Pretty easy unit to HD. Labs are good and relatively easy with no assessment related. Cell profile report wasn't too hard and seems a lot more intimidating than it actually is. 3 Lectures a week which was a bit much, but overall the assessments weren't that hard and the content seems a lot more intimidating than it actually is.

Maybe this unit used to be good, but it was a sh*t show for me this semester. I agree with the previous review that there is little support for students in this unit, and the TAs are all extremely busy and occupied during practicals (which by the way, is not used to deliver content but for you to capture images of your allocated cell for a cell profile report on your own devices), so I hardly had the chance to ask questions and clear concepts with the TAs.

The semester isn't even over but I can't wait to be done with this class - it has sucked all the enjoyment out of biology for me, and I don't think I'll ever be interested in biology at Monash ever again. Some reviews have been saying that it's an 'easy to HD' or backburner-type unit, but that is not the case at all. The lectures are super content-heavy but often prioritise dumping information on you over actually explaining key themes and topics in appropriate detail. Moreover, alongside the 2 hours of practical workshops every week, the lecture content totals 3 hours at a minimum, but often it is more. Often, I would start the online lecters in the morning and only have them finished by late afternoon - it left me feeling incredibly mentally drained, and I often dreaded having to watch them. Likewise, there is very little support for students, no practice material is ever released, and feedback is withheld after assessments. This makes it very hard to recognise areas of improvement or confusion, and also means that studying is harder because the content can be so overwhelming. I think the worst part was that we were discouraged from contacting our TAs, we were told that asking them questions or trying to email them would interrupt their personal work and research - they were only teaching us to be able to finish their PhDs, so we shouldn't contact them outside of when we had a class with them. It was ridiculous! The lecturers were not much better, as often said that we should only ask questions if we really couldn't figure something out on our own. Overall, I regret taking this unit. I kept trying to tell myself that "things will improve," or, "it'll get better," but that was never the case. I was constantly overwhelmed, stressed, and basically at the point of a mental breakdown. Don't take this unit!

When I chose this unit, I had no clue just how much TA-variability would affect students, including me. For those interested in developmental biology, this is a no brainier. However, be prepared from nearly 40% of your work to be based on the sole judgements of 1~2 TAs who specialise in a certain branch of biology (not always developmental biology). The biggest problem with this unit was, in my opinion, the online lectures. No offence to the lecturer who made them, but it felt like something tacked on last minute and often unrelated to our actual lecture series. Some of the online lectures were supremely basic (read: what is DNA transcription), making it almost wasteful, whilst others were filled with tedious details (read: memorize the different growth factor, signalling events & receptors) you had to memorise. A few were interesting and complemented the labs well, but for the most part I believe the online classes could have easily been integrated into the main lecture series. More problematic, however, was the cell profile report, Worth 30% this year, the spread of marks felt really random and it wasn't fully clear how or why some students lost marks. It felt more like a gamble than a proper assignment, and I would have loved to have the assignment at the very least cross marked (we had no indication if this was the case). Overall, I personally didn't like the assignments but this may be due to COVID. The actual content is interesting and relevant, however make sure you are okay with the different assignments & online lectures before you proceed.

I personally found the content taught in this unit really interesting. The actual workload for this unit can get pretty high though due to the amount of content. The unit coordinators/lecturers are lovely and really willing to help students out. I ended up having to do this unit entirely online, and while most of the lecturers were relatively easy to understand and seemed to know their content pretty well, some of the last lectures were difficult to understand. This could just be due to the unit being run online though. The tutors in this unit were also super helpful when it came to writing up the cell profile report (the major assignment in this unit). I definitely wouldn't say this is an easy unit by any means (it was actually the trickiest unit i've had so far due to the amount of content), but if you stay on top of the content from the beginning of the unit, it's definitely HD-able!

I found this unit very interesting with a broad range of related topics covered. I found the prices to be pretty useless and a waste of time although the anatomy practicals were interesting. I used flashcards to memorise literally every part of each lecture which sounds like a lot but was actually extremely manageable, even more so if I had done it over the semester (use Anki). Many people struggled with the midsem exam and final exam but I didn’t because of this and ended up scoring much better than I thought. The cell profile report wasn’t too difficult if you have previously done SCI2010 which I found much more difficult. However the marking was extremely different between tutors and there were huge discrepancies between markers so that may come down to luck. Julia is also lovely and a good lecturer who is easy to understand and very approachable.

Really enjoyed this subject. Julia the coordinator is lovely and very supportive of students. I felt the content was really well taught and the unit structured very well. The in semester assessments were really easy (almost everyone was getting 90%+) but the mid-semester exam and end of year exam were much harder asking for the application of specific concepts, very doable if you study and stay up-to-date with the content but lots of people got tripped up because they expect "an easy HD". Really loved the unit and I'm looking forward to more units in this department.

This unit is really organised with straightforward labs, open book online exams and an easy midsem. There is a fair bit of content but if you stay up to date it isn't difficult to HD.

This unit must have been given a shake up because this year, it was not an "easy unit to HD" at all. The lectures were broad and the exams were specific as previously mentioned by someone else. The online lectures were hard to keep up with. You really have no idea what will be on the exam due to no practice questions etc.

Did not like this subject. No practice exams were made available, nor were there any reviews allowed of the previously assessed content. The resources made available throughout the unit seemed re-used as though the subject had not been revised in years. Lectures were extremely broad with extremely specific questions being asked on both the mid semester and final exams.