BOTA30001 Marine Botany

[DeeN]

Hey guys! Just wanted to know if anyone has done this subject before, and what they thought about it?
I need a Level 3 Science subject that's relatively easy to do well in

[LeviLamp]

I took this subject!! I definitely recommend it It was a weird choice (I chose it over Experimental Marine Biology even though the latter was part of the zoology major), but I don't regret it. Not too hard, and the very small cohort (~24 people in our year) and live-in arrangements with other students make it super-fun. Going and collecting seaweed independently, and doing the (pretty chill) group research project were highlights (though my friend dropped my camera into a tray of seawater  - not fun). Also, you get on a first-name basis with Rick Wetherbee (potentially - he decided to come for the 2014 cohort, but he's retired...). The exams were fair but definitely covered all the content. You also get ~2 weeks to study for the two exams after returning to Melbourne, but the one drawback (imo) is that there are no recordings (since your lecture theatre is in the marine consortium with a view over Swan Bay), so make sure you pay at least some attention to the lectures if you decide to do it.

Disclaimer: it's not a bludge, but if you put in the effort you'll get an H1. If you don't, you'll probably do very badly (I think I recall Heroen, our coordinator, saying that the distribution the year before ours was very bimodal, and the class average was extraordinarily low and required scaling, but our cohort was much stronger and the content had not changed to account for the difference in grades). However, it's not like some sort of next-level complex material and there isn't really too much content, so getting an H1 is absolutely doable. The biggest plus is that the questions were *clear* - you knew what you were supposed to be answering, unlike a subject like Animal Behaviour where you have no clue how to respond to an exam question.

[DeeN]

Rick Wetherbee !! I miss hearing the dulcet tones of his phlegm <3
Yeah I thought the seaweed collection and preservation part sounded like a bit of a joke haha
What did the lab assessment involve?

Sounds like a pretty groovy subject to me! Were the lecturers good?

[LeviLamp]

Rick Wetherbee !! I miss hearing the dulcet tones of his phlegm <3
Yeah I thought the seaweed collection and preservation part sounded like a bit of a joke haha
What did the lab assessment involve?

Sounds like a pretty groovy subject to me! Were the lecturers good?

The seaweed collection is actually more challenging than you think - I'd make sure to get on top of it during the subject (I tried to find a specimen to fulfil my last couple of criteria in Williamstown and very luckily got a piece from some floating driftwood), and the I.D. of the species can be a major headache (especially for Rhodomelaceae) - but it's a pretty easy 10% and apparently leniently marked. The lab assessment exam was watching videos, doing some I.D. keys, answering questions about diagrams and so on. There were a bunch of stations you'd move between for the specimen-based questions, and for the other half of the exam it was all about the videos on-screen; you had to answer questions as they went because they wouldn't show the video again.

The lecturers were good, except for the physiology guy (who Heroen says they want to replace and modify that part of the course for) (he takes two lectures), and maybe Jan (she's really nice but a bit slow in terms of speaking).