Subject Code/Name: PHYS20009: Research-based Physiology Workload: one x 1 hour lecture and one x 3 hour practical per week. Total Time Commitment: 48 contact hours with an estimated total time commitment of 170 hours (including non-contact time)
Assessment: - Written reports of up to 1000 words each due during the semester (20%);
- Class participation during the semester (5%);
- Effective PRS participation and contributions (5%),
- A research-project and written report of up to 2000 words due during semester (30%);
- Ongoing assessment of e-Learning activities(10%);
- A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (30%)
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: Yes - past exams are available on the university library page. However, 2012 semester 2 is the only exam that was written by the current coordinator (Dr. Deanne Skelley). Nonetheless, go through all the exams as many questions are repeated/similar questions are used by Dr. Deanne.
Textbook Recommendation: No textbook is required - lecture notes will suffice.
Lecturer(s): Dr. Deanne Skelley
Year & Semester of completion: 2016 Semester 2
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1 (89)
Comments: Overall, this subject was a great subject to take. Being a practical/research-based subject, there was a larger emphasis on the application of theory as opposed to mere rote-learning, which coming from my degree oriented towards a Micro/Immuno major, is a breath of fresh air. I'll start off with Dr. Deanne Skelley. Look, I'm not going to lie, she is not the most approachable nor the nicest lecturer. Between her hit-and-miss jokes, and her projections of being too good for everyone, you're left with a rather unpleasant experience with her. Nonetheless, she does the job of a lecturer and coordinator well. As a lecturer, she guides you towards understanding what is required for the assessments, particularly the exam (I will come to this later), and she also provides feedback that is beneficial. Furthermore, she is quite prompt with replying to emails, and is often more than happy to help if the issues are concerning special consideration/technology problems, etc. Overall, she could be nicer, but gets the job done.
Lectures: As mentioned in the workload, the contact hours for this subject are not too demanding. Weekly, there is one, 1-hour lecture that covers the materials relevant for the practical/workshop to come. The lectures are structured in a way where for every practical, you receive a pre-practical lecture and a post-practical lecture. The pre-practical lecture basically covers the fundamentals of the theory concerning the practical (e.g. if the practical is on cardiovascular responses in humans, you will be given the basics of the heart, cardiovascular system and the baroreceptor reflex). The post-practical lecture, which is the week following that of the practical (more on that below), will involve exploration of a few more aspects of the theory, as well as any advice on the write-up of the practical itself. This is really helpful because it ties in anything that was covered in the practical, and basically provides a way to tie up any of those loose ends so that you can polish your practical report (more on that later, too).
PRS: the PRS system is an easy way to get 5%. Attending more than 75% of the lectures will get you a guaranteed 5%. Throughout the lectures, there will be a number of questions that are answered using the PRS clickers. It is a great way to make sure you're on track with any theory, or any queries you may have are settled once she goes through the solution to the particular question. You are not penalised if you don't get the question right. As long as you answer one question, that will basically secure your 'attendance'.
Workshops/Practicals: the slot for practicals is a given 3-hour block during the week. If you have a workshop, it only runs for 2 out of the 3 hours, and a practical runs for the full 3 hours.
(a) Pre-Practical Test: you are required to complete a pre-practical test prior to your practical session. This pre-prac will be made up of some multiple choice questions, as well as some short-answer questions. These tests are usually out of 10 (some are 9, some 11). My biggest piece of advice for these is to make sure that you include every detail you believe is relevant. What do I mean by this? Well, basically if you think 'Should I include this?', include it. This is because I found that for the first pre-practical I completed, the feedback was mainly on including points that I did not think were necessarily imperative in including. E.g. if you're discussing a drug acting on the heart to increase heart rate, make sure you say something like "the drug acts as b1 receptor antagonist, resulting in a decrease in heart rate). This will ensure you leave no room for criticism, and in turn maximise your marks. For a given practical, which is assessed, 5% of your total practical mark is made up of this pre-practical.
(b) Practical: the practical runs over 3 hours. The beginning of this practical involves a briefing session by one of the senior demonstrators, where they go through the contents of the lecture and safety precautions, as well as giving advice on appropriate management. Each practical will have relevant pages that include the method of the practical, a little background info and also questions to be answered - this is provided on the LMS. You are also provided with a sheet onto which your results will be collated. Your practical is done in groups allocated to you from the beginning of the semester, which is great because you can bounce ideas off one another and ensure you're all on the right track. The practicals are relatively straight-forward, and getting through it all is facilitated by demonstrators who are great. Ask them questions!!! They know their stuff and are more than happy to help.
(c) Results/Practical report: once you finish your practical and your results have been collected, the next task is to make sure you get your practical report typed up. This is pretty straightforward - you have to scan your results sheet, and then answer the questions in the lab manual in 500 words. Be clear, concise, to-the-point and make sure you include all the key aspects for the relevant questions. You don't need to include any aims/hypotheses/etc., and it is so helpful and time-saving that you only need to answer the questions directly. These usually take a week to be corrected. Your results make up 25% of the practical report (which is so easy in my opinion to get the 25% of), and the discussion (i.e. answering the questions in the lab manual) is 70%. You have four practical reports to do in total, each of them 5%, making up 20% of your total grade. You only receive a grade with feedback (e.g. H1) - you do not receive any actual mark for your practicals.
The workshops are structured in a way where you need to apply your theory and usually work in your allocated practical groups to come up with hypotheses/learn to use Excel to make spreadsheets and necessary calculations, etc. In these workshops, you need to submit (as a group) an E-learning task (which may involve for example coming up with hypotheses, making calculations of standard errors of mean or even designing an experiment based on theory you're given in the lectures). E-learning contributes to 10% of your grade. Try and work well in your group! My group was awesome - we were not only fun, but we were able to bounce ideas off one another to come up with great work! You also only receive a grade (e.g. H1) and no actual mark for these tasks.
Assignment: trust me when I tell you, thermoregulation will never be more hated by anyone as much as it is by PHYS20009 students. This is a major assignment for which you are required to write an abstract/introduction/methods and materials/results (including graphs)/discussion/conclusion on a practical you do involving thermoregulation. Every semester the nature of the practical varies (e.g. we did a subject immersing his legs into cold water, whilst semester 1 was thermoregulatory responses to heating). However, the nature of the practical is that you will need to use the theory you've collected over the semester to develop this report. A few tips:
1. Drafts: every week from the commencement of the practical, you will be able to submit a draft. SUBMIT THOSE DRAFTS. I submitted one for every section completed, except the results and discussion (because GAMSAT life). For the results, we had to do a copious amount of graphs and follow the same structure for all 23 graphs, so I only submitted around 5 in my draft and so it worked fine because I could just use the feedback from those to emulate for the remainder of my graphs. But the discussion I could no get done in one week, so I submitted a shitty copy and I never even ended up using a bit of it. I got a H1 for all sections in my practical, and H2A for the discussion. This was PURELY because I winged the discussion and had guidance from feedback for all the other sections. All in all, this task is so daunting and makes you want to rip the hair out of your head - however, if you work through it all and follow the criteria and Deanne's advice, it isn't difficult to do well in. Unlike the practicals and other assessments in this subject, you actual get the mark and grade for this (I got 85.5 / H1). This is great because it comes out a few days before the exam, and with a bit of Math, you can calculate the amount you'll need for a H1, in the exam.
Exam: Okay, this is worth 30% of your mark. I promise you, it is NOT a difficult exam, if you approach it correctly. As I mentioned above, do as many exams as you can from the library because many questions are repeated! Furthermore, Dr. Deanne is great in the sense that she tells you a LOT about the exam, so there are usually no real surprises. The exam is out of 60. The first 40 or so marks are fine and usually very doable because she tells a lot about what will make up these 40 marks, and also the questions in practice past papers help enormously. All she tells you about the remaining 20 marks is what types of questions to expect. This is the section with the most application - you're essentially given a case study, and you're asked to write a hypothesis, explain the results and underlying physiological mechanism, anything about the study design, ethics/limitations, etc. Our case study this semester was a little iffy (it was about pregnant women who had exercised 2 years before pregnancy vs. those who hadn't, and it was very bizarre, but doable if you got the point of the extract). The exam overall was very much doable!
Overall, I really enjoyed this subject. My practical group was amazing and we all got along so well that now we are so inexplicably linked. I've made great friends with them all, and without this group, it would have been pretty hard to do well. Moral of this? Try and really work as a team. It'll help you all out. We had a facebook group and we always helped out one another. If you have any questions, let me know! Best of luck