ANAT20006: Principles of Human Structure

ADSL Quizes x 8 (10% in Total)
2 x 30 minute mid semester tests (worth 15% each)
Final exam (worth 60%)

Practicals

The practicals are very useful. If you're lucky enough to get good demonstrators (which are medical students), then you'll gain a lot out of them. My advise would be to try if you can go through the prac booklet before each prac and start answering the questions. I found that going into the pracs with an understanding of the concepts they cover really helped. Often you'll see a lot of people who haven't even read the booklet and then when the demonstrators are asking questions and explaining things, these people look very lost. As you are in a small group of about 8 people, you often spend most of the practical having discussions with other students and your demonstrator. Hence, that's why it's a lot more useful to enter the pracs as prepared as possible because otherwise you won't be able to contrubute to any discussion.
For clarification the pracs don't usually assess any content outside the lecture material, however sometimes demonstrators will inform you of some finer detail and hints to questions on the MSTs, so it's important that you're actually listening to what they say.

Mid Semester Tests

I found the assessment quite fair. There are 2 MST's across the semester that are not too difficult if you know the lecture content.
MST 1 covered material from Lectures 1-12 (Embryology, Nervous System, Human form and function, Skeletal System & Bones, Articular System, Muscular System, Inegumental System, Vascular System). I find this MST a bit harder than MST 2 despite the fact that MST 2 assessed more content. A lot of fine detail is assessed here, and in my opinion the embryology questions were the hardest (although some people from other reviews stated the Nervous System to be the most difficult concept, but I disagree). The average for MST 1 was 22/30 (I recieved 24/30) while the average for MST 2 was 21/30 (I recieved 27/30). While the average for MST 2 was lower, in my opinion MST 2 is much easier to do well in. While it assesses lectures 13-25 (Vertebral column & Back, Upper Limbs, Lower Limbs, Visceral Systems, Upper and Lower Respiratory Tracts, Thorax, Cardiovascular system), I personally found the nature of the content easier to remember. In saying this however, the upper and lower limb topics were EXTREMELY dense with content and it was often very difficult trying to remember this section. Luckily there was only a couple questions relating to this topic such as which muscles are innervated by what nerve/artery etc....
At first 30 minutes for 30 MCQs seems daunting, but you will find that it usually only takes 15-20 minutes to complete the entire test, giving you time to go back and review your answers.
They do not release the answers to either of the MSTs, however they do email you a report of which areas you got questions wrong in. For example, it may say you got Question 5 wrong and then below state that Question 5 assessed the Nervous System etc... It never really bothered me that they didn't release specific answers because the exam doesn't assess any of this content in Mutiple Choice format anyway.

ADSL Tasks

ADSLs were essentially weekly quizes. They release a 'Tutorial' each week (The name is a bit misleading - they are basically online modules that include diagrams and more information from the topics covered in lectures), and then a quiz to be completed that accompanies each Tutorial. The tutorials are LENGTHY and it often took me multiple days to hand write all my notes from them. Some people may prefer to just read them, however I found it useful to actually write the information down and print out the images (or if you don't have the time you could just type them). The ADSL tutorials also are accompanied with links to a website called Anatomedia (which a lot of the lecture diagrams come from). Anatomedia and the ADSL tutorial information work hand in hand, and the Anatomedia content often goes into a lot more depth. Often you have to make an informed decision about which Anatomedia content is actually relevant (as a lot is extened knowledge that isn't assessed) and in the beginning it can be a bit overwhelming. At the top of the page for each ADSL Tutorial it will provide 'refrences' for sections to go through in Anatomedia. FOLLOW THIS. Otherwise you will just get overwhelmed by the amount of sections/topics Anatomedia has and which ones to go through. In addition, having the lecture notes opened as you go through each ADSL Tutorial/Anatomedia helps work out which sections of Anatomedia are relevant and worth revising. The accompanied ADSL Test (which is open for a number of days) is a free 10% to your assessment. They have a 20 minute time limit each however you can complete them multiple times until you recieve 100% . However if you don't get 10/10 on the first go it won't tell you which ones you got wrong. I was usually always behind due to how long it took to go through each tutorial, so when the due date for the tests came, I always found myself using StudentDoc where people had uploaded the answers to the quiz. My suggestion is to screenshot your answers to the quiz because once the quiz closes you can't access them again for revision.

Exam

The exam this semester was very fair and in my opinion less difficult than expected. However, that isn't because the exam was necessarily easy (as I'm sure many people would have found it hard) but because of the way I approached my revision of diagrams. As stated extensively in other reviews the bulk of the exam assesses your ability to label and answer questions referring to DIAGRAMS. Any of the diagrams in the ADSLs, Anatomedia, prac booklet and the lectures CAN and WILL appear on the exam. At first this seems a bit fustrating because there is A LOT of potential diagrams that they could choose to put in the exam and it may come down to a bit of luck in terms of which diagrams you understand best. My advise is that during your exam revision, make a document of all the ADSL/Anatomedia diagrams from your revision notes and practise labelling them without any help. I would label them during SWOTVAC everyday before I began revising my other notes until I had them all commited to memory, and also to make sure I wasn't forgetting how to label things the next day.

Yes, with screen capture

Junhua Xiao, Dagmar Wilhelm, Jason Ivanusic, Stuart Mazzone, Simon Murray and Varsha Pilbrow. All the lecturers are pretty good, but Junhua is by far the best. As the subject coordinater, she always makes it VERY clear what is assessible as she goes through her lectures. I found it useful watching her lectures online for notetaking because of the quality of her explanations.

No. However for Sections B and C of the exam they release a few sample Questions for you to get an understanding of the way these sections are set out. They don't release answers however in the Exam Revision Lecture Junhua answers a few of them.

4/5

General Anatomy: Principles and Applications (Eizenberg) and Gray/s Anatomy are recommended. However often they emphasise in lectures how the textbooks cover topics in far more detail than they teach you. Hence I think reading any 'recommended' textbooks would only be confusing and probably a waste of time. I never used any textbooks as the lectures and ADSL online tutorials were enough.

Section A: 20 MCQs on the remaining 1/3 of the course that wasn't assessed in the MSTS. If you have revised this content well enough then you will be able to pretty much answer all the questions during reading time.

Section B: 4 x 10 mark questions each requiring you to label a diagram (so that's 4 diagrams). This is a "fill in the gaps" style of answering Q's so again, it's all MCQ. This semester 2/4 of the diagrams were from lectures and the other 2 were from the ADSLs. I was pretty relieved with this section because 3/4 diagrams I was familiar with (the other one less so but I managed to make a few educated guesses). An Embryology diagram from the lectures initially caught me off guard but when it came to answering it, it was actually not too difficult if you knew the basics. I didn't study embryology much because one of the practical demonstrators told my group that they never really assessed embryology on the exam, but luckily it wasn't too difficult if you knew the general concepts of embryology.

Section C: 4 x 15 mark questions that each include a diagram. This is the "extended response" section, that is broken down into numerous questions (It's not just a single 15 mark question). This section is the most difficult because you don't have the help of MCQ memory cues. Each of the 4 questions will include a diagram that you have to label, and in this section there will be no list of words to choose from when labelling. So you really do need to make sure you're familar with diagrams, but luckily each label was usually only worth 1/2 mark. In addition to labelling a diagram, you will get questions relating specifically to the diagram and questions not relating to the diagram. They will also assess clinical significance here.

Again, you shouldn't really feel too pressed for time. I think I finished the exam with about 15 minutes to spare. If you're lucky enough to be familar with the diagrams from Section B, and the MCQ questions in Section A, then these 2 MCQ sections can be completed quicker than "a minute a mark".

All in all, this subject rewards those who dedicate a lot of time into commiting a whole lot of facts and diagrams to memory. If you have completed revision notes throughout the semester, then by the the time SWOTVAC comes you can just spend your time revising and reading through them.

Goodluck!!!!

3 x 1 hour lectures per week
4 x 2 hour practicals throughout the semester
- Practical Class Week 7: Anatomical Structures
- Practical Class Week 8: Upper and Lower Limbs
- Practical Class Week 10: Back and Vertebral Column, Respiritary & Cardiovascular Systems
- Practical Class Week 12: Gastrointestinal, Reproductive and Urinary Systems

2018

87 (H1)

Mid semester tests were okay. I never felt like there were many trick questions there, so as long as you're prepared you should be ok.

If you're a rote learner, you are going to love this subject. There is a whole lot of content which is covered, and is to be expected considering its anatomy of the human body.

Multichoice section on the last 3 weeks of the semester, fill in the blanks section relating to pictures, four extended response questions in response to pictures (ER questions are like a series of short answer questions). As I mentioned before, lots of ADSL stuff in there.

Yes, with screen capture

Dr Varsha Pilbrow (the principles lectures incl. muscles, the skeletal system)
Dr Peter Kitchener (nervous system)
A/Prof Colin Anderson (embryology)
DR Simon Murray (back and vertebral column, upper and lower limbs)
Dr Junhua Xiao (Ribcage, lower respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract: first part of the series)
Dr Jenny Hayes (the heart, gastrointestinal tract: second part of the series)

No, but you can access past BIOM20002 Human Structure and Function exams on the library archives. Some of the content in these exams is similar.

I'll get straight to the point, you look at prosections of cadavers. I found the pracs pretty interesting I guess, except I came out every time more confused than I was before because the demonstrators kept telling us "make sure you know this, that, that oh and that too". It became overwhelming because I was always thinking "man we have to know all this stuff in addition to the lecture notes?". I guess the demonstrators were just trying to prepare you well for the exam. They mark your attendance and you are expected to attend around 75% or something, but there is no actual assessment that contributes to your final mark for them.


I guess what I liked about the subject was the fact it was extremely interesting. Hence, it didn't seem as much of a task to rote learn everything unlike other subjects.

My rating reflects the fact that there was such little practice materials we could use for assisting us in the subject (except for ADSL type stuff). There are no actual past exams for the subject, let alone any practice mid semester test stuff. In addition, once you have done your mid semester tests, they don't go through the content with you and analyse them after.

3.5/5

Handbook lists "Eizenberg N, Briggs C et al: General Anatomy: Principles & Applications, McGraw-Hill 2007". I didn't use it and I don't think you need to. Internet is all you need.

Basically in your lecture notes, there is a whole bunch of pictures. I felt as if it was not a case of whatever is on the lecture notes is examinable but what the lecturer says is examinable. Writing my lecture notes for the subject took up a lot of my time (2-3 hours sometimes e.g. for the limbs section) because I didn't know what level of detail we had to go to. You'll come to find that they expect you to know such pedantic things like a whole bunch of numbers corresponding to dermatomes and myotomes for muscle movement. All in all I found the nervous system and upper and lower limbs the most interesting.

3x1 hour lectures per week, 4 x 2 hour practicals scattered through the semester

2013, Semester 1

H2A

On-going assessment on theory and practical work throughout the semester (25%); a 2-hour written theory examination in the examination period (60%); on-going summative assessments (15%).

To be honest I found anatomy quite overwhelming (but I think I speak on behalf of a small minority within the subject cohort ). I didn't have a choice in the matter though as it is a prerequisite for Medicine and Health Science Graduate Courses. Chris Briggs who took the Principles lectures for Bones/Upper and Lower Limbs and Jason Ivanusic who took the Reproductive Systems and Respiratory Tract Lectures were the most enjoyable and engaging to watch. I think every lecture proceeding the 2nd week, I had to lectopia again which took like a minimum of 2 hrs per lecture (+including collating my study notes). For a good 3/4 of a semester I think I approached the subject in the wrong way. It is important that you know that ALL ASSESSED material will be in the lecture. I kind of got obsessive compulsive and kind of read all the relevant (discussed in lectures) material within Grays Anatomy and then got completely overwhelmed by it. If your on top of your work, the MST should be relatively easy. Coming from a 500 student cohort the median and average mark was about 20/30 for both tests. I had to screw up both by getting 21 and 22 for each test which sucked because it meant I had to get 80% on the exam to get a H1. The ADSL (LMS 15%) quizzes are very useful. Chris Briggs posts up questions fortnightly which supplement the Lecture material which is intended to help aid in studying for the TIMED online quizzes and the exam if you complete them thoroughly. Images that are put onto these ADSL's WILL BE ON the EXAM so study them and make sure you're familiar with labelling everything.

The practicals were intended to supplement the lecture materials. The university recruits Physiotherapy and Medicine students to conduct each workshop class. There are 6-8 workshop stations within each practical usually on each lecture topic which groups of students rotate around through the duration of 2 hrs. You're able to see dismantled cadavers and have opportunity to touch/poke/prod them. Personally, I found it pretty dry and my legs were tired so therefore I wasn't very fond of it. Make sure you attend it though because they take attendance in some weeks. I don't think the practicals were assessed in any way though.
The exam comprised of 3 Sections. A Multiple Choice Section which covered all lectures from the last three weeks of semester, A fill in the Blanks section (similar to that in 1st Year BIOL) and a Short Answer Response Question (whereby I had the choice of choosing 4 out of a 8 Questions). It was this exam structure which allowed me to recover from my terrible MST marks as you could be familiar with a bit more than half the subject content and still be able to score well. The Questions were very straight forward, mostly stuff that were drilled in during the semester so make sure your familiar with the key concepts and principles. Take your time in the exam.

Yes, with screen capture

Dr Chris Briggs, Dr Varsha Pilbrow, Dr Peter Kitchener, Dr Jason Ivanusic & Dr Virginia Grossman

No, some unhelpful sample questions were provided.

3.5 of 5

Eizenberg N, Briggs C et al: General Anatomy: Principles & Applications, McGraw-Hill 2007 (not recommended). I think going to the Biomed library to borrow out the Grays Anatomy book by Drake and Netter Anatomy Atlas for exam study. They are overnight loans but because you can manually reborrow them, I reborrowed them for the whole semester because i'm cheap ass.

3 x 1hr Lectures and 1 x 2hr Practical every week after Week 5

2011 Semester 1

H1 (81%)