UoM General Chat

[Shenz0r]

Would you be in Critical Thinking With Data? ARE YOU IN THE LECTURE ROOM I'M SITTING IN RIGHT NOW?! HELLO. 

Nope, I do Body Mind and Medicine . Bad luck brah

[charmanderp]

This thread has been very dull for non-Science and non-Biomed kids recently ):

[Leronziia]

You mean there are courses other than science and biomed? 

 

[vox nihili]

You mean there are courses other than science and biomed? 

 

I actually think there are people in our course who believe this...

[LeviLamp]

Does anyone know how to lodge an official complaint to First Year Biology?

SELF-GRATIFYING RANT

Their handling of (the genetics component of) BIOL10005 has been utterly disappointing and their effective organisation is all over the place. There are errors throughout the workbook, some in lectures, the MID-SEMESTER TEST contained an extremely obvious error and was extraordinarily poorly designed, instructions given for important assignments have been misleading and unclear, and the marking of tutors has been grossly inconsistent. I don't care how sweet Dawn is, this is not okay :Y
Apparently the fact that an (incredibly easy, content-wise) assignment attracted an average of (possibly well) below 10/20 when almost 2000 students completed it should indicate something is wrong on the staff end. I lost 6 marks out of 8 for a question I got all but one tiny detail correct on that most people completely failed to answer (according to my workshop demonstrator) and 2.5/3 marks for spending three hours finding the ONLY not-outdated article that related Arabidopsis genes to cancer (literally the ONLY one THERE WERE OTHER MODEL ORGANISMS WITH HUNDREDS), copy-pasting it and writing down two relevant keywords not already given because WE WEREN'T TOLD TO DO ANYTHING ELSE. This happened to huge numbers of other students I know, most of whom are very conscientious and consistent with their study and the way this is being handled is pathetic :T

[jinny1]

Does anyone know how to lodge an official complaint to First Year Biology?

SELF-GRATIFYING RANT

Their handling of (the genetics component of) BIOL10005 has been utterly disappointing and their effective organisation is all over the place. There are errors throughout the workbook, some in lectures, the MID-SEMESTER TEST contained an extremely obvious error and was extraordinarily poorly designed, instructions given for important assignments have been misleading and unclear, and the marking of tutors has been grossly inconsistent. I don't care how sweet Dawn is, this is not okay :Y
Apparently the fact that an (incredibly easy, content-wise) assignment attracted an average of (possibly well) below 10/20 when almost 2000 students completed it should indicate something is wrong on the staff end. I lost 6 marks out of 8 for a question I got all but one tiny detail correct on that most people completely failed to answer (according to my workshop demonstrator) and 2.5/3 marks for spending three hours finding the ONLY not-outdated article that related Arabidopsis genes to cancer (literally the ONLY one THERE WERE OTHER MODEL ORGANISMS WITH HUNDREDS), copy-pasting it and writing down two relevant keywords not already given because WE WEREN'T TOLD TO DO ANYTHING ELSE. This happened to huge numbers of other students I know, most of whom are very conscientious and consistent with their study and the way this is being handled is pathetic :T

Probably wait for the student feedback survey to open??

[LeviLamp]

That's what I was leaning towards 
Do you know roughly when it opens? During SWOTVAC?

[Ballerina]

Have you checked the MBB2 discussion board?
I copied my answers for the multi choice questions from that, pretty sure at least 90% of them were correct

Yep, but I wanted to collaborate as much as possible to increase the odds of our answers being correct. Some of the questions seem to be up to personal interpretation. Thank you though.

Does anyone know how to lodge an official complaint to First Year Biology?

SELF-GRATIFYING RANT

Their handling of (the genetics component of) BIOL10005 has been utterly disappointing and their effective organisation is all over the place. There are errors throughout the workbook, some in lectures, the MID-SEMESTER TEST contained an extremely obvious error and was extraordinarily poorly designed, instructions given for important assignments have been misleading and unclear, and the marking of tutors has been grossly inconsistent. I don't care how sweet Dawn is, this is not okay :Y
Apparently the fact that an (incredibly easy, content-wise) assignment attracted an average of (possibly well) below 10/20 when almost 2000 students completed it should indicate something is wrong on the staff end. I lost 6 marks out of 8 for a question I got all but one tiny detail correct on that most people completely failed to answer (according to my workshop demonstrator) and 2.5/3 marks for spending three hours finding the ONLY not-outdated article that related Arabidopsis genes to cancer (literally the ONLY one THERE WERE OTHER MODEL ORGANISMS WITH HUNDREDS), copy-pasting it and writing down two relevant keywords not already given because WE WEREN'T TOLD TO DO ANYTHING ELSE. This happened to huge numbers of other students I know, most of whom are very conscientious and consistent with their study and the way this is being handled is pathetic :T

Yeah, there are a lot of mistakes in the lab book. And inconsistent marking. I remember for the prac involving the logarithmic graph, I and the person next to me received full marks for some question about base pairs, but the person across from us with the identical answer received 50%, just because he went directly before us. The question basically used the wrong units - distance travelled was in base pairs or something - so a majority of the class gave the identical wrong answer. But some people were given full marks for their answer if they went after a bunch of people who were given 50%, because it was clear from the preceding people that the question was misphrased. But EVEN THEN, the markers did not admit to the mistake and stated we should have recognized the answer from the context regardless...even though they gave some of us full marks as though the error weren't our fault. Very contradictory.

I actually love the class overall, but there are a few prominent mistakes that I hope they have the humility to rectify. Especially the assignment; if they don't standardize the marks, it only shows propagation of foolishness.

Nope, I do Body Mind and Medicine . Bad luck brah

nuts

[LeviLamp]

The assignment is what gets me, as Dawn has had the audacity to completely overlook the fact the awful marks/fail average were accrued by an incredibly large body of close to 2000 (!) students, perhaps indicating the fault lies with the department, and state she will post feedback and mistakes on the LMS, as though this is somehow compensation (I got the third question on the -surprise test- entirely correct, going off what the workshop demonstrator said, save for not writing that the gene was autosomal yet lost 6 of the 8 available marks with no explanation from my tutor whatsoever, as did my friend (though she lost half a mark less with one additional error I didn't have)) for the confusing, clearly misleading explanation of the assignment and what it entailed.

The assessments (the IMPORTANT BITS) are generally what are most poorly explained and organised, and so the quality of the course as a whole is severely undermined by having 20% of (non-standardised) marks all over the place and completely unaddressed; I also hear there are mistakes on the exam most years, which is really something that should be addressed :T

I also hope Dawn (as the director of first-year biology :/) has the humility to change the errors and standardise the marks (if she doesn't, there's certainly going to be many more low scores than usual, but I remember Calculus 1 didn't change this, so I doubt Dawn would be obliged to either). The subject seems well-run on the surface but it's a complete shambles underneath as far as prac marking, information consistency, accuracy and adequate explanation go.

[jinny1]

idk what happened in 1 year, but i thought biology was well organised and run when i did the subject....

My prac group was awesome; we always helped each other and shared the answers <3

Shame that you guys are experiencing the opposite.

[LeviLamp]

I love my prac group too, they're great and we usually get full marks for everything by helping each other when there's a strange/poorly worded question :3
It doesn't say anything about the inconsistency of marking, though.

[simpak]

Levi, I'm sorry but you can't really get angry about the exam mistakes thing.  What usually happens is one of the following (and yeah, it happens in every subject, it happens in third year subjects and probably Honours and Masters coursework too...it just happens):
a: a student identifies the incorrect question and notifies an assessor
b: statistical analysis programs identify the incorrect question when the top tier of students fails to answer it correctly, giving the question a bad score, this basically looks at how 'good' the question was.

After you identify that a question has been written incorrectly, you must appeal to the Board of Examiners to see if the question can be removed.  It may be removed but not always.  For instance, in Immunology this semester there was a highly ambiguous question that <25% of the class answered correctly (ie chance) and most people thought was incorrect during the exam and kept putting up their hands and being like 'is this correct?'.  Afterwards, the coordinator deliberated with the lecturer who wrote the question because it seemed the majority of the class was completely confused by it, including myself, and the coordinator thought it was unfair.  If you ask me, there was no correct answer given.  But the lecturer who wrote the question stuck by it and said that the answer they chose was definitely correct based on what was taught.  Therefore, despite rating poorly in statistical analysis, it will not be removed from our exam and most people just lose a mark on it.  THE COOKIE CRUMBLES.

The reason that so many of your questions appear wrong is because they're recycled questions, slightly rephrased or reused multiple times even in the same cohort because you all get different mid semester tests.  I know it sucks but it's just honest mistakes, sometimes they get fixed, other times they don't but it's not up to Dawn even as the coordinator to make that decision.  Similarly, when there are assessors even lower down the hierarchy executing a grading scheme they usually don't have the power to agree that a question is incorrectly worded and assure that it will be removed.

If so many people in your class are failing there will definitely be a statistical shift.

Why did it take you 3 hours to find an article on Arabidopsis and cancer?  I'm just genuinely interested, not trying to make you feel bad or anything - was there a specific criterium that you had to fulfil other than that?  I just spent 3 minutes looking and found at least 3 articles since 2011 that have been published on the relationships between Arabidopsis and BRCA genes.  I'm only asking because perhaps if you're not going about locating research articles in the most efficient way some of us could give you some tips to enhance your speed!

[Starlight]

Trust me LeviLamp, if you put in the same amount of hard work in your exam it will pay off in the end! What is it worth anyway like 60%?
Rarely would the biology department ever have an unfair exam especially given the structure of the exam (MC, fill in the blanks, extended response questions). I truly believe that the students who normally receive the top marks will be compensated by the time they get their final subject scores, surely there would have to be same sort of scaling involved if every person technically got <40 or w/e on their subject score, they just would not be able to repeat that many students.

This thread has been very dull for non-Science and non-Biomed kids recently ):

There's nothing stopping arts/ environments students etc. from making a post though. But I get what you mean.

[vox nihili]

Biology is usually pretty good with their exam questions and the way they mark them. I'm on the SSLC for BIOL10003, and it was really clear that they go to great lengths to make sure they get things right with that form of assessment. Additionally, there were some errors on our exams that were actually rectified. They just took them off the total. That said, there were probably a large number of others that weren't changed. Potentially explaining why only one student got 24/25.

That said, you shouldn't abandon your concerns. You highlighted some things I'd certainly agree with about practicals (we do the same as you guys). The inconsistency between demonstrators and tutors is really worrying, and some of the assessment is plainly unfair. One particularly good example of that is a tick drawing we had to do. It wasn't listed in the assessment, and we were told by the lead demonstrator ten minutes before the end that it would be, which is shit, but still doable. Only problem was that there were two slides per table of eight, and it wasn't put on the monitors. So most people (myself included) had to literally guess what a tick looks like under a microscope. We raised this at the SSLC and they laughed about how poorly they were done and some of the errors people made and said they'd clearly taken that on board and would rectify it. It wasn't, which was disappointing.

[charmanderp]

There's nothing stopping arts/ environments students etc. from making a post though. But I get what you mean.

Haha I wasn't being serious, just a lighthearted observation that the last two weeks/six pages have pretty much been monopolised by you guys. Was only joking around though!

And psh, nice try. I wasn't born yesterday, I know environments students don't really exist. They're like the tooth fairy.