Subject Code/Name: ANAT30007: Human Locomotor SystemsWorkload: 72 hours (3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x three hour practical per week)
Assessment: 2 quizzes on theory and practical work throughout the semester, each worth 10% (20%);
2-hour written theory examination at the end of semester (40%);
2-hour written practical examination at the end of semester (40%)
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: No. Although Varsha did put up a few sample questions.
Textbook Recommendation: Moore KL et al: Clinically Oriented Anatomy, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 2014
OR
Drake et al Gray's Anatomy for Students, Elsevier 2015
I didn't use either of these. And I think you get Grays Anatomy for free online, via the LMS. Dont quote me on that though.
Lecturer(s):-Varsha Pilbrow (every thing thats not covered by the other lecturers, which is a lot)
- Peter Kitchener (Neuro stuff + Locomotion)
- Jenny Hayes (nerves/vessels of Upper limb and lower limb)
- Kylie Pickles (Spine)
- Various clinical lecturers.
Year & Semester of completion: 2016, Semester 1
Rating: 3.9 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1 (scraped it)
Comments: Ok, like one of the previous reviewers for this subject I also have a love/hate relationship for this subject. Mainly since the content you learn is so interesting, and I did love the content. But you are simply given too much content, that it makes assessment so much more difficult. And believe me I loved second year anatomy, and thought I would love this too by default, but this subject goes into crazy detail, with some very fast talking lecturers!
Now I know this subject already has quite a few reviews, but I thought a few of them made it seem like this subject was no biggie. This subject most definitely IS a biggie! Perhaps the course has changed since those reviews were posted, but I feel people need to be aware of what they're getting themselves into with this subject, with the most current info available.
Lectures:Ok its mainly broken up into 5 bits:
-Neuroscience and Locomotion
-Spine
-Upper Limb
-Lower Limb
- Evolution
And these are interspersed with lectures by clinical lecturers, in the fields of biomechanics, radiology and surgery that I can recall.
If you've done or are doing neuroscience subjects, doing the neuroscience+locomotion lectures you'll have a slight advantage.
The spine, upper limb, and lower limb have HEAPS of info, and their lecturers I found can talk quite fast. And everything they say is examinable, so I found myself having to rewatch all these lectures in their entirety, to just make sure I didn't miss something they said. Also the lecture notes aren't very detailed, so you need to rewatch the lectures (at least I had to).
Also there's Jenny Hayes in this subject! She teaches nerves and vessels of both upper and lower limb. She's a fantastic lecturer, really helps you learn her content, she'll repeat important points, have some slides that kind've summarise the paths/innervations of nerves and vessels. Her questions on the MST were quite easy too which was good.
Evolution I thought was relatively the easiest, and the most enjoyable topic. I always liked learning about how we differ to early hominin species, as well as from the apes and monkeys. Quite Enjoyable. We also have associated practicals, where we look at skulls, and ape and monkey skeletons. Cool stuff!
The clinical lectures. A big concern for many students, was what to take from the clinical lectures, since often times they'll have heaps of lecture slides (One of them went above 100 slides!). I always tried to look for a few things, that were emphasised, and take a few key points out of the lecture, rather than write down everything said (which I felt had to be done in the non-clinical lectures). Really enjoyed these lectures too, and some of the clinicians would even invite students to come watch them in action at their hospitals. Great people!
Assessment:MST 1. Median was roughly 21
MST 2 : Median was roughly 22
I thought the MSTs were quite fair, and are what you'd expect. You really need to put a lot of time and effort into studying them though, but unlike with the final exams, you will definitely get a payoff from all that hard work.
Practicals:These were quite interesting, as you'd find yourself chopping into a region of a cadaver each week (except for the last few weeks), with a partner. You'd generally have about 12 people around 1 demonstrator, who'd have 2 cadavers, then you'd go off into pairs and work on a specific region on one of the cadavers. I found these quite enjoyable, as you would find things like shoulder or knee replacements in the cadavers, which were really cool to find and look at.
Exams:Oh god, these exams. Just wow.
Okay. Well you have a practical and a theory exam, and my god with the huge amount of content you have to revise, it is so difficult to know what comes up on the exam. They seemed to focus on post MST 2 a lot with the theory exam, and the prac exam was much more evenly spread out. Boy do I wish I knew that beforehand
Prac exam was all multi choice, that were based off a series of pictures. Unsure how I went with this one. You should use anatomedia, or some atlas if you can get your hands on one for this exam. And hope that anatomedia doesn't crash the day before your prac exam, like it did with us! =[
The theory exam had 4 sections. 1st section was all Multi-choice, 2nd section was fill in the blanks, 3rd section was short answer, 4th was long answer.
I found the 1st and 4th sections quite good, but the 2nd and 3rd sections were tough. There are some questions and topics in those 2 sections that may trip you up. Felt like things that were barely emphasised, and some odd terms that weren't explained well, were assessed too greatly in these 2 sections. Sections 1 and 4 were great though.
Somehow managed to scrape an H1 in this subject, but a lot of people I knew weren't so lucky despite a lot of study.
Recommendation:This subject certainly had a lot of interesting content, and the access they give you to cadavers is great and really helps supplement your learning. I know that's something you don't get at a lot of other universities, as unimelb has that body donor program. I feel like I have a great understanding of the human body (of course theres always so much more to learn about the body), and I really enjoyed it.
But as I said before, there is just so much information in this subject, that once you get to the final exams you'll have no idea if what areas/topics that you put the most time into, are even going to pop up. There was a lot of luck in this subject, that determined whether you'd go well in the final exams and get the coveted H1. Either need luck, or you'd better have an eidetic memory!
If you're someone thats concerned about your grades, and you're not doing a major that requires this subject, i would probably not do this subject. You can put so much time and effort into this subject, and its not going to guarantee you a high mark. This subject could distract you from other subjects, and negatively affect your performance in them.
But if you're doing the HSF Major, well you don't really have a choice. And I wish you luck