This was a fairly easy course. It took it in summer 2009 with Dr. Kajiura and Dr. Wei. A lot of it was a review from Bio 1M03, most of it was common sense and a few new things.


Professors and Lecture Style

Dr. Kajiura taught her portions of the...

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Originally Posted by naval23

How much in detail should I read the textbook? I know he references stuff to read in the book, but do I really need to know all those details about biomes covered in 20 pages?

last year the testing questions on the biomes were mainly identification,

a)shows a graph with temperature/month throughout the year.... what biome is this?
b)low biotic diversity, simple vegetation, extremely cold, short seasons of growth.... what biome?

there were a few of these throughout the midterm/final

How would you recommend studying for the final? Straight from the textbook or textbook + notes! I haven't really attended many classes and I didnt do so well on the midterm, so I was wondering what the optimal studying method for this class would be.

Thanks!

Took this course last semester. Honestly one of the most disorganized courses I've ever taken at Mac. The SimUText assignments were completely pointless, and the presentations were really annoying to work on, as you had to work in a group of about 5-6, which is sort of hard to coordinate. Kolasa's slides were also based off of the previous edition of the 2F03 textbook, not the one that we were told to buy. Halfway through the semester, someone found the link to the previous edition, so people just used that to study off of instead of going to class. Even though the course was a bit ridiculous, the final was really easy and Kolasa gave away so many bonus marks. He also told the class that as long as they got 90% on the final, you would get a 12 in the course (but really you only needed to get like an 80% because he had so many bonus questions on the exam). Mildly easy to get a 12 in the course, but not sure if it was worth the frustration.

Do not buy Simutext. Do take this course.

Is it actually necessary to read the textbook?

Does anyone have past midterms they're willing to share?

Took this course in the Fall 2016 Term with Dr. Kajiura. Overall, this course is very easy, and rarely did I ever go to lecture. Kajiura basically reads off of the slides, and tells you what is importent. The textbook for this course isn't really necessary if you want to do well, just if you want a deeper understanding of the material. The course breakdown is as followed:

25% Midterm
10% in Participation in Tutorials
15% in Leading "Lab" Discussions (3 PP Presentation)
15% in assignments (3 at 5%)
35% Final Exam (Cumulative)

Both the midterm and exam only consist of multiple choice questions, making them very easy, and ending up with high averages.

Another part of this course is the "Lab" section. When i first went into this class, I assumed that there were actual labs. But instead, they were just 3 hour tutorials. Apparently they are classified as Labs because you can't have 3 hour tutorials. These tutorials seemed very unorganized in how they were executed. The "labs" started after reading week. However, we were split into groups of about 5-7 people, and told to do a presentation on a choson topic for the first "Lab". This was especially hard because no one was responding over reading week, so my group met the night before to "build" our presentation. They told us that the presentation should be about 15 minutes in length, and another 15 minutes for questions. These questions are how you get graded for participation.

The assignments were fairly easy to complete. The first one, you go on a nature walk and write down types of flora and fauna that you see. You then have to fill out a chart with their scientific names and their role in the ecosystem. The other 2 assignments were online, using a program that you had to pay 15 dollars for. These were pretty easy, and many people just used a google doc to complete them.

Overall, this class is somewhat interesting, but also really easy if you like biology. Most of the information is just common sense after taking many biology courses. Very easy to get a 10-12, with minimal effort put in