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Rating

Total average

67.6/100
Learning Materials ( 63 )
Learning Activities ( 62 )
Blackboard Management ( 59 )
Course Content ( 78 )
Course Structure ( 59.3 )
Contact Availability ( 65.3 )
Course Difficulty ( 93.5 )

Reviews (3)

Anonymous
   
BIOM2011 – Integrative Cell & Tissue Biology 37.1

This course was very poorly coordinated in this semester (Sem1, 2015). There was a great lack of communication with students and incorrect details in the ECP. The ECP was not made available until well after week 1. Even then, the dates in the ECP were wrong, stating Thurs classes instead Fri, which caused confusion for at least one lecturer, let alone the students. Dates were changed in the ECP without any notification to students a number of times throughout the semester, even up until the last 2 weeks. The course coordinator seemed oblivious to the hassles this caused students. The blackboard was also not updated from the previous semester with old materials all over the place. I wasted time and money printing lecture slides from a year ago, at the beginning of semester.

Two of the pracs were also not updated in the ECP. The last prac stated it was about yeast, but it was actual about action potentials with cockroaches. The specific prac manuals for these were only available just prior to the pracs, so not much time to absorb and prepare. Then only a week was given for the written reports to be submitted. The ECP stated feedback would be within 3 weeks of submission, but after 6 weeks there was still no feedback nor any communication by the course coordinator about when this was likely, even after following up with him. He seemed to disappear in the last half of the semester.

There was no end of semester review lecture, each module just had a review lecture at the end (or in the last lecture) of that module, which in about half of the cases were just a rehash of the lectures and didn't help to prepare for the exam at all. Many of the exam questions were not representative of the key mechanisms in the lectures. In fact one short answer question worth 10 marks was on just one aspect of one slide on a very specific cell type. Other short answer questions were similar in that they were not about key overarching mechanisms. So if you do not thoroughly understand the 'details' behind 'every' slide, you will most likely not pass the exam, which btw was worth 60%. It would be more reasonable in a 2 hour exam to give students the choice of answering 4 out of the 6 short answer questions, like BIOL2200 did this semester, for such a content heavy course. The MCQs also seemed designed to confuse rather than test knowledge.

There was no assigned textbook, just a recommended text that we were encouraged to read. However, I did not find this textbook very useful. In addition, some of the lectures did not draw from this textbook, and diagrams within a single lecture were often from multiple texts. It was also difficult to pre-read prior to lectures because we didn't know in advance what the lectures would actually be covering in many cases. This put me behind in this course, sitting through lectures that just went over my head without having done relevant reading prior. And the reading I had done seemed to be a waste of time.

The only positive about this course was the interesting content, and the delivery of this by 4 out of the 6 lecturers. The other 2 lecturers were frustrating to listen to. I felt very unsupported in this course, and uninspired by the lack of consideration to students in terms of communication and fair testing of knowledge in what was a very heavy load of information to absorb. I hope you will manage the logistical issues better next time too to reduce the unnecessary extra burden on students.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BSc

Is lecture attendance necessary?

Yes

Is the textbook necessary?

Yes

Positives
  • Content interesting
  • Easy marks for first 2 pracs, but this does not make up for difficulty of exam
Negatives
  • Poorly co-ordinated. Blackboard was a mess from prev semester. No attempt was made to clean this up.
  • ECP was not available until well after week 1. Dates & assessment details were incorrect
  • Lack of communication to students about changes to lect times throughout semester, and assignment feedback timeframes well beyond the 3 weeks stipulated in ECP with no communcation
Posted on July 8, 2015 11:53 am
Anonymous
   
BIOM2011 – Integrative Cell & Tissue Biology 93.9

Very interesting yet content heavy course. If you are disorganised like I am, do not choose this course as it will quite literally drive you nuts. Lecturers were great and presented the content in a neat and thougt-out manner. Except Chen Chen's lectures. No disrespect here, but it was incredibly hard to understand his module and he just skimmed over the lectures when we needed the fine details for the exam. The practicals can be a bit of a bore but they are easy marks as the first 10% is attendance for the first 2 pracs and the next 30% are straightforward practical reports you will have to do for the last 2 pracs. I might add that the sensory module was incredibly interesting, mainly because of the lecturer, in that I had no idea that our eyes, ears and balancing mechanisms were so complex (finally understood why we get dizzy or headspins lol).
Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BSc

Is lecture attendance necessary?

YES

Is the textbook necessary?

Somewhat, just use Boron to help clear out some concepts you may not understand from the lectures.

Positives
  • Very interesting
  • Easy to rack up marks before final exam
Negatives
  • Content heavy, cramming not advisable
  • Final exam can be a bit daunting
Posted on July 5, 2015 9:30 pm
Anonymous
   
BIOM2011 – Integrative Cell & Tissue Biology 71.7

This course is a great course. I actually completed BIOM2013 which is exactly the same as 2011 but just we have a different practical. First thing I will say is I honestly hated the practical sessions! They weren't really related to the content learnt in lectures (felt more related to BIOL2200) and they weren't really explained as well as they could have been. The first practical was okay but when you get to the second practical it felt the class was left with little help (maybe that was the purpose but it was a hard practical). The first practical made you do a group presentation (10 minutes) and the second is an individual report. They weren't hard assessments but the report felt like the time between when you received your results and the writing of the report is very limited.

The content learned in lectures were very interesting. Each module was fun, I especially like Noakes' on the Neuromotor system even though for the majority of the time I had no idea what was happening! The only hate about the content is that Peter Thorn talks really fast in his Epithelial module and his lecture notes have nothing on them so it requires you to rewatch the lecture.

Overall this course was great. Very hard but very intellectually stimulating and worthwhile. The majority of people have to do it for the Biomed major but it is fun. And the final exam is relatively straightforward!

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2014

Your program/major

BSc/Biomed

Positives
  • Interesting Course Content
  • Great Lecturers
  • Content flows well
Negatives
  • Boron textbook isn't that helpful
  • Practicals were unrelated (BIOM2013)
  • Content can be an overload at times
Posted on June 28, 2014 1:25 am

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