BOTA30001: Marine Botany

Another Important thing is, you need to find accommodation when you're staying there, you can use various websites like Stayz, or AirBnb. Some people had family and friends living there, but you most likely will have to bunk with a bunch of other people, and preferable you should be near the conservatorium. You don't want to be driving/cycling from Ocean Grove every day lol. Staff put up a discussion board on the LMS which you can use to discuss living arrangments and renting a house, get on it and don't leave it to the week before the subject starts. But all in all Queenscliff is great, beautiful place. And you do get a dayoff on the weekend, where you can go visit the Ozone Wreck at Port Arlington, its super cool! Definitely check it out, lots of marine life and ruins there.

Also one of the assessments, is your algae collection, do NOT neglect this. Marks can be deducted for small things, so just make sure you stay within the guidelines and you should be fine, and take your photographs of your samples in clear light, and clear water. These should be easy marks, but can be easily mucked up if you're careless. Also there are a lot of no-go algae collecting zones around Queenscliff/Point Lonsdale, so you need to know where to go. Also the Algae Collection is due on the day of the exam, back in Melbourne. So even if you don't get everything at Queenscliff, you can still go to Altona or Williamstown or someplace to get algae after your return.

(One 20-minute mid-subject progression test, taken mid-way through the teaching period (5%);
One 15-minute group research project presentation due on the last day of class (15%);
Collection and preservation of 6 to 10 seaweed specimen throughout the teaching period (10%);
One 2-hour laboratory examination, taken at the end of the teaching period (30%); and
One 2-hour written examination, taken at the end of the teaching period (40%))

I thought this was a great, interesting subject, definitely one of my favourite so far. And I'm not a botany nut or anything, I did this one as a breadth. You learn about the different types of algae: green, red and brown and their features and reproductive cycles. You later go on to learn about phytoplankton, so stuff like diatoms, oomycetes, ciliates. And you then learn about problems affecting marine plant life. You have to print out the lecture slides yourself, and unfortunately there is no lecture capture, as that would've been a great help. You could probably voice record it on your phone, as the lectures are held in classrooms

You have two exams, theory and Lab. These occur about a week or so after you come back from Queenscliff. For the Lab, you really need to study and know your algae and your phytoplankton and know their defining features. Cannot stress this enough. I know a lot of the phytoplankton look pretty much the same under a microscope, but you really got to find the defining features like the extra flagella, or haptonema, or armour-like protection.
Theory Exam was much easier in my opinion, there isn't a whole tonne of stuff that needs to be learnt for the subject, and as long as you've been reading up and studying for this exam, you should be fine. And there are no pictures, which I was happy about, since distinguishing between different micro-organisms or algae on a picture is what caused me trouble.
Although I have listed some gripes with the subject, I still give it a 4 out of 5. I think its my favourite subject I've done at uni so far. You definitely get enthusiastic about this subject even if you're not someone super into plants and botany and stuff. I definitely recommend this subject, it only has a quota of 30 people, so don't leave enrolment to the last minute. It is very interesting, and you get to go to Queenscliff for 10 Days, which is good as. Its not too hard to score well, provided you don't make many careless errors. Having said that you still need to work for it though, just that there aren't difficult concepts to remember or anything. Anyway I hope this is helpful to all you prospective Marine Botany Students!

You have some field trips, where you go on to the various beaches around Queenscliff, Port Lonsdale and Barwon Heads and pick up various algae, and the demonstrators will tell you stories, or various things about them. Try be in Heroen or Jack's group, as they're very knowledgable and have good stories. Some of these samples are later used in the lab.

The Group Presentation was alright, we got to look at a specific topic, and then went out and did research on them out in the field. We also got given a Demonstrator, young people who were doing research in these areas, and they were good. However, they made us use some complex programming, for statistical analysis, which I felt was beyond our course. But your demonstrator should be well versed in this program, so shouldn't be too bad. But still it was a very tiring exercise, we spent many hours getting the project done.

Speaking of the lab, these were alright initially, however they were 3 hours long and dragged on for ages. Initially you're looking at various algae they bring in, and use these answer key sheets to identify what species an algae is, which follows a list of steps that go through the characteristics. It may sound simple, but believe me they were very difficult! Even some of the demonstrators took a while using those. And you needed to know how to use these answer keys in the Lab exam, so try get the hang of it if you can. Later on we would look at tiny little organisms under microscopes, and they would all look so similar, like golden-green circular organisms. Ughh it got really tiring eventually, and hurt my eyes.

No.

Heroen Verbruggen,

Also you have a mid-sem test, worth 5% about halfway through. Ideally you should try hard on this, but you really don't have much time to study on this. A lot of people in my cohort scored poorly on it, but you can definitely redeem yourself from a poor score on it.

None available

4 out of 5

None. Although they recommended to borrow some books from the library at Uni.

18 x one hour lectures, 9 x three hour practicals (in laboratory), 4 x three hour practicals (in field)

2015, November Intensive