Has anyone taken this course before?
there wasnt a review on it and I heard it a fairly new course
How is this course for an elective?
I'm interested in taking an origins course but the downside is it's 8:30 class and im not a morning person..

This course was HORRIBLE! I have never ever been so bored in my life!

Originally Posted by bernas3

This course was HORRIBLE! I have never ever been so bored in my life!

How eloquent.

In my experience with Origins, if you like having your mind blown and your thoughts provoked, Origins is the best way of doing it. I'm taking this course this year, and I am quite excited.

Originally Posted by bernas3

This course was HORRIBLE! I have never ever been so bored in my life!

that's not good, how was the workload for this class?

The description of the course sounds fantastic. I took the course because I thought it would be super interesting like Origins 2BO3. Unfortunately I was VERY VERY wrong! We started by learning about viruses and protists and fungus! The lecture were very boring and very painful to sit through. There was ALOT of material as well. However, the tests required no memorization. Still, the class average was quite low because I feel as though a lot of students were not used to the testing style.
There was one test, tutorials, a presentation, a project and an exam.
The tutorials were cool and the presentation was quite easy to do. The project, however, was completely dumb and time consuming. We had to make our own extremophile (draw or create it) and then write a really short summary about it. I feel as though all the marks came from the summary and the creation of our extremophile was only for them to admire our artistic talent.
Dont get me wrong, you can still do well in the course (I did) but I hated every minute of it so I would definetely not recommend it!

Well, I'm a bio nerd and I'm super excited to take this class =D So all that stuff you described doesn't seem too daunting.. I'm also a big fan of tests that do *not* require memorization. So this sounds pretty good for me ahah

Hi,

I took this course last year, and I must say that I was very disappointed by it. I understand that the course description is VERY interesting and will draw you into the course, but don't be fooled. Although the tests were not memorization based, they were VERY TOUGH. They required a lot of thinking and were often based on very insignificant facts from the lecture slides. The tutorial project, which involved designing your own organism (extremophile) was very unclear and a real pain to complete. However, that's not to say that this course didn't have its pros. First of all, the workload in this course was EXTREMELY light. This is because the tests were not memorization based, so you did not have to memorize anything before tests. Secondly, all of the evaluations in this course were marked fairly easily. Although the tests were very difficult, the TAs were very lenient and marked very easily. However, I can't say that the TAs will be as leninent for the 2011-2012 year. Overall, I do not recommend taking this course. However, if you're feeling lucky, take it. A lot of people in this class ended up getting 10s and above.

I heard that they are making a major change to this course is this true?

If you are not a morning person, don't take morning courses. Especially something as dry as origins.

I would not recommend this course to anyone! The average for the course was very low. Considering that this was elective in 2011 term 2, I was very disappointed with my grade. I love bio and read the course description and thought I would enjoy this course, but man was I disappointed by the course material. The tests as mentioned above were based on very random facts taken out the notes, testing style was based on logic and putting random mini-facts together, so if one had a good grasp of the material and were able to logically deduce the answer from the useless info, they would have done good on the test/exam. If you are considering this as an elective, I would not recommend this course. In fact, I wont recommend this course to anyone.

If you are a morning person and decide on taking this course, you will be putting yourself through torture! do yourself a favor, take another elective unless you're really keen on lowering your gpa and acquiring useless knowledge.

Originally Posted by quresmu

I would not recommend this course to anyone! The average for the course was very low. Considering that this was elective in 2011 term 2, I was very disappointed with my grade. I love bio and read the course description and thought I would enjoy this course, but man was I disappointed by the course material. The tests as mentioned above were based on very random facts taken out the notes, testing style was based on logic and putting random mini-facts together, so if one had a good grasp of the material and were able to logically deduce the answer from the useless info, they would have done good on the test/exam. If you are considering this as an elective, I would not recommend this course. In fact, I wont recommend this course to anyone.

If you are a morning person and decide on taking this course, you will be putting yourself through torture! do yourself a favor, take another elective unless you're really keen on lowering your gpa and acquiring useless knowledge.

oh no i dont like the sound of that but i think im stuck on taking this course so hopefully it's not bad as everyone says it is