ATS1309: The Global Challenge

20% Essay (1500 word essay due in week 9)
An essay with three topics to choose from - one about population, one about urbanisation and one about consumption (the first three topics of the unit). I struggled with this task as I lacked motivation and left it to the last minute. However, the three topics were interesting and there was a lot of information to be found for all of them.

15% Tutorials
There are four tutorials run throughout the semester, in weeks 2, 4, 8 and 10. Each tutorial had a different kind of activity - one was about answering questions on a sheet, one involved group work and a mini presentation, one used ArcMap and the other involved a group discussion and answering questions. Not having tutorials every week made it difficult to get to know people, but a lot of people also enjoyed having few classes because their contact hours were reduced. The tutorials are usually quite enjoyable, and my tutor was really helpful in her explanations. Marks are received by handing in the tutorial sheet at the end of each class.

20% Field trip
There was a full-day field trip done on the Tuesday in week 5 to Port Melbourne. The field trip was related to the urbanisation section of the course and involved firstly walking around the streets of Port Melbourne, looking for signs of redevelopment, gentrification and similar processes. Then, there were questions about land use in Collins Street and sketching a block of the street. The field trip went for almost the entire day (9:30am-4:30pm) and it was very tiring because there was a lot of walking.

A really important thing to remember is that you give in the sheet with all your answers at the end of the day. Yep, you don't get a chance to go home and neaten up your handwriting or have time to research anything afterwards. This can be good, because it means once it's done, it's done and you don't have to worry about it anymore; it can also be bad, because it's worth 20%. Having some basic background knowledge of the areas would help in this aspect.

40% Exam
Ten short-answer questions and two (short) essays in two-hours. Most questions are pretty accessible, it's just difficult to study due to the large amount of content and no real clarity as to what is most important to know (eg. there were a number of different frameworks/models/perspectives presented for certain processes, such as city growth and resource consumption, that were confusing/complex and had very few questions focussed on them).

This subject is broken up into four 'blocks' that run for three weeks each - population, urbanisation, consumption, economics.

Population included a lot of things studied in VCE geography, such as birth/death rates, migration and population distribution, and introduced challenges involved (eg. refugees, spread of HIV/AIDS and development). Urbanisation looked at how we understand cities, how they grow, re-urbanisation and gentrification, how to classify cities, and challenges such as homelessness. Urbanisation also included the field trip to Port Melbourne, which was fun but tiring. I definitely preferred the first half of the course because I found the topics much more interesting. The second half of the course was a bit dry. Consumption looked at what resources are, the types of resources, peak oil, renewable energy, food, consumerism and waste. Economic geography included what the economy is, growth vs progress, the informal economy, production chains and globalisation of companies and production.
Being more science-oriented, I much preferred ATS1310 and only really liked population and urbanisation because I was a bit more familiar with them and had studied parts of them before. The number of different complex theories/frameworks in the second half of the course, and my previous lack of knowledge about the topics, is what caused my lower rating of this subject.

Dr. Michele Lobo

None (because the past exam database was taken down). The final lecture included 2-3 sample questions for both short-answer and essays, with no answers.

3 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

An Introduction to Human Geography 4th edn (2012) or 5th edn (2016) by Daniels et al.

Not really necessary because a lot of the lecture material comes from this textbook, just presented in a different way. I did have it and use it for consumption/economics because I had never studied topics like those before and wanted a bit more information about some things. However, I had difficulty reading the textbook, because at times it seemed like it was giving really long-winded explanations of things that could've been explained just as well in a simple sentence.

There were lists of suggested texts to read in the unit guide/library reading list for each section of the unit, from both this textbook and chapters in other textbooks. I only read the recommended textbook so unfortunately I cannot comment on what those extra readings were like.

1x2hr lecture every week (except for the field trip day), 1x2hr tutorial in weeks 2, 4, 8 and 10

2017, Semester 2