I took this course as one of my engineering electives in the Fall 2008 term and I found it to be pretty interesting. I also had Dr. Mercier as my prof who was very good at lecturing. His style was to post all lecture notes on WebCT the day before so you can print it out and bring it to lecture and while he is going through the powerpoint slides you fill in a few of the blanks on the lecture notes. So you really need to go to lectures to find out the important stuff.
The material itself was quite interesting and very easy to understand since it was an introductory geography course. Sometimes the materials was just common sense. Some of the topics included: Globalization, Development, Wealth and poverty concentration, locational decision-making of manufacturers, population pressures, similarities and difference in cities, the global 'food crisis', and the 'Wal-Mart' effect.
Although the textbook was required in the course I rarely used it since I found that the lecture notes and attending lectures (he would put questions on the midterm/exam that only students who attended lectures would get) were all that were needed for the midterm/exam. He would also give an outline of what important topics (definitions, diagrams etc.) to study for the midterm/exam a week before the actual test.
The lab section of the course was were assignments were given out and sometimes the TA would do a review of some of the material to know before the exam. There were a total of 5-6 assignments. The assignements start of very easy from writing a short paragraph on an article, learning to read a map and using the library catalogue (
http://library.mcmaster.ca/) to find specific books, and working with a group of 4-5 and going around Hamilton to specific locations (Jackson Square, University Plaza, Limeridge Mall etc.) to create a simple map of the location, write some field notes and then do a 10-12 page report on them. The group work was probably the hardest part of this entire course since it takes a while to go around on bus or car to each location and spend ~30-60 mins. there then go to the next one. All of these assignments are in your custom courseware that you buy at Titles and guides you through each assignment so its pretty straightforward.
Overall this was a pretty neat, and fairly easy introductory Geography course even through I dont really like Geography lol. Hope that helps. Good luck!
But I'm gonna stick to it now coz it sounds quite interesting 
