BMS1042: Biomedical Science and Society

I'll start of by saying that students either love or hate this unit. The previous reviewer of this unit loved the epidemiology component, and I found it boring. This could be explained by the different lecturers between this year and last year. As opposed to last year, which had a multitude of different lecturers, lectures were covered by predominantly Basia and Penny. Basia, who covers the epidemiology content, is competent. Penny, covering stats, is not able to communicate her knowledge at all. All guest lecturers were quite good.

The unit is essentially two units packed into one. There is the epidemiology content, which has a lecture and tutorial a week, and the statistics component, which also has a lecture and tutorial a week. The epidemiology content is enjoyable, but it is very hard to study for the exam with it. The statistics is quite easy, with a bit of work. Tutorials are essential, and you should go to them, even if you have the 4pm-6pm or 8am-10am classes. Yes, I know, it's tough, but you'll regret not going.

Going through assignments:
A warning, half of these assignments come out of nowhere, at a very similar time. If I remember correctly, AT3 and AT2 were due in the same 2 weeks, and there will be BMS1052 and elective quizzes and assignments around the same time.
AT1: Two quizzes, difficult when doing them, but pretty simple when looking back. Just do them with your mates and it shouldn't be too bad.
AT2: This is a large analysis response on 1 of 5 topics. You will be provided with a journal article, and a media article corresponding with it. This was probably the hardest assignment, and took me the longest, but I'm awful with essays. In this assignment, you will follow a question sheet, which makes passing the word limit pretty easy. It will be assigned quite early, and it's tempting to leave it until later, but you will be overwhelmed if you leave it until later. Make an attempt at writing after covering the Study Design component.
AT3: Assigned after, but due a bit before AT2, this oral presentation will follow a similar format to AT2, and will be assessed as a 4 - 5 person group assignment. Students are encouraged to add a theme, like news report or argument. Depending on the tutor, there will be a post-oral questioning, where the lecturer and students will ask questions, testing your analysis of the information. As groups are assigned randomly, hope for a good group.
AT4: This is a very easy Twitter assignment, handing out 3%. It's tempting to not do it, but students just have to do 5 simple tasks, including posting a "dumb ways to die" score on twitter, posting and discussing an article on twitter, and sharing a friends post. There will be a moodle quiz which the questions are repeated into. I'm not sure, but the moodle quiz may mark answers correct by just entering characters into the question boxes. If you don't want to do the assignment, make sure you write anything in the boxes to possibly get marks.
AT5: The statistics assignment, which only tests students statistics knowledge, is a questions sheet. There are 5 different value tables, so if you have a mate with the same values, it might help to confer with them if you're having trouble.

The exam is the real challenge of this unit. Everything up until this point, including the practice exams, seems pretty easy. However, expect difficult (and in my opinion, unfair) questions on predominantly epidemiology content. There was very little focus on stats in the exam, so the last 2 weeks of stats was mostly worthless.
For revision, focus on epidemiology, as that's where the difficult questions will be. You'll feel like you know everything before the exam, but you don't.
The unit only gets 2 out of 5 because it is boring, badly executed and the exam is much more difficult than the unit.

Kind of. Expect old, and very unrepresentative exams.

2 out of 5

I didn't use any.

Semester 2, 2015

D - 77

I went into this unit expecting it to be terrible. Was I wrong! Many people didn't like this unit because they didn't consider it 'hard science' like most of our other biomed units, but I loved it. Even biostatistics was good, though it's usually a struggle.

I'll comment on this units in two parts with individual grades (epidemiology/public health and biostatistics), given that it was essentially two distinct areas combined into one unit.

Biostatistics:

• Dr. Baki Billah

Epidemiology: (many guest lecturers)

• Dr. Basia Diug (Introduction into Epidemiology & Public Health/Exposure, Measurement & Error)
• Prof. Robert Burton (Descriptive Epidemiology)
• Prof. Robin Bell (Study Designs/Diagnostics and Screening)
• A/Prof. Dragan Ilic (Comparing Study Designs)
• A/Prof Bebe Loff (Importance of Ethical Guidance in Research and Clinical Practice/Research on Humans)
• Dr. Katherine Gibney (Outbreak Investigation)
• Prof. Brian Oldenburg (Chronic Non-Communicable Disease)
• Dr. Darshini Ayton (Health Promotion)

Yes, quite a few from 2009 backwards on the Monash exam database.

5 out of 5 (I'd give it more if I could lol)

Yes, with screen capture

Semester 2, 2013

D