[R633]

Course Breakdown:
Labs: 40%
Midterm: 25%
Final Exam: 35%

Overview:
This course will provide you with a detailed physiological understanding of the major vertebrate organ systems. Major topics include the circulatory, respiratory, muscular, and renal systems. Although this is a course on vertebrate physiology, you will spend little time discussing human physiology. Mostly, you will be focusing on the physiological dynamics of other vertebrate species (ie. fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds etc....). For example, you will analyze differences in anatomical structure of the amphibian and reptilian ciruclatory systems and the implications these differences have on their physiology.

Labs:
The labs in this course are very interesting. You will end up doing quite a bit of dissection and also working with some live animals. Topics include electrically stimulating the gastrocnemius muscle of the frog and perfusing the ciruculatory system of the trout fish with pharmalogical agents. There are two types of lab reports: One is essay style where the TA will give you two questions to answer related to the lab you just conducted. The course material will help you to answer these questions, but to fully answer them you will have to do outside research. The second type of lab report is the formal lab report. You will have to write out an abstract, results section, and answer discussion questions provided in the lab manual. These ones are harder to do well in, but are still quite managable. This section of the course was by far the hardest, not because of the material, but because there was both a new lab to conduct and a new report to hand in every week.

Midterm:
Very fair. Essay style questions based both on the labs and course material. The questions are very straightforward - as long you understand the course material and the concepts in the labs, you will get a good grade. The average was in the mid-70's.

Exam:
This is just like the midterm, except more questions. It is the exact same format and covers the entire course. There is a lot of material to know, but if you work at understanding all the material, you will do very well. There are no surprises, just make sure focus on the underlying concpets and not on every single detail.

Professors:
Both Drs McClelland and Wood are very knowledgable and and explain concepts really well. Our class size this past year was about 25 students and both lab TAs were also very helpful.

Overall, this is an excellent course, it is challenging and has a heavy workload because of all the labs, but if you put in the time, you're guarenteed a 10-12. Good luck!

How many formal lab reports did you guys have to write?

Thanks

Haven't taken the course, but I have a friend who did and I remember her having to write a lab report most weeks, if not all. There's 11 labs total:
http://www.biology.mcmaster. ca/ima...02011 -12.pdf

Yes, there were 11 labs, and a lab report was due every week.

There were 3 essay style lab reports and 8 of them were formal.

Was there a lab test like Bio 3U03?

When you mean essay-styled questions, are they like long answers where you are given a page long to write. Also, for the midterm/exam, roughly how many questions were there and was the 50 mins in class enough to write the midterm/exam?

Originally Posted by lankan_4lif

Was there a lab test like Bio 3U03?

When you mean essay-styled questions, are they like long answers where you are given a page long to write. Also, for the midterm/exam, roughly how many questions were there and was the 50 mins in class enough to write the midterm/exam?

The essay styled questions involved answering 2 questions that were assigned to you after lab and are meant to be approximately 1-2 pages long. As long as you answer the questons directly, you will do well. The midterm was a little tight for time, but I felt there was more than enough time for the exam. If you know the material well, time will not be an issue. I wrote a little too much for the midterm questions so I had to rush at the end... I wrote more cocisely on the exam and finished with time left. The midterm had 10 questons from which you choose 6. The exam had 12 questions from which you choose 10. There was no lab exam.
If you are interested in this course then you should definately take it because you will do well regardless of workload. Don't take an easier course that you have no interest in thinking you will get a higher grade.

Thanks for the review. Yeah I am taking this course since I love physio courses despite the formal lab reports. How many marks were the questions worth, were they like questions you had to write a half a page to one page about or are they similar to like the Bio 3U03 short answers/long answers on the exam?

The questions on the midterm and exam were worth 10 marks and the answers are recommended to be about half a page in length. The course is probably going to be switched up a little bit this year, so be ready for slight changes in lecture topics, labs, and format of the midterm and exam.

could you give a rough average of the class lab marks?
as a huge part of the course, this might be a dealbreaker for me :S
I really want to take it, but I've been screwed over by labs before

The labs were marked difficultly. I would guess the overall lab average to be in the mid 70s. The key is to be thorough in all the lab assignments. A lot of people didn't do well because they did not answer the questions completely. However, don't let this deter you from taking the course.... as long as you explain your results (whether they be correct or not) and answer the discussion questions fully, you won't have a problem. Remember, this course has a heavy work load, so take this into account when choosing other courses in the same semester. Good luck.