I really enjoyed this subject. The lecturers are very passionate about their areas of expertise and everything is explained well. The lecturers were always ready to re-explain things if concepts were misunderstood. The workshops were really interesting and the group work was always engaging. If the lectures are studies carefully and you attend the workshops and live lectures, the exam is not challenging in that everything on the exam was already emphasised during the semester as being important topics.

This subject is really good, one of the better subjects at unimelb - the lecturers and coordinator are clearly very passionate about evolutionary biology, and they seem like they genuinely want to impart their knowledge upon their students (unlike in some other subjects where teaching seems like its a chore for the lecturers *ahem* MAST10010). I thought the pracs were very good, they weren't boring like most subjects, and everything is explained really well. The one let down of the subject was that I felt like they overcompensated for the exam being open book - it was pretty hard - a lot harder than the 2019 exam, I struggled to write something of quality in the last big question and hand it in on time. I don't think the difficulty of the exam should have been changed that much from 2019, there isn't enough time to look up answers anyway.

This is a great subject. I found this subject to be very detailed across all aspects of evolutionary biology. Like the other poster, I was also a first year who took this subject and I don't believe that this subject was too challenging. I found that a lot of the first few lectures were overlapping with first year subjects but from ~week 4, there was a massive step up in complexity and interest. All the lecturers IMO were very very very good and you could clearly see their deep passion for evolutionary biology. Other than the lectures, they provided us with practice questions each week to consolidate understanding as well as a weekly Q and A (though not many people turned up towards the end). The workshops were alright... unfortunately, quite a few times, I felt the workshops unnecessary as sometimes they didn't really relate with the content (I remember one of them was trying to find an article from a topic then writing about it (literature review)). Other than that though, I believe this subject is well worth the money and especially good for those looking to pursue a career in evolutionary bio or for those with an interest in this topic. Unlike the other post, I wouldn't recommend this subject purely as a WAM booster because you may feel it can become very boring and confusing very quickly.

I got an H1 and just studied the lectures, and none of the given textbook, even though it looks fun. I took this second year subject in my first year. I was surrounded by people who were in their 2nd or 3rd year at the uni. I was very intrigued about evolution and thought this would be a fun and interesting class. This subject is new this time around so the lecturers were sometimes unorganized, in the sense that some lectures were confusing. Even though I like the lecturers as human beings, they were not very good as giving lectures. Do not think this will be a lecture that talks about human evolution, it is a broad subject. The workshops were sometimes extremely fun and sometimes extremely confusing. There are written tests in each workshop and they are difficult at times. Even though I am a first year student, I managed to get a really good mark on my essay, and I wrote it in 3 days or so. But do not underestimate the essay! The exam was a mix of easy questions and hard ones. The given example of an exam was way more easier than the actual exam though, so do not count on it. At times you can feel bored during this subject, but to boost your GPA/WAM, it's a good one to take.