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Depending on your high school background, Biology 1M03 serves as an introduction to evolution and ecology. As I have mentioned in the summary above, the term consists of three major units which are taught by three different professors.

Part 1: Introduction to Evolution taught by Dr. Dushoff

This lasts for 1 quarter of the term and was for me a review of principals covered in high school. Dr. Dushoff had fill in the blank type notes which made the lectures very easy to follow. He also opened the forum for discussion in class and so this kept my attention.

But though the material seems easy, the midterm questions that Dr. Dushoff contributed were very difficult. They were rather wordy and so it was easy to get confused. It was not uncommon to find multiple choice questions and answers written out as paragraphs on the midterms.

Part 2: Behaviour and Human Evolution taught by Dr. Papaconstantinou

This lasts for another quarter of the term. Behaviour is interesting and is pretty easy to grasp especially if you are taking psychology 1X03 because some of the concepts are the same.

Human Evolution is horrible, basically at this point, we are learning anthropology and requires memorization. You can make connections but those only come after the memory work. I hate anthropology type stuff so yeah... I did not enjoy this unit at all. Dr. Papaconstantinou's notes were her power point presentations. Her lecture style was very ineffective as she read off the slides. Dr. Papaconstantinou 's multiple choice is also very tricky because she always has options like "choice a and d" and a and d sound very correct however usually those options are incorrect. Her multiple choice is based on her powerpoint presentations and you will get the answer wrong if you read too much into the question even though your solution may be valid.

Part 3: Ecology and Diversity taught by Dr. Kajiura

The remainder of the course is taught by Dr. Kajiura and sounds like those environment campaigns that you have probably heard in life (not that it is a bad thing, just that you are familiar with the topics even though you may not have covered it in high school.) Dr. Kajiura's lecture style is similar to Dr. Dushoff's and the same as her notes. Her exam and midterm questions were straightforward.

There were weekly dry labs in this course and they were pretty boring. Topics were note taking, APA style etc however they were fairly easy to complete and you would get perfect or close to perfect. There are also pre-labs and pre-quizzes. I would like to say that for a course that emphasizes conservation, the lab printouts were definitely wasteful... (12-18 pages a week!)

Another important aspect of this course is Problem based learning project where you in a group of 4-5 are to come up with a solution to a proposed problem area and this problem is related to the course. The assignment requires a lot of effort, lasts for almost the entire semester but is only worth a mere 10 %. It is important to be creative however I found that my peers generally ripped off other ideas and they got decent marks.

There are two midterms that are not cumulative and an exam. The midterms have 20 marks for multiple choice (no part marks) and 15 marks for short answer. The short answers were not hard and included the mathematical
problem solving such as Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium etc.

If you want to save money,
DO NOT BUY THE REQUIRED/ RECOMMENDED TEXTBOOKS.
Yes, the professors stress that you must buy them but later on in the semester, will say that you may use the textbook as a reference. Important diagrams are shown in slides or you could ask on WebCT for someone to explain it to you.. there are like three diagrams anyways. Don't even think about buying how Human's Evolved since the questions are based exactly on the power point.

Taken in Term 1, 2008

Peace

I actually found the main textbook pretty useful for Dr. Dushoff's part at least. But yeah, how humans evolved was completely useless.

I liked Dushoff and his material a lot, however Papaconstantinou was awful. Really really ineffective. Her material was useless and just confused me on tests and exams with the questions. Kaijura... well you either love her or don't like her. I didn't like her by November... She was enthusiastic, but it would take sometimes 20 minutes to get down to the actual BIOLOGY which is what I'm PAYING for... So I suppose that instead of babying us for a month, I'd rather learn about ecology. I can learn about everything she talked about in those 20 minutes in my free time when I'm not paying however much amount of money it is to take a course...

HOWEVER the ecology and evolution was very interesting, and I liked the course overall. But Papaconstantinou's part killed the whole Dushoff vibe.

Dushoff was amazing he kept my interest and the course material on evolution (not human) was very interesting. However i also took Physical Anthropology this year and when we got to human evolution, oh boy, i must say i was very dissapointed when i realized that the book was OUTDATED, i was learning DIFFERENT conceps than those in Anthropology, from a Prof who had no previous experience (she wasn't all that bad people). Kajiura's stuff was not that bad, it was interesting, her questions were indeed very straightforward but i must add that she did leave a lot of stuff out from the textbook and didn't really go into detail and spent most of her time telling us how we should 'study' for the exam rather than actually...going over the material.

Overall, it was a terrible Idea to put Evolution into Biology 1M03, especially if you took Anthropology, you had to forget roughly 1/4 of what you learned in Anthro beacuse it conflicted with Species names and tools and whatnot with Bio 1M03.

I LOVED Dushoff. He was funny, enthusiastic and his accent kept me listening. Papaconstantinou was terrible. She was monotone and read off the slides. I went to ONE of her lectures, fell asleep, and left halfway through. I never went back. I tried one or two of Kajiura's lectures, and I appreciate her love and care of first-year students, but I don't need anymore study tips. I only attended three lectures after Dushoff and didn't get anything out of them. I don't understand why this is a mandatory course. I'm never going to remember anything about human evolution.

Also,
I loved Dushoff's questions on the final. Those ridiculous once-in-a-while multiple choice answers, like "a slice of pizza" really helped take the edge off and made the exam seem shorter.

Basically I have a few things to add.
In highschool, our biology professor spent a good 1.5days covering evolution. When I found out this was an evolution course, and it was mandatory, and it was required I was extremely tempted to go back to him and yell, shout, and slap him =]. But hontestly, this class was really great, even with my lack of background in this subject.

The Professors:
Dr. Dushoff is God. Not really, but he's really amazing. He's the only professor in my whole first year that I believed had something/did something to put things into my head and make them stick. His test questions were all application questions that were like a paragraph long and you had to read them carefully, but they were fair. He use amazing examples in class, which to this day I remember.
Dr. Papaconstantinou is new. She really doesn't know how to teach/ be a professor. I'm sure she'll improve with time, but she was pretty terrible. She had no enthusiasm in her voice, at 8:30 in the morning, she made me want to sleep in class. I went to every single lecture (I'm the kind of person who feels guilty if I miss classes) but I didn't get a thing out of her lectures. For her section, you had to buy a separate textbook. They textbook itself is really interesting, and she tests directly from in, and you have to read it to be able to answer her questions (not only go over notes). I was very stuck up and decided not to buy this book. I borrowed it from friends/skimmed it before tests and exams. This is probably the one thing that stopped me from getting a 12 in the course.
Dr. Kajiura is frusterating. Like conster said, she gives a lot of study tips. I honestly dare someone to raise their hand in the middle of class and say "Dr. Kajiura, will any of this be on the midterm/exam?" because honestly, I feel that she could've spent more time teaching us and giving us examples/explaining things better instead of giving us study tips. Apparently someone confronted her about this, and she said it's because people get bored/fall asleep in class and this keeps them interested. =|. Her test questions are really straight forward. If you do the reading/read her notes then it's exactly straight forward. No applications or anything, even though in class she tells you that it's application style.

BUY THE TEXTBOOK.
This course isn't completely based on course notes. I don't know how well you can do without a textbook, but I think it saved me. It's required to read before attempting pre-lab quizzes, and basically allows you to get a double digit grade. You also understand what's happening during lectures if you read the chapter covered ahead of time, and things stay in your head more. TRUST ME.

LABS:
You have labs every week. It stinks, but the labs are really simple. They're dry, so basically most of it you like walk around the room and do activities. We played this "having babies" game where you rolled a dice to see if your baby would be dominent or recessive. During labs, we had to do 1 presentation based on a really really really boring/dry journal article and you had to talk about it in 2 minutes or less with a partner. They're really actually only 2 hours long and a lot of the time run less than that.

TUTORIALS:
Tutorials are just time you have to meet with your PBL group (I'll talk about this soon). You also have to meet up with your PBL TA who will give you advice/direction. Make sure you're not late and your group is all there because you get really easy marks just for showing up & having some sort of ideas.

PBL:
You'll either love it or hate it.
It's "Problem Based Learning" where you have a project to solve a big problem (ie. deforestation, air pollution, water pollution ...). You have to make a presentation & write a paper which you're graded on. You work with a group of 4-6 people and it really depends on who is in your group. They don't assume you'll be able to solve the problem, but they're looking for creativity. My group had a really really great idea and it was quite feasable, but it wasn't as "Creative" as like having a robot monster come in and destroy all the bad things in the universe with orange laser beams. The papers were really toughly marked (in my oppinion) but the presentations balanced things out because everyone I talked to did well with them.

OTHER:
There are a lot of "easy marks" like filling out surveys & such, they're not much but these little things will bring your mark up a # if you fill them out, and it's really simple.

Good Luck, and enjoy this class. =] It is quite interesting.

Youd on't need that piece of shit human evolution textbook for this course. It was useless.

Plus the human evolution part is complete memorization, it requires very little skill for that section and i guarantee you the prof will make you want to sleep unless you like boring lectures where profs read off slides. But anyways most of you guys probably have to take this course, so have fun in hell...

The evolution and ecology parts are very fun, but human evolution: have fun memorizing all those things, its pretty much anthropology with the fun sucked out of it.

Other people have already done a great job covering the professors and material, so I'll just go over that briefly.

Papaconstantinou is dry, and pretty much reads right from her slides. I definitely got the impression that she was completely uninterested in the subject area she taught (but, lets face it- who wouldn't be?). I did not buy "How Humans Evolved" and still did quite well in her part, thanks to her incredibly detailed notes. They would be terrible if you had to copy all that information down, but they are all available online in advance, which is very helpful. The last part of her material, on behaviour, was much more interesting. And she was more enthusiastic about it.

Dushoff was funny, clear and interesting. Most of his material is review from high school, or common sense. With a bit of studying before the midterm, you'll have no problem getting a 90+ in it.

Kajiura is probably one of the best teachers you will have in your first year. As stated, she spends a lot of time giving useless study tips. But aside from that she gives great lectures, is interesting, went to Mac herself so knows the campus, offices, etc quite well. It helps that her material is all pretty easy ^.^

As far as tests, midterms and exams go, there isn't much to tell you. Study, you will do well. Even if you don't study most of it is common sense. Doing the sample problems provided is extremely useful as well.

The one thing that people don't seem to be mentioning enough is PBL. It is pretty straightforward, but is worth quite a large chunk of your mark. However, if you do a good job a high 90 is easily obtainable. (And that can really help the marks you might have lost from human evolution!)

A few basic tips:
Treat your labs as a scouting place for potential group members. It sounds incredibly stupid, but getting a good group is very important for this. Although I lucked out and got a group of people who were all clear speakers and were very punctual, you might not get so lucky. A good group is more important than an interesting topic.

That said, the biodiversity topic (assuming they don't change) is probably the best. You have the most freedom to take it in whatever direction you want.

Get your work done on time, and make sure that your group members do too. You most likely will need at least a night of editing, so keep that in mind.

If any of your group is very strong at essay writing, (say, someone who picked all their electives from the Humanities courses) PUT THEM IN CHARGE OF EDITING. A lot of the work I saw others write wasn't very well written, and I think the TAs would get sick of that pretty quickly. That said, don't be a jerk and give it to the editor the night its due.

Also, take full advantage of your PBL TA. They will give you advice, look over your rough draft, etc. And again, make sure you get it to them early. If they don't feel like you threw it to them at the last minute, they'll spend more time on it.

Most importantly, practise your presentation. I know its hard to juggle everyone's schedule and work load to find a dedicated time to practice, but it is well worth it.

If you follow that advice, PBL should be a breeze!

ah Ecology, i hate that part of biology the most LOL. How much of the evolution section is review of grade 12 Biology or does that matter on how indepth you went in high school?

Originally Posted by lankan_4lif

ah Ecology, i hate that part of biology the most LOL. How much of the evolution section is review of grade 12 Biology or does that matter on how indepth you went in high school?

I think the evolution is entirely new. At my highschool we never learned about human ancestry.

The profs have changed this year, they are Kajiura and Quinn. How are they as teachers?

Originally Posted by hellonewyork

The profs have changed this year, they are Kajiura and Quinn. How are they as teachers?

Never had Quinn but Karjiura is a very good teacher.

I've heard really good things about Quinn, although I can't personally attest to any of them.

I only liked Kajiura initially. Then her preachyness and 'encouragement' got to be ridiculous, over the top and fake. But on the upside, she lectures fairly well (minus the "when I was a first year and I sat right there *points to a corner of the lecture room*...") and her questions on tests/exams are straightforwrard.