Hi there. I was just wondering if anyone has taken Bio3dd3 before and could give me their opinion of the course. How is the workload/difficulty with Kolasa? Thanks in advance .

Kolasa isn't the best lecturer out there, but I enjoyed the material taught in classes. He posts lecture notes after classes (2 lectures/week) which can be supplemented by a .pdf "textbook" he's written (the flow may be a bit choppy, he wrote it himself).

As his course outline states. Everything is optional but the final exam, he'll weight them accordingly (I don't know the exact scheme though. That being said tutorials are optional, you either do them all or opt out of it. They require a lot of work though.. 4 presentations + 4 reports for a total of like 12%. There's also computer exercises (Simbio) - worth another few percent that you can opt out of as well.
The material will still be on the exam however.

If I recall correctly, the exam had 60 MC with only 50 MC being marked. This a bit of leeway for people who opted out of tutorial + simbio or didn't study enough of one section.

Originally Posted by VitaSoy

Kolasa isn't the best lecturer out there, but I enjoyed the material taught in classes. He posts lecture notes after classes (2 lectures/week) which can be supplemented by a .pdf "textbook" he's written (the flow may be a bit choppy, he wrote it himself).

As his course outline states. Everything is optional but the final exam, he'll weight them accordingly (I don't know the exact scheme though. That being said tutorials are optional, you either do them all or opt out of it. They require a lot of work though.. 4 presentations + 4 reports for a total of like 12%. There's also computer exercises (Simbio) - worth another few percent that you can opt out of as well.
The material will still be on the exam however.

If I recall correctly, the exam had 60 MC with only 50 MC being marked. This a bit of leeway for people who opted out of tutorial + simbio or didn't study enough of one section.

Thanks for the review. I'm only considering this course because the marking scheme is one of the most flexible ones I've seen. Is the textbook PDF and Simbio program free? I don't really mind doing the mark as long as the marking is fair. By 50/60 MC being marked, do you mean that the exam is out of 50 marks, even though there are 60 questions, or 10 out of the 60 questions just won't be marked (we don't know which ones). Have you taken Bio2f03 with Kolasa before? I've heard people say that he isn't the best lecturer as well, but do you think I would be able to learn the material just as well by studying his lecture slides and reading his text?

No problem. He posts his pdfs on avenue but SimBio costs ~$30USD (again, totally up to you). I pulled the exam description of A2L:

Final exam 2012 information (50% of the course mark, or more)

Format: multiple choice, four options only, number of questions 50 or more

Coverage: cumulative but the material not yet tested will dominate; there will also be questions from the labs (tutorials and computer labs) in proportion to their course weight.

In addition: most likely, there will be a number of questions that you will be able to ignore without any penalty (say, you may find the test to include 60 questions but the mark will be calculated only on fifty and the calculations include all the correct ones). In practice, you will be able to ‘choose’ the questions you want to answer.

Details of tutorial questions: each TA will provide 4 questions (one for each discussion). All these questions will be listed on the exam paper but you will need to answer only the questions that will be identified with your TA name. You will not be allowed to answer other TA questions.

Mark calculation: if the final exam mark is better than your other marks (tutorials 25%, midterm 25%), then it will be your course mark. If the final exam (50%) is worse than your other marks, then those marks will be used in the calculations of the course mark with respective contributions (25 and 25%).

Example: if your midterm was 60%, your lab 90% and the exam 70%, then your mark will be calculated out of lab 25%*90 plus 75%*70 = 75% (actually 0.25*90+0.75*70, with the midterm dropped). Note that exam mark applies to the component(s) that received a lower mark, but not the higher mark.

I think if you refer to the lecture notes & supplementary pdfs you'll be set for the course.

I took this course 2 years ago and it was by far the worse course I've taken at Mac, I would not recommend it. Kolasa's lecturing was terrible imo and the tutorials were very disorganized, and you had to do pretty frequent group presentations with large groups of people. It was difficult to find time to meet up with your group, and I was never really clear on what exactly I was supposed to take out of the lectures/pdfs. At the beginning I had read all the pdfs because I was a bit lost in lecture but found out that they weren't much help either.

In the end, I sorta took my chances with the material and did decent in the course but it was a frustrating process.

I graduated from Mac last year and I can confidently say that Kolasa was one of the worst profs i had. His lecture slides are pictures and he mumbles during lectures so you dont understand anything. He will post these PDF documents which are excessively long and I think he wrote them himself so they are full or errors. This course was a nightmare. Even though I got a 10, this course frustrated me so much.

Your better off taking another course.

I actually don't mind if he's a terrible lecturer, as long as his notes/supplementary materials are sufficient for the midterms/exam . Those presentations sound a little hectic though, for sure. These are presentations with around 20 people right? However, I've also heard that they were not worth too much in the end. The flexible marking scheme is the only reason why I'm even considering this course (plus I haven't been able to find any other upper 3rd/4th year bio/molbio courses.) If anyone has some recommendations please shoot me a PM or post here . Thanks

kolasa isnt a bad prof at all. this course is easy because of kolasa. take it.

also bio 2f03 with kolasa is a complete joke, take that course for sure lol.

So you can opt out of the presentations? They seem like a lot more work than they are worth lol