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....

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I didn't find Quinn to be as bad a prof as a lot of people have said, sure he was kinda disorganized at times and his notes weren't nearly as complete as Stone's were, (last year second sem the profs were Stone for the first half and then Quinn) but when it came time for the exam I think Quinn's questions were a lot more straight forward - Stone liked to use questions where the options were:
a) One statement is true
b) Two statements are true
c) No statements are true
.
.
etc

But on the other hand Stone's midterm questions were very fair and straight from his notes. The good thing about him was that he gave you pretty much everything you needed right in his notes, so that in lecture you could focus on any extra things he had to say, whereas Quinn's slides were mainly blank or filled with pictures so you had to do most of the note taking from what he was saying. Overall I think Stone's lecturing was less interesting but he gave more comprehensive notes, and Quinn was pretty much the opposite

Most people find this course boring but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It just depends on what you're interested in. And with my prof (Kolasa) the How Humans Evolved book was pretty necessary, considering he barely went over any of the material in class. His notes were bad but the first prof, Dr. Stone's notes were good and you probably wouldn't have needed a book had he taught the whole course.

im in this class right now. we got screwed because we had a new prof, dr evans for the first midterm. he raped everyone lol

I read How Humans Evolved, the whole book, and when the exam came, I saw less than 1% of the questions from that textbook!!! I was so upset and my midterm was hard as hell. I didn't know what they wanted us to get out of that textbook, but it was so bad. I hated it to the core.

Originally Posted by AnimeGamer31

I read How Humans Evolved, the whole book, and when the exam came, I saw less than 1% of the questions from that textbook!!! I was so upset and my midterm was hard as hell. I didn't know what they wanted us to get out of that textbook, but it was so bad. I hated it to the core.

You're probably just trying to emphasize the fact that not much from that textbook was on the exam, but the exam consisted of 100 questions, so "less than 1%" would mean less than 1 question (0 questions). From what I remember, there were probably 6-8 questions related to that book that were on the exam, with probably only 1-2 that couldn't be answered using only the lecture slides. Nonetheless, most people considered this a rather frustrating course.

i dont understand why peope say this course is a nightmare. i just finished it with evans and quinn. i will admit the midterms were hard. evans was very tricky, but quinn was easy. the material in this course is on evolution and ecology. the first midterm material i found very interesting and it was barely any content, but again, evans was a very tricky prof. second midterm i can see why people complained. everyone wasted time reading the how humans evolved textbook. this book was the only bad thing about the course, but the midterm based on this was material straight from the lecture slides. the profs tests were 90% from the slides so they were fair, but people were tricked into reading the 300 page boring textbook. final exam was easy though. if you went to lecture, you didnt even need to study to get a 60 on it. if you studied you were golden for this exam since it was mostly on quinns material which was ecology. ecology was easy and interesting too especially since quinn was an enjoyable prof.

I disagree with Jason somewhat but people did make it out to be this nightmare that never ends its really not that bad, I guess!
I have to say that the organization of the course was extremely poor with the exception of Evan's slides. Dr. Quinn emphasized to "really know concepts" yet this was certainly not the case. The material was interesting for the first half of the course but got very dry after Quinn took over.

I had this course with evans and quinn this term. This course is unbelievably dry and surprisingly difficult. First half of the course, the prof told us "NO SPECIFICS on the midterm" and the midterm was full of specifics. The second midterm was hard as well... and A LOT of people MSAFed it. The exam was okay, but a majority of poeple eneded with a bad mark. Dr.Quinn is a good prof, very interesting. However, Dr. Evans speaks way to fast, too much material is covered not in the textbook and too much material is covered compared to the first term as well. The tutorials are horribly organized. There are numerous mistakes in the tutorial and none of the tutorials are relevant in the exam!

^tutorials were a huge mark booster. dont complain about what saved your mark >_> and i enjoyed tutorials. good to socialize, pbl presentation was easy and straightforward and another free 9/10 marks.

Originally Posted by Philipp31

I disagree with Jason somewhat but people did make it out to be this nightmare that never ends its really not that bad, I guess!
I have to say that the organization of the course was extremely poor with the exception of Evan's slides. Dr. Quinn emphasized to "really know concepts" yet this was certainly not the case. The material was interesting for the first half of the course but got very dry after Quinn took over.

how was this course unorganized? everything we needed to know was given, they posted slides that we needed to know, we didnt even need to attend class to do fine. it was structured the exact same way as bio 1a03 and chem and enviro sci. slides were posted, we needed to know them. thats it.

I really hated this class, it was my lowest mark of the year and it was boring as shit. I went to class at the beginning and then it just became so hard to pay attention that I stopped going all together. The profs, Evans and Quinn were very boring, and very different from one another. Evans is a frog psycho while Quinn is the bird man (his bird calls were good though, very entertaining). On the whole, the tutorials were USELESS. This is probably my harshest review yet.

Not the funnest class. I had Dr. Stone and Dr. Quin, Dr. Stone's section is definitely more dry than Dr. Quin. Tutorials were useless and redundant but easy marks which is useful because the midterms were very specific. The PBL was easy and required a few hours of solid team work and good research skills. It's not the hardest class but trying to pay attention is hard task. Cheers!

I hated this course... most boring material ever

Quinn's lectures are interesting and pretty easy to follow but his test questions can be tricky

Buying 'How Humans Evolved' was an absolute waste of money. Some of the material from it was mentioned in lectures but it was hardly used on the midterm or final exam. I would recommend sharing with a friend, but I would not recommend buying it.

Is the PBL project mandatory?