After a hiatus, this course was re-structured and offered in Winter 2012, taught by Dr. Nickett Donaldson. See the attached course outline.
Mol Bio 3A03 (Current Topics in Molecular Biology) is a completely self-directed course, where each student chooses a "current topic" in the field -some topics included genomic imprinting, molecular evolution, blastocyst implantation, planar cell polarity signalling pathway, and others.. you're free to choose!. Four major projects are completed, all relating to that single topic, with the mark breakdown as follows...
1) Literature review in the chosen sub-field (10 pages, written) [15%]
2) Presentation of a recent, original research paper (oral) [15%]
3) Grant Proposal (5 pages, written) [30%]
4) Presentation and defense of the proposal (oral) [20%]
Participation (meaningful contributions to class discussion, asking the presenters questions, filling out peer evaluation sheets) also counted for 20%.
No midterms or final exam! 
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Literature Review: Basically, choose a lab that is conducting research in the field of molecular biology to pick your topic, read a bunch of articles and summarize the information that seems important. This was the worst part of the course. We were given an example of a literature review written by a student who did their thesis last year, but we were never explicitly taught HOW to write a lit review. We were just sort of expected to figure it out ourselves. It was frustrating picking a topic, not knowing if it was too broad/too narrow.. and if you wanted help you'd have to stick around after class and ask the prof questions/listen to other people's questions in the hopes that you'd pick up some useful tidbits of information. I don't think anyone really knew what they were doing, except for the few fourth year students in the class who had experience writing a lit review for their thesis.
Presentation of a Research Paper: Choose one recent research paper (within the last 3/4 years) and prepare a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation summarizing the findings, providing background info, answering follow-up questions, etc. This was pretty straightforward and everyone did well.
Grant Proposal: From the course outline:
Through your previous assignments, you will likely have realized that there are many unanswered questions in your field. You will now prepare a modified proposal in the chosen subfield.The scenario is that you are joining a lab as a postdoctoral research fellow and you are applying for a fellowship from a funding agency. As a part of the grant, you will be required to present background information in a concise format, state specific research objectives/aims, describe concisely the method of approach for proposed research, suggest potential outcomes, and present future directions in the field.
This assignment could either be very difficult or very easy/fun, depending on the topic you chose and how 'current' it is. Current as in, I used articles written in March 2012. So if you are taking this course in Winter 2013, you want articles written in Winter 2013! More current = easier and better. This is where previous courses like Mol Bio 3H03 (Nucleus), 3II3 (Eukaryotic Genetics) and/or 3O03 (Microbial Genetics) really come in handy, as you can apply the techniques you learned in those courses when designing experiments for your proposal (i.e. yeast two-hybrid screening, ChIP, vector cloning). Definitely don't save this assignment for the last minute - I found this very time consuming since lots of research was needed.
Presentation of Grant Proposal: Pretty much just presenting your written grant proposal in power-point format (20 minutes). You have to understand your proposed experiments inside and out, and know the pitfalls and how they can be overcome (this is the 'defense' aspect).
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Positives/negatives. One the one hand, you're encouraged to research a topic that they know
nothing about (it's discouraged to pick a topic that you're already familiar with through your thesis/job), so you get the chance to learn A
LOT - about your topic, how to conduct research, improve your written skills, oral presentation skills, etc. plus you get exposure to lots of molecular biology fields through your peers. It's also a very small class (we started off with ~25 students at the beginning of January, but that number dropped to 12 when students realized they'd actually have to write stuff) so its more personal and there's the potential for really good class discussions.
On the other hand.. perhaps I've just been spoiled/babied by some of my previous bio courses, but I found it really annoying and frustrating not having a step-by-step lesson of HOW to write a lit review or a grant proposal, and the prof was reluctant to communicate to us exactly what her expectations were (she didn't want to give anyone an 'unfair advantage'..?). There were also lectures every week dealing with various topics, which were informative at times, but were somewhat irrelevant since we were never evaluated on them, and they did not really relate to the topics we chose for ourselves.
Having said all that... everyone who took the course ended up doing really well (overall class average was 9.6). And... no final exam which was awesome.
Overall, if you're okay with pretty much teaching yourself a course, you are good at writing and presenting, or want to improve in these areas, I recommend 3A03.
