BMS1021: Cells Tissues and Organisms

-Practical Class Reports (25%)
-Written Assessment (15%)
-Mid Semester Test (10%)
-Exam (50%)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, 45% must be achieved on the exam to pass the unit

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.

-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)

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).

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

None, however a substantial number of practice questions were available.

4/5

Yes, with screen capture.

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.

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.

3 x 1 hour lectures per week, 1 x 3 hour labs (during 7 of 12 weeks)

2017, Semester 1

TBA

- 8x Practicals [25%]
- 1x Mid-sem moodle quiz [10%]
- 1x 1000 word essay [15%]
- 1x 3 hour MCQ exam [50%]

This unit was easily the best unit of the first semester. It is one of the three compulsory core subjects that must be completed alongside BMS1031 and BMS1011 in Biomed. It is the most content-heavy subject of the core units, but also the most simple.

All of the practicals were completed in the lab-slots. It is possible to get good marks in the pracs, even if you didn't attend the lectures. Most barely relied on course material. However, many pracs had prep-work that is essential to complete. It is also quite easy to forget about the prep-work. Note that on my exam (maybe not yours) pracs were assessed.

Lectures were usually good. Some got a bit boring, and I often struggled to maintain my consciousness during some of the later lectures. As usual, you should watch all lectures, either by actually going to the lectures or watching them on mulo.

The essay was the worst part of this unit. I'm bad at essay writing, so I wasted many hours fruitlessly attempting to add few more words to reach the word limit. If essays are more your thing, this won't be difficult. The essay offered 10 topics, which are all marked by different lecturers.

ALL of my exam was MCQs, which was great. It was a grueling 3 hour, 100 question exam. Similarly, the mid-sem test was also MCQs, and had ~25 questions (I forget the exact number). Neither of these were very difficult.

Finally, they offered a PASS program in my year. This is where 3rd year students would teach you the content for an hour. It was less productive than the BMS1031 PASS, however its still covered much more than I could in an hour, so I'd recommend doing it if possible (note that classes fill up fast).

- Dr. Chantelle Hoppe (Histology)
- Dr Robyn Slattery (Immunology)
- Dr John Beardall
- Dr Chris Johnstone (Homeostasis)
- A/Prof Jose Garcia-Bustos (Viruses, Fungi etc..)
- Dr Helen Abud (Developmental Biology)
- Dr Anne Peters (Animal Diversity)
- Mrs Wilma Checkley (Introduction to Bio)
- Dr Paul Crellin (Bacteria)

No, but many questions were provided by the lecturers and PASS. Also, a "peer-wise" program was utilized, in which questions are generated by students, for students. These are often quite good at determining weaknesses, or so I found.

4 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

Cambell Biology, Xth Edition is recommended, however all the required information can be extracted from the lectures in this unit.

- 3x 1 hour lecture per week
- 1x 3 hour lab almost all weeks

2015

HD