Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002: Biomolecules and CellsWorkload: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.
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!