BMS2011: Structure of the Human Body: An Evolutionary and Functional Perspective

30% total from 3 lab tests (divided into 8% test 1, 12% test 2 and 10% test 3)
20% poster group project on the anatomy of human evolution
20% midsem
30% final exam

Closed book, 130 minutes for 60 multis (including some with drop down options) assessing lecture knowledge from weeks 6-12. This exam was way easier than everyone initially expected, especially given that it was closed book, otherwise many of us would’ve failed. There were like 2 hard questions from Luca’s lectures that went into a lot of detail about the theory covered in his lectures (which I wrongfully assumed to just be context, please assume everything is examinable unless specifically indicated otherwise), but it is what it is, you can only give it a lucky guess and hope for the best. Protip: in dropdown questions, if you know all but 2 of the options (say you only know 1 out of 3), for the 2 you don’t know put the same answer for both so that you’re guaranteed 2/3 in the example I’ve given instead of risking mixing them up and only scoring 1/3. All those extra 1/3 and 1/4 marks you pick up this way will boost your unit score when every single mark counts in biomed (as we say, HDs get MDs). This was the only exam I felt I aced this semester (and it’s the most objective one). Edit: now that results are out, I can safely say that there was minimal scaling (maybe only be 1 mark out of 60). Which is surprising because one’d expect quite a lot of scaling for the hardest unit in biomed as I heard it’s the unit with the most fails in previous years from my TAs.

Edit: Luca just made an announcement on the average grades on the exam, it was 69% (no cap). This is pretty surprising because this implies that the final exam was harder than practical theme test 2 (73%), which was certainly not the case for me. They also commented that the grade was consistent with past years' BMS2011 exam scores when conducted on campus with invigilation, so I think they figured out a way to stop the WAMflation from cheating which is very good news, it means you no longer have to push yourself so hard to beat the cheat

We were assigned a topic about human anatomy in the week 3 online lab and this was due on Friday of week 10 at 5PM. Our topic was to create an A1-sized poster (you can’t change the canvas size) evaluating the identity of the hominin Homo floresiensis aka the Hobbit which was discovered on Flores, Indonesia in 2004, comparing and contrasting various models in scientific literature that attempt to explain its origin. In essence, this was a literature review but in poster form, we ended up using 10 different references. Hands down this is the worst part of this already terrible unit. We received no guidance from the teaching team on this poster whatsoever and the rubric was extremely subjective and poorly written. To add insult to injury, all the fonts had to be bigger than a certain size and we’re given almost no freedom on the poster as we’re not allowed to change the template which was horribly designed. However, I found a hack that allowed us to fit everything onto the page (by decreasing line spacing, the unit coordinators never prohibited this even though they didn’t allow small fonts). The worst part comes from the backstabbing group members (only 1 backstabber for this project luckily). Similar to the BMS2021 group project, the team evaluation was worth 15% of the group project, ie 3% of your overall unit grade and the poster component was worth 85%. I only received 76% on the Feedback Fruits review because of one backstabber. Thankfully, we scored 76/85 for the poster section, giving me an 87.4% overall on the group project which I guess is still acceptable. They said (and even gave me a 2/5 in the fostering teamwork criterion when I don’t think anyone else in the group gave someone else less than a 3/5):

These were VERY difficult (except for lab test 1) despite being open book. You’re given 30 minutes for 20 marks and some questions involved labelling multiple parts of a dead body (prosections). Every single muscle looks the same when you’re under this immense time pressure, however I would much prefer these to be open book than closed book which they were in previous years apparently. Especially in tests 2 and 3, you won’t have much time to Google the answers or look them up in your lecture notes, from my poor results in those, I think a lesson would be “never fall behind on BMS2011 lectures”, because the lecture content, while not explicitly assessed in these tests, helps you understand the labs tremendously.

As I just alluded to, the lab tests only assessed the content covered in the labs. Test 1 was on the general and axial musculoskeletal systems. Test 2 was on the appendicular musculoskeletal system, cranio-dental anatomy, neuroanatomy and special senses. Test 3 was on thoracic viscera (ie cardiovascular + respiratory systems), abdominal viscera (ie digestive system) and the urogenital systems. When I was in one of my BMS2031 labs (I haven’t taken lab test 2 at that point but have completed test 1 and the midsem), Julia (who is also the chief examiner of BMS2011) told me that since the cohort average grades for test 1 and the midsem were so high, Luca and Olga decided to make subsequent assessments insanely difficult. Indeed, my scores reflect this pretty accurately, I scored 92.5%, 80.4% and 78.4% on the 3 lab tests respectively (the cohort average for these were 84%, 73% and 66% respectively). It really didn’t help that everything else in my other units were due on the last day of the semester which was the same day as test 3.

Every 2nd week or so (there were only 4 in-person labs due to rona restrictions), we go into the basement of the biomed LTB and examine some actual dead bodies. They were on axial MSK, appendicular MSK, neuroanatomy and thoracic + abdominal viscera (combined in 1 lab). One of the in-person labs (neuroanatomy) got moved to a Zoom session because both Luca and Olga were sick at that time (one of the unit coordinators must be present to conduct in-person labs), so it really disadvantaged the stream that had their labs on that week. Before the lab, it’s highly recommended that you complete a prelab Moodle quiz, while it’s optional and not assessed, it really helps you understand the concepts covered in the labs. A major drawback is that the lab sessions were only 90 minutes, you only spend 20 minutes at each station which was nowhere near enough time to go through everything on your lab manual. Given that all lab content is assessable on the lab tests, incomplete lab manuals often translated to poor marks, so make sure you Google the answers if you didn’t have time to go through everything in the lab. We had a really nice TA (Rohan) who looked like the Green brothers from Crash Course on Youtube (complete with the glasses) who taught us some wicked mnemonics, I don’t know what’s wrong with us, but we all seem to learn best with questionable mnemonics:

We have an 1-hour Zoom session with an anatomy TA every week (except week 6 which was midsem week and week 12) where we go through certain pages of our lab manual, label those schematics (ie cartoon depictions of human anatomy), answer relevant questions in the lab manual and play around with a computer anatomy model called Biodigital Human. I felt so lost during these sessions because to understand these livestream labs, they presume that you have watched and throughly understood that week’s lectures. Of course, I’m always at least 2 weeks behind in anatomy lectures, so a lot of things didn’t make sense to me and I couldn’t answer a lot of the questions our TA, Hyab, threw at us. Luckily she’s very supportive, taught us many useful mnemonics and even went above and beyond to help us nail labelling questions when the orientation of the prosection or schematic isn’t what you’re used to ie anatomical position.

Luca Fiorenza
Olga Panagiotopoulou
Julia Young
Sonja McKeown
Kim Catania
Anne Peters
Craig Smith

Tests knowledge of the week 1-5 lectures (ie no lab content). It was open book like the lab tests, but it was super easy in comparison (no dead body labelling). You can literally look up everything on Google. Some answers to questions (especially from Luca’s lectures) can’t be found on the lecture slides, so you may need to spend extra time Googling or searching through your notes. However, you’re given 70 minutes for 40 multis which is more than enough time to finish, check your answers and find answers to any difficult questions. I had a very unpleasant experience with the teaching team on the midsem. A few days before the midsem, I’ve found a practice midsem for the 2012 version of BMS2011 on the internet. Given that I’m aware of the BMS2011 midsem’s notoriety from this thread on ATAR Notes, I wasn’t about to let a practice exam go to waste. I went through the 50 questions, found some that were pretty challenging and asked them on the forums. I got told off by the unit coordinators who informed me that posting past exams on forums isn’t allowed, that I shouldn’t do that again and as such they won’t help me with those questions. There was another priceless expression of this units’ poor organisation, when the midsem marks were released, it turned out that I somehow scored 101.32% on it (probably keeping even the strictest Asian parents happy) because while they entered our marks correctly (I got 19.25), they accidentally made the denominator out of 19 instead of 20. They eventually changed it back but everyone who got above 19/20 (and hence “got” >100%) had a good laugh about it. The cohort average was 87%.

This unit was the worst unit I have taken in biomed so far (even making BMS2031 ie biophysics look like it’s well run in comparison). There was so much content to memorise (luckily they decided that we only need to know half the unit for the final exam), but apart from the difficulty, its organisation was EXTREMELY poor (you’ll see why as I roast this unit piece by piece below). To be fair, maybe it’s just that the unit coordinators haven’t adjusted the unit to the rona age very well, but to put it nicely, there’s a ton of improvements that could be made. In terms of lectures, I'll briefly give my impression of the lecturers here.

Luca (unit coordinator) takes lectures on the muscular system, the axial musculoskeletal system, hominin evolution, skin pigmentation, appendicular (ie lower and upper limb anatomy), cranial evolution, dental anatomy and origins of bipedalism. His lecture slides have almost zero information on them (you have no idea what point he’s trying to make with his slides alone) and you’ll have to listen for the information he wants to deliver very carefully (even so, it’s barely comprehensible because he doesn’t explain things in the most intuitive way and Youtube had to save me when I had trouble understanding his content). In Luca’s defence, he did offer us a lot of really useful online resources on the evolution stuff that he did not explain very well, so you’d be fine if you went through those. My social skills aren’t the sharpest after 1 year of quarantine isolation, but I’m getting the vibe that he might be annoyed at the questions we ask him on the forums and only answer them begrudgingly (again, I’m stressing it’s just my suspicions, speculations and general impression).

Olga (2nd unit coordinator) lectures you for the skeletal system, head and neck anatomy, respiratory system, cardiovascular system, digestive system and urinary system. Her lectures were the best in the unit, her slides have a healthy mix of text and images, and force you to listen to them by not giving everything away. She stands out from all other lecturers because she’s very clear on what’s assessable and what’s not, so it takes a lot of guesswork out of studying for the final exam when it comes to SWOTVAC, freeing up time to study for some other difficult BMS2011 concepts or other units. Her explanations were always great when you tune in to listen, her lectures were the only ones I didn’t require Khan Academy or Crash Course to help me consolidate. She has this quirk where she starts every lecture AND Moodle announcement post with “Dear students…” so it comes as no surprise she cares about our progress and understanding of her lecture content and she’s on the forums all the time answering people’s questions very quickly and in a lot of detail.

Anne only has 1 lecture on animal diversity and taxonomy, this is pretty much revision of high school bio and helps you understand how to read a phylogenetic tree (which will come in handy in Luca’s lectures).

Sonja has 2 neuroanatomy lectures in week 7. These examine embryonic brain development as well as the anatomy of the adult nervous system (both CNS and PNS). You’re introduced to the cranial nerves and their functions so make up (or look up) your most inappropriate mnemonics to memorise them (one is listed in the spoiled section under the heading Labs: in-person), they’re very important to know for this unit’s assessments. Sonja was really nice on the forums as well, being very quick to answer student questions especially during SWOTVAC.

Kim’s only lecture is on the anatomy and physiology of the special senses except for touch (ie sight, smell, taste and hearing). A lot of it will overlap with the neurobio you covered in Sonja’s lectures, as well as the sensation lectures in BMS1052. Like Sonja, Kim is very approachable on the forums for questions on her lecture content.

Julia takes 2 reproduction lectures in week 11 covering the developmental origins of the gonads to anatomical adaptations for effective reproduction, as well as the anatomy of the mature male and female reproductive organs. Her lectures were witty, humorous and very easily understood. There was quite a lot of overlap between her lectures and the BMS2031 reproductive lectures, so you can kind of kill 2 birds with one stone if you run out of study time.

Craig takes you only for 1 embryology lecture in week 12, which is a revision of BMS1021 dev bio and overlaps heavily with his lectures from BMS2021.

No. Practice questions from past final exams provided, but some weren’t relevant to the current course content

0 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

Gray’s Anatomy for Students (4th edition)

However, I also used Sobotta’s Atlas of Anatomy (15th edition) and Anatomy- a Photographic Atlas (8th edition) to help me prepare for schematic and prosection labelling questions

2 x 1 hour recorded lectures
1 x 1 hour livestream lab
1 x 1.5 hour in person lab every 2nd week

2021 Sem 1

90 HD

This unit has a lot of issues. From what I've been told, the issues didn't begin with this year. The unit was "restructured" a couple of years ago, or so I've been told. It will likely be restructured again, after devastating SETU surveys.

In terms of the content of this unit, expect a lot more human evolution than you are comfortable with. Most lectures will have an anatomical component, and then a evolutionary/functional component. For example, the lecture on lower limb anatomy consists of an overview of the muscles, bones, vasculature and innervation of the leg, and then a discussion of bipedalism (in humans and other primates).

The quality of lectures for this unit are dependent on the lecturer. The main lecturers are Dr. Adams and Dr. Fiorenza, with other lecturers will only taking one or two lectures. Dr. Adams is a competent lecturer, and is confident in his teaching. He also covers interesting content, such as visceral anatomy, the CNS/cranial anatomy and a couple of lectures on other stuff. Dr. Fiorenza covers Primate/Human evolution, as well as limb/spine anatomy. Dr. Fiorenza's lectures are well organized. However, they also contain significant amounts of information, and it is not always clear what is expected to be known.
The "masterclasses" can be summarized as a lecturer asking the audience questions about an article they were supposed to have read before the lecture. I recommend watching recording of these before the exam, as they won't show up until then.

The labs consist of an hour long lab and an hour long tutorial.
The lab will involve looking at wet (cadavers) and dry (3D models, bones etc.) specimens, and filling out a booklet. I highly recommend completing the questions before the lab, as it facilitates learning and allows more time to enjoy the actual lab. The other component was the tutorial. This is usually just a presentation by a TA about a related topic. It is worth noting that the labs aren't directly assessed, and are instead assessed in online quizzes and the week 12 lab quiz.

There were 3 online quizzes throughout the unit. They were around week 5, 7, 10 (off memory). The quizzes assess the lab content, and were not easy. The week 12 quiz was essentially the online quizzes, but not online. The poster is a 1 ppt slide on an evolution related topic. This was a controversial, and poorly handled assessment, with many students complaining about low grades, inadequate feedback (initially no feedback) and initial refusal to re-mark. I recommend following the instruction document closely, to prevent the loss of easy marks. The mid-sem and EOS exam were both MCQ's assessments, consisting of question from the lectures. The mid-sem contained week 1-5, and the EOS exam contained mostly week 6-12.
In conclusion, this was a difficult, poorly organized unit, that definitely needs some fixing. In terms of organization, it is the worst of the BMS units I have taken so far.

Yes, 1 from 2015

2.5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

None that I used.

2016, Semester 1

Unknown. Hopefully HD

In summary, this is a great - if extremely heavy - unit. It's far more than a memorisation-based course because it aims to examine comparative anatomy as well as clinical aspects, and provided us with a well-rounded anatomical understanding from various anatomy-related areas and viewpoints. The teaching staff are easily among the best I've ever had at uni so far, main;y because of how directly and closely involved they were in teaching and learning during the semester. For example, Dr McHenry was extremely regularly present on the Year 2 Biomed Facebook group, where he frequently helped people out with difficult concepts (and come end of semester he essentially gave us a practice exam by parts in several posts in the group haha!).

The complaints I have about this unit are few and far between, but they're present; the lab journal task takes up many hours of work both in and out of class hours per week and should be worth far more than 25%, and the requirement to give an oral presentation through a powerpoint rather than alongside a powerpoint was a bit strange and more than a little bit inconvenient.

All in all, this is a fantastic unit and really helps you develop a passion for anatomy and a great basis for further anatomical study.

Both the MST and the end-of-semester exam were worth 30%; I - and I think many other people - found the MST to be much, much harder than the end-of-semester exam. As with any other anatomy subject anywhere, there is a degree of memorisation required but this course was superbly constructed in that it actively aimed to minimise the rote learning required, and taught anatomy with a more integrated focus than purely focusing on the clinical and rote side of things (take that MEDxxxx students, our anatomy course is better ). In reality for both exams, the only true memorisation was that of the 12 cranial nerves, which are easily recalled by mnemonic:

Lectures are all brilliant, engaging and entertaining. Aside from the content being pretty much ubiquitously interesting, the lecturers are all engaging, funny and really passionate about anatomy. My personal favourites were Prof Norm Eizenberg and Dr Colin McHenry, who were both absolutely fantastic lecturers.

The lecture series was as follow:

Colin decided to do something different this year, which was the implementation of four interactive anatomical Masterclasses tying together key concepts throughout the semester. These sessions, which took place in the 2-hour lecture slot, were great fun and really helpful in preventing the course from becoming an exercise in memorisation. The Masterclasses were essentially an 'open lecture', where there would be some presenting by lecturers but a lot of back-and-forth discussion between them and students.

The Masterclasses were as follows:

The only other assessment task, aside from the 2 exams and the lab journal, was the 15% group project. Along with 2 or 3 other people, you choose a topic, develop a proper working title, then research that topic using medical (or otherwise academic) literature. Although this is called an "oral presentation", you don't actually do any first-hand presentation. Instead, you record your presented material by voice onto the powerpoint presentation that you'd ordinarily present alongside a standard presentation. I can't say I was or am a fan of this system - predominantly because it was prone to technical difficulties (especially given the advent of ~30 groups attempting to each upload ~90mb files to Moodle at approximately the same time) - but in truth it's fairly easy to organise, coordinate, delegate and get very high marks.

Make sure you and your group sorts out the organisational stuff early, because it's rather hard to 'whip' people into submitting by deadlines over a computer! Luckily my group was extremely helpful and we worked well together to get everything done on time (huzzah!).

This is a great unit, really spectacularly well-organised and executed. I admit I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with it throughout the semester, predominantly because it's immense in terms of content. Ostensibly, this is an anatomy unit, but it's also bolstered by the fact that you're not only looking at human anatomy, or anatomy solely through a clinical viewpoint; instead, this unit aims to provide a well-rounded anatomical understanding that incorporates both human anatomy as well as embryological, palaeontological and zoological anatomy and how they compare. As such, instead of devoting the whole course to clinical stuff, you look at evolutionary and environmental aspects as well. This is a really well-rounded course, but it eats up a massive amount of time and requires a good deal of effort and organisation to do well throughout the semester.

No, but Colin uploaded many practice questions to our Facebook group which ended up being a massive, massive help (I'll talk about this more later).

The practicals were really different to anything I've ever done before at uni. Basically, each prac session was divided into 3 parts:

4.25 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture.

As with any anatomy course there is a veritable bevy of potential textbooks out there for you to peruse. However, I'd personally recommend:

• Gray's Anatomy for Students
• Thieme Atlas of Anatomy: General Anatomy and Musculoskeletal System by Schulte and Schumacher

And depending on what you choose to do your group project on, you might like to look through various, more specific, textbooks. I found Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain by Bear, Connors and Paradiso extremely helpful for my CNS-related project (students who have done BMS1052 might already have a copy of this).

Sem 1, 2014

HD