October 14, 2019, 08:18:26 am

### AuthorTopic: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 431620 times) Tweet Share

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#### Springyboy

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #465 on: July 15, 2019, 04:51:17 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: BFC2751 - Derivatives 1

1x 2hr lecture per week
1 x 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment:

30% Mid-semester test
10% Participation
10% Assignment

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past/sample exams provided. Practice questions provided which are very similar to the final exam questions.

Textbook Recommendation:

Options, futures and other derivatives (9th edition, global edition) - Very valuable to have this book for this subject, either in hard or soft copy. It goes over the content in a far more stripped down form, plus all the tutorial questions are taken from this book each week. It also has extra questions to do for the exam as practice to go over everything again, so highly beneficial to get this.

Lecturer(s): Zhe (Andrew) An - Also the CE. Was his first time taking the subject, so seemed a bit distant from the content, and it was tough to understand him in the lectures as a result. He was also coughing for the majority of the lectures that I went to (on Fridays) so made it a little tricky to understand him as a result. But in consultations he seemed like a very decent guy who wanted to help out his students as much as possible.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 4 out of 5

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

Really interesting subject for anyone doing a finance major. It is incredibly real-world, as it goes through products (derivatives) which are actively traded on the financial markets today. The course starts off with an overview of derivatives, before looking at futures and forwards and how they are priced. Then basic options are covered + crucial concepts such as put-call parity, which form a key part of the exam.

After the mid-semester test, trading strategies in options are covered, followed by binomial trees. Then the Black-Scholes-Merton model and Greek letters are covered.

What is key to know is that this subject has changed from previous years, and is now taught in a traditional approach of lectures/tutorials, in a purely theoretical way. All excel coding has been removed from this subject, with the exception of implied volatility, but this is not examinable in that format. So, to do well in this subject, focus should be paid on understanding the content in a theoretical way, by going through tutorial questions themselves + lecture notes.

Participation - This consisted of 8% coming from work done in tutorials, with the remaining 2% being via posting a question and answer on the Moodle discussion forum with an exam relevant question. This question had to be original, with feedback provided on common mistakes. However, this was an easy 2% to receive, as if you posted on Moodle then you got the marks. The remaining 8% consisted of 2% for presentations in tutorials and 6% for just showing up to your tutorial and answering questions. My tutor scrapped the presentation marks due to time constraints and knowledge that students didn't want to present which was very kind of him. This enabled all 10% of marks for this section to be very easy to gain.

Mid-semester test
This was held at the Caulfield Racecourse on a Monday night when one of the lecture streams usually took place. It consisted of 4 questions with a total of 30 marks. The first question was about differences between forwards/futures, second was margin calls, third calculating prices of forwards and futures and 4th on put call parity. In general most students did not do that well on this, with the average mark being around 60%. This is probably because of time constraints, as there was only 1hr to answer everything and time was perfectly calculated to answer all questions. I did not do that well on this, mainly because of being flustered and confused with some of the wording of the questions, but it was not worded in that confusing of a manner overall.

Assignment
This was where students were to write 1000 words on what can we learn from financial disasters? Two topics were provided, either the London Whale case from JP Morgan Chase, or the collapse of Baring Bank.
Students’ last names starting with A to M were told to write on Baring bank, whilst last names starting with N to Z were told to write on JP Morgan Chase. This was quite straightforward to do, as it was the kind of essay you'd write in a marketing or management context, not finance which is usually more practical. That being said, the average mark for this was 7.1/10 as students normally skimmed over stuff and missed the finer details.

Exam
Worth 50%, this consisted of 5 questions. The first question was 10 short answer questions covering all topics of the course. Question 2 was on option trading strategies, and asked how to design a short strangle strategy based on the options given to trade in. Question 3 was on binomial trees. Question 4 was on the Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) model with interpretation, and question 5 was related to Greek letters. It seemed as though this exam had little difficulty to it, resulting in nearly 60% of the cohort scoring 80% or higher on the final exam. The median of the exam was 41/50 which again seems too high to how an exam distribution would usually be structured. This seems to be a once-off thing, as in the future the exam should be much harder in order to gain a far-more streamlined curve.

Overall, this was a highly enjoyable unit for me. Although I did not do that well in the in-semester assessments, I was extremely lucky with the exam and scored highly in it. To succeed in this unit, get the textbook, do the questions over and over again, and try and get some old past exams (if they're still available), as practice is perfect to do well here.

#### Eucalypt

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #466 on: July 15, 2019, 06:57:16 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: MTH2132 - The Nature and Beauty of Mathematics

Workload:  One 1-hour lecture and one 2-hour lecture every week

Assessment:
10 x weekly problem sets (30%)
These were engaging and enjoyable, and very easy to get good marks on with a reasonable understanding of mathematics
Lecture polls in every lecture (10%)
This was a new assessment, replacing an essay. It was very easy to get these right as the lecturer would go through the answer and allow you to change your answer if it was wrong. They are only open during the lecture and there is no way to answer them without actually being in the lecture. The question wasn't on the poll, only a spot for the answer, with the question being displayed on the slides.
Exam (60%)
*40% hurdle for exam and 40% hurdle for in-semester assessment*

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture. I would note however that whilst the lecturer uses the document camera for the many practical demonstrations, this cannot replace actually attending the lecture.

Past exams available:  There were no past exams. We did, however, receive a document of 120 practice questions, and 80% of the exam was made up with questions directly from the document.

Textbook Recommendation: There are no 'recommended' textbooks, however much of the content is similar to the content of 'The Heart of Mathematics: An invitation to effective thinking'. This book was in no way necessary, but I found it useful to refer to sometimes (and is available at the library). Another resource to make use of is Burkard's 'Mathologer' YouTube channel.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Burkard Polster (also Unit Coordinator)

Year & Semester of completion: Sem 1, 2019

Rating:  5 out of 5

I really loved this unit. It made many difficult, high-level maths concepts accessible to anyone with a year 12 level of maths. We did heaps of practical demonstrations (at least one every lecture) such as magic tricks, bubbles, and juggling. There was usually a small practical task in the weekly assignment that we had to take a picture of for bonus marks. I'm not studying education but I would highly recommend this unit to anyone who is, as you not only increase your understanding but also learn many activities that you can run in your classes. Burkard is clearly incredibly passionate about what he does, and runs an organised unit. After each week, he sends out lecture notes which are really detailed and include great diagrams.

Weekly assignments:
These are out of 10. They are due before the Friday lecture and get handed back in the following Friday lecture. Not every question was marked on these, but you have no way of knowing which will be marked beforehand, so you have to do them all. I spent ages formatting mine and making meticulous diagrams, but my friend did them by hand somewhat roughly and got the same marks, so it's the work that's really important. I would recommend checking answers with someone before handing them in as it was easy to make mistakes.

Lecture polls:
These are easy marks, you really need to attend the lectures to get them though. This was a new assessment so I'm not sure if it will be included again. They added up to 10% and you got half of that automatically for doing 70% of the polls, and one extra percent for every 10% correct you got above 50%. Eg. Answering 70% polls, and getting 80% of them correct would get you 5+3=8%.

Exam:
The exam format was 80 marks, 10 questions worth 8 marks each, and 4 sub-questions for each question, worth 2 marks each. Although they were all worth 2 marks each, they varied from simple answers to full-blown proofs. Something I didn't realise before going into the exam was that we were given a list of questions and a script book, and we just answered the questions in the script book (by far the strangest way I've done a maths exam). I'm still not sure if we were meant to do them in order, although I didn't and still did well, so as long as the questions were clearly labelled I assume it would be ok. The best way to do well on the exam is to do all 120 questions (this takes longer than you think so start early), and to attend the revision lecture. During the revision lecture, he often hints at questions that might be on the exam, and questions that you definitely don't need to bother with.

#### Springyboy

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #467 on: July 17, 2019, 11:13:17 am »
+3
Subject Code/Name: ETC3460 - Financial Econometrics

2 x 1hr lectures per week
1 x 1.5hr tutorial per week - Attend these each week, as the content is gone over in far more detail + no solutions are given for tutorial questions except in the tutes themselves.

Assessment:

Assignment 1 & 2 - 15% each (30%) - These were done in groups that were allocated randomly based on your tutorial, with 4-5 students in each group. Both assignments consisted of short-answer questions related to the material that had been taught. Assignment 1 was mainly focused on theory behind the CAPM + some interpretation work from EViews, whilst assignment 2 was solely interpretation and graph plotting in EViews. As long as you've done ETC2410 recently, then you should be fine with the EViews work as all steps to carry out analysis in EViews is covered in the course, with the exceptions of news impact curve plotting, which could be done in whatever program you wanted. Most students did well in these assignments as the questions weren't too tricky, with only the odd curveball question here and there.

Group Project (10%)

This was the most tricky task to do for the semester. In the same groups as the assignments, you were to pick up to 10 stocks from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), and track your performance in their returns over the semester. Then, starting from mid-way through the semester, you were to forecast tomorrow's returns, using past returns and the methods taught in class. Gradually over the semester the forecasting power got better and better, as there were more models available to help predict your returns. These returns + forecasting methods were then to be written into an investment report, which was to be marketed as a tool for potential investors to invest in the stocks that you had chosen. This was quite tricky for me and my group to plan and write, as it was the first time that we had ever written something in this domain. After the report was submitted, the top 20 groups (out of 64 for the cohort) were chosen and had to present a 5 min report to the class in the week 12 lectures, summarising their report. The top 5 groups out of those 20 received full marks, with the remainder receiving 90%. I found the marking to be very generous for this, resulting in high marks overall, which justified the effort put into the work at hand. My tip for this would be to start as early as possible with forecasting methods, and ideas on how to write up your report, as this will take a ton of time to put together, and will subtract time from everything else that you would like to do on the side.

Exam (60%)

The exam consisted of 4 questions in the following form.

Q1 GARCH Modeling: 20 points
Q2 CAPM Analysis: 30 points
Q3 Time Series Analysis: 20 points
Q4 Volatility Analysis: 30 points

70% of the exam was very similar to the 2018 exam so was not that tricky. The remainder though comprised unseen material, particularly question 4 in relation to using the normal distribution and proving its probabilities. This tripped up a lot of people, including myself, as this was something that had never been fully explained in class as a potential exam question. Despite this, the exam was not overly difficult and was a fair exam that was able to be completed within the 2hr duration. This was reflected by the mean of the exam marks being around 64%, such that it was very fairly written overall. To prepare for this, go through all the tutorial questions again and again, particularly the two revision tutes in weeks 11 and 12, and then attempt the 2018 exam to the best of your ability. The trouble was, I seemed to find the 2018 exam easier than the 2019 exam, as the degree of difficulty seems to have been increased in the 2019 exam to compensate for high in-semester marks.

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, the 2018 exam was given along with indicative solutions provided in SWOTVAC.

Textbook Recommendation:

No textbooks are needed for this subject, as the slides + Kevin Sheppard's notes provided on Moodle are sufficient to understand the content

Lecturer(s):

David Frazier - Also CE & unit coordinator for the subject. David is incredibly passionate about financial econometrics, so his lectures were very engaging and worthwhile to attend. He knew the content extremely well, only referring to the slides to provide tips on the key material via his laser pointer, or indicating at graphs on the slides. What is key to know is that David does use a laser pointer each lecture to provide further emphasis on the material, and this does not appear in the recordings, so try and get to the lectures otherwise you miss that additional detail.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Thoroughly enjoyed this subject. David is a gun at explaining financial econometrics, and has done a great job of piecing this unit together into one build-up of knowledge. The lecture slides are of outstanding quality, so definitely use those as a revision tool for the exam, even with the odd typo here and there.

The only issue I found was with EViews work. Some commands had to be manually written in the command window in EViews, which was a bit clunky as I was learning code on the go whilst trying to get the graph that I desired. For example, the recode function for EViews was only taught in the week 10 tute, and was necessary for assignment 2 to plot news impact curves in EViews. This is being fixed in the future though as the unit is switching to R and RStudio from next year to do all graphical outputs, due to the majority of students having the background in R and RStudio to be able to use it confidently in the subject.

The content started with a review of statistics needed in the unit, particularly the law of iterated expectations and law of total variance which are examined upon heavily in the exam. Then basic financial modelling such as the CAPM, AR, MA and ARMA process are examined as well as the theory behind finance, returns and financial products. After this, volatility modelling is covered through ARCH, GARCH, T-GARCH & EGARCH processes. Then multivariate volatility is touched upon, in the form of the BEKK and DCC models but this was not covered in the exam.

Tutorials were pretty standard, but were done in the Learning and Teaching Building (LTB) using EViews via MoVE on your personal computer, instead of the computer labs in the Menzies building due to booking constraints. This made the work a little annoying to do due to computers constantly rebooting or being unable to connect to EViews via MoVE and Citrix Receiver. The tutorial class sizes were also large, with around 50 students in each of the 5 tutorial sessions. I had Nathaniel and Shuofan as my tutors, both of whom knew the content extremely well and provided great explanations to each tutorial question. Make sure you go to each tute as stated above, due to detailed tutorial solutions not being provided unless you attend the tutorial or a consultation session for either David or one of the tutors.

Overall, highly enjoyed this unit, as it combined my financial and econometric approaches together. I would strongly recommend this unit for anyone with an econometric / stats / mathematical background if you did ETC2410 and enjoyed it, as it goes deeper into modelling financial products and is a really enjoyable subject due to David providing such a succinct course structure.

#### Springyboy

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #468 on: July 17, 2019, 08:08:32 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: ETC2430 - Actuarial Statistics

1 x 2hr lecture per week
1 x 1.5hr tutorial per week

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

Mid-semester test (20%) - Was taken from the first half of the course. No calculators were allowed, so the questions included excel screenshots and relatively straightforward mathematical calculations, as well as some derivations and theory questions. 90 mins was allocated to complete the 8 questions of the test. This did not prove to be enough time to finish the test, as there was too much material to cover in such a short time-frame. This was compensated by generous marking, however the average was only 59%, even though the top mark was 98%.

Assignment (20%) - This was a very time-consuming and tedious assignment to complete. It involved creating a spreadsheet in Excel for a reverse mortgage annuity product, accompanied by a report to produce to potential clients in your product. Very limited instructions were provided as to how to design the spreadsheet, such as application of Goal Seek, so consultations with tutors were required immensely to produce a reliable spreadsheet that could be easily interpreted, along with explanations of your calculations in the report. This was compensated by relatively generous marking again, such that the average mark for this task was 15/20.

Exam (60%) - This covered the remainder of the course from weeks 8-11 + 1 question on the exam from lectures 1-5. Of this, around 60% of the exam was taken from weeks 8-10 content, with 20% from weeks 1-5 and 20% from week 11. The exam was also calculator free, so involved a majority of theory based questions + some simple calculations that did not require a calculator. Unlike the mid-semester test, there was only 1 derivation type question which was relatively straightforward to achieve full marks in. Time was less of an issue here as well, as the exam was designed to be of similar difficulty to the mid-semester test, only shorter.

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No past or sample exams provided. Limited amount of practice questions provided

Textbook Recommendation:

No textbooks are recommended or prescribed, as all content is taken from the CM1 core readings.
However, buying the CT1 or CM1 combined materials pack from Actuarial Education (ActEd), will help you immensely as this goes into far more detail than what is given in the slides.

Lecturer(s):

Brett Inder - Took the first 5 lectures + half of the revision lecture in week 12. Brett continues on his merry way from ETC1000, as he shows the same level of enthusiasm in delivering his lectures. However, he is learning the content on the go with his students, so can sometimes slip up when explaining derivations. Despite this, Brett was the best of the 3 lecturers, as he always kept his audience engaged so that they can understand the content as best as they can.

Heather Anderson - Takes lectures 8-11, as lecture 6 was the mid-semester test, and lecture 7 was on Good Friday so did not run. Heather took the more mathematical areas of loan schedules, equations of value, project appraisal & equity and bond valuation techniques. Sometimes she became a bit lost in the derivations, such that the lecture theatre had no clue of what was going on. Her lectures also tended to be a bit drier than Brett's, as she would usually read off the slides more, so made it hard to comprehend what was going on completely. Despite this, the material was still relatively straightforward to understand under her guidance.

Maziar Nikpour - Took the guest lecture at the end of week 5 and the lecture in week 11 on term structure of interest rates. Maz delivered lectures in a very detailed way, and often skipped over important details if he could see that he was running out of time. He also struggled to show some Excel calculations such as using Goal Seek to explain a problem, as in practice is different to what is taught in the classroom. Despite this, Maz still showed a great deal of enthusiasm in explaining the content and still made it relatively straightforward to comprehend.

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2019

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

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

For those of you who have read previous reviews of this subject, scrap whatever way it was taught in the past. 2019 marked a change in the way the content was taught, with Brett taking on the role as Acting Head of Actuarial Studies, and together with Julie designing a new approach to this course. This resulted in most complex formulae scrapped from the course, as they are not relevant in day-to-day work, along with the removal of calculators to switch to using Excel in tutorials, lectures, assignments and exams, due to this being more widely used in day-to-day practice.

Tutorials

The tutorials are still standard 90 minute tutes where you went over the tutorial questions provided. However, each tute had a question to do in Excel, like designing a loan schedule or calculating the price of an annuity using Excel commands. I had Melvern as a tutor, and he was one of the best tutors I've ever had in my whole degree. Having taught the course in the past, Melvern had a great in-depth knowledge of all the concepts in the course, + the Excel applications due to him tutoring ETC1000 as well as ETC2430. This helped make the material far more comprehensible than if I were to be in any other tute. Melvern also provided tons of tips about the mid-sem, exam and the actuarial science degree, making it far more interesting to sit in his tutes and ask him any random question about the course than any other tutor. If Melvern tutors the course next year, I would 100% have him as a tutor again due to his wide understanding of every detail in the course, as he was a key influencer in the way it was designed.

Despite this, the course overall felt like a work in progress. Lecture slides varied quite significantly per lecture, and often difficult questions tripped the lecturers up as they did not have an in-depth knowledge of the material being asked, having only learnt about it a few months before the course was started to be taught. That being said, the ability of the entire teaching staff to explain the content was valued significantly, as they were able to comprehend the material in a very short window and explain it to the students in a far more detailed way than expected. As a result, ETC2430, although being rebuilt from the ground up, is in a very strong shape, as only content from the past CT1 is examined, and all complex material has been removed and incorporated into ETC3430/ETC3530 instead.

#### LifeisaConstantStruggle

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #469 on: July 18, 2019, 02:02:26 am »
+3
Subject Code/Name: ETC3410 – Applied Econometrics

Workload:  2x 1 hour lectures, 1x 1.5 hour comp labs.
Assessment:
Assignment 1 (20%): 1 individual component, 1 group component with STATA, 1 project proposal for a research project. The individual and group components comprise of questions on the theoretical and practical part of the lectures and comp labs, and these are pretty standard actually albeit its length. The research project is designed to test students’ ability to design projects and use econometric techniques taught in the lectures to analyse data. Students can opt to choose 1 of 2 topics provided by the lecturer, or make up their own project topic, which was pretty cool. Our group did an entire project on global HIV/AIDS data. Marking was pretty harsh though.
Assignment 2 (20%): 1 individual component, 1 group component with STATA, 1 project report for a research project. Again, a similar structure, but the project report with the results section is handed in instead. Marking was quite harsh for this as well.
Final exam (60%): 3 long questions. The questions were fair, and there were definitely a few challenging bits here and there. Marking was quite harsh apparently, and students don’t do as well compared to other ETC units despite being an “applied” and “easy” unit. If one were to focus in the comp labs and do the assignments well it is quite easy to do well in the finals.

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1 sample exam with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach by Jeffrey M. Wooldridge. Textbooks are not required as lecture slides are more than sufficient.

Lecturer(s): Jun Sung Kim. Great guy, super funny and approachable, gives really good advice for the research project.

Year & Semester of completion: S1 2019.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Comments: Thoroughly enjoyed the unit (partly biased as an econometrics enthusiast). This unit is divided into 5 topics:
1)   A review of econometric topics (statistics and linear algebra, OLS from ETC2410, GLS and an array of hypothesis tests)
2)   Binary choice models (logit, probit)
3)   Instrumental variable estimation
4)   Panel data estimation (fixed effects, random effects, etc.)
5)   Project evaluation (not examined)
Even though this is technically an ‘applied’ unit, Jun does spend a great deal of time on developing the theoretical foundations of the models and econometrics techniques taught, while the applied side of the unit is mainly taught in the tutorials. STATA is used as the main software for this unit, and basic commands need to be recalled for exam purposes, which isn’t a very steep learning curve compared to R.
The only gripe I have with the unit is how econometric methods are used in a ‘black box’ manner without any form of confirmation through mathematical reasoning (i.e. serial correlation and what-not). Otherwise, it is a really good unit.
2016-2017: VCE (ATAR: 99.3)
2018: Monash.

#### strawberry7898

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #470 on: July 25, 2019, 01:07:45 am »
+2
Subject Code/Name: ATS1264 - Bioethics, justice and the law

Workload:  1 x 1-hour lecture & 1 x 1-hour tutorial

Assessment:
Short Critical Analysis- 15%- when they say short they really do mean it- only 650 words, nothing too tricky, you get to choose a topic so that makes it easier. Treat this as a practice run for the bigger argumentative essay. The gist is- present an author's view, present counter arguments, make your opinion based on the strength of the objection.
Argumentative Essay- 45% (was 35% for me)- this is the big one! 45% is a lot but this essay is not that intimidating in the end. The rubric provided is extensive so use it. Again, you get a choice of 5 Qs to pick one. I felt that the lecturer and tutors made their expectations clear in the assignment description and it's not particularly taxing. I think the main thing you should do for high marks on this is to defend your own original points well and show understanding of the unit in general. Doing some research on your topic will help too. Try to start early, it can take some time to come up with your own arguments if it's not something you've done in advance or aren't used to. Discussion with family and friends can help here.
Tutorial Performance- 5%- don't know what my mark for this was, but my tutor did say he was pretty chill about giving people marks for trying. I think that the unit guide has a detailed schema in place for it- so ask your tutor what their expectations are maybe?
Examination- 35%- highly recommend taking notes on your readings throughout the semester to make this easier. You also get to choose the topic etc for some Qs, which was great. Details are provided Week 11-12. You need to have done your readings, memorised the notes you've made on these readings to an extent and have an opinion formed on the issues. You can get away with no reading for your assignments but the exam is designed to catch you out for skimping in your reading- if you have done your reading though, nothing unexpected will pop out and you'll be fine. The exam is pressed for time though, so get ready for the epic hand cramp!! Definitely the hardest part of the unit, but reading, even if last minute, will pay off
Bioethics Beyond the Classroom- no longer in this year's (2019) unit guide but it was a really small assignment where you could make art or discuss a movie or news segment which covers a chosen bioethics issue, really simple stuff, I didn't do anything too creative unfortunately, I just wrote. Other people did brilliant things like sculptures/drawings etc. Sad they got rid of it!

Recorded Lectures:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No. But they give you some idea about the exam structure and style of Qs beforehand so that makes it much easier to prepare for

Textbook Recommendation:  In my year, nothing to buy, any texts you had to read (and you DEFINITELY do have to read them!) were available online through library- they were all articles written by bioethicists and I believe there was a website. If you want to have a read of these you can do that through "Reading Lists" under the library tab under my.monash, just gotta search the unit code

Lecturer(s): Ryan Tonkens-  at least that's who I had, I believe this has since changed

Year & Semester of completion: S2 2017- unit may have changed since!

Rating: 5 out of 5

General advice for all your assessments in this unit- DO YOUR READINGS AND THINK CRITICALLY- so form opinions and argue those opinions out. Your tutes (and lecture for that matter) give you the opportunity to discuss these opinions and see what people say to counter them- these conversations tend to give you ideas for your essays, so pay attention. As for the readings, you don't have to read the entire thing but have an idea of what each author is arguing for and some points that they use to support their argument. The lectures aren't particularly helpful if you're relying on watching lectures to smash the unit- they only give you a gist of the different opinions on an issue but I found you had to do the readings to get the exam marks

I highly recommend this unit if you enjoy writing. For those of you who have a background in debating or just like to discuss, you'll really enjoy the tutes because they're very interactive. I think this element also depends on who you have as a tutor but mine was very encouraging and he pushed me to contribute as I tend to be the person who sits at the back quietly and listens the whole time. This is important too because tute participation counts for marks, so they really try to incentivise communication! If someone makes a point in a tute that you like (or if you think of one yourself), I reckon write it down- it'll probably come in handy in some assessment at some point, arguments form a big part of this unit (see assessment description)

I think the assessments were spread out well and were easy to score in, they weren't too demanding in terms of workload. Many people do this unit as a "bludge" and I think it is sort of bludgy because of the fewer assessments but don't take that exam for granted if you are the student who has been taking other assignments for granted because it can pile up- especially if you haven't been keeping up with your readings.

This subject has a lot of relevance in real life too and you are encouraged to discuss the topics you encounter in your tutes with people, so discuss with family for example. I personally enjoyed the unit, it had application for me as a biomed* student looking to do med in the future, because it discussed public health issues that are highly relevant and you got to hear the opinions of those who had backgrounds in other fields like arts or commerce because the cohort for the unit is very diverse. My only regret is not having done ATS1263 too!
*word of warning: some biomed students in my cohort did not like this unit, it was more because they realised they don't like arts units because they said they didn't like all the reading and writing and subjectivity etc or that they didn't like having to talk in tutes- so I guess do this unit if you're like me and loves this kind of essay writing and wants a break from all the sciencey biomed stuff?

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##### Re: Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #471 on: September 12, 2019, 09:40:30 am »
0

Monash University
Subject Reviews & Ratings

If you have any queries, comments, complaints or suggestions, feel free to contact Coffee or Sine

Index
Current Totals
Arts: 105
Biomedical Science: 26
Education: 2
Engineering: 36
Information Technology: 9
Law: 26
Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences: 26
Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences: 16
Science: 121
Other: 2
Majors: 1

Total: 451 Reviews
Updated to post #470

(2) (3) etc. denote 2nd and 3rd reviews.

Majors

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

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

Please use the following template for subject reviews:

Code: [Select]
[b]Subject Code/Name:[/b] [url=insert link here]SUBJECT CODE - SUBJECT NAME[/url]  Please insert the handbook link for the subject, and replace SUBJECT CODE - SUBJECT NAME with the appropriate details[b]Workload:[/b]  (specify how many lectures, pracs, tutes etc. and their duration)[b]Assessment:[/b]  (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)[b]Recorded Lectures:[/b]  Yes, with/without screen capture[b]Past exams available:[/b]  Yes, how many?  No. Was there a sample exam?[b]Textbook Recommendation:[/b]  What must you buy?  What is "recommended"?  Do you need it?[b]Lecturer(s):[/b][b]Year & Semester of completion:[/b][b]Rating:[/b]  out of 5[b]Your Mark/Grade:[/b] (Optional)[b]Comments:[/b] Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
and the following template for majors reviews:

Code: [Select]
[b]Major:[/b] [url=http://insert link here]Major Name[/url]  Replace "insert link here" with the handbook url for the major and replace "Major Name" in the URL tags with the appropriate name of the major. Also delete this text. [b]First Year Subjects:[/b][b]Second Year Subjects:[/b][b]Third Year Subjects:[/b][b]Year of completion:[/b][b]Rating:[/b]  out of 5[b]Comments:[/b] Please include all relevant comments about the major, briefly explaining how you found individual subjects and giving some background about the major itself. Feel free to detail your personal experiences, though do not include unnecessary rancour. Including where you hope the major to take you, or indeed where it has taken you is also very welcome!

Template courtesy of stonecold's University of Melbourne subject review page.