This unit has 6x 3hr labs, 4x post-lab sessions (alternating with labs), and a weekly workshop. Quite time consuming but it’s not too bad if you don’t have too many content-heavy units. The reviews below are very irrelevant and old now. The molecular cloning lab has replaced the DNA hybridization lab, and the PCR lab has been completely reinvented. The exam is also online. The labs aren’t particularly ‘easy’. The lab work itself is easy, but the post-labs assessments can be a bit of a pain. Especially when the labs don’t work. The post-lab quizzes sometimes have confusing questions, but luckily there are always some easy calculations to bump up your grade. I generally enjoyed the labs though, and they are way more interesting than first year. It is very possible to average 80-100% with the labs. Theory component is just an extension of SCIE1106 and BIOC1001. There are 4 themes in total: recombinant DNA technology, transcription, proteins, & enzymes. It may sound easy, but they do go quite in-depth. The corresponding quizzes are generally fine (4 in total). It takes a while to wrap your head around the enzyme kinetics, but it really isn’t that bad after a while. The workshops are essentially just revision sessions. They are very useful in my opinion, and I love getting marks for attendance. The end of semester online exam is worth 40% and I generally found it okay. It’s open book but if you don’t know your stuff, then it’s very easy to run out of time. It’s definitely a fair exam, but some of the questions are a bit confusing. Overall, the unit was very informative and enjoyable. I learned a lot of lab technique and the theory component is very useful and relevant. I would advise anyone doing the unit to try and make some friends/pick a good lab partner. It really helps having people to discuss the theory and lab content with. Good unit overall.

Very easy unit. It's very well organised but I always felt like Peter (the unit coordinator) thought the cohort was dumb as hell and decided to spoonfeed half the content. The labs were easy to do well in and the prelab and postlab assessments were open book (quite boring though). Compared to first year chem unit this seems like a step down in difficulty and workload with only 2 lectures per week and 5 or 6 lectures per test so you could just learn the content a day or so before the test and sit down for 5 minutes to do the 5 questions test. This did however mean you'd lose 20% if you got one question wrong. Not a very thorough unit honestly hence the 3 stars but the content was much more interesting and relevant than first year stuff. The exam was decently challenging but quite simple. It was open book and consisted of matching and multi choice questions. Provided you actually made notes it was easy to get a really good mark in it. Just read through the questions a couple times as they are a bit harder than the tests to understand.

Do not do unless it’s a core unit! My first mistake was taking this unit as an elective thinking it would be like SCIE1106!!! The labs are very boring and useless and do not reflect lecture content like SCIE1106!! The exam is not easy if your not prepared as the questions are obscurely worded!!! Definitely would not recommend.

Very easy exam consisting of an assortment of mcq, fill-in-the-blank, SAQ, etc. A bit time consuming due to labs but overall an easy unit.

very easy unit with interesting labs. the topics get a bit dry and challenging occasionally but still very fun to learn

Great unit. Peter Arthur seems to really care about students and obtaining valuable feedback. Content is well presented, easily digested, and staff are easy to contact. Lab sizes are small and you get a lot more demonstrator attention, plus most of the lab work is individual or paired (no 3+ people groups!). You get good preparation for the exam and it's also really easy, no surprises. :)