just pumping out content for us to learn, without any motivation or at best just some obvious explanation that certainly is insufficient for a student. In many cases he'll just give some terse explanations so that you can go through the book yourself to learn the rest of the details. This again is understandable and one would expect that a Msc student can do such a thing but it certainly takes a lot of time for those with weak backgrounds and together with all the other factors piling on top of one another, it is not helpful for students' learning imo.

Finally for the assignment, I understand that they are worth 60% of the course and so they are meant to be more difficult. My opinion though is that they are too difficult and we are given like a week to do them which is far too short. Paul said it himself that the assignments are designed to hurt you and make you better for it. I feel that the difficulty level was a little too great for us, especially considering how most of us, like myself, did not have much background in differential geometry (let alone those without a background in topology). In addition, Paul said it himself that despite giving us a week to do it, he does not expect people to spend a week working on it, meaning that his intention is to have us work on it for like 3 - 4 days and that's it. I, however, had to spend like an entire week only on that assignment, could not study any of my other subjects which puts me really far behind. Idk maybe I'm just dumb but again my opinion is that the assignment was far too difficult in many many ways. Btw, one of the assignment required you to read one of the reference book and explain it so that's another reason to grab the books.

The bottom line is, unless you're well prepared in advanced with all the background knowledge and studying skills (you'll be left to your own device for most of the semester due to the unreliability I've stated above), you'll be playing an unfair game against you, where even basic things like precision, correctness and rigour of statements will be scarce lol

Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: huy8668 on November 29, 2021, 04:36:09 pm
Subject code/name: MAST90133 Partial differential equations

Faculty: Science

Workload: 3 one hour lectures

Assessment:  4 assignments, 10% each and an exam 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with capture

Past exams available:  Not sure but don't recommend it

Textbook Recommendation:  Princeton lecture on analysis, Fourier and Real analysis. Must have!

Lecturer(s): Volker Schlue

Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 2

Rating:  2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:

Comments:

This subject was definitely a fun one and up my alley (analysis). If you’re after the content of the course, it’s at the end. I’ll begin with just the negative review on how kind of terribly ran the subject was. It’s probably one of my very first negative reviews on a subject because in most other cases, even if a subject is poorly ran, I wouldn’t know and I’d just conclude that I just was not good enough and thus struggled. Now that I’ve gotten a bit stronger, I can tell that the subject is just terribly ran lol
This a relatively new course, being taught for the second time this year. Although new, the structure was well-designed, and the pace was ok for an Msc level subject. In saying that, because I spent all my time on another subject, I really struggled to keep up. This subject actually ended up being one I pay the least amount of attention towards. In any case, we were provided with typed up lecture notes, which was essentially a summary of a number of chapters from a number of books. Btw, it may be a good idea for you to brush up on your multivariate calculus and Hilbert space theory before entering this course. Hilbert space theory will be introduced again but multivariate calculus will not.
The lecturer is a somewhat knowledgeable guy in this field and his explanations to the lecture content were ok but ones in the notes were not that good tbh. The notes were typed up neatly which I am quite grateful for, but not a great deal of thoughts were put in them. In many cases I had to read the extra content in the reference book to really know what was happening. Also, he could not give very good answers to many additional questions (which I’d expect lecturers to be able to answer) asked in consultations or outside lecture time in general. It was a busy semester for the guy so he screwed up in a few places, more on this later, but he tried his best to make it work so kudos to the guy.
The assignments are, from my understanding, not designed to be extremely scary and just some problems that require you to think like ones you would see in undergrad. Although intended to be that way, it was not created nor designed that way this semester lol How it works is that the lecturer will find problems in the reference book that are doable for students and set them as assignment questions. The issue is that what Volker considers “doable” is not quite doable. He would ask problems that are far too much where for example, unless you are lucky (in its literal meaning) you really most likely will not be able to solve it. Me being a lucky one, I found it odd that such a problem can be set for Msc students to do as an assignment question and asked him about it. He said he made a mistake and mentioned that he set the problem with the intention of testing a certain topic when in fact the problem tests a very different topic. It gets worse on another assignment where he again accidentally sets an entire assignment which was mostly too difficult and outside of the scope of the course. It got so bad that in one of the problems where you’re asked to prove a biconditional statement, as long as you prove one direction you’ll get the full mark. This fixes things up a little bit but was rather frustrating for many of us who spent so much time proving both directions, especially since we did not get any bonus marks. The worst part, though, had to be his hints to the assignment lol His hints made the problem more difficult in certain cases and in my case, even put me off the right track. Let’s just say that the assignments were all over the place.
For the exam, I honestly don’t know whether to judge it a fair exam or not. Subjectively I found the exam to be fair ‘cause he tested what was in the course, nothing new that we’ve never seen before. Like if you know how to study for this exam then you’ll be good to go. But then at the same time, after talking to friends, I found that objectively, the exam structure was a little off since it had no free marks and all problems were pretty difficult, with one question being poorly worded and screwed me over. In addition, part III of the course was rushed and he promised to ask very basic questions on the exam. I definitely did not find the questions asked to be “basic” lol In any case I guess I managed to preserve through a lot of the stress and pain during the revision period and it paid off. Apparently, I got the highest mark with a 95, yay!
This subject is an introduction to studying linear partial differential equations. If you’ve done any kind of study on differential equations on the past, you’ll know that this stuff gets very difficult very quickly. Thus, eventually we can’t even solve them anymore and rather can only deduce existence and uniqueness of a solution. The course is split up into three parts and its content is probably the best part about the subject, at least for me. I’ve always enjoyed the analysis stuff.
Part I: solving PDE using the Fourier series, Fourier transform and some applications. You’ll study the Fourier series, Fourier transform in a little more detail.
Part II: studying PDE using Hilbert space theory, trying to deduce existence and uniqueness of what’s know as a weak solution. Weak solutions need not be differentiable but behaves in the same way as a strong solution in many ways we care about so they’re cool stuff. You’ll study these things called harmonic functions, which are like holomorphic functions, and find some interesting stuff about them. Many new interesting techniques in mathematics like smoothing will be taught to you.
Part III: studying PDE using distributions. Now things get so difficult that solution aren’t even functions anymore, but rather distributions which is just a generalisation of what a function is. Again these are cool stuff but I did not get too much time to study these. I only knew some of the basic stuff so don’t ask me on this lol
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on January 21, 2022, 12:01:10 pm
Subject Code/Name: PATH20003: Experimental Pathology 

Faculty: MDHS

Workload:  1x lecture/week + 1x practical/workshop/week (alternating weeks)

Assessment:  Lab/workshop performance and contribution (10%), EOS MCQ Exam (15%), Continuous assessment throughout sem incl. prac reports, lab notebooks and 5 small quizzes (75%) (more details below).

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture etc.

Past exams available:  Nope.

Textbook Recommendation:  They forced us to buy the physical lab manual for $15 even though the entire semester ended up being online and the overseas students got it for free as a pdf. If you'll be in person, you'll more than likely have to also buy it. Yes, I know its bullish*t.

Lecturer(s): Sophie Paquet-Fifield and Vicki Lawson

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 2 2021

Rating: 1 Out of 5 (hated it)

Your Mark/Grade: 89

Comments: The last reviews are outdated as they recently changed the staff and structure of this subject (clearly for the worse), so don't base your decision on reviews older than 2020. That's what I did and let me tell you how disappointed I was.

TL;DR: I don't recommend this subject to my worst enemies. It was easy but not worth the headaches and frustration. Do yourself a favour and take something else if you can.

The content is divided in 5 blocks (ischemic disease, forensics, immune-mediated disease, haematological disease and genetic disease), each with a different case study where you're introduced to someone suffering from a particular condition (i.e. heart attack, death, glomerulonephritis, haemophilia and cystic fibrosis). Each block will have 2 lectures (typically 1 on theory and 1 on scientific writing), a workshop and a practical.

Lectures will give you some background knowledge and theory on the condition investigated in each respective block and it was mostly recaps from year 2 path so if you did PATH20001, the content for this one is very easy.

Workshops differed slightly from block to block but they were mainly to discuss results, ask questions and practice scientific writing.

Practicals will focus on one (1) experiment per class (and you bet we don't need 3 hours for that). Sophie will also have you look at anatomical samples and discuss organ morphology and such. Even though I did it all online, by this point there is no excuse for online practicals to be so disorganised and boring. You had a whole year to prepare.

Assessments:

- 5 small MCQ quizzes, 1 per block. Purely based on the theory lecture, 2% each. Easy 10%.

- Lab notebooks where you had to record what happened during the prac, 3% each. Marked very harshly.

- Scientific reports where you write a publication style report on the prac containing introduction, methods, results and discussion. First one did not count, purely to let us practice and get feedback. Report 2, 3 and 4 were 10% each and Report 5 is 20% (even though it's not necessarily longer or harder). Also marked very harshly.

Let's get into why this subject sucked so much, shall we? Let's start with the coordination, which is abysmal. Sophie would only publish lecture slides on Sunday at 10pm for a Monday lecture. She would "strongly encourage" us to start writing lab books and reports as soon as the prac was finished but wouldn't open the Cadmus link until 2 days before the deadline. 3 times we had to ask for feedback to be unlocked from Cadmus. Again, she forced us to PAY for a 100-page lab manual which I maybe used 3 times and every other self-respecting prac class would give for free or as a pdf. And again, the whole subject ended up being online for everyone and only the local students had to pay, the overseas students got a free pdf. Vicki Lawson was just there for emotional support for Sophie I reckon, cause she didn't do anything, just interrupted every once in a while to correct something Sophie said. She was also very unhelpful to students who emailed her with issues and kept changing the timetable schedule every week for stupid reasons. The last timetable she uploaded was around week 6 and it was version 4. She also gives the exact same lecture about scientific writing every other week, which doesn't actually teach you anything of essence or gives you any guidance on how to go about actually writing the assessments. The expectations on what they wanted from you were so vague. They told us write an introduction from current literature. I did that and got a 60% because that's not what they actually wanted. They wanted you to ONLY use background from the lecture and find sources to back this up. I figured this out eventually but in the first few weeks of the semester it was incredibly frustrating trying to figure out why you got the grade you got.

The prac demonstrators didn't help balance things either, and they are the ones grading 75% of your mark for the subject. How well you do will depend 100% on the demo you get. If you get Caroline, I salute you and will pray for you because she was the worst demo I've ever had in my life. Extremely harsh and poor feedback. She would take marks away with no explanation and whenever you would ask her a question she would reply with "hmm....well what do you think?"... UM I don't know, that's why im asking you, Caroline. And you might think oh its cause she wanted you to think about the answers rather than just give them to you, but no. You would say you thought and she would just shrug. No comment. So even then you're still not sure what the answer is. Completely useless. Not to mention she just told us to drive our pracs and workshops ourselves, so every time there would be a different student playing the role of demo that tried to guide discussions forward while she just sat there in silence. Great. Tbh, I can't say anything about the other demos. Would my experience have been better with a different demo? Probably. But I can't say that for sure. What I can say is the demo we got was horrible and completely unhelpful in every way.

For every block there are also ungraded interactive "tutorials" which you have to do on your own. Didn't mind these too much, in fact, they were probably the best part of the whole subject and the best way to actually learn the content and understand what they want you to learn.

The exam was fine, nothing too difficult, pretty much a recap of lecture theory and some questions related to the different experiments you've done throughout the sem.

If I haven't managed to change your mind from taking this subject the only thing I can say is: good luck. I honest to God would never take this if I could go back, even though I got an 89 in the end. Even when I saw my grade, I didn't feel like all the pain was worth it. I genuinely was just happy it was over and I wouldn't have to ever think about it again. If you really want to do a GOOD second year prac subject, I can't recommend BCMB20005 enough. Brilliantly coordinated, rewarding and with achievable student expectations.

PATH20003 has a lot of potential and from past reviews, it seems like it used to be what it's marketed as but has gone downhill with the current management and staff. I believe this is the first subject that Sophie coordinates so who knows maybe in 5 years it would be better coordinated but as it is I cannot recommend this. Genuinely the worst subject I've done in 3 years.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ganksau on April 19, 2022, 09:49:32 am
Major: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

First Year Subjects:  None, but you need at least 1 Biology and 1 Chemistry subject to be eligible to enrol in the second year subjects.

Second Year Subjects: *May be different for Biomed, check handbook*
BCMB20002: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
BCMB20005: Techniques in Molecular Science

Third Year Subjects:
         Core:
BCMB30010: Advanced Techniques in Molecular Science
BCMB30012: Current Advances in Molecular Science

         Electives (need at least 2):
BCMB30001: Protein Structure and Function*
BCMB30002: Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics
BCMB30003: Molecular Aspects of Cell Biology
BCMB30004: Cell Signalling and Neurochemistry
BCMB30011: Cellular Metabolism and Disease*
BIOM30003: Biomedical research project
MIIM30017: Parasitology*

*I did not take these subjects, so can't comment on them.


Year of completion: 2022

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Average Mark: H1 in all BCMB subjects and BIOM30003

Comments: I've decided to write a quick review because the major structure has changed in the past year, but I fully agree with the previous reviewer.

In my honest and humble opinion, this is the best major you could choose if you're interested in biomedical research. I've done electives in other MDHS majors (immunology, pathology and pharmacology) and none even compare to how well BCMB subjects prepare you to enter the research field.

I think the key difference to other majors is their practical subjects. BCMB20005 and BCMB30010 should be a must do for anyone wanting to enter honours/masters by research in MDHS. Their focus on techniques and independent thinking is unmatched. The pracs themselves are quite hard, don't get me wrong, and they do test your lab performance. In BCMB30010 it's especially important that you actually do the best you can because its essentially one long 12-week project, so your results from 1 week will transfer into the next (obviously if you mess up really bad they will give you class results to keep going but they will take marks away in performance/the lab notebook). Even though this can be annoying and frustrating, I left this subject feeling ready for honours. They teach key techniques that are applicable in most wet lab research, regardless of whether you do protein biochemistry, cell biology, cancer research, microbiology or immunology, etc. I personally am starting an honours project at PeterMac, looking at breast cancer immunology. But I could do any of the projects advertised by any research institute and I'd feel equally confident in my lab skills.

You can also choose to do an independent research project with one of the dept labs through BIOM30003. I did this at Bio21 and highly recommend for anyone wanting to go into honours/masters. It's a lot more independent work and allows you to see what a lab is like before you actually commit to a year-long project, so this is a big plus.

In terms of the theory subjects, BCMB20002 is what made me wanna major in biochemistry. It's a fantastic subject. BCMB30004 and BCMB30003 are two of my all-time favourite subjects I've done in undergrad. What I like is that they all follow the same structure in terms of content delivery, assignments and exam. They're all very cohesive and complement each other beautifully. BCMB subjects can be notorious for being content heavy, and they are lol, but they are very well taught and very easy to score well if you put in the work every week and keep up with the content. Another bonus that not all other subjects have (cough cough principles of immunology) is that BCMB theory subjects all have a 2h workshop/week where you work through the content from the previous week, giving you context and answering any questions you might have, allowing you to interact with the content more actively, which I think really sets apart the major. Some theory subjects are just 3 lectures a week and thats it, which can make it very hard to interact with the content or learn it in a productive way, so I appreciate that this is not an issue with BCMB.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this major. The department is the GOAT, all the lab heads/lecturers are so easy to contact and always happy to answer any questions. Highly recommend if you're interested in biomedical research.
Title: Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
Post by: ashmi on June 18, 2022, 10:14:44 pm
Subject Code/Name: PHYC20012 Quantum and Thermal Physics  

Faculty: Science: School of Physics

Workload: 3 one-hour lectures + one tutorial every week

Assessment:  3 assignments worth 10% each and a final exam 70%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  6 past exams with no answers

Textbook Recommendation: The recommended textbook for the thermal part of the course “D V Schroeder, An Introduction to Thermal Physics” you must absolutely get. For the classical, I recommend David Morin’s Introduction to Classical Mechanics, however, do be cautious as this requires a strong foundation in maths and is more for Theoretical Physics 2. In the quantum part of the course you don’t need anything as the lecture notes are sufficient.

Lecturer(s): David Jamieson and Jeffrey Mccallum

Year & Semester of completion: 2022 Semester 1

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

This subject used to be called “Thermal and Classical Physics” however since 2016, it has had a whole quantum section added in conjunction with the previous thermal and classical components. This is a jam-packed subject and please be cautious taking this with other heavy science electives.

The first half of the course in my opinion is what let down this subject. David takes the thermal/classical component and the lecture slides are hard to read and follow along sometimes, especially for the classical section where there is a lot of maths. The first six weeks are the most intensive as there is a lot of new content that needs to be absorbed and many lectures slides to fish through. Tutorials are good and are where you learn how to apply concepts from the lectures. The textbook is essential as David’s notes can get quite messy the further the course goes in and there are recommended problems from the textbook you need to go through. The content is interesting but could be presented much better.

The quantum section which is the second half of the course is an absolute miracle. Jeff is lovely, and his teaching quality is excellent. He even visits the tutorial classes to help and even the second-year physics labs! His lecture notes are presented very clearly (just as clear if not clearer than maths lecture notes) and each week he has a 2-page summary of what was covered and what we need to know for the exam. He also has problem sheets for this half of the course and the tutorial sheets are of a higher quality and contain more relevant questions to the content. There is no need to use a textbook for this half of the course as Jeff’s teaching and provided material is sufficient.

There are 3 assignments that you have a month to complete and they can get quite hard. You NEED to put a lot of effort into these assignments as the questions you get are similar in quality to the exam and this is where you learn to do the application in the subject. You need to undertake your own research to answer some of these questions and they get quite tricky. Do not leave this till the last minute. The average mark for the first two assignments (from the people that submitted) was 68.8% and 65.8% to give you an idea. Provided you start early, explain every assumption you make and work hard, these can be easy marks to grab. For the assignments, I averaged around 97% so definitely possible to do well provided you think about and justify everything you write with either proofs or research evidence. Write your assignments in latex to make them easier to read for the marker. Tutorial-wise, Fred is the best tutor so get into his tutes!!

Exams are about the same quality each year, and this was no different. This year's exam did look intimidating at the start at first glance, however, once you got into it, it was about the same. There are no answers to past exams so you need some quality friends to go through exam answers with you, this is how you will learn. This subject will become extremely hard if you don’t have your own friend group in physics to discuss answers with so, please make some friends at the start of the semester!

TLDR; Quantum section carries this subject but the lecture notes for thermal and classical let it down. If you pick this subject, please be careful about the time commitments because it's definitely a lot more than you think.