BIO1011: Biology I

15% Weekly Moodle quizzes
5% Post-workshop quizzes
30% Lab assessments
50% Examination

Overall impression: I absolutely loved this unit, despite everything being online with zero physical interactions. All assignments were well organised and every change to the structure of the unit as well as weekly summaries were clearly communicated via email. The content is very similar to VCE biology but don’t worry if you haven’t done it, reach out to the coordinator early. I highly recommend attending the weekly drop-in sessions, even if you know the content pretty well, as you can learn a lot from the questions from other students. PASS is also an excellent weekly revision/catching up tool. The teaching staff and the tutors are super nice and highly knowledgeable and if you are having trouble with content, drop some anonymous qs in the forums or book a one on one zoom session with Tom.

Weekly quizzes (15%): Multiple choice, 20qs, 25 minutes, 1 attempt
Weekly quizzes are based on the videos and/or readings given each week. They are open book, and most are relatively straight forward, with some quizzes including application questions. The tricky thing was the time limit and preventing second guessing which, I guess, can only be improved by being confident with your knowledge.

Tip 1: Stay on top of the weekly content. It’s definitely easier to do this at the start of the semester, with your motivation at its peak but you have to keep going! This is where those drop-in sessions come in clutch, usually the same group of people attend, and you can make friends and form a little supportive community.
Tip 2: I hand-wrote all my summary notes weekly (twas two empty pens worth) but experiment with your note taking style, to figure out what works best for you. I tend to copy directly if typing but handwriting forces me to find only the key information and also incorporate mind maps and diagrams into the notes.
Tip 2: Don’t stress about knowing everything in the textbook readings, it tends to go out of scope or a bit too into detail. But make sure, you know all the bullet points listed in the consolidation sheets or the contents in the PASS sheets.

Post-workshop quizzes (5%): approx. 4-6 multiple choice qs but sometimes some had a few short answer questions, unlimited time
These can be a little tough at first glance, well at least for me, due to excessive research on the case studies. But the key to acing these, is watching the workshop, applying the knowledge from the content and once again attending those excellent drop-in sessions to ask about anything you find confusing.

Labs (30%): various activities including worksheets, a test and a lab report
You are allocated to a lab session and a tutor at the start of the semester. Make sure you attend these fortnightly as they are essential to get to know the practical and also to ask the tutor all the confusing questions. I was very lazy with these but prep before each lab is key; read the introduction in the manual and watch the pre-lab seminar to write down any qs you have for the tutors. In terms of the actual lab assessment, they are application style worksheets, usually based on a continuation of the workshop case study. Understanding the given criteria, making sure to fill each box and giving exactly and only what they ask for, will get you that sweet hundred percent.

Exam (50%): 120 multiple choice qs, 2 hrs and 10mins, open book and non-invigilated
The questions were similar to the weekly quizzes, in my opinion, although some were very simple, some were sneaky trick questions. The super quiz (mock exam) should be used to identify which areas, you need to focus your revision study on and not as a memorisation tool. The revision lectures and zooms were invaluable, they went through all the areas students found hard, multiple times. My revision consisted of making mind maps, annotating diagrams/ flowcharts as well as going through the bullet points in the consolidation sheets.

Extra tips:
Join the Facebook group chat if possible.
If you don’t do chem and haven’t done it prior, reach out to the lecturers as there’s a very smol part at the start of the semester.
Check out the unit guide, to plot out an estimate of how the semester will look like in terms of topics and assessments.
Goodluck!

Dr Thomas Hiscox (Unit Coordinator)
Dr Mike McDonald
Prof Craig White
Dr Richard Burke
(s/o to) Dr Callum Vidor (absolute legend <3)
Dr Kelly Merrin
Dr Ben Seyer

No, Revision super quiz provided – approx. 500 questions

5/5

Workshops and review seminars were recorded on top of being streamed on zoom and echo, Labs were only through zoom and

How life works, 2^nd Edition – an online copy is provided

1 x 1 hr workshop weekly
1 x 1 hr review seminar weekly
1 x 3 hr practical every fortnight
Approx 1.5-2hr online activities

2020, Semester 1

91 HD

Quite an easy unit, not significantly harder than VCE biology (in fact, all content other than plant and animal diversity was exactly the same as VCE biology).

There are 6 labs, 5 of which are practical and one being a poster that you create and present with a lab partner. Labs are fine, especially if you have a good TA (shout out to Claire!).

Over the course of the unit, there are 4 online Moodle tests. These questions are mostly taken from the Pearson database. Also, you have a Pearson MasteringBIO quiz to do each week, of material that will be lectured on in that following week. These are fairly easy, and often have video tutorials built in.

The textbook is good, but I used it maybe once - I didn't do the readings at all, but they'd definitely help someone who's never done biology before. Diagrams and explanations are good.

All of the course material and lecturers are fine (John Beardall (and his plant Boris) and Gerry Rayner are particularly good), but personally I found plant diversity to be incredibly boring.

Labs are alright, I had a good lab partner so that definitely helped. My one serious gripe about the labs were the weird 'quizzes' that we had prior to the labs - you needed to sign into a (fairly crap) system via Authcate and do a MC quiz (usually 4 questions) based on powerpoint slides. These quizzes counted for some of the lab mark.

The exam is 144 multiple-choice questions, with ~6 questions from each lecture.

Nope. Exam is reworked every year, but a 100-question practice quiz is available on Moodle close to exam time.

4/5

Yes, with screen capture.

Semester 1, 2013

HD

Exam(Not a hurdle, you don't need to pass the exam to pass the unit) - 40%
Mastering Biology Pre-lecture Readings Quizes - 5%
Blackboard Quizes - 15%
Practical Reports - 30%
Essay - Draft -2%
Essay - Final - 8%

Very good unit overall. It only has 2 x 1 hour lectures instead of 3 lectures a week, like most of the other science subjects which is nice. As someone who has done VCE biology however, a lot of the stuff is repeated, in a little more depth but still not worth it i think. Monash doesn't stream biology, there isn't a biology unit for people who have done VCE and for people who haven't. There are some other subjects that weren't covered in VCE like parasites, sponges, other kinds of animals. More indepth stuff about plant diversity. This isn't really anything i'm interested in though.

It is incredibly broad and i guess "thin" in some places. Evolution had only 2-4 lectures. I noticed a lot of people didn't get certain concepts, especially if they didn't do VCE Bio. 2-4 Lectures isn't really enough to get a good grasp of evolution. In VCE we had weeks and weeks, i'm thankful i came in with that knowledge. I reckon it would of been a much harder ride for me without it. It's because im lazy though haha, definetly do-able.

Practical lessons were alright, no complaints there.
I don't really have any major criticisms for the unit except for the minor stuff mentioned above.

Heaps, not going to list them all here.

No past exams available. They rework the previous exam year to year. There was however, a quiz on blackboard that had practice questions.

4 Out of 5

Yes, with screen capture.

Biology 8th edition. Campbell, Reece, Meyers. Not really necessary. Exam is based on lecture material only. You need it to do the reading before the lectures and the quizes associated with these. Nothing you couldn't manage by borrowing it from the uni library i guess. Its only 2 hour loan/overnight loan i think though. Still useful to have.

2 x One Hour Lectures. 1 x Three hour lab.

S1 2011

70