I was reading the description for this moral issues course and it sounds very interesting. any opinions. and I was also wondering how much essay writing is involved in this course.

I am also interested in this course. How did you find it and would you recommend it as an elective?

Best course I've ever taken. The prof can be kind of dry but the readings are really interesting. The assignments are in case study form and they're really fun to do. I'm in philosophy though and I have an interest in bioethics so I ended up doing really well in the course. I know a ton of people who hated that class.

Originally Posted by ferreinm

Best course I've ever taken. The prof can be kind of dry but the readings are really interesting. The assignments are in case study form and they're really fun to do. I'm in philosophy though and I have an interest in bioethics so I ended up doing really well in the course. I know a ton of people who hated that class.

Why did they hate it? Was it just because they didnt find it interesting or was it something else?

Haha, I'm going to have to disagree with Ferreinm. i took this class last year with Rodde, and although he was a really good prof and I liked the way he organized/ran his lectures, I ended up really disliking the course itself. It was a HUGE class when I took it (~600 students) so there's really no room for meaningful discussion. My tutorials weren't run very well either as most of the people in them would just get really emotional when we had discussions (which is understandable, most of the material focuses on controversial topics like abortion,euthanasia, etc. which lots of people have very strong opinions on) so i didn't feel like that was very useful either.

I know a lot of people who really DID like this course, so don't let me discourage you if you really want to take it. I'm minoring in philosophy though and I didn't really feel like this was a philosophy class, more a "controversial-topic-discussion-class." It wasn't hard to do well in, and the workload wasn't intense, but I found a lot of the readings very dry.

I thought this class was... fine. I definitely agree with everything Geek said.

It seems to be the elective that EVERYONE takes and I really hate classes like that. The class is enormous and it's held in MDCL 1305. I really think you shouldn't be setting foot in that classroom past first year, that's not education. The material is really interesting but tutorials can be a disaster. I had an excellent T.A who knew how to police discussion and place emphasis on what you're actually supposed to be taking away from the course but I can definitely see how the tutorials can become very uncomfortable and overly emotional.

However, it is really easy. Just a few assignments and a final. You'll get a high mark if you put in a reasonable amount of time, can write fairly well, and have decent critical thinking skills. When I took it, we were given case studies for assignments and we had to break down the case and analyze using theories/models from the readings.

Take it if you find the subject interesting and won't mind an enormous class and possibly terrible tutorials.