great subject with a good amount of content - good revision if you have done high school Bio! This subjet will also give you a good basis for any 2nd or 3rd year bio/biochem/genetics or evolution subject! Definitely useful for medicine too!

content heavy but it will be okay if you work hard enough. A subject that hard work will pay off.

This subject starts with a review of VCE biology, so although they go through it pretty fast the first few weeks are a pretty good ease into university. The rest of the subject is pretty unrelated to VCE, but it sets you up very well for any area of biological science you wish to go into in the next couple of years.

Content-wise, fairly comprehensive and arguably interesting subject. However, many of the lectures are rather poorly delivered (with a couple of notable exceptions, particularly Mark Green in module 3), and rather dull. Module 1 is basically covered by 1/2 Bio (prokaryotes/eukaryotes) Module 2 is plants and most people found it quite boring. Module 3 is about animals and systems, and while content heavy, quite interesting. Module 4 is behavioural and quite abstract. (exam q's not too bad tho) Tutes are pretty light and enjoyable. Pracs can be somewhat stressful with the quizzes, but overall not too bad. Not necessarily a hard subject to do well in. Perhaps a step up from VCE, but if you had put in some time to understand the concepts and do a bit of revision, the exam was definitely doable (lots of multis and fill-in-the-blanks).

Very well organised and structured subject. Lots of materials are given to help you do well in the subject. I did Bio HL in the IB program so a large portion of the content was at least introduced to me before, and this subject covered those topics, and more in-depth. The final exam was quite challenging and lots of my peers found it difficult. This was most likely because a lot of the questions required a deeper understanding and application of the topics. I found it fairly doable, as long as you were familiar with the concepts learnt and their implications. I personally found the practicals and their assessments very stressful from the beginning, but once you get the hang of how they flow and you do all the readings beforehand, you should survive.

Decent subject which covers the foundations of biological science. This subject is important for laying the foundations for subjects to come in biological sciences. Quite interesting, but sometimes a bit tedious in lecture delivery. However, all around a decent and fair subject experience.

Although the lecturers tried to make this subject an 'introduction' to university biology and an 'extension' from VCE biology, it doesn't really flow on well from VCE biology at all - there is a heap of new content like physiology, plant structure and function and animal behaviour. I felt that this subject was very poorly organised - we were not taught properly on how to draw a cross section under the microscope yet were marked down a lot during that component of one of the practs. The skills workshops barely helped with anything and were a waste of time. There was also this 'numerical reasoning test' which was essentially free pract marks but no clear information was given on the purpose of this test and neither did the skills workshops help to develop any of these numerical reasoning skills. The biggest pain of this subject were the module tests. First of all, there's 4 of them - way to many for a subject and they're worth 20% in total. Furthermore, they were extremely detailed and question were poorly expressed, and a poor indicator of the hard work you've put in. Essentially, they were a good way to lose marks. As I am currently in second year and have done both msts online and under exam conditions, I can say that these 1st year bio module tests were harder and the amount of time you were given to work out hard problems was ridiculous (like 15 questions in 20 mins). Furthermore, some questions seem deceptively easy but are not easy at all. Though it can be good to make some questions challenging, there was a severe lack of practice materials, especially for the animal physiology component. Barely any relevant practice resources were given for this section, yet the questions done in the module test which was in class and assessed in the exam were very difficult. This was made even more frustrating by the fact that the lectures for this section were really rushed and I didn't feel like the content was covered properly, yet the amount of detail you were expected to know was quite ridiculous. The expectations for the assignment was equally as ridiculous. Even if you did cover the 'significant points' in this assignment, the marker you get could still mark you down if they didn't think it was 'significant' enough - the marking of this assignment was extremely arbitrary. Overall, this subject definitely does need to improve on its delivery and organisation. Although that being said, Semester 2 bio (Genetics and the Evolution of Life), is a huge improvement from this subject.

Loved this course as I took HL Bio in IB. (even though I got a H2A) Most of what you learn in IB is basically in this course. Some are even thought in the second semester course. So if you did Bio HL or even SL, you should be fine. The biggest difference was the practicals, so the lab. I never learned any lab skills in IB except how to use a microscope, so it was bit of a challenge, but you will get used to it. If you are worrying about animal experiments, you can talk to the dean beforehand and meet up with her. Dawn is lovely. Even though I am a vegan I did do the animal experiments. You get to choose if you want to partner up, so your lab partner could do the "ugly" bit and you could just watch over. Be sure to interact with the people at your lab table as you will help each other out. The online quizzes are very short in time, so you probably won't have time to do an actual "open book" quiz. Assignments can be quite stressful. I remember that everyone I knew got a horrible mark on the given assignment. So don't stress to much about that. The essential reading do help, even though I read only 2 chapters. They do put 1 or 2 questions from the essential reading content that is not taught in the lectures. The workshops are a bore, but it gives you 1 mark for the practicals, so do go to them. If you don't like bio and is not a pre-requite, do not take this course as it wont up your GPA/WAM

fun to learn on your own, boring to read from textbook, boring to listen to many lecturers (not all lecturers were bad), you will only do well if you put in effort. overall, decent subject, really need good memory skills is all.

Content-wise, great. First few weeks is a repetition of high school biology before moving on to more complicated topics, so might be hard for those who didn't take biology in high school. However, delivery of said content is not so great. It's quite hectic and most of the time I don't know what's going on, especially in the pracs.