Originally Posted by inthemaking

Re: HTH SCI 2J03 - Having a pass/fail course is actually detrimental to most health sci students (since 99% are aiming for grad/professional school) because a pass/fail course is typically not included in your GPA. So instead you have one less course to include in your cumulative GPA and less of a buffer if you happen to do poorly in another course that semester. I wish I received an actual mark for that course because I also happened to take orgo that semester and sure could've used another mark to help me out.

You mean, you found a non-BHSc course to be an outlier in terms of your grades? Interesting.

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

Ima let you guys finish your argument but first, I'd like to say that the Biochem program is the best program of all time.

As gggg stated earlier (in a rather aggressive manner), a lot of people get the impression that life sci program is all about regurgitation of information. I'd like to say that after having taken several biochemistry (2B03/2BB3/2L06) and biology (2b03/2c03 etc) and chemistry (2OA3/2OB3/2P03), I can safely say that each of these courses, although required memorization (c'mon where is memorization TOTALLY absent in science), there was a great deal of emphasis on problem solving/creativity/communication/presentation skills. Especially the biochemistry courses which required students to complete some pretty difficult assignments (e.g. designing a new drug/enzyme inhibitor and justifying its design) that required A LOT of thinking. These biochem courses also had a big PBL group project that was due at the end of the year. AND these courses had a sufficient lecture/test/quiz component of some sort. I should add that many of these tests were not easy and required a great deal of thinking. In fact, looking back at my second year, I'd go as far as saying that the biochem program is at least as good as BHSc simply because we incorporate everything innovative about BHSc (e.g. PBL, groupwork), in addition to benefits of traditional lecture/test based learning (i.e. individual work). Additionally, the professors are fair with the grades and you always get what you deserve, never less and seldom more. Basically, through these examples, it should be clear that not all life sci programs are (1) the same (many specializations within life sci) and (2) prepare its students for a career as a physician just as well as any other program and in the case of the biochem program, I'd say (feel free to slay me for my patriotic spirit) that the biochem program may even prepare me better than a BHSc program

Oh, I also think it's really messed up that anyone here, especially those who aren't in med school, have an opinion on whether non-academic skills are more or less important than the "knowledge" gained from life sci vs. hsci program.

I just wrote this because I got the general feeling from this thread that people think life sci may not prepare you well for med.

However, there are a few things I dislike about the BHSc program, but it's mostly out of jealousy than any sort of personal attack at its students. There are some courses, like HTH SCI 3S03 Communication skills which allow students to pretty much learn how to talk to a patient; this course is limited to BHSc as resources are limited and prioritized. I think that those who are aspiring for med school should not be so frustrated with any apparent inflation that may exist (inflation may change your gpa by like a max. 0.1/4.0 IF YOU'RE SUPER LUCKY) but instead be frustrated with the non-academic factors associated with restricted access to courses like HTH SCI 3S03. I've tried talking to people in the BHSc dept but they say they can't let me in due to resource contraints :( I wish someone could guide me as to who I could to talk to in the Science dept in order to address this issue.

As for grade inflation: (1) a lot of my friends are getting some seemingly* unjustified grade boosts in the health sci stats course where there was a random 3% final mark boost in the health sci stats course simply for this year's average being lower than the previous years' and some curves in HTH SCI 2L03 (anat/phys semester 1) again due to avgs that were historically lower, (2) I have to say that HTH SCI 2J03 (where you pretty much just do yoga/gym for a semester and is pass/fail) is a bit unfair, (3) first year inquiry (don't know code) is a bit of a bird (AS QUOTED FROM MY HEALTH SCI FRIENDS) and (4) they are allowed to take HTH SCI 3H03 in the summer, and count it as a during-the-year credit; this pretty much allows them to take 1 less course during the year... -- should be noted that all these statements were based on what the health scis told me and not based on my personal judgement of the program. However, these inflations do not really bother me because in pretty much all the courses I've taken in the biochem program, work has been proportional to mark and therefore, I have no reason to complain. *I used seemingly as there may have been a reason other than the one mentioned that I was unaware of.

Totally agree about your point on 3S03, it seems like a great course and I am stoked to take it next year. I mean, there will always be space issues for any class, but I don't know how you could go about fixing an issue like that (complaining to science faculty to make a similar course?). Ya there was a curve in anatomy and stats.. I could argue that this hurts the 'smartest' health scis the most because it massively affected people who got crappy marks but for people who did well in the first place, their marks didn't change. Also, I would have loved to take STATS 2B03 instead but I am not in the science faculty and never took data management so I couldnt. The health sci stats course was really not good and that is all I will say even though I ended up with a 12.

I'll comment on your biochemistry praise.. I've taken all those courses (biochem 2b03/2bb3/2l06, chem 2oa3/2ob3) except the bios (2b03/2c03) and the phys chem. From what I've heard from the phys chem class, that course is massively curved to an extent that would make people go apesh*t if it were health sci. I know someone who got 50s on multiple midterms and like a mid 70 on the exam, learned nothing in the course, and ended up with an 11 due to the free marks quizzes, 1 good midterm, a 56 on one section of the exam, and like 76 on the second section and the more than generous marking scheme that allowed performance like that to get a good mark.

there was also technically bonus marks given in biochem 2bo3/2bb3 (2b03 on the midterms, you could get 8% bonus to your grade.. and the tests were really easy regardless) and in 2bb3 you could get bonus for handing in an assignment early, and we also got to 'cheat' on a quiz. In 2L06 we wrote the tests in groups - that inflated peoples grades a lot because you could completely copy someones test even if you knew nothing. so.. yes, health sci has bonus marks in some courses, but so does every single biochem course i have taken. do I think it was wrong to give bonus marks in any of the cases? not necessarily, I think giving students a break and emphasizing the importance on learning and not grades is better even if it means helping out some slackers a bit more than necessary.

Not going to comment on orgo since it's not really biochem specific.. Also don't know too much about the cell bio 2b03 either. I think genetics is really cool and it's weird that there is no required course in genetics for health sci (just some 3rd year electives) but I have heard good things about that class (2C03).

In terms of group work in biochem, I think it was good to have part inquiry group project, part lecture. But the biochem dpmt doesn't put any emphasis on group dynamics / development like the health sci department. so in biochem they kinda just don't give much guidance and hopefully you figure things out. In health sci you have peer tutors that make you talk about how your group is working etc.. to try to correct any problems in terms of unequal work distribution, lack of attendance, and to address without being too rude and everything. for the biochem projects the TAs weren't really versed in group dynamics and focused the discussion entirely on the content of our projects (in my experience). the group projects were still really fun times, though, in both faculties! improvements can obviously still be made. neither one is perfect.

I'll say that the biochem department and health science department are both amazing, innovative, programs that are good preparation for professional schools, and I'm glad to have experienced both in some form.

Originally Posted by WalkerBlue

You mean, you found a non-BHSc course to be an outlier in terms of your grades? Interesting.

Well to be fair I was overloading that semester (with another non-BHSc course - genetics). I bit off more than I could chew with 6 courses + ECs and decided that, rather than compromise my semester average by spreading myself too thin, to just let orgo go since it was a) not a prereq for vet school and b) not important for my major. The smart decision would have been to drop orgo but I was too proud for that. Also, I'm not afraid to admit that orgo is not my strongest subject and I don't think I'm alone in finding orgo difficult. BHSc student or not, most people don't get 12s in orgo.

I've graduated now and orgo is my only outlier grades-wise, and the majority of my electives were non-BHSc courses.

Originally Posted by yoni

I'll comment on your biochemistry praise.. I've taken all those courses (biochem 2b03/2bb3/2l06, chem 2oa3/2ob3) except the bios (2b03/2c03) and the phys chem. From what I've heard from the phys chem class, that course is massively curved to an extent that would make people go apesh*t if it were health sci. I know someone who got 50s on multiple midterms and like a mid 70 on the exam, learned nothing in the course, and ended up with an 11 due to the free marks quizzes, 1 good midterm, a 56 on one section of the exam, and like 76 on the second section and the more than generous marking scheme that allowed performance like that to get a good mark.

For someone who is so insistent that people are judging health sci courses without knowing what they're talking about, your statement about phys chem is extremely hypocritical.

It's not curved. Period.

One year (Fall 2010, the year after I took it), a bunch of biochems decided they'd rather drop out of biochem than have phys chem drop their average. So the biochem department pushed to have a pass/fail option given to the course, to prevent people from dropping out of biochem. And yes, people DID "go apesh*t", as you put it--the only difference being that it was people WITHIN the department and program that recognized this, instead of people in other programs or faculties. It's a ridiculously unfair arrangement and some people refused to take the pass/fail on principle.

When I took the course, we had a prof who knew jack sh*t about what he was supposed to be teaching us, was lost if he couldn't consult wikipedia during lectures, proved unable to write a midterm on his own and so resorted to using the midterm and exam from the previous year, which, by the way, he was incapable of solving most of the problems on. Watching him try to answer questions about the exam was hilarious. That he needed a huge amount of convincing that for thermodynamic equations, temperature needs to be in Kelvin and not Celsius, is pathetic. There was no curve or special marking scheme for us. In Fall 2010, they had a fully competent prof, it was just the students that were "dense" (quoting from a student in that class). There was absolutely no reason to offer a pass/fail option.

Due to the backlash from the pass/fail option the one time it was given, I don't believe they have offered it since. In other words, they learned from their mistakes.

So unless I completely missed your point about phys chem, I really don't see how it proves anything.

Originally Posted by RememberTwce

There was a change in the marks for Stats. It was really horribly taught, and PBL didn't work at all for that class. I don't know the official reasoning for the changes, nor do I think we'll ever get access to that information, but it was similar to a curve in any other class and appropriate in my opinion.
.

If I'm not mistaken, the average for Stats before the adjustment was ~75%. Slightly higher even (decimals). In your HONEST opinion, does a mark like that deserve to be curved? I know you're a transfer. Did any of your first year courses get bumped up from a 75% average? Any of your other non-hth sci electives? Any other self-respecting course would LOVE to have an average like that (individually as a mark, students may not be pleased and may disagree - heck I do, but as a COURSE, a 75% average overall is pretty solid).

In your university career you're bound to meet courses that you may find to be 'horribly taught'.
In this case however, an average of 75% indicates that the prof has most certainly done his/her job.

Heck, it's not that hard to figure out how to do a Chi-square test or an F or T- test on your own. I know there's more to it than that but, as YOUNG INQUISITIVE MINDS that are all about PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING, use GOOGLE or the other infinite resources made available to you and do just that, PROBLEM SOLVE.

The fact that you find this adjustment APPROPRIATE is slightly concerning.
Appropriate adjustments would be for oh-I-don't-know, Organic Chem? Where the averages are in the 50s? Just my opinion. You can argue that class is also 'horribly taught'.

Forgive me for not knowing how to 'quote' properly, but with regards to:

"There was more to HTH SCI 2J03 than just doing that stuff, albeit not anything overly rigorous, but that's why it's pass/fail. It was meant to show us some different perspectives into health and it did, but there was no mark associated with it for that reason. I can't speak for everyone, but I would've rather taken a course in which I received a mark (or had I known about the course in advance, I would've overloaded). So while you're right, it was a pass/fail class, there wasn't any benefit to only having 4 grades that semester."


I commend you for wanting to take another course in its place. However, I just want to point out that it's slightly embarrassing to see Health Science students treading across campus, going to CLASS with yoga mats and gym clothes. I mean COME ON. Not even Kin kids do that. AND THEY'RE THE STEREOTYPICAL 'GYM CLASS'. (Although I believe York- Kinesiology has a gym component? Mac doesn't.)
And please don't tell me there wasn't "any benefit" .. You gained inner peace and learned how to 'de-stress' from that course, didn't you? Last time I got inner peace was from watching Kung Fu Panda 2 (unreal movie btw).
In all seriousness, the REAL benefit is the time you can allocate to your other 4 courses (ie. Anatomy).

Which brings up another point..You say that statistically/historically your year has done poorly in BOTH anatomy and stats, which is why you deserved the curves. Did it magically get so hard that your year is unable to comprehend this new-found knowledge? Curriculums change all the time. AS THE CREAM OF THE CROP and based on your style of learning, you should be able to adapt to these changes. Blaming it on the lack of a midterm bell-ringer isn't exactly a good excuse. You have access to the anatomy lab. Go in well beforehand and prepare yourself. You KNOW it's a hard course. All a matter of preparation.

To be honest, the real p*ss off here is, courses like Anatomy are supposed to be your 'hard courses'. Aka the ones where you don't get saved. The ones that 'kill' you. (And no, please don't think that I want you all to fail).
Unfortunately, that's not the case. You still get adjustments, even in your hardest courses.
It's slightly annoying (and don't kill me for going back to this med school thing) because you guys are our (everyone else's) competition for grad schools and all the fancy professional schools.
When you compete with people who's Senate cutoff is 11.7 and Hooker is 11.9, it makes it kinda tough to realize your dream knowing that you'll be compared to them (discouraging as well).

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

I commend you for wanting to take another course in its place. However, I just want to point out that it's slightly embarrassing to see Health Science students treading across campus, going to CLASS with yoga mats and gym clothes. I mean COME ON. Not even Kin kids do that. AND THEY'RE THE STEREOTYPICAL 'GYM CLASS'. (Although I believe York- Kinesiology has a gym component? Mac doesn't.)

Just a note on this - technically we're not going to class, we're going to one half of our tutorial. The other half of the tutorial involves presentations and class discussion, and then we also have lecture based classes on top of our tutorials. Not saying it's not a bullshit course (I would have preferred taking something in its place), but the course wasn't all "gym class" etc.

Originally Posted by nerual

For someone who is so insistent that people are judging health sci courses without knowing what they're talking about, your statement about phys chem is extremely hypocritical.

It's not curved. Period.

One year (Fall 2010, the year after I took it), a bunch of biochems decided they'd rather drop out of biochem than have phys chem drop their average. So the biochem department pushed to have a pass/fail option given to the course, to prevent people from dropping out of biochem. And yes, people DID "go apesh*t", as you put it--the only difference being that it was people WITHIN the department and program that recognized this, instead of people in other programs or faculties. It's a ridiculously unfair arrangement and some people refused to take the pass/fail on principle.

When I took the course, we had a prof who knew jack sh*t about what he was supposed to be teaching us, was lost if he couldn't consult wikipedia during lectures, proved unable to write a midterm on his own and so resorted to using the midterm and exam from the previous year, which, by the way, he was incapable of solving most of the problems on. Watching him try to answer questions about the exam was hilarious. That he needed a huge amount of convincing that for thermodynamic equations, temperature needs to be in Kelvin and not Celsius, is pathetic. There was no curve or special marking scheme for us. In Fall 2010, they had a fully competent prof, it was just the students that were "dense" (quoting from a student in that class). There was absolutely no reason to offer a pass/fail option.

Due to the backlash from the pass/fail option the one time it was given, I don't believe they have offered it since. In other words, they learned from their mistakes.

So unless I completely missed your point about phys chem, I really don't see how it proves anything.

I'm talking about Fall 2011.... I know they had that pass/fail thing in the past but I was not talking about that in my post at all. Fine, curve is not the right word to choose, but this year (2011), 36% of the grade was for online quizzes that everyone got near-perfect on, midterms that only counted if you did well, etc. That's insane. Sorry if your prof for the course wasn't the best ever. It happens in every faculty.So you taught yourself for that, like we taught ourselves stats. Big woop. You teach yourself. You didn't take 2P03 this year, so I don't think your opinion on it is any more valid than mine. I was just trying to illustrate that biochem courses are very generous / accommodating when it comes to grades. And I don't see anything wrong with that even if it is an really really generous increase. Give everyone 12.0 for all I care, then we could actually talk about something more interesting than grades. I just wanted to point out some examples so that people see the issue of 'inflation' more holistically and not just jump in on a one-sided bashing of a program.

edit: oh, and it definitely was curved this year. I know more than one person whose final mark went up a grade point on grade reports several months after the course ended.

Originally Posted by yoni

Give everyone 12.0 for all I care, then we could actually talk about something more interesting than grades.

This.

/12chars

Every faculty has their respective problems. There is no perfect class, never mind course, never mind programme. Every student will look at a faculty/class/programme/course and find different positives and negatives. I can see them in HS. I can see them in LS. If I were to tell you what I see, you would disagree, but that concerns neither you nor me. The only way to have a programme which is re-mote-ly acceptable to a student is for that student to create their own. Which, right now, is not possible.
So what do we do? Grit our teeth, pick a programme, work through the kinks, get a Master's, get a PhD, and form our own programme.
Then we can fill it with students who will point out the positives and negatives...negatives , mostly...while we sit in the Dean's chair and say, "Why didn't this ever exist when I was a student?"

Originally Posted by yoni

I'm talking about Fall 2011.... I know they had that pass/fail thing in the past but I was not talking about that in my post at all. Fine, curve is not the right word to choose, but this year (2011), 36% of the grade was for online quizzes that everyone got near-perfect on, midterms that only counted if you did well, etc. That's insane. Sorry if your prof for the course wasn't the best ever. It happens in every faculty.So you taught yourself for that, like we taught ourselves stats. Big woop. You teach yourself. You didn't take 2P03 this year, so I don't think your opinion on it is any more valid than mine. I was just trying to illustrate that biochem courses are very generous / accommodating when it comes to grades. And I don't see anything wrong with that even if it is an really really generous increase. Give everyone 12.0 for all I care, then we could actually talk about something more interesting than grades. I just wanted to point out some examples so that people see the issue of 'inflation' more holistically and not just jump in on a one-sided bashing of a program.

edit: oh, and it definitely was curved this year. I know more than one person whose final mark went up a grade point on grade reports several months after the course ended.

This past year (Fall 2011) was them trying to change the course AFTER the pass/fail disaster. As it's a relatively new course in general, it's going to take time to get a marking scheme that actually works. Sorry I didn't take the course this year, I just have spoken with the people involved in trying to make this course better, and been involved in discussions trying to make that happen. So I do actually think I know a bit more about it than you do.

Also, it's NOT a biochem course. So using this course doesn't help your point at all, if your point is about biochem courses.
Also, as a side note, biochem faculty are part of the Faculty of Health Sciences, and many of them have similar teaching philosophies. This isn't meant as a criticism or anything...just a fact. Also a reason though that using biochem as an example of how mark inflation is present elsewhere isn't really saying anything. (And no one is even denying that mark inflation happens elsewhere).

Just because the mark goes up after grade points are initially released, that does not mean it was curved. I've had that happen in a couple of courses, due to an error in mark computation. In my experience, they will send you a lovely email to inform you if the error results in your mark going down, but not if it results in your mark going up.

And I think you missed the point about my prof. The point was basically that, out of all the courses I have ever taken at Mac, if some sort of adjustment in the marks was warranted, it would be in that course. I've had other horrible profs, but none were even close to as incompetent as this guy. This is actually the *only* course I've taken where I would think that any adjustment is warranted. It wasn't just "teach yourself", it was teach yourself AND learn to recognize when the notes you're trying to learn from are factually incorrect, learn when the prof can't do math and the derivation is wrong yet he's convinced it's right, etc. Then, when you don't understand a question on the midterm and you go afterwards to try to learn how to do it properly, the prof hasn't the slightest clue. Also, you should learn to recognize errors in the midterm questions that the prof isn't aware of. This experience was provided as a point of contrast to that of the Fall 2010 class, who basically got a pass/fail for no reason.

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

If I'm not mistaken, the average for Stats before the adjustment was ~75%. Slightly higher even (decimals). In your HONEST opinion, does a mark like that deserve to be curved? I know you're a transfer. Did any of your first year courses get bumped up from a 75% average? Any of your other non-hth sci electives? Any other self-respecting course would LOVE to have an average like that (individually as a mark, students may not be pleased and may disagree - heck I do, but as a COURSE, a 75% average overall is pretty solid).

In your university career you're bound to meet courses that you may find to be 'horribly taught'.
In this case however, an average of 75% indicates that the prof has most certainly done his/her job.

Heck, it's not that hard to figure out how to do a Chi-square test or an F or T- test on your own. I know there's more to it than that but, as YOUNG INQUISITIVE MINDS that are all about PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING, use GOOGLE or the other infinite resources made available to you and do just that, PROBLEM SOLVE.

The fact that you find this adjustment APPROPRIATE is slightly concerning.
Appropriate adjustments would be for oh-I-don't-know, Organic Chem? Where the averages are in the 50s? Just my opinion. You can argue that class is also 'horribly taught'.

The goal of any adjustment isn't to reach a particular range, it's to make up for inadequacies in the course itself. That's why I don't consider the average before the adjustment relevant. Just because the average was 75 doesn't mean that we weren't hindered from achieving a higher mark.

I took orgo (the first one at least) and it was fairly well taught. I think I understand what you're getting at though, but this wasn't the case of just having a bad prof. The course itself was just fundamentally flawed. The information presented in class made little sense in the context of the questions that were asked on assessments, the use of PBL was unwarranted, and in addition to that, the profs were bad.

And we did do that (study on our own). Everyone I know did exactly what you described, but having to learn an entire course on your own (introductory class, but nonetheless) shows that it wasn't taught appropriately.

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

Forgive me for not knowing how to 'quote' properly, but with regards to:

"There was more to HTH SCI 2J03 than just doing that stuff, albeit not anything overly rigorous, but that's why it's pass/fail. It was meant to show us some different perspectives into health and it did, but there was no mark associated with it for that reason. I can't speak for everyone, but I would've rather taken a course in which I received a mark (or had I known about the course in advance, I would've overloaded). So while you're right, it was a pass/fail class, there wasn't any benefit to only having 4 grades that semester."


I commend you for wanting to take another course in its place. However, I just want to point out that it's slightly embarrassing to see Health Science students treading across campus, going to CLASS with yoga mats and gym clothes. I mean COME ON. Not even Kin kids do that. AND THEY'RE THE STEREOTYPICAL 'GYM CLASS'. (Although I believe York- Kinesiology has a gym component? Mac doesn't.)
And please don't tell me there wasn't "any benefit" .. You gained inner peace and learned how to 'de-stress' from that course, didn't you? Last time I got inner peace was from watching Kung Fu Panda 2 (unreal movie btw).

Believe me, it was equally embarrassing trying to justify to my friends what I was doing with a yoga mat when I said I was going to class. Like someone pointed out though, that was only one component of the course and there was other work involved, albeit not much. I guess I was wrong when I said there wasn't any benefit, but what I was trying to convey was that it was less beneficial to us than a course in which we would have had more work and been assigned a mark.

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

In all seriousness, the REAL benefit is the time you can allocate to your other 4 courses (ie. Anatomy).

That's fair.

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

Which brings up another point..You say that statistically/historically your year has done poorly in BOTH anatomy and stats, which is why you deserved the curves. Did it magically get so hard that your year is unable to comprehend this new-found knowledge? Curriculums change all the time. AS THE CREAM OF THE CROP and based on your style of learning, you should be able to adapt to these changes. Blaming it on the lack of a midterm bell-ringer isn't exactly a good excuse. You have access to the anatomy lab. Go in well beforehand and prepare yourself. You KNOW it's a hard course. All a matter of preparation.

As far as I know, the stats profs changed in our year, which may have accounted for why we got a curve. I can't comment on that though, seeing as I've only taken the course the one time. All I can say is that it wasn't adequately taught and the profs decided in the end that we deserved a mark adjustment.

Focussing on anatomy, I brought it up in my original post but I guess you chose to ignore it. It wasn't just our marks that were historically low, it was true for all sections of the course (including engineers, who I'll use as the example because I think it's universally agreed upon that they have the worst time in that course). Yes we had access to the anatomy lab, and I can't speak for everyone but I was in there a lot practicing/studying for the final. However, we had very little information about what to expect from the bell-ringer and because of that we had historically low marks.

This decrease, and the subsequent adjustment, was true for, again, all sections of the course and only happened in Term 1 Anatomy. We didn't receive any such adjustment in the second Anatomy.

So yes, I do feel these changes were warranted and deserved.

Originally Posted by Ca$hMonayz

To be honest, the real p*ss off here is, courses like Anatomy are supposed to be your 'hard courses'. Aka the ones where you don't get saved. The ones that 'kill' you. (And no, please don't think that I want you all to fail).
Unfortunately, that's not the case. You still get adjustments, even in your hardest courses.
It's slightly annoying (and don't kill me for going back to this med school thing) because you guys are our (everyone else's) competition for grad schools and all the fancy professional schools.
When you compete with people who's Senate cutoff is 11.7 and Hooker is 11.9, it makes it kinda tough to realize your dream knowing that you'll be compared to them (discouraging as well).

The Anatomy courses weren't my hardest courses. Again, only speaking for myself. Both HTH SCI 2D06 and 2K03 were much tougher for me, whether it was because of the change in learning style or the consistent presentations I'm not sure, but Anatomy was definitely simpler. Again, I don't think we were 'saved' but instead compensated for failures in the structures of each course.

Originally Posted by nerual

Anyways, in our program you learn communication skills, you learn how to work in groups, and you ALSO learn science. It shouldn't be one or the other (which I think you thought I meant in my post). Your undergrad degree (assuming you're going to med school) should teach you BOTH. Also, plenty of people who have experienced Mac's PBL/self-directed learning are very critical of it. It works for some people, sure. But I don't think Mac does a very good job of selecting people it will work well for during their admissions processes.

There is definitely some level of scientific background necessary to enter most med schools, regardless of your background (MCAT, certain prerequisite courses, etc). If you don't have this knowledge, you will have to catch up, because lets face it, they're not going to start med school off by teaching you what a cell is, what organelles are, etc--at least, I certainly hope not. The more you know, the easier it will be for you.

Although I agree that science is essential for medicine, there are some terrific courses in health sciences that I don't think one would have exposure in a mainly science core undergrad. For instance, there are several healthsci courses that teach you about the social aspects of health, such as global health (the specialization), heath policy, critical appraisal, bioethics, community-based research etc. I don't think it's fair to say 'university level' science knowledge is superior to knowledge gained from these courses. I'm not arguing one program is better than the other though because everyone has different interests & reasons for going into medicine. However, I think it's naive for an individual to feel more 'prepared' for med school simply because they have more 'science' knowledge, because in the end medicine is about understanding health & diseases from a -holistic- perspective.

Originally Posted by RememberTwce

The goal of any adjustment isn't to reach a particular range, it's to make up for inadequacies in the course itself. That's why I don't consider the average before the adjustment relevant. Just because the average was 75 doesn't mean that we weren't hindered from achieving a higher mark.

I took orgo (the first one at least) and it was fairly well taught. I think I understand what you're getting at though, but this wasn't the case of just having a bad prof. The course itself was just fundamentally flawed. The information presented in class made little sense in the context of the questions that were asked on assessments, the use of PBL was unwarranted, and in addition to that, the profs were bad.

And we did do that (study on our own). Everyone I know did exactly what you described, but having to learn an entire course on your own (introductory class, but nonetheless) shows that it wasn't taught appropriately.



Believe me, it was equally embarrassing trying to justify to my friends what I was doing with a yoga mat when I said I was going to class. Like someone pointed out though, that was only one component of the course and there was other work involved, albeit not much. I guess I was wrong when I said there wasn't any benefit, but what I was trying to convey was that it was less beneficial to us than a course in which we would have had more work and been assigned a mark.



That's fair.



As far as I know, the stats profs changed in our year, which may have accounted for why we got a curve. I can't comment on that though, seeing as I've only taken the course the one time. All I can say is that it wasn't adequately taught and the profs decided in the end that we deserved a mark adjustment.

Focussing on anatomy, I brought it up in my original post but I guess you chose to ignore it. It wasn't just our marks that were historically low, it was true for all sections of the course (including engineers, who I'll use as the example because I think it's universally agreed upon that they have the worst time in that course). Yes we had access to the anatomy lab, and I can't speak for everyone but I was in there a lot practicing/studying for the final. However, we had very little information about what to expect from the bell-ringer and because of that we had historically low marks.

This decrease, and the subsequent adjustment, was true for, again, all sections of the course and only happened in Term 1 Anatomy. We didn't receive any such adjustment in the second Anatomy.

So yes, I do feel these changes were warranted and deserved.



The Anatomy courses weren't my hardest courses. Again, only speaking for myself. Both HTH SCI 2D06 and 2K03 were much tougher for me, whether it was because of the change in learning style or the consistent presentations I'm not sure, but Anatomy was definitely simpler. Again, I don't think we were 'saved' but instead compensated for failures in the structures of each course.

Thank you for such an informative post! It surely enlightened me to why you think many health sci courses were bell curved.

For stats, you said that the course was bell curved because of inadequacies in the course itself, but wasn't the PBL-learning style used for previous years as well? (correct me if I'm wrong!) If the same learning style was used, why was your particular year the only year that got the grade-boost of 3%? Looking at the grade conversion chart, 3% is A LOT... that means the majority of people got a letter grade up. Do you think the profs boosted your grade because it was at a historic low, or do you really think the prof thinks the 'course was inadequate', despite the fact that it was taught that way in the previous years? And again, I just finished my first year so I don't know too much about second year and what not, so please, correct me if I'm wrong.

And now for some anecdotal evidence (take it with a grain of salt if you will). I was talking to my psychobio TA about my journals, and we were talking about my marks. She admitted to me that if I was in life sci or some other program, my A- journal would be actually be a lower mark. She said that in other programs, the class average is never in the A-range, and that our grades are indeed inflated. And I can see why she said that. I think that, year and year again, the profs and TAs are so predisposed to the notion that the students in Health Science are diligent and bright people, and that they all get good grades. So when an incoming class comes in with people who are not as strong in math, for example, the profs will be more likely to blame the method of teaching, or the difficult test, instead of the students'. I am not saying that this is necessarily the case for why the profs gave a 3% boost to everyone last year; all I am suggesting is that this case may happen.

As well, my argument strengthens if you think about how every year, the incoming class has around 150-200 people, which is significantly less than that of other programs. A smaller class means a higher chance of outliers (lots of people in the class not being good at something, for example). I can understand why orgo profs or chem profs would bell curve up. With a much larger class, there is a greater probability that the grades would follow a bell curve. If the test average was at a 50%, there is less of a chance that all 1000 people attending that orgo class suck at orgo, while if the the test average was a 50% in a health sci class, there is a much greater chance that the 150 people may just not be as capable as they thought.

Originally Posted by paperplanes

Although I agree that science is essential for medicine, there are some terrific courses in health sciences that I don't think one would have exposure in a mainly science core undergrad. For instance, there are several healthsci courses that teach you about the social aspects of health, such as global health (the specialization), heath policy, critical appraisal, bioethics, community-based research etc. I don't think it's fair to say 'university level' science knowledge is superior to knowledge gained from these courses. I'm not arguing one program is better than the other though because everyone has different interests & reasons for going into medicine. However, I think it's naive for an individual to feel more 'prepared' for med school simply because they have more 'science' knowledge, because in the end medicine is about understanding health & diseases from a -holistic- perspective.

Global health, bioethics and health policies are important, but these things are usually taught in med school from scratch. When you are performing a surgery on someone, I am sure the surgeon wants to know all about global health and canadian health policies when saving someone's life. Communication skills with the patient and other doctors are important, but to be honest, unless you are anti social and very rude, communicating with a patient should not be too hard. When I go see a doctor/surgeon, they usually only take ~5 minutes for consultation and some of them are pretty rude. But at the end of the day, I really dont care much about the doctors communication skills, what I care is if he did the job properly.

Originally Posted by gggggg

Global health, bioethics and health policies are important, but these things are usually taught in med school from scratch. When you are performing a surgery on someone, I am sure the surgeon wants to know all about global health and canadian health policies when saving someone's life. Communication skills with the patient and other doctors are important, but to be honest, unless you are anti social and very rude, communicating with a patient should not be too hard. When I go see a doctor/surgeon, they usually only take ~5 minutes for consultation and some of them are pretty rude. But at the end of the day, I really dont care much about the doctors communication skills, what I care is if he did the job properly.

I don't understand why many people see having good communication skills and 'doing one's job properly' as two separate things. The idea here is that having communication skills is a huge part of doing the job properly... any job.