Uni Stuff > University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
gongchan:
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30008 Drugs: From Discovery to Market
Workload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week (total contact hours: 36) Total Time Commitment: 120 hours
Assessment: Continuing assessment 10% Mid-semester assessment 20% A 2 hour examination in the examination period 70%
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: Yes, one provided (subject began last year), past questions from other relevant subjects also provided. However, no past midsemesters available.
Textbook Recommendation: None prescribed. Recommended:Pharmacology, Rang et al., Churchill Livingstone, 6th edition, 2007 OR Principles of Pharmacology, Golan et al., Lippincott, Wilkins & Williams, 2nd edition, 2007. Not really "needed"; I didn't look through them last semester.
Lecturer(s): (could have missed some) Michael Lew, Tony Hughes, Ross Bathgate, Alastair Stewart, Gary Anderson, Peter McIntyre
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1
Rating: 4 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments: This subject is required for a pharmacology major. It goes through some basic pharmacological principles in more depth than Pharmacology: How Drugs Work (level 2), and talks about the drug discovery process. The "continuing assessment" consists of online multiple choice tests with a lot of time to look up the answer if you don't know, and a lot of people get full marks on them (or close to it). The midsemester test had a lot of time pressure (and all essay/short answer), and the average mark was 50% this year. The final exam also had no multiple choice and was all essays, and you had to choose 6/7 topics to write on. However, it was less pressured for time than the midsemester.
gongchan:
Subject Code/Name: PHRM30009 Drugs in Biomedical Experiments
Workload: Contact Hours: one x 3 hour practicals per week plus two x 1 hour workshops per week (total contact hours: 60) Total Time Commitment: 120 hours
Assessment: Continuing assessment of practicals during the semester (40%); Mid-semester assessment (20%); A 2-hour written examination in the examination period (40%).
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: Yes, one midsemester provided, one exam. (out of two previous semesters)
Textbook Recommendation: Course Manual (Provided) (no cost). No textbook prescribed or recommended, although pharmacology knowledge from theory subjects will help.
Lecturer(s): (not complete) Michael Lew, James Ziogas, Graham Mackay, Alastair Stewart, Peter McIntyre
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1
Rating: 3 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) H1 (barely)
Comments: The subject is a practical subject, available in semester one and two, and compulsory for the pharmacology (biomed or sci) major. Compared to some other practical subjects (from what I hear) it is pretty laid back (not assessed each week), but sometimes pracs can be up to 4 hours long. The midsemester and final exam in semester one felt harder than last year's ones which we had for practice. They can sometimes throw strange questions (non multiple choice) to do with hypothesis generation etc. That said, to do reasonably well in the exam doesn't really require that much hardcore knowledge.
gongchan:
Subject Code/Name: BIOM30002 Biomedicine: Molecule to Malady
Workload: Contact Hours: Three 1-hour lectures per week plus two 1-hour tutorials per semester (note: the tutorials are a timetabling artifact; they are just spots to make up for lectures due to the tests, because they wanted to keep 36 total "learning" lectures I guess). Total Time Commitment: 120 hours
Assessment: 2x Intra-semester tests (20% each) at around weeks 5 and 9; 3 hr written examination in the final examination period (60%). (note: There are 6 themes. Two are assessed in each midsemester in MC format (4 out of 6 in total), but in the end of year exam the last two are assessed for 1/3 of the exam mark in MC format (ie 20% of total like the midsemesters) and the rest is a choice of short answer questions for 4 themes out of 6)
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: None, but sample short answer/essay questions given.
Textbook Recommendation: None prescribed.
Lecturer(s): Various
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1
Rating: 4 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H2A
Comments: It was quite interesting to learn about 6 major types of "maladies". Like the biomed cores from second year onwards though, it was not easy, although a lot of people received H1s on the midsemesters.
I guess you don't really have a choice with this subject though; if you're in biomed you have to do it, but if you're outside biomed, you can't do it at all. The choice has already been made for you :P.
gongchan:
Subject Code/Name: MAST20026 Real Analysis with Applications
Workload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 4 x one-hour computer laboratory classes during semester Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours
Assessment: Ten to twelve written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 50 pages (20%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%). (no multiple choice)
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture, however, the lecturer does a lot of working out on the whiteboard which is not recorded.
Past exams available: Yes, about four, but as someone else on is thread pointed out, only one for this subject was useful because for some reason the lecturers all seem to teach different stuff for this one subject. The lecturer gave us plenty of practice from Accelerated Math 2 past exams though.
Textbook Recommendation: None prescribed
Lecturer(s): Barry Hughes
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Semester 1
Rating: 5 Out of 5 (in terms of interest if you like math, but don't expect it to be easy!)
Your Mark/Grade: H1 (barely)
Comments: As stated by someone else on this thread, this subject goes into the deeper and more fundamental levels of mathematics. It's very rigorous. It's also way harder than calculus 2 and linear algebra, so I wouldn't recommend it as breadth or an elective if you found those difficult.
I found the depth that this subject went into was quite interesting, although like the other reviewer of this subject, I was frustrated with having to explain almost every minor detail in my working. For instance, you can't just use L'Hopital's rule by saying (0/0) or something without saying f is continous, g is continous bla bla bla, and can't just say the limit of 1/x as x approaches infinity is 0 without further explanation.
The labs were not assessed, but somewhat useful.
gongchan:
Subject Code/Name: MAST10007 Linear Algebra
Workload: Contact Hours: Summer Semester: 6 x one hour lectures per week, 2 x one hour practice classes per week, 2 x one hour computer laboratory classes per week.
Semester 1 and 2: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours
Assessment: Summer semester: Five written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 25 pages (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held at the end of semester (10%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).
Semester 1 and 2: Ten written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 25 pages (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held at the end of semester (10%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).
Lectopia Enabled: I think so (never used it).
Past exams available: Yes, >4
Textbook Recommendation: Prescribed text: Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 10th edn, Wiley, 2010. (not required). There were course notes which you are supposed to fill in during lectures available at the bookshop.
Lecturer(s): Prof Peter Forrester
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 Summer
Rating: 4 Out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments: This subject is mainly covering the use of matrices in many different ways. I thought it was pretty easy, although that said, I did do well in math in high school. In summer, I got 3 lectures a day for 2 days a week, and for 6 weeks. The first several lectures were quite boring, because the lecturer taught a concept and then did heaps of examples which were slightly different from one another, where you'd expect to "get" the concept on the first example (although that said, I guess not everyone is strong in math). It got better as the semester progressed.
I personally found the labs to be the most difficult part of this subject, due to the coding involved, but very little knowledge of it (apart from quite basic commands) is required for the lab test.
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