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March 29, 2024, 02:39:53 am

Author Topic: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 1735078 times)  Share 

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wobblywobbly

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #690 on: June 29, 2018, 08:08:12 pm »
+3
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.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2018, 08:14:31 pm by wobblywobbly »
:)

wobblywobbly

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #691 on: June 29, 2018, 08:36:40 pm »
+4
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.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2018, 08:41:37 pm by wobblywobbly »
:)

Meddling

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #692 on: June 30, 2018, 11:21:59 pm »
+2
    Subject Code/Name: PHYC10003 Physics 1 

    Workload:
    • 3 x 1 Hour Lectures per week
    • 1 x 1 Hour Problem solving class per week - Attendance not a Hurdle
      • 8 x 2.5 Hours Practicals (worth 25%)
      • 10 x Weekly assignments (worth 15%)
      • 1 x 3 Hour Final Exam (worth 60%)

      Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, however, when professor uses the black board it is not recorded. Also, some experiments done in class are recorded with a camera.

      Past exams available:  Yes, from 2008 to 2017 with answers to all papers. Only hard questions have working out for them.

      Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended. This textbook was the easiest to obtain from the web!. The lectures should be used as a supplement to the content; not as a primary source of your learning. I & many other peers have felt the same way. The lectures assume you know the content before you enter the lecture room. So make sure you read the chapters prescribed to you!.

      Lecturer(s):

      Prof Harry Quiney: He will be taking majority of the lectures in week 1 to 6 (Motion & Force). The first lecture of physics 1 seems reaaaaally simple and easy, but this is because he is covering very basic definition of concepts or words that you must know (Even an year 10 physics student could define some). However, do not be fooled by these introductory lectures. I was lost throughout the whole semester in this subject. (Very content heavy for someone that thought it was a simple extension of VCE Physics). It is important to note that it is unlikely for complex concepts or calculation questions to be assessed in the final exam. Quiney's style of teaching is very concise and clear, and is arguable the one of the best lecturer for this subject. However, I did feel like that he over-complicates the content/course. (Like half of the content covered during the first 6 weeks were examined in the exam - but who knows in the future!).

      Prof Steven Prawer
      He is very approachable if you have any problems, and does try to be funny. However, most of the content covered (Friction etc.) are very dry, and again, over complicated. He does drop some hints for the final exam (Topic that will be in the exam), so make sure you note it down!

      After week 6, there were two streams available: a morning stream and an afternoon stream.

      Dr Jeff McCallum
      He was the lecturer that took the afternoon stream of the remaining half of the semester. I like McCallum's lecture the most, as it did show that he was trying his hardest when teaching special relativity & gravitation & optics. His lectures were the least driest, and also the one that made sense. (Special relativity is hard at first though). No complaints for him because i could feel that i was going to be alright for the remainder of the semester. However, as i was behind from the first half of semester, there was this burden that i felt throughout this semester & course.

      Dr Matthew Dolan
      He is a young lecturer that took the morning stream of the remaining half of the semester. I personally did not enjoy this stream, partly because it was in the morning, but it was very dry compared to Dr McCallum's lectures. His lectures are also pretty understandable compared to the first half of the semester. He was the only lecturer that seemed to utilise the blackboard, but it is not important. So do not worry if you want to use the lecture capture.

      Year & Semester of completion: 2018, Semester 1.

      Rating:  1 Out of 5

      Your Mark/Grade: H1 (81)

      Assessments

      Weekly online homework:
      Personally seemed like a waste of time. Do not be afraid of the questions that they ask in these homework assignments as the exam is literally 1000 times easier. The questions are really hard and requires a lot of thinking. If you really care about your marks, i strongly do not recommend you solving them by yourselves (it is possible but it is not worth the risk, and time). If you copy and paste the question on google, you will find a answer to them 95% of the time. So just try to understand the answer given on the websites and it should be adequate. It is an easy 15% you can earn throughout the semester.

      Practicals
      Very annoying how there is a prac pretty much every week, and how they do not link with the materials you learn in your lectures. (They are meant to, but the schedule is off). The marks you get in this component is dependent on your demonstrators. I was lucky to have nice demonstrators, because they were lenient on how they marked your report. You must manage your time well with this subject, as they do require you to write reports in class after each experiment. The experiment itself is very simple, but it can yield really bad results in some. You must also do error analysis, which is annoying but you can do it with the demonstrator's help. Also, before you go into your prac, make sure you read the practical, but don't bother with pre-prac questions in your book; because your demonstrator will go through the whole experiment when the class begins.

      Lectures
      I personally hated the lecture component in this subject, because it was really hard to get your head around the content they throw at you. You will not have any time to write notes by hand, so a computer is advised. (They talk really fast, and flick through the slides very quick - who likes that?). I have only attended the first few lectures of this subject, as it did not help my learning. Just read the textbook chapter they prescribe to you after each lecture, and make simple notes because chances are, it wont be assessed.

      Exam
      As they provide you with so many past exam papers, you will start to identify patterns in the questions they ask you. Past students have said that the exam will be very similar to the past exams. However, this wasn't the case this year (2018), 70% of the question were in different formats, and actually required you to stop. and think for a while. So make sure you utilise your time during reading time. But don't be afraid, you will be 100% fine if you do all the past exam papers, and memorise some answers (for worded answer questions), and working outs (for complex questions). The reason i was able to do well in this subject is all thanks to these past papers, because without them, i would have failed undoubtedly. If you need any tips, just pm me and i will reply!. But do not rely on this approach if you have not done physics 3/4 in VCE.

      Comments:
      This subject is definitely not suitable as a subject filler, because it has so much contact hours. If you have done physics in VCE to a good level, you wont need to attend the lectures but just skim through the text book and try to absorb as much information as you can. In my case, i have probably spent less than 20 hours of my time during the semester on this subject, but as i did have prior knowledge i was able to perform good. Remember: Doing past exam will guarantee you a pass! but if you do all of them, and just leave them without going through them again; chances are, you will make many mistakes and wont be awarded any marks. So remember to highlight what you had trouble with in the past exam and memorise their answers or working out.
    [/list]
    𝟸𝟶𝟷𝟾 - 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟶⎬BSc (Human Structure and Function) @ UniMelb
    𝟸𝟶𝟷𝟾⎬⧼BIOL10004⧽⧼BIOL10005⧽⧼CHEM10007⧽⧼CHEM10003⧽⧼PHYC10003⧽⧼PHYC10008⧽⧼UNIB10009⧽⧼MUSI20150⧽
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    𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟶⎬⧼ANAT30007⧽⧼ANAT30008⧽⧼NEUR30002⧽⧼NEUR30003⧽⧼TBA-Elective⧽⧼TBA-Elective⧽⧼TBA-Breadth⧽TBA-Breadth⧽


    Wilsonj

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #693 on: July 02, 2018, 09:10:27 pm »
    +1
    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.

    dddknight

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #694 on: July 03, 2018, 02:32:44 pm »
    +4
    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 :)
    BSci @ Unimelb (2016-2018)
    Year I: BCMB20002 BIOL10004 BIOL10005 CHEM10009 HPSC10001 MAST10010 PHYC10005 UNIB10006
    Year II: ANAT20006 BCMB20002 BCMB20003 CLAS10004 FOOD20003 MUSI20150 PHRM20001 PHYS20008
    Year III: BCMB30001 BCMB30002 BCMB30004 BCMB30010 NEUR30002 NEUR30003 PSYC10003 SCIE20001

    Tvasa

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #695 on: July 03, 2018, 05:58:02 pm »
    +5
    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!!!!



    « Last Edit: July 03, 2018, 06:01:30 pm by Tvasa »

    j_820

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #696 on: July 07, 2018, 10:33:43 am »
    +5
    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.

    EBrookBa

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #697 on: July 13, 2018, 02:09:48 pm »
    +5
    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.

    clarke54321

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #698 on: July 14, 2018, 02:09:04 pm »
    +7
    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.

    « Last Edit: July 18, 2018, 05:39:23 pm by clarke54321 »
    BA (Linguistics) I University of Melbourne
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    dankfrank420

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #699 on: July 15, 2018, 07:18:40 pm »
    +5
    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.
    « Last Edit: July 15, 2018, 07:22:51 pm by dankfrank420 »

    sterobo

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #700 on: July 17, 2018, 06:39:31 pm »
    +3
    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.

    junyper

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #701 on: July 17, 2018, 10:24:33 pm »
    +5
    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. 
    « Last Edit: July 18, 2018, 10:27:31 am by junyper »

    Hungry4Apples

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #702 on: August 03, 2018, 03:06:43 pm »
    +4
    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.

    Hungry4Apples

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #703 on: August 03, 2018, 03:23:53 pm »
    +6
    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.

    showtime

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    Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
    « Reply #704 on: August 05, 2018, 11:11:03 pm »
    +7
    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:

    • Online assignments- these basic exercises consisted mostly of fill-in-the-blanks and similar primary-school-style questions. They were done in your own time and you could use your textbook. They were computer marked, so even though they were simple, care was required as even minor differences in phrasing were considered wrong. There were also a lot of exercises (50+ per assignment), so it would be extremely unwise to leave them to the last minute.
    • Composition 1- ~300 words on yourself, your family, a piece of art by an Hispanic artist, and a culture or subculture you identify with.
    • Group presentation- a 10-minute oral presentation, complete with notes and slideshow, entirely in English. You picked a topic relating to Hispanic or Latin American culture, and interpreted a bunch of art pieces with respect to that topic. You also tied in and reflected on your own experiences. Afterwards, you received questions and feedback from the rest of the class.
    • Oral presentation- this was essentially a recital of Composition 1, with enough added content to fill up 6 minutes.
    • Composition 2- this was the same content as the group presentation, except translated to Spanish and put into an Instagram format.
    • Exam- similar in format to the online assignments, with a small writing section. I found the exam to be pretty challenging. The marking was strict, including when it came to fine points like accent placement. The exam writers also liberally applied new words that required context to figure out. There was definitely more to this exam than rote learning of the vocab and grammatical structures, so it was educational in its own way, I guess :)

    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!
    « Last Edit: August 07, 2018, 10:29:13 pm by showtime »