[Lois]

**note: I took the course with Dudley, not Rollo**

The course itself was fairly interesting if you enjoy biodiversity and the environment. Make sure you know the articles very thoroughly - most of them are interesting (especially at the end).

10% Quiz - mostly based on articles
40% Midterm
50% Exam

Plus, up to 5% bonus through learnlink participation. I'll warn you though, the TAs know the difference between "I'm just going to post random irrelevant articles all the time to get 5%" and well thought out postings that are relevant and well explained.

The average for the bonus marks for everyone who participated was 0.4 %. Although I didn't spam the LL forums, I got 4.2% bonus from about 6 messages.

jesus, just wondering when you took the course? I don't know if it'll change much because Dr. Dushoff is supposed to be teaching it this fall...

Cool, I like Dr. Dushoff. I hope I get him in my upper years.

I took it last year with Dudley.

Hm, I'm really surprised Rollo isn't teaching it this year. =p

Were the articles mainly the focus of the tutorials or were they part of the midterms/lectures as well?

Could you comment on the workload also?

The articles were covered on the tests. If people had any major questions, you could go to the tutorial to get some clarification. I found that it was pretty easy to pick out what was important though.

The course load was fairly light (2 lectures, one optional tutorial). The articles got progressively more interesting as the term passed. There were a lot of equations, but I think that was Dudley showing off her degree =p. With Rollo, the most you have to know is the Lokta Volterra equations.

I just took it this past semester with Dr. Dushoff. I think that overall he is a good proff, he's really funny, but I disliked the course very much. It was pretty boring, and he was very confused and flustered most of the time (probably because this was his first year teaching the course). He would lecture something and then decide to change it they next class and later test us on it which would cause confusion. There was no courseware or textbook for the class- just his notes- which made studying hard.

I found the tutorials useful.

Breakdown:
Midterm 1- 25%
Midterm 2- 25%
Exam- 40%
Online assignments: 10%

One important thing- Dr. Dushoff really like math, so he decided to put quite a bit of math in the course- which freaked out alot of us Biology people. There was alot of formulas and manipulating equating in the first half of the course. One thing that probably sounds silly but really bothered me- he didnt like the way ln looked on paper, so he would use log in all his notes and tell us to just use ln where ever he said log (right...cause that's not confusing)

I took this course in 2010 where Dushoff was the prof. I had Dushoff as my prof in Bio 1M03 and I loved that course soo I thought this would be somewhat similar. His teaching style is the same if you had him as a prof in previous courses. Honestly, I didn't like the course...it was soooo boring. Now I'm a person who loves ecology and all aspects of it, but I wasn't expecting the amount of MATH that was involved. I only gave it a low rating for easiness because, well, I suck at math and I was never good at it. Also, I was never interested in math or learning about dynamic models and stuff...soo that kinda ruined the course for me.

There was no textbook for the course. We relied on lectures, which I found alright. There were assignments every week or so...to be completed but not for marks. Tutorials were also optional. The course was broken down as follows:

3 Online quizzes = 10%
Two midterms = 50% (25% each)
Final exam = 40%

Dushoff was a good prof (IMO) I always liked his lecture notes for some reason. Unfortunately, the material was very dry at times. We were given many mathematical equations and models and graphs. Lectures consisted of completing notes on his lecture print-outs. The tests were fair as long as you kept up with his lecture notes and did (or at least looked over) his assignments.

I really enjoyed the course. There was math involved, but it was simple and somewhat review of logistics that you've learned in first year bio. Though Dushoff might of been a bit confusing about a topic on occasion, he was a really good and funny prof. I'd recommend the course.

This course is fairly easy.

Dushoff sets out to keep the marks fairly high, as he adjusted our final marks and our first midterm marks.

The tests in generally though were easy.

I found the interrelationship between math and biology in this course interesting.

What were the online quizzes about? Were they based on lectures?

Yes they were based on lectures from the previous few weeks

Just curious what would you say on average you could get in this course? I'm okay in math but I wouldn't say was top notch.

Originally Posted by AnnaWM

Just curious what would you say on average you could get in this course? I'm okay in math but I wouldn't say was top notch.

It's easy to get 10+ cause the material was easy....I'm really bad at math though and I'm sure you can easily achieve 10+ =)

took in winter 2011

I did not like this course. it was boring and unorganized.

Dushoff is flustered/disoriented 80% of the time which is really annoying cuz you're trying to understand what he's saying and then when you ask him to repeat it, he usually can't...
His notes are really organized (unlike him) though there were mistakes here and there..
The TAs were somewhat helpful, they were not very 'connected' with him.. like i would ask my TA something and she would be like.. o we don't really know what he means..

3 asns worth 10%
2 midterms 25% each (each out of 25 marks, around 20 m/c and 1 short answer)
final 40% (40 mc)

I think he reduced a lot of math since the first time he taught it cuz there was barely any
the only good thing about this course was most of the material was somewhat simple and the midterm/final were not hard

had to download this program called 'R'
i thot it was kinda stupid cuz we had to do our assignments with them and he doesn't even go through anything about it in class, only online instructions

there was sorta a textbook.. you can get by with just his notes but the textbook clears some stuff up that he's not good at explaining...