BIOS2061: Vertebrate Zoology

3x laboratory dissection drawings 15% (5% each)
3x lab reports 10% (3.33% each)
Bird Survey of Centennial Park 5%
Mid term lab quiz 10%
Practical exam 20%
Final exam 40%

None.

I picked this course as an elective, and boy is this course run extremely well. The lectures are run by a lot of lecturers, which does mean that each lecture style changes every 2 weeks for so, however, this wasn't a problem because every single lecturer was so passionate with their topics. They were all engaging, and energetic.

The course covers the classification of all vertebrates and the key features of their anatomy, including teeth, bones and their evolutionary traits. There was also a closer investigation into Australian vertebrates. A lot of the content is pretty straight forward and intuitive for the most part, but the main difficulty came from the new terminology. Sharks aren't sharks, they're Elasmobranchii with subgroups of squalomorphs and galeomorphs. Once you get over this initial hump and learn what the terminology mean makes the rest of the course pretty easy.

The laboratories started out fantastically, starting with a dissection of a dogfish shark and microscopes of some animal tissue or small animal. It, however, did become pretty mundane as the weeks went on because it then only consisted of bones/specimen jars, which isn't bad in itself, but 4 hours a week of it made it stale, because there wasn't too much information that co-existed with the exhibits.

The assessments of the course are really quite easy and stress-free. 30% of the final mark was essentially impossible to get less than 90% of it. The "lab reports" were just answering questions in the lab manual and handing them in at the end of the lab. The real kicker is that we were given the answers to every question before submitting. The dissections, were also marked extremely leniently (I can't draw for the life of me, but I still got 100%). The bird survey was also a nice excursion that made the assessment enjoyable. The only difficult assessment I found was the midterm, although multiple choice, some questions required you to know some specific things, and made it pretty difficult. This made me think that the final prac exam would be of similar difficulty, but I was really wrong, most of the questions were really simple, and if they weren't, the (again multiple choice) answers were pretty easy to guess. Finally, the final exam was in the same sense of the practice exam, and it wasn't multiple choice. ~80% of the final exam had the exact same questions in the practise exam, so studying made it really easy.

Overall, I really liked the laid back aspect of the course that more focussed on interest and motivation rather than assessments, and I think that was the reason why I enjoyed it so much. In hindsight, my mark should've been higher for what I did get, nothing was difficult, but my mark is still good. Expect high marks if completing this course This course has been designed it a fantastic way.

3x 1-hour lecture and 2x 2-hour laboratory each week.

2.0/5

Yes

Mike Archer, Sue Hand, Peter Yates, Ian Suthers, Jodi Rowley, Richard Kingsford.

Lab manual and one past paper.

4.2/5

None required

2019 Term 2

80 DN