BIOL 200 & BIOL 201

BIOL 200 (with Dr. Ninan Abraham)

• Course Taken: Tu/Th 2pm-3:30pm (September, 2013 - December, 2013)
• Format: Typical 1.5 hour lecture with iClicker questions for participation. There is also a weekly tutorial component worth 25% of your final grade. During tutorial, you will have 4 chapter quizzes and a news article assignment. The quality of the tutorial really depends on your TA and your section. Some sections are really enthusiastic with lots of discussions while some sections are half-dead. 
• Grading Scheme: Tutorial mark, midterm, final (you are allowed a double-sided 8" x 11.5" hand written cheat sheet for all quizzes & exams)
• Textbook: I didn't bother to get the textbook. There is a extremely thorough set of notes on Connect even though the site itself is quite confusing to navigate. 
• Class Average: 68% 
• Personal Experience: In general, this course is very similar to BIOL 121/SCIE001 except with 100% focus on cells. Topics included targetted transport into ER, mitochondria, nucleus & interpreting gels. Especially at the beginning of term, there is a lot of overlap from first year which made it a bit boring. Dr. Abraham is a great lecturer that keeps his students engaged. He has nice analogies, excellent iClicker questions and a fun personality. I personally wish his lecturers had a more consistent "storyline" because sometimes I found they bounced around a little bit too much. His office is a bit tricky to get to (LSC, requires an access card), so he is often available after lecture to answer questions. Dr. Abraham tries to posts his notes by 11pm the night before class. Some people thinks he speaks too fast, but as a native English speaker I thought his speed was normal. 

• Advice: Write your own notes after each chapter. It will make studying for the final much easier than trying to navigate through all those links on Connect. During the exam, READ QUESTIONS CAREFULLY before answering. The exams are open-ended with an essay question, so it is important to try to hit as many "learning objectives" as you can while explaining your reasoning. Throwing in as many definitions as possible is often a good strategy. 

BIOL 201 (with Dr. Richards & Dr. Jeter)

• Course Taken: MWF 10am (January, 2014 - April, 2014)
• Format: Lectures with iClicker questions and 4 mandatory tutorial sessions which counted for participation marks. There was also a weekly weekend reading quiz (due Monday morning) on BioChem Portal for marks. Unfortunately, the BioChem had a lot of glitches. 
• Textbook: Principals of Biochemistry 6E by Lehninger; by purchasing the mandatory online portal, a e-textbook is also provided. 
• Class Average: 73% 
• Personal Experience: The 4 mandatory tutorial sessions consisted of us doing worksheets with a TA lecturing in between. I did not find these sessions helpful. However, the rest of the time there were optional tutorial sessions where you could go in and ask for help on problem sets. 
• Dr. Jeter taught majority of the course (except for animal metabolism). He is extremely enthusiastic and likes to stay after lecture to help clarify concepts. I found his analogies a bit confusing though due to his tendency to oversimplify. In his online notes, he liked to leave a lot of blank spaces for students to fill in. I had trouble filling in everything before he moved on. In addition, he doesn't like to post his final set of notes and he often jumped around in his slides during lecture. 
• Dr. Richards taught the animal metabolism section of the course. He is a great lecturer with a bit of a "theatrical" flare. I enjoyed the way he summarized the concepts from the last lecture at the beginning of each class. He is also very helpful outside of lectures. I found his posted notes very useful plus he posts any in-class corrections & handwritten diagrams online right away. He liked giving the online practice questions as homework. The next class would have iClicker questions of some of the questions he assigned. These iClicker questions would be for marks. 

• Advice: Do the practice questions with the reference materials that will be provided on exams. It is a great way to prepare for exams since you will be familiar with what you need to memorize and what will be given.