Subject Code/Name: BMS1021 Cells, tissues and organismsWorkload: 3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour labs (during 7 of 12 weeks)
Assessment: -Practical Class Reports (25%)
-Written Assessment (15%)
-Mid Semester Test (10%)
-Exam (50%)
Hurdle Requirement: Yes, 45% must be achieved on the exam to pass the unit
Recorded Lectures: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: None, however a substantial number of practice questions were available.
Textbook Recommendation:Campbell Biology Australian and New Zealand edition (10e). I never really used the textbook however if you haven’t done biology in high school I would recommend getting a copy.
Lecturer(s): -Dr Chantal Hoppe (Introduction/Histology, lectures 1,12-16)
-Mr Brendan Wilding (Biochemistry, lectures 2-4)
-Professor John Beardall (Cell Biology, lectures 5-7)
-Associate Professor Craig Smith (Developmental Biology, lectures 8-11)
-Dr Christopher Johnstone (Metabolism/Physiology, lectures 17-23)
-Associate Professor Robyn Slattery (Immunology, lectures 24-26)
-Dr Paul Crellin (Microbiology I (bacteria), lectures 27-29)
-Associate Professor Jose Garcia-Bustos (Microbiology II, lectures 30-32)
Year & Semester of Completion: 2017, Semester 1
Rating:4/5
Your Grade/Mark: TBA
Comments: Lectures:Biochemistry: A very nice introduction into the course, not too taxing and a breeze if you have done VCE biology- if you haven’t get ready to learn a tonne of content this semester. We covered concepts on water and biomacromolecules. Being lipids, nucleic acids, amino acids & carbohydrates. There is some overlap with this topic and Biomedical Chemistry 1011 however it is more complementary than “overlap”.
Cell Biology: Also a very simple topic If you had already done VCE biology. We learnt all the components of the cell and their functions along with the components of the cytoskeleton.
Developmental Biology: Once again another topic that builds of VCE biology, so it’s a steep learning curve for those who haven’t done it. We covered Gametogenesis (spermatogenesis and oogenesis) along with fertilisation and the development of an embryo. Then as logic would dictate the development of the body plan. In the last lecture for this topic we looked at the different disorders that can crop up such as disease states and syndromes - be it a birth defect or caused by a teratogen.
Histology: The hardest topic in my opinion and consisted of looking at a lot of histograms and determining what is shown and labelling portions of it. The problem I had with this is that you were only 100% sure if you had seen the exact same image before so this topic was pretty dodgy imo. I put the most amount of time into this and it paid off as the exam questions ended up being mostly simple.
Metabolism/Physiology: Another tough topic for me, however this time not for the content but how dry the content was. For the most part, any concept learnt in this unit isn’t too hard but for some minor portions understanding it fully can be. The metabolism sections were quite straightforward. The physiology portion covered temperature regulation, respiratory gas exchange, blood and respiratory pigments, circulation and salt/water balance. The hardest part would be determining what we needed to learn but evidently (from the exam) everything is examinable
.
Immunology: Once again a simple topic if you had completed VCE biology although I found it to be a very nice refresher. This went over the innate and adaptive immune responses. The major difference would be the depth in which we learnt the adaptive mechanisms along with the understanding required of the lymphatic immune system.
Microbiology: At times, a very dry portion of the course. We first covered bacteria where we had to learn some of the specific types of bacteria and the disease they caused. The main concept I felt in the bacteria section was really gram+ vs gram- bacteria. We also covered the favourable and unfavourable places within the human body where in which bacteria may live or infect. Then we went into protists, fungi and viruses. The lecturer here was very nice in telling us what specific genus we were required to memorise and thankfully what he said ended up being on the exam.
Practicals:This unit consisted of 6 practicals. 6 of which were worth 3.5% and 3 hours long and the microbiology practical being worth 4% however it was run over 2 weeks for 6 hours (2 x 3 hours). This totalled to 25% of the unit grade. Overall, I felt many of the pracs were boring and tedious however very simple.
Microscopy: We basically learnt or reviewed the basics on how to use a microscope along with all of its features. It’s a very important prac since this semester and later in the degree we continue to go back to stuff taught in this prac. Like most of the pracs it was long and boring, the assessment was a short test along with assessment of our actual practical skills.
Biochemistry: This prac was purely online based and was mainly ourselves altering an excel spreadsheet to change pH and see what changes occurred to the relative concentrations of a particular ionisation state of aspartic acid. The assessment was 15 MCQs which were quite accessible, from what I recall there where two questions that were quite dodgy but nothing too bad.
Developmental Biology: This practical was hands on however I’m not too sure whether it was compulsory since you could’ve skipped it and still completed the quiz online haha (no attendance was taken). We covered the stages of spermatogenesis, labelling the anatomy of a spermatozoa and we also looked at some sperm under the microscope and observing it’s motility/morphology. As I’ve said the assessment was an online quiz which wasn’t too taxing but as a lot of these practicals there was a couple of questions which weren’t explicitly covered in the pracs nor the lectures so we had to do our own research.
Histology: A very interesting prac session consisting of 2 activities which were a worksheet and a presentation. The worksheet was tough for me as histology was the hardest section for me in this unit but there was help available. The presentation included students in groups of 4 creating a model of an organ containing the 4 primary tissue types (muscle, nervous tissue, epithelium and connective tissue). HINT: Chantal apparently loves kidneys 😉 The assessment for this prac was an online quiz.
Metabolism: The procedure was relatively simple, we examined the activity of amylase in germinating barley. The assessment was quite tough and was very different to the other pracs. We had a scratchy sheet for MCQs so you had to scratch out what answer you wanted to submit and if you got it correct on the first go you got 2/2. However, if you get it wrong you have another shot (to scratch out another answer) for a potential 1/2).
Immunology: Was above all my favourite one (probably because I knew all the content going in) It was slightly tedious but was manageable since we all knew we were going to do quite well on the prac. If you have done VCE biology this will be an absolute breeze.
Microbiology: My least favourite prac, maybe because we hadn’t covered the relevant lecture content before the prac and I was never 100% sure on what to do. This was because the cohort was split into those completing the prac in week 7 & 8 or in week 11 & 12. Although this was also good since closer to exam time I had more time so it evened out. The prac included basic techniques we can use in order to differentiate different bacteria. Our context was a package had come in with a mysterious white powder and the 1021 unit coordinator had developed an respiratory tract infection and we had to determine what it was smh. Only once we started microbiology content in the lectures was when I started to understand what I did in the prac fully.
Mid Semester Test: This was worth 10% of the total unit grad and included 45 MCQs covering lectures 2 through 17 however the amount of MCQ questions that was counted is not known since there was some disagreement if there was some dodgy questions LOL. I found the test to be very fair but of course there were a small number of questions which went into the minor details of the course. We had an hour for the test which was more than enough time so I was able to do the test twice. I scored slightly lower than I had anticipated so maybe didn’t consider some silly errors. From memory, it took around 4 weeks for the results of the MST to be released.
Simplified Literature Review:This was worth 15% of the total unit grade, so really a massive chunk. Personally, my least favourite part of my whole first semester at university. It involved us choosing one of nine topics. I ended up choosing Protein folding and misfolding. Topic choice was on a first come first serve basis and some topics were fully ridiculously quickly, e.g. 2-3 topics were full after 1 minute and maybe 5 topics full under 10 minutes. A week’s labs were allocated to for the lit review and included a workshop where they tried to help us and tells us what we needed to do. This wasn’t that helpful since it was really early in the semester and months before the actual lit review was due. In the workshop, we worked in small groups to complete a guided worksheet .
Now for the actual writing of the lit review. We had a word limit of 1000 words and you could go the usual plus minus 10%. It was painful to go through tonnes of articles looking for anything which may have some value for our own lit review. I used one note to upload all the articles I found and annotated which parts I thought were useful. The best way I found to approach the lit review was to break your question up into 3 smaller questions then try to answer them individually. Also remember primary articles are favoured over secondary however they take so much longer to interpret since they have raw experiments and data. We received our marks around 4 and a half weeks after the due date. The actual marking of our lit reviews was extremely fair and for someone who wasn’t always sure what I was doing did relatively well on it. One of my friends ended up with 29/30 so it’s possible to get full/close to full marks since you are marked via a rubric. I would think the average mark would’ve been around 22-23/30. This is just an educated guess though since the actual value was not released.
Exam:The exam is worth 50% of the total unit grade and consisted of 110 MCQs and ran for 3 hours. There were no time strains whatsoever and most people finished early and left. Maybe 30-35% of the students stayed until the very end. It was very similar to the MST although I felt it was slightly harder than the MST. However I felt as though the exam was extremely fair although heaps of tricky questions I felt as though went into extreme detail of the course. However, there was plenty “Free marks” for those who did enough study to do well. This exam was probably good for me in the long run since now it’s very clear that even the smallest details can be assessed.
PASS:PASS classes were run for this unit however I stopped attending after a few weeks. Although I still received the worksheets from friends. PASS sessions were timetabled very badly for me so the main reason why I stopped going and I also felt they weren’t that great for me to out of my way to get to the class. The worksheet given is the main learning tool here as the tutor doesn’t really teach us but guide you during the session.
Other/Overall: I found this unit to be extremely content heavy however simple at times. It was extremely run well and the only major fault I can comment on is the lit review (might be a little bias). All the assessment was very fair and how well you do will be up to how much time you invest into the subject.