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I took this course in 08/09 and it was taught by Dr. Dej and Dr. Campos. The course can be roughy segregated into three parts, two taught by Dr. Dej and one by Dr. Campos.

The first part of the course covers Mendelian genetics and basic patterns of inheritance. Much of it was similar to genetics you learn in highschool biology. This was the easiest section of the course but people who didn't have a strong background with probability suffered here. The second part of the course emphasized molecular genetics while the third part by Dr. Campos covered cancer biology and it's relationship with genetics. These two sections had a reduced emphasis on mathematical calculations.

There was a test for each section and the averages for tests were generally high. A lot of practice questions given to us ended up being on the test, so getting a good mark on these tests was not hard. Tutorials were lengthy and often covered material not taught in lecture. At first there was an emphasis on solving genetic problems but later tutorials just taught material. Three assignments were given out in class and were generally easy marks. If you had any problems the IA, Ray Procwat was a big help on these assignments. There was also a group project that you do with members of your tutorial, this consisted on writing a report about a specific gene and doing a presentation about it. Not hard stuff.

The exam was fairly difficult and focussed on the later half of the course. Some of our questions covered material only lightly touched upon during lectures/tutorials. Dr. Dej is a great prof, no complaints at all. As for Dr. Campos, a mix of 8:30 classes and her lecturing style put me to sleep almost every class. It's a shame, her material on cancer was really interesting.

This course is a fair amount of work and I wouldn't call it the easiest 2nd year bio course but it was far from the super difficult course that many told me it was going to be.

Does anybody know anything about Prof. Dudley?

Originally Posted by Meejo

Does anybody know anything about Prof. Dudley?

This was last year: http://www.macinsiders.com/showthread.php?t=1838 2

Some people have problems with Dudley, but I think they're unwarranted.

Sure, she can have messy hand writing, but when she really likes the material (plants or math-related things) then she's a great prof.

Dudley is difficult for most students only because they don't know how to work around her handwriting issue. For first year biology, she posted lecture summaries/notes. I believe she willl do that for genetics also.

Her notes are really good, to the point and all you need to know. During class, things might get confusing due to her hand writing and confused students ask a lot of question making the material seem more difficult than it is, when the topic is actually really simple.

This was probably one of my favourite courses for this semester.

The mark breakdown is:
Midterm 1- 15%
Midterm 2- 15%
Midterm 3- 15%
Tutorials- 15%
Exam- 40%

The course was supposedly redesigned this year, but it doesn't seem to differ too much from earlier descriptions. The first part of the year focuses a lot on basic population genetics stuff. Pedigrees, Hardy Weinberg, Dihybrid Crosses, etc. Not too hard. The second part was a bit more extensive, covering Quantitive Traits, Heritability, linked traits, etc. This midterm was by far the most difficult, but not because of the material. There were just too many questions that were poorly explained, and not enough time allotted. I assume this will change for next semester, since Dudley admitted it wasn't a fair representation. The third part of the course focused on the molecular part of genetics- Meiosis and Mitosis, Chromosome movement, Chiasma, Imprinting, etc. The rest of the course was supposed to focus on practical genetics, we looked at things such as de-etiolation in plants, PCR, SNPs, various methods of gene analysis and sex determination.

The exam was non-cumulative, focusing on the last part of the course. I suppose I can't really say how easy it was until I get the mark back, but overall it didn't seem that bad. A step up from the midterms, but doable. Others I talked to made it seem worse, maybe I should be more worried, lol.

The tutorials were nice. Make sure to learn the material given in tutorial (often not in lecture) as it is testable. They were two hours, but we often got out early. A sheet of questions that were generally not too difficult were given out to be completed. 9% of the tutorial mark was for these. The other 6% were for group presentations on a specific gene. These weren't too bad, but seemed a fair bit of work for the marks. 3% for presentation, 3% for the written part. Each TA sets their own max and min for length, but I think the average was 5-8 pages double spaced.

I found the material really interesting, but genetics is what I consider to be the most interesting part of Bio. The prof (Dudley) has received a bit of a bad rep, that I don't think she deserves. She could have been a bit more knowledgeable about the molecular side of this course, but for her first time teaching it I think she did a great job. I also like how she actually wrote on the slides, rather than just speaking. It helped re-enforce important points. I would recommend this course to anyone who is interested in genetics, or just want a Bio course that can be related to the real world quite easily.

I found Dudley to be really disorganized and she really didn't know a lot of what she was talking about. She didn't know the answers to a lot of questions asked during lecture, including things like "What does that abbreviation stand for?" She wasn't using her own slides half the time and it seemed like she didn't look over them before because she was confused sometimes as to how the slides were organized or what they meant. I understand that it was her first time teaching the course but I really think someone else who has more knowledge in the area should teach it.

Other than the professor, the course material was pretty interesting for the most part.

This is probably the only biology course I've taken that legitimately focused more on applying concepts rather than memorizing pathways/mechanisms. Dudley was pretty decent and I enjoyed this class.

Since others have already commented on the course for the Fall 2009 with Dr. Dudley, this might be repetitive...

Lectures
I found the lectures to be extremely disorganized and hard to follow. Slides were usually posted before lectures, and sometimes there are blanks to fill in on them. The slides weren't as useful as they could have been because they're not detailed, but there are a lot of diagrams and example. As mentioned, Dr. Dudley wasn't using her own slides a lot of the time, and it definitely showed. I felt as though she was figuring out what was going on in them as she went along, which resulted in poor explanations. In the beginning of the course, there was a lot of unnecessary examples, such as the ten slides of "lolcats", but there was less of this later on. Overall, I found it was more effective to learn the material on your own from the textbook and ask questions after.

Dr. Dudley is not the best lecturer out there, but she is one of the better ones if you can get over her handwriting. I had her for Bio 2D03 and Bio 3SS3 last year, and she was perfectly fine in those, so it's not as though she is a poor professor. As mentioned, this was her first time teaching Genetics, so I would imagine she would be better if she taught it again.

Tutorials
The tutorials were annoying for me. Every week you go and have to complete one-two pages of questions and hand them in. They're easy marks, and you can work on them with other people, but it just feels like you have a mini-quiz every week. What I really didn't like was how off they were from the lectures. Maybe it's because my tutorial was earlier in the week, but almost all of the time, the tutorial questions were ahead of what was being covered in class. They were useful though when it came time to study for tests, after the materials been covered in lecture. In addition to the questions, we were given extra problems to try at home and sheets with testable information on them.

The group presentation and paper wasn't a lot of work, but I found that the guidelines weren't specified clearly (for us anyways). I think this project was more for getting people interested in genetics than anything.

Tests
There were three midterms (50 minutes each) and a three hour final. The first midterm was easy and pretty much everyone did well (the average was in the 80s I believe). So, you're all excited that this is going to be a good course, but then the second midterm comes along, and you realize that it's not. Personally, I think they purposely made the second midterm significantly more difficult (through ambiguous wordings in the questions among other things) to lower the average. We were all told that this midterm would be easier than the practice test that was posted, but it definitely wasn't. It wasn't completely impossible though since some people did well on it. The third midterm was in between in terms of difficulty. The final exam wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; it was just really long.

Tests may include some multiple choice, definitions, matching, labeling, and short answers. Generally, you'll want to do as many practice problems as you can, especially for all the different crosses. Expect to do some math for a bit in this course.

Interest
For me, the material ranged from interesting to dull. The part that I really didn't like was the quantitative genetics, but that's just me. Generally, I liked the non-math parts of the course. The real-life examples were always the more interesting material (such as the genetic disorders). A combination of poor lecturing and poor tutorial organization made Genetics my least enjoyable class this term. I probably would have had a different experience if I had the regular professor who teaches it (Dr. Dej).

Now this is a review for Dr. Dej's 2010 Genetics class.

I took it this term, and I loved it!
So here's a review.

Lectures
They were very easy to follow. Dr. Dej is a great lecturer and even won the Biology Dept.'s "Best Professor" Award this year. So I bet that is proof enough. Also she has clear, well organized notes. The thing with her lectures are that you have to be pretty good with taking notes. She has excellent notes posted online anyways, but I felt that if I took extra notes of the things she mentioned that weren't on the posted slides, it really helped me immensely with the material over all. Also always remember, feel free to ask questions. She's really nice at answering all of your doubts most of the times. If you feel shy asking during the lecture, then go to her after the lecture and ask it personally 1-on-1.
She also has a great sense of humour and has these funny 'clumsy' moments here and there. All in all, a good lecturing experience.

Tutorials

The tutorials were really helpful for me. They were as mentioned above, a page or two of problems dealing with material you covered that week. They helped me get a practical or mathematical/statistical insight of the things we study in class. Don't get scared at the mention of math/stats! It's really basic stuff, and if you don't get it then there's always the T.A.'s who will help you. My T.A was really helpful and she was really considerate as well. Biology T.A's for the most part are pretty chillz so, you don't have to worry there.

Also many of the problems from the tutorial were great practice for the tests. So there's a hint you might want to focus upon.

Tests
There were three midterms (50 minutes each) and a three hour final. The tests on general were pretty fair and descent. The 1st one was the easiest as one can imagine, the 2nd one was pretty good as well. But for our year, I believe the 3rd one was a bit harder. The average was significantly lower than the 1st and 2nd tests. Like mentioned above, doing the tutorial questions (the one's not assigned as well) really helped! The exam was really lengthy and quite tedious. I thought it was fair, but there was a bit of complaining pertaining the material covered and the questions asked. But all in all, I thought it was a fair test. Just really long, since I remember that the majority of the class took all 3 hours to write it.

Interest
I genuinely loved this course. The math/stats part was a bit challenging at first. But enough practice during tutorials and doing the problems which are not assigned as well, will be good enough to hone your stats skills. I loved the case studies and the guest lectures at the end of the term on "San Luis Valley Syndrome" & "The West Nile Virus". Those were really interesting.

Also, the course in general I believe was quite fun and really relevant to my program of Biology, since genetics is quite a strong and influential field. Dr. Dej's teaching style coupled with her real-world examples and explanations made this one of the best courses I've taken so far.

I sincerely wish that you shall appreciate this course as much as I did. I hope all of you who are taking it in the summer enjoy it because I don't believe Dr. Dej is teaching it next year. So good luck!

- Abhijeet

Not too many comments since manaya said most of what i felt about the course as well.

I liked how the tests were MC questions AND short answers. The short answers were relatively easy if you did the tutorial practice questions and attended tutorial (because my TA gave us tips on questions that were going to be on the test and she even took half a tutorial to go over this one question that WAS on the test)

I think the 3rd test was harder because the 1st/2nd had really really high avg (in the 80s) so it made sense that the 3rd test had a lower avg.

Loved the bonus questions that Ray (IA). Had one for every test and even a bonus mark for the exam.

The exam was long but really fair. Many were complaining because it was a little harder than the tests (but come on.. its an exam, what do you expect..)

I would recommended doing the textbook questions in dr.dej's summaries cuz i recall that a few of them were on the 2nd test... o wait.. she's on maternity leave next year i believe..

anyone think its a managable course for summer school>

Originally Posted by Jenn

anyone think its a managable course for summer school>

Yep, I personally didn't put in that much time into it. Plus if it's the only course you are taking during the term then you'll be good.

What was the textbook for this course?

Originally Posted by mcgaffme

What was the textbook for this course?

Genetics: A conceptual approach by Pierce 3rd Edition. It's the same as for Summer.