Mark breakdown:
- Quizzes 8%
- Summaries 8%
- Information presentation 24%
- Overall discussion 5%
- Midterm exam 20%
- Group project 20%
- Take-home exam 15%
1 lecture + 1 mandatory tutorial / week
Required textbook: none - but must buy a CD (~$5) that contains course manual as well as course materials
General comment:
Mark breakdown itself can give you an idea that this course has some serious amount of work involved.
I give "easiness" 7, but there's one thing you should keep in mind. It is very easy to get a final grade of around A-. That being said, it is somewhat difficult to get A+, and intense "studying" that all of us (science students) are used to will
not help you at all to achieve A+ in this course. As you can see, midterms & quizzes only account for 28%, and the rest includes essays, weekly in-class presentation, etc.
This course has more to it than just studying. Personally, I find it stupid that
most of the marks are based on subjective judgments from the TAs. But again, it is very easy to get A- without even trying hard (as long as you attend weekly tutorials). So if you are a type of person who is satisfied with A- ish, then the easiness is 10/10. If you seriously need A+, then this course may not be so good for ya.
Another thing I found very unpleasant is the fact that this course is
self-learning based rather than prof giving formal lectures. You do weekly presentations in front of your tutorial group every week based on the video/radio/article you watch/listen/read from the CD. So again, you should take this into consideration before taking this course. For me, I know I would've learned much more stuff if the lectures had been given by the prof, not by the students.
Quizzes
There is a weekly quiz ~5 questions long. Format is generally fill-in-the-blank and sometimes true/false. Since there are 8 tutorials, each quiz is worth 1%. Quiz materials are based on some videos or radio shows that you can find in the course CD. Sometimes, there is
unreasonable amount of things that you have to watch for a 1% quiz. But quizzes are generally easy; if you watch them once and take some notes, you'll do fine.
Summaries
Based on what you present that week, you have to write a ~300-character (including space) summary.
It's about 4 lines, and they do check for grammars, etc. This is one of the things that I don't like about the course. Sometimes, I put so much effort and they gave me 60-80%. Sometimes, I was so tired to I just wrote whatever I had in mind in 5 minutes and they gave me 100%. Very subjective marking scheme. My advise is "keep it simple" (no fansy words, etc.)
Information Presentation
This is the weekly presentation (for 8 weeks = 8 presentations). You're divided into groups of 6. If you want good marks, make sure you get reasonable group members on the first day. Since you're giving 10-15-minute presenation every week, you'll have to meet up with your group at least once during the week to go over. Every week, there's a 'leader' who organizes the presentation. One reason you can easily get A- in this course is because most TAs tend to give you full marks here as long as you present reasonable information every week. So that's about 24% you walk in with.
Overall Discussion
Every week after the presentations are given from your tutorial members, you are forced to participate in a tutorial group discussion. I participated at least twice to 3 times every week, but could not get a full mark here. Apparently, if you want to get the full mark, you have to participate 'actively', so I guess the active participation means participating more than or equal to 4 times in a discussion every week to get the full mark.
Midterm
100Q multiple choice. Really easy. Prof posts summaries from each unit as pdf files. Just read over and memorize, and you'll do fine.
Group Project
Near the end of the course, you're given a month to prepare for the final formal presentation. This also coincides with the busiest month of most people's university life. Extremely subjective marking scheme. Actually, we had the opportunity to see the 'best' group presentations in class on the last day, but I honestly think that the other group in my tutorial did much a better job. Very time consuming project for most. I have a friend who spent just 2 days preparing for it and got ~85%. As long as your project looks 'good' you'll get 80s.
Take-Home Exam
Yet another essay at the very end of the term. Topic is released just a week before the due date and that is during the exam period. Some people might like this, but I would personally rather write a 100Q multiple choice exam. Again, extremely subjective marking scheme. I think if your TA's been easy during the term, he/she tends to go harder on this, and vice versa (but this is only my personal opinion based on comparisons of the marks in general). Very very difficult to get 100%. I am certain that even if the TAs were to write it and have it graded by another TA, they would still not be able to 100%. This is out of 15 marks so 1 mark deduction is critical.
This course does have some workload, but you don't have to put much effort to get A- ish, because most of the marks are heavily subjective. I was very frustrated to see my mark, because I actually put a lot of effort and still could not get A+. You have to be lucky with your group
and your TA. For example, for the final take-home exam, I'm dead certain that if you have your essay marked by 5 different TAs, each will most likely come up with different marks lol.. But again, since it is out of 15 marks, 1 mark difference means a lot.
This is my first time taking this kind of self-learning based course, and hopefully it will be last
