Quote:
Originally Posted by beebee2
Hi everyone. I'm in my third year and am considering taking this course next year. If anyone has taken this course before, please share your thoughts, I would love to hear what you have to say! (ie. workload, difficulty, favourite/least favourite part etc.). Don't mind if it's not a bird course, as long as it's possible to do well with effort.
Thanks!
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Hey,
I took this course as a geography student and I found it pretty interesting! This review is based on taking the course with Niko Yiannakoulias (I don't know if they switched profs this year or not)... sorry this is so long haha! This was the course outline from this year, its pretty straightforward:
http://www.science.mcmaster. ca/geo...se_Outline.pdf
The first half the course is lectures, then the second half is seminar presentations. In lectures you learn about study designs, assessing risk, HEO model, etc etc. Then you have a midterm (which is essentially the exam for the course) which was around 8 application questions, 50 minutes. It seemed really difficult when I wrote it, but I ended up doing really well. Then you just watch presentations/do your presentation for the rest of the course, which is nice because you don't have to worry about knowing more information for an exam.
Assessments are: 10% HHRA proposal, 25% presentation, 5% participation, 30% midterm, and 30% HHRA report.
The Human Health Risk Assessment is where you have to assess a certain place (neighbourhood, city, etc) and figure out what the risk is of something happening there (risk of TB occurring, risk of lung cancer, etc etc). The proposal is 10%, you're basically stating what you want to do and Niko gives good feedback on whats good/where to improve. The report is 30%, but he outlines exactly what he wants from you (see the course outline), and it's pretty interesting to do since you can choose a topic you're actually interested in.
The presentation is 25%, groups of 3 people, and Niko gives a list of topics and everyone gives in their top choices, then you basically give a 20 min informational presentation on your topic/hold a discussion (my topic was active transportation, there were topics on travel and disease, history of disease, social aspects of health, medical geology, etc). You also need to go watch all presentations/contribute to discussion, because 5% of the mark is from participation.
Going into the course I thought it was going to be really hard, but if you put in effort you can do really well. I was kind of surprised by the math type stuff in the course (quantifying risk and stuff) but it wasn't terrible. It seems like a LOT of work, but in the end it wasnt that much, especially since the presentation was in a group. Niko is really helpful in guiding you in the right direction if you're confused on what to do for your presentation or what to write about for your HHRA. I definitely recommend the course if you're interested in health/geography!
