This unit heavily focuses on the visual system, making the unit title misleading. The first half of this unit taught by Jenny was great. The labs were a little confronting as I was not used to dissecting animals every week but were a great experience. The lectures are pre-recorded with weekly in-person discussions but the content is a little convoluted and difficult to understand. The assessments included MCQ quizzes on research papers (2% in total), experimental design quiz (3%), R wholemount assessment (5%), fish paper (50%) and final exam (40%). The fish paper has two submission options (first draft and peer review or final submission). I chose option 1 which meant I handed in a first draft (10%), then peer reviewed others papers (10%), and then made changes to my own paper using 2 reviewers and a demonstrators comments, handing in a final submission (25%) and resubmission letter (5%). This option gave me lots of feedback, a look at what other students were doing, and a better indication of my mark heading into the exam (final submission fish paper marks were released after the exam). The second half of semester was taught by Jan. His lectures were difficult to understand and the experimental design content was heavily assessed in the final exam. The final exam was confusing and I did not know what to expect as no practice exams were given. Overall, if the second half of the unit was removed it would be awesome.

I loved this unit. Jenny the Unit Coordinator is so lovely she made a good unit into a great one. 1 lecture/week + 1 discussion/week which were taught very well. The first 6 weeks there were labs that involved multiple dissections. At first, I felt a bit iffy but it ended up being great fun! Each week there is a simple quiz and all total to 2.5% of the mark. 7.5% is a unique assessment involving a Brain Atlas Program which was quite interesting, and not too difficult. The largest portion of the mark (50%) is a large research paper which is offered in 2 ways: first involves a draft (10%), peer review (10%), coversheet and response to peer review (5%) and final draft (25%); second is just the final paper worth 50%. The paper itself is a lot of work to do but it isn't over the top by any means. The first pathway is one I'd recommend, I gained a lot from the feedback and how I could improve my paper, and I feel it can be applied to future papers. The final exam is open book with fair questions but was quite tough. This isn't an overly stressful unit and can be enjoyable, but you do have to put a lot effort in if you want to achieve a HD.

50% of the grade came from doing a lab report, disliked the grading system and every assessment took way longer than required.

Jenny is amazing and the content was really interesting. The labs were great fun, and the peer review process was insightful and entertaining. Would 100% recommend!

Jenny is an awseome unit coordinator. Looks like a super nasty and hard unit was the biggest suprise of all soo interesting plus only 1hr lec per wk. The unit tends to focus on the visual system.