BIOL10004: Biology of Cells and Organisms: BIOL10004 Biology of Cells and OrganismsWorkload: 35 lectures, 5 practicals (and one additional introductory prac), 5 ILTs and 6 optional workshops. This adds up to about 60 hours of course delivery time.
Assessment: I'll outline each component of assessment in a little more depth below.
ILTs: A very easily obtained 5% buffer to add to your final mark. You read through all the information the ILT presents and then take a final test on the content. To the best of my knowledge, the ILTs are examinable (but make up a very minor component of the exam), so it might be a good idea to read back over them and try to internalise their key points. The test can be done with the ILT readings/activities open in a separate tab, so you can score well on these (not that it matters, you get the 1% for passing each ILT) simply by looking back at the material covered by each task.
Pracs: Worth a substantial 25% of the final subject mark, it is in your best interests to try and do well in these! The pracs in 2013 involved an introductory (no marks awarded, but sadly this was a hurdle requirement) microscope use prac. It only goes for one hour and is incredibly simple to do well in. You should be made to take an online prelab for this prac; use it to become acquainted with the style of online testing the Biology department uses. The ASSESSED pracs included one on cell structure, one on photosynthesis and leaf structure (isobilateral and dorsiventral leaves are important for some reason, so make sure to not mix them up on the post-prac), water movement in plants (which forms the basis of the 10% assignment), heart and lung structure and function and the analysis of a mouse's digestive system. Please note that first year Biology will allow alternative provisions to be made for those who conscientiously object to dissecting animal remains, though I am unaware of exactly how the department compromises.
Pracs are, on the whole, very slow in pace and often quite dull, though I enjoyed the first, fourth and fifth pracs well enough. Make sure to complete the assessable portion of the prac first; there are always a number of activities set for each prac block and there's never enough time to finish all of them, but as most of them are non-assessable you should be fine ignoring them (though they may come up on the postprac if you're unlucky, you can always read through the prac notes and reason your way through any relevant questions). Prac demonstrators can be kind or harsh with their marking, but if you show that you know your stuff (and listen to what they say in the pre-lab tutorial!) then you probably won't be penalised much. Also, MAKE SURE TO COMPLETE THE PRE- AND POST-PRAC TESTS! Together, they account for 50% of each prac mark, or about 3% of your subject mark, which is -substantial-. The password for the post-prac will be given at the beginning of each practical. If you miss a prac, do NOT get the password for the post-prac off another student and do it to scrounge some marks, as the Biology department is very likely to get mad at you.
Overall, pracs are a rather annoying but fairly easy way to gain marks for these subjects, if you're careful with the post-prac questions and read the prac notes before the prac (something I occasionally failed to do, to my own detriment).
AssignmentWhat a load of shit. Worth 10% of your final grade, this is the reason the subject gets 4.5/5; it's dreadfully designed, incredibly harshly marked (and inconsistently too, depending on your tutor), and far too short even for people attempting to be concise. The department have stated they won't be changing the assignment because it gives them such a nice grade distribution, and the staff are too nice to get angry at, so you're stuck with this annoying thing whether you like it or not. Be INCREDIBLY pedantic with your referencing, make sure your spellcheck doesn't change potometer to pedometer (and other similar errors), USE a reference in your introduction even if you don't need to read anything to present the information. Use italics for the name of the plant, say "leafy shoots" and not "leaves", subscript for the 2 in CO2, that kind of thing. If you don't, you will lose marks, and it adds up! I still managed to scrounge 8.25/10, but this assignment ruined many people who thought they'd done fantastically. BE AS ANAL AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY BE, and you might find that you're reasonably successful.
Mid-Semester TestThis test covers all of Rick and most of Andrew's lectures, with the unfortunate side-effect of having fewer easy cell biology questions to answer on the final exam. If you study and complete the provided sample MST, you should be fine. I did a fairly modest amount of study for this and still managed to get a 22/25 (the average was 17 or 18, which is quite high!). Don't exhaust yourself studying for this, but at the same time do make the time to go over all the past lectures, lecture summaries and your own notes. This is a fairly easy way of obtaining 8-10% of your final mark.
ExamI really do have to commend the Biology department for their production of such a fair and rewarding final exam. I'd made a few minor blunders over the semester, and this exam really helped me make up for those (I got about 95% on the exam, and I suspect my dodgy extended response answers were to blame for most of that lost 5%). There are FOUR sections on the exam. Section A is comprised of a number of multiple choice questions which total to give 60/180 marks on the exam. For the most part, if you've studied adequately, these won't be too hard, but may occasionally require you to think about a given problem. There were a few tough ones there to differentiate the students that really paid attention and those who were kind of winging it using their VCE Biology knowledge, so don't get complacent. These are not free marks, and I'd say Section B was far easier to complete.
Sections B and C are both "fill in the blanks" sections, where you pick a number corresponding to a specific word option and fill in the gaps to complete biologically focused sentences and paragraphs, or to accurately label a diagram. Sections B and C can cover pretty much any concept, so be prepared, but there are usually only a few sensible options to choose from for each blank, if it's not completely obvious, so there's lots of room for educated guessing. Mark Elgar's B and C questions are weird in the sense that he prefers to have you form grammatically tidy sentences rather than fill in scientific terms, and Geoff Shaw evidently LOVES sex, but other than that, a very fair component of the exam, and also very heavily weighted. Again, if you studied well, you'll be A-OK (though one or two of the answers may be difficult to get, the VAST majority are quite mainstream in terms of content and shouldn't push you too hard). Section D is the big gamble, but thankfully is only worth 16%. You get NO QUESTION CHOICE, so don't be fooled by the sample exam like much of the cohort (who clearly didn't read the front page :V). They can ask anything they like over these three questions and you need to be able to answer their questions in a logical and coherent manner. There's no way 2013's content will be the same as 2014's, so I won't go into the questions themselves, but PLEASE think about how to clearly write out your answers and make sure you can apply some basic practical skills (there was a prac-style question in the ER worth 10 marks). One thing I will say again; Geoff Shaw LOVES sex. Never before have I written the words "penis", "vagina" and "period" on an exam together, let alone labelled and/or drawn four diagrams of reproductive tracts and systems.
In terms of who sets the fairest questions, Rick's section will make you happy if you put some time into learning his things during the semester, and Andrew's parts were all very fair (though not as easy as Rick's, there wasn't anything to fault and a wide range of topics were examined). Geoff's questions covered a lot of the nitty-gritty details that you wouldn't think would crop up, but they did (alongside many very simple questions, I should add) and so I'd say his exam questions were the most challenging for students. Stephen's were quite easy, though he did try to cause some headaches with less clear-cut questions in Sections B and C. Mark Elgar's questions are very strange, and you will need a decent grasp of English grammar to successfully complete his Section B/C questions, whether or not you remember his examples. On that note, DO learn all his examples, because you WILL need to know them. However, his questions were really very simple if you knew what you were doing.
Really, a very fair exam with few faults or gripes, and I think it did a great job of assessing who knew their shit and who had no clue what was going on.
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, but occasionally Geoff Shaw forgot to properly set up the recordings. His lectures are better for voice-based note-taking anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. That said, I strongly encourage you to go to the lectures as well as watch them/listen to them again on Lectopia.
Past exams available: One sample exam. The difficulty is similar to that of the actual exam, and the style of questions each lecturer uses is also quite similar. There was one (maybe?) recycled multiple choice question I noticed on the exam itself, worth 2 marks, so don't expect to blitz the exam because you did the sample exam - STUDY THE CONTENT THOROUGHLY and you will mow down the exam. If you don't revise all the lecture content and rely on having done well on practice tests and online assessments the exam will mow you down instead.
Textbook Recommendation: R B Knox, P Y Ladiges, B K Evans and R Saint, Biology, An Australian Focus 4th Ed, McGraw-Hill, 2009.
The textbook is useful, but don't do what I did and attempt to answer questions from it (if you must, draw the line at short answer) because it'll only make you confused and feel like you don't know any of the content. Probably worth a buy if you're continuing with biology in first year, and especially if you're planning on taking BIOL10001 in the subsequent semester.
The Biology department also publishes a loose leaf subject manual that you MUST buy, new, from the university's Co-op store; all practical assessment is completed and marked (!) in this book, and it contains a plethora of useful worksheets, tutorial sheets and other such things if you feel like completing them (hardly necessary but probably useful!) Binding it is a good idea to avoid it becoming crumpled up paper mess.
Lecturer(s): I'll discuss the lecturers individually below.
Rick Wetherby - Life's Origins and Cell BiologyFriendly lecturer, very clear and well-paced with fairly comprehensive notes and useful lecture summaries (provided on LMS). His voice is fantastic. At the end of his teaching stint he'll email you a list of things to revise for the MST and exam. He seems to love the phrase "no trick questions!". VERY keen on endosymbiosis.
Andrew Drinnan - Respiration, Photosynthesis and Plant SciencePerhaps not favoured by students as people tend to dislike or be averse to plant science, but I quite liked him. To get everything out of his lectures, I strongly suggest going home and listening to what he's saying, then taking notes based on that. He moves a little too fast to write down everything important, but rest assured most of what he says IS important. Fairly interesting, his content was interesting as well, save for respiration (don't kill me, I LIKED plant science). Strangely obsessed with marijuana.
Geoff Shaw - Circulatory and Respiratory Systems, Homeostasis, Reproduction and Animal DevelopmentSex-obsessed old man who really lights up your day. I doubt I'll forget him in a hurry! Covers perhaps some of the trickiest concepts of the course, and also says many important things that aren't covered by his slides. A joy to listen to; I'm sure you'll get a few laughs out of his course segment even if you find the content dull or challenging.
Stephen Frankenberg - Animals and Their Interactions With Their EnvironmentsRather slow voice, but this is made up for with fantastic pictures and videos. You can tell Stephen is enthusiastic about the course, but he's a little too socially awkward to bring his enthusiasm out. What he covers is fairly simple if you pay attention in lectures. Don't miss anything - the concepts he covers are easier to understand if you have the whole picture. Strangely endearing man who looks nothing like his lecture slide photograph.
Mark Elgar - Evolutionary Mechanisms, Ecology and Animal BehaviourFairly pretentious and stuffy, and maybe a little slow with content delivery, he seemed to be most peoples' least favourite lecturer, but even he wasn't terrible, more mediocre and too preoccupied with his research colleagues. He'll tell you he dislikes assessing specifics, but all his specific examples are assessable and will be assessed, so please learn them! What he teaches is very simple and will likely be a welcome break to an intense semester. He really loves lions (and his colleague Melissa
).
Year & Semester of completion: 2013, Semester One.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1 (91)
Comments: BIOL10004 was a fantastically well-rounded introduction to, well, the biology of cells and organisms! It covers a wide range of topics concisely and quickly, but in enough depth to give you an appreciation of how organisms function and exist on our planet. If you did VCE Biology and REMEMBER the content (I didn't remember a single thing, so this subject was like learning biology from scratch all over again), most of this subject should be fairly easy to study for, despite the different methods of content delivery. Lecturers were, on the whole, great and good at teaching their content (though Mark is a little pretentious and Stephen a little dry-sounding) and the tutors and demonstrators tried to turn each prac and workshop into something interesting. The course was easy to study for, easy to take notes for, and not terribly boring, either. Workshops are definitely not compulsory, and if you find yourself bored to death, don't go - I went to two, and while those two helped, I was totally fine without them. Pracs can be boring but might be interesting or enjoyable depending on your prac group. I actually made a few friends through pracs, so if you're feeling lonely, try being outgoing during the prac classes and see where it gets you! The staff also seem to care about students despite the incredibly large number of jaffies enrolled in the subject, which does make you feel a little bit more welcome at uni. I don't really know what else to say other than that this subject will reward you academically and personally if you put in the hours, and that if you enjoyed biology in highschool then there's nothing to regret about choosing BIOL10004! If you've never taken biology before or don't remember anything/much from highschool, expect this to be quite content-heavy, but not particularly challenging. Good luck!