It's not as easy as some of the reviews say, still requires a lot of work. This is expected, but among all my biomed units this unit needed a lot more attention, study and preparation time. The labs are a big step up from level 1 units - they throw you in the deep end from the very first lab. Read ALL the information provided in the pre lab material, including details about the equipment/materials used. You must be proficient at understanding unit conversions and different types of dilutions for each lab, it's expected knowledge. Try calculate as many dilutions/equations as possible before the lab, because time is always tight and there are other in-lab questions to do. It's also a good idea to get familiar with SnapGene Viewer as we used this a lot and it was really hard to navigate. The workshops were really great and can be very useful. Post labs require very good understandings of the lab and all the calculations involved. Part of the post lab assessment are 5 min student presentations - you only have to present once in the semester, and they mark generously. Content wise, there are 24 lectures with varying lengths - some are 30 mins, others around an hour. Most lecturers are good, especially Peter. However, Alyssa's lectures are quite annoying because she hasn't included all the relevant information on the slides and orally gives very key points that should be on the slides. Her slides are pretty empty for that reason, containing a few points that are convoluted. Her teaching style is just reading off a piece of paper, so she moves very fast but has lengthy sentences which are hard to digest just by listening to her speak, and her monotone intonation kind of bulldozes through paragraph after paragraph so her lectures are not memorable at all (she teaches the 4 enzyme kinetics lectures). Exam for us was open book and online. Had 4 theme quizzes, one per theme, each theme has around 6 lectures. They weren't too hard. It is very plausible to get a HD in this unit since the content is not that hard, but it requires you to stay on top of weekly tasks. Side note: this unit is not like SCIE1106 or BIOC1001 since it has a lot more emphasis on labs, but the theory is a continuation of those units.

Not much to add. I enjoyed the unit and my experience is similar to the 3 and 4 star reviews. That being said, I'd like to confirm that the enzyme kinetic lectures are not good. I disliked it how critical information was not included on the slides. It felt like the lecturer was trying to teach math verbally, which obviously never works. The enzyme lab solidified some concepts but I resorted to online resources for the majority of that theme. The exam is randomized but has a large emphasis on enzyme kinetics so don't slack off if you want to do well.

I found Peter, the UC to be unresponsive. He almost never replies. The unit is highly disorganised. Lectures are online, but the order of lectures and workshops changed since last year but the the numbering has not. The actual dates did not match that of the unit outlines and some announcements had mistakes. The workshops give guranteed participation points which is perhaps the best part of the unit and the exam is open book which made it easy to HD. With that said, I found the teaching to be very poor, especially the teaching done by Peter and Alyssa. Honestly, I ended up having to learn most of the stuff my self. The lab component is worth 60% and is weekly. This unit requires more time than any other unit I have done so far. I found the content to be a mixture of useful interesting stuff, and random useless nonesense. The questions in the unit often had mistakes, were unclear and poorly phrased and the only reason that this unit is easy to score well on is because the participation points and the fact that all assesments are open book. However, overall, I would not reccomend this unit as an elective

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. :)