BIO1042: Environmental Biology

(Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
10% mastering biology quizzes. Best 10 out of 12 quizzes count 1% each towards your grade. These aren't in a locked down browser so you can access Google etc. but they are timed. Don't do what I did and forget the one due in midsem break or the one due after week 12

12% climatewatch prac
every week you obtain sightings and photos of your target species (mine was the magpie-lark, some people had trees, shrubs etc.)
this is a group assignment where the vast majority of your marks come from a creative presentation of your data, conclusions you've drawn etc at the end. You work in your assigned lab group.

10% leaf breakdown prac
you work in your assigned lab group a little bit but your marks come from the write up which you do individually. They make it very clear what they want you to focus on and how to analyse the data.

3% preprac quizzes.
individual, using clickers. If you read the lab manual before class you should be fine

Food webs, biogeochemical cycling, & plant adaptations pracs
4% each. individual. Read the information available and class and write detailed responses (using science conventions and paying attention to key words) to the questions which you'll submit at the end of the lab. If you're efficient, you can leave the lab early. You can answer the questions before you enter the lab if you want, but it was rare that someone did that.

Measuring and sampling online prac
3% pay attention to the provided information in the virtual lab that you work through before hand & follow the instructions - not very hard to get close to 100% on this

Exam
50%, all multiple choice, eassessment. This was my first time completing an exam on a laptop & I was glad to see that you could click "not sure" and quickly go back to your "not sure" questions. There were a few questions where the specificity of what they wanted us to remember was unexpected, but overall it was a very reasonable exam.

Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

I liked being able to get outdoors but didn't feel like I was learning much. If you know how to use excel, draw scientific diagrams, how food webs & trophic levels work, about nutrient cycling & basics of pollution don't expect this subject to really extend you. This might be less so for students who haven't done outdoor ed or the old (2016) bio study design. Lots of overlap with EAE too.

I found the most difficult part memorising info about evolutionary history, geological history (gondwana, pangea etc) and common plant families.
Not much conceptual difficulty here, but if you're good at memorising things you should be all set.

Suitable for students without much scientific background imo - very much an entry level unit

Can't remember all of their names etc. but in general they were friendly, approachable & knowledgeable.

No. They did the same thing as BIO1011 where you can do about 100 mastering biology questions at a time as "practice". problem is, the mastering biology questions are based on the textbook rather than the lectures (the exam is based on the lectures).
I would recommend revising the lecture content rather than repeatedly completing the superquiz.

3.75 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture & online livestreaming available

What must you buy? What is "recommended"? Do you need it?
You're supposed to use the textbook for readings but I didn't and found that the quizzes (which is where this is assessed) were fine anyway.

(specify how many lectures, pracs, tutes etc. and their duration)
1 3hr lab each week (compulsory)
sometimes this would be replaced by "do your assignment" or "do a virtual lab". You could sometimes leave early by getting your work done quickly2 1hr tutorials each week (non-compulsory, recorded, online livestream available)

Sem 2 2018

HD

10% MasteringBio assignments
These “assignments” were 40 minute quizzes that assessed your knowledge of the weekly readings, which usually involved pages from the textbook and occasionally some other links or other textbooks. Because these questions are mostly based on the Campbell Biology textbook, a lot of them can be searched up and found in Quizlet sets that other people have made 😉 (except for week 7, where the questions are based on Biology of Australia and New Zealand by Augee et al, which is linked to on Moodle).

12% ClimateWatch project (practical 1)
This is a semester-long group project based on the ClimateWatch app, which encourages citizen scientists to record sightings of flora and fauna. In your group, you’re given a plant or animal to monitor over the semester. The aim of the project is to determine whether you believe their behaviour/phenology is being altered by climate change, eg. warmer temperatures meaning plants are flowering earlier. The biggest challenge for many groups, including mine, was actually making sightings of the bird we had been given. Others with bird species also had lots of trouble finding nests. Three times over the semester, you write up a 300 word reflection piece about your species-identifying skills, teamwork and data analysis. In week 12, you have 10 minutes to present your methods, findings, limitations and if you believe the species’ behaviour has changed. This project was frustrating for many groups, mainly regarding spending time looking for the species you had been given.

10% Wetland project (practical 2)
This project was also semester-long, but work was only done at the start and towards the end of semester. In the same group as your ClimateWatch project, you submerge some leaves of different species in the lake in Jock Marshall Reserve, retrieve them 9 weeks later and work out how much of their mass has decomposed in that time. The aim of it is to determine whether the leaves decompose at different rates, and whether this changes in open water or shoreline environments. You individually write up a 900 word report on the results, which is due in week 11. I felt this was a relatively simple assignment, as a lot of help is given during prac classes and the marking rubric was very detailed.

15% Laboratory practicals 3, 4 and 5
These three pracs were each run during one 3 hour lab session. Each prac had a reading associated with it, including some textbook questions and the lab manual, which was tested with a pre-practical quiz (worth 1%). The prac write-up was done in the lab manual and ripped out and handed in at the end of the session (worth 4%). Prac 3 looked at aquatic food webs, prac 4 looked at biogeochemical cycling and prac 5 was about plant adaptations. These were pretty fun, and the TAs were all very nice and helpful. Also, the actual questions that are marked in these pracs are available in the unit guide before the pracs occur, if you have time to have a look beforehand.

3% Prac 6 (online)
This practical was run online, so you could do it in your own time. You use an online software through Internet Explorer to “sample” an area of a beach with a drain outlet on it and determine whether the concentration of worms changes depending on where the stormwater flows. It is assessed through a 15 minute quiz, with questions mainly relating to the statistics involved in this type of sampling. If you have done any statistics unit before, this should be pretty straightforward.

50% Exam
2hr 10min closed book e-exam. Yes, on a laptop! The exam consisted of 120 multiple choice questions (= 5 questions per lecture). Doing this exam on a laptop was pretty straightforward, because all you had to do was click the answer, as opposed to filling in the bubbles on paper. It was all very well organised, and the exam staff were quick to help with issues. I felt that the exam itself was quite fair and most people finished and left early.

Disclaimer – this review is coming from someone who had not done any VCE biology or university biology units prior to completing this unit.

I really enjoyed this unit. I felt that the assignments were all fair and weighted well, and the content was quite broad and really interesting. Weekly topics included: the tree of life, biophysical constraints on life, food webs and trophic cascades, biogeochemical cycling, evolutionary genetics, plant adaptations, biogeography of Australian flora, animal adaptations, biogeography of Australian fauna, pollution and climate change, human impacts on ecosystems, the biosphere. Because the topics were far less technical/specific than other biology subjects, I didn’t find that I was behind much by not having done much biology before. It also links quite well to a number of EAE subjects!

For me, the majority of time I spent on this unit was doing the weekly readings and completing the MasteringBio quizzes. I also did spend quite a bit of time trying to find my ClimateWatch species and make at least one sighting a week, but I did less and less of that as time went on after I realised it was probably going to be impossible for me to find a welcome swallow nest. The practicals were all quite chill and not too stressful, and because you handed them in as you left, there was no extra work to do after class.
Overall, a fun unit, even if you haven’t done any other biology!

Dr Rowan Brookes, A/Prof Alistair Evans, Dr Akane Uesugi, A/Prof Damian Dowling, Dr Rohan Clarke, Dr Joslin Moore, Prof Dustin Marshall

No past exams. However, a revision quiz was available on Moodle, with a huge bank of questions.

4 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture & livestreaming available as well

Campbell Biology 11ed – Aus/NZ edition. Definitely recommended, as the majority of questions in the weekly MasteringBio assignments were based on readings from this textbook. I was able to buy an eBook version and saved lots of money that way.

2x1hr lectures, 1x3hr lab class (8/12 weeks)
Looks like this is changing in 2019!

2018, Semester 2