I took this class in Winter 2012.
All this information I am about to present to you, can be found on his website (
http://physwww.mcmaster.ca/~higgsp/4Y03.htm), but just in case the website is unavailable I will copy and paste here:
This course will focus on key issues in molecular evolution, and will introduce the bioinformatics methods that are necessary to answer these questions. Now that hundreds of complete genomes are available, what have we learned? Which genes are shared between organisms? How do we build evolutionary trees? Is there a molecular clock? What are the evolutionary relationships between bacteria? How often does horizontal gene transfer occur? What are the origins of organelles and their genomes? How does the human genome compare with other species? What do microarray and proteomics experiments tells us about how organisms work at the whole genome level?
Recommended text:
Lectures will be based on material included in the book ‘Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution’ by P.G.Higgs and T.K.Attwood.
Assessment
Three written assignments - each worth 15%
***Based on papers that he gives you to read, easy marks although how he marks is questionable.
Midterm test - worth 15%
*** Three long answers, 1 hour in length. Basically what you are supposed to do is just give examples of what you learned in lectures or readings and answer his questions. Again fairly simple, but the marking is sometimes questionable.
Final Exam - worth 40%
***Just twice as long as the midterm very similar format and cumulative
Must do readings if you want to do well (11-12). You can skip the readings, but sometimes his lectures don't make much sense they are basically word for word from the textbook. It also helps to read the stuff cause then you can answer the questions better on the midterm/exam. The readings aren't boring, they go hand in hand with the lecture so it won't feel like you're reading something random or wasting time on it.
Overall if you like math and biology it was a good class. I'm not much of a math person myself so I didn't really hit it home with the math equations but I still managed to scrape a decent 8 out of it without stressing too much. Very little memorization. All application based questions. The work load is not enormous you can deff put this class on the back burner and study 1-2 days before the midterms if you're just looking for at least a B.
Hope this helps!