Subject Code/Name: BIOL10002 Biomolecules and Cells Workload: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 hour tutorial (weekly), 2 hour practical (fortnightly)
Assessment: A 20 minute multiple choice test held mid-semester (5%); work related to practical classes during the semester with a combination of assessment of practical skills within the practical class, completion of 4 or 5 on-line pre-practical tests + written work within the practical not exceeding 500 words + and 4 or 5 short multiple choice tests (25%); completion of 5 Independent Learning Tasks throughout the semester (5%); a written assignment not exceeding 500 words (5%); a 3 hour examination on theory and practical work in the examination period (60%).
Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. an 80% attendance at the practical classes together with a result for the assessed practical work of at least 50%).
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture (they even record the actual lecturers too!)
Past exams available: No, but there was a sample exam which had more questions than an actual exam. Solutions were provided. Moreover, there are some additional questions provided for certain topics (a sample MST and questions from Mary Familari on her content were provided).
Textbook Recommendation: D Sadava, D M Hillis, H G Heller, M R Berenbaum, Life. 11th Ed. Sinaver/Freeman, 2016 is recommended by the coordinator and lecturers do assign pre-readings, but this really isn’t required. Students who use the textbook mainly do so to reaffirm concepts which were unclear in lectures.
Lecturer(s):Coordinator: Prof. Dawn Gleeson
W1-3: Prof. Geoff McFadden, Lectures 1-9; Cell Biology.
W4-5, 9-10: Dr Mary Familari, Lectures 10-13, 23-27; Cell signalling, Homeostasis (endocrine & nervous systems), Immune system, Stem cells.
W5-7: Dr Lisa Godinho, Lectures 14-20; Cardiovascular, Circulatory, Respiratory, and Osmoregulatory systems.
W8: Prof. David Gardner, Lectures 21 & 22; Digestive system
W10-12: Dr Alexandra Harvey, Lectures 28-33; Reproductive system, Development, Animal taxa.
Year & Semester of completion:2018 Semester 1
Rating: 4.5/5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments: Overview & Tips: All in all, this was a very enjoyable subject to take which was also a nice transition from high school to Uni. The content was largely stimulating and the assessments were very accessible to all students. A great thing about this subject is that you can really maximise your score by doing well in your ‘pre-exam’ assessments given this is 40% of your grade.
When planning your timetable, I would suggest placing your tutorials before your practicals - this is because sometimes the tutors give you a few tips about the prac at the start of the tutes. Also, note that the MST for this subject is completed during your tute time, so you may want to be careful when choosing a time for your tute (i.e. morning or afternoon, the start of the week or the end of the week). That said, don’t just choose a time later in the week in the hopes that you’ll hear questions from other students because they make multiple versions of the MST, so you will most likely get a different question set. Therefore, I guess make your choice based on whether you focus better during the morning or afternoon. Furthermore, when choosing a prac time, I would try avoid pracs on Monday - this is because you will not find out the in-prac assessment before the actual prac, so everyone who does it on Monday essentially walks in blind with no knowledge on what is going to be assessed. Sometimes tutors will tell you in your tutes, but generally you will find out from other people who have done it before you (for some pracs it won’t really matter, for others it can make a difference - for instance, the assessment for prac 1 could’ve been completed at home beforehand, so preparing and perfecting your responses here would pretty much guarantee a 6/6).
In regards to doing well in this subject, I would first point out that the main difference between High School and your 1st year BIOL subjects is that there is a much greater focus on rote learning mass amounts of content as opposed to critically thinking about the content. For instance, there were never any application type questions in the MST or exam (at least ones you would find in VCAA papers); instead, questions such as labelling the kidney structure or regurgitating the differences between the innate vs adaptive immune response would be tested. In this sense, I was actually surprised that the difficulty wasn’t necessarily regarding the way questions were asked; the difficulty mainly arises due to the large amount of
detailed info you need to know for the assessments (I bold detailed here, since some answers require very intricate details. For example, you may be asked how many grams of sugar there are in a can of coke [this was in our exam lol], or the disease which arises due to a lack of vitamin b - both concepts which are presented in lectures for perhaps less than a minute or so but then show up on exams). Therefore, I’d really recommend keeping up to date with all your lecture content (though I was up to week 5 content in SWOTVAC
), and studying by using heaps of
diagrams! Here, what I did was print out unlabelled diagrams (such as a picture on nephron structure, or perhaps the development of a zygote) and then label them and outline any related info (e.g. the structure’s name and function) - this will help a lot for section b of the exam (which I’ll discuss below). Another study tool is to write out paragraphs on processes (i.e. section c practice), which again I’ll discuss below (though I started doing this for BIOL10003).
A final note - in my opinion, completing VCE Biology (units 1-4) is an enormous help for this subject (especially year 11 given the large focus on systems), but is by no means a requirement to get a H1. From my experience, my friends who didn’t do VCE Biol struggled quite a lot in learning all the new jargon in the subject, since a large portion is learned during year 11 and 12 Bio, and sometimes the lecturers don’t really explain what certain terms mean. That said, doing VCE Biol doesn’t guarantee a high mark either - a number of my friends who got above 40 in Biol got low 70s in the subject, so work definitely needs to be placed in this subject for a H1 - this is because although a large portion is taken from VCE Bio, there definitely is a greater level of knowledge needed for concepts which were in VCE (mainly the info was much more advanced for all the systems content) and there were at times completely new concepts (such as cell development and animal taxa).
Lectures :
For us, all lectures started at 8am and ran on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Also, note that because the biomed cohort is increasingly expanding, the lecture rooms are generally over-filled in the first 3 weeks. Therefore, since this will probably be your first lecture at the uni, make sure you’re early and grab a seat! I remember having to sit on the floor for my very first lecture (not a great way to start the semester hahahaha). But as the semester goes by, you’ll see the attendance rate dropping (for me, I stopped watching lectures after week 4... 100% do not recommend).
Geoff, the first lecturer, presented quite basic content on cell biology. His content was similar to the VCE curriculum and concerned prokaryotes, eukaryotes, the plasma membrane, proteins & enzymes, cellular respiration, endosymbiosis, cell division, and carbohydrates & nucleic acids. As a result, the first three weeks were pretty chill since the only new important info was the differences between archaea, bacteria, and eukarya (which appears again in BIOL10003), and content about the specifics of the cytoskeleton. As a lecturer, Geoff was really good, and he showed quite a handful of videos and diagrams in comparison to the other lecturers. Note though that because of this, his slides at times lack info - for instance, he may just have pictures for slides for cellular respiration, but then you can be expected to write a 10 mark essay question on it for the exam in section c. So when reviewing his content, look thoroughly at the diagrams he shows, since you’ll soon find that diagrams are very assessable and often form the basis of those intricate and detailed questions I mentioned earlier.
Next, we had Mary who taught us her first portion of lecture content on tissue types, homeostasis, cellular signalling, and the endocrine system. Imo, this is when the course begins to get a bit more challenging given the appearance of a fair bit of new content, such as learning the different types of tissues (epithelial, muscle, connective, and nervous), and the specifics of certain cellular process such as the effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline and the secondary messenger pathway involved. That said, Mary was a very good and enthusiastic lecturer and provided us with study questions as revision for both the MST and the exam.
The third lecturer was Lisa. She presented content on most of the systems, including the cardiovascular, circulatory, respiratory, and osmoregulatory systems. The foundational knowledge was very similar to year 11 Biology, but it was interesting to learn the systems at a much greater level. In my opinion, Lisa was the best lecturer (though I could be bias since I liked her content the most), and it was awesome that she used Poll Ev at the beginning of every lecture to review what we had learned in the previous lecture. As mentioned above, diagrams are SUPER important if you’re looking to do well in her section b questions, since a thorough understanding of what the system looks like is required. For us, we got a question on the osmoregulatory system, but she had sneakily inverted the Loop of Henle, so if a student didn’t know the structure well enough to notice, that would’ve been a solid 5-10% of the exam mark gone.
After Lisa, we had David Gardener who presented two lectures: the former on nutrition and the latter on the digestive system. In my opinion, David was not a very good lecturer since he was largely unenthusiastic and was frankly boring (though not the worst, Alex is coming up). His first lecture was honestly such a mess given the content which was assessable was super unclear - he had tables listing all the vitamins and minerals, and when asked the question “do we need to know this”, he responded “yes, because it’s important for your everyday lifestyle” in the lecture
(Just to let you know, the only examinable ones were vitamin B, C, and D. You just needed to know if they were water or fat soluble, what they did in the body, and what disease would arise if there was a deficiency of the vitamin). That said, his content on leptin and it’s role in weight gain was extremely interesting. His second lecture on the other hand was much more engaging given the step-up from year 11 bio.
Afterwards, we had Mary again to deliver her second set of lecture content: the nervous system (in two parts), the immune system, and stem cells. The first part of the nervous system was pretty cool since it was entirely new (I guess if you’ve done VCE psych it’d probably be familiar); this concerned concepts such as the different regions of the brain and their functions as well as certain diseases which arise when there are abnormalities in certain regions, and the different phases of sleep. The stem cells lecture was also super fascinating.
Finally, we were punished with Alex who presented content on the reproductive system, cell development, and animal taxa. Personally, I was extremely interested about learning development before we had Alex since the field of IVF has always been fascinating to me; however, Alex really put me off from the concept (that said I still have hope that MCB will re-ignite that passion and will influence me to take the cell and developmental bio major). In my (probably very popular) opinion, she was extremely disengaging and dull - it was almost like she didn’t want to be there. In addition, she would often go on tangents and use terms which were defined later in the slides, which made it so challenging to understand what she was saying (for example, she began her first lecture on fertilisation using terms such as ‘cumulus oophorus’ and ‘zona pellucida’ without explaining their meaning until the end the lecture). Because of this, it takes about 2 to 3 hours to watch one of her lectures on lecture capture given you have to constantly rewind the lecture to note down all the terms and processes she mentions which aren’t addressed on the slides. Also, if you haven’t already heard, animal taxa is the bane of most students’ existence in this subject given how dry the content is (though it’s taught much better in BIOL10003). Luckily I think we had only two multiple choice on it in the exam, and I think they were the exact same multiple choice from the sample exam.
Tutorials :
The tutorials for BIOL10002 consisted of a classroom of about 20 students with one tutor (i.e. the teacher), and were overall quite useful. In the tutes, you will go through a powerpoint slide prepared from the tutor, which covers content from the previous week of lectures as well as associated revision questions. These questions aren’t really exam-style questions, but are designed to help you remember the content. Because I was pretty slack with the subject, I stopped doing the homework questions after week 2 lol, but they seemed quite helpful as a revision tool during the semester (based on a quick skim the day before the exam hahahaha). Most importantly, I found that tutes helped a lot in highlighting what type of content is assessable, especially given the fact that it’s the first Uni exam you will be taking from the transition from VCE. I had Sarah as my tutor, and she was absolutely amazing - because she used to be in charge of marking all the exams in previous years, she would often give us tips on what to study based on what showed up in previous exams (for example, she would mention that in X year, X lecturer briefly mentioned X content but it came up in the MST/exam). In addition, she included a lot of practice section c questions in her tutes, and more importantly emphasised how they mark it.
Practicals :
In total, we completed 6 pracs, as listed below:
Introductory practical - using the microscope: here, we went through setting up a compound (light) microscope and learning how to
properly complete biological drawings. This was pretty simple stuff and you most likely would’ve done this in high school, but just note how to complete a biological drawing correctly, since this will be assessed in future pracs in both this subject and BIOL10003 (i.e. know exactly how to write a title, get the magnification, how big a drawing should be, etc.). Note: this prac was not assessed.
Practical 1 - cell structure: here, we stained a plant cell and observed it in a light microscope, we observed the effect of osmosis under the microscope when rhubarb cells were placed in different solute concentrations, and had to prepare a slide of from a living plant cell. For this prac, questions from the booklet about osmosis and a drawing from the living plant cell were assessed for in-prac. Note that the osmosis questions could’ve been completed before the prac.
Practical 2 - cells and tissues: here, we had to identify whether a solution for blood plasma was hypertonic, hypotonic, or isotonic by preparing certain solutions with blood. Next, certain carbohydrate substrates were mixed with yeast to determine which solutions could be metabolised by the yeast. For this prac, a hand-in sheet for the blood activity was assessed for in-prac (from memory, this was about whether you identified the solutions correctly in your experiment and your definitions of hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic).
Practical 3 - heart and lungs: here, we had to observe the texture and volume of a mass of lung tissue in comparison to liver tissue, and then observe a section of lung tissue under the microscope. Next, we had to dissect a heart. For this prac, the in-prac assessment was to correctly identify two parts of the dissected heart and to give a function of a third part (the parts were chosen by the prac demonstrator), as well as a hand-in sheet which was about correctly labelling where gas exchange occurs in a the lung from a microscope cross-section and explaining why (i.e. Fick’s law).
Practical 4 - structure and function of the mammalian digestive system: here, we had to mix a different digestive enzymes with different substrates in various test tubes to identify the digestive enzyme and substrate pair, and what effect the reaction had (i.e. colour change, mass change, etc.) Next, we had to dissect a rat and observe it’s digestive system. For this prac, the in-prac assessment was to correctly identify two parts of the dissected rat’s digestive system and to give a function of a third part (the parts were chosen by the prac demonstrator).
Practical 5 - comparative reproduction: here, we had to dissect a rat and a frog and compare it’s reproductive systems. For this prac, the in-prac assessment was to correctly identify two parts of the dissected rat’s (and maybe frog, I can’t really remember) reproductive system and to give a function of a third part (the parts were chosen by the prac demonstrator).
For the BIOL10002 pracs, you complete these in the Redmund Barry labs. Here, I’d say there are about ~120 students in the lab, with each bench holding ~7/8 students on each side. For most pracs you generally work individually, but there are some cases where you work in pairs. In terms of timing, there is a person who announces to the entire group the timeline for the practical, and I found that the bio pracs aren’t that challenging to finish in time (in fact you often finish 15 minutes early). A prac demonstrator will manage your bench and will help you out with any questions you have, and will mark your in-prac assessment.
For each practical, there is an instruction booklet you receive which details all the associated content, steps to complete the experiment, and some questions which are meant to help with the post-prac tests. For practicals 1-5, each is worth 10 marks, with 1 mark coming from a pre-prac quiz, 6 marks coming from the in-prac assessments (which I’ve listed above), and the remaining 3 marks coming from a post-pracs test. The pre-prac quiz was just an online test with 10 multiple choice; this was untimed and just tested if you read the instruction booklet (i.e. there is nothing to stress about here, all you need to do is have the booklet open with you while you do the quiz and all the answers are in the booklet). To the the 1 mark, you need to get 8 questions out of 10 (tbh this is essentially free marks). The in-prac assessment is generally completed at the end of each prac. I personally found it quite simple to full mark these if you prepared adequately for the pracs; however many people I spoke to found it challenging to get high marks in the prac component. There were two post prac tests - one is completed while you do your MST in your tute; the other one is a timed test completed at the very end of the semester on the LMS. These test both the content from the instruction booklets, and more importantly the results you received from your pracs (particularly the activities you do which aren’t assessed during the in-prac assessment). They are both multiple choice (I think they were both out of 15); the first post-prac test covered the introductory prac, prac 1, and prac 2, while the second covered prac 3 - 5. Apparently doing the questions in the instruction booklets help for these, but I was pretty lazy so I wouldn’t know
. Just make sure you have your results and the content with you while you do the tests.
Just something to note about practicals:
each practical is 5% of your final mark. I think most students forget this, especially when you compare the time put into doing well in pracs versus the MST or the assignment. If you want to do well, make sure you do well in every prac.
MST :
The MST, which is 5% of the final mark, was completed in week 7 and covered Geoff’s and Mary’s content (lectures 1 - 13). This was 15 question multiple choice (I think). For preparation, there is a sample MST with addition questions. In general, the MST forces you to revise the first portion of the course and will give you an indication on how you are going, hence it’s a pretty useful assessment. Overall, it was quite easy to do well in it given the multiple choice weren’t too tricky; I’m pretty sure the average was 11 or 12 out of 15. Just a hint - the lecturers are aware of the overlap between the VCE course and this subject, so they like to test things which are new for all students (therefore expect a few MCs which cover new content).
The Assignment :
The assignment, which is 5% of the final mark, was due in week 8 and was about temperature change and it’s effect on hormone concentrations. In summary, we were given data for an experiment and we had to present the data in a graph, write up results, and write up a discussion. Although this sounds simple, the average for this assessment was around high 50s to low 60s. This is because they are
very strict when marking. Just a few tips: make sure your graph is
perfect - essentially, people who had a ‘complicated’ graph not only lost marks in that section, but also lost marks in their results and discussion since every time they referred to the graph they’d lose marks. The difficulty with the results is the word limit - to get around this, change up your sentence structures (don’t write "X increases as Y increases. Z decreases as Y increases”. Instead frame your sentence like “as Y increases, X increases and Z decreases”), connect your units together (e.g. 20mins instead of 20 mins - that way, it’s counted as 1 word instead of 2), and use hyphens with no spaces (20degrees-40degrees instead of 20 degrees - 40 degrees, this cuts 3 words in this case alone). With the discussion, include your data and
explain it in full. The final bit to be marked is your reference list - to make sure you do this properly, visit re:cite unimelb.
Independent Learning Tasks :
There were about 5 ILTs: these were an online study tool which went through content, followed by a series of 8 to 10 multiple choice questions on the content. Generally, the ILTs complemented the lecture material, but there were a few which were quite different (such as the one on blood components). The ILTs contributed 5% to the final mark, and are really free marks; they are there just to help you with your revision. That said, don’t be complacent and forget to do them (your tutors will remind you but you’d be surprised by the amount of people that forget to complete them). To get the 5%, you need to average 80% or above over all the ILTs.
The Exam :
The exam, which is 170 marks and contributes 60% to the final mark, is divided into three sections: section a (multiple choice), section b (fill in the blank), and section c (the essay section). To my memory, section a was ~50ish marks and divided into two types of multiple choice: the first handful are 1 markers and are just basic re-call questions, the next bunch are 2 markers and are deemed to be more challenging (though most of them were still pretty simple). Section b was ~70ish marks with ~8 or 9 questions; here, there would either be a paragraph of text with gaps and you would have to fill in the blanks, or there would be diagrams with blank labels and you would have to complete the labels (therefore revising this subject using diagrams will help enormously). The final section was 40 marks, with three questions: question 1 and 2 being 10 marks each, and question 2 being 20 marks. Thankfully, Dawn Gleeson (the coordinator for the subject) will tell you which lecturer wrote which question in your final lecture (which is a summary lecture that goes over the frontiers of biomedical research, exam procedures at unimelb, and other stuff for jaffys). For us, question 1 was written by Geoff, question 2 was written by Alex, and question 3 was a combination of Mary’s and Lisa’s content.
Section A is probably the easiest part of the exam, though as mentioned above, they can test very specific details. The best way to prepare for section c is to write up paragraphs going through processes (e.g. the process of egg or sperm development, the process of cell development, etc.). Although this is an ‘essay’ section, just be able to write about a page or two for the questions. Imo, the hardest part of the exam is probably section b, since some of the options may require very specific knowledge, so don’t stress too much for the section c since you’ll generally be able to write on the topics listed (that said, they may throw in a minor topic to really separate the cohort - they did this with us, but if you studied your lectures properly you would’ve been fine).
In my experience, the exam only covered lecture content, so I wouldn’t bother revising ILT or prac content. In terms of timing, it’s very easy to finish the exam in time; the tutors and lecturers recommend a minute a mark, but since most multiple choice are simple recall, you can finish the multiple choice earlier and spend more time on the section c.
Also, note that the Biol exam is 3 hours long and is always held on the very first day during the exam period.
tl;dr If you work consistently in this subject and appreciate the content you learn, you’ll certainly do very well at the end of they day - good luck!