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 have this course next sem with Evans...i'm really scared now

Originally Posted by kesunia

Is the PBL project mandatory?

yes the PBL project was mandatory, it was worth 10% of the final mark.

This course is like the forgotten bio. It isn't really similar to the bio you did in grade 11 or 12 (except Evolution and Population Dynamics). The content in the course isn't that hard, but there is a lot to know. The course is divided into 3 main parts: Evolution, How Humans Evolved, and Biodiversity & Ecology.

The major drawback of this course is the How Humans Evolved portion. The textbook is poorly organized, and it can be very overwhelming to learn the material. It's not something that just sticks with you when you read it like the evolution or biodiversity portion of the course.

However, this course is not hard to do well in. The tutorials are basically a free 14%, they are really easy assignments. In addition, you have another free 6% in pretutorial quizzes, pretests, and surveys. The PBL is another 10%. The written part of the PBL was marked hard imo, but it is still not hard to get above 85 overall because the presentation, peer evaluations bring up your mark quite a bit. The PBL was a nice part of the course, you meet some new people, do a small presentation at the end.

The midterms are not that bad, as long as you study for them at least 3 days before. The first midterm was very easy, the second midterm was awful because of the how humans evolved part. I found the exam to be much harder than the midterms, the exam was more application than knowledge. For example, instead of having a general know it question about the water cycle, you'd have a question like "Which of these factors is the least important in affecting the water cycle?".

Overall, I'd say this course was pretty boring and dry. I don't know if it was because my profs were Stone and Dudley, but I've heard that Quinns and Evans are more enthusiastic.

Good course though I thought the presentation of the material was a little dry but I guess tarts with any general first year course.

This course was very odd. It felt like an eclectic jumble of anthropology, stats and biology. I still enjoyed it, but some elements of it felt very out of place.

I am kind of in the middle with this course. I realize that there are different professors for this course almost every semester and the experience widely varies depending on who you have. I had Stone and Dudley. The course was relatively easy, the only annoying thing was How Humans Evolved. The textbook would give you information and then go back and say that we really can't know anything for sure because it was such a long time ago. Overall this course seems less strenuous than Bio 1A03. There was a tutorial and lectures for this class, but no lab.

I had this course with Evans and Quinn. I found the content interesting but the tests were unfair. Most of the questions were irrelevant and didn't accurately test your knowledge of the course.

Had this with Evans and Quinn. The Tests made people cry literal tears. They were poorly written and as aforementioned, were not effective in testing knowledge of the course. I enjoyed the content so much and then got absolutely obliterated on the tests, despite feeling confident while writing them!.... I was so disappointed with how the course was structured.

I have the option of having a stone/dudley combo and a evans/quinn combo for bio 1M03. Who would you recommend?

Originally Posted by justy11

I have the option of having a stone/dudley combo and a evans/quinn combo for bio 1M03. Who would you recommend?

Definitely Stone and Dudley - much easier tests, it's not worth the stress of evans/quinn.


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This is the most boring class I have ever taken. Thank god for podcasts. I found this course hard cuz i had no idea wtf was going on. Some of the questions that Evans/Quinn put on the tests were so specific that I felt it was kind of unfair. Also some questions were pretty tricky where a single word can make an option incorrect so it's best that before choosing an answer you read all your options. Also it's important that you do your test corrections. The exam was out of 80 and I recall there being somewhere between 5-7 questions that were pulled directly out of the tests, exact same wording, same multiple choice options. But these were basically free marks because even if you got them wrong on the test, if you did your corrections and remembered the answer then you got these free marks and these free marks are the ones you don't want to miss because the exam is worth the most.

I took this course in Winter 2015, with Dr. Evans and Dr. Quinn.

I don't have much to say about the course content. Evans started off with Evolution concepts and Phylogeny, and ended halfway through Human Evolution. Quinn finished it off and continued with Evolutionary Psychology and Ecology. I enjoyed the course as a whole because the content was a breather from all the molecular bio, chemistry, physics, math, etc. that I was taking, which really surprised me since everything covered in this course were the parts of science courses I took in high school that I didn't enjoy. It's definitely more enjoyable (or at least less stressful) than Bio 1A03, partially because the lectures are live and are not web modules (this is a matter of personal opinion - I don't like web modules).

There is a group project at the end of the course, using Problem Based Learning. Assuming everything remains the same, they'll give you a bunch of environmental problems relevant to today, and you and your group will attempt to put together a cohesive action plan as a solution. The PBL project is very subjectively marked in my opinion, and was really dependent on your TA. My advice would be to focus on making an idea your own, rather than rehashing a method that has already been tried - the marking scheme doesn't give this impression, but creativity is pretty heavily marked (and it is okay if your idea is not completely realistic).

Although this course seems to switch out profs a lot, what made the biggest impression on me were Evans and Quinn themselves. Evans is notorious for talking way too fast, but he knows he does it and tells people to warn him if he does. You can tell that he talks faster when he's really passionate about what he's teaching, which for me is worth the struggle to keep up in class. His passion is contagious and keeps me going. Aside from that, he's really goofy and makes a lot of sex jokes out of nowhere that are easily missed because of how fast he talks.
Quinn is basically the prototypical professor - older, long disheveled white hair and gives off an aura of wisdom. His pace is much more manageable compared to Evans, and he speaks very clearly with a really smooth voice (I nodded off a lot in lecture because of it). Some of his research is based in Hamilton, and he offers to let first year students volunteer with removing tarps for his bird breeding ground by the lake.

This course didn't seem like much to me at first, and I assure you there are many people that didn't enjoy it, but it pleasantly surprised me how much I did. I really hope the profs are teaching again next year.