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....

Click here to read the entire review

ohh okay papaconstantinou read off slides but she's not teaching the course. Kajiura.. yes people dislike her for being phony (and I found that in small class settings she really doesn't come off as phony), but that doesn't hinder on her teaching. Looking back, I appreciate her efforts and she does make the material really easy.

Dushoff is a great professor, the other professors who usually teach this course aren't, though.

Evolution is interesting, ecology is super boring.

It's pretty easy all around.

Originally Posted by jhan523

Yes, that quote of hers is so random. Me and my friends pondered what would happen if the next day the seat disappeared.

Biology 1M03 was a basic introduction to evolutionary biology and ecology. This year it was split between Dr. Dushoff (Evo bio) and Dr. Kolasa (Ecology).

I thought Dr. Dushoff was excellent. His style of teaching was informative and entertaining, attested to by every lecture of his being filled...
Dr. Kolasa was a great guy, but an incredibly boring lecturer. I went to the first two lectures for his section and then didn't go again.

Dushoff definitely gets a 10/10, while Kolasa gets a 6/10...

I found the material from evolution to be very interesting, although much of it was grade 12 review. The human evolution section seems to have been toned down from last year, and was taught (conceptually, not in much detail) by Dr. Dushoff. Ecology was terrible - most of the information seemed like it came right from high school ecology (I don't remember the year we did ecology...).

The tutorials were worth 17% of the mark. They were nearly 2 hours long, and rather boring (in my opinion). The post-tutorial assignments were due the day after the tutorial, and were based on concepts learned in tutorial. These were usually very straightforward. Material taught in tutorial but not mentioned in lecture was not testable.

The midterms were worth 15% each. The first midterm was on just 3 chapters, while the second was on quite a few more. The first midterm was 100% Dushoff, while the second was 50-50 between the two professors. Both had multiple choice (30 marks) and short answer (15 marks) and were among the easier midterms I wrote in that semester. The final was worth 45%, and had questions that were similar to the midterms, except was ~70% Kolasa and ~30% Dushoff, with 95 multiple choice questions.
Dr. Dushoff's questions are a whole lot more interesting than Dr. Kolasa's. Dushoff's questions typically tended to have a little bit more thinking involved, and occasionally had a ridiculous, Dushoff-like answer like "a slice of pizza" to take the edge off. Dr. Kolasa's questions were more rote memorization. Luckily for me, and others that dislike memorizing, he gave you hints after every question to allow you to deduce the answer.

Overall, Dushoff's questions tended to be paragraphs that told you all the information you needed within them and asked you to problem solve, while Kolasa emphasized rote memorization. I definitely preferred Dushoff's questions, but I'd suppose that Kolasa's would technically be easier.


PBL was quite possibly the most horrible work I've had to do all year. It's only worth 10%, though. They mark the written part very tough, but are easier with the presentations.

Overall, the course information was great during the Dushoff section and boring during the Kolasa section. However, some people may like ecology more than evolution, so it may be the opposite for them. It was probably one of the easiest courses I had in the term, with the only involving aspect being the (terrible, horrid, dreadful, etc.) PBL project.

I'm curious as to what chapters/topics in evolution and ecology that the course covers?

Originally Posted by ~*Sara*~

I'm curious as to what chapters/topics in evolution and ecology that the course covers?

We started with a general introduction to the scientific method and logic. Our first evolutionary topic involved the basic tenets of Natural Selection, and then elaborations on the theory. We modeled basically using the Hardy-Weinberg model and Hamilton's Rule (easy marks ), but the emphasis on this course was understanding mathematical models rather than actually plugging in numbers and working.

After the introductory evolution chapter we moved on to more specific topics. First was speciation, and after looking into the formation and interaction of species (intra and inter specifically) we then looked in-depth into one of the definitions of a species in the next chapter (the phylogenetic model of a species).
After looking at phylogenies and species, we moved on to an analysis of behavior from an evolutionary perspective, and then this served as a segway into human behavior and the human evolution portion of the course. Human evolution was not in-depth (no memorization of bones and features, just a couple of dates). We looked at human evolution and behavior in this section.

In ecology, we first covered a general outline of what ecology is and what sub-types of ecology exist before looking at each of the sub-types more specifically. After the general introductory chapter (which involved a lot of trends and easy concepts like climate and weather) we looked at the fields that specific types of ecologists study. I didn't particularly enjoy the ecology section.

Hope that helps.

Thanks!
Were the chapters in order in the textbook, or was it all over the place, seeing that there are 2 textbooks?
Oooh, and were all the topics covered in the Biological Science textbook, or do we need to purchase the other textbook, How Humans Evolved?
Thanks again!

Originally Posted by ~*Sara*~

Thanks!
Were the chapters in order in the textbook, or was it all over the place, seeing that there are 2 textbooks?
Oooh, and were all the topics covered in the Biological Science textbook, or do we need to purchase the other textbook, How Humans Evolved?
Thanks again!

I didn't really use the books very much, Dr. Dushoff had excellent, concise notes and his lectures really stuck in your head - I don't think I studied at all for Dr. Dushoff's material.
Dr. Kolasa's material was rather straight-forward, and his notes summarized everything from the textbook you need to know.

The Biological Science textbook was used for the vast majority of the course, HHE was basically useless (it seems interesting, but useless for the course). If you're going to buy a textbook, buy the Biological Science text. HHE is good, but more as a book you read on your own time for your own personal knowledge.

Again, the professors summed up everything well - there was no real need to read the textbooks.

Awesome! Thanks a lot !

Can anyone tell me how the tutorials are like for Bio1m03. Do you have to prepare for them? Do you get tested on the material or do you have to do a set of problems/ questions like chem before you go in?

Thanks

Originally Posted by dedust

Can anyone tell me how the tutorials are like for Bio1m03. Do you have to prepare for them? Do you get tested on the material or do you have to do a set of problems/ questions like chem before you go in?

Thanks

I haven't taken the course, but I've talked to people who have. Basically, there are pre-tutorial quizzes (instead of pre-lab) and the tutorials themselves, include assignments which are a pretty large portion of our mark.

The tutorials this year were worth a combined total of 17% of the overall mark.
The professors were both really good, but I have to agree with everyone else - "How Humans Evolved" was totally useless. That being said, I bought the Study Guide in addition to the textbook and thought i really helped. The pre-tutorial quizzes were relatively easy, and the labs are dry labs, and take maybe 20-30 minutes to complete to hand in the next day.
My favourite first year course, for sure.

Originally Posted by dedust

Can anyone tell me how the tutorials are like for Bio1m03. Do you have to prepare for them? Do you get tested on the material or do you have to do a set of problems/ questions like chem before you go in?

Thanks

The tutorials are dry labs, and aren't that difficult really (in my opinion). You have to do a pre-tutorial quiz online, and they're fairly short. Ten-minute job, usually. To my recollection, you're just tested on course material that is relevant to your upcoming lab (sometimes it's not relevant to it). Some lab assignments were completed within the 2-hour lab, and sometimes you'd have to obtain data in the lab and do a post-lab after hours, and hand it in the next day to the drop-box. If you're concerned about pre-lab work or post-lab work being time-consuming or difficult, it isn't an issue with this course.

There is a PBL (Problem-Based Learning) group project assigned in the labs that is worth 10% of your final mark, and it's relatively time-consuming if you want to do really well. I'm probably just crazy geeky, but it's actually really interesting and it was my favorite part of the course despite my long-standing hatred for group work.

Hope this helps!

Can someone please tell me how they would find this course WITHOUT grade 12 biology or BIO 1P03? I need to take gr.12 bio/1pa3 in order to take the Psych courses I want, but I can skip it and gos traight into bio 1mo3. This way, I can take upper year ecology courses that I'm interested in, while still allowing me to take Psych courses.