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March 28, 2024, 09:05:07 pm

Author Topic: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 1734561 times)  Share 

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honlyu

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #780 on: February 23, 2020, 08:47:20 pm »
+2
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Online MCQ quiz: 5%, Assignment 1: 10%, Assignment 2: 15%, Tutorial participation: 10%, Final exam: 60%.

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Four past exams with detailed answers were provided.

Textbook Recommendation: Get one if you’re bewildered by the ambiguity in this subject

Lecturer(s): Phillip McCalman and Tom Wilkening

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 95

Comments:
For someone who's done economics in high school, over half of the content in Micro should appear rather familiar. But one important caveat is that the topics in Micro you reckon you’re familiar with might not be exactly the same as what you learned before — Uni-level Micro can sometimes be far more in-depth in terms of quantitative reasoning.

Lectures:
The difficulty and pace of lectures in Micro really depend on your prior knowledge of both economics and maths. Those who’ve done economics before and are good at maths are likely to digest lecture slides faster and more easily.

Tutorials:
At the start of every tut you will be given a worksheet. Your tutor will firstly take you through relevant concepts for each question and then give you some time to work on it yourself, after which the solution will be shown and explained. Pre-tuts are done online. I’m not sure whether they’ll count towards tutorial participation, but I’d suggest you do all of them to secure the easy 10 marks.

Online quiz:
In my year there were only eight questions in total in the online test. But considering that the quiz takes place only a few weeks into the semester, many people might not have gained a good grasp of this subject. Added to that the questions can be quite tricky. So don’t underestimate it just because it’s all MCQs.

Assignments:
Both assignments are done individually. There’s a weird mismatch between the difficulty of questions and the marks you get. Most questions are much harder than the exam, with some requiring self-teaching (e.g. partial derivatives in my semester) and some ambiguously worded. As long as you put some effort into the assignment, however, a decent mark is guaranteed. Most people I know got over 90% for both assignments.

Exam:
You should be able to find a common pattern after scrutinising all past exams provided. But there’s no guarantee that the actual exam will follow that pattern. The exam I had, for example, had a much stronger focus on maths than any of the past exams




« Last Edit: February 23, 2020, 08:50:09 pm by honlyu »

honlyu

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #781 on: February 23, 2020, 08:51:20 pm »
+1
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Group assignments: 2x10%=20%, MST: 10%, Final exam: 70% (no marks allocated to tutorial participation)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Two past exam papers and one sample exam, with brief answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: Absolutely no need for a textbook as everything you need will be taught in lectures

Lecturer(s): Shuanming Li

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 90

Comments:
Despite being named Introduction to actuarial studies, it’s actually not a compulsory subject for actuarial students. But it’s been highly recommended by the actuarial department and past students as it’ll give you a solid foundation for level 2 actuarial subjects (I shall find out next semester). And for students from other disciplines, this subject might be a good choice if you are good at maths.

Lectures:
A major upside of this subject is its clarity as it’s one of the most (if not THE most) maths-based subjects in commerce at level 1. So ambiguity should not be expected. Also, almost everything you’ll need for your assessments would be put on lecture slides (I say almost because answers to some example questions would only be shown in recordings). Some students were complaining about the lecturer’s accent. Well it’s true that he had an accent but, trust me, you’ll quickly get used to it. And on top of that, his accent wouldn’t really affect understanding. So why bother being picky about that? I mean, how often can you get a lecturer who can always get things across and puts everything on the slides?


Tutorials: Tutorials are basically pointless. First of all, there’s no participation marks. Moreover, detailed answers to all questions in tutorials would be posted on lms at the end of every week.

Assignments:
Both assignments were rather easy, either involving simple calculations or basic spreadsheeting. Added to that they are done in a group of 4. Some moderate effort and double-check would suffice to get your group full marks.

MST:
A sample exam and a past exam were provided, whose difficulty was beyond my expectation. But the MST in my year was relatively easy, with most people I know scoring around 90%. Regardless of the difficulty, you really have to be alert to the time limit. With only 45 minutes available, you can’t afford to get stuck on any question. So make sure you not only have understood all concepts and simple derivations but also are able to solve questions quickly.

Exam:
Sample and past exams are highly indicative of the actual exam. However only final answers will be given, so you’ll have to ask your tutor or lecturer for detailed explanations. My tip for the exam is: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE IT. Admittedly a large part of the exam simply involves applying formulae and thus doesn’t require much thinking. But a weird thing is: quite a lot of marks could be taken out for unknown reasons (could be missing steps I guess). When I saw my mark, I thought the exam got scaled down, but it then turned to be the other way round.




honlyu

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #782 on: February 23, 2020, 08:51:50 pm »
0
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload: two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Two online quizzes: 2x5%=10%, Two assignments :2x10%=20%, Tutorial participation: 10%, Final exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Three past exams from 2016 to 2018 were available, with detailed answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: It might be a good idea to get one as some topics may lack clarity

Lecturer(s): Nahid Khan and Lawrence Uren

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 91

Comments:
Compared with Micro, Macro has a stronger focus on theories. So take some time to figure out the logical reasoning for every topic.

Lectures:
The pace in Macro is just as slow as that in Micro. There wasn't much content in every lecture as Lawrence would sometimes go into detail on a really simple idea or derivation. In the meantime, however, there was a lot of ambiguity in his explanations, which necessitated the reading of textbooks or searching online. A highlight of lectures was a comprehensive final revision of all major topics –– different topics were reviewed in the last lecture of each of the four streams.

Tutorials:
Macro tutorials have basically the same structure as Micro, in which you are handed a worksheet at the start and given some time to think about each question before your tutor walks you through them. There are pre-tuts as well but my tutor stopped checking them from around week 5. You’ll get 10 out of 10 for participation as long as you attend all tutorials. If you really want to make sure you don’t lose marks for tutorials, do the pre-tuts.

Online tests:
Online quizzes were generally easy, with a few hard questions and some weird ones on non-examinable topics. Most people I know got close to full marks.

Assignments:
In Macro, you get to choose whether you’ll do the assignments alone or in a team (teammates limited to in-tutorial). Most, if not all, questions were pretty generic and required more copying off from lectures than original thinking. Added to that marking was as lenient as Micro’s.  So the assignments should be a breeze if you’ve understood everything from relevant lectures.

Exam:
The exam has 15 1-mark MCQs and SAQ of 45 marks grouped under three topics. MCQs in my exam were a bit tricky, which was partly due to their ambiguous wording. For SAQs, my suggestion is to focus on topics with models, which you’ll probably have to sketch in the exam. The pattern of questions can be somewhat inferred from past exams, but there’s no guarantee that the exam in your semester is not an anomaly. The exam I did, for example, had two questions worth 9 marks in total on a case study which was barely even touched on, despite the fact that all SAQs from the three past exam papers were largely generic.




honlyu

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #783 on: February 23, 2020, 08:52:49 pm »
+2
Subject Code/Name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2

Workload: four 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour practical per week

Assessment: Two written assignments: 2x5%=10%, MST: 10%, Final exam: 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but whiteboard writing is not captured

Past exams available: Loads of past exam papers available from around 2009 to 2018 (but only the ones in recent years would be relevant), with NO answers provided

Textbook Recommendation: The yellow book written by Barry

Lecturer(s): Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:
This is probably one of the hardest subjects in year 1 (according to Barry himself) as it essentially covers both Calculus 2 and Real Analysis (it can replace both Cal 2 and Real Analysis as a prerequisite). Added to that AM2 digs deeper into some topics (especially those Barry is passionate about). So get prepared for a punishing workload. There is no question booklet in AM2 and all practice questions are from the yellow textbook written by Barry himself. And the fact that not all practice questions are provided answers can make the learning process in AM2 particularly arduous. In our mid-semester subject survey, no one rated the pace ‘slow’ or the difficulty ‘easy’. This really shows how challenging AM2 is considering that most of the cohort were maths, physics, and actuarial students with a lot of chancellor scholars among them. Unless you are doing a maths related degree or have a strong passion and aptitude for maths, particularly mathematical rigor and proof, I would NOT recommend doing this subject.

Lectures:
Barry is a fantastic lecturer who vivifies seemingly dreary concepts by making witty comments on a regular basis. Respected and loved by all students, he received an ovation which lasted a minute at the end of the course. He is also known for his undisguised preference for mathematical analysis over things like calculus techniques. So you can tell this subject will be heavily skewed towards its analysis part. In fact, what gets expanded on in Calculus 2 like is oftentimes only touched on in AM2 (especially integration techniques!!). As a result, some extra effort is more than necessary when you are studying such topics. Another unique feature of AM2 is that Barry writes EVERYTHING on the whiteboard and DOES NOT record it. So you either have to attend every lecture physically and take notes or get those notes from trustworthy mates (by trustworthy I mean those who can take quality notes). There is also a third option if you’re skilled in dictation by any chance (use it as a last resort, trust me it’s really time-consuming).

Practicals:
Practicals are probably the only way for you to get detailed explanations of textbook exercises and feedback on your working (unless you go to consultations on a regular basis, which I never did). So make sure you clearly lay out your working on the whiteboard so that your tutor will be able to provide valuable feedback on it. And in order to do that, you’d better do some revision before every tutorial (attempting a few questions is even better)

Assignments:
I got the lowest mark I’d ever got in my first assignment (73% for your information) and most of the marks I lost were for sloppy notations and proofs, which came off as a bit of a shock –– no subject I did before had such an emphasis on mathematical rigor. I did much better in the second assignment as I was gradually getting the hang of it. An important piece of advice I’d give regarding the two assignments is to carefully go through the solutions provided, which are probably the most detailed ones you’ll get in this subject, and reflect on your mistakes and potential room for improvement because these solutions are to some extent indicative of the marking scheme for the final exam.

MST:
The MST in my year took place at lecture 23 and covered the first 18 lectures (with l’Hopital’s rule being lecture 19, you can see how nasty the test was gonna be). The test was 45 minutes long and no sample tests were available, so you’d expect it to be challenging. Fairly speaking though, most questions shouldn’t be a problem except a few tricky ones of course. If you’re not aiming at full marks, my suggestion is to ignore the hard ones and get all easy ones correct to secure an 8 out of 10.

Exam:
Difficult though AM2 might be, the final exam is actually not that intimidating. Half of the exam is overlapped with Cal 2. This part should be a breeze  given that you’ve managed to follow along through the semester. Barry did not mention the overlap with Real Analysis (as far as I can remember). But after comparing past exams, I reckon at least a quarter of the final exam is from the Real Analysis exam. Anyway, the analysis part of the exam would be much harder than the Cal 2 part, with quite a few tricky questions that require some in-depth thinking. But still, a large proportion of analysis questions are pretty generic. Overall I think more than 80% of the exam shouldn’t be a problem IF you’ve thoroughly understood all topics and on that basis memorised all theorems and formulae (you have to do that since there’s no formula sheet, otherwise you’ll have to derive them). An important tip for the AM2 exam is that EVERYTHING, except the lecture introducing complex analysis, can appear on your exam. And it is not useful at all to try to summarise a pattern from past exams. Before the exam in 2019, for instance, the last topic (power series) had almost never been tested, yet it constituted about 10% of the actual exam. It is also noteworthy that answers to the past exams would not be provided in a direct way –– Barry prefers to go over them in the last two lectures (and still he won’t present final answers to you so you’ll have to check with your peers). If you haven’t finished your revision before the last two lectures, I’d suggest that you ditch the two lectures and get notes from others. In that way you’d be able to take mock exams during the swot vac when you’re more prepared.





honlyu

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #784 on: February 23, 2020, 08:53:48 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10002 Introductory Financial Accounting

Workload: one 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Assessment: Online quiz 1: 2%, Online quiz 2: 3%, Individual online assignment: 15%, Two random tutorial exercises: 2x3%=6%, Tutorial participation: 4%, Final exam: 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Four past exams from 2017 to 2019 semester 1 were available, with detailed answers provided

Textbook Recommendation:  Like most other commerce subjects, lecture slides are well enough.

Lecturer(s): Warren Mckeown

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 semester 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 92

Comments:
With more focus on comprehension, IFA requires much less rote learning than ARA. That being said, the time spent on this subject should be no less. But IFA is definitely far more enjoyable if you’re good with numbers.

Lectures:
The pace of lectures in this subject, like ARA, is rather slow. However, some decent effort is definitely needed in order to fully grasp the concepts and methods you learn. Warren managed to put everything across with great clarity and lecture slides were well structured. This should be a huge bonus for those torn by the ambiguities and contradictory concepts in ARA. And if you’re worrying about what topics are examinable and have no idea where to start your revision towards the end of the semester, Warren stated EXPLICITLY what would and would not be on the exam in the revision lecture. This was really helpful to me as the few most tedious topics were thrown out, which saved me heaps of time.

Tutorials:
IFA tutorials are, so to speak, not of much use. At least that’s the case with mine. There was a selection of exercises from the pre-tut question sheet to be finished before every tutorial, which my tutor never checked. Almost all questions were numerical, so you’re guaranteed to get them right as long as you’ve fully understood the lecture and haven’t made any careless mistakes. Tutorials were predominantly in the form of teamwork, in which you would discuss pre-tut questions with your teammates and sometimes write on the whiteboard. Usually too much time was assigned to every problem. Added to that my group always went through the question really fast as our answers were pretty much the same. So most of the time we were just chit chatting, waiting for other groups to finish. After that, my tutor did not provide explanations. Instead, she would ask every group to share their answers with the class. And the only thing you’ll get is just the final answers unless you ask for extra illustrations. What is more, at the end of every week, detailed solutions to all pre-tut questions would be provided, which rendered tutorials even more meaningless.

Online quizzes:
Make sure that you’re familiar with everything from relevant lectures before you click start, especially the second one. The first quiz (2%) was rather easy, in which I had plenty of time to check my answers against lecture slides. The second one (3%), however, was much harder. And I felt a bit pressed for time as I didn't do any revision before the quiz. But you shouldn’t worry too much about them. At the end of the day, they’re only worth 5% in total. It is also noteworthy that a few questions could be on non-examinable topics. In such cases, just follow what the lecturer says.

Online assignment:
This is a 15% individual assignment in which you’ll need to use an accounting app called Xero to record transactions from invoices provided and produce income statements and balance sheets. The assignment includes two parts. In the first part, everyone gets the same invoices, so you can compare answers with your mates to ensure you get full marks. Invoices in the second part would differ from person to person. If you’re majoring in accounting, I’d recommend you to take some time to figure out everything about the app because obviously you’ll encounter something similar in your future study. For those doing it as an elective, especially aspiring actuaries, which I myself am, a quick tip is to skip all formalities and focus on the numbers only. If you did that, the assignment would come off as much simpler.

Participation and random tutorial exercises:
Your participation mark should be a solid 4 out of 4 as long as you go to every tutorial. Random tutorial exercises are simply two questions picked from the textbook by the tutor and they should be a breeze compared with online quizzes. If you’re unsure about your answers, just double-check with your tutorial groupmates and then you’ll be well set for full marks.

Exam:
The exam is half theory and half practical. There are 200 marks on the exam paper, which is because Warren doesn’t want to give half marks (not really sure about that). In terms of difficulty, the exam was rather fair except a 20 mark question asking us to identify for ten scenarios related concepts and provide explanations. The real problem with the exam is time. I finished the exam only about 5 minutes early, which was the slowest among all subjects I did last semester. My advice for revision is to focus on past papers as they offer a lot of insight into the actual exam. If you scrutinise every one of them, you’ll notice some types of questions that appear quite frequently. Make sure you’re super familiar with them so that you can save some time to ponder on the harder questions in the exam.


Eric Patrick

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #785 on: February 23, 2020, 10:30:37 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics

Workload: 2 × 1 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: quiz 5%, assignment 1 10%, assignment 2 15%, tutorial attendance and participation 10%, final examination 60% (with hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, and can be crucial to learn this subject well.

Past Exams Available: There are four past exam papers provided.

Textbook Recommendation: It is still not mandatory to purchase the textbook (like many other commerce subjects), but might be useful since some explanations in the lecture slides are not clear enough.

Lecturer(s): Tom Wilkening

Year & Semester of Completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 3.0/5.0

Your Mark/Grade: 91

Comments:

1. Lecture
Overall, Tom is a good lecturer. There are two lecture streams in this semester with two different lecturers. Compared with the other lecturer whose lectures were regarded as the "most boring class for the entire semester" by one of my friends, Tom's lectures were more intellectually rich and entertaining. He would add some interesting cases inside the lecture slides instead of plainly talking about the theories and diagrams for the whole class. The problem is with Tom's pattern of speech. He frequently rushed in the lectures and could not make his pronunciation and expression clear whenever the lecture content was overloaded and/or time was limited. However, I would reckon that I was able to make sense of his logic when I spent some time listening to the recording. As long as you can get adapted to his way of teaching, listening to Tom's lectures should be a valuable experience.

2. Tutorial
My tutor for this subject is a bit incompetent (hence I cannot and do not want to remember his name). There were at least two times in the semester such that he forgot to bring the tutorial sheets to the class and aimlessly explained the questions on the whiteboard which made no sense at all! However, even though there was nothing to look at, he still required students to discuss the "questions" as a group and blamed us for not being passionate and participative. What the hell should we discuss about? Due to these facts, I did not go to two tutorials and lost 2 out of 10 for tutorial attendance and participation. I also found out that he sometimes failed to explain the questions accurately and even failed to recognise his mistake hence correct it. This can be really misleading since a lot of tutorial questions are highly related to exam questions with similar styles. For me, the tutorial sheets were not useful resources for preparing the final exam, and I did not perform well in the exam as a result. For students who have a nice tutor, tutorial for this subject can be vital such that you should prioritise the revision of tutorial questions rather than going through the lecture slides at first.

3. Assessments
For most (commerce) students, the microeconomics quiz is the first piece of assessment that you will have during the university career, thus this quiz may not be such straightforward as you think (like what we have prior to university). The quiz questions are mostly case-based, so you should not only familiarise yourself with the pertinent knowledge but also analyse the cases correctly to choose the right answers. There are eight questions in total with a 25 minute time limit; however, I reckon that this time limit is not as sufficient as you think, since some cases can be really tricky. Overall, it is hard to get all answers correct, but the average should not be very low; after all, this is a MCQ and you can discuss the questions with your fellow students - a good start point for university assessments.

The two individual assignments are my favourite part of this subject. Indeed, they are a bit time-consuming, especially when we need to use PowerPoint to draw the graphs (very inconvenient); but the reward for such effort is fascinating - both assignments were marked out of 60 and I have never seen any of my friends who got a grade below 52. The fact is that there are correct answers for each of the assignment questions (mostly calculation-based), so you can check your answers with others to make sure they are correct. There are also no formatting issues or any similar (horrible) requirements, so marks are awarded for correct answers only.

In terms of tutorial attendance and participation, I cannot give any recommendations since my tutor is awkward as mentioned above. Overall, this ought to be an easy mark to get.

The final exam for this subject is a perfect reflection of how you are going for the semester. Although the MCQ part of the final exam can still be tricky like the MCQ assessment, students may not struggle with the short- and long-answer questions, since every question should have appeared in the lecture slides. As long as you listen to each lecture carefully and understand the main topics, there is no excuse not to work out these final exam questions. This also helps us identify what to review in the SWOTVAC - we can mainly focus on the most important theory, diagram or model in each lecture since they are the only stuff that may appear in the final exam. Tutorial sheets and past exam questions are good resources in terms of exam preparation (though I did not go through them in detail), since what you see there should be what you will see in the exam.

A final point to make is about mathematical issues. Compared with macroeconomics that you will learn later, microeconomics focuses more on mathematical stuff, so make sure you are familiar with them and have a workable calculator in the final exam.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2020, 11:54:58 pm by Eric Patrick »

Eric Patrick

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #786 on: February 23, 2020, 11:48:36 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: FNCE10002 Principles of Finance

Workload: 1 × 2 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment: online assessment 10%, tutorial attendance and participation 10%, mid-semester test 20%, final examination 60% (with hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, and its usefulness may depend on different persons.

Past Exams Available: There are two sample exams but not quite helpful in indicating what will be expected in the exam.

Textbook Recommendation: The required textbook is highly recommended since most students have no finance background and the book makes the topics more understandable.

Lecturer(s): Asjeet Lamba

Year & Semester of Completion: 2019 Semester 1

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Your Mark/Grade: 93

Comments:

1. Lecture
The accent of the lecturer is strange - I have to acknowledge this fact at first. However, once you can focus on his expertise and professionalism, this will not be an issue anymore. The lecturer may not be such impassioned, but the lecture content is still intellectually abundant, and I really enjoy how dedicated Asjeet Lamba is when delivering the lectures. Each week's lecture slides should include roughly 60 pages with almost a quarter of them focusing on case studies. If you are not so eager to gain more finance knowledge (like me), you can definitely skip these cases since they are not examinable. On the other hand, if you want to broaden your horizon, try to listen to the lectures or the recordings carefully, otherwise it is hard to grasp the principles and theories underlying the cases. For the other knowledge, looking through the lecture slides may be enough, hence there is no need to listen to the lectures in great detail. The textbook is a good resource such that it gives a deeper explanation of some theories and calculations.

2. Tutorial
Cameron is the best tutor I have ever had, and I am looking forward to having him as my tutor for future subjects if possible. He can always focus on the main topics of each lecture but deviate from the lecturer's teaching style. For example, every week he would compile his own tutorial notes instead of following the lecturer's instruction on how to teach in the tutorial. His tutorial notes were highly condensed with every point focusing on HOW TO GET MORE MARKS. For all calculation-based questions, he would work out general formulas such that we can use directly to get the correct answer. For those theory-based questions, he would usually construct an answering structure guiding us how to explain the theories concisely but get the full marks. After reviewing his tutorial notes each week, the knowledge became quite straightforward, and overall POF is a very easy subject for me.

3. Assessments
The online assessment is very easy and almost every student can get a full mark. The questions were released a week before submission, and everyone would get exactly the same questions. In this case, we would have a week to work them out and compare our answers with others. As long as we are careful and do not forget to do it, how can we lose mark in this assessment?

Another generous mark comes from the tutorial assessment. What you need to do is going to the tutorial and submitting each week's pre-tutorial questions. So long as you have submitted enough of those questions, you can get a full mark! The quality of the work does not count, so literally you can just copy some stuff from the lecture slides and enjoy a full mark!

The mid-semester test is a bit tricky, and a large number of students do not perform well based on past experience. One thing you need to be careful with is the wording of the questions - the beginning year, ending year and amounts can be misleading and interfere with a correct calculation, and Asjeet likes to put redundant information into the questions to confuse us. Another thing relates to the formula sheet. Since there is a formula sheet for both the mid-semester and final exams, students may not be quite familiar with the formulas. Under the exam condition, some students struggle with which formula to use, since the formula's name is not provided and they have never looked at the formulas in detail (since they think they do not need to memorise). Students should also practise how to use the calculator efficiently, which can help them save a lot of time in the exam.

The final exam is fair enough with most questions focusing on calculations and a reasonable distribution of difficulty. Again, if you are familiar with the formula sheet and the operation of the calculator, you can easily get most calculations correct. The difficult point is with the MCQ part of the final exam, since many of the questions require a thorough understanding of the relevant theories. During the exam viewing session, I found that I had got five of those questions incorrect, since I did not review the theories at all. The sample exam papers are generally not useful, since the questions do not resemble the real exam questions, thus do not think you can perform well in the exam if you can get all sample questions correct.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2020, 11:54:30 pm by Eric Patrick »

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #787 on: July 03, 2020, 12:53:27 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: HIST20013 The Holocaust and Genocide

Workload:  1 x 1.5 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials a week

Assessment: 
   - 1,500 word primary document analysis (40%)
   - 2,500 word research essay (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s):  Angel Alcalde

Year & Semester of completion:  2020 Semester 1

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H2A (76)

Comments:

First, just a disclaimer that I did this during the crazy online semester. That said, there weren't major differences - all assessments and content were the same - we did miss out on a visit to the university archives, so unfortunately I cannot review that part of the subject.

Content

The first part of the subject looks at theory. It covers the history of violence and genocide and the reasons behind why they take place, specifically political, cultural, economic, and even psychological factors. Different roles are also covered - victims, perpetrators, bystanders, witnesses, and "grey-zones".

The second part of the subject is on specific case studies. The major one is (obviously) the Holocaust. Other main examples include Armenia, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Lesser known cases  are covered briefly, as well as examples of mass killings which aren't fully recognised as genocides.

Assessments

Document analysis: 1,500 words worth 40%. You get a choice from 10 documents, most of which are in regards to the Holocaust. You have to analyse the document with reference to 1-2 themes using the document as evidence.

Research essay: 2,500 words worth 60%. You can choose from a list of prompts or make your own (though you must get approval). The prompts are broad and focus on the theoretical side of genocide studies, and you must refer to at least two case studies.

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed this subject and overall found the content to be interesting and engaging. History-wise, it doesn't go into any of the actual genocides in detail, not even for the Holocaust. It's a pretty great elective for international relations / anthropology students due to the heavy political and societal focus.
2019-21: Bachelor of Arts (Politics & Int'l Relations / Economics)

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #788 on: July 03, 2020, 12:56:21 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: HIST20069 Modern European History

Workload:  1 x 1.5 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials a week

Assessment: 
   - 1,500 word primary document analysis (40%)
   - 500 word tutorial journal (10%)
   - 2,000 word research essay (50%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s):  Gregory Burgess

Year & Semester of completion:  2020 Semester 1

Rating:  2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1 (80)

Comments:

Overall, I found this subject to be badly organised - and this was before the university even shifted to online learning (this was the Corona semester). My other complaint is that I found the content delivery to be on the dry side, even though 19th/20th century Europe is something I'm personally interested in.

Content

The subject begins with the French Revolution in 1789 and ends with the outbreak of WWI in 1914. The topics covered (in order) are:
   - French Revolution
   - Napoleonic Wars
   - Industrial Revolution
   - Revolutions of 1848
   - Nationalism
   - Developments in science and culture
   - Unification of Germany and Italy
   - Paris Commune
   - European imperialism
   - Outbreak of war
If you plan on studying European history any further, then the content would be highly useful.

Assessments

Document Analysis: 1,500 words worth 40%. You get a choice from 3 primary sources on a particular topic (in 2020, it was the Industrial Revolution) and respond to it like you would with any history source analysis.

Research Essay: 2,000 words worth 50%. There are roughly 10 topics to choose from covering all aspects of the subject. All of the topics were incredibly broad (for example - this was one of the prompts - 'Discuss the impact of the French Revolution in Europe').

Tutorial Journal/Presentation: 500 words worth 10%. Sorry, can't be of much help here. It was replaced with a discussion board post in our year due to online arrangements.

Final thoughts

I know I gave this unit a low rating, but I think with proper organisation, it can be a great subject. I just won the bad luck lottery - the subject coordinator actually just wanted to bloody retire but the university "forcibly delayed my plans" (actual quote from Greg) last minute so he was winging it from the start. That, in addition to moving online half way, made this subject one of the least enjoyable ones I've done so far. However, I still recommend this unit, especially to those wishing to study European history further, purely for the content.
2019-21: Bachelor of Arts (Politics & Int'l Relations / Economics)

hums_student

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #789 on: July 03, 2020, 12:59:34 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: ECOM20001 Econometrics 1 (Renamed - previously known as Introductory Econometrics)

Workload:  2 x 1 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials a week

Assessment: 
   - 3 x Assignments (15% total)
   - Tutorial (5%)
   - Weekly Quiz (10% total)
   - Exam (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, all exams from 2018 semester 1 are available, plus a sample exam.

Textbook Recommendation:  Introduction to Econometrics, 3rd edition by Stock and Watson. It's not really required, and if you must get a textbook, then any that covers regression would do.

Lecturer(s):  David Byrne

Year & Semester of completion:  2020 Semester 1

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:  H1 (95)

Comments:

If you are reading this, chances are you're trying to decide between Econometrics 1 and Quantitative Methods 2. I'll get to that at the end of the post. But first off, some disclaimers:

(i) I did this during the online semester, so our assessments were modified. I wrote this review without factoring in those changes to the best of my ability.

(ii) If you are noticing contradictions between my review and the previous two reviews in this thread, that is because this course was changed in 2018, but those reviews were from 2013 and 2017.

Content

This subject may as well be renamed Regression 101 because that's the entire subject. The first week covers probability and statistics revision from QM1, the rest of the subject is wholly regression based. The topics are:
   - Single linear regression
   - Multiple linear regression
   - Nonlinear regression
   - Time series regression
   - Regression application

Software

For this course, you must learn the programming language R (changed from the previous software Eviews). The additional packages used are 'AER', 'Stargazer', and 'ggplot2'.

Assessments

Assignments: 3 group assignments spread throughout the semester worth 5% each. The assignments all require R and you would need to also submit an index page with all your codes at the end of the assignment. They're mostly maths/computing questions without much writing involved.

Exam: worth 70% and is hurdle like all FBE subjects. The exam is 2 hours long - 10 MCQ (section 1), 3 short answer (section 2) and 3 extended response questions (section 3).
Section 1 - mostly theory based, with some maths
Section 2 - mostly maths based, usually with at least one proof question
Section 3 - maths/computing based, including writing R pseudocode.

Weekly Quiz: 12 quizzes in total. Your 10 highest ones are counted. Worth 10% total.

Tute participation: I mean, this is the easiest 5% you'll ever get. Don't take it for granted. In our year, since it was the *Covid* semester where everything was online, Dave put this 5% to an entire new assignment where we had to write a full report and create an econometric regression model to analyse the effect of easing social distancing restrictions on the spread of Corona. Pray that you don't get anything like that.

Econometrics 1 vs Quantitative Methods 2

Econometrics 1: Depth, quantitative, maths focus
Quantitative Methods 2: Breadth, qualitative, application focus

I highly recommend econ majors to do Econometrics 1 instead of QM2, as in 3rd year you MUST do at least one econometrics subject. If you did Econometrics 1, then the subjects you can choose from are:
   - ECOM30002 Econometrics 2
   - ECOM30003 Applied Econometrics Modelling
   - ECOM30004 Time Series Analysis and Forecasting

But if you did QM2, the only subjects you can do are:
   - ECOM30001 Basic Econometrics (which is essentially Econometrics 1)
   - ECOM30002 Econometrics 2 (but only if you got H2A or above in QM 2)

Final Thoughts

As an arts major with a weak maths background and no prior experience in computing, I went into this subject feeling really unsure of whether I made the right choice of picking this over the renowned WAM-booster QM2. Econometrics 1 is quite a jump from QM1, and the first few weeks were challenging. But by the second half of the semester it easily became my most enjoyable subject. I absolutely loved this subject and highly recommend it to all Commerce and Arts (Economics) students.
2019-21: Bachelor of Arts (Politics & Int'l Relations / Economics)

dahyun

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #790 on: July 08, 2020, 09:28:52 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics 
Workload:  2 x 1 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials per week.

Assessment: 
  • Multiple choice test (5% of total)
  • Written assignment 1 (15% of total)
  • Written assignment 2 (15% of total)
  • Final exam (60% of total)
Note that the final exam is a hurdle. (50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject.)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, a selection of exams ranging back from 2016. (but not all exams from that period, e.g. 2016 semester 2 was not given, but semester 1 was.)

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Microeconomics, 7th edition by Gans, King, Byford and Mankiw, and Microeconomics: Case Studies and Applications, 4th edition by Borland. The first textbook is highly useful and is used for module readings. The second is to give you a taste of the applications of things you've learned over the course of the subject, so feel free to skip on this. With that being said, they do give out chapter references for reading in modules for those inclined. 

Lecturer(s): Professor Tom Wilkening and Jonathan Thong. Tom ran the afternoon stream of lectures, and Jonathan ran the morning stream of lectures. Both lecture streams occurred on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For this review, only Tom's lectures will be included, since I never went/viewed any of Jonathan's lectures.

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1 Note that this semester was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes transitioned into online learning by the third week of semester.

Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B :( choked on exam

Pre-requisites: Entry into Commerce, Biomedicine or Science degrees OR a study score of 25+ in Methods otherwise.

Comments: Some background about me: I did VCE Economics but it is not a pre-requisite for this subject (or any at unimelb). With that being said, it does help with understanding early concepts like opportunity cost, price elasticity of demand, demand/supply graphs but expect to go a lot in-depth and learn a lot of new things. I think those that did IB HL Economics will find this course pretty standard (...at least that's what my friend told me...)

 This subject is a compulsory subject for all commerce students, and a pass is required to successfully enroll in ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics (another compulsory BCom subject) and ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics. With that being said, you'll meet a whole range of people doing this from the arts faculty through the economics stream over there.

Lectures and content
The course itself is well designed and presented in an approachable manner, Tom's lectures often included various tidbits of useful information that didn't appear on the lecture slides. As noted by someone a while back here, Tom's engineering background means that his explanations of any equations here were easily understandable and basically just only told you the useful parts. With that being said, some people did complain about his intonation of his voice but honestly you get used to it. Lectures themselves included examples and definitions, but most of Tom's working out was done on a second projector, but he uploads those as well. Overall, the lectures were sufficient and sometimes entertaining! Both lecturers seem to do a great job.

Tutorials
Tutorials were fine, essentially you break off into small groups answering questions from the tutorial sheet given at the start of the session, and then collate answers while the tutor presents the correct answers. My tutor was pretty good and I am yet to have heard of a "bad" tutor from this semester. These people also mark your assignments and potentially the exam (unconfirmed) so it's always good to build a good relationship with them! Ironically, I almost never showed up to any tutorials after week 5 since I felt the tutorial videos made for international students with incompatible timezones were sufficient.

Assessments
Assessments wise, we had a multiple choice test (5%) consisting of 10 questions that occurred in week 4. This was pretty easy if you've kept up with the work and honestly if you did VCE Economics, you could answer like 8 of them right now...

The first written assignment (15%) occurred just before the mid-sem break, so around week 5. It is an application of the things you've learnt up to this point. It seems very daunting at first, but as you breakdown the questions themselves they get easier. We had around a month and a bit to complete it. I received a 48/50, my best mark in this subject.

The second written assignment (15%) occurred in around week 7-8, and was due around week 11. This is the same as assignment 1 but just on things learnt since assignment 1. This was easier than the first one, but I found myself getting lower on this than the first one. (It seemed like almost everyone else improved however.)

For the previous two assessments, it is highly recommended to consult the discussion boards, Cameron Low (I think he's like the head tutor? no clue) is an absolute saviour in this and in Principles of Finance (review soon hehe) as he answered basically every query anyone had. Definitely the reason why I got such a high mark in my assignments.

The final exam (70%) was of moderate difficulty. I am unsure as to what I got but I ran out of time and had to rush the questions. I think with proper study and doing past papers, you can easily get a 80+ in this exam and hence really, the subject itself.

Concluding remarks
Overall, this is a very well done subject despite the pandemic forcing online teaching. I think this subject would be a lot better if it weren't for the forced transition. Otherwise, a very good introduction to microeconomics and university schooling in general.


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dahyun

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #791 on: July 09, 2020, 02:23:00 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis 

Workload:  1 x 2 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorials per week.

Assessment: 
  • Tutorial "participation" (4% of total)
  • Assessable tests (6% of total)
  • Written assignment 1 (10% of total)
  • Written assignment 2 (10% of total)
  • Final exam (70% of total)
Note that the final exam is a hurdle. (50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject.)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes, but only one was given which faithfully represented the final exam itself. More on that later.

Textbook Recommendation: Accounting: Business Reporting for Decision Making, 7th Edition by Birt, Chalmers, Maloney, Brooks, Oliver and Bond. I found the lecture slides sufficient enough but if you want to do more questions or have a deeper understanding, then get this book.

Lecturer(s): Noel Boys

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester 1 Note that this semester was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes transitioned into online learning by the third week of semester.

Rating: 2/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Pre-requisites: None...well entry into unimelb...

Comments: This is a compulsory subject for commerce students.
I have no prior experience in accounting but for those who do, Noel will quickly tell you that ARA is quite different and not "all black and white". With that being said, those who did do VCE Accounting or equivalent may have an easier time completing assignments. (balance sheet, cash flow statement etc.) This subject is pretty boring, despite Noel's attempts to spice things up.
 
Lectures and content
Personally I dislike having two hour lectures, but for the most part Noel does a great job at conveying information through. His usage of analogies will keep you awake (somehow tied in a fishbowl or something with accounting) throughout the lectures. His whole demanour is probably the reason why I even watched the lectures anyways...
Content wise, unless you somehow have a passion for accounting, this is a very boring and dull subject but I doubt this will change; maybe I just inherently hate accounting??? Regardless of my opinion, it is an important subject for all commerce students to do as it will offer a glimpse at how businesses record assets, liabilities, equities and more, along with introducing Excel who I feel will be along with me for the rest of my life... :)
Noel himself seemed a lot more pessimistic than usual this semester, but who wasn't. I think he was just about done by the final exam, his last rant is legendary haha...

Tutorials
Tutorials are essentially like any commerce tutorial - you get given questions and you answer them in groups. My tutor was good and my tutorial itself was good as well, so no complaints here. There is a tutorial participation mark (where you had to attend them) but that was waived, and instead it is expected that you complete the pre-tute quizzes (4%). These are pretty easy and honestly you could answer them with common sense half the time.

Assessments
Assessable tests are 4 glorified pre-tute quizzes that are in total worth 6% of the final grade. These have a timelimit of 3 days and are usually opened on Fridays and closed Sunday evening. These aren't hard, but I did miss on the very first one when the COVID-19 panic went super saiyan. But otherwise, pretty chill and as long as you keep up to date, you'll be fine with these.

Assignment 1 (10%): This introduced Excel and essentially is just filling in the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement. While the numbers and timelines are different per student, you could still cross-check with your mates so it shouldn't be too hard. Be careful that you read everything on the instructions sheet that comes with the assignment, as Noel wants your answers in a particular format. He makes a very big deal on this and it is kinda funny when he does go on his rants about students not reading the instructions properly.

Assignment 2 (10%) was formerly a group assignment but was changed to an individual assignment owing from the pandemic. This was just like assignment 1 but with a focus on ratio analysis and 12 multiple choice questions. For some reason, the only thing that was counted towards our final grade here was the 12 multiple choice. These were pretty easy and I got my best mark here (10/12).

Final exam (70%) was the source of most of the ARA controversy you may have seen on Reddit or Unimelb Love Letters, as it was significantly harder than any of the past exams given. While Noel did say that the past exams from previous semesters were not indicative of the actual exam, I don't think anyone was expecting how hard the exam was going to be. The one practice exam that he did give us was a lot easier and I suspect it was just for us to see how the exam was formatted. The final exam consisted of 81 questions, all of which were a mixture of multi-choice, drop-down, and calculations, and 4 unfilled statements. I have yet to meet anyone that got their statements to balance, but I'm sure there are a couple of people that did. I am worried about my mark here since while I did finish it, I don't think I did that well. I'm expecting a H2B/H3 here, but I'll be happy with a P.

Concluding remarks
I think this subject in this semester definitely soured the taste of accounting for all that did it, and despite Noel's best efforts to make this "fun", it is a very dull subject and his exam did not improve my opinion of accounting. It is a shame that we didn't get to see the funny Noel that people often talk about on here, but I hope my review of this subject is a minority from here on.

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Endosymbiosis

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #792 on: July 09, 2020, 05:58:23 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: MAST10016 Mathematics for Biomedicine

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

Assessment:  Ten weekly written assignments (25%), an oral presentation (5%) and a final written examination (70%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  One past paper is available, but no solutions were available (so frustrating).

Textbook Recommendation:  None. Everything you need to know is in the lectures.

Lecturer(s): James Osborne

Year & Semester of completion: 2020

Rating: 3/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Having just completed VCE mathematical methods and under the belief that I could kiss maths goodbye forever, MAST10016 came and obliterated my fantasy of a maths-free uni experience. As a first-year core subject, if you are good at mathematics, this subject will not be hard to get a H1 in whatsoever, as long as you keep up to date with lectures and weekly exercise sheets. The nature of the maths is VERY different to what I experienced in VCE, with little to no calculus or complex problem-solving involved. The first week in our tutorial we did a little high-school maths revision exercise, as we begun practicing drawing simple hyperbolas and quadratics and solved some basic derivatives. Other than that, the only other cross-over from VCE is probability, which the entire subject is essentially centred around.

Three topics were explored: population genetics (finding the probability of an 'A' or 'a' allele), enzyme kinetics (investigating the rate of cellular reactions and the role of enzymes and inhibitors in these) and disease modelling (investigating how different types of diseases can be spread throughout the population). Whilst these topics sound quite interesting to a Biomedical student at a glance, as we delve deeper into each topic, personally I found them to be quite mundane and tedious. Whilst James is a knowledgeable, friendly and funny guy, I found that even by the second week, his explanations and derivations went in one ear and out the other - they were simply too hard to follow. If he had simply gotten to the point a lot quicker and emphasised that point, I would have found this subject much easier to follow. There were lectures, particularly towards the end of the course, that I could finish watching and simply have no clue what just happened.

I cannot emphasise enough how useful exercise sheets are. They are what I solely relied on to achieve a H1 in this subject. Because they are harder than tutorial sheets and exam questions, completing these sheets will give you an understanding of the subject that will allow you to complete the exam and assignments with little to no troubles. Sometimes a very similar question would appear on the exercise sheet and the weekly assignment and so you could just go through the workings from the exercise sheet to understand how to do the assignment question. For exam revision, I simply went back and redid all of the exercise sheets and identified all of my areas of weakness, which I found to be a useful method of studying, since there is only one practice exam with NO solutions  >:(

All in all, this subject will be pretty uninteresting and often painstaking unless you have a great fondness for maths. However, the actual content itself is not that hard so a nice WAM booster :)
VCE (2019): | Biology [50] | Chemistry [50] | Psychology [48] | English [45] |
ATAR: 99.40
2020-2022: Bachelor of Biomedicine, The University of Melbourne

tiredandstressed

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #793 on: July 10, 2020, 06:37:20 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20149 Music Psychology  

Workload:  No lectures, just watch videos online, there is a 2 hour seminar for discussion but it not compulsory to attend.

Assessment:  10 online weekly quizzes, consisting of four questions (open book, open time) (40%) and a 2000 word written assignment (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  No exam, no sample essays were provided

Textbook Recommendation:  N/A

Lecturer(s): Many guest lectures but the coordinators are Dr Elly Scrine & Dr Katrina Skewes McFerran

Year & Semester of completion: 2020 Semester One

Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: If you’re looking for an easy H1 Music Psych ain’t it. Let me explain.
So yea Music Psych has little to no commitment hours, as long as you do the quiz (in which you have a week to do) that pretty much it for most of the semester. Keep in mind the quiz questions were sometimes ridiculous super broad, and you couldn’t choose between two answers, I guess they do try to make it difficult. Keep in mind each question is worth 1% so try to get as little wrong, and don’t forget to do the quiz because you then lose an easy 4%. So you might be thinking, the weekly quizzes are easy right, why such a low rating. Let’s discuss the essay.
This essay had the least amount of instructions, I legit had no idea what to write. Basically, every week you will go through  different topic, you can choose the topic (or two topics) you found the most interesting and choose this to be the centre of your essay. Based on the topic you chose in your introduction you must identify three key theorists and explain how their works have contributed to the research field in your topic. Then, in your body you must critically analyse three articles and evaluate their research design, research bias and their overall results. The introduction was super unclear I am still not sure if I even wrote what they wanted, the rubric required us to discuss quite a lot but I couldn’t fit it in the word count and just chose not to address the whole rubric. The body was actually interesting to write, each week Dr Kat critically evaluates two articles and she shows us the skills and approach we should take for the assignment, this was helpful. The conclusion required a discussion of future recommendations for any possible research.
My main complaint with the final essay was the lack of clarity we had on we were supposed to write (in the end, yes I did well). They changed the assignment to previous years and with such lack of clarity, I was so confused. I would encourage you to start your essay early (Week 10, because there is plenty of research you will need to do before you write).
Overall, a decent subject I have it little to no effort and still got a H1, it wasn’t easy the essay was stressful, but it does fulfil as a WAM booster.

« Last Edit: July 10, 2020, 09:01:03 pm by tiredandstressed »
VCE '17-'18
2017: Biology, Psychology
2018: English, HHD, Chemistry, Methods
2019-22: Bachelor of Biomedicine (Honours) @ UoM
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M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #794 on: July 11, 2020, 08:06:12 am »
+3
Subject Code/Name: ELEN90054 Probability and Random Models

Workload: 3× 1 hr lectures per week
1× 2hr Tutorial/Examples Class (Basically just another lecture dedicated to the lecturer doing problem booklet questions, but called a "tutorial" on the handbook/timetabling system. Also normally only went for 1hr)
1× 2hr Workshop

Assessment: 6× 5% Workshops (Basically assignments with a dedicated workshop session)
*2× 10% Tests
*1× 50% Exam

*NB: Usually it is one 10% mid semester test and a 60% exam with a hurdle, but the assessment structure was revised and the hurdle was removed this semester due to Covid-19

Lectopia Enabled: Yes with screen capture (obviously given the circumstances, but I believe they are also normally available for all lectures and the tutorial/examples class)

Past exams available: 3 with numerical solutions only, for both the final exam and mid-sem test

Textbook Recommendation: Probability and Stochastic Processes by Yates and Goodman is recommended and lectures use some examples from it, but it's really not necessary. Lectures and the problem booklet are enough.

Lecturer: Brian Krongold

Year & Semester of completion: 2020, Semester 1 (Online/Covid-19 Semester)

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (86)

Comments: Having gotten a H3 in MAST20004/Probability in undergrad I was worried about this subject so decided to get it over with early on, but fortunately it turned out to be nothing to worry about. Some of the content can get a bit tricky, but overall if you persist and keep up with the problem booklet/lectures, the exam and test/s are mostly doable, at least with Brian taking the subject. Handbook provides a pretty good overview of the content so I won't re-list that here. Brian was also a really great lecturer who explained things in good detail and provided a few extra materials for harder concepts/questions.

My favourite part of this subject was probably the workshops. Despite the name, as mentioned above they were basically assignments which had a dedicated workshop where you'd normally get assigned a partner and start to work on it together (this didn't happen during this semester, but in normal circumstances I highly doubt you'd have enough time to finish it all in the session), then it'd be due a week or so later. They contained a mix of theoretical and MATLAB questions, the latter of which mainly involved setting up simulations. Most people doing this subject would be coming from the BSci Electrical Systems major where Engineering Computation/COMP20005 would have been compulsory, but if you were one of the few people like me who didn't come from the standard pathway, make sure your coding skills are up to scratch unless you want to be relying on a workshop partner. However, having fortunely done COMP20005 as a breadth in undergrad, a decent understanding of this subject would be more than sufficient for the skills required for the workshop MATLAB questions. The simulations meant that you could pretty much verify most your theoretical calculation answers, so while these workshops were usually pretty time consuming, getting full marks or close to it was very doable.

For weeks when there wasn't a workshop assignment, the timetabled workshop session pretty much became standard tutorials where you'd work on problem booklet questions and could ask the tutor for help which was quite helpful, especially before a test or the exam.
VCE, 2015-2016
BCom (Econ) @ UniMelb, 2017-2019
MCEng (Elec) @ UniMelb, 2020-?