I took this course in Winter 2018 with Dr. Verónica G. Rodriguez Moncalvo. NO EXAM!
Lectures: There was only one lecture a week and I found the prof to basically read off the slides. I had Dr. Veronica for LIFESCI 2A03 and had a similar experience with it. The lectures contained some background knowledge of the labs.
Groupwork/ ELNS: At the start of the term you form one group of four in the lab as a Pod. And you work with the same pod for the rest of the term. You create a google doc named as Electric Lab Notebook i.e. ELN and document all the lab activity etc. There's a shared folder created on google docs with ELN doc in it. This folder is shared with all members and TA. It includes all the lab images taken all excel sheets with data basically everything.
Labs: The labs took place weekly which was very time-consuming. The instructions were pretty straightforward and you are expected to be on top of stuff and perform with minimal supervision. There was a student guide posted before each lab and students were expected to read it along with any other resources because they were quizzed on at the start of the lab. Lab reports were due in 48 hrs time frame I believe.
Tutorials: Tutorials had their own assignments and were sort of related to what you learned in the lecture and lab. The assignment gets introduced (read off from the doc!) for the first 5-10 minutes and remaining time is to work on it and sometimes you had to show the TA that you are done. However, they weren't mandatory to attend since many people didn't finish during that time and had 48 hrs to submit but at the end of the term, they started taking attendance as a lot of people were skipping.
Quizzes: Quizzes used to take place in this first 5-10 mins of the lab and if anyone came in late...well their loss. They were based on the student guide posted days in advance of the lab alongside some other resources. The student guide contained most background information and steps of the lab. Some sample questions were: the bone being studied in today's lab was retrieved from which department? or what does MURSA stands for?
Tests: The tests were not cumulative and pretty straightforward. The tests are done in the labs and how it works is that you have three stations, you get 15 mins at each station. You could be asked to re-perform part of an old experiment/lab and use the software you used for that lab to draw some answers (could be math or could be theoretical). The tests did have some odd questions that were unrelated for example; calculate moles or mass etc.
Essay: You have to write an essay on a topic you may choose from a pool of topics and you are provided with 1 week grace period.
Oral Presentation: You do an oral presentation with your pod and the Instructional Assistant Ryan Belowitz personally came to every lab and marked the presentation. It was very straightforward but you must know your stuff and research and follow the guidelines provided for your presentation to not mess up.
Course Evaluation:
Quizzes - 1% each (total 9 but 1 dropped so 8%)
ELN - 1% x 9 labs (9%)
Tutorial Assignment - 3% x 9 (27%)
Essay - 10% (1% was for essay draft and 9% for the actual essay)
Presentation - 11% (Presentation Doc Draft 0.5%, Oral Daft 0.5%, Final Presentation Doc 2.5%,
Oral Presentation 7%, Peer Eval 0.5%)
Practical Lab Tests 2 - 30% total (the test with highest mark recalculated to be 20% and lower mark
to be 10%)
Reflections/E-Portfolio - 5%
FINAL OPINION: I personally found the lectures to be a waste of time except for the guest lectures, do attend them! Labs and tutorials are very time-consuming and demanding, it was just too much weekly work for me. Quizzes were straightforward and very easy to do well on and same goes for the tests however many students complained about odd questions like finding moles/mass (I know it was odd but you're 2nd-year life science, you took 1 whole year of chem, finding moles is very basic chem math
). The essay was pretty straightforward I wrote mine 5 days late in my grace period and few hours before the dropbox permanently closes and I got 87%.
Soo, in my opinion, the course is very HEAVY WORKLOAD tbh and it seems very intimidating but it's not that hard. It definitely is annoying and frustrating but I guess that can be majorly avoided if you have responsible group members. You can definitely get an 11 or even a 12 in the course if you do your work and stay attentive and focused in the labs. The quizzes are helpful for tests so if you do good on them there's a good chance you'll do good on the tests. I did find the course to be a bit disorganized but hopefully, it will be better in upcoming years
